The Rafters

The Rafters





I was no more than ten or eleven at the time. The university, a block away from my home in Hawaii, represented much of a riddle to me. It was a playground for my friends and me, an amusement park, foreign in sights and sounds, no matter how many times we sprinted across its grounds, our bare feet skating past cane-wielding geezers and afghan-hoarding crones, who were at least twenty years at the time. We watched them from the corner of our eyes, avoiding contact, for we were travelers in their dimension of lecture halls and study sessions, but never natives.

Of all the places on that campus, the auditorium was it. It was a place of mystery; a large rectangle that extended sixty feet into the sky, its roof sharply angled and peaked. Inside the main entrance, bucket seats for several hundred adults descended to the floor in front of the stage. On the raised platform, well-worn by the disciples of Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, and Aaron Sorkin, black drapes hung from rollers that skittered along curved rails high above.

I had been in all of these places, exploring their heights and depths, wandering among the forest of ebony curtains and ancient props from plays gone by. However, the greatest adventure lay above, in the rafters. Like all adventures, the path was strewn with obstacles.

          The most obvious of them were the two sets of steel and tinted glass double doors that guarded the auditorium from the uninvited. Unless there was some activity, or by odd accident, these doors were locked. They were the will of authority, reminders of policies and regulations, things that we did our best to circumvent. And we did just that. 

         Invariably, one of the exits at the rear of the building was left open. These tall wide doors were used by props crews, working on the latest rendition of  “A Midsummer’s Nights Dream” or maintenance crews who stored that odd piece of lumber that wouldn’t fit within their own supply closet. We didn’t mind so that much since it meant that we had frequent and easy access to the stairs.

         The stairs were made of a silvery metal, most likely stainless steel, with those little diamonds stamped in them. When I was young and bold, I never knew what the purpose of those stairs was, other than to say “to go up”. But there wasn’t much up there to go to. Still, that didn’t concern us much. The stairs were a gateway to a mystical place, one which grown-ups and authority figures were determined to keep us from.

         After a while, the powers that be became wise to our forays to the heights of the auditorium and took precautions to stop us from future attempts to the rafters. We were more determined than they, though. Even when they welded a chain link fence to the stairs, and locked the gate-like door with a five pound lock, we snickered. I suppose their thinking was, “if we wrap this staircase in fencing material, those (insert your favorite cussword here) kids will give up and go home”. The Denver Broncos had a better chance of playing the L.A. Lakers than a steel fence had of keeping us from our goal.

         The first time that we saw the stairway, wrapped in a web of interlocking links, we milled around, unsure what to do next. Our only entrance to the rafters was blocked and none of us had been gifted with the foresight to bring along a set of bolt-cutters. It didn’t matter though. We were determined to reach the top of the stairs, to climb our mountain, and the ingenuity of the maintenance crew of the university was no match for the neighborhood kids.

         We eyed the fencing along the side. We’d climbed fences before, as well as walls, inclines, trees, and everything else with a vertical surface, all none the worse for wear. At least, that’s what we told ourselves and each other. The fencing was new. It glinted in what little light was on the stage. It was doable, the braver souls among us decided and they took a handful of linked fence in hand and in foot and began to climb upwards.

         The climb wasn’t easy by any gauge. First, the right foot had to find purchase in a link around knee-high, and all of us were barefoot. Then, pushing with that new foothold that pinched and bit, they’d push upward and get a new handhold with the right hand and a new foothold with the left foot. Last, the left hand, at leisure, would find a new place to hold, the hard work done. Repeat until five or six feet above the ground. Now they scooted to the side, since the stairway ascended at an angle. Slide to the side, and then pull themselves up a foot or more.

         Lucky for us, the maintenance crews had been lazy. They hadn’t run the fence all the way to the top of the first landing – only the first ten feet or so. Once the first few of our gang had reached the end of the fencing, they pulled themselves into the stairway whispering words of “commonlet’sgo!” The less valorous of us, confident that it was possible, waited to make the climb. I was usually last. Not that I didn’t think that it couldn’t be done, but the risks of failure were real, and I put off the danger of it till the last moment.

         I did it, and we moved on, invincible and confident. There were several landings, the stairway effectively doubling back on itself as it carried us closer to the rafters. We passed an entrance that led to a walkway over the ceiling of the auditorium, a place where workmen replaced spent lights and electrical lines. After that door, we jittered with anticipation. We were almost there, to our haven, to our goal.

         A few minutes more, and we had arrived. Above us, the rafters, steel girders running from end to end of the length of the auditorium beckoned us. It was always déjà vu: no matter how many times we had gone before, the experience was new, with a vague, almost instinctual remembrance of having been there before. The beams were rust orange and dusty. We climbed them, hopping from rafter to rafter like high rise construction workers, to find our places, solemn and earnest. The floor was twenty or thirty feet below.

         The walls were concrete, but old, and now remind me of sandstone. Ages of kids from before had carved their initials in the walls of the rafters, creating history, and we did the same. Any blunt object was good enough – the cement fell away almost as soon as we touched it. Each time we went up to the rafters, we would again inscribe our names on the walls, as proof that we had been there. Among our crowd, words were not enough.

         The ritual of inscription completed, we would talk. Not of the rafters, but of running down streets on calloused feet, kickball, school, and a hundred other topics that escape the lips of triumphant pre-teens. That, and take furtive glances at a small door that led to the roof of the auditorium. The door that was always ajar, letting thin slices of sun into the blackness.

         The occasional kid would gaze furtively at the small door, which was the right size for a skinny eleven-year-old. It led to the slanted, Mediterranean-style, tile roof. Very little was said about that door, although occasionally I opened it up and gazed about the university from its vantage point, six stories up. The view was a reminder of both the glory and the danger we undertook, the joy of doing something forbidden and the risks we took to get there. 

         Eventually, the end would come. We would file back down the stairs and out of the auditorium, quiet, not with the joy of the climb, but to give our respects to that holy place, the forbidden place where we boys bonded with danger ignored and flirted with mortality. Perhaps it was to seek out the dark and laugh in its midst, leaving proof that we had pierced the veil of the forbidden, and came away unscathed. Whatever the reason, I will forever cherish my memory of that place.