Works and Days

[ChrisGibson]

CHAPTER SIX

OLD CROW



“Stop!” Chayne demanded, letting his hands fall.
The choir ceased making its noise.
And noise was all you could call it.
“Am I flat?” Faye demanded.
“No,” started Chayne. and then, “Well, yes, but so is everyone else. So that’s not the problem. The problem is that you’re an alto in the soprano section, and could we all get into out proper sections?”
“But Chayne,” said Robert Feldon, “I’m not sure if I’m a tenor or a bass.”
Chayne gave Robert Feldon a quizzical look, and then Robert opened his mouth and croaked out a note.
“Tenor,” Chayne told him. “Sort of.... People. Choir, may I tell you something? Two somethings?”
“Say it, Chayne!” Diggs cheered.
“Thanks, Diggs.”
“You’re welcome Chayne.”
Chayne swallowed and said. “We need serious practice. You all are really...”
“Bad?” Russell supplied.
“That would be the word,” Chayne said. “Who will be free tomorrow night?”
“Oh, Chayne, we’re having a girl’s night out,” Jackie said, though who the we was was not specified.
“Well then on Saturday afternoon, two o’clock,” an arbitrary enough time, “I want the women to come here. I’ll be training altos and sopranos.”
Chayne thought abotu asking, alright? But then thought against it.
“And for tonight, I’ll work with the tenors and basses and almost tenors and almost basses. That’s enough. Ladies, you may leave.”
“Thank God,” said Claire Ross, “My feet are killin’ me.”
“That’s what you get for wearing heels at eight o’clock on a Thursday,” Gldys Someral returned.
“I just got off of work...”
Kaye stood in front of Chayne long enough for him to ask her what she needed.
“I need the key to get into the house.”
“You know I don’t lock the house, Kaye!”
“Now, Russell, bring me the song list. Thank you. We open with “Holy! Holy! Holy! That’s a good one. Offertory... I don’t like that. We’ll do “It is Well.’”
“That’s not in the hymn book,” Russell told Chayne.
“I’ll get a copy of it by tomorrow so either the sopranos and altos can do it, or you guys can look it over on Sunday morning practice before Mass. Communion hymn, ‘I Am the Bread of Life’. Beautiful hymn, but difficult for tenor and bass voices. I think. And then we close out with—oh, no we don’t,” Chayne scratched it out Father Geoff’s plans.
“We’ll do, ‘Now the Green Blades Rises’. Gentlemen?”
What was left of Chayne’s choir looked down at him in waiting expectation.
“Let’s start with ‘I Am the Bread of Life’, alright? And remember, men singing should sound just like that, men singing, not one long sustained belch. Now first you tenors...”

It was past nine o’clock when they had finished, and Chayne and Russell were walking down Curtain Street with Diggs, passing a pool of white lamp post light when Diggs said, “You know what the choir really needs?”
“More practice?”
“Oh, come on, Chayne,” Russell said. “I think we were good tonight.”
“Yeah,” said Diggs. “Even Jeff Cordino opened his mouth and sang. Now what we really need is robes instead of just coming in jeans or whatever. We need to look world class if we’re gonna sound world class.”
“That’s an excellent idea!” Russell said, beaming.
“Yeah, Evervirgin’s choir has at least three sets of robes and we don’t even have one. How are we ever going to compete with them if we don’t have robes?”
“Who said anyhting about competing?”
“Oh, Chayne ,you knwo all the churches in the area have a sing off every year,” Russell said.
“Does Saint Adjeanet’s ever compete?” Chayne demanded.
“Every year,” said Diggs.
“Why?” Chayne looked truly puzzled, and then said, “And where would we get—” and stopped.
“What, Chayne?” Russell looked at his friend who had stopped talking as they approached the house, and now had a face full of conniving.
“We will sound good this Sunday,” Chayne decided. “And we will have robes.”
“Really?” Diggs looked excited, every inch the gerbil.
“Yes,” said Chayne. “We’re getting them tomorrow.”
“Where?” Diggs demanded.
Russell knew better than to ask Chayne anything when the man’s eyes were glazed over like this. Chayne folded his hands, marched up the stairs of 1421 Curtain Street, swung open the screen door, said hi to Faye and made a bee line for the telephone.
“Hello. Jackie? What are you doing tomorrow? Really? Great. Come with us, we’re getting choir robes.”



“Tonight! Tonight—!” Jackie Lewis sang, as she and Felice left Patti’s house on Friday morning.
“And wear something nice,” said Felice. “You might meet someone special.”
“I just met someone special,” said Patti, “and I’m not even divorced yet. which reminds me—”
“The lawyer?” said Felice.
“Um hum,” said Patti. “Need to meet with him for the first time today.”
Jackie’s stomach went queasy.
“I can’t really talk about this,” she said. “After all, it’s my brother you’re divorcing.”
Patti nodded. They were all quiet for a second, and then Felice said, “Oh, let’s stop all this frowning. Tonight we will paint Chicago red!”
They stopped at Sharon Kandzierski’s apartment, down the street from Jackie’s because Felice needed to pick up a suit.
“Now we have almost the same build in the shoulders,” Sharon said, “so you’ll look good in this.”
Felice spun in front of the mirror with the black top and jacket from the pants suit and approved of herself.
“If I can do something about this shelf growing off of my back...”
“Girl, no one wants a bone but a dog,” Sharon told her cousin, though Sharon had never had to worry about a shelf.
“Goin’ out on the town,” Sharon shook her head. “I remember when I used to run with the girls.”
“Come with us!” Jackie said spontaneously.
“No!” Sharon sounded like she’d been pinched.
“Yeah, Cousin Sharon,” Felice said in her rough voice.
“I haven’t—I haven’t been on the town in thirty years,” Sharon said.
“And Chicago no less!”
“Well, then you’re out of practice. Come on,” Felice cajoled.
“You might catch a man,” Jackie added. “You look good enough for someone half your age.”
“I already have a man, Jaclyn,” Sharon reminded the younger woman.
“No, you have a Graham,” Felice corrected her cousin.
Sharon snorted.
“Stop. No. you all have fun and let me know what happens when you get back. If you get back. If you can remember!”
Sharon shooed the girls—the women—they were both in their thirties by now, Sharon reminded herself—out the door, Graham heard her laughing as he came into the living room and sat on the sofa, under the large wicker sun which suddenly looked old and out of place.
“Graham, did you hear them?” Sharon said.
“No.” He didn’t appear interested as he turned on the television.
“They wanted me to run out on the town. Me an old woman running around Chicago hittin’ bars and what the not.”
“That is foolish,” Graham agreed. “Girls are girls. They don’t know we ain’t as young as we used to be. They don’t know how old they are either. Like Chayne,” Graham murmured.
“Jackie said I might mess around and end up getting hit on by a boy—”
Graham laughed.
“What young rooster would hit on an old hen like you?”
Sharon stiffened. Inhaled. Exhaled. That’s how she dealt with thirty-seven years of Graham.


Sharon Kandzierski was shocked out of her self examination.
“Mother, what the hell are you doing?”
Chayne entered the bedroom, hands crossed over his chest, scowling at the woman who had been twisting in front of the mirror.
“Chayne, am I old?”
“Well, you’re not young,” he allowed, “but then I’m not anymore either, so...”
“Well, do I look nice?” she asked her son irascibly.
“Yes, Mama. You know you do. You don’t have a wrinkle on you, and there’s no grey hair. And—and you’re not old.”
Sharon moved away from the mirror and flounced down on the bed.
“Jackie and Felice said that I should go to Chicago with them-”
“That’s a great idea!”
“But I said I was too old to be running around.”
“You’re never too old—”
“And your father agreed.”
“I thought you’d stopped listening to Graham years ago.”
“Usually I don’t” Sharon admitted. “And he said, ‘What would a young rooster be hitting on an old hen like you for? He said that—”
“And you listened?”
“Chayne, yes.”
“Mama, listen to me,” said Chayne, “Jackie’s in the living room right now. We came to borrow the station wagon because we’re going to get the choir robes. Now I want you to go out there and tell Jackie that you’re going to Chicago tonight,”
“But what’ll I look like, a fifty-seven year old woman running around in the streets?”
“Look like to who, Mother?”
Sharon was quiet.
“Mother, the only way anyone ever becomes old is by letting themselves get old. Now you can live or you can die. One or the other, no in betweens. The trip’s four hours and I know they’ll be leaving at about four o’clock, so I suggest you tell someone and make yourself pretty, or else you’ll be sitting around here tonight watching Graham snore in front of the television.”

