Pigtails
Ian Woollen
_Three young men stood on Cemetery Hill above the university. They shared cigarettes and a bottle. Bo gazed down at the campus. “Freshman move-in day, like picking low-hanging fruit,” Red boasted, “Stuff just out on the sidewalks. A total zoo. Last year we grabbed three or four laptops, a couple X-boxes, and a big-ass TV.”
“And don’t forget the coats,” Jimmy said.
“Right, we got us some nice parkas,” Red said.
“The freshmen – they all come with these fancy parkas, because their parents think we have such cold winters,” Jimmy explained to Bo.
Jimmy and Red were trying to convince Bo to step in for his sister and drive their getaway van. Sandy, their usually reliable driver, had ditched them. Nobody knew her whereabouts. Bo claimed he wasn’t worried. Maybe Sandy finally found that roadie gig she’d always craved.
“You know what your sis used to say about you?” Red asked.
Bo shrugged. “I could have been the first one in our family to go to college – to major in skateboarding.”
“That wasn’t what I was thinking,” Red said.
Jimmy blew a smoke ring and recited: “Sandy would say, ‘Who among us has not woken up all hungover, confused by daylight and treetops roaring past at high speed and a rumble of wheels that remind you, oh, yeah, I’m cruising with the buddies. My kid brother, Bo, that’s who. Bo is too in control to ever sleep in a car.’”
“That’s the kind of driver we need,” Red said.
Bo said, “I don’t know. You guys don’t exactly look the part anymore, especially with the tattoos.”
“Oh, they got plenty of tats, man. Them college kids love to tat. Why do you think the downtown parlors stay open so late? The frat boys go drinking and show up around midnight wanting a dragon half-sleeve,” Jimmy said.
“I figure we’re good for one more year, especially with your baby face,” Red said, running a hand over his shaved scalp.
* * *
did Sandy owe money to someone? had her biological father kidnapped her again? could she survive on the streets of a big city? was she dead? was she partying with a new gang? maybe she was just biding her time, waiting to save up enough cash to send me a plane ticket? maybe she will secretly contact me asking to send her a bus ticket home? and what about her medicine?
* * *
Freshman move-in day did not go well from the start. New regulations required an Unloading permit for the parking lot adjacent to the dorm. A security guard wearing a gold sash explained the rules and waved off the van. In the passenger seat, Red thumped at the pocket of his Hawaiian shirt, pretending to have lost the permit. Bo pulled a sharp U-turn, or as sharp as he could with Jimmy’s rusty van.
From the back, Jimmy hissed, “If we can’t use the lot, it makes it harder to blend in when we’re carrying stuff out.”
Bo eased the van into a spot across the quad. “Is this close enough, or should we abort the mission?”
Silence while Red and Jimmy considered the question.
Bo lifted a cigarette off his ear. He eyed Red and Jimmy. They glared at the dorm and the bustling crush of students and their parents, carrying furniture from their SUVs. Bo could see in the hard set of Red’s jaw and the twitch in Jimmy’s brow that they were beyond the abort stage. Adrenaline was already kicking in, a certain thrill, a sense of dare and challenge, an opportunity for the ‘have-nots’ to score a few points on the ‘haves’.
Bo wondered why he didn’t feel it more strongly. He had every right. He was the one who had come closest to joining the college ranks. If it hadn’t been for his sister’s disappearance on the day of the SAT and the family shitstorm that unleashed, he could be starting classes next week. Bo shrugged and chalked it up to Fate. He was a big believer in Fate, every since studying the Greek myths in fourth grade. Bo was also surprised not to feel more alarmed by the possibility of a bust. Previously, he took pride in avoiding the legal scrapes typical of his southside neighborhood. But lately, a clean record didn’t seem to matter so much. Doing time, in or out, was pretty much the story.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” Red announced, “We’ll carry the goods out to the curb at that corner, and when we give the signal, you swing around.”
“If we’re not out in a half hour, you disappear,” Jimmy said. “I don’t want your mama on our case, if there’s trouble, and I don’t want my van impounded.”
“Sorry, I don’t have a watch,” Bo said.
“Use the clock on your phone,” Jimmy said.
