Riding Trains Together

[ChrisGibson]

Prynne frowned, and as he looked at the bearded man he was beginning to see something, and he said the name even as the man told it.

“Dennis Lorry.”

A considerably older Dennis nodded.

“Well,” Prynne smiled and laughed, “I can see why you took your time coming here.”

“You apologized for your school,” Dennis said. “Now I have to apologize for me. I can’t make up for what I did. I… have you ever heard the phrase wrong side of history?”

“Indeed.”

“Everyone I know, everyone in my neighborhood talks about how progressive and equality minded they were in the sixties and the seventies, how much they loved every body and wanted … equal rights and people holding hands and … I’ve heard myself say that because I’m embarrassed of what I was. I was a very, very stupid kid who repeated what my parents said. And… there’s no excuse for it. I’ve been ashamed of my actions for a long time.”

“Well,” Prynne, who was never good with apologies said, briskly, “I’m sorry for throwing a noose around your neck and setting your room on fire.”

Dennis was not ready to make light of it, though.

“Father Abbot,” he said, “I am sorry for thinking it was funny that little girls died in church fires. I am sorry for making a joke about lynch mobs, and I am sorry for acting like the things that people who looked like me, who are me, the shameful things we did were things that should have made you ashamed. I… don’t expect any of this is easy for you to hear, but if you need friends, I am one. And even though they’re not here that stands for Dom and Tony and all of us. We were worse than assholes, and I hope in time you really understand how sorry we all are.”



The truth was Eutropius Prynne hadn’t thought about Dennis Lorry since graduation, and didn’t suppose he would ever see him again. The world had been changing, and Prynne wasn’t naïve, but the time of the Dennis Lorrys was fading even when he and his friends had been there.

He wasn’t overly ambitions. He had done well enough for an academic scholarship at Saint Damian’s down the road, and this is where he went along with Andy and Benji. Jason went down to Bloomington, and once or twice, when Prynne visited, he’d wished he gone too. It seemed like everything university was supposed to be with enormous halls, a college encompassing a whole town and the secularism he had never been a part of. Ben found his own secularism, sleeping his way though the girls’ dorms and no longer afraid of buying condoms. Privately, Tommy Prynne thought it was strange he had ever considered being a monk and agreed that it was wise of Merrill to have told his friend to go to college first.

Senior year of college, Jason wrote and told him two things; he was staying at Bloomington for his Masters, Prynne should too, and what was more, he had met a girl called Wendy and he thought they were going to be serious. Andy surprised them all by saying he was going to graduate school in Florida and Ben, who was going to graduate school nowhere, decided to go down south and be roommates with Prynne.

Before the first year of their graduate program was over, Jason had married Wendy, and soon she was pregnant with their first child.

“Will you be the godfather?” Jason asked.

“Is a Jewish godfather a thing?”

“You’re not Jewish, so that doesn’t matter.”

So Tommy Prynne agreed.

By then they were done and thinking of, but not serious entertaining, earning PhDs, and Tommy and Ben went off driving around the country, and while Ben fucked women, Tommy wandered outside under the stars or sat under trees. In motels he leaned against the wall, writing in his journal while the bed creaked and girls cried out under his best friend.

For a very brief moment Tommy had a series of odd jobs and very much frustrated his parents who had paid for a good education, and then he wandered through ashrams and Buddhist monasteries, and one day Ben showed up again and they drove to visit Jason who was harried and unhappy, but trying to hide it, surrounded by his three kids.

“She’s not bad,” he continued. “It’s not Wendy. It’s me.”

Prynne didn’t see the point in saying, “Well, you did get married awfully quick,” which is exactly what Ben said while he eyed the waitress.

Ben never ogled women or pressed them. He was quiet and soft spoken, and he paid them real compliments because he really loved women. They ended up laughing and talking with him, and then in bed with him before the night was over.

“I can’t explain it,” Ben said, softly while they were driving toward Calverton to visit their old school. “I just have a sort of… passion.”

Abbot Merrill was glad to see them. They were surprised—but not completely—to learn that Andy Reed was now a postulant. They stayed for a week, and Lewis Merrill was never the kind of person to ask, “Are you alright,” or to suggest things politely. He just came to Prynne and said, “They need an English teacher at Saint Damian’s, and I said you were coming on Wednesday,” and that was that. The night before he was leaving, Ben came to him, very quiet, and he said, “Here’s the thing, Tommy…. I’m not leaving. I’m staying here.”

To his credit, Thomas Prynne was not the type of person who doubted people or thought he knew what their limits. Ben was full of love. His lust was a lust for life. He was the sweetest most compassionate person Prynne knew, except maybe Jason. If anyone could give this life a try, it would be his best friend.

“Prynne…?” Ben started.

“Yeah.”

Ben looked like he had a great question in his hazel eyes, but instead he shook his head and pulled his hands through the marmalade hair that still fell in his face after all these years and said, “Nevermind.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion. It was interesting to see things of the past coming back, especially Prynne’s past. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

That was a great portion. It was interesting to see things of the past coming back, especially Prynne’s past. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!

I'm glad you enjoyed it coming full circle. I really do like this third volume too because the story deepens and I'm glad you'ree njoying it too. I hoped it would work because Prynne is important to me and we dont really learn about him until this book.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Prynne stayed in Dwenger Hall, which was then a residence for a few employees, priests and a couple of older students. He was sitting in room 42, his room, and looking out of the bay window when a car came up and there was a knock down below. He went to answer it and was surprised to see Jason looking miserable.

“You wanna go for coffee?” he asked as if Jason had not for driven three hours across the state.

At Grandma’s, over bad coffee and pie, Jason told his friend, “It’s over. It was peaceful enough. No real fighting. I think she’s even met someone. And I wanted to go back to Chicago. She wouldn’t. I mean, that’s not the only reason. But… I guess I’m on my way back. I can’t face my parents right now.”

“Why don’t you stay with me for a few days? Till the end of the week, and then I’ll think of something.”

Jason nodded.

“You’re a good friend,” he said.

“Well, so are you,” Prynne told him.

When they drove the interstate and launched into the Skyway crossing the great blue bridge that took them into Illinois and across the Calumet, Prynne marveled that there had been a time when none of this had been here. They came off of I-90 near Bryn Mawr, and drove east till Paxton, then headed north for 70th where the trees were green before the red brick rows of two flats, three flats, old homes and apartment buildings, and Jason began to smile.

“We’re taking you home.”

And they stopped before The Birches, but Jason’s family had gone to West Ridge some time ago. It was Donald Portis who came to the great porch and opened the door.

“You’d better stay here a while,” Don said to Jason when they had told Jason’s story, “but only if you want.”

For the first time since Jason had come back north, he smiled.

He said, “I think I’d like that very much.”


Chapter Twelve





























Suddenly Sal remembered, “You realize you left all your stuff in our room?”

Chris frowned. It was the frown he wore to forestall decisions.

He said, “And Doug will be mad if you just drive off to Lafayette from here.

“I did tell him I could stick around Saint Damian’s for a while, and I wouldn’t be missed. I could stay. If you wanted me.”

Swann did not say that if they kept doing what they were now doing they would have to figure out what it meant to live together for more than three days. He only let Sal say, “Of course we’d want you.”





“I have spent more time with a life I thought I put behind me than I’ve done in the last three years,” Chris said that night after dinner.

“You spent a whole lot of time with Brad,” Sal said. “I was too trashed to say much about it, but… I didn’t even know you knew Brad Crist.”

“We were all roommates,” Swann said.

“Oh? Why didn’t I know that?”

“Cause you were living at home like a normal teenager. and you had your own life.”

“He asked me about Damon.”

Swann only made a noise.

Sal said, softly, like someone touching a wound, “Your son?”

Chris nodded.

They had been talking, him and Brad, and Brad was yawning and talking about getting back home, and Annette was saying she was driving and he said he couldn’t wait to get back to Tamsyn, even though she’d hopefully be asleep.