TOMORROW: BITS AND PIECES

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great start to the chapter! It looks like Chayne is really trying to help the choir get better and that’s definitely a good thing. His parents seem to communicate like Patti and Russell have been. I am glad Chayne and Russell can depend on each other. Excellent writing and I look forward to more Bits and Pieces tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Russell was coming out of Father Wilkin’s Religious Values class that afternoon when he heard someone call his name.
It was from room 106.
It was Chuck Shrader.
Russell eyed the man. Ralph Balusik, beside him said, “You’re gonna get it now, Russell,” and Russell crossed the crowded hallway into the sunlit room filling up with seniors.
“Mr—Ch—Mr. Shrade....” Russell let it die.
“Russell,” said Chuck Shrader, “I wanted to talk to you.”
He leaned in so the incoming seniors wouldn’t hear them.
“I’m sure this isn’t the right place, but I don’t really know a better one, and I wanted to know if you had a problem with me seeing your mom.”
Russell swallowed, tilted his head and tried to think of something sensible to say, and then only said, “No. Mr—no. I mean, if you’re happy then—I mean, if my mother’s happy, I’m hapy, and she seems to be happy. You make her happy, so... It’s great.”
Chuck looked lost in pleasure for moment, and then he came back to the world.
“Is it true?” the teacher asked the student.
Russell blinked and readjusted his bookbag.
“Is what true, sir?”
“Is she really happy? Do I make her happy?”
Russell bit his lip, and nodding his head, smiled at Chuck Shrader.


“We gotta make this quick cause I need to be sexy by four,” Jackie said as they swung away from Our Lady of Mercy. They had thought of going to get the robes earlier, but both Jackie and Chayne had suspected Russell would want to go on this adventure.
And why was it an adventure? Chayne wouldn’t say, so Jackie didn’t know the answer, but she suspected something was up.
Diggs was with them. The four of them sped down Kirkland. After it intersected with Key, the street awakened. Here were the strip malls and the ranch houses, Jerrold Parkway and Finnalay Parkway, tree lined, wide and bordering Saint Gregory, Orrin Park Mall, Cramer Mall and, on Easterling Street, north of it all was Evervirgin Catholic Church.
Surely this part of Geschichte Falls, asphalt, crowded and sunny, should have given the town a population more than ten thousand people, but the people driving and shopping here were not Fallers. Breckinridge people came here, yes, but mostly it was the people from East Sequoia, from Saint Gregory and from that subdivision, Keyworthy, that was in Geschichte Falls, but certainly not of it, that was... a township. North of Keyworthy and its cul de sacced, treeless, meandering ways and its prefab houses was old Easterling Street, and on Easterling Street, was Evervirgin.
Saint Adjeanet’s on Kirkland Street, across the street from three story brick shops, was humble and white, plain on the inside, charming. The Church of Saint Mary the Evervirgin was huge and brick and double towered with a great rondo of the Annunciation over the enormous portico, and bells ringing out three o’clock from the carrilons that boomed down on Chayne and Russell and Jackie and Diggs as they drove around the massive red brick nemesis and parked at the back, in the alley, not in the parking lot, which lay to the left of the church between it and its modern school.
“Chayne, what are we doing?” hissed Jackie as they moved through the trees and the little walkway between the rectory and the church.
“Shush,” said Chayne, and he came in through the side door.
Evervirgin was always open, ever ready to display her wealth, her gorgeous German lancets inscribed with innumerable stories and inprobable saints. The church was filled with a golden light from the rondo that sat above the large choir loft, shining over the rows of polished pews.
They moved under the arcade, under the balconies that were above the arcades, past the grottoes with their saints. They came to a door at the back of the church with a plush rope across it, which Chayne ignored and went past, going up the winding stair into the darkness.
There was something not right about this. It made the other three all the more excited. They followed Chayne up the stairs with their boxes. Here there was a room and grey light cane in from a little door at the right which led to the choir loft, but here were rows and rows of choir robes hanging on racks before them.
“Oh, Chayne....” Jackie’s voice trailed off, half in condemnation, half in wonder, all in comprehension. “We can’t!”
“Maybe you can’t,” Chayne said, moving to the robes. “Which colors do you like best?
“I really liked the green and gold,” Diggs volunteered.
“They are the nicest,: Russell admittred, putting his box down and considering them.
“Let’s not take the nicest,” Chayne said. “Let’s get these,” he settled on the white ones toward the back. “The purest.”
Chayne pulled down four, and solemnly folded them into his box.
“Is it right?” Russell whispered.
“I don’t know,” Chayne said, unconcerned, stuffing in more robes.
Jackie was the last to join in. It was a short job. There was—in the heart of every member of Saint Adjeanet’s a feeling of not rightness about the lofty people of Evervirgin. Their first sin was that a hundred years ago part of Saint Adjeanet’s had left, moving to the north end and founding Saint Mary the Evervirgin. While the new congregation built up a much more elaborate church for congregates who were becoming wealthy from the steel trade, Saint Adjeanet’s had looked on with blessing and even given them their old statue of Saint Mary. But the ultimate crime was that Evervirgin, forgetting from where she had come, had exalted herself to heaven. And this made it all the more easy for these four to walk off with the robes.
Once, as they were tipping out of the church, the front door opened up, and they froze, hearing footsteps, and then Chayne hissed, “Go! Go! Go!” and they ran to the side door, and then, coming outside, Chayne whispered, “Stop, stop, stop. Look casual.”
Quickly, they walked, casually, to the station wagon, loaded it up, got into the car, and did not dare to laugh until they reached Bunting Street.
After they had laughed through Bunting Street and Helvering, Chayne rolled down the window and screamed for a whole street block. Then, catching his breath he confided in his friends, “I love being me!”


Graham Kandzierski, turning to the entertainment page of The Saint Gregory Herald, did not hear the car honk three stories down on Royal Street.
Sharon Kandzierski did, and when Graham saw her striding out of the bedroom in heels that could fillet a fish and a poisonous red dress, tight as a sausage casing, he asked her, “What in the nation’s going on, woman?”
“I’m going out to raise some hell,” Sharon said, picking up her handbag and kissing her husband on his balding heard.
“Don’t wait up.”







The remains of sun were slanting lazily into the church when the doors of Saint Adjeanet flew open and the RCIA group just breaking up that included Thom Lewis, Jeff Ford, his sister, Anna Castile and Jeff Cordino looked up to see Chayne, Russell and Diggs marching in proud with robe filled boxes.
“What’s all this?” Geoff Ford asked with a delighted look that said he knew.
“Choir robes,” Chayne’s eye had just caught Thom. He felt bad for dissembling in God’s house, but pretended he hadn’t seen the other man all the same.
“Where did you—” Father Ford began delightedly, then with a careful frown and a wave of the hand said, “I don’t suppose it really matters as long as they’re here.”
“That’s the spirit, Geoffy,” Chayne smiled, and he and Russell began to head into the little tunnel where was the stairway that led to the old choir loft.
“Russell—” started Thom, and his son turned around.
“We still on for tomorrow?”
“Yeah, Dad,” Russell heard his voice come out lighthearted, and was completely unconvinced by the performance.
“And that,” said Geoff Ford, “is about it for this part of the meeting. Now go back to the parish house or go back to your own houses, but I want catechumens and sponsors to spend some one on one time together, asking questions. I feel that it’s the one on one contact that is important....”
Chayne could hear Geoff as he and Russell began hanging up the robes and Russell said, “You’re right, Chayne, these robes are just right.”

“Boys!” Faye was screaming from the rooftop of 1421 Curtain, “Get up here! Get up here!”
Over the years, Chayne and Russell had both forgotten it was no easy affair to climb up to the roof of a two story, mansard roofed house. They’d forgotten to the point that it no longer was, and now all three of them sat with Faye who was smoking a Newport.
“I have succeeded,” Faye reported, “so far. The first meeting of the Literary and Artistic Society of Geschichte Falls is convening tonight.”
“Really?” said Chayne.
“At nine. Here. I even made goodies.”
“Can we have some now?”
“Don’t you dare, Russell!”
Faye crushed out the Newport and lay back, planting her hands on the tar roof behind her.
“Just look at that!” she exhorted.
The western sky spread over Saint Adjeanet’s and the Curtain and the covering of deep green trees, a pale pearl blue, and the melting sun poured a glowing red line over the horizon, and lit the rooftops and streets red gold, a heavenly copper of a descending day.

