A Classic

This is the continuation of Father Figures and Ford Mustangs Part 1

The speedometer only went to 85 in those days, and it had been pegged since before the last gear change. Andrew's eyes were fixed firmly on the road, while Kelly and Angie vied for rearview mirror territorial supremacy. Mike nervously glanced from the girls, to the road, to the speedometer, and around again, while his palms filled with sweat that he wiped against the gelled sides of his hair. EAGLE 97 had been playing horrible music all night, and when Mister Mister's Kyrie made its third pass for the evening, Andrew reached his right hand from the wheel, and without so much as a peek at the dash, he quickly pushed the milky gray cassette tape into the deck.

As if it had been pre-cued, the first few notes of George Michael's Father Figure began to pop and hiss as it pushed loudly from the factory sound system. In 1988 anyone who was anyone had a "system". An Alpine head unit, class A amps, Kicker subs, and the ability to rattle windows in a windowless high school, were all prerequisites for having one's car considered "dope." Andrew's Mustang had no aftermarket audio equipment. Unbeknownst to the student body, the car was a lease, and no meddling with factory installed components was allowed.

Had the car belonged to anyone else at the school, they would likely have been labeled a "poser"; however, no one would have had the sack to apply that label to Andrew. While not particularly gifted athletically, he played every sport. A pretty boy in the eyes of even the most cynical and jilted teenagers, he won Homecoming King by a record margin. In a redneck town, where the sale of alcohol was divided along religious boundaries, and the property taxes along racial ones, his popularity knew no borders. The night Mike Tyson knocked out Michael Spinks quicker than boy's first orgasm, every manner of race, creed, and political faction was watching at Andrew's place.

He had the world on his plate, yet Mike always thought Andrew seemed sad underneath his polished exterior. Until this moment at least. As the intro began to Father Figure, Andrew once again moved his right hand from the steering wheel to the dash, where he quickly spun the volume knob up to its max. George Michael's first words were met with an atonal uprising from 3 directions. Andrew and the two girls began belting out the tune as if they had staged the curtain to go up at precisely 125 MPH. Mike was immediately appalled by the dissonant lack of harmony, and then became downright frightened when Andrew removed both hands from the wheel and began to plead with the rushing air, pulling both fists in tight as he wailed to the muggy night air.

"That's all I wanted, just to seeee my baaaaaaby's blue-eyed shine (all making sounds trying to imitate the orchestration...and failing) This time i think that my lover Understands me (all: UNDERSTANDS ME (yelling) If we have faith in each other Then we can be Strong.......

At this point, Andrew turns the actual song down so that he and the girls can hear themselves singing more clearly. They all take in mighty breaths of hot 100 MPH wind, and begin belting out the chorus, while stunned bovine and night owls sought shelter.

"I will be your Father Figure, put your tiny hand in mine, I will be your preacher teacher, anything you had in mind" Then Andrew goes off script and cuts to the end... no hands on the wheel, eyes closed, knees guiding the path. "I will be YOUR...YOUR Teacher....and I'll be your Daddy" suddenly, his hips swayed right and the Mustang veered violently towards the ditch!

Mike, without hesitation, ripped his hands from his wind-blasted coiffure and grabbed for the wheel. His head met a lunging Angie's as they both attempted to steer a new course for these rock n' roll refugees. Andrew calmly came to from his bacchanal, applied the brakes deftly, and just as the right front wheel reached the edge of the pavement, he steered the black Mustang back onto the asphalt.

Kelly spoke up and said, " I need to pee" as Angie and Mike reeled from their collision. Unconsciously, Mike went back to pushing against his slick-downed sideburns. They were less than a mile from town after the near-accident. They eased their way back along Betchnik road pulled into the local convenience store chain, "My Brother's Place" on the outskirts of town.

"I thought we were going to crash Mike exclaimed." "I didn't" said Andrew, with a wry smile and a quick glance in the rearview at the two beautiful girls climbing out to visit the restroom.

"Oh yeah, why is that?" Mike asked indignantly, with far more confidence than this group would typically allow him.

Without a word, Andrew reached down, and with one hand pushed the eject button on the tape player. He caught the projectile with the same hand in a move he must have made a thousand times, and in the same motion, flicked the cassette onto Mike's lap, and said "because we had FAITH son....because we had FAY-THU- FAY-THU Faith!"

