Bells Above Greens (15 page)

“Never go to sleep angry,” Claire said.

Pat Carragher blew boredom from his lips.

“I can’t wait,” Claire said.  “In the cathedral, right Emery?”

“Right.”

“Right,” she repeated.

“No, left,” I said.  “Go left.”

“We’re not going to Blarney’s,” Pat Carragher said.  The car slid a little on the ice.  “There’s a jazz club further in.”

“The jazz club.”  Liv was excited.  “Sam, the jazz club, remember?  We know the trumpet player.”

“Which one?” Pat said. “The old guy or the young guy?”

“The young one.”

“Because the old guy is my uncle.”

“We don’t really know him,” I said.  “He played at the dance last week.”

“I talked with him,” Liv said.  “He threw me his hat.  His name is George, but he goes by something else.  Kings-horn or something.  Royalhorn.”

“Great name,” Jackie said.

“Isn’t it, though?  He’s in the marching band too.”

Dave turned around in his seat.  “Does he play the tuba?”

Pat glanced at him.  Evelyn answered him.  “She just said he’s the trumpet player.  She just said that.”

“We were throwing tennis balls into the tuba section at the game,” Dave said.  “They get them stuck way up in there and can’t blow them out.”

“Why that’s awful.  Why did you do that?  Don’t do that.”

“Why do they always give the tuba to the fat guys?”

“Sam, tell him to stop it.  It isn’t polite.”

“Don’t listen to Dave,” Pat said.  “He doesn’t know why he does these things.  His mother raised him as a girl until he was fifteen.”

Dave punched his arm and Pat laughed.  “That’s not true at all,” Dave said.  “I was the family dog.”

“Never house-broken.”

Pat Carragher put a big hand on Dave’s face.  Dave moved his head around to get free and it soon escalated into a playful shoving match.  The steering wheel drifted and the car began to veer off the road.  Pat overcorrected and sent the rear end in a swerve. 

“Oh hell.”

He overcorrected again, coming within an inch of an oncoming car, its horn blaring, the driver at once drained of color, and the Buick spun completely around, hopping a curb and slamming backside into a pine tree.  The back window webbed in cracks instantaneously in a snap of metal, and steam began to rise from under the car.

Pat Carragher looked back from the driver’s seat.

“Just a fender bender.  All right?”

We stood on the curb and looked at the car.  Pine needles covered the roof and hood, newly shaken from the overhead branches, and a fresh wound in the pine gave a vanilla scent.  A tire had blown and the trunk had crumpled on the left side, a taillight broken.  It wasn’t until we heard the thumping that we remembered there was a passenger in the trunk.  He was kicking from inside, hard kicks that made the water droplets and pine needles jump from the metal.

“Oh God,” Dave laughed.  “The kid.”

He stuck his hand in the driver’s window and pulled the keys from the ignition, turning around quickly to unlock the trunk, slipping on the ice as he moved.  The yelling was muffled from inside. 

“Which key is it?”

“The same as the ignition,” Evelyn told him.  “That’s the one.”

“It won’t open.”

“You have to turn it.”

“I am turning it.  It won’t budge.  It’s stuck.”

Pat Carragher stuck his fingers under a gap in the trunk. 

“Kid, can you hear me?”

An angry response came from the trunk and the kicking continued.

Pat Carragher yanked once and the car bounced.  He yanked again from a squatting position, putting his legs into it, and the latch broke free, the trunk burst opened.

“Myles,” I said.

He had cried his face red with frustration, his hair was mussed and he stuck his jaw out in iron hatred, but it soon fell to quivering.  I felt the blood drain from my cheeks.

“Oh God, Myles,” Liv rushed to him.  “Myles are you alright?  Myles.” 

She held him close under her chin, the way a mother consoles her bullied child. 

“Sam,” Emery said.  “Sam, I didn’t know it was him back there. 

“Get the hell off me,” Myles voice went high and sounded painful, strained in his throat.  “Go to hell, get off me all of you!”

“Sam, I didn’t know who was back there.” 

Marcus and Jackie hid their faces behind humped backs, looking over their shoulders as they disappeared down the sidewalk.  Evelyn was painted in shame, her arms crossed as the bottom piece of the portrait frame, staring at the ground, and Dave spoke.

“It was just a joke,” he said.  “We weren’t going to hurt you.”