“Wow,” said Jeff Cordino, jamming his hands in his pockets and kicking one leg up as his eyes went around the loft. “I’ve never been in Jackie’s apartment before.”
Thom, in the kitchen area, shrugged. “I figured this was better than the parish house with everyone sitting around on all that harvest gold furniture. Especially when Lee Armstrong went back to her house with Rose Stanley and Jackie’s out on the town tonight and all.”
“Grand Rapids?”
“No, Chicago.”
“Oh!”
Silence.
“Wanna beer?” Thom offered.
“No,” said Jeff. “I mean, yeah. Yeah I do.”
“You can sit down, you know,” Thom told Jeff, raising his eyebrow as he opened the refrigerator and smiled a little.
“Ah,” Jeff seemed to be coming back to himself.
“Oh, yeah,” he chuckled, sat down on the sofa under the large window, and placed his feet on the steamer trunk.
Thom came out with the two Michelobs in long necked bottles, and pulling out a milk crate to sit on the other side of the steamer trunk, passed the other beer to Jeff.
“Not my favorite,” Thom remarked of the beer apologetically.
Jeff, unceremoniously putting the beer in his arm pit and twisting the cap off said, “Oh, I like it. Why? Whaddo you drink?”
Tom, about to answer, realized he didn’t really drink beer and tried to think of an answer.
“There was the one Mexican one, the best beer I ever had—”
“Corona?”
“God, no. I hate Corona!”
“Me too,” Jeff said with a laugh. “My sister uses a lime to drink it. I tried it with a lime and salt. That’s the only way it’s any good.”
“Yeah,” Thom said, rubbing his hands together and nodding. “You want to order a pizza or something? It’s on me, Jeff.”
“Okay. Alright? Parisi’s?”
“Yeah. Jackie’s got their phone number on the fridge.”
Thom got up and called. He was put on hold. During the five minute hold he asked Jeff what he wanted on it, and Jeff shouted sausage and together they agreed on mushrooms and Thom came to the steamer trunk, the beer tasting like a warm sock in his mouth.
“Jeff, I haven’t done this before. This sponsoring thing. So I’m not sure if I’m even doing a good job—”
“You’ve been great,” said Jeff. “I’m serious.”
“I don’t want to be a Chayne Kandzierski sponsor?”
“Wha?” Jeff started to laugh.
“Chayne was Russell’s Confirmation sponsor.”
“I didn’t know Russell was Confirmed.”
“He wasn’t. Eighth grade year he went into the whole thing sort of half heartedly, the way all the other kids do, and midway into the whole—candidacy, I guess the word is—Chayne had Russell’s head full of questions he’d never asked before and me and Patti couldn’t answer, and I guess Chayne couldn’t either. Or he didn’t. So Patti went and bought the suit for Confirmation—it was the night before Pentecost—and all the family—Irish Catholic on both sides—was getting presents ready, getting ready for this big party when Russell announces, ‘I’m not doing it. I’m not getting Confirmed.’”
“But,” Jeff said, “He goes to church and everything. Is Russell not a Christian?”
The word sounded strange to Tom. He never used it, not to describe himself or anyone else, and Thom said, “It’s not that he didn’t believe, he said, but that it was too much to believe and be ready for and commit to right now, so he didn’t.”
“But you said Chayne talked him out of it?”
“I think he did.”
“Well, Chayne’s a Christian. I mean, he’s different, but he’s serious about... religion, isn’t he?”
Thom sat back, his eyes bugged a little and he exhaled. “It’s hard to get a handle on Chayne.”
“Well, I think he is,” said Jeff. “And I think—and maybe I’m wrong—that what he did with Russell was good. I don’t think I would have been ready to get Confirmed, not in eighth grade. I wouldn’t have understood what was going on. I’m glad it’s happening now, when I can say I’m a grown-up and ready to make this commitment. I guess that’s what Russell’s waiting to do.”
Thom sighed. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Thom, when did you get Confirmed?”
“Right when we moved here,” Thom said. “When my mom moved us here from West Virginia. I was twelve—I think.”
“What was it for you?”
Thom looked strange. He thought about laughing it off. He scowled.
“Well, we all did it. I mean all the kids in my grade. It was... the done thing. I mean, I don’t mean it like that. I was proud. I felt like I’d done something.” Thom smiled gently, “though I’m not exactly sure what it was I had done.”
Jeff smiled broadly and said, “I don’t really think I know what I’m doing now. But I want to do it.”
His face grew sober. “Thom?”
“Jeff?”
“Are we friends?”
If Thom was used to thinking, not afraid of thinking, then he would have known why the question sent deep currents inside of him rolling far beneath the surface. He only answered, “Yes, of course we are.”
“Good,” Jeff bit his bottom lip.
“I’m going to say this quickly and not bring it up again. We’re meeting in Jackie’s apartment and I teach Russell and we’re just casually ignoring the fact that well... you and Patti aren’t together anymore and Russell’s not... living with you.”
“Does that cause a problem for you?”
The question was flat. The answer to it could send Thom’s emotions anywhere.
“No, Thom. But it might for you. And if we’re friends, then I want to know what I can do to help.”
Thom’s mouth was a little open. He felt like the whole world had turned inside out. He felt that he’d been phony for a long time until this moment when he told Jeff, “Thanks. Thank you, Jeff. You’re a good man.”

MORE NEXT WEEK

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! So much going on that I am going to have to read it a few times. I was surprised that Chayne is stealing the choir robes. Hope he doesn’t get into trouble. Excellent writing and I look forward to more next week!

 

[ChrisGibson]

END OF CHAPTER SIX


“Jackie, I thought you knew where we were going?” Felice said.
“I did. I mean I do!”
“Then how come I’m stepping over this bum for the third time?” Patti demanded.
“We don’t know where the hell we are!”
“It could be worse,” Sharon said. “We could be that bum.”
“I guess you’re life has hit rock bottom when you turn into a landmark,” Patti allowed.
“It’s all starting to look the same to me,” Felice said. “Tall grey buildings, can’t see the sky, nothing but El tracks vibrating overhead. People walking in and—oh, my’God, Cousin Sharon, look!”
Felice ribbed Sharon and the two Black women saw, stepping out of a Saturn, a woman with black, Flashdance hair, gold lamé top, black handbag, micro mini skirt, legs covered in matching black hair, a bobbing Adam’s apple and a look of fierce determination as she closed the car door and walked into the club.
Jackie tittered, but Patti hit her with a handbag, “I don’t want to die tonight. He’s probably packing heat.”
“I couldn’t help it,” Jackie said as they passed the club and the transvestite’s car. “He—”
“They prefer to be called she,” interjected Sharon, and Jackie stared at her in surprise.
“Well, whatever she prefers to be called,” Sharon remarked, “Those pumps were fabulous. Even in a size fourteen.”
“You don’t see that in Geschichte Falls,” Patti remarked.
“You do,” Sharon disagreed. “But you don’t usually see it on Breckinridge.”
“Should we go to that club?” Felice asked.
“But that’s not our club,” Jackie protested. “The club we’re going to is on Wabash.”
“Well, how the hell can you tell you tell?” Felice demanded. “Shit, I don’t care what people say, all these streets look alike.”
“It makes me remember why we left Chicago—” Sharon spoke and the El train passing over them roared over her words.
Privately Patti agreed.
“Let’s just find the first club that we see, the first one that looks like a good time,” Jackie said at last. Then, “How about that one?”
Jackie pointed across the street. A yellow taxi whizzed by.
“The one called...?” Patti’s voice faded in disbelief as she touched the side of her mouth.
The entryway was plain, and so was the lettering of the sign, but the sign itself was a long pink, indisputable penis which Felice now read.
“The Big Nasty,” she pronounced the name dubiously.

“The first meeting of the Geschichte Falls....” Faye had not really bothered to think of an official name until now, “Literary, Poetic and Artistic Society is hereby called into order.”
“Aren’t poets and writers artists?” Diggs asked.
“Well... yes,” allowed Faye who had been in the process of banging a hammer on Chayne’s kitchen table.
“Well then shouldn’t it just be the Artistic Society?”
While Faye pondered this, Chayne reached across the table and took the hammer from Faye’s hand.
“Well, I imagine...” said Faye.
Chayne looked around. Aside from Diggs, Faye and himself there was Russell as well as Ted Weirbach who lived out near Route 103 and had just published a poetry collection a few months ago. Also there was a fortiesh looking woman with brown hair wearing a purple business suit name Elaine Reardon.
Faye looked to Chayne who cleared his throat and said, “I suppose we should all introduce ourselves. Most of us know each other, but Elaine is new to us and Ted’s been a long time out of our company.”
“Well,” Elaine shifted and crossed one leg over the other, “As you know my name is Elaine Reardon. I’m a stay at home mom right now—”
“We love stay at homes,” Ted interjected, beaming. He was a not unhandsome man, blondish, with a prominent nose and happy blue eyes that blinked through glasses. Chayne was glad to have him there.
“Thank you,” Elaine smiled and colored. “I have three children, Casey, Benjamin and Tiffany—she’s only two. She’s... heaven. What they say about terrible twos isn’t really true. I—ah, wrote a little poetry back in college, in high school and all that but I hadn’t really started again until I was home with Tiffany. It was hard at first.... It still is. But I feel that if I have a sort of... support group, you know, people who really take my writing seriously, then maybe I can take my writing seriously too.”
“I was like that a long time,” Ted ventured. He was tall and lanky and reddened with pale blond hair and brass rimmed spectacles and a thick, ponderous voice. He pressed the tips of his very long fingers together as he spoke. “I didn’t really start writing until college, and then there were workshops. And then one day a professor of mine said ‘Hey, you should probably publish this,’ I had to have my hand held the whole way through.”
“I’m glad they held your hand,” said Eliane. “I love your first book. i mean, I love all your poems. But I think my favorite is ‘With Me On the Waters’.”
“Oh, yes,” Ted chuckled, laying a long finger to the side of his face. He was a man who looked at the ground and seemed to be always be talking just to the person in front of him. “There’s a funny story about that....”
But Chayne did not hear the story. He’d gone to high school and junior college with Ted and never known quite how to feel about him. His mother was Jewish, his dad Catholic, and he had a fuzzy, often quiet voice. Gentle was what Ted was. He had always been sort of goodlooking, but now Chayne was surprised to realize he seemed very goodlooking,
Woody Harrelson meets Woody Allen, Chayne joked to himself.
“So where do you live?” Ted asked her.
“Out in Keyworthy.”
“Oh.”
My family goes to Evervirgin Church—”
And just like that, Chayne’s musings about the feel of Ted’s slightly rough, long hands touching his, and his placid, blue eyed smile falling on him were halted..


