the Line

by Daniel E. Machado

 
This took place when my daughter Emily was quite small. The event impressed her so much that for years she would make me tell it at family gatherings as an after-dinner story. It was her favorite. I wrote it down and hard-bound it into a small book for her sixteenth birthday.

    "Daddy, I’m hot." Emily's small sweaty fingers dangle loosely from her father's hand.
    "I know, Sweety. I know."
    Emily and her father have ventured out into the hellish Bakersfield mid-day sun to see the film "Pinocchio"; this being the first time in Emily’s short four-and-one-half years of existence that the Disney Studios have seen fit to release the children’s classic. Father and daughter have braved a blow-torch drive from Oildale down Highway 99 in their dark green ’69 Volkswagen bug in hopes of purchasing a few luxurious hours of the refrigerated magic kept hidden away behind the Cinema Valley Plaza's long wall of dark glass doors. Pulling her nose up over the counter Emily smells the popcorn-scented coolness as it spills out the smooth round hole cut into the ticket booth's blue-green tinted glass.
    After pushing paper money through a silver tray just below the hole Emily’s daddy receives two shiny quarters and two strips of printed red paper from a bored looking teenage girl in an oddly cut burgundy-red uniform.
    For Emily the film Pinocchio will be just another newness in a constantly new world. For her daddy this is a glimpse back at the first film he ever consciously remembers being totally scared shitless of. The "whale scene" really got to him.
    After buying their tickets Emily and her daddy walk past the people standing in front of the theater to discover that the line ends way out in the middle of the driveway, out in the sun, behind no less than fifty hot angry adults each with at least one fidgety child of their own. Standing at the end of the line Emily stares up at her daddy, her sweaty little fingers still hanging loosely from his.
   "Daddy, my feet are hot!"
   Emily's daddy glances down at his daughter’s thin white leather sandals. It’s 106⁰ in the shade. Black asphalt lying out in the hot sun must be at least 150⁰. The cheap quarter-inch of leather under Emily’s tiny toes work just fine inside the theater but seem poor protection against this much heat.
    Looking up toward the front of the line Emily's daddy notices that someone had the unbelievable foresight to build the theater facing North with a marquee that shades the first twenty people standing in line. Unfortunately everyone else must fend for themselves out in the sun.
    "Daddy!" Emily insists with a sharp tug on her father's pant leg. The child's soles begin to sting as the girl desperately tries to keep both feet up off the ground at the same time by running in place as she alternately stands on both her tip-toes and heels.
    "Here. Stand on my toes." Her daddy tells her.
    Emily quickly hops up off the broiling hot asphalt and onto her daddy's red canvas sneakers. The girl's soles are still uncomfortably hot, but at least her sandals have stopped getting hotter.
    Suddenly finding an intolerable situation considerably worse Emily’s daddy again looks up at the long line of people stretching down off the sidewalk and out into the driveway and considers the total stupidity. The entire back half of the line has to move out of the way every time a car drives by.
    Then Emily's daddy notices a small sliver of shade has just slipped down off the side of the theater's cinder-block wall to cover about a foot of sandy dirt.
    You know, we should all be standing over there! It’s entirely too damn hot to be out here in the middle of the road, out in the hot blazing sun, with a hot fidgety four-and-a-half-year-old girl dancing around on my toes.
    "Daddy?" Emily pleads up at him as she shifts herself back and forth on his hot aching toes, rocking herself in sun-baked frustration. It was then that Emily’s daddy has an agony inspired idea.
    No one has ever accused the child's father of being abnormally shy. As a matter of fact, on occasion Emily's daddy has been known to be quite the extrovert. Lifting the child up off the man's screaming toes Emily's daddy sets his daughter down in the shade of one of the adults standing in line ahead of them.
    "You wait here a minute, Sweety. I think I know how to handle this."
    Leaving his daughter standing at the end of the line Emily’s daddy takes several long steps out toward the curb and clears his throat.
    "Excuse me." Her father says in a loud clear voice. A Portuguese ancestry gives Emily’s daddy more than enough volume for such occasions, but most of those standing in line are so preoccupied with their own personal miseries that only one or two of the more curious actually look over at him. Bumping up the volume another couple of notches Emily's daddy addresses the line once again.
    "Excuse me!"
    The man's voice carries some unknown authority that a bare majority of the line responds to by looking his way.
    Good enough.
    "Ah… I don’t know about the rest of you folks, but my daughter and I are getting extremely uncomfortable standing out here in the sun." All of the children standing in line suddenly stop their fidgeting to stare up at him startled. "And it’s probably not such a good idea for any of us to be standing out here in the middle of the road like this." The grown-ups standing in line all stare at Emily's daddy with varying degrees of confusion curiosity and mistrust. Some even stare back at Emily standing by herself at the end of the line, making the tiny girl more than a little uncomfortable as she listens to her daddy continue without pause. "So if we could all just pivot the line up there at the corner and move over into that little bit of shade there next to the theater, then I’m sure we’d all be a lot more comfortable. Okay?"
    Emily’s father hopes his little announcement has been neighborly enough. The smile never leaves his face. He even makes several broad arm gestures in hopes of getting his point across those standing in line who may not be as intelligent as their toddlers.
    Emily still doesn’t know quiet what to think. Most of the other daddies standing in line look at her daddy as if he’s just called them all a bunch of brainless idiots in front of their wives and children. Most of the mommies standing there look at him as if asking: "Where th’hell have you been for the past twenty minutes?"
    Staring wide astonished blue eyes up into her father's growing smile Emily's daddy reaches down to take the girl's tiny hand, grinning at the thunder-struck expression on his daughter’s small beautiful face as he turns without hesitation to walk his child in a wide arc across the driveway, up over the curb, through the dry dead flower-beds and in between the tall shadeless desert shrubs planted in a line next to the theater.
    Before the two even reach the curb tiny tugging hands still to young to be afflicted by the absurdity of preferring pride over comfort begin to persuade some of the more severely oppressed parents into following the madman and his child up into the shade. Emily’s daddy winks down at his dearest darling daughter as they step into the thin strip of relative coolness beside the theater wall.
    "Anything for you, Sweety." Emily's daddy whispers down at his daughter's disbelieving grin. "Anything at all."
    The decision soon becomes unanimous as the few remaining holdouts find themselves in the awkward position of looking even more foolish than Emily’s daddy.
    Emily still can’t believe it. All those strangers are following them up into the shade just ‘cause my daddy said so! Looking up at her father Emily sees the man in a sudden God-like wonder, which isn’t too hard to understand; a parent being about as close to God as a four-and-a-half-year-old's mind can comprehend. Emily suddenly sees her father with renewed wonder, realizing for the first time that a fragment of his mysterious daddy-power – his voice – could actually transcend their personal existence and effect the real world outside.
    My daddy can do anything!
    The tiny girl smiles up at the tall thin bearded man in T-shirt and worn Levi’s that she calls daddy, her suddenly wonderful daddy.
    Five minutes later both father and daughter walk hand in hand around a shady corner toward the cool dark promise of Technicolor splendor hidden behind the chrome and blue-green tint of theater doors.
 
 
 
 
 
 

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