I lead in a rumble once, out at Desolation, an Easside - Wesside umdeilu that happened on our turf, by the train tracks, on a stormy summer night. There's condos there now, and a chain restaurant that inherited the vibe of the land it sits on, or at least has had a hard time shaking it. For years after it popped up kids from town still strayed over there to do deals and smoke this or that out back by the dumpsters.
All that was after the earthquake, though, when any attempt to correct up the damage was at the very least considered. Even as the huge white tents still lined the Mall while the hippies and old money battled new commerce in a three-way showdown, lame plans like that restaurant snuck through the approval phase and were built up all lickety split and in the blink of an eye. Ancient Indian burial ground, though, as any of us could have told the developers. Some plots o' land you just don't try to make a buck off of.
But before all that, pre-quake, life was different out there. Desolation was literally just down the street from our Spanish Deco apartment, there at the tail end of the Mall. On the empty lot next door, all rugged hardy weeded and browned dirt, was a bike repair place, Harleys and other badass models, and next to that a trailer that we knew the speed was flowing from in spastic parcels and up grungy, oiley noses. We stayed clear of that then, but it would be only a short year later that we were hangin' with that same type in another apartment by another set of tracks over the hill, in another neighborhood most nice people only drove past. But back then, before all that, and with those particular leather-vested bruisers and their skank dolls and wives, we steered clear.
We were ourselves only inches from being them someday, or at least the sort who'd get let into the chain-link gates to buy, but time was on our side: we were still babies, still fresh fresh in most ways that count. At least we saw ourselves that way. We had a future! and in our minds it didn't involve pit bulls and engine grease. Within a year, though, there we were, over by those other tracks, taking apart our '74 Honda 550 to replace a blown head gasket, him so fried on the sticky yellow peanut butter crank we'd scored up in Occidental that I had to do the whole thing myself.
At least the second time we took the bike apart: the first time I read the manual for him and watched him do the whole shebang in the dark of night under the lights of the open-sided parking lot behind our pad. Two nights later we realized that we had an extra o-ring, and had to take it all apart again, way down to the very bottom of the engine, and by that time he was far gone, tweaking, mumbling, carving our names in the wooden tie at the end of our parking spot where he sat. I'd learned enough to be able to do it myself, so I did. That's how it rolled.
But back up to Desolation and the rumble. Easside- Wesside. We were Wesside, takk, owned the Mall, hippies up there at that far end, punks down by us. The bus station was on our end, nearer the beach and the Boardwalk, and closer to the Flats where the cholos ruled. Weird mix, with weekend families wedging their cars as best they could end to end in front of our apartment on Saturdays, unloading bags loaded with sunblock and towels and drinks and such and kids for a day at the strand only a three minute walk away, us inside always surprised that the night had ended so quickly and starting to gnaw at the thought that we'd soon need more beer.
It was somehow comforting that the bikers next door, with their engine grease and Marlboros and nasty dogs and hardcore women and bandanas tied around their balding skulls, lanky, emerging ponytails proclaiming that they'd once been lush of mane, were still inside that fucking trailer, harder and faster and meaner than we'd ever be. A study in contrasts!
Who knows what the rumble was really about. Coulda been drugs, though most of the dealing was happening in the Flats via that element, and had almost little to do with us. But the Flats were Wesside, so in service to our cholo mates, who relied on us Mall kids to move their product, we had an honor-bound imperative to take on those fuckers from the cliffs, scuzzy surfer-fodder and who knows what else.
Desolation. Who, at what point in time, decided to name it that? And for how many generations had that name been used by the scuzz and punks and lost folk and fokking hippies and crazies of town? Cross the road that separated the money from the scum, pass over the railroad tracks and across the barren acres and you'd eventually get to a forest, or a massively overgrown and massive concentration of the kind of bad weeds and bushes that, left unchecked, grow thick thick stems, as thick as birch, so they could almost be mistaken for real trees. Telltale low and creeping branches that tangled into each other gave this forest away, though, as a rampant fester of sticky, spiny, spider-infested weeds, about yay tall, twice the height of a man and so just tall enough to hide all manner of seedy action inside of.
There were two entrances to the bushforest as far as I knew, and deep in its center they converged on a wide sickly pond of wastewater treatment overflow. There was a semblance of a beach around the north bank, well-tramped dirt with a gentle incline from the water's edge. A few large stones showed the wear of many an ass, shined smooth over decades, most probably proffered to the girls in any group who made it this far into Desolation. I wanna say that only few knew about it, at least by name, and that's probably true.
But more to the point, only a few were allowed to make it past the first few yards of overgrowth. Homeless lived there, or more literally, off-gridders, hobos, wildmen, tramps, outlaws, an occasional runaway (though most were run off by the mean grit who camped there; only the ones who'd been adopted for purposes got to stay) and leftover deadheads who'd died one too many times on fry, met the devil, and had become its bitch for good. Not that the bushdwellers were nasty to a man, but some were outright curs, not to be crossed by our invading youth.