“So are you with the bride or the groom?” a weedy white boy asked Felice.
Felice turned back to Jackie for some sort of answer, took a sip from her gin and tonic, said, “Um hum,” and walked off.
“Eyyy!” they heard Patti scream from the dance floor as some college kid spun her around, then dipped her and she kicked up her leg.
“I didn’t know,” Jackie told Felice and Sharon as they gathered around the bar, “this was a wedding reception.”
“Well,” Sharon shrugged, “at least the drinks are free.”
“So what’s our story gonna be?” Jackie demanded.
“We’re the bride’s family,” said Sharon.
“The bride’s white,” Jackie said.,
“Well then you be her mother.”
Jackie blenched at Sharon.
“Shit!” swore the other woman, “I can’t.”
“Bridal shot! Bridal shot! Bridal shot!” roared some guy who jumped on the bar and tossed off his jacket.
“Drink! Drink! Drink!” roared the crowd, and Patti ran over, breathless with the young man who had just dipped her.
“Bridal shot?” Sharon whispered to Patti.
“I don’t remember one at my wedding,” Patti shrugged.
The boy who’d been holding her hand impulsively kissed her on the mouth. She stared back wide eyed.
“You’re beautiful, baby!” he hooted.
“She’s old enough to be your mother—” started Jackie, but no one heard her as the bride was brought forth, all in white and the crowd roared, “Drink! Drink! Drink!”
The bartender, took out a bottle of something, filled an exceptionally large shot glass with it, affixed to it a peach colored plastic cock and then shoved it into the bride’s mouth while the crowd showered her with condoms.
“Oh, my God,” Jackie murmured, her voice flat, and then she screamed as some biker smacked her ass and said, “Let’s dance, Mama!”
Jackie stared at him wide mouthed, then back at Sharon and Felice.
“Girl, why not?” Felice said. “He and Chip could be cousins.”
Felice had stolen Jackie’s cigarettes, was contenting herself with a gin soaked olive and Sharon was looking forlornly at her daquiri when she heard someone say, “Whazzup, whazzup, hot mama!”
She looked to Felice, and then heard, “No. You, pretty Mama!”
“It’s all you, girl,” Felice said, and Sharon beheld a white boy, no more than twenty-five with a backward turned baseball cap, jeans sagging to his knees, three gold chains and black shades.
“Um! Um! Um!” he said with a downward hand gesture for each um, “You are sooo FINE!”
Sharon looked at him, incredulous.
“A’know a’know a’know, you’re probably looking at this white boy saying, ‘How’s he gon try to mack with me? And you right, you right. I ain’t got no right. You are SUCH a Nubian goddess. I’d like to take you home with me, but if it’s alright by you, I’ll just have this dance?”
He offered his very white hand.
Sharon looked back at Felice.
“Com’on, Brown Sugar,” he urged.
Sharon looked back at Felice who shrugged.
“You heard him,” she said. “Go on, Brown Sugar.”


TOMORROW.... BITS AND PIECES

 

[CharmedFan28]

Great to see the women having a good time out in Chicago and it seems like there will be more to come! Also good to see the society meeting. That was some excellent writing and I look forward to Bits and Pieces tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

the women are off in Chicago having a good time.
I took them out of the story the first time, but once it was a book, they belonged. And Faye needed something to do.

 

[ChrisGibson]

SEVEN


COWBOYS
AND
POETS















“...For we are all dust!” Ted Weirbach finished, stamping three times on the tabletop, and then stepping down and collapsing on the ground. Chayne wondered for a minute if he was dead or not, then the poet got up with a Buddha smile and Elaine applauded him wildly.
“And now you’re turn,” he said to Elaine.
“Oh, I can’t.”
“Oh, you must.”
Elaine blushed. “Well... alright.” Elaine shuffled around in her papers and finally cleared her throat to read from one of the sheets:


“Often when I am sitting
with the baby in front of
the television,
I wish that I could run.
Oh, my oh how I think of the sun,
and sometimes I think of blowing
this whole house to kingdom come.
And that is because
I hate to do the dishes.”


Elaine paused, and at last they clapped, Chayne not daring to look at Faye or Russell. Chayne was wondering why the hell Faye had thought up such an idiotic idea as the Artistic Society when Elaine was saying, “That was from my angry period, right after I’d had Tiffany. I’m not sure that it was very good—”
“No,” Faye said. “It was full of... emotion. It was honest.”
“It was very real,” Russell added, nodding sagely, and Chayne kicked the boy under the table.
Diggs remained politically and Chayne suddenly caught Ted’s eye. A laugh almost burst from the other man’s mouth, and bitting his lip, Ted Weirbach turned away.
“I used to think I wasn’t very good either,” Ted began. “It took a lot of encouragement, a lot of stroking of the ego to get me to the place where I could even dare to publish, and then when I sent my work out it was amazing how easily I was picked up.”
“Was it that way for you, Mr. Kandzierski?” Elaine asked.
“Chayne’s never needed anyone to stroke his ego,” Faye said.
“And you have?” Chayne eyed his friend sourly.
Faye closed her mouth, aware of having overstepped a line and Chayne said to Elaine, “and no, neither Faye nor I had Mr. Weirbach’s fortune.”
“But then I guess it’s not really about fortune,” Diggs threw in.
“Good point,” Chayne, who hated talking about writing and would rather just do it, said.
“Uh,” Ted said, “I really like your stuff. What I’ve read.”
“Thanks,” Chayne, who was always surprised anyone had read him blinked.
“Would you care to read something for us?” Ted asked, blinking.
“Absolutely not,” said Chayne and there was a knock at the door.
“It’s open,” Chayne shouted from the kitchen, but Faye got up to answer it, and a few seconds later said, “Chayne, there’s a new member of the club,”
Russell’s jaw dropped to see, clutching his portfolio, a brightly beaming, Chuck Shrader.


“Is this the poetry thing?” Chuck Shrader asked, looking around the kitchen.
“Yes it is,” Faye replied. offering her hand, and Chuck took it.
“Uhhh. Russell, we keep on running into each other.”
Chayne looked to Russell.
“He’s dating my mother,” Russell offered, not in the least accusatory, and everyone looked from Chuck to Russell.
“Well, that’s it, Russell, I guess you’ll have to take my class next semester.
“I’m Chuck Shrader,” Chuck Shrader told everyone else.
“Make yourself at home,” said Chayne. “Let me get you something to drink.”
“Oh, that’s alright.”
“We’ve got coffee... juice.”
“Ah,” Chuck looked around and put down his portfolio rubbing his dands together, “Coffee. Coffee.”
Chuck was just standing there, so Chayen said, “Well, there’s the pot. Cups are in the cabinet, We run a do it yourself establishment here.”
Chuck grinned and found himself a cup and the cream, and at Chayne’s guiding the sugar and finally sat down while Ted said, “Maybe you’d like to read something of yours?”
Chuck shook his head.
“Don’t be nervous,” said Elaine.
“Oh, I’m not,” Chuck told her. “I mean, it’s not that I don’t believe in myself, I brought my stuff with me. Just, I’m not one of those poets that has to have an audience and make a performance all around me.”
Chayne cleared his throat and nodded for Faye and Russell, and then said, “Well, you might as well read something because Faye produces psychology books, Russell doesn’t write any sort of poetry to my knowledge. I don’t feel like reading aything and Diggs… Diggs, why the hell are you here?”
“I’m just here for the ride,” said Diggs, and Chayne shrugged.
“Well,” Chuck frowned from one side of his mouth, looking uncomfortable, and said, “Okay,” and began scrambling in his portfolio for something.
“Uhhh. Okay.”

He cleared his throat and began.


There’s not going to be a soul to thank me for these dreams—I’ve kept
I did not make them up
they fly on in
the din of weeping princesses fills this tenement
the lament of the drunk outside
becoems mine
whisky and wine
while I sit—while I lay on my back
naked—tracing shadows alone’
four in the morn—and light another
cigarette

ah—forget it!
you think the writing life is easy
how’s it easy?
No validation
this permanent vacation from the world
anyone else knows

And now again—I know love—which is to say I get laid
and curl up in the window
hands wrapped around ankles—to watch the rain roll
down on Reilly Street
I see one man below
—walking slow—to spite the storm
I learn
I learn the secret—life is lonely
No—only some of the time

When you came over the loneliness melted away
you said--you said putting your hand to my cheek—
give me your lonely—your tired—your poor!
thrust them into the door!
And in the dark I thrust them all night
My God! The door was so tight!
I imagine that a world was made in that explosion
I can’t imagine how you held me, my body tossing
the next morning your hand touching—
that spot—that bone—that place on my hip—
your arm tossed over me
your breast there to feed me.

And I thought and I thought
now there’s nothing else
Now—
I am really naked
and she understands me

And the bus rolls below on Reilly Street.

They were all quiet. Chayne only heard the ticking of the clock. His mouth was open a little. He hadn’t heard anything beautiful in a really long time, though he’d seen much beauty today. Chuck looked around. Faye at last spoke, seriously, reverently, as she seldom did.
“Thank you, Chuck.”
Russell only hoped that the poem had been written before Chuck met his mother, and he kept on thinking, “We live on Breckinridge Avenue, not Reilly Street, not Reilly Street.”


MORE AFTER THE SABBATH

 

[CharmedFan28]

Excellent to get back to this story! Chuck seems like a nice guy and a hell of a writer! Great writing and I look forward to more after the Sabbath!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I'm quite fond of Chuck. Glad you're enjoying him, and his writing. More shortly.