Brad said, “He’s the best thing in the world. He’s so beautiful. I remember when Damon was born, how you never thought about not having him for a minute, I remembered that, and then when it happened again, with Annette, I knew we wouldn’t be able to do what we’d done the first time. We just looked at each other and we were like, we can’t do it again.”

“So you’re the reason Brad and Annette got married at twenty?” Swann said, more drily than he’d felt.

“He said more than that,” Chris said. “But, it’s so strange that Damon made him want to keep the second baby, and… Damon’s gone.”

“I don’t think it was just that,” Swann said. “I don’t think they ever wanted to…. Well, that’s not true. They didn’t want a kid. But it wasn’t easy for them.”

“Wait?” Sal said, “I don’t know any of this.”

“You’re not really supposed to,” Chris said.

“Brad got Annette knocked up Freshmen year in college,” Sal said.

“Yes,” Swann agreed. “But he got her knocked up sophomore year in high school first.”

“What?”

“And then they had an abortion.”

“Fuck! Well,” Sal shrugged. “I don’t blame them. That had to be so scary. And, look, I know what we’re supposed to believe and Chris, congrats for you and Amy for not doing it, but they were kids. I don’t know what I would have done.”

Swann remembered he was the only one of them who had never been with a girl. Pregnancy had been a very real possibility for Sal.

“I don’t either,” Chris said. “Obviously it wasn’t primarily my choice to make, but I was really kind of judgmental about it when things happened with Brad. I was an asshole. Maybe I was scared about what might happen to me, and it did happen, but it happened almost a year later and Damon was probably born because of what I saw with Annette and Brad. Neither choice was really that easy. I dunno. Life can be really sad.”

In contrast to what he’d just said, Chris said, “These days I’m really happy. You guys, I don’t think I’ve been so happy in a long time. I think I spent so much time walking away from… I guess Saint Francis and the past and everything, and lately I’ve just been really happy.”








“Let us go together to meet Christ on the Mount of Olives. Today he returns from Bethany and proceeds of his own free will toward his holy and blessed passion, to consummate the mystery of our salvation. He who came down from heaven to raise us from the depths of sin, to raise us with himself, we are told in Scripture, above every sovereignty, authority and power, and every other name that can be named, now comes of his own free will to make his journey to Jerusalem. He comes without pomp or ostentation. As the psalmist says: He will not dispute or raise his voice to make it heard in the streets. He will be meek and humble, and he will make his entry in simplicity...”



Midnight in the retrochoir of the great chapel of All Angels, and Ben…. Herulian, read from the Palm Sunday passage for the office of Vigils. Herulian, always gentle, and always calm, had become strong as a monk, stronger as the prior of the abbey. The squabbles, the tempers that swirled around him were all stilled under his gentle hand and his plea which always began, “Guys! Guys!”



“Let us run to accompany him as he hastens toward his passion, and imitate those who met him then, not by covering his path with garments, olive branches or palms, but by doing all we can to prostrate ourselves before him by being humble and by trying to live as he would wish. Then we shall be able to receive the Word at his coming, and God, whom no limits can contain, will be within us.

In his humility Christ entered the dark regions of our fallen world and he is glad that he became so humble for our sake, glad that he came and lived among us and shared in our nature in order to raise us up again to himself. And even though we are told that he has now ascended above the highest heavens—the proof, surely, of his power and godhead—his love for man will never rest until he has raised our earthbound nature from glory to glory, and made it one with his own in heaven…”





With Prynne, his hand either fell or not at all. A “guys guys” would never have settled things with him, and frankly, he was surprised to even be sitting here amongst his brothers, yawning, but still prayerful, tired, but happy. Many of them he’d know for most of his life. There was Andy, in his black and white habit, leaning back, arms crossed over his chest, yawning. He and Roberts had gotten back from the track team’s trip an hour ago, and showered and changed from track suits, ball caps and whistles to looking like serious monastics. There was Jacob Herdegger who had been a bit of a clown when he taught him three years in a row and, there, in plain clothes, Jack Knapp.

Palm Sunday, the beginning of the holiest week of the year. In the morning, Swann and Chris and Sal would be here. And many others? How had he gotten to this place? Not on any particularly holy day. It had been with an invitation, in the surprising heat of the bicentennial year, 1976.

 

[CharmedFan28]

Great portion! We are learning so much about the past and the present and I love being so immersed in this world! Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Great portion! We are learning so much about the past and the present and I love being so immersed in this world! Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!

immersed in this world..... I love that you feel that way. I can't express how much I love that.

 

[ChrisGibson]

CONCLUSION
When they pooled their money to buy the Birches, Sefra moved to the top floor and kept it for herself and Rose whenever Rose came to visit, and Pamela took the second floor for herself and Deborah, and Donald took the first floor for himself and Mama. Mama was already beginning to show signs of sickness, and Donald was devoted to caring for her.

They got a nurse called Thomasina, and Donald was blind to her attentions. He was after all, only about Mama. Because he was the youngest of several children, some of who were twenty and almost thirty years older than him, Mama had always been old to him, and he’d always had the knowledge that she could not last forever. It was strange. To him there had always been Pamela and Sefra and there had been Jean too, though she had died with the baby in her belly. Then there was Annie. The older sisters were strange shadows and imperfect attempts, Leona, Mattie and Dorothy.

The night she died in the spring of 1970, Donald Portis hardly knew what to do. He was never a crier, but he cried then. He wept into the arms of Thomasina, and she held him, in love with the smell of him which was sweat and cinnamon, and the little soft curls of his hair. She held him while he wept, and hiked up her skirt and lowered her underwear and guided him inside of her, and the point of light at the end of his prick guided him through the absolute horror so that he pumped and pumped and pumped her until he staggered with the full force of his orgasm.

That was how Thomasina came into his life. She had the dignity to stay away for the funeral, but the night after, Donald was stiff with the need of her, and the bed creaked under them. She was pregnant and they were married soon after, Thomasina, the first new Mrs. Portis in nearly fifty years. Pamela and Sefra, who rarely hid their feelings, kept silent for this. Annie had been married to that awful Brown. Pamela had gotten out of fifteen years with Geoffrey. Sefra was still with Boochie, a married man and a drug dealer no less. What could they say about Thomasina?

Besides, Thomasina didn’t last. She had Jessica, but didn’t much enjoy children, or for that matter marriage, aside from fucking Donald, and maybe she was over him too. Jessica was barely two by the time Mrs. Portis was gone, and then came Viviane and that necessitated getting a divorce so there could be a second Mrs. Portis in less than three years. Viviane was a smart woman, and it was only a year after she’d had Yolanda that she said, “You know what? I think I wanted to be a mother, and I think you wanted to have a mother. I’m not much of a wife, and you’re not much fo a husband.”

And this was fair. Donald agreed. She had adopted Jessica, and she moved just a little north to Woodlawn, and when she did, she took both girls with her.



So when Jason came to The Birches, Donald had been through a great deal, perhaps just as much, and he was ready with a room and wisdom for Prynne’s best friend. The Birches was just what Jason needed, and he decided that the South Side was where he belonged, not West Ridge or Skokie where all the other Jewish families he’d grown up with had fled. As soon as he was teaching, he got looking for a place for his daughters to visit and found an old high rise off Lake Shore Drive. This was all that was going on when Sefra announced that Rose was about to bet married to a man from Ohio with money.



“I don’t like him, and neither does Sefra,” Florence reported to her son, “but there it is, so be there and be ready. Wedding’s on the seventh.

“Where?”

“In the house. Sefra and Pam are organizing everything. Gon get Father Lawrence from Saint Agatha’s, and then all the guests are going to be all through the apartments, on the stair rails, and when it’s done, Rose and this man can go back to Ohio.”

“Is he really rich?”

“Rich enough.”

“I can come up there for the wedding, and then go down to Calverton the same night.”

“What for?”

“Benji.”

