said.
The hippie looked over in our direction, and I lowered myself in the seat. 'Mom, please. You can't do this.' It was touch-and-go for a moment, but I knew she'd stop short of actually dragging me from the station wagon. 'Can't we put this behind us? I'll pay you back when we get home. Really, I swear.'
She watched me cower and then she got back into the driver's seat. 'You think everyone who asks for money actually needs it? God, are you gullible.'
The spare-change girl seemed to have started a trend. On my next trip to the Kwik Pik I was hit up by another hippie — this one a guy — who squatted on the ground in front of the ice machine. He saw me approach and held out his leather hat. 'Greetings, brother,' he said. 'Think you could manage to help a friend?'
I handed over the fifty cents I'd planned to spend on Coke and potato chips, and then I leaned against a post, watching this hippie and studying his ways. Some people, the cool people who had no extra money, made it a point to say, 'Sorry, man,' or 'You know how it is.' The hippie would nod, as if to familiar music, and the cool person would do the same. The uncool people passed without stopping, but still you could see that the hippie held a strange power over them. 'Spare change? A dime? A quarter?' It was a small amount that asked a big question: 'Care ye not about your fellow man?' It helped, I thought, that he bore such a striking resemblance to Jesus, who was rumored to be returning any day now.
I watched for half an hour, and then the cashier came out, fluttering his hands as if they were whisk brooms. 'We can't have you hassling the customers,' he said. 'Go on, now. Scoot.'
Hasslewas a young person's word, and coming from a full-grown man, it sounded goofy, reminding me of the way movie cowboys used the wordamigo. I wanted the hippie to stand up for himself, to say, 'Cool it, Baldie,' or 'Who's hassling who?' but instead he just shrugged. It was almost elegant, the way he picked himself up off the ground and crossed the parking lot to what was most likely his parents' car. It didn't matter that he probably lived at home, criticizing the system during the day and sleeping each night in a comfortable bed. He'd maybe put my quarters toward some luxury — incense maybe, or guitar strings — but that was no big deal, either. He was a grown-up's worst nightmare, and, minus the hat, I wanted to be just like him.
At that point in my life I was still receiving an allowance, three dollars a week, which I supplemented with babysitting and an occasional job at the Dorton Arena, a concert and exhibit hall located on the state fairgrounds. When we were lucky, my friend Dan and I wore white jackets and folding paper hats and worked the concessions counter. When, far more frequently, we were unlucky, we wore the same dopey outfits, hung heavy trays around our necks, and marched up and down the aisles, selling popcorn, peanuts, and the watered-down Cokes we were instructed to refer to as 'ice-cold drinks.'
In real life nobody said things like 'ice-cold drinks,' but our boss, Jerry, insisted on it. Worse than simply saying it, we had to shout it, which made me feel like a peddler or an old-time paperboy. During heavy-metal concerts we went unnoticed, but at the country-music shows — jamborees, they were called — people tended to complain when we barked through their favorite songs. 'Stand by Your POPCORN, PEANUTS, ICE-COLD DRINKS,' 'My Woman, My Woman, My POPCORN, PEANUTS, ICE-COLD DRINKS!' 'Folsom Prison POPCORN, PEANUTS, ICE-COLD DRINKS.' The angrier fans stormed downstairs to take it up with Jerry, who said, 'Tough tittie. I got a business to run.' He dismissed the complainers as 'a bunch of tightwadded rednecks,' which surprised me, as he was something of a redneck himself. The expressiontightwadded was a pretty good indicator, as was his crew cut and the asthma inhaler he'd decorated with a tiny American flag.
'Maybe he means 'redneck' in an affectionate way,' my mother said, but I didn't buy it. Far more likely he saw a difference between himself and the people who looked and acted just like him. I did this as well, and listening to Jerry made me realize how pathetic it sounded. Who was I to call someone uncool — me with the braces and thick black-framed glasses. 'Oh, you look fine,' my mother would say. She meant to reassure me, but looking fine to your mother meant that something was definitely wrong. I wanted to turn her stomach, but for the time being my hands were tied. According to the rules, I wasn't allowed to grow my hair out until I turned sixteen, the same age at which my sisters could finally pierce their ears. To my parents this made sense, but ears were pierced in a matter of minutes, while it took years to cultivate a decent ponytail. As it was, it would take me a good nine months just to catch up with Dan, whose mother was reasonable and did not hamper his style with senseless age restrictions. His hair was thick and straight and parted in the middle, the honey-colored hanks pushed behind his ears and falling to his shoulders like a set of well-hung curtains.