Twilight Road - Ellis County

Father Figures and Ford Mustangs is series of fiction on the actions and dreams of a young man, reared in rural Texas. The series is part of my upcoming book and my first piece of new prose for The Housewrighter.

Mike pushed hard on the sides of his head, attempting to hold his hair flat against the force of the wind blowing from the open convertible top. His chemically straightened mop was no match for Ellis county roads at high rates of speed. He was reluctant to grasp the top of his overgrown bangs so he didn't come off like Audrey Hepburn on a scooter in Roman Holiday. He knew he still looked completely ridiculous, but his self-conscious calculations could not be restrained, and so he continued to push, looking more and more like he was covering his ears to block the shriek of a passing ambulance. With his hands occupied, the bolo tie round his neck swished back-and-forth across his gaunt torso. While he was the second tallest guy in his class of 300, he thought his height insignificant supported by a mere 155 pounds. The discounted Guess jeans he wore were easily a 1/2 inch too short for gangly legs. The black and white printed rayon shirt made his pale skin appear pearlescent, and his dark brown eyes seemed as black and one-dimensional as a shark's. Still, a booming voice, laser -wit, and a fervent curiosity made him gregarious enough to ask questions that well-heeled kids would not have asked. He did not belong in this fast-moving foursome, but he was good company, especially when no one else was around. He would later understand the true nature of being the sidekick.

Angie, in the backseat, let her flowing raven locks whip with the gale. Mike noticed how the ends of her hair slapped aggressively at her high cheekbones, and yet she did nothing to prevent it. She was locked into the music, the speed, and sadly Mike thought, the driver. Andrew was cool without equal, handsome beyond reproach, and was the first to sport a real navy bomber jacket after the release of Top Gun. The enormous question vexing Mike on this evening, besides was this particular high-speed junket through Garret, TX going to be his last, was: who did he love more, Angie or Andrew?

Only a year prior, in his sophomore year, Mike was an honor student, addicted to basketball, board games, and vocabulary words. Cool was a manifestation of his own ideas, the path he followed was cut through the marsh of his own nightly imaginings. The wants of puberty, the need for physical release, and the camaraderie associated with the other sex was not yet a concern. The Bard, Juan, and the two Dereks had been his usual companions. Their carefully planned weekends involved premature pattern baldness beer buys, campouts, drinking truth, masturbation dares, and the kind of unity that could only be disrupted by oxygen inhalation and sunrises. He often wondered how this could change, and frequently, he just questioned why his friends could be so short-sided. Why did they need girlfriends, and what was he missing? Mother tried to reassure him that his time would come, he would love and be loved, and that all of this would be a bad dream. Accepting that was basically self-mutilation. Acknowledging that life would get better, once it got bigger, was a copout. He had no capacity for patience, nor strategy. If being cool was now the game, then the game was on, and he would simply be what he needed to be, when he needed to be it.

Kelly had money. Her Dooney and Bourke purse collection made the blue-collar girls seethe with envy. She often changed purses between classes depending on the temperature in the upcoming window-less classrooms. The small clutch worked much better with the cashmere sweater for English class, while the full-strap in bright pink was very cute with a lab apron in chemistry. She drove a red Saab convertible with a manual transmission. Her aggression with the stick followed her to the bedroom, Mike supposed. She was bitchy in an adult way, in a Mother sort of capacity. Humor, sarcasm, and prodding could sometimes bring her to offer an uncomfortable smile, but typically, she simply pushed at her hair, or tugged at her skirt, when confronted with a confusing (i.e. intelligent) remark. All of this being said, he still imagined her naked on occasions when he felt slighted, and that was often. It mattered little, as she was only want to be wooed by Andrew's class. Older, wealthier, and of preferable genetic stock, there would be no consideration of less, not without more Mad Dog, and much, much more privacy.

The 1987 Mustang GT 5.0 was the most spectacular car on the market. 3 boys drove them in Ellis county. A bright red convertible with black top owned by the most elegant guy in school, a blue and grey two-tone hardtop driven by the quiet farmer turned drug merchant, and the most wonderful of all, the black on black convertible currently carving a contrail of high-speed exhaust near the Boggy Creek bridge. $28,000.00 seemed like such a deal for 225 horses of guaranteed copulation. Andrew was very secure in himself, so long as he had his entourage. Mike was always quick to volunteer for posse duty, and on this night, there was nowhere else on earth he would have chosen to be.