Let Them Wear Earplugs
By Alice Kinerk
At a Northern New England bi-monthly Unitarian-Universalist youth conference, nine p.m.’s lights out, but if you go to sleep then, when the adults do, you’ll just get woken up later and made fun of. Some kids drove two hours to be here. Think they want you asleep? They do not.
Regarding the sleepers, Shib says, Let them wear earplugs!
Shib’s a queen, but she’s no Marie Antoinette. She’s my queen. A klepto who calls herself a Robin Hood. Everything Shib steals she shares. She started small (five-stick pack of Big Red) just this past September, but has expanded, I’m happy to report, lifting lipsticks and cigarettes. Right now, under the pew where she sits crocheting, there happens to be a box, and I happen to know it contains hair dye. Blue Moon. Pink Lightning. Sea Nymph. Each jar having been acquired one at a time, the lot of them comprising Shib’s biggest heist yet.
Shib’s the one who told me about these conferences, and why I keep coming back. The two of us couldn’t be more different. (Shib: Unitarian, eleventh grade, klepto, pink hair, extrovert. Me: Atheist, Freshman, non-klepto, very dark brown hair, quiet.) Yet we’re friends. Whatever.
It’s 9:15. The hair dye station is all Shib, but she’s asked me to keep lookout, so I’ve stationed myself in the Sunday School Hall. I’ve brought my sketchbook, and I’m on the floor, back to the wall, triangle knees, working on my portrait of Nelson Mandela, which is due Monday. I’m keeping a lookout on the three Sunday School rooms the three adults are sleeping in, just in case they decide to come back out again.
So far the only people I’ve had to shuffle along so far are Jeremy and Jaycee, who were looking for a room in which to fuck.
“Hi,” says a person wearing Birkenstocks despite it being winter, and prodigious golden leg hair.
I look up. It’s Laurel. “Shh,” I do a pouty face. “The grownups are sleeping.”
Laurel plops to the floor beside me. She smells like patchouli and she’s wearing a floofy madras skirt and anklets with a bunch of teeny brass bells braided in. It’s as if she’s trying to draw attention to the sight of her golden leg hair. Her feet look cold.
"Wow,” Laurel whispers. “You must really like Bill Cosby."
"It's Nelson Mandela."
"Oh." Laurel fawns over my drawing even as I go on hating her. “Show me how to do that crisscross,” she says, so I explain to her about cross hatching, doing a little example in Nelson’s shoulder as it’s going to get covered up anyway.
A door opens. We look up. One of the adults, Joe, steps out just long enough to scotch tape a piece of paper to the outside of the door. He waves at Laurel and me, flashes the peace sign, then goes back inside and closes the door again. Laurel pops to her feet, tiptoes to the sign, reads it, then tiptoes back. It’s like Laurel to tiptoe even while her ankle bells go on jingling.
“It says Joe is sleeping here,” Laurel whispers.
“Ha. Make more.” I figure signs will keep kids like Jeremy and Jaycee from fucking too loud and waking up the adults. Because Unitarian-Universalists may be the hippies of Christianity, but sex in the Sunday School? Hair dye in the sanctuary? Hard pass. No. Absolutely not.
I tear some pages out of my scrapbook. “Help me.”
“With what?”
“Let’s make decoy signs. It’s what they do for famous people. They get people who look just like them to go around in public. So if someone tries to shoot them, they’ll shoot someone else.”
Laurel’s eyebrows make a drawbridge. “You think someone will try to shoot Joe?”
“God, no. It’s a metaphor. Help me.”
Laurel and I make signs for all of the rooms and scotch tape them up using the roll Joe left. Now all eight doors say Joe is sleeping here. I give Laurel a hearty slap on the back, and she jingles.
***
Of course, the logical place to dye hair would be the church kitchen. That was where Shib and I had imagined it happening. That was where she first took her box when we got to the conference and where we would have set up, had our longtime foes not blocked our path.