“What about him?”

“You know he’s down there in the order, being a monk, and now he’s starting to have doubts, so… I thought I’d join him and support him for a bit.”

“And drive the getaway car if it turns out he really should be gone.”

“Well, that too, Mama. That too.”



He arrived at the Birches with Jason, and Jason and Donald were both dressed alike, as Jason had been dressing like Donald for some time. Don had on a blazer and a fawn colored fedora over his double breast pocketed shirt, and he never wore a tie. He called the girls Popeye and Meech, and even his ex wife learned to live with those names. Jason was in high form, his blue eyes flashing. He wore his favorite blue and white double breast pocketed shirt, and his dark hair was combed sleek under a white fedora. He was nearly inseparable from Don, and Sefra said, “They been like that since he moved here. Truth is, I forgot Donald knew how to smile.”

“Tommy! Tommy!” Pamela called from down the hall, “get down here and help me!”

Pam was smoking a cigarette, and her hair was in curlers. She held the brazier like a breast plate to her ample chest and said, “Help me get this motherfucker on.”

Prynne obeyed, coming forward, and she dropped the brazier handing it to him. When he averted his eyes she said, “You ain’t got to be dramatic. It’s just titties. You seen ‘em before.”

With effort, Tommy Prynne got the bra on Pam and helped her dress, buttoning the back of her dress.

“I knew you could. Florence said you can strap a bra on like no man’s business.”

“Who wants to get beer with me?” Don called out, and before Prynne could respond, Jason was at Don’s side.

“They almost look like twins,” Sefra commented. Then said, “Almost.”

The doorbell rang and she said, “Here come Rose with this nigga who think he something. Let’s let him know he ain’t shit, but showing him we are.”

Tommy did not like Nate Porter or his friend Pete Merrin, but then he’d never really liked Rose. Rose made sure she introduced Deborah to Pete because Pete was already engaged and she wanted her cousin thinking about how marrying a rich man was out of her league. At least this was how Tommy saw it.

“You look very nice, Tommy,” Rose said in a way that he couldn’t help think was condescending, and he said, “Rose, you actually look beautiful,” and meant it.

Boochie stood at Sefra’s side as if there was no wife and child at home, and the two of them presided over a magnificent wedding. Many of the gang from Stony Island were there, and the neighbors up and down 70th were as well. Toward the evening they wound their way down to the Lake for a night time cookout, and Prynne made his excuses and his goodbyes.

“You got to go now, Baby?” Sefra said.’

“It’s already night, and I promised a friend I’d be down to visit.”

“Well, that was a bad promise, but a promise is a promise.”

They were all heading back toward 70th Street, and Jason threw his arms around Prynne.

“I love you, brother, and take some of that down to Benji for me.”

“Will do.”

“Promise to come up next weekend?”

“I promise. Maybe I’ll even bring Benjamin with me.”

Prynne embraced Don next, and looked between his two friends, the one he’d known all his life, and the one he’d known since he was fourteen. He nodded and turned to go, slipping on his own fedora, and Jason said, “Call. Just to let me know you got there safe.”

“That is very… maternal.”

“Fuck you. Just call.”

They watched Prynne drive away and Sefra, standing on the stoop said, “Can we agree to clean tomorrow and let this shit rest for the night.”

“I just want to get this damn bra off,” Pamela said.

“You should have asked Tommy before he left.”

The siblings said goodnight to each other, and Sefra kissed Jason on the cheek, heading up to her apartment, still in heels.

“Where you goin’?” Don asked Jason.

“I could go home. It’s sort of empty though, and—”

“And you might be a little tipsy,” Don added as he closed the door from the landing and they continued down the hallway, where one stairwell went to the basement apartment and the door into Don’s apartment was open to their right.

“I just might be,” Jason agreed.

“You might want to stay here, tonight.”

“Well, I do know the lay out of the place.”

They both laughed, and Don said, “You can even have your old room.”

“I believe,” Jason said, lowering his eyes and smiling, “That’s currently your room.”

“Yeah,” Donald said, thoughtfully, “yeah. I think it might be. You think you’d be alright with sharing?”

“Yeah,” Jason said, looking away from Donald who took his hand and opened the door with the other, “I think I’d like that just fine.”

 

[ChrisGibson]

But Tommy Prynne drove west long enough to mount I90, and then followed it south, across the long high bridge back into Indiana and drove an hour or so and more till he was on the road into Calverton and arrived at Our Lady of the Angels and Saint Francis, a long sleeping beast in the night. They never locked the great doors into the vestibule and the chapel and by now Prynne knew his way in so that he entered the church and then the cloister and found his way to Benji’s room in the old novitiate.

“Wake up, asshole, I’m here.”

Benjamin wiped his eyes like a little boy and sat up.

“You brought food!”

“A bag of hot wings and slaw and barbecue and two liters of Fanta, and they’re still cold. Let’s eat.”

“What time it is?”

“Almost midnight.”

“I have to go to Matins… Or Vigils it’s called now. Oh, no, it’s Sunday. It won’t be till three.”

“Great, then let’s eat.”

“I don’t know if—okay,” Benjamin changed his mind and climbed out of bed. His white novice robe was over his chair, but he carefully avoided it and put on dungarees and a snug, sleeveless tee shirt.

“We can heat the rest of the food up in the kitchenette. This place is huge, and it’s like me and Andy and two other people in the novitiate this year.”

“I didn’t even know this kitchen existed,” Prynne said.

“There is so much unused space here,” he continued, “Some of these rooms could be classrooms. Or dorms. God knows the school could use them.”

“Oh my God these wings are so good,” Benjamin murmured, uninterested in renovations, his mouth red with sauce.

“Mama made em.”

“Thank you, Florence!” he lifted a wing to the air in gratitude.

“You should have come. I would have got you.”

“I know, and now I think I should have gone. How was it?”

“It was great. Between my family and the Portises, nothing was spared.”

“I miss that place.”

“So do my parents. So do I for that matter.”

“How’s Jason?”

“In love, I think.”

“Really?” Ben put down the chicken and lifted the icy glass of grape soda to to his mouth. It fizzed, and the sting of carbon was almost as wonderful as the sweet tart grape flavor.

“Yes,” Prynne said cautiously.

“With?”

“I may be wrong, but I believe Donald Portis.”

“Whaaat?”

Prynne shrugged.

“Jay was always a little…. I mean, I thought it was hero worship or something, but…”

“Well, maybe I’m wrong, but whatever it was, what I think it currently is, is love.”

“Weren’t they both married?”

“And aren’t they both divorced?”

“How do you feel about it, Prynne?”

“I don’t feel any way about it. It’s none of my business.”

“But, like…” Ben thought on it and said, “I don’t think I’ve really ever known men… like that. You know?”

“You live in a monastery and we went to an all boys’ school. I’m sure you’ve known several men like that,” Prynne said sensibly.

“Huh,” Ben considered it. “I’m sure you’re right. Well, I hope they’re happy. I mean, if that’s what’s going on. And if it’s not, then I still hope they’re happy.”

“And what about you?” Prynne asked as he separated the bones of a wing and picked the tender meat from between them.

“Are you happy?”

“I am not,” Ben said. “Now that you’re here, I feel like everything’s right when you’re here. But… it’s been a struggle.”

“Well, maybe I’ll stay a few days now that it’s summer, and we can struggle together.”

They sat talking until the bells began to toll above them, longer than the other simple strikes of the night, and Ben said, “that means it’s almost Vigils. I gotta go change into my habit.”

“You change and I’ll clean up.”

“You can come. There’s a always a few folks from the guesthouse and some summer students. They hang out in the chapel while we’re in the retro choir.”

“Alright,” Prynne said as he stood up, piling paper plates, and Ben headed down the hall back to his room, “I’ll see you there.”