“I forgot it,” Bo said.
“Here – take mine,” Red offered, “I’ll go score another.”
* * *
was she hiding in town, closer than anybody thought? did she ever see any of the Missing Person posters? did she have a guitar? was she finally reading The Odyssey? did she ever think about her kid brother? did she ditch Red and Jimmy because she was tired of their small-time stuff, or just wanted out? and what about her medicine?
* * *
Bo watched the freshman dorm from a distance. He watched a girl with blonde pigtails in the parking lot. She fussed with a high-heeled woman - her mother, or maybe a step-mother. They argued about a large pink pillow that the girl apparently did not want. The step-mother insisted she take it. A man wearing loafers with no socks jumped out from the back of their Explorer. He grabbed the pillow and threw it into a dumpster. The woman stuck her tongue out at him. The girl retreated into the building.
Bo observed a tearful round of embraces between a tanned family all wearing the same blue sweatsuits. He remembered sneaking into a college football game through a hole in the fence that Sandy located. Neither one realized that the surrounding brush was poison ivy.
He checked the time. A half hour was up. No sign of Red or Jimmy. Bo scrutinized the flow in and out from the dorm. He considered taking a nap, as a prank. Wouldn’t that be funny – Jimmy and Red racing out and finding him asleep in the car! He started the engine. He turned it off.
Grabbing his ‘Big Blue’ hoodie (a shoplifted 17th birthday gift from Sandy), he climbed out of the van and walked across the quad. His disguise worked fine. Nobody blinked as Bo slouched through the crowds toward the front door of the dorm. He felt a bit queasy, a slight constriction in his chest, but otherwise it was okay. He stood up straighter.
It was like a video game. A classic shooter. He started down a long, bustling hallway – figures moving in and out of the rooms. Friend or foe? He spotted Red at the far end of the hall. Red and Jimmy both running, and someone yelling, “Hey, stop, that’s mine!” A security guard chased them. It was like a video game. A slight knob adjustment to his internal joystick and Bo pivoted left into a dorm room full of sunlight.
The girl with pigtails sat up on the bed. She blinked and said, “Who are you?”
“I’m Jason,” he lied.
“Jason who?”
“Uh, like Jason and the Argonauts,” Bo said.
“I’m Ellen Reynolds,” she said. She pointed to the cotton fluff sticking out of one ear, “I have an earache.”
He stepped around away from the door, pretending to admire a framed Sierra Club poster leaning up against the wall. “You like the outdoors?” he asked.
She ignored the question and rubbed her broad forehead. “What are you doing here?” she said.
Bo answered, “It’s a long story.”
“Is there a short version?” she asked. She kicked at an open suitcase on the floor beside her.
“My sister disappeared,” Bo said.
“Yeah, people are always disappearing,” Ellen sighed. Bo squinted into the sunlight. “Even from themselves,” she added.
Bo shrugged, “What do you mean?”
“I was just lying here thinking this is all a big mistake,” the girl said, “I should be out west fighting wildfires. I should be in forest ranger training. That’s what I always wanted to be. Instead, here I am in this stupid dorm room, just so my daddy can brag about his kid going to his alma mater.”
Bo stepped over to the corner window with an angle on the quad. Bo could just see the front of Jimmy’s van, with two officers cuffing Jimmy against the hood.
“Well, there are worse places you could be,” he said.
A security guard barged into the room and looked around pointedly and demanded, “You seen a guy wearing a Hawaiian shirt with a skull and crossbones tattooed on the back of his head?”
Ellen laughed, “Heck, no. And I hope I never do!”
Bo continued to stare out the window, avoiding the security guard’s question, while he processed the information that Red was still on the loose, most likely high-tailing it up to Cemetery Hill, familiar turf.
“What about you, Buster?” the security guard demanded.
“His name is ‘Jason’,” Ellen interjected, “and we haven’t seen anybody like that. We’ve just been hanging out talking.”
The security guard backed out of the room. Bo exhaled deeply. He tried not to say anything stupid. Concern for himself and his partners momentarily shifted to a desire to burst this rich girl’s bubble.
Ellen spouted, “Why would anybody tattoo a skull and crossbones on their head? That’s gross.”
