Tribunals
The Mackinac high school bus route only has one stop. After rumbling along dusted roads for a good portion of an hour, the wax blessed bus lets approximately two dozen kids off in the apex of the farmer’s market, which serves as a rendezvous for the small town in Michigan. The girls with the Moschino backpacks & rabbit fur keychains slip into Volvos, Bentleys, Audis. They carry charm bracelets, cigarettes, smile at each other from behind tinted windows; elusive and mysterious and faux chic, all at the same time. The cross country kids stop to lace up hiking boots, tuck L.L Bean thermoses into canvas sling bags, slather on a layer of thick cream sunscreen. They pull out handfuls of granola bars, distribute them among each other, snicker about the Grey Poupon scene playing out before them. They are clever in a “before the government regulations” kind of way- they know their way around rocky precipices, which bands mark a coral snake and which belong to a king snake, how to leave a splinter in a thumb without letting it become riddled with infection. They wave to the art kids, the ones who wander up to market stands, who wear silk neck scarves tied in ornate knots, carry Pentax P-30’s and watercolor bushes and talk about the days before the Bush administration. The ones who embroider grids on bell bottom jeans, dream of The Water House & Michelangelo & French film.
None of these kids pay any attention to the last few waiting in the market stalls, watching the light leak in past the damp birch boards, tinting everything shades of papaya, tea leaves, orange peel. The children in suede & moccasin, with taupe beads in coarse, black hair, lightened feathers twined together at the end. They carry rabbit’s feet, Chippewa prayer stones, essence of Egypt amber. They are serene, intuitive, waiting patiently for the lead of horses to appear, listening to the soft whisper of paper lanterns strung together, swaying in the night breeze. They look up, up past the fronded blades of grass, past the market and the lanterns and the airplanes and satellites beaming across the inky sky. They look up into the constellations, think of the dotted cattle on the reservation. They look up and wonder where it all branched out.
None of these kids pay any attention to the last few waiting in the market stalls, watching the light leak in past the damp birch boards, tinting everything shades of papaya, tea leaves, orange peel. The children in suede & moccasin, with taupe beads in coarse, black hair, lightened feathers twined together at the end. They carry rabbit’s feet, Chippewa prayer stones, essence of Egypt amber. They are serene, intuitive, waiting patiently for the lead of horses to appear, listening to the soft whisper of paper lanterns strung together, swaying in the night breeze. They look up, up past the fronded blades of grass, past the market and the lanterns and the airplanes and satellites beaming across the inky sky. They look up into the constellations, think of the dotted cattle on the reservation. They look up and wonder where it all branched out.
Emma Banks, a sophomore Literary Arts major at Appomattox Regional Governor's High School for the Arts and Technology, is a willowy girl with many opinions & a love for all things vintage. She firmly believes that Wes Anderson should direct her life.