“Milady,” Longhair Dave had said, taking off his Greek fisherman cap with a spiraling hand and a histrionic bow, releasing the greasy tresses for which he was named. This was earlier when everyone was just arriving. Shib and I, as well as Longhair Dave and his best bud Beener, had simultaneously walked into the church kitchen, set our boxes on the counter, and locked eyes.
Turns out, while Shib and I had been spending the past weeks fantasizing about dying hair in the church kitchen, Beener and Longhair Dave had been making plans for a competition involving themselves, a timer, and copious amounts of Jolt cola.
“Two words,” Longhair Dave had looked at Shib. “Projectile vomit.”
Longhair Dave had cracked up over that. Beener too. Then, Longhair Dave had argued that as this was his home church, the church where his grandparents, his family, and even he himself sometimes went on special occasions, he got dibs on the kitchen. Shib countered that this was the church her aunt went to, not to mention she herself was a guest, so kitchen space ought to go to her without saying. But then, even while Shib spoke, Beener and Longhair Dave had begun opening up the first box of Jolt cola, taking bottles out and lining them up on the counter. What we had approached as a diplomatic negotiation the boys saw as an old–timey land grab.
Shib glared at Dave. Dave ignored Shib. There was an awkward moment where Shib was deciding what to do. So finally, she (we) gracefully deflected to the sanctuary.
Shib is queen, like I said.
By 9:47, I can hear the Jolt contest in the kitchen. I can also hear Laurel yelling at everyone to quiet down or else the adults will wake up. I close my sketchbook, stand and stretch. Then I walk to the sanctuary and stick my head through the door. Shib’s still crocheting. She asks me how long since an adult has been seen.
“Twenty, thirty minutes.”
“Show time!”
My heart is buoyant. My step light. I skip around the corner into the kitchen where the Jolt competition is experiencing a quiet moment. I clear my throat and make the announcement about Shib doing hair dye in the sanctuary. I use a carnival barker voice and jazz hands.
Two girls jump off the piano bench and book it to the sanctuary. A couple more walk. I stay back to watch the Jolt competition, which does not disappoint. After a moment the linoleum bears testament to the capacity of Beener’s stomach. Dave and a kid I do not recognize scream-sing “We Are the Champions” by Queen. Meanwhile, Laurel and some other girls are pointing to the vomit and giggling while everyone else freaks about the smell. It’s loud, but probably not loud enough to wake the adults up.
I walk to the sanctuary. Shib’s done seven already. They’re sprawled out on the drop cloth, waiting before rinsing off. Two kids have rolled their heads around on the plastic drop cloth and are finger-painting with red and purple dye. The rest are just talking.
Jerad appears. His coat is still on. He’s too late for the competition, but he brought his own bottle of Jolt and is making up for lost time. He laughs with Shib. In his other hand he’s flipping a cassette case open and closed. Then he goes to the pulpit and digs around, skips up the stairs, shifting the curtain this way and that, looking for a tape deck. He sticks his butt out while he’s looking.
Jerad disappears behind the curtain, and then peppy brass bursts forth. It gets loud. Then he skips back out and takes the drop cloth as a dance floor, skanking while the hair dye kids scoot out of the way. To skank is to dance to ska music. Bow your head, curve your spine, then fling yourself around like you’re a marionette on the hand of a crackhead. That’s how I do it at least.
There are eight kids on the drop cloth now, plus Jerad. Jerad rouses them to their feet and they begin skanking. No. Wrong. Bad. For one thing, the music’s too loud. For all we know, enough to wake them. Maybe they’re already awake. Maybe they’re on their way.
But Shib has her hands full, literally full, with red-orange hair dye. Just then Laurel sort of swoops up behind me and tugs me onto the dance floor, the drop cloth dance floor, right out onto the middle. And then Jerad goes Whoop! Whoop! Carrie’s here! Party’s started! And I can feel myself blush and then I have to skank. So I do. Or I try to. Whatever.