Bo stared at her from across the room. He explained, “It’s a requirement for joining a certain gang here.”
To her credit, she got the message. He watched a crease of apprehension turn her face into a worried emoticon. “So, you’re…a townie?” she asked.
Bo nodded solemnly.
“And… maybe you even know the guy in the Hawaiian shirt?” she said.
Bo nodded again.
“Are you going to hurt me?” she asked. Her trembling voice included a slight note of inquisitiveness mixed with fear. It hooked Bo. If she could get him so wrong, maybe he had her wrong too.
“Oh, no, nothing like that,” he stated, “Nobody is getting hurt. I wouldn’t do that. Especially to a girl.”
Ellen Reynolds tugged at her yellow pigtails. She said, “Look, I’m sorry about whatever happened to your sister.”
Bo, flummoxed, didn’t know what to say. He remembered that when Sandy was little, she wore pigtails too. Stubby ones.
“Is it okay if I ask you to leave?” Ellen said.
“Yes, I’m leaving. I’m gone,” Bo answered.
The girl waved her hands in front of her face, like swatting at an invisible insect.
“Wait, first I need to ask your help,” she said. “There’s something I want to get rid of, but I can’t do it myself.”
She reached down into the open suitcase and extracted a pair of scissors. She held the scissors out to Bo. “Cut them off,” she demanded, and swung the pigtails forward around her neck.
“No,” Bo said.
“If you don’t, I’ll scream and you’ll get busted,” Ellen said. She stood up and held out the scissors again.
“Cut them where?” Bo asked.
“Close to the top.”
It was like carving through the braided vines hanging from the cemetery oaks. They both breathed heavily and occasionally their eyes met. She released one gentle moan. When he was finished, she shook her remaining hair free into a shaggy moptop and said, “Thanks, that feels much better.”
“What do you want me to do with these?” Bo asked, holding the severed manes up to the light.
“Take them away,” the girl said.
Bo slid the two golden pigtails into the front pouch of his hoodie. He pictured Red and Jimmy’s reactions when he revealed his treasure from the freshman dorm raid. But, no, they wouldn’t understand. Sandy wouldn’t get it either, but that was okay, that was just her, Bo told himself, finally sensing that she was never coming back.
*
“And don’t forget the coats,” Jimmy said.
“Right, we got us some nice parkas,” Red said.
“The freshmen – they all come with these fancy parkas, because their parents think we have such cold winters,” Jimmy explained to Bo.
Jimmy and Red were trying to convince Bo to step in for his sister and drive their getaway van. Sandy, their usually reliable driver, had ditched them. Nobody knew her whereabouts. Bo claimed he wasn’t worried. Maybe Sandy finally found that roadie gig she’d always craved.
“You know what your sis used to say about you?” Red asked.
Bo shrugged. “I could have been the first one in our family to go to college – to major in skateboarding.”
“That wasn’t what I was thinking,” Red said.
Jimmy blew a smoke ring and recited: “Sandy would say, ‘Who among us has not woken up all hungover, confused by daylight and treetops roaring past at high speed and a rumble of wheels that remind you, oh, yeah, I’m cruising with the buddies. My kid brother, Bo, that’s who. Bo is too in control to ever sleep in a car.’”
“That’s the kind of driver we need,” Red said.
Bo said, “I don’t know. You guys don’t exactly look the part anymore, especially with the tattoos.”
“Oh, they got plenty of tats, man. Them college kids love to tat. Why do you think the downtown parlors stay open so late? The frat boys go drinking and show up around midnight wanting a dragon half-sleeve,” Jimmy said.
“I figure we’re good for one more year, especially with your baby face,” Red said, running a hand over his shaved scalp.
* * *
did Sandy owe money to someone? had her biological father kidnapped her again? could she survive on the streets of a big city? was she dead? was she partying with a new gang? maybe she was just biding her time, waiting to save up enough cash to send me a plane ticket? maybe she will secretly contact me asking to send her a bus ticket home? and what about her medicine?