Ever since the fourth grade we had been mutual outcasts — the nature lovers, the spazzes — but with his new look Dan was pulling ahead, meeting cool people at his private school and going to their homes to listen to records. Now when I called somebody an L7 he looked at me the way that I had looked at Jerry — cuckoo cuckoo — and I understood that our friendship was coming to an end. Guys weren't supposed to be hurt by things like that, and so instead I settled into a quiet jealousy, which grew increasingly difficult to hide.
The state fair arrived in mid-September, and the concessions crew moved back and forth between concerts at the arena and smaller events held at the speedway. Dan and I were setting up for the first stock-car race when Jerry announced that instead of Coke, we'd be selling cans of something called Near Beer.
What separated near beer from the real thing was alcohol content. Beer had one, and Near Beer didn't. It tasted like carbonated oatmeal, but Jerry hoped the customers might be deceived by the label, which was robust and boozy-looking. 'The mind can play tricks,' he said.
Maybe he was right, but the minds that mistook a sugar tablet for an aspirin were not the minds that gathered to witness a North Carolina stock-car race. Our first load sold instantly, but come our second time out, people had begun to catch on. 'Beer, my ass,' they shouted. 'Ya'lls isdeceivers.'
'It'll pick up when the heat kicks in,' Jerry said, but no one believed him.
There was an hourlong break between the first and second stock-car event, and as Dan and I walked along the midway I thought about a suede vest I'd seen the previous week at J. C. Penney's. It was what the saleswoman described as 'a masculine cherry red,' with lines of fringe swaying like bangs from the yoke. Eighteen dollars was a lot of money, but a vest like that would not go unnoticed. Couple it with a turtleneck or the right button-down shirt and it announced that you were sensitive and no stranger to peace. Wear it bare-chested and it suggested that, long hair or not, yours was a life lived in that devil-may-care region best described as 'out there.' I'd hoped that by working all weekend, I might earn enough to buy it, but what with the Near Beer, that was pretty much out of the question. Now I'd have to put it on my Christmas list, which definitely neutered the allure. What had seemed hip and dangerous would appear just the opposite when wrapped in a box marked 'From Santa.'
The bleachers were filling up for the second race, and as we headed back to the speedway I noticed a pair of squarely dressed boys staring up at the Ferris wheel. They looked like me, but a bit younger, brothers probably, wearing identical black-framed glasses secured to their heads with tight elastic bands. I saw them looking upward with their mouths open, and in that instant I saw my red suede vest.
'Spare change?'
The brothers looked at each other, and then back at me. 'Okay, sure,' the older one said. 'Gene, give this guy some money.'
'Why doI have to?' Gene asked.
'Because I said so, that's why.' The older brother unstrapped his glasses and rubbed a raw spot on the bridge of his nose. 'You're a hippie, right?' He spoke as if, like Canadians or Methodists, hippies walked quietly among us, indistinguishable to the naked eye.
'Well, course he's a hippie,' Gene said. 'Otherwise, he wouldn't be bothering people.' He sorted through his change and handed me a dime.
'Right on,' I said.
It was the easiest thing in the world. Dan worked one side of the Ferris wheel, and I took the other. We asked for money the way you might ask for the time, and when someone gave it we blessed them with a peace sign or the squinty nod that translated to 'I'm glad you know where I'm coming from.' Adults were cheap, and too judgmental, so we stuck to people our own age, concentrating on the obvious out-of-towners who had heard about hippies but had never seen one in real life. People either gave or they didn't, but no one asked what we needed the money for or why two seemingly healthy teenagers would trouble complete strangers for change.