The bells had finished tolling as Prynne made his way to the chapel and settled down in its dark. There were only a few of the swinging lanterns that were on in the Chapel of the Holy Angels, a chapel as large as most churches in town, and the pictures in the stained glass windows could not be seen so that each of the windows looked like scars, the etchings of their patterns long scabs in the night. The retrochoir beyond the high altar was lit, and as Prynne crossed himself and sat down, they began singing



“Oh God com to my assistance

Oh lord make haste to help me

Glory be to the father and to the son

and to the Holy Spirit,

as it was in the beginning, is now,

and ever shall be, world without end,

Amen.”



He remembered his old breviary, which he’s stopped using reluctantly, but still occasionally turned to. It had been his grandfather’s, and the leather was old and the pages thin:



“Deus, in adiutorium meum intende;

Domine, ad adiuvandum me festina.

Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto,

Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper,

et in sæcula sæculorum. Amen.”





There were a few others in this safe darkness, in this darkness where nothing could happen to them even though there were no locked doors. This was the safest, holiest place to be. From the retrochoir the monks sang, and Benjamin was among them, and so was Andy.









“Lord, how many are my foes!
How many rise up against me!
Many are saying of me,
“God will not deliver him.”

 

[ChrisGibson]

What a strange way to start out morning prayers. But, no, right now they were in darkness, defenses lifted, rid of all bullshit. Energy was gone and even now, as they prayed, Prynne gave himself to all of his feelings, emotions he put away often enough so that the world could keep moving.



“But you, Lord, are a shield around me,
my glory, the One who lifts my head high.
I call out to the Lord,
and he answers me from his holy mountain.

I lie down and sleep;
I wake again, because the Lord sustains me.
I will not fear though tens of thousands
assail me on every side.”



When would his life begin? Teaching at the college was nice enough, and it had come just in time, but Ben with all of his doubts was here, and Jason, no matter what turns he had taken, had found something and still, for Prynne there was this rootlessness he put a good face on. He cared for so little in this world, and was often so very tired.



“Arise, Lord!
Deliver me, my God!
Strike all my enemies on the jaw;
break the teeth of the wicked.

From the Lord comes deliverance.
May your blessing be on your people.”



The true weariness, though, came years later, when the habit was on him, and his head was shaven and he wore the abbot’s ring. That was sixteen years later, and he knew and some pointed out, that there were many who had been there far longer and were far older and who had never been abbot. He came to the prison where Father Mc.Kindley was, the priest who had touched Jason’s son, the priest who had molested Jeremy Lorry, and put his hands on Chris Knapp, who sat across from Prynne on Palm Sunday morning.

“I marched at Selma,” was the first thing the old priest said.

“I got a dispensation from the bishop, and permission from Merrill, and I marched at Selma. They beat us back. Some of us died.”

Prynne raised one eyebrow at the old white man across from him.

“I did,” the old priest continued.

“Rights for everyone. I remember what this place was like, yes, even Indiana, and what those shit boys did to you. How you set their room on fire. I see it now, behind the Abbot, Tommy Prynne. You weren’t a Martin Luther King. You wouldn’t be sitting across from me in that habit, Father Abbot, if you were.”

“Are you through?”

Abbot Prynne took out his cigarettes and lit one.

“May I?” Father Mc.Kindley held out his hand.

Prynne took out a Marlboro, gave it to the other priest, and lit it for him.

“What you’re doing is new,” the old man said, “and that’s great. Things need to be renewed. The Mass needed to be renewed. We needed that. People would have left without it. But some things are old.”

Prynne found himself more fascinated with this priest and his words than he wanted to admit. He wanted to know where the old man was going.

“The culture of the Church is old. It’s ancient. You’ve been to the Vatican. You were schooled in Rome. You’ve seen it. You know how it works. As long as there have been celibate priests, as long as there has been a male priesthood, as long as there have been altar boys, it’s gone on. You know? It’s gone on just like… Rubens, the painter, married a sixteen year old girl, and the Old World thought nothing of it. Michelangelo, Titian. Even back to Plato and Socrates. Men who loved young men. Boys who… were coy, shy, eager for it… who wanted it. Tempting you, pretending they didn’t. Keeping the game going.”

Prynne had stubbed out his cigarette. The smoke tasted foul in his mouth the way people told you not to smoke said it was supposed to. His face was hot.

“You’re not a naïve man, Father Abbot. You’ve never been that. Surely you know this is the way it has always been.”

Prynne stood up. He’d heard of rage and disgust, but those words seemed very sanctimonious and far off from this buzzing in his ears, this shock, this need to leave or to shut down, this heaviness.

“You’ll die in this place,” was all he said to the old priest, and pocketing the lighter and cigarettes, he turned to leave.

As the car drove him back into town, Prynne barely heard the driver say, “You’re a good man, Father.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s why you’re so shocked. You’re a good man. You were a good boy. Every body remembers you in town, when you were a kid… Smart. That kid’s bright and funny. And you were good… And then you were a priest and no one around here had ever seen a Black priest, begging your pardon, and…. I’ll shut up, now Father.”

“How can people be like that?” Prynne wondered. “Do you know I thought when I saw him I would kill him, but when he started making excuses for himself, saying the things he said, I couldn’t do anything. I could hardly move.”

“Begging your pardon, Father, but you did a lot. And what’s more, that’s probably how those boys felt. Paralyzed… You know?”

“Yes,” Prynne said as the car drove on. “I suppose you’re right.”

The afternoon after Rose Portis’s wedding ,when he was sitting outside with Father Merrill, the old man put a hand on his knee and said, “Why don’t you stay here a while?” Prynne said, “Okay, Father, a while.”

And when Merrill cuffed him on the back of the head as if he was still a child, he had very little idea he would be the shocked abbot in the back of the car or the abbot, shocked again in the chapel sitting across from Jack Knapp.

Or did he?

Was there, somehow, however faint, some long hallway, some thin path, a line leading from the boy who set Dennis Lorry’s room on fire to the nomad in his twenties who had settled here at midnight, to the young monk, to the new made abbot telling Father Mc.Kindley he would die in jail to the forty seven year old who sat right here, contemplating it all?

MORE NEXT WEEK

 

[CharmedFan28]

This was a fascinating trip into the past. I like learning more about these characters, especially Prynne and Don was interesting to in this portion. Great writing and I look forward to more next week!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Chapter Thirteen










Douglass Perrin went with Joe to Palm Sunday Mass because Joe had asked him and not because he had any attachment to church. But today he enjoyed being there, even liked the badly done Passion play that Saint Damian’s put on every year. If someone was to ask him how he felt about Catholicism, he would say he didn’t mind it at all. It wasn’t even that he didn’t believe in it. He was simply untouched by it. He didn’t think he was any different from other people, just more honest about it. He couldn’t imagine that Joe was as Catholic as he seemed to be this morning in this church, and he could never understand Chris’s attachment to being an altar boy, especially since his life was so unlike that of an altar boy. Swann he understood, for Swann’s religion was like Uncle Donald’s, one of spirits and incense, intuition and dreams and Tarot cards. And he understood someone like Prynne, someone who was silent and aloof, knew his own ironic mind and, despite all appearances of the casual, was devoted enough to his God to give him body, life and soul.

Doug, who dug in the dirt and worshiped the God of growing things, who was fascinated by the maturation of the fungus and the growth of the vine, had always been sure his God was somewhere else. He was somewhere in this church, yes, but hidden behind these stories. He tried to be a Christian because he loved God and that was the only God he knew. He set up a little altar with candles and incense and walked around singing songs. His parents set him down.

“Could you be a little…. Less?” Deborah asked.

“Less Christian?”

“That’s not what we mean.”

“It is,” his father said.

He couldn’t take his parents seriously, and he needed to love God, but the truth was, Doug could not love Jesus. He couldn’t love a white man who was a Jew who behaved neither like a Jew nor any type of white man he’d ever known, who should have been Palestinian but didn’t look like one and looked like a hippie but didn’t behave like one of those either. And he knew these were only pictures, but without pictures you had nothing. Jesus was beyond him, though Doug had tried him, and admired what he did for other people.