* * *
Freshman move-in day did not go well from the start. New regulations required an Unloading permit for the parking lot adjacent to the dorm. A security guard wearing a gold sash explained the rules and waved off the van. In the passenger seat, Red thumped at the pocket of his Hawaiian shirt, pretending to have lost the permit. Bo pulled a sharp U-turn, or as sharp as he could with Jimmy’s rusty van.
From the back, Jimmy hissed, “If we can’t use the lot, it makes it harder to blend in when we’re carrying stuff out.”
Bo eased the van into a spot across the quad. “Is this close enough, or should we abort the mission?”
Silence while Red and Jimmy considered the question.
Bo lifted a cigarette off his ear. He eyed Red and Jimmy. They glared at the dorm and the bustling crush of students and their parents, carrying furniture from their SUVs. Bo could see in the hard set of Red’s jaw and the twitch in Jimmy’s brow that they were beyond the abort stage. Adrenaline was already kicking in, a certain thrill, a sense of dare and challenge, an opportunity for the ‘have-nots’ to score a few points on the ‘haves’.
Bo wondered why he didn’t feel it more strongly. He had every right. He was the one who had come closest to joining the college ranks. If it hadn’t been for his sister’s disappearance on the day of the SAT and the family shitstorm that unleashed, he could be starting classes next week. Bo shrugged and chalked it up to Fate. He was a big believer in Fate, every since studying the Greek myths in fourth grade. Bo was also surprised not to feel more alarmed by the possibility of a bust. Previously, he took pride in avoiding the legal scrapes typical of his southside neighborhood. But lately, a clean record didn’t seem to matter so much. Doing time, in or out, was pretty much the story.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” Red announced, “We’ll carry the goods out to the curb at that corner, and when we give the signal, you swing around.”
“If we’re not out in a half hour, you disappear,” Jimmy said. “I don’t want your mama on our case, if there’s trouble, and I don’t want my van impounded.”
“Sorry, I don’t have a watch,” Bo said.
“Use the clock on your phone,” Jimmy said.
“I forgot it,” Bo said.
“Here – take mine,” Red offered, “I’ll go score another.”
* * *
was she hiding in town, closer than anybody thought? did she ever see any of the Missing Person posters? did she have a guitar? was she finally reading The Odyssey? did she ever think about her kid brother? did she ditch Red and Jimmy because she was tired of their small-time stuff, or just wanted out? and what about her medicine?
* * *
Bo watched the freshman dorm from a distance. He watched a girl with blonde pigtails in the parking lot. She fussed with a high-heeled woman - her mother, or maybe a step-mother. They argued about a large pink pillow that the girl apparently did not want. The step-mother insisted she take it. A man wearing loafers with no socks jumped out from the back of their Explorer. He grabbed the pillow and threw it into a dumpster. The woman stuck her tongue out at him. The girl retreated into the building.
Bo observed a tearful round of embraces between a tanned family all wearing the same blue sweatsuits. He remembered sneaking into a college football game through a hole in the fence that Sandy located. Neither one realized that the surrounding brush was poison ivy.
He checked the time. A half hour was up. No sign of Red or Jimmy. Bo scrutinized the flow in and out from the dorm. He considered taking a nap, as a prank. Wouldn’t that be funny – Jimmy and Red racing out and finding him asleep in the car! He started the engine. He turned it off.
Grabbing his ‘Big Blue’ hoodie (a shoplifted 17th birthday gift from Sandy), he climbed out of the van and walked across the quad. His disguise worked fine. Nobody blinked as Bo slouched through the crowds toward the front door of the dorm. He felt a bit queasy, a slight constriction in his chest, but otherwise it was okay. He stood up straighter.
It was like a video game. A classic shooter. He started down a long, bustling hallway – figures moving in and out of the rooms. Friend or foe? He spotted Red at the far end of the hall. Red and Jimmy both running, and someone yelling, “Hey, stop, that’s mine!” A security guard chased them. It was like a video game. A slight knob adjustment to his internal joystick and Bo pivoted left into a dorm room full of sunlight.
The girl with pigtails sat up on the bed. She blinked and said, “Who are you?”
“I’m Jason,” he lied.
“Jason who?”
“Uh, like Jason and the Argonauts,” Bo said.