 

[ChrisGibson]

“Can I get you another drink?” White Boy asked as he swayed with Sharon.
“Are you trying to seduce me?” she joked.
“No! No!” he thought she was serious. “No, you’re just a beautiful lady and—”
“What?”
“I said you’re a beautiful lady.”
“It’s been a long time since a man’s said that to me.”
“Maybe you’re hanging around the wrong men.”
Sharon chuckled and shrugged as much as she could while slow dancing. “Maybe you’re right.
“I don’t even know your name,” Sharon told him.
“My name’s Robert.”
“Robert,” Sharon considered it. “Yes, that’s a nice name. Robert, I think I will let you get me another drink.”
After all they were free. He walked her over to the bar and asked what she wanted. Sharon tried not to think outside of herself or she would laugh at this whole situation. What would Chayne say?
“Here you go,” he served her the martini.
“You drink these often?” he asked her as they sat at the bar.
“No, but my son talks about them a lot. I don’t think he drinks them either, but he always puts them in his stories.”
“You’ve got a kid?”
“Yes,” Sharon nodded, smiling. “Yes. We all live in Michigan. With my husband.”
Robert bawked, and then said, “This is the man who doesn’t tell you you’re beautiful?”
“Not for a long time. My son actually tells me though, but he’s my son, so how can I believe that?”
“How old is he?”
Sharon laughed, suddenly realizing that not only was she young when she’d had Chayne, and still very attractive, but that Robert had no idea how old she was.
“Probably older than you! He’s thirty-five, an English professor and a writer.”
From the way his mouth opened and his eyebrows shot up, Sharon was sure that if she could have seen his eyes, they would be popped wide open.
“I’m twenty-three,” he confessed sheepishly.
“Well, I’m fifty-seven. Robert, let me see your eyes.”
Obediently, Robert took off his shades.
“You have very nice eyes.”
They were wide and almond shaped, very blue.
“You should show them more often.”
He blushed and made to put them back on, but Sharon’s hand held Robert’s down.
“Now your hat, so I can see your hair,”
It was gelled and parted, gold white, shaved at the sides and Sharon said, “See, I would never have known you were attractive if you hadn’t shown your face, Robert... Robert who has no last name.”
“Robert Keyes, Sharon....”
“Kandzierski.”
Robert’s eyes squinted.
“It’s Polish. My husband’s father was white—to make a long story very short—”
“No, no,” he said. “What’s your son’s name?”
“Chayne.”
“Get out!”
“You know him. Know of him? My son’s reputation proceeds me.”
Robert nodded and quoted.

Against all the pain I’ve seen and the knowledge that there is certainly something wrong
I hear the galaxies hum another song,
against the anguish and the pain I look into the stars at night
in them and in the sun and in the air is God’s own whisper—
there is a greater, greater “Something Right”

“Did Chayne write that?”
As happened now and again, she was embarrassed to know her son so little.
Robert said, “He did.”
“And you memorize poetry?”
“I do lots of things,” Robert smiled. “You don’t really know anyone at this reception do you?”
Sharon laughed and admitted, “My friends and I just wandered in here. We had no idea it was a wedding.”
“Sometimes I feel like I just wandered in here too, and this is my family.”
Sharon hadn’t considered until now that he must be related to the wedding party.
“The groom’s my brother.”


“Well, I want you to do that for yourself, Robert,” Sharon was saying.
“Go to school?”
“That or something like it,” she said. “Oh, Robert, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you and so much promise. I mean, I know it doesn’t look like that now. But, but I think you’re really special.” Sharon was telling him while Jackie came back to the bar and said, “Enough of the Chip look-alike.”
“That’s my cousin, Ralph,” Robert said.
“Oh,” Jackie coughed, and lit a cigarette. “Well, he was too much like Chip for me?”
“Jaclyn, you complain about this man all the time. What’s Chip like?”
“Oh, Sharon, he’s not that bad.”
“Jackie,” she looked at Robert too. “Children, listen to me as your elder just this once. You don’t have to settle for anything that’s not that bad. Life is too short for that. I forget that most of the time, but I’m learning it now. You need to do what makes you happy.”
“What if I don’t know what makes me happy?” Robert said.
“That’s the scary part, the not knowing. Because then comes the long time of trying to figure it out, and when you see it. It will terrify you.”
“Does John terrify you, Jackie?” Patti asked, suddenly coming up behind them, hair out of whack, shining with perspiration.
“Who’s John?” Sharon asked.
“John is Jackie’s flame,” Patti tattled.
“If there’s a John why the hell is there a Chip?” Sharon demanded.
“John is Patti’s little brother,” Jackie said.
“Here’s the story,” Felice interrupted. “When Thom and Patti got married, Jackie and John met each other—”
“Sixteen years ago—” said Jackie.
“And they’ve had the hots for each other ever since! They started out just liking each other. But then John got this girlfriend—”
“Kim—” Patti filled in.
“And they got married. Had three kids. Still, Jackie was holding a torch for him.”
“I was not,” Jackie colored.
“Was too. But then he and Kim got divorced.”
“And they’ve been divorced for almost two years,” said Patti.
“Well, then what the hell’s the problem!” Sharon demanded.
Jackie became silent.
Now she had to ask herself, What the hell was the problem?

The four women were walking down State Street very carefully. Once or twice Patti had thought of taking off her heels, and then decided against it. Above their heads, the El train thundered and flashed down fluorescent lightning.
“That was really sweet, what he told you,” Patti said. “That Robert boy.”
“He thought that God must have sent me to him. Well, who can say? I think he might be right.”
Sharon sighed and looked around the street still full of life, flashing neon signs and flashing people, marching up and down in heels.
“Sometimes I’m sure there’s a lot more of God than we see.”
Then she stopped being solemn and laughed.
Patti looked at the other woman expectantly.
“And Graham told me I couldn’t snag a man!” Sharon crowed.
“What?”
“He said, ‘Why would a young rooster go after an old crow like you?”
“He said that to you?”
“Um hum,” Sharon chuckled over it, nodding.
“Does he say that sort of stuff all the time?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Sharon.
“I wouldn’t put up with that,” Patti shook her head, “With a man putting me down. I did for a while but... I don’t kwow Graham very well, so maybe I think of him differently. I guess you see something more than I do.”
“No,” said Sharon. “There isn’t anymore to see. But he’s right. I am an old hen. I’m an old crow. But I’m a beautiful old crow. And what’s more, I love Graham, and if that makes any since that sort of cancels out everything else. And then... and then... I’ve been married to him for a long time. Thirty-seven years is too long a time to call it quits.”
And then Sharon added, “So is sixteen.”
They walked on in silence for a while and, at last, Felice said, “Now Jaclyn, what street is the car on anyway?”
There was more silence as Jackie continued walking at the head of their group.
“Oh, Jackie,” lamented Felice. “Jaclyn!”


TOMORROW, RUSSELL AND THOM GO ON A TRIP

 

[CharmedFan28]

It sounds like the girls have had a good night. It is a bit sad that in order to get a compliment they had to get them from strangers. Great writing and I look forward to reading about Russell and Thom’s trip tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, the ladies did have a good time. Let's just hope they get home. Sharon and Patti both had to travel a long way to get a compliment, you've got a real point there, but at least they got one. Also, at least Patti has met Chuck. There is still time for Thom to get better, but I think Graham will be the same no matter what.

 

[ChrisGibson]

