10:45 Tuesday Night
by
John Crawley
We played cards on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Bridge to be exact. We had started with hearts, progressed to spades and then on to full-fledged bridge. As soon as we had the pool and the dressing rooms hosed down, as soon as the chlorine had been added to the massive pumps which hummed their high-pitch squeal incessantly, we settled into the old wire-cage office up front and began an evening of bridge. The older guys–seniors in high school and guys from the junior college, who were also life guards–played 42 with dominoes on Mondays, but our T days were for bridge; although, we never told anyone that is what we were playing – most thought we had a poker run going.
We were four. Henry (Hank for short) Williamson, Dale Carlisle, Web Wilson and me. Hank and Web were juniors, I was a sophomore and Dale was a ninth grader, but had been held back a year when we were in like the 5th grade or something, so he was still our age. Dale had been held back a grade because he had undergone brain surgery that year to remove a tumor. It turned out benign, but the doctor touched something inside of his head that caused him to have to undergo therapy for months on end. You couldn’t tell it by high school days, but still he was behind us. He was the only one of us who smoked.
That Monday, the city manager showed up to the public pool and told our boss, Coach Radcliffe, that the city was going to be working on a water main Wednesday and Thursday and while that was going on the city was also going to do some updating up the women’s dressing rooms and all the diving boards. We would be shut down for two whole days. With pay. Praise be to the lifeguard gods.
So that Tuesday night we were in no hurry to clean up out back by the pool. The workers would just get it dirty anyway. Chad Mitchell, the head lifeguard and WSI for the city pool said we could come in early Friday morning and get the area ready. The pool didn’t open until eleven for most swimmers. Lessons were from nine till ten thirty, but they, too had been cancelled because of the construction.
Thanks to the construction, bridge started early Tuesday night. Dale and I needed to make up lost ground. It was just June and already we were deep in debt. Dale and I were losing to Hank and Web for the umpteenth time. Then our luck changed. Just like that.
I still maintain to this day they had some secret signaling going on under or around that rickety card table we propped up with sawed off mop handles. But neither Dale nor I could break the code or catch them at actually communicating. But they were good. It was as if they were in each other’s head when they were bidding. Like one person holding both hands. I have never seen anything like it. To say they were good is an understatement. They played as a team all the way through college at the University of Texas at Austin. Then on to grad school at A&M. Six years after high school they were still doing it to unsuspecting folks who thought of themselves as pretty fair bridge players. Williamson and Wilson were the best of the best.
Hank died at Christmas this past year. I worked in the building next to where his widow worked. Then suddenly two months later, Web, who had been ill with MS for a decade or longer passed away, too. His eldest son had called me at the office to tell me. He sounded relieved that his father was out of his misery, at last. It was almost as if the old bridge players couldn’t be away from each other. Like they had a tournament to get to. They had to keep the team together. The partnership played on.
But that night, Dale and I were suddenly making up some ground. I have often wondered if Hank and Web weren’t letting us win some, just to keep us around as playing partners. There is a serious side of me that believes in conspiracy theories of all kinds. Oswald didn’t act alone. The men on the moon were in a studio and no-hitters are arranged by Major League Baseball for the entertainment of their TV audiences. I have several that deal with the Pope and the Catholic Church, but I won’t bore you with them at this time. Suffice it to say, my mind played it over and over, that the duo across from us, might be letting Dale and me get close, just to keep the summer evenings interesting.
And on that night, we were getting more than close; we were getting the cards. We were actually kicking some booty.
I remember the first call that came in. It was around nine. Maybe even a minute or two before nine. That’s what I recall telling the Chief of Police when he showed up. Dale took the call because he was the one sitting closest to the wall-mounted phone. “Sorry we’re all closed everybody’s gone. We don’t open again until noon on Friday. Thanks.”
“Hey, you told them noon on Friday,” Web pointed out. “I thought it was eleven.”
“Noon. Eleven. Who cares? It is Friday. So don’t come tomorrow or the next day. That’s my message.”