“I’m Ellen Reynolds,” she said. She pointed to the cotton fluff sticking out of one ear, “I have an earache.”
He stepped around away from the door, pretending to admire a framed Sierra Club poster leaning up against the wall. “You like the outdoors?” he asked.
She ignored the question and rubbed her broad forehead. “What are you doing here?” she said.
Bo answered, “It’s a long story.”
“Is there a short version?” she asked. She kicked at an open suitcase on the floor beside her.
“My sister disappeared,” Bo said.
“Yeah, people are always disappearing,” Ellen sighed. Bo squinted into the sunlight. “Even from themselves,” she added.
Bo shrugged, “What do you mean?”
“I was just lying here thinking this is all a big mistake,” the girl said, “I should be out west fighting wildfires. I should be in forest ranger training. That’s what I always wanted to be. Instead, here I am in this stupid dorm room, just so my daddy can brag about his kid going to his alma mater.”
Bo stepped over to the corner window with an angle on the quad. Bo could just see the front of Jimmy’s van, with two officers cuffing Jimmy against the hood.
“Well, there are worse places you could be,” he said.
A security guard barged into the room and looked around pointedly and demanded, “You seen a guy wearing a Hawaiian shirt with a skull and crossbones tattooed on the back of his head?”
Ellen laughed, “Heck, no. And I hope I never do!”
Bo continued to stare out the window, avoiding the security guard’s question, while he processed the information that Red was still on the loose, most likely high-tailing it up to Cemetery Hill, familiar turf.
“What about you, Buster?” the security guard demanded.
“His name is ‘Jason’,” Ellen interjected, “and we haven’t seen anybody like that. We’ve just been hanging out talking.”
The security guard backed out of the room. Bo exhaled deeply. He tried not to say anything stupid. Concern for himself and his partners momentarily shifted to a desire to burst this rich girl’s bubble.
Ellen spouted, “Why would anybody tattoo a skull and crossbones on their head? That’s gross.”
Bo stared at her from across the room. He explained, “It’s a requirement for joining a certain gang here.”
To her credit, she got the message. He watched a crease of apprehension turn her face into a worried emoticon. “So, you’re…a townie?” she asked.
Bo nodded solemnly.
“And… maybe you even know the guy in the Hawaiian shirt?” she said.
Bo nodded again.
“Are you going to hurt me?” she asked. Her trembling voice included a slight note of inquisitiveness mixed with fear. It hooked Bo. If she could get him so wrong, maybe he had her wrong too.
“Oh, no, nothing like that,” he stated, “Nobody is getting hurt. I wouldn’t do that. Especially to a girl.”
Ellen Reynolds tugged at her yellow pigtails. She said, “Look, I’m sorry about whatever happened to your sister.”
Bo, flummoxed, didn’t know what to say. He remembered that when Sandy was little, she wore pigtails too. Stubby ones.
“Is it okay if I ask you to leave?” Ellen said.
“Yes, I’m leaving. I’m gone,” Bo answered.
The girl waved her hands in front of her face, like swatting at an invisible insect.
“Wait, first I need to ask your help,” she said. “There’s something I want to get rid of, but I can’t do it myself.”
She reached down into the open suitcase and extracted a pair of scissors. She held the scissors out to Bo. “Cut them off,” she demanded, and swung the pigtails forward around her neck.
“No,” Bo said.
“If you don’t, I’ll scream and you’ll get busted,” Ellen said. She stood up and held out the scissors again.
“Cut them where?” Bo asked.
“Close to the top.”
It was like carving through the braided vines hanging from the cemetery oaks. They both breathed heavily and occasionally their eyes met. She released one gentle moan. When he was finished, she shook her remaining hair free into a shaggy moptop and said, “Thanks, that feels much better.”
“What do you want me to do with these?” Bo asked, holding the severed manes up to the light.
“Take them away,” the girl said.
Bo slid the two golden pigtails into the front pouch of his hoodie. He pictured Red and Jimmy’s reactions when he revealed his treasure from the freshman dorm raid. But, no, they wouldn’t understand. Sandy wouldn’t get it either, but that was okay, that was just her, Bo told himself, finally sensing that she was never coming back.
*