Freshmen year at Saint Francis had been the only one where religion class was very good, and there had been a presentation on Hinduism, in the auditorium, on a great projector, and he knew it was a projector, and he knew it was a video and he knew it was an image shone onto a wall, yes he knew all this, and yet there, larger than life, blue like the sky and beautiful in armor as he spoke to Arjuna, was Sri Krishna Govinda.

And Krishna’s voice rang through him like a gong, declaring, “Arjuna, I am the taste of pure water and the radiance of the sun and moon. I am the sacred word and the sound heard in air, and the courage of human beings. I am the sweet fragrance in the earth and the radiance of fire; I am the life in every creature and the striving of the spiritual aspirant.”

Just like that, Doug knew he had found his God. He was a Hindu, and that was that.

Even though in his mind that was that. He was not a hurried person. He was not a dramatic person. He never cared for what people thought, and had no need to make a splash. He wanted to know. He wanted to be fascinated by something, and in love with God. He read the Bagavad Gita assigned to them and put the Bible away, tired of it. He went through the meager school library, looking for more, and then went into Calverton and pulled out huge books about Hinduism, all the scriptures and texts he could. That summer he scandalized his parents, who had been complaining about his Christianity, by setting on his altar a resin murti of Ganesha beside Vishnu and the Goddess Lakshmi. As would happen in his dorm room at high school where his school mates complained and he did not care, he began to burn Nag Champa while learning to chant and still the thing in him that, before, had never stopped moving.



“O sacred head now wounded
With grief and shame weighed down
Now scornfully surrounded
With thorns Thine only crown
How pale Thou art with anguish
With sore abuse and scorn
How does that visage languish
Which once was bright as morn.”



How beautiful! And the church veiled in purple, ready for Holy Week was beautiful too. Chinnamasta, plastered to his wall was like that head. The stories said the Goddess Parvati was walking with her devotees, and they cried “Mother, we’re hungry,” and so she took off her own head and three spouts of blood jetted out, one for each of her devotees, and one for her own head. The endless and boundless desire of the Mother to feed, as Jesus gave bread from heaven, as he fed the five thousand and offered his life. Doug suspected if he talked this way, he would bore or disgust even Joe. This was the only week he liked being a Christian, the only week things felt real, and even now it was all wrapped up in guilt. I killed Jesus! We killed Jesus! The Jews killed Jesus! To be so close and so very far from the meaning of things was an endless puzzle to Doug about a religion he hadn’t practiced in years.

“That was all very nice,” Doug said at the end of the Mass.

“I think I’m going to meditate this afternoon, maybe all afternoon.”

“All very nice!” Joe repeated. “You really don’t believe in any of it!”

“What’s belief mean, anyway?” Doug wondered. “What does belief do? I don’t think believing was ever the point.”

Joe shook his head.

“Sometimes I don’t get you.”

Doug was wise enough to not take seriously the treacherous thought, “Mike would understand.”

The understanding didn’t matter. God wasn’t about that. Not for him. Some people liked religion because it attached them to other people. Catholicism had never attached him to other Catholics, and he knew all he was really concerned about was God.



When the world had gone mad, he closed the doors, lit candles and folded his legs beneath him singing om namha shivaya om namah shivaya, and God, who had been a distant dream and an aspiration became suddenly real to him.



Later in the day, when he was wondering where Swann and Sal and Chris were, he came into Joe’s room and lay beside him.

“What are you doing?” Joe swatted his hand away.

“Playing with your lips.”

“Stop.”

Joe swatted him away, grinning and refusing to open his eyes.

“Nope.”

He adored Joe, who was a little shorter than him now, compact and lean, little boy like in his tee shirt and shorts, curled up on his bed, but built like a man, muscled and brown, half Italian and thick lipped, prominent nosed, with his brown curly hair, beautiful when they lay naked together in the dark, the boy who had found him when he had no real friends of his own at school, his first love. His first sex. In a bed like this, Joe had taught him how to make love, lain over him, entered him with his surprising girth. They wrestled on the bed, laughing, and Doug thought of the secrets he’d shared with him, a raspberry tower of ice cream on a cone they’d eaten together one spring night after an award ceremony where Joe was in shirt and tie and so handsome, and Doug was so proud of him, and at the same time he thought of the throbbing inside him after Joe had fucked him, and the tenderness of being in his arms.

They laughed together and Joe said, “I’m sorry I’m so dumb I don’t get you sometimes.”

“What?”

“You say and do stuff, and I don’t get it at all, and sometimes I get pissy about it.”

“I don’t understand half of what you do. I’m certainly no engineer. Or a mathematician.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Joe nodded, grinning humbly.

“Like, I never got calculus or trig at all.”

“Oh, it’s just a branch of mathematics concerned with relationships between angles and ratios of lengths.”

“Oh!” Doug laughed. “Thank you.

“I completely lost you.”

Doug nodded and smiled.

“I like,” he said, pressing his head to Joe’s, “when you lose me.”

“Really?”

“It turns me on a little.”

“You’re weird.”

“Tell me what trig is, Joe.”

“Let’s eat.”

“Tell me,” Doug pressed his nose to Joe’s aquiline one, “what trig is.”

Joe cleared his throat, and they straightened out on the bed, facing each other.

“Well… It emerged in ancient Greece around the third century BC from applications of geometry to astronomical studies. The Greeks focused on the calculation of chords, while mathematicians in India created the earliest-known tables of values for trigonometric ratios—also called trigonometric functions—such as sine.”

“Sine?”

“Yes, Sine. Is that turning you on?”

“Very much.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! I always enjoy learning more about people’s beliefs and religions. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

That was a great portion! I always enjoy learning more about people’s beliefs and religions. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!

Dear Mathew, I'm glad you've been enjoying my little story and all of our mutual friends.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Holy Thursday night he would go up to Chicago with Swann, and the whole family would go to the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. Holy Week and Passiontide were the only times Doug felt like a Christian, or felt like the Church was an actual church. Saint Agatha’s would be full, and Stony Island would feel safe as it rarely felt to him at night. People like him who never attended church would be there, and all the Black Catholics who had once lived there, whose families had gone somewhere else as well as all the other families who had been a part of Saint Agatha’s but moved on. For those next three days they would all be in church. Church, Doug believed, was the body of God. It had little to do with specifics beliefs, perhaps transcended belief, mostly thrived on hope, even desperate hope. In those days, especially at the vigil, when they held up candles in the dark and the flames shone on all their faces, Doug knew they were standing in the truth, waiting for some real rebirth that eluded them when the lights came back on and business went back to usual.



One day Brahma and Vishnu were quarrelling. Brahma claimed, ‘I created the world. I must be God.” Vishnu retorted, “That you seek validation means you cannot be God, “ Then who is God?’ Brahma demanded to know.

As he spoke, a huge column of fire split the earth between them and blazed up through the sky to pierce the highest heavens. Astounded, Brahma and Vishnu decide to determine the source and extent of this brilliant pillar of light. Vishnu became a boar and burrowed deep into the netherworlds. Brahma mounted his goose and flew as far up as the heavens reach.

But even after thousands of years they could not find the bottom or the top of the shaft of light. When they finally give up and returned to their starting place, Shiva emerged from the light in his partial bodily form.



Around Ash Wednesday or Valentine’s Day was Maha Shavaratri. The Midwest was frozen, but it was the great and burning night of Shiva, the festival of the Great God shining in the darkness. On that night was his wedding to Parvati and therefore the joining of all things divided in the world. In the dark span of this night, creation and the soul and the self and hope are reborn.

Doug was in Chicago then. He had made his way to one of the Hindu shrines on Devon and taken Mike Buren with him and they sat in an old restaurant, sharing a giant sheet of naan and eating pakora shrimp and samosas, bright red butter chicken and lamb biryani.