“You sons of bitches,” Myles broke away from Liv and charged.  “I’ll kill you.  I’ll kill you.”

Dave stepped aside and sent Myles away by a handful of his shirt.  Evelyn put her hands to her face, and Liv shrieked.  Myles rolled and came up.  His face was twisted in pain, his eyes filled and poured over in streaks on his cold skin.  He looked at me and tried to speak but it came out in chokes.  He wiped his tears away as if they were the nuisance of rain, his face pulled in anger and embarrassment, hurt too strong to speak through.

“Oh Myles,” Liv was hurting and began to cry.  “Oh Myles, Myles.  No.”

“Don’t touch him,” I told to Dave.  I found my voice to be a growl.

He removed himself from fault by showing me his palms at chest level.

“It’s alright, boy,” Pat Carragher said.  “Hell, we weren’t hurting you.  Just playing.  We were taking you to have fun with us.”

“You were not,” I said. 

“We were.  Just goofing off for fun.  No need to take it bad.”

Dave spoke.  “Don’t cry about it.  Don’t be a baby about it.”

“Shut up,” I said.  “You guys are wrong.”

“We were just playing.”  Pat said.

“Shut up, damn you.”

“Ease off.  We were clowning around.  He needs to take a joke.”

“That’s not a joke.  How long was he in there?”

“I don’t know.  Awhile.  We were going to let him out.”

“Do you know him?”

“What?”

“People only joke around with their friends.  Do you know him?  Is he a friend of yours?  Myles, do you know them?”

“No.”

Pat held his hands out.  “So what?”

“Why’d you pick him?”

“Who cares?”

“I care!”

Pat Carragher walked up to me and put his face in mine.  My eyes were level with his chin, I could feel my lips tighten and my nostrils burn.  Pat spoke softly.  “We were just goofing around.  He should be a sport about it.”

“You can’t do that to people.  You don’t even know him.”

“Who says I have to know him?”

“He’s half your size.”

Dave stepped up.  “I know him,” he said.  “He’s a fairy.”

In my peripheral I could see the blur of Emery take a step forward.  In front of him, clear in my vision, Liv stood with her arms around Myles again, and he stood with wide red eyes, waiting for me to answer.  Myles needed someone to stand beside him, someone to walk through his uncertain world with him.

Pat Carragher glanced from Dave back to me.  “Well?”

“You don’t know him.”

He lifted a shoulder and cocked his head.  “I know that part about him.  I know he cries like a baby when you play with him.  He shouldn’t be here in the first place.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I don’t know how he’s been able to stay this long.”  He looked at Myles.  “If I was the gatekeeper you wouldn’t have gotten past me.”

“Don’t say that,” I said again with a step forward, and Pat flinched his arm up in defense.

“He’s not supposed to be here.  He’s wrong.  You can’t argue that, can you?”

“It doesn’t matter.  You’re supposed to be tolerant.  You’re supposed to be respectful.”

Pat Carragher lowered himself to stand even with me, exaggerating his crouch as if he were speaking to a toddler. 

“Tell me he’s right.  Tell me he belongs here.”

I stood there with balled fists and held my anger.  I wanted to swing on him and put him down, but I searched for an answer instead and found none.

When I said nothing he shoved me hard, hitting my shoulders with open palms, making my head whip and my breath catch audibly in my nose.

I should have hit him for Myles.  Pat’s words cut deeper into Myles’s skin than any knuckle could have, and I knew he was in a fragile state of mind.  The only thing that hurt him more than Pat Carragher was my absence of words and my failing of fists.

Chapter Fifteen

The semester ended with ropes of colored light bulbs reflecting on the snow-white yards, towers of twinkling trees in store windows, and life-sized nativity scenes under the yellow lights of church steeples swirled in the angelic song of children’s choirs. 

I walked the sidewalks of South Bend, the busy shoppers who made last minute dashes inside toy stores, bakeries, and mom and pop shoppes, the ding of bells over a dozen store doors rang one after the other.  Husbands stood on the sidewalks outside and smoked cigarettes, nodding to passers-by with glad tiding, a loose dog ran under the legs of several shoppers, their arms going up in the air one-two-three as it darted, a small boy carried his weight of frozen turkey in front of him and shouted ho-ho-ho.  I was among hundreds of smiling faces, each one more eager than the last, and yet I was very empty and alone that Christmas Eve.

