Chapter 8: Chesterfield

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Chesterfield_(cigarette)

     "You and Jimmy seem close," Beat observes from a perch atop a rock retaining wall, handing over a cigarette stolen from her father's carton of Chesterfield kings.

"Twins," Nadia exhales, her word accompanied by a stream of harsh, sweet smoke as they dangle legs above the tinkling stream. "He thirteen, I twelve."

"Happy birthday Jimmy!" Beat laughs, quickly deducing how twins could have different ages.

"Yeah, big boy at 11:12, little girl at 12:13," explains Nadia while pointing her cigarette toward the little kids digging into the shale bank below. "Treasure under that rockslide?"

"Nah," Beat replies taking a slow drag, "I just made that up to keep them occupied."

"You are bad," laughs Nadia with a low guffaw that's interrupted by a clanging of rocks echoing from under the Union Avenue bridge.

"Oh shit, the Crescent Drive Kids," Beat whispers, snuffing out her smoke and starting down the wall. "Let's get out of here."

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     Nadia and Beatrice weren't as well prepared as Jimmy Nedjer for navigating teenage life in 1960s Bound Brook. Young women were still steered into home economics and secretarial prep classes at the otherwise excellent high school. It wasn't until 1972 that Title IX granted equal access to sports and other educational opportunities, and it took about ten years to become a reality for most public schools. As free-spirited and nature loving pre-teens in a male dominated social structure, the two girls would either have to eek out an identity with little support or grin and bear it until they could get the hell out of there.
     Mr. Reed's preferred cigarette brand had been an innovator in manufacturing and marketing. Dubious firsts included double lined packaging to preserve moisture, king sized cigarettes for longer smokes, and advertising to women to double the market. They were also the last brand to add filters, only doing so in 2019 when data was emerging, ironically, that burning plastic fibers in filters was as toxic as tars in the actual tobacco.

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     "I show you how to handle boys," Nadia asserts, climbing down the rock wall and picking her way over boulders to the underpass.

Beat watches in stunned silence as her new friend leans into the tall leader, whispering into his ear before he waves the gang back to their side of the bridge.

     "What did you say to him?" Beat queries as they lead their little siblings in the midday sun across the steaming blacktop of Tea Street to the Dairy Queen.

"Go away or I tell Jimmy you felt my chest," Nadia whispers, her lips tickling Beat's ear with each consonant.

"Talk about bad," Beat concludes, shaking two more Chesterfields out of the soft pack as the children climb around a wooden picnic table, "but here's to the feeling of chests!"

   

Chapter 7: May Day Parade

Photo by Frank Holubowicz

     "It's N-e-d-j-e-r," declares a tall girl as she and Beat follow the other Roadies and Needers splashing down the Middlebrook, "and I'm Nadia."

"Pleased to meet you, Nadia N-e-d-j-e-r," smiles Beat glancing sideways at the older girl's svelte legs shimmering in the mid-morning sunlight beaming through the crystalline water. "Beatrice R-e-e-d at your service."

"Little ones over tracks," calls Jimmy pointing to a barely discernible dirt path up to the railroad trestle after touching a wooden beam to make sure no trains are coming. "Swimmers under."

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     April had given way to May in the year of the golden carp, and the child gangs of the west end were turning into teenagers led by a surprising newcomer. The Nedjers were political refugees fleeing Prague after the 1960 communist makeover of constitution, flag, and state symbols of the old Czech Republic. Jimmy had grown up on the bohemian streets of one of eastern Europe's oldest cities and was well positioned to broker the ethnic rivalries of a diminutive New Jersey town. A tall, strong twelve-year-old, he was also capable of the physical negotiations required for traversing Bound Brook's tough neighborhoods.
     Even the polluted waterways of the industrial Cold War suburbs hadn't prepared Jimmy for what he was wading towards. The Raritan valley with unregulated development and proximity to New York ports had become the birthplace of the American petrochemical industry. The companies lining the banks with their effluent pools read like a who's who of the worst workplace environmental disasters: Calco's aniline dyes (American Cyanamid); Ruberoid's roofing shingles (GAF); Bakelite's plastics (Union Carbide); Johns Manville's asbestos products. By mid-twentieth century the Raritan ran in various sheens after any significant rain, as occurred each spring and with periodic tropical depressions coming up the coast.

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     "The linden was burning, burning," Jimmy sings as the smaller kids rejoin the splashers lined up across the Middlebrook. "The linden was burning, burning."

"My sweetheart was under it, my sweetheart was under it," joins in Nadia from behind, smiling over at Beat as the creek reaches her waist with the approach of the point.

"Hey!" shout the rest of the Nedjers and the whole family joins the chorus of the Czech folk song as Beat, Keety, and their siblings listen entranced:

"Water flows down from above,

Swift like me,

It turns around, 

Around a maple tree.

Water flows down from above,

Swift like me, 

It turns around,

Around a maple tree."

With a final splash of twenty arms, Jimmy and Beat catch a flash of gold streaking into the amaranthine Raritan, never again to be seen in the clear waters flowing down from the Watchung hills.