“You’re staying the night, aren’t you?” Mike said, and Doug said, “It’s much too late to go back to school… Or even to South Shore.”

He spent the night praying at the little Buddhist altar in Mike’s room, and burning incense and half of it Mike spent with him. In the morning Doug said it was time to drive back, and he didn’t say he wanted to take Mike with him. He didn’t say, I’m attracted to well built little men and I want to slip you in my pocket, Michael. He didn’t say, let’s just go to South Shore and spend the day at the Birches, and he wanted to go back to school anyway. Swann was on his mind, his new friends were on his mind. Joe was always on his mind, but he was in love with Mike and he wondered, even while the room smelled like Nag Champa and the world was new, how long it would be where Mike could be dating Ben and he could be dating Joe and the two of them could be sleeping chastely side by side or one on the floor and one in the bed.

“Sex doesn’t really matter,” Doug said in one of the few times he made a statement he didn’t believe. “We’re more than that. Sex is… silly really.”

“No it isn’t,” Mike said. “Every time you leave, every time I wake up on the floor and you’re in the bed or vice versa, I think about what it would be like to wake up in your arms. To have my skin against your skin, what it would be like if we… It’s not silly at all. If it was silly we would have done it.”

Doug had closed his eyes and closed the door behind him, leaning against it.

“Well then.”

“Not today,” Mike said. “Not now. Before anything happens between us I have a thing or two to tell you that I’ve never told anyone.”

“That’s never a good sign.”

“I wish you wouldn’t joke.”

“I’m sorry,” Doug said, making this one of the few times he actually was sorry.

“It’s not easy. I thought it would be easy. I told myself I didn’t care, but the truth is I just don’t let a lot of people into my life, so there isn’t really anyone to care. Except you. And Ben. And you know, Swann and Chris if they were here, but…”

The impatient and admittedly selfish part of Doug wondered if he should have simply said goodbye and called Mike on the phone to have this conversation later.

“I never thought I’d have to have this conversation.”

“How bad can it be?” Doug said. “I mean, especially when you’re talking to me. I’ve poisoned people, and I’ve done far worse than that.”

“Well, this is more than that.”

“You were a hitman?”

“Doug.”

“Seriously, what did you do? Did you kill people? Did you embezzle cafeteria money? Sell grades? Rent your apartment out as a crack den?”

“Doug!”

“Work the corner as a male prostitute?”

Mike’s face shot up and a look of almost rage passed quickly across it, then was gone. Both of them pretended it hadn’t been there and Doug stumbled and said, weakly, “Or work for the mob or…”

“No,” Mike said, firmly. “No.”

“Oh,” was all Doug said after a moment of waiting for something better.

“I wasn’t serious when I said that… about being a…”

“I know you weren’t.”

And then Doug asked and felt stupid for asking, “Are you sure?”

Mike, sitting on the edge of his bed, looked up at Doug with his fierce grin and laughed.

“Am I sure I was a whore? Yeah, Doug, I’m sure.”

And then he said, “You’re so innocent, you know that? You think you aren’t, but you are.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Just what I said.”

Doug shrugged, and dropping his bag he came and sat down beside Mike.

“What… Do you want to tell me?” he asked.

“I don’t do it now,” he said. “It’s been a while.”

Doug nodded.

“You’re really not going to ask, are you?”

“It’s your story, Mikey.”

Mike nodded.

“It’s just that… I don’t really know how the Mike Buren I grew up with and the Mike Buren who’s sitting right next to me got into that. Or how anyone does. I’m not judging—”

“Of course you’re not.”

“I’m really not.”

“I wasn’t being sarcastic,” Mike said.

“Oh… okay.”

“The Mike Buren you’re sitting next to wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t been that Mike Buren, the one you never met.”

Doug touched his hand.

“I thought you’d flinch if I touched you.”

“Why would I do that?”

“You used to do it when you felt defensive. Or angry. And I’d reach out for you.”

“I’m the one who was a prostitute, why aren’t you flinching from me?”

“Did it pay well?”

“What?”

“Did it pay well? I never did it cause I never had to. I don’t really know what I’d do. If I had to. Or if I had the chance.”

“I was at a bath house one night, and this guy came up to me and started touching on me. In the steam room. He gets on his knees and starts blowing me. After he’d done it he asks where my locker is. I think he’s leaving his number or something, so I tell him. When I go to get dressed there’s a hundred just shoved into my locker. I start coming at a regular time, and he’s there too, and he asks if he can do more and more, and I like sex, right, so I say yeah. He always leaves something. He fucks me in the shower room and leaves five hundred dollars.

“I guess he tells other people, and I just start to post little ads because school does not pay for itself, and I didn’t know men would pay for me, little Mike Buren. And some men like it. They like that I’m not tall and I look young. They like it when I tell them I’m sixteen or fifteen. They come quick when I call them Dad or when some guy with a super small dick I can’t even feel is ramming away and I scream that it hurts cause I’m only twelve or some shit like that. You have to learn how these people work.

“This is the abridged version. It gets to the point where I won’t even talk to a dude unless he offers money, or when I’ll go with any weird fantasy if it means a little more cash, really, cause it’s like saying I’m worth it. And then, I don’t know, I want to be really dramatic, but I woke up one day, and I just didn’t like myself, and I needed to like myself, so I said I was done. It wasn’t quite that easy or that simple. I did it a few more times, but basically I’d put it behind me. And then a few months later I met Ben and… there you are.”

“Wow,” Doug said in a quiet voice.

“Wow,” Mike echoed.

Mike said, “There are all sorts of stories. Maybe I’ll write them down in a journal one day like you write things down. But I don’t think I’d like to share them with you. Or anyone else I care about for that matter.”

“Thank you.”

“Huh?” Mike looked at him. “For what?”

“You didn’t have to tell me.”

“If you think I didn’t have to tell you, then you still don’t understand what you are to me.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! Mike’s past surprised me but I’m glad he could open up to Doug. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

That was a great portion! Mike’s past surprised me but I’m glad he could open up to Doug. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!

Mike Buren is quite a surprise. Everyone had so many secrets. The sign of love is who you can tell them to.

 

[ChrisGibson]

AS WE COME TO THE LAST CHAPTERS OF THE OUR BOOK, HERE BEGINS A NEW ONE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN



Mike’s knees were black with dirt, and even his face was smudged. Doug didn’t understand his feelings yet, only how warm he felt toward the bronze haired boy who was, at that time, just a little taller.

When Mike said, “I think we’re lost,” he didn’t quite mind it, because last year when he had come home he thought about Mike as much as he thought about Chris, and when he saw him again this summer he’d run straight to him.

“We’ll be fine,” Doug told him.

They’d stopped moving, and Doug was on the ground tying sticks together.

“Do you know where we are?”

Doug shook his head.

“Nope.”

Mike had come to believe Doug could do anything, and he was briefly disappointed. Then Doug said, “We are surrounded by edible things. We’re basically in a grocery store.”

A bird took off right behind Michael, causing him to jump and it stopped him from making the joke, “Some grocery store.”

“I’m actually getting hungry,” Mike said, carefully, not wanting to sound like a whiner.

This was the camp’s fault. Chris was in his cabin with food poisoning, and the other councilors had sent them out in groups of four, saying they were old enough to not get lost. But over an hour ago, Mike and Doug had gotten in an argument with Bernie and Maitland, and they’d split, going their own ways into the forest. Now, an hour and a half later, Mike and Doug had no idea where they were.

A strange scream came from below, and Mike went to his knees after Doug did.

“Ah, luck!” Doug murmured.

There was a screaming rabbit in the trap Doug had made, and Mike made a sympathetic wail, then Doug looked up at him.

“How hungry are you?”

“You’re gonna kill it?”

“You’ve got your hunting knife, right?”

“Yeah, but…”

“Give me your knife.”

“I changed my mind!” Mike said, quickly. “Let it go.”

“You sure?”

Mike nodded.

Doug nodded.