Anyway I'm skanking, and Longhair Dave walks into the sanctuary, pushes open the double doors and just stands there, mouth open and his hands on either side of his belly, as if his gut is a fireplace bellows and he’s about to squeeze. Behind him are Laurel and a bunch of other kids. Longhair Dave takes fast steps to the drop cloth and all at once I can see the future. “No headbanging!” I yell, but it’s too late. He’s gone full metal. He throws his head forward. He pops up again and repeats. His long hair flaps in the breeze. Beside him, Beener does the same. “Stop! No headbanging allowed! We have wet dye!” Beener cups his ears at me for a second. Then he shrugs, turns away, head down, elbows up, like he’s moshing at the Hatch Shell.
Longhair Dave goes to the side, hands an audio cassette to one of his fangirls, who skips past the pulpit and puts it in the sound system. The music switches to Mudhoney’s “Touch Me I’m Sick”, distorted guitars blaring everywhere, and all at once everyone is pushing each other, kicking, stomping, headbanging. Dye goes everywhere.
“Stop! Stop!” I wave my hands and run at Longhair Dave. I plan to grab his arm, shout in his face, make him turn off the music, make everyone stop and think about the consequences.
However, I slip. I do a real old school slip-and-fall on the hair dye kids have been painting with on the drop cloth. Slapstick. Comedy gold. It’s one of those moments you wish you would have caught on your camcorder so you could send it to America’s Funniest Home Videos. I go sliding forward on the heel of one foot, catch air, and land flat on my back on the drop cloth. Bam.
“Are you okay?” It’s Laurel.
All the air’s knocked out of my lungs. I can’t move. I can’t inhale. I think of Joe for some reason, lying in a Sunday School room, same position, but fast asleep. I think of Shib’s Aunt Marsha, who has MS. Marsha was lying down the last time Shib and I visited her. It’s late. She’s probably sleeping right now. Soon she’ll lie down, dead. I think of all Earth as a big ball, all five point five billion humans stuck to it like magnets. I take a breath, which hurts. Then, I wish the adults were awake. The music, the Jolt competition, I don’t know how they can sleep through all that. I want to cry. I’m thinking that I wouldn’t want to cry if at least the stupid music was off.
Then someone shuts the music off. I don’t know. Sometimes life’s so magical.
“Carrie. Open your eyes. Are you okay?” It’s Laurel again.
I open my eyes. “No headbanging,” I breathe.
“Oh, hello. Are you the dance police?” Beener’s face. I can smell Jolt.
“Shut up Beener.” Shib is now by my other side, next to Laurel. “Try to sit up,” she says gently.
I sit up. My tailbone throbs. The back wall of the sanctuary, formerly the standard, sober white, is now speckled like an Easter egg.
Just then Jeremy and Jaycee walk in, look around, walk back out again.
I groan at Shib. In theory she shouldn’t care. Shib hates religion. It causes wars and divides people. But Aunt Marsha doesn’t need to arrive at her special place to find Shib helped redecorate. And Marsha would know. And Shib would know she knew. And even though Aunt Marsha’s cool enough to keep it secret from Shib’s mom, the speckled sanctuary would become an unsaid unpleasantness between them. And being unsaid, there’d be no hope of resolution. Never, never, because the damage is done. And one day soon Marsha will die, and then Shib will be alone with the secret forever. It’s been a while since Shib’s talked about her aunt, but I know this is what she’s thinking. She doesn’t have to say.
Two things happen. Shib takes off her gloves, and walks unceremoniously away from her hair dye station. Also, Longhair Dave goes to the sound system and starts it up again with Mudhoney.
After that, he doesn’t even have time to walk back. I force myself to my feet. I push past him, shove back the curtain. Stop. Eject. The sudden silence feels very loud. “Assholes,” I say before Longhair Dave or Beener can speak. I keep moving my shoulder blades back, trying to work out the pinch. “You got dye on the wall,” I wave. “This is Shib’s aunt’s church.”
