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zeke
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in 4th grade in spring. the whole school took a field trip to central park. as i recall we were going to do science in the field all day. it was a clear beautiful morning as we came out of the auditorium to get on the yellow school busses waiting on hudson at the curb. some were also parked on grove around the corner. my bus was a bit up the block and i remember walking in the clear, breezy air, climbing up into the bus, all the way to the back and taking the drivers side window last seat. this bus had a seat all the way across with no emergency door. no seat belts.
central park is frederick law olmsteads greatest work. built at the end of the 19th century in the romantic and neoclassical style. it covers 843 acres from 59th to 110th streets and from 5th to 8th avenues. it has ponds, lakes, creeks, streams, lagoons, hills, cliffs, small castles, groves, great lawns and a myriad confusion of paths (paved and unpaved) going through it all. i believe that the organizing principle of his design was to create the illusion of an idealized 18th century european country estate, updated with nouveau and neo classical elements. it is green and seems to be a larger world inside than is accounted for in it's plan, but i digress.
the bus ride up hudson street to where it becomes 8th avenue at 14th street was a process of ramping up the chaos until the full, shrill ambience of our enthusiasm for the day, the ride and the destination was reached. we had 60 blocks to go (in weekday traffic) and i had already discovered that the metallic curved ceiling detail above the back seat was in fact closed cell foam rubber sprayed with silver paint. of course every bump became an excuse to thunder into it with our heads. much happy screaming and laughing. we arrived and disembarked near the 86th street transverse.
into the park in a vaguely orderly gang, of increasingly mixed ages and classes, we went. i cannot recall where we went initially but it took us on winding courses through a part of the park called the rambles which is hilly and deeply shaded by trees and giant stands of bamboo. geology in the form of exposed and scored bedrock and glacially deposited boulders pokes through the earth and the paths wind between, around and sometimes over all of it. my friends and i began to imagine that we were in the movie the planet of the apes, and that everyone around us was either an ape captor or or a human prisoner. the scholastic content of the day was a distant buzz at the edge of our short horizon.
eventually (it must have been some time based on my knowledge of the parks geography) we passed between a huge and cloven outcropping of scoured bedrock, tilted with smooth scores from the ebb and flow of the glacier which once covered manhattan. we decided that since just beyond it the giant mob to which we belonged was assembling for lunch, we would have our lunch inside it's crevasse. one wall had been subsumed by earth and was a steep and dusty grade. the other was a cliff of bedrock with alcoves formed by sections of rock that had split inward and pivoted towards the interior of the crevasse. heaven for 8 year olds in the midst of apocalyptic play. there were 5 of us. me, hart, adam, quin and jess.
after a while we emerged dusty from sliding down the grade and went in search of food (pb&j on white and chocolate milk in paper cartons). we found a vast encampment of teachers, aides, parents and students clustered around a glade bordering a large pond near an exit of the park in the lower nineties on the west side. we were on the interior side of the group near where the ponds north shore curve to the south west. as it curves the bank becomes a bit raised and is inhabited by shade trees and lots of mature and woody bushes. a cluster of excited kids were grouped around a particular bush which overhung the pond, obscuring our view of the pond. they were very excited. we pushed and insinuated ourselves into their midst (as only 8 year olds can) to find that ceasar (a very small, hyperactive and strangely quiet kid from my class) had climbed out into the bush, and was actually suspended about 2 feet over the waters edge. the water was black, implying that it was relatively deep. initially i thought everyone was jostling for a turn to limb out as he had. eventually we realized he had climbed out with a goal. he had seen a monofiliment fishing line tied to a branch and depending into the pond. what it was attached to was a total mystery. as we arrived he had just become secure in the branches and was beginning to untie the line and pull it up. he also had shifted into a position in which our view was entirely obscured. "what is it"? we all asked over and over. caesar, pulling his line never spoke. then he was scrambling backwards, through the bush and into our midst, forcing us to make way with his back still to us. i could sense from his posture that he was dangling something by the line and i saw muddy wet drops hitting the dirt and sparse grass between his feet.
all at once he spun around, using his momentum to swing the object into a spin and was whirling it around over his head in a spray of cast of water and mud. it was so sudden that we did not know what was whizzing around in a 4 foot arc, faster than the eye could follow. it began to whir quietly, as the water fell off it. needless to say we all stepped back. caesar took that as his cue and began to run, all the time swinging wildly, making a beeline towards a group of kids and a teacher at the edge of the glade. we of course followed to see what it was and to lay claim to witnessing the genesis of what we knew would be a legendary moment in our school's history.
caesar, with unerring precision, chose his target. she (i never knew her) had waist length golden hair, and was standing at the outside of the group with her back to us. plop, it went wetly and stuck in her hair. we still couldn't see what it was because she, in a sudden panic, was now running towards the general assembly in the glade with the whole lot of us, caesar in the lead, in tow. it became total chaos.
when she finally stopped and a teacher was engaged in the removal, i saw a drowned spider monkey snarled in her tresses. it's fingers were entwined as holding on for it's life. it was horrific.
i will never forget that day, or caesar.
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