“Today you live, Thumper,” he said, and bent down undoing the trap. At first the brown rabbit limped, and then it took off full force.

A moment later, Mike said, “I’m sorry. That was dumb of me. There goes our food.”

“Any day I don’t have to kill something is a good day,” Doug said.

“Follow me, alright? We’ll find some mushrooms and roots.”



“Do you think we should stop and just wait for them to find us?” Mike wondered once.

“No,” Doug said, firmly. “They lost in the first place.”

“I just want to make sure we’re not going in circles.”

“You see where the sun is? And the moon that’s just coming up? You see the moss on that tree? We’re headed east. I’m not spending all night in this wood. Where the wood is in relation to east I don’t know, but we’re headed east, and we’re bound to get out eventually.”

“You’re amazing.”

Doug wished he could do something else amazing. He was almost glad to be out here in the woods just to see that look of almost worship on Mike’s face.

It seemed like after that they didn’t hike that much longer. Mike could hear something new in the distance, but wasn’t sure what it was.

“Mikey?” Doug began

“Yeah?”

“If you give me your hunting knife and I stab that, will you eat it?”

“What?” Mike demanded. “Yes, God, anything.”

Doug thrust out his hand and pointed through the trees. Mike had a hard time putting it all together at first, the yellow light, the red, the brick building and the sounds.

“Holy shit, that’s a Mc.Donalds.”

In a few minutes Doug would march in as if he weren’t twelve and demand to see the manager and phone his parents. He didn’t have the number to the camp, and frankly wasn’t thinking about them. He would demand Mc.Nuggets and Big Macs, fries and a drink and say they had no money, but were starving, and they were both good for it. Mike would eat and eat and vomit all over the floor, and be truly embarrassed, and when the supervisors from camp, notified by Doug’s parents, arrived at the Mc.Donalds and took the boys back, Mike begin to laugh about it. Chris, sick and bed, would be up, lose his temper at the councilor who had replaced him, and collapse back into bed, and all three of them would stay together for the next several days.

But before any of this happened, the two boys would be standing at the end of the wood, which was the parking lot to a Mc.Donald’s in some town in Northwest Indiana, and Mike would turn to Doug and kiss him quickly on the lips.

“You don’t mind do you?” he’d say, his dirty, sweaty palm inside of Doug’s.

“No,” Doug would say, and it would melt into the fabric of who they were, never mentioned again.



What seemed a hundred years later, in a much less innocent time, Mike Buren, armored in hair spray, boy cologne, blue blazer and his place on the swim team, would wind his way to Douglass Merrin’s room while the other young man was packing the last of his bags. Crossing his arms over his chest, Mike would lean against the wall.

“You brought this all on yourself, you know?”

The arch look on Doug’s face, a lot like Swann’s, a lot like someone very, very old and beyond him, disconcerted Mike.

“Is that the only thing you came to say?”

“Yeah,”

“Then you could have stayed upstairs.”

Mike was ashamed of that moment. There were lots of moments someone else might have thought he’d be ashamed of, but treachery toward one of the only people he’d ever loved was the one that stuck in him. A part of him was even certain there was a link between this arrogant boy who turned his back on a friend and the one who got on his knees in bath houses for strangers. He’d said it over and over again. He’d lost his way. It was good to find it, but he could never remember quite when he’d lost it.

“Like in that wood. I was lost without you. It was always so easy for me to be lost.”

He had replayed a better version of the past, one where that last night he had run to Doug’s room and thrown his arms around him:

“What did you do?”

And Doug would say, “What I had to.”

And Mike would say, “Well, I’m sorry. I know I wasn’t there like I should have been! Let’s go see Father Reed about it.”

And Doug would say, “I don’t want to be here anyway.”

Mike would break down just a little, and he would say, “I’ve been such an asshole, but I don’t know what I’m going to do if you’re gone.”

Doug, who was younger, would be the older one again, and put a hand on his shoulder.

“You’re about to graduate anyway, and I’ve already taken care of myself. Tell you what, come to my place this summer. We’ll get up to all sorts of mischief. How’s that?”



“That would have been nice,” Doug said with an indulgent smile.

He would have been near when Mike went to DePaul. Mike wouldn’t have been friendless and made the decisions that friendless people make. They would have gone to the bath house together, if at all. Maybe he wouldn’t have gotten that blowjob. Maybe he would have, and then he would have laughed at the money in the locker. They could have split it and talked about how weird men were.

Doug had grown up the same as Mike, in the same church with the same God. There were angels and demons, good and bad, even one sin made you damned and Jesus came to die for you because you were lost and wicked, full of sin. And then you were saved, but there was always the regret of having sinned against God, of having been fallen, of the fallen world after Eden and Grandmother Eve who bit the apple. What we could look forward to was the grand day when the Lord returned withal his angels and saints and made right the whole goddamned thing.

But Doug was a Hindu, and in that story of many stories, the world was a shit show and always had been. Brokenness was built into the way of things, and demons were evil, but also untaught. Even a devil could be saved. Anyone could be half a devil in need of divine love. Nothing was fixed forever, you had to fix it again and again and regret, while natural, could not be sustained because there were lives and lives and lives one might look at behind you, and there were lives and lives to march on to in the future. You just had to do, you just had to love and to do.

Today was Palm Sunday, and the noise down the hall told him that Swann and Sal and Chris were returning. Joe was in the shower and Doug’s mind was on him, but it was also on Mike the day after Shiva Shivaratri, several weeks ago.

“The way it happened,” Doug had told Mike, “was the way it happened. What was… was. What is is now.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent start to the chapter! I am enjoying this deep dive into Mike and Doug. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Chapter Fourteen





























“What’s happened to the semester?” Swann wondered. “I feel like we just got back from winter break.”

“I don’t know how I feel,” Doug said. “It seems sometimes like everything is happening all at once. I’m not sure if it’s just been a few months or a few years.”

They were smoking on the porch of Dwenger, and the day was lasting longer and the air was getting warmer, just a bit.

“How was the school?” Doug asked.

“Nice. You should go back.”

“I did go back. I went for the funeral. That was enough.”

“You know he’s your godfather too.”

“And I’ll see him when he comes to Chicago. We’ll all be there soon anyway.”

“Next Thursday.”

Swann thought of crushing his cigarette, realized he wasn’t quite ready. There was still smoke in it yet.

“What about Mike?”

“I’ll see him. I wish I could invite him to Easter.”

“You could.”

“He’ll be with his family.”

Doug said, “You know, I don’t know what’s going to happen with him. It’s not like you and Sal and Chris and whatever arrangement you made. I don’t think either Joe or Mike would be up for that. And I love Joe. I think a part of me hoped I would stop loving him, and this whole thing would be easier, but I’m more in love with his silly face every day.”

“And his great body.”

“And his….”

They both laughed.

“You love Joe too,” Doug said.

“Not the way you do. He’s a good friend.”

Swann thought of saying, tender lover, thought as honest as he and his cousin were with each other they didn’t need to say everything.

“I don’t see why… if you know what happened with Joe and us happened, I don’t see why you don’t just go to Mike.”

“It’s different,” Doug said.

“Do you ever wonder what it would be like? Mike?”

Doug let out a long trail of smoke and sighed as he did.

“Mike hated me when I left school. He couldn’t wait till I was gone.”

“So you said. When you called from Chris’s dorm.”

“But it wasn’t without reason.”

“You poisoned that pizza and I know he ate it.”

“Yeah, but I seduced him before I poisoned it.”

“What!”

Here was a new story Doug had never shared.

“I was tired of him, He was so snarky and such an asshole and I knew he wanted to fuck me. It was the school dance and I’d been drinking and he’d been drinking, but I knew what I was doing. I just didn’t give a shit and Vinnie and Varlon told me I should go to bed, and I lied and said I was, but I found Mike and brought him into my car and then after it was over I told him to get out and I went to my room and went to bed.”

Swann was silent for a moment.

“That,” he began, “I did not know.”