A couple kids go tsk-tsk, as if it isn't their fault, and Beener makes a dive for the cassette. I drop it between my boobs. Then I stalk off to find Shib.
I find her in the Sunday School Hall, holding my portrait of Nelson Mandela.
“I’m glad they freed him,” she says when I sit down. “Took long enough.”
“I don’t even understand why they put him in prison in the first place.”
Shib sighs. “Why does anyone do anything.”
I take my sketchbook out of her hands and close it. I stand. Then I pull Shib up. She frowns.
“We’re going for a walk.”
“Where? There’s vomit in the kitchen, and if I go to the sanctuary I’ll cry.”
“No. For a real walk. Outside. Get your coat.”
So we get our coats. It’s bitter cold, New Hampshire January. We pull the zippers and stuff our fists into our pockets. We walk down the steps, where kids are balanced on the handrails smoking clove cigarettes, across the parking lot to the sidewalk. We turn right. No destination. We follow where the sidewalk takes us, past storefronts and a park, down a hill, around a corner. It’s eleven. The streets of the little town are quiet. We don’t talk. Shib and I can do silence.
Eventually the sidewalk becomes a bridge. Below us is a river. I remember it from our drive in. When we reach the middle of the river, Shib stops. She digs into her chest pocket, takes out her pack of Marb Lights and knocks it against her thigh. Then she withdraws a single cigarette and lights it. She hands it to me and lights another. The two of us stand there smoking in silence for a minute. She puts her other hand on the railing and stares down. We can hear it even if we can’t see it. The gurgling of it sounds very cold and loud.
“I hate people,” Shib says finally.
“Same,” I say.
“Do something nice, and look what it gets you.”
“Treat others how you’d like to be treated, and you become a doormat.”
Shib sighs. “And I hate Mudhoney.”
I pluck Longhair Dave’s cassette out of my bra, show what I’ve got to Shib, then fling it into the river. It hits with a ploop and Shib laughs. Once she’s laughing, I’m laughing.
We laugh over nothing in that middle-of-the-night way. When we’re walking back toward the church, there is snow. It starts the way it always does, one flake lost and lonely. Then another, another. Then millions. We walk through the empty downtown, right down the middle of Main Street, the sodium lights shining yellow. And this snowstorm. It’s really coming down. Big fat flakes, no wind. The way the snowflakes look in the streetlight, it's like a celebration, like confetti. Had there been snow in the forecast? Shib says no and so do I.
The thing about snow is it’s silent. We hear the church before we see it. Everyone’s outside. Laurel’s making snow angels. There’s a snowman in progress. Also a fort.
Then someone shouts “They’re back!” Longhair Dave appears in the doorway, paintbrush in hand. There’s white paint on the bristles. I picture Longhair Dave on the Sundays he’s been dragged along to church. I see him wandering into supply cabinets, locating paint.
***
It's almost midnight. The adults remain asleep.
Tomorrow, Shib will finish her afghan. We will drop it off at Marsha's, have tea, then drive home. Shib’ll linger, I won’t mind. I will be finishing my portrait of Nelson Mandela. In Shib’s car folk music will play at a moderate volume. Shib will light up while declaring yet again her desire to quit smoking.
But right now, Shib and I are standing outside the church. Laurel comes running up. The snow’s all packed into her Birkenstocks. “I made him do it, Carrie. I told Longhaired Dave. You fix this.”
Shib nods. Laurel skips off across the snow.
Sometimes Shib does things I don’t understand. Like right now, for instance. Shib is smiling at Longhair Dave. Longhair Dave is smiling at Shib as if all is forgiven and peace reigns again.
THE END
Author Bio: Alice Kinerk recently sat through a ChatGPT info session for work, and is excited that AI might be able to draft her dry-as-dirt emails and boring reports. However, she has and will continue to write fiction the old fashioned way, forming ideas in her gray matter and expressing them through her fingertips. For Alice, writing is about the journey. Her short stories have been published in Oyster River Pages, South Dakota Review, Rock Salt Journal, and elsewhere.