THIS IS A HEFTY PORTION AND A LOT IS GOING ON TONIGHT, BUT THAT'S JUST THE WAY IT IS SOMETIMES


At nine o’clock sharp there the door bell rang at 1421 Curtain Street. Chayne stayed upstairs, knowing who it was. Russell answered and met Thom’s brown eyes with his green eyes.
“You are so tall, Russell!”
“I guess.”
“Are you ready?”
“Yeah,” said Russell, “Just let me get my jacket.” Russell jabbed his thumb in the direction of the kitchen and then shouted up the stairs, “Chayne, we’re gone.”
The station wagon made its way from Curtain, to Reynold to Kirkland and then down to Royal and they rolled down Royal, past the old mills and the stacks of the power plants breathing out white smoke along the banks of the Chichtaw River. They drove under the belly of the Southside along one story white houses with umimpressive porches and trucks on cinder blocks. Thom pointed at one house and said, “That’s where me and Jackie lived when I was your age.”
Russell looked at his father in a different way for only a second. He had never regarded his father as a hillbilly, and yet nothing else lived on Thompson Street or any of these other blocks and all these other blocks on the outskirts of town.
The Chicktaw River had widened now, and on the other side of it Russell saw East Sequoia. Russell wondered if there was a West Sequoia or even a Sequoia. How had it got that name? After all, Geschichte was a German word and this town had been established by the French, long ago. It should have been Chichtaw Falls, after the river, but someone had screwed up something somewhere along the line, and here, they were approaching Chichtaw Falls, now called Geschicte Falls, for which the town had been misnamed, which was, in fact, not in town.
The small falls dropped over rocks, into the wide black Lake Chictaw bordered by circles of high green trees.
The car braked on gravel and Thom climbed out and got the tackle from the back of the car. Russell followed his father, looking all around him and not really at his father, and at last, Thom said, “Oh, Russell. It’s beautiful out here.”
He sighed and pointed up. “Look at those birds! Geese!”
Thom’s thoughts had been the same as Russell’s and, irrationally, Russell was annoyed with his father for getting inside of his head and sharing them. And he was surprised at seeing Thom take joy in anything natural or simple. Actually, Russell had never known his father to take joy in anything.
“Here is a good place,” Thom said, pointing to a stone pier that ended in a tower of tumbled rocks.
Under the rocks there was another fisher and when they approached, Russell saw she was a woman, dark haired like his dad and smiling up them.
“It’s a beautiful day to be out here,” she said. “For all sorts of things.”
Thom tipped his cap and said, “Yes, it is ma’am.”
“Handsome and gallant,” she smiled. “Are you two brothers?”
“Well, ma’am,” Thom began, but Russell said, “Of course we’re not brothers. He’s my father.”
“Oh,” the pretty woman blinked and Russell thought, “This slut is flirting.”
She said, “You two look like brother and brother. Well, I wouldn’t want to upset the lady who must be waiting for you.”
“There is no lady,” Thom said too quickly for Russell’s ear.
“Yup,” Russell, said, “Dear old Dad’s a divorcee.”
He wanted to add that his mother was dating someone, but even now thought that was a bit much.”
“Oh,” the woman stopped. Without lifting a finger she had commanded them to wait. She lifted her pole from the water, and reached into her breastpocket. She took out a small notepad and pen and wrote down her number, handing it to Thom.
“Uh… Thanks,” Thom said.
“Don’t thank me yet,” the woman winked at him as Thom stuffed her number into his pocket.

Tom and Russell climbed the rocks and scrambled down the other side, to find what Thom called comfortable places. Russell was not sure if he was hot and discomfited from the woman hitting on his father or the climb up the rocks where he admitted he was actually less fit than a man who, indeed, did more resemble his brother than his dad. Carefully, patiently, Thom taught Russell how to bait his lure. Russell tried not to look so disgusted or so indifferent. Being with Thom wasn’t so bad. It was weird as hell, but it wasn’t so bad, this enforced male bonding.
After a while, when the final mist had lifted off the black water and there was nothing to be caught, Thom impulsively threw his arm around Russell and said, “It’s good to be out here with my boy.”
Russell, rigid, allowed himself to be loved, and didn’t attempt to hide his indifference, because he didn’t expect Thom to pick up on it.
Thom realized, without Russell telling him, that he wouldn’t have picked up on it three weeks ago, even, maybe one week ago, or last night before he had talked with Jeff Cordiino. He looked at the miserable red headed boy and realzied that he didn’t know him. He had a feeling that he was not only a strange to Russell, but that he had done soemthing to Russell, the way his father had done something to him. Thom did not credit himself with knowing much, but right now he knew Russell treated him the same way he would treat his own father if that man were here..
“Russell, did I do something?” Thom asked in a quiet voice.
Russell felt something drop into his stomach..
“Did you...” Russell’s voice was quite, “do anything?”
Thom’s mouth opened a little. He dared to speak again. “Yes, Russell.”
Russell shook his head, feeling cold prick his face.
“Can I count the things?” he demanded. “You and Mom are getting a divorce—”
“Russell, it’s only fair to tell you that wasn’t my choice. I didn’t decide that—”
“The hell you didn’t!” Russell shouted, afraid of his rage, but unable to stop it. “You didn’t even try to talk to Mom. You never listened. You’ve never been at home, so there’s nothign different now. And you decide you want to bond with me—now! I’m fifteen years old and you’ve never bothered with me until now. Suddenly I mean something to you this weekend?”
“Russell, that’s not true!”
And then, grasping at straws, instead of understanding, he accused in return.
“And I asked to see you last week. We were supposed to get together last Sunday—”
“Last SATURDAY!” Russell roared, standing up. Thom blinked up at him.
“It was Saturday, and I came over, only you were busy fucking I don’t know who on the the kitchen table like some two in the morning cable porn! So that’s how much your marriage means to you! That’s how much I mean to you!”
Thom suddenly went blind. He couldn’t have stood up if he wanted to. He felt like he’d been punched and he wanted to throw up. He was instantly covered with shame. But Russell couldn’t see that, so he continued.
“Yeah, I was there. I came, and I didn’t want to. And I don’t want to be here now! Go find that woman who was making eyes at you. You can fuck her too.”
Thom didn’t move. He just stared at Russell, but what Russell saw was someone he didn’t like very much looking at him like he was crazy, and not at all prepared to take him home. He was getting ready for Thom to laugh at him the way he laughed at Mom and say, “Don’t be silly!” but he wanted Thom to know he wasn’t being silly at all. He wanted to say everything because this chance might not come again. He wanted to say, “I hate you.” and so he did.
Thom’s handsome face hardened, and suddenly Russell, conscious of his outrageous white skin and red hair wondered—irrationally, “Why couldn’t you have at least give me your looks?”
Thom’s grip on his fishing rod tightened, and then he took it out of the water and quietly put everything in the tackle box. He moved past Russell to the station wagon. Half timid, Russell followed. They climbed the rocks and on the other side, Russell was relieved that the woman was gone. What was the man thinking? What was going on inside him. Russell got into the passenger seat. They drove in silence back to Curtain Street, Russell frozen, Thom silent until they got to Chayne’s house. Not looking at Russell, Thom leaned over his son, pushed open the car door, waited for Russell to get out. Russell did. Thom closed the door and drove off.
Before Russell turned around to go up the stairs, he put his hand over his chest to stop the rapid beating of his heart, and tried to regulate his breathing.

When Thom Lewis knocked on the door for the second time that day it was Chayne who answered, and all the things he’d thought of saying changed when he saw the other man. Beyond Thom the sky was filled with late day light and a cool breeze blew the scent of the jasmine flowers into the house. Chane realized that although he joked about Thom being short, he himself was actually not that much taller.
“Thom, I think it’s the stupidest thing to intrude in a family, and even though Russell’s been staying with me I don’t really believe I’ve stood in the way of your authority as a father. But... Russell’s gone to visit you twice, at my encouragement and every time he comes back it’s sadder than he left, then I have to wait to hear the story. Now, I don’t know what you did today, but I don’t really think I want to let you into this house to do anything more.”
Thom did not try to fight Chayne. He just said, “I fucked up. I fucked up really bad. You’re right, Chayne. Tell him. Tell him I’m sorry. And tell him I love him. That’s what I was going to tell him, but maybe it’ll be best if you tell him.”
Thom turned around and Chayne said, “Thom?”
Thom turned around.
“Is that the reason why... you’ve been the way you’ve been?”
“Been?”
Chayne cleared his throat and said, “You say you love Russell. I think you love Patti, but you haven’t really tried that hard to make it known. You... you give up too easily, Thom.”
Thom’s jaw hardened, and then he came back up the stairs and because Chayne didn’t move to stop him, Thom went up the stairs and went inside the open door where Russell was on the bed.
Whatever Russell was about to say, Thom put out a hand and said, “Russell, don’t say anything yet. Please. Let me talk.”
Russell shut up, but instead he looked out of the west window and let Thom talk to the side of him.
“Look at me, Russell.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Okay,” Thom sighed. “I’ll talk to your side.
“When you told me... what you told me—”
“I said I hate you,” Russell repeated in case Thom had forgotten it. “Since you don’t seem to actually hear anything anyone ever says to you, for future reference, I said ‘I hate you,’. And you said nothing.”
“What did you want me to say?”.
“I don’t know,” Russell said, turning to him. “I wanted you to display emotion.
“Look at you. I don’t believe you have a single real feeling. You’re so cold. You’re so fake. I wish you’d be fake on your own time and leave me the hell alone. You never wanted to be bothered with me so don’t bother with me. I’m not your pal, I’m not your buddy. I’m not your stupid friends that respond to your… twenty-five cent smile and your perfect hair and I can’t be like you—”
“And I can’t be like you either!”
Russell’s open mouth froze.
“I can’t be you Russell. I’m sorry. I don’t know how to talk to you. I don’t—Russ, I know this isn’t an excuse, but I never had a father, not really. I don’t have anyone to tell me how to do it, I don’t know how to do it! I’ve never known how to do it and you have always blamed me for it. It’s not easy to be your father!”
Russell raised an eyebrow.
“That,” Thom said, “is not what I meant. What I meant… is… I love you.
“The moment I became your father, the moment I held you in my arms was the proudest moment of my life.”
Russell closed his eyes and his face was hidden behind his hair as he bowed his head.
“It was easier,” he said, “when I thought you didn’t care about me.”