“It’s a few things you don’t know,” Doug said, “because the truth is I’d rather not tell you. But I would like to know what it’s like to be with Mike when we’re both sober, and not hating each other. He always asks me to forgive him, but he never seems to think that I have done some things that need forgiving too.”



“I have something for you,” Sal said, “And it’s kind of dumb of me, but just like, put up with it.”

“Okay?” Swann eyed.

Sal twisted off his ring and gave it to Swann.

“It’s my class ring, and I wanted you to wear it. I mean keep it really”

It was champagne colored with a thick red stone and Sal said, “I mean, it’s not valuable, and who’s gonna care about it in a year or even now, but—”

“I’m so stupid,” Swann said.

“What?”

Swann took of his heavy silver ring and placed Sal’s on his finger.

“Oh, I didn’t mean for you to wear my ratty ole ring on—”

“See, I wanted to give you my ring, but I thought it would be silly. Or too much, So I just didn’t. I’m always like that. I want to say I love you, and then I don’t. And you say it. I want to give you my ring because I want you to know… I’m not good at all the things that come naturally to you. I wanted to give this to you.”

Sal held out his hand.

“Then give me the damn thing.”

Swann laughed, feeling stupid, and placed it in Sal’s hand.

“We’re doing something no one ever showed us how to do,” Sal said, “I love you,” he said, fitting Swann’s ring onto his finger.

“I love you too.”

“And I love both you guys,” Chris said entering Room 42. He’d just showered and now he was changing into shorts in front of them.

“So this is you saying you’re sticking around for a few days?” Swann said.

“Absolutely,” Chris reached for someone’s deodorant, and rubbed it in his arm pits.

“Is it time for bed yet?” Sal asked.

“Yes,” said Swann, and as they crawled into the king sized bed there was another knock and then Swann climbed out and opened it. Doug and Joe stood there, holding their pillows, Joe trailing a blanket behind him. It reminded Swann of those days when Brad, miserable, could barely sleep alone, and they all huddled around him. After that it just became one of those things that sometimes those five roommates, or the others in their group, Jill and Annette and Anita, Jim Hanna and Mike Buren, all drew their mattresses together for warmth and for love as they did now. Sal fell asleep almost immediately, facing the wall while Swann, the heavy class ring on his finger, clasped Sal’s waist. Chris lay on his back, Doug’s back pressed into him while, facing the open door and the safety of Dwenger Hall, Joe Stanley slept, curled up like a baby.





When their last class let out, Jim Hanna turned to Doug and said, “Are you messing around here for a while, or are you headed home?”

“If it’s 3:15,” Doug said, unnecessarily, because it was 3:15, class always let out precisely at 3:15, “then we’re probably headed straight home. We always go to Holy Thursday Mass.”

“I never figured you for religious,” Jim said, hoisting his bag over his shoulder.

“Well, we’re at a Catholic school and we went to a Catholic high school together, so, religious enough,” was all Doug said.

Jim had graduated with Joe and Sal and Swann. He hadn’t been there for junior year when things were bad, and he probably had never heard the rumors, never heard about Doug and the necklace of teeth or Doug telling Jeff Mahon he would die in the woods or, for that matter, Jeff Mahon dying in the woods. And Jim never passed Doug’s room downstairs to smell the incense and hear the chanting. As he packed away The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day, and The Seven Storey Mountain, the books they were reading for Conversion and Action class, Doug thought that, like most people here, if you weren’t very Catholic, people just assumed you weren’t very religious. And, Doug added to himself, no matter how not very religious they were, Catholics assumed by the very nature of them being Catholic, and a little misty eyed on Good Friday, they were more religious than anybody else.

“I gotta drive the old lady back,” Jim said, meaning Jill, “but that’s not till tomorrow. Tonight we’re hanging out with Brad and Annette and then we’ll all go back to Indy.”

Doug hadn’t known that much about Brad and Annette except that Brad was one of Swann’s friends, not in a let me call you every day way, but in a very intense, let’s hide a body if we have to way. Doug didn’t ask too many questions, he didn’t have a gossipy mind. If people wanted to tell him things they would. Chris has let slip some time ago that the year before Doug came, the year after he and Mike had been lost in the woods and found Mc.Donalds, Brad and Annette had had an abortion and not many people knew about it. It was strongly hinted that Abbot Prynne knew and more than knew. Swann and Brad had not been particularly close, but apparently him and Pete Agalathagos supported Brad the whole way through. Anyway, Brad and Annette, like half of fucking Saint Francis, had gone to college school at Saint Damian’s, and then sophomore year discovered that, once again, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other and, once again, seemed to not understand contraception. Only this time they had married and had a baby they named Jasper, as if he came with a prospector’s pick axe and pan, and every time Doug saw that kid he wanted to shout, “There’s gold in them dar hills.”

Of course they didn’t have much of a social life now, but Jill and Jim could be prevailed upon to occasionally babysit, and Dr. Pfaff, Brad’s advisor, told his daughter that if she did it for free on occasion he would pay her.

But Doug parted from Jim in the middle of the quad as he headed for Justin Hall, and Doug headed for Dwenger. They were becoming friends. He was making friends. This was a whole different situation from Saint Francis. he was liked and he liked himself here. He was not like a cat on guard against something. That’s the way it had been, even those first two years, when he’d had friends but they had mostly been inherited. And now he felt taller and stronger Of course he was. But he felt himself taking up space and realized that always, always there had been someone trying to cut him down.

 

[ChrisGibson]

The day when he had been expelled, he was almost delighted to sit in Father Reed’s office and hear him going on and on. He almost laughed, knowing this was his last day and the last time this worrisome man who looked like a grasshopper would have any role in his life.

Of course he had been wrong. A little while later he told Chris, who apparently loved Father Reed, how he used to pass the old house at the back of the school, on the other side of the soccer field, and he would see a blond woman, pretty but bedraggled, with wet hair and a wet dress, and she was walking around weeping, not all the time, but many times. Once he said he called her Sharon, and when Chris asked why, Doug said he didn’t know. It just seemed right, and she seemed to calm down whenever she saw him.

It had never occurred to Chris to repeat this to even Swann, but he had never laughed at it either. Then, on one of his visits back to the school, Chris was running laps with Father Reed and, as they passed the house, he repeated this, not saying who the student was.

Andrew Reed fell over his own feet and demanded who had said it, and Chris, frightened by the priest for once, said, “Doug Merrin.”

This has been an issue in Reed’s head for days, and finally he went to Prynne who, looking up from his computer, pushed up his glasses and said, as if it were nothing, “Oh, yes. Douglass has the Sight. He’s… uncanny. It’s in the family. With Swann it’s different. It’s more his personality. But…. Yeah.”

It was said so casually, that no matter how he felt about it, Andy Reed had to believe it. When he asked Prynne and then Chris if they might speak to Doug for him, Doug promptly sent back the message: “No. And you know why.”





In his room, Swann was on the phone and Jill was on the massive bed.

“Jill,” Doug whispered, “Jim is on his way to Justin Hall to see you.”

“I guess he’ll figure out I’m not there and turn around and come here,” she said, not greatly concerned.

“Mass is at seven?” Swann was saying.

“Yes, Donald, I’m sure it does happen the same time every year, but I have other things to do than remember what that time it is…. Well, you did, didn’t you?.... Goodbye.”

“It’s at seven o’clock.” Swann said.

“We gathered,” Jill and Doug both said.

“Are you packed?” Swann asked his cousin.

“Since this morning.”

“Alright!” Swann stood up, “then I guess we should go.”

“Are the boys coming with you?” Jill asked.

“Chris and Sal and Joe?”

“Yeah.”

“No, they’re headed back to Calverton.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“Feel about what?”

When Jill said nothing immediately, Doug said, “How do you feel about the chance of Chris and Sal fucking each other when you’re not around?”

“They either will or they won’t,” Swann said. “And for that matter, Joe might join in.”