“You got classes Friday?” I asked the other three.
Only Hank did. “The Harris twins. Goddamn those kids are filled with lead, I swear. They couldn’t float with the Queen Mary strapped to them.” We laughed. The Harris kids had been students of just about every lifeguard at the city pool. They each weighed about 300 pounds and weren’t yet fifteen. I had even had them in my classes at the country club the year before. I know, you want to know why I would leave the country club with all the cure rich girls in their skimpy two pieces and come and work for the city pool. Well, money. Not that the city paid that much better. No way. It’s just we had a system that – well lets say in the free enterprise system we were to life guarding what Enron was to energy markets. (Of course in 1969 we had never heard of Enron.)
The city ran the pool with this system. There were six lifeguards on duty at almost anytime. Four at the pool and two at the wire-caged ticket booth office. Where everyone came to pay to go swimming. We alternated in and out during the stretch of a day. And every time someone would come to pay, we were supposed to take a ticket, tear it in half, put one half in the “keep” box, (which went to the city auditors on a weekly basis so that they could match sales to cash) and the other half of the ticket was to go to the customer. Mostly, they went into a trashcan in either the men’s or the women’s locker rooms. There was an exception. And this is where the money was made. Season Ticket holders.
Season Tickets could be purchased two ways. Individuals could have a season ticket and families could as well. So when a big group of people came to the cage waving money around, we would take only a few tickets and tear them and give all the halves away. Nothing went into the box – or very few. If we were ever challenged on the fact that there were two hundred people in and around the giant Olympic-size facility and only twenty tickets in the box, we would shrug and say “Season Ticket holders, boss.” And we would pocket the cash. As it worked out, the cash flow would be divided up nightly, the more senior guards taking sixty percent of the till and us younger studs getting forty percent. Once you became a senior in high school, you got to dip into the resources at the higher rates. And those rates more than made up for missing the rich country club girls and their skimpy outfits.
Mike Andrews, one of the junior college guys stopped by and gave us our nightly cut of the cash proceeds. It had been a particularly good Tuesday. Each of us made like an extra thirty bucks that day. He reminded us of Friday cleanup and that we were supposed to hose down the pool walkways and patio at the food court before we left. Hank told him for sure we would. He left and not one us ever gave another thought of hosing down anything or even going back on the city clock for a minute.
Why would you? We had our cash in hand, if we added time to our clock, we would actually be losing money. Or so the topic went around the table as the bridge battle heated up.
The second call came at nine forty-five: a little over three quarters of an hour after the first call. The person on the other end sounded frantic. I could hear her from where I sat. Dale held the phone out for us all to hear her screeching voice. “I’m sorry ma’am. No one is here. The pool is closed. It won’t open again until Friday. There’s going to be construction.” Dale paused. He looked at the phone and then said, “Let me let you talk to my supervisor.” He handed the phone to Web. Who shook his head and wouldn’t talk. Finally Hank took the receiver and spoke to the lady.
“This is Hank Williamson. May I help you?”
“Hank, this is Bridget Lawrence.”
“Yes, Mrs. Lawrence. I am a lifeguard here. What can I do for you?”
“My son went to the pool today and has not come home.”
“Well, I’m sorry. I do remember seeing him here. Randy. That’s his name. Right?”
“Yes. Yes it is.”
“Well, Mrs. Lawrence, we are closed and like Dale said we won’t reopen until Friday about midday. Everyone is gone.” Hank’s voice was authoritative and soothing at the same time. He would later earn an Eagle Scout and become a member of the Texas legislature. He was an engineer – civil engineer. Until that day he just keeled over and died right at his desk. Two clients were sitting across from him talking about building a dam on their ranch and wanted Hank to engineer the project. He just leaned forward and never came up for air. And two months later Web, who had been a pharmacist until MS made it impossible to do his job, joined him in the great Bridge Club in the sky.
Mrs. Lawrence hung up the phone and we returned to our bidding and card counting.
“You know that kid is into drugs.” I think it was Web who informed us of that.