“Chayne,” Thom said, putting on his jacket as he went to the door. “I want to tell you something.”
“Yes, Thom,” Chayne bit his lip.
“Since I suppose I’ll be saying it for a while... I should say it to you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for getting in your face earlier this week when what you really should have done is decked me. I’m sorry for being an asshole. I was... afraid. I still am a little.”
“Of?”
“Of... That I ruined everything. And I’m sorry for saying that you’re envious and jealous and everything I said. I want to thank you for not listening to me. I’m sorry for,” Thom smiled sadly and bit his lip.
“I’m sorry for a lot of things that I’ve done to you over the years. I can understand if you still hate me in the morning.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“You don’t like me.”
“You haven’t made yourself very likeable.”
“I can’t really argue that. Well,” Thom blew out his cheeks and looked around the room. “I had better be going.”
“Drive safe.”
“I walked.”
“Walk safe.”
Thom smiled.
“Alright then.”
He headed down the stairs.
“Thom?””
Thom Lewis looked back.
“How’s Russell?”
Thom came back up the stairs and confided in Chayne, “I told him I really love him and I’m sorry and he’s not taking the news very well. He said it would have easier if I’d just kept acting like I didn’t care. Maybe he’s right.”
“It would have been easier, but not better.
“Good night, Thom.”
“Good night, Chayne.”
Thom Lewis went down the porch steps, and up Curtain Street in the golden evening.



“Cowboy Dan hasn’t been by in a while,” Russell noted while they were washing dishes.
“He comes and goes,” Chayne said. “Which is inconvenient for someone like me.”
“Do you miss him.”
“I miss parts of him,” Chayne smiled mischievously and took the plate from Russell.
“Are you and Faye still going out?” Chayne said.
“You mean to give you space? Yeah. Faye’s taking to the Blue Jewel.”
“I wish I could come up with something more edifying for a fifteen year old,” Chayne said, “but there it is.”

It was times like these that Chayne wished Russell had friends his age and could go where fifteen year olds were supposed to go. Still, he supposed things would come together one day. They had for him.
There was a soft knock on the storm door. The main door was open. Chayne called, “It’s open.”
A moment later, right when Chayne was entertaining the thought that a polite killer might be walking through the house, Ted Weirbach appeared in the kitchen.
“Ted, hello,” Chayne said, and Russell said hello as well.
“Grab a dish or a pot and make yourself useful,” he said to the tall man.
Ted still looked young,” Russell thought. He would have been Chayne’s age, and Chayne had said something about he and Ted going to college together. He was goodlooking in a professor kind of way and strangely obedient to Chayne’s command to start cleaning house.
“What brings you around here,” Chayne asked. “There’s no meeting tonight.”
“Oh, I know,” Ted said, in away which really answered, no questions. He took up and old skillet and held out his hand for the scrub brush.
In a sort of comfortable silence, the three of them continued washing dishes, and Russell supposed that the tall man with the swimmer’s build, prominent nose, sandy hair and glasses would be staying for a while.


TOMORROW: THE BOOK OF THE BURNING

 

[CharmedFan28]

Well Thom found out what Russell saw and how much of a bad Dad he has been. His apology does redeem him a bit but he still has a long way to go. I am glad you didn’t cut this portion down it needed to be this length. Great writing and I look forward to The Book Of The Burning tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I'm glad you agree that it was just the right length, and Thom's foolishness is out in the light, and so maybe we can begin something new in the Lewis family, a little bit of redemption.

 

[ChrisGibson]

“Well,” Patti said, “if Chayne was impressed, then I’m impressed.”
“Do you think you’ll be coming to the literary society?” Chuck asked her.
“I was never of a literary mind,” Patti said, taking a sip from her wine glass.
“Patti—” Chuck began.
“I feel like you’ve wanted to ask something,” Patti lifted a finger. “I feel like like you’ve wanted to ask a thing and you’re a gentleman so you don’t know how to.”
“Patti,” Chuck cleared his throat. “Please.”
“Or am I wrong?”
Chuck stopped himself from looking away.
He said, “You’re not wrong.”
Patti nodded, pleased.
She said, “Oh, here isn’t the right place for it… No. But, would you like me to come home with you?”
“Yes,” Chuck said, his voice thick with emotion he hadn’t expected.
Patti felt strange and solemn and beautiful. She leaned into Chuck and kissed him on his cheek. It was soft and she could feel just a little bit of stubble, she pushed his blond hair from the side of his face and stood up.
“Give me a few minutes. Let me get an overnight bag. I don’t like going out for breakfast. You can cook?”
“I can make an omelet out of this world,” he grinned at her.
“Great,” she said, heading up the stairs and feeling her whole body light up, “I love a good omelet.”



Chayne Kandzierski was not in the business of giving speeches to teenagers, but then he had not been in the business of havingin Teenaged godchildren until recently. Russsell was off with Faye right now, but he though, if there was anything he had to tell the boy, he would say, you have to know that you exist. Part of him suspected he would share this philosophy soon enough.
He hadn’t known he existed because he lived in his own mind, same as anyone else, and it had taken a while to realize who unlike other minds his mind was. The world he had bee nbrought up in was the same world everyone else was brought up in. there were moves and books and televisions shows where a boy showed up and then a girl, and in you know they would be together. It was meant to be long before Chayne knew anything about himself.
He makes lists now and again. Mike, KJ. Andy, Andy Andy! Boys who looked at him and something went through him, but he didn’t understand it. Hopes he had, but that were not fully had or even partially understood. How late he was to the game, and how he kept meeting men late to the game. Desire was like a fish in deeo water. You had to see that lure, you had to see that shiny thing that made you swim up. And that shiny thing was a mirror. You had to see yourself. Now this was supposed to be a new day. Ten short years ago everyone had been afraid of having AIDS. Now the world was so togther, even progressive Christian were talking about gay marriages.
Chayne had no tastes for marriage. He thought marriage covered up the thing that everyone did have a taste for, was a good way to cover up what had so recently been uncovered, that men desired other men. That was the golden key. When Chayne learned that he felt like he had learned everything. So whenever someone seemed to be interested, he cncouraged it. He now knew that anything, or anyone was possible.
So Russell was gone tonight, and Faye was gone tonight, and they would not be home. Faye would be kind enough to get herself drunk enough to stay at Jewel’s, but return around eight so they could all dress for church and choir. Tomorrow, ten o clock Mass could belong to Saint Adjeanet, but tonight, when he cried out, when he shouted and wrapped his thighs about Ted Weirbach, when he let the quiet, tender man fuck him, quietly, tenderly, shuddering while Chayne ran his hands over his cheeks, through his hair, down his back, the way gentle men did, tonight, he thought, as his mind left itself, went into that shimmering shuddering place and his finger slipped inside of Ted, pressed, made him shudder and fuck deeper, tonight was theirs.

The moonlight shone on rowing shoulders, straining back, flexing buttocks. His knees gathered strength as he thrust deeper. As his body, white in the moonlight moved, under him he heard cries that urged him on, that made him fuck harder and harder. Hands buried themselves in his thick dark as as, in the warm starlit night, like kids they made love on the pier jutting out into the black waters of Lake Choctaw. Her names was Stephanie Evans, and her fingernails raked his ass and made him shudder. He’d told himself not to come, but as Thom’s neck arched and his eyes were filled with statlight, orgasm pulsed through his whole body, and still, as he thrust into the woman he’d met that morning, he was hard as ever, and she didn’t stop shouting, and he didn’t stop fucking.

END OF CHAPTER: MORE IN A FEW DAYS

 

[CharmedFan28]

Thanks for posting the end of the chapter! Good to see Chayne has someone now. I hope this ends up being a relationship for him but we will see. Excellent writing and I look forward to more in a few days!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, I'm just going to ask everything else on Facebook.

 

[ChrisGibson]

CHAPTER EIGHT


THANKSGIVING


“No,” Patricia McLarchlahn said, “I don’t advise any sort of medication at all. This is a simple case of depression.”
“Then doesn’t that mean I need medication?”
“No,” Patti told the man again, crossing her legs and sitting deep into the winged back chair. “Let me tell you something. You need to start paying attention to yourself, to what the voices in your head are telling you, to what your body’s telling you. Nothing, sir, nothing can tell you what’s going on like you. I’d say we’re at about the same age—”
“I’m forty-one.”
“Midlife,” Patti nodded. “Your body and the whole world is coming together to say wake up. “
“A midlife crisis?” he sat up, looking a little distressed.
“Don’t be distressed,” Patti smiled and put up a hand. “It doesn’t mena you have to find a younger woman and buy a sports car, and I know this’ll come as a shock to you, but it doesn’t mean you’ve been asleep or dead your whole life. It means you’re being reawakened to your needs and guess what? Needs change throughout the years. We’re never just one person. It’s never just completely over. We change. New doors open. You’ve got to see the doors opening for you. And I know this isn’t easy for any of us in society, not easy for men, not easy for women, for different reasons in both cases: but you’ve got to allow yourself to be happy,” she placed a hand on Jeremy’s arm, “even if it brings you to the point of tears.”
The man grinned a little and looked around the large living room then at the placid, pretty doctor with her spectacles hanging from a chain around her neck and said, “This is great advice doctor, but I have a hard time seeing you there—in that place. Lost.”
“Jeremy, if I hadn’t been to that place, I wouldn’t be sitting right her in front of you in private practice.”
She looked at her watch, reached to her pack of cigarettes on the table and said, “Our hour’s up. And one more piece of advice, Jeremy?”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t quit smoking unless you absolutely want to.”