But I got in, because of him. He knew everyone somehow, even a few of the older hippies at the end of the Mall. Maybe it was from his construction days, or that his family name held weight in town, or just because he was who he was, charming, beautiful, ready, powerful, energetic, flawed and blessed with the humility of a true prince. Who knew. if he had a few extra dollars he'd buy 40's for the bushmen and hand them out as needed, entrance fee. The raw and dusty men lived in hollowed-out barrows in the forest, where at some point in its early days emerging twigs had begun to be pushed aside or broken off around smoother spots of dirt, over time forming cubed-meter sized caves sided by branches and leaves.
These hollows had low entrances, most often camouflaged by greins that acted at doorflaps, so that only the resident knew exactly where to enter their lairs. First come first serve, though like I said, you had to have proven yourself worthy of entrance to Desolation's bush in the first place to even consider taking up living there. They weren't bad men who lived there, but they were wild. If you acted out, shunned protocol, were a proper dick or didn't share as need be, you'd find the few remaining possessions you had, your hoard, gone. your precious sleeping bag, your backpack, your store of jerkey and, torn in half, the only photo you had left of your mother or wife or daughter, that last link to who you used to be before Desolation and the Town of the Cross took your life.
When he could, he'd bring 40's of malt liquor or buy an extra sixer to soften up the forest dwellers out there. We'd only go during the days, cause nights were dangerous, when the men argued and fought amongst themselves for the last of the booze or who had bud or speed. That's when the desperate homeless, who'd slept in the town library as best they could during the day or on a bench tried to invade. But during the day, on a nice day, even a princess like me could try to pretend we weren't sitting around a treatment runoff pool, me on one of the few rocks, and imagine instead that this was the life of secret luxury, a hidden pond for only a select few.
The night of the rumble we were out there with bats and chains, me right in front with him, Wesside Mall royalty ready to protect our crew regardless. it was already setting up to be an óveðurnótt, the winds blowing off the ocean in the misty gusts of summer that scattered the usually gentle fog that rolled in evenings. We sensed rain, wondered if the whole thing would be rained out. But what we didn't expect was that the darkening sky would thunder up, huge godlike clouds massing above us in plays of grey. It boded, though well or not we couldn't know at the time.
Him and I, we were preppy punks, dressed in immaculate black, proud of posture, both with close cut, bleach blonde hair, weaponless except for our pure intent. He inspired followers, and me there by his side made him seem invincible. There was menace to us, the sort that cloaks a protector on a mission. As much as I want to remember what we were rumbling about, I also don't: it might have been the sense of their emerging market crowding our territory, or it might have been the rape of one of our runaways, an idea that niggles there at the back of my mind as the primary reason the two of us were there in front at all. We knew the drug scene, were a kind of sideline part of it, or rather it was a softcore part of us, but I don't think we'd have fought for its survival on our ground. Something else had happened, something that represented how the Easside held no respect for the world we lived in, and how some things were not allowed, ever at all.
The clouds gathered above us and the crowds around. We easily had more bodies, but the slag they'd gathered looked wicked nasty, and even more so as the sun slipped farther down and behind the ominosity of cumulus above us. The rattling of chains, the thump thump of a bat slapping into a hand, the random shouts across the wasteland swath the separated our sides. We stood there, shifting our hips, gauging the enemy as best we could until the time had come.
9pm, no cops in sight, best to go for it now or never while the chaos in the heavens covered our deeds in a supernatural darkness. Someone from our side, next to us, the big one who traded with the Flats and brought the goods up to the Mall, the one who'd supposedly been in jail, again, newly released, a town sleb, easy with the young flirts and all badass in all ways we could tell. He shouted Time! You fuckers ready for us?! And we advanced.
Time and space closed between us, closer by footsteps, the unreal twilight eerily lit by the reflection of city lights bouncing off the belly of the clouds above. It was hard to tell distance in that light, so really any moment could mean an Easside fist in our frontline faces, or a rock thrown by some skank from the other side. They had their betties with them too, and if you've ever been in a rumble you'll know that the primal scag in any girl emerges when her man's honor is at stake, or her town's. But I suspect we were fighting for something more precious, and so had a deeper sense of honor on our side.
The shouts got louder, the space between our armies' footsteps shorter every moment. Then true thunder boomed, sucking the air from our breath, and I'd swear every body out there at Desolation that night paused in shock. A beat, a beat, a beat, then the flash of wicked light hardly ever seen in that part of the world. Lightning, and again, more boom, shouts drown out, fear shilling into every heart at least a bit, and the symbolism of the moment lost on no one.
Up front was me, the wild one in so many ways, the one who knew nature to her core, from a strange distant cold water island, the one with ancestors who named this weather as a god, whose unhappiness manifested as a cold gust that blew chill into the heart of my opponents, the one whose smile would part clouds, whose deepest urges were to face the terrors of night open-hearted, arms wide. This was my weather, I knew back then. This was not just a rumble on an open ugly acre but a battle in the sky, and in our favor.
Here, far away from all that, I can't say that my memories are perfect, but all I can see with my past eye is what I've shared, and for me it's how it all went down. No one broke a bone that night, no one's bat landed a hit, and eventually the chains went silent. At each lightning strike, their numbers diminished, until only the original offenders were left trying as best they could, with aggressive stances, to justify their sins. Then none were left, except the few who maybe knew the kids on our side and stayed for a hug and a swig of whatever whoever had in their coat pockets. It was a righteous rumble won by clouds and thunder, by gods who chose our side.
***
maria alva roff