I protested saying he was too young. “It was his older brother, Harry David who had gotten hooked on the needle.”
“Harry David shoots up?” asked Dale who was always late on gathering any news about town.
“Hell, Dale, Harry David has his own pharmacy for God’s sake. He shoots up as often as Jannie Rose spreads her legs.”
“Okay now,” said Web. “Does anyone here at this table actually know a single person who has ever gotten it on with Jannie? I mean her reputation is that of a class A slut, but really?”
“O’Mera has.” I said with a great deal of self assuredness, mostly I was making it up, but Howell O’Mera had told me he had been to third base with her at the Star, our local theater. “They did it in the theater during Gold Finger.”
“How can you screw at the Star? And better yet – how can you screw during a James Bond flick?” Web was skeptical.
“I’m just saying.” And so it went. We discussed the attributes and scale of likelihood of many girls that evening while the cards were laid down and picked up. But by the time we got to Susan Hancock, the prettiest girl in high school, who didn’t date anybody but boys from the junior college, we were sure that pretty much every girl in our school, at one time or another, had experienced sex with a guy we knew. (This of course was a list that eliminated most of the girls from First Baptist and from Christ the Savior Catholic church, although Margret Crane, who was a good Catholic girl, was known to give a great hand job in the back of Otis Lea’s Thunderbird on homecoming night. That had been testified to by at least half the football team.)
The phone rang again. It was officer Wayne Hildebrandt. Wayne had played on the district championship football team in 1961 (the closest the all-white school ever came to a big season before we integrated in 1970 – then we won three state titles. We also won two state basketball titles after ’70 as well, but those trophies joined two other state trophies earned before integration.)
“Officer Hilly,” Dale said. As soon as he said Hilly, we knew who he was talking to. If you were going to get in trouble in our town, you wanted the officer after you to be Hilly. He was one of us. Hell, he had all but invented the money scam at the city-owned swimming pool when he was a lifeguard. Hilly was cool. He got it. A little alcohol on your breath, he would look the other way and tell you drive real safe. Or a joint found on your possession, he would remove it and tell you to roll tobacco next time. (And this was during the time Henry Wade in Dallas Country was giving kids life in prison for an ounce of grass.) Yeah, Hilly was a good cop.
“Nope. She’s called here twice. Place is all dark and closed up and we’re not due to open again until Friday. City’s got some construction going on for a couple of days. Right. You take care, too. Drop by and we’ll buy you a Coke.”
Dale hung up the phone. “That Lawrence woman is making a fuss about little Randy. I bet he and his no-good brother are either shooting up somewhere or got them some dirt legs.”
“Dale! The kid is what eleven, twelve?’ Give me a break.” Hank was tired and the game wasn’t going his way. He pushed away from the Samsonite table we had propped up against the wire cage and walked toward the men’s room. “I gotta take a Dale.”
“Hey watch it, ass hole.” Dale was up and heading for the bathroom, too. The game was on hold.
“You think we ought to take a look around out back?” asked Web who was always a bit of a nervous worrier.
“Yeah. Why not,” I said. “Won’t hurt anything. Besides, I left my whistle and towel out by the deep-end chair.”
Web and I slowly made our way up the concrete ramp to the entrance to the pool. We entered the turnstile gate and I went to the electrical box and threw a lever that turned all the lights on metal poles around the pool and the courtyard. The black hole which was the water itself, was simmering with the smell of fresh chlorine from the pumps that were housed in the brick building to the north of the pool. The pump house was off limits to everyone except the lifeguards and the city engineers. I went to the lifeguard chair and got my whistle and towel. The place was deserted. Web walked to the pump house and went inside. He turned on some lights and went to a power box panel and began turning on the lights in the pool. Blue shaded lights came to life under the slowly rolling surface of the pool.
From nowhere I heard Hank’s voice. “Jesus Christ, he’s in the deep end.”
I remember looking at the wall clock that was situated above the entrance to the men’s and women’s dressing rooms. It read 10:45.
No comments:
Post a Comment