For Patricia, Sharon, Jaclyn and Felice, the quest through the pre-dawn streets of Chicago to find the car had been more of an odyssey than the drive back to Michigan. Patti had spent the whole Saturday asleep only to be surprised Saturday night by the arrival of Chuck. She’d all but beat him over the head when he’d said that he’d not only met Faye Matthison, but spent a whole evening talking with her. Head beatings, however, had given way to something else altogether, and she had awaken at Chuck’s place the on Sunday morning.
Not knowing what Mass Thom would attend, and being on the east end of town, anyway, Patti had driven to Saint Celestine’s in Little Poland. She didn’t like it. It wasn’t hers. It felt strange to be running away from familiar old Saint Adjeanet’s.

Thom did not go to church that Sunday. Thom had awaken in an old brick apartment building in Saint Gregory in the large and inviting bed of one Stephanie Evans. They had laughed and talked about life and Thom was able to admit to someone he had not known that he had been passionless and dull, that he didn’t believe in himself, that he loved his son more than he could say and knew his marriage was dead. He wasn’t used to intimacy and had forgotten all about passion. It had been so long since he’d felt vulnerable with another human being. Stephanie, ofr her part was a divorcee whose daughter was with her father for the weekend. She worked in Grand Rapids as well at a pricey law firm, but had grown up on Thompson Street and was surprised she’d never met Thom.
“You’re a good listener,” she told him.
It hurt Thom, and even though Thom wanted to cry, he didn’t. She saw the hurt in him, though, and asked about it.
“It’s just,” he told her, “I… Deep inside inside I believe I’m a bad person.”
He had never been able to say that, and except for maybe with Jackie, never opened himself up to being accepted. Stephanie accepted him, and they made love until mid morning, up until the noon. He wanted her to come. They had come together, so powerfully, with so much abandon, Thom realize he’d stop feeling free or safe along time ago. He was with this woman. He was totally with her, but as he lay on his side, still trembling, his hand on her hip, he realized none of his issues had been Patti’s fault. She had reacted to how he had wronged her, and there didn’t seem much of a way to make that right.



Russell had come home early that Sunday to hear the toilet flush and then see, looking startled and a little awkward, the bookish Ted Weirbach in black jockeys and bare feet walking out.
“Russell,” Ted’s voice was always a whisper.
He couldn’t get on first name basis with Ted, who looked and felt like a school teacher, and somehow, meeting him almost naked made him more respectful.
“Mr. Weirbach.”
“I was just…” Ted began.
“Going back to bed,” Russl said with no irony. He wasn’t an adult, but he was close to it and could behave like one. He nodded his redhead and then he said, “You might want to go back now, because Faye is on her way in.”
Russell went up the stairs, quickly, allowed Ted to get back to Chayne’s room, unobserved and when Russell reflected on the fact that last time he’d left the two men, they were simply washing dishes, he was impressed. He was also impressed at Chayne’s ability to make a lover out of anyone. He certainly wouldn’t have pictured the awkward poet with Chayne, but Ted Weirbach had a swimmer’s body and a broad chest and powerful shoulders. Russell was surprised by how handsome he was, and also by how aware he was of Ted’s looks. He thought how Chayne had not expected them to return so early, and then he realized that Chayne probably did not care. There was no scrambling of Ted out the door five minutes later. A half hour later when everyone was getting ready for church, there was Ted in the kitchen, looking peaceful and scholarly, his large nose bent over the newspaper. Chayne was in a housecoat with cigarette sipping coffee and Faye was splitting one of the apple fritters they’d bought at the bakery on the way back into town.
“Don’t stare,” Chayne purred. “Do get something to eat. We have to be at church in forty-five minutes. Ted’s coming with us.”
“I love church,” Ted said, and went back to reading the paper.
That was all there was to be said about it.

That night, Patti McLlarchlan had taken a walk and thought, “I’ll have to find a job sooner or later.” She did not want to teach and—she realized—she enjoyed staying at home. She liked getting up whenever she wanted. She liked the leisure of smoking half a pack of cigarettes and watching the world go by. And she liked talking to people so, in the end, opening up a private practice had only seemed natural.
Russell came and went as he pleased, and Patti saw no reason he shouldn’t. Divorce was not quick. Chuck did not complain a great deal, but now again he had something to say.
“Sometimes I wonder if you really want to divorce Thom,” Chuck said.
“No one wants to divorce anybody,” Patti said. “At least I hope not. But no, I’;m not clinging to anything. I don’t even see him or speak to him.”
“Do you think about him?”
Patti looked at him incredulously.
“Do you think about Jane?”
Chuck caught his breath, pursed his lips and shook his head.
“I’m sorry, Patti,” he said.
She touched his hand. It was warm. When he looked at her with blue-green eyes and the lamplight shone on his head she remembered what his touch was like, at night, in his apartment. She could not bring him into Thom’s bed or sleep with him in Russell’s house, but when she went over to Chuck’s she was as close to free and single as she’d been in almost twenty years and his kiss, his touch, the heat of his body, reminded her of the girl she’d once been.

The air grew cooler, the sky seemed to lose that deep rich blue. It thinned out like an old candy lozenge and became transparent. The green in the leaves gave way to suffusions of red and yellow and gold in the veins, but many of the flowers still held up. 1421 Curtain Street was still filled with the smell of jasmine though, as Chayne predicted, the weeds began to die. Russell began to wear his jacket more. No one was sad to see summer go. It’s reign had been long and successful, and like the reign of all seasons, at the end, wearying. The smell of fried chicken that arrived in the air over Geschichte Falls at midday lessened only a little in the cooler air. At three o’clock it still smelled as if biscuits were being baked somewhere.
Faye went back to Chicago after a long stay. The Society degenerated—or evolved—into Friday nights that involved poetry and story reading but also cigar and cigarette smoking, gin drinking, guitar playing, singing, laughing, knee slapping, ribs and friend chicken, rolls and biscuits, cobbler, pie, greens, whisky, and no one going to bed till two in the morning. School was not bad now for Russell because it was only a very small part of an otherwise rich life right now.
And then there were kids from school that actually made their way to Chayne’s house. Two seniors, Curtis Brown and Nick Ballantine would show up some Friday nights. Both of them wanted to be writers when they grew up.
Nick was a senior at Our Lady of Mercy, weedy, blond, thin faced with a friendly smile he always turned Russell in the hallways. Curtis was a cousin of Chayne’s on the Wynn side and no logner went to Our Lady of Mercy. He was a senior at Richland High and the one that wrote the most. He and Chayne could have nearly been twins, the same glasses, the same long hands, the same loud laugh though Nick claimed Curtis had never laughed so hard until recently.
And many nights Jackie and Diggs were there, as usual, and Chuck Shrader whom Russell was getting used to. Occasionally Thom stopped by but, thankfully, never when Chuck was there. He and Chayne stood in the kitchen quietly arguing while Thom pushed money at Chayne and Chayne pushed it back and then after a logn tiem jostling Chayne took it only to wait for Thomn to leave and then gave the money to Russell.
Russell did not know what to make of Thom, or rather, what to feel about him. He told Chayne this one night.
“I want to love him,” Russell said. “But also... I’m afraid to.”

In the midst of the the Society, Chayne felt a duty to begin writing again. Everything he sat down to write was bad, and this, he reflected, was probably the reason he hadn’t written at all. He bought a hugh black ledger and stole a the golden tassel from Great Grandmother Prince’s Bible to make a bookmark, and then kept extensive notes. He wrote a great deal in that book, wrote to find a story. And he spent a great deal of time in empty Saint Adjeanet praying for a story.


The mailman came one day while Chayne was deleting the beginning of another story. There was a letter addressed to him, and he opened it up and read wondering if maybe a story would come up out of this.

Dear Mr. Kandzierski,
I think I have to tell you now, after all these years, what your work has meant to me. You see I don’t really read, and I write even less so this means something big. But it was in my first semester of college—and the last—that my professor made me read your poems. I’ve read all of your poetry books, and all of your novels except the new one. My favorite one was The Blue Season because it made me feel like I wasn’t alone, like I wasn’t the only ugly duckling, and it gave me hope.
I think the real reason I wrote you is to tell you that now I think I know where you get all of your talent from.It must be from your mother who was by far the sexiest woman in all the Windy City the weekend she came down. I think she’s actually about half of your characters. Thanks for the books, Thanks for your mother (I don’t mean that in a gross way)

Robert Keys

“Mama, who the hell is Robert Keys?” Chayne showed Sharon the letter one day when he went over to the apartment on Royal Street.
She looked at it, read, it, tilted it to and angle as if to get a secret message, and then laughed and told Chayne the story of the weekend in Chicago.
“I knew you had in you, Old Woman,” Chayne said.
“The letter’s addressed from Europe,” said Sharon. “Well that is another thing to be thankful for.... That somehow in a world that seems so troubled you can touch another soul. Makes me happy.”
October turned into November and November turned redder and oranger, and then one particularly chill day, when Chayne and Russell were drinking cider in front of the fireplace, Felice came over.
“Cousin Chayne.”
“Felice?”
“Me and Mickey and LaVelle were talkin’ and we were gon run this by Sharon later on but we though we should run it by you first.”
“Um hum?”
“Seein’ as this is your house and all.”
“Okay?”
“We want to have the family Thanksgiving dinner here.”
And, at once, Chayne wanted to say no and at once he knew he couldn’t possibly say no and that it made all the sense in the world, but he did say, “I forgot that it was alsost Thanksgiving.”
“Next week, Cousin. Next Thursday.”
Life has a funny way of racing by.


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