Liv had packed herself into a taxicab, and was whisked away to her parent’s house.  She had extended to me an invitation to Christmas dinner but she lived too far and my pockets were empty, so I had to decline. 

“You might have a hard time getting past my father anyway,” she said.  “He plants himself in the front doorway and doesn’t move until mom and I force him to.”

I stood on the curb and waved as she rode away, and she blew me a kiss out the back window.

Emery left with Claire to break the news of their engagement to her parents.  He told me later “her old man only wanted to talk about Michigan football and why Notre Dame will lose next year.”

Peter was gone.  It was the first Christmas without him, without his cheery voice waking me just before sunrise.  He used to walk down the staircase at my aunt and uncle’s house, his feet purposefully taking each step casually, his arms stretching outward to form a human gate, and me behind him anxiously trying to get to the tree in the living room.

My aunt and uncle had sent me a Christmas card wishing me a merry holiday season.  They did not hint of an invitation to dinner and I did not ask for one. 

With the smell of scented candles mixing with winter’s stony breath I stopped in front of a jewelry store window, wiping the frost away with a circular motion of my hand and peering in like a hungry child at a bakery.  Diamond rings winked outward, enticing the bloom of love, awaiting the warm fingers of happy women. 

I stayed on the streets of South Bend until the last shopper went home.  I walked the lighted, caroled streets of the neighborhood, warm chatter in the windows, the colors blinking, until the lights fell behind me and the dark stones of memories jutted upward from rows of blackness, alone in the night on a forgotten edge of the city.  I found his marker and spoke to him as if he was sitting atop it. 

We spoke of Christmas’s long ago, starting with the first I could remember.  He once wrapped me in a blanket before I could awake fully and escape, carrying me over his shoulder like Santa’s sack of toys, and dropping me in a bathtub of cold water. 

“I never did repay you for that.”

We burned a holiday ham one year, cooking it until it was a smoldering black rock that smoked out each room and nearly burned the house down.  We were wrestling with neighborhood kids in the front yard while our aunt and uncle were out shopping, and had forgotten about it. 

We talked about snow forts, snow fights, and snowmen, building one so large in the middle of the street that cars could not get by and the city sent a snowplow to remove it. 

“We hid in the tree and threw snowballs.”

It’s lonely here without you and I don’t know what to do.  I go to church like I should, and I go to class because I know that’s what you would tell me to do.  But I don’t know where I’m going and I don’t know what I want.  You were always ahead of me to show me the way, and now without you in front I’m afraid to take a step. 

It wasn’t until my tears had dried and I stood to leave that I noticed a bouquet of flowers had been laid against the headstone, frozen in a lasting bloom.

Emery returned alone before New Year’s Day.  We went to Blarney’s and drank until we could not see the dollar amount on Higgins’s check.  We ordered more, hoping a more legible number would appear.  The bodies at the bar became deeper as midnight approached, the empty mugs lined up in frothy rows.

“You don’t think it’s too early do you?” he asked me.

“No, never too early.  Nothing’s too early.”

“I mean getting married.  Claire thinks it’s a good age.”

“It’s a good age.  It’s a good age for everything.”

“Have you ever thought of getting married so young?”

“Marriage is one of those things that you don’t think of unless it’s right there in front of you.  Why should I think of it?”

“You shouldn’t, I guess.  So you haven’t?”

“No.”

“Mom and dad were always arguing about religion.  Dad wasn’t going to move, not a single inch.  He’s as Catholic as…” (he wound his hand around, searching for the word) “…fish.  He wouldn’t budge even if it meant a divorce.  Which he wouldn’t have stood for either.  Mom was so strange about it, like all of it was some kind of language she didn’t understand.”

“So?”

“Well, so I’m getting married to a Catholic.  I figure I owe it to dad.  It crushes out the potential for argument.  He’s always telling me to make sure to marry a Catholic girl.  It won’t go right if you don’t marry a Catholic, he says.  As if that’s the only secret to happiness.  But I believe it is now.  If I didn’t then I wouldn’t have asked Claire.  And she believes it too, and she’s excited about it.”

I sat back and blinked.  I waved my hand in front of my face and tried to single out the fingers.  “You think married people argue only about religion?  Money is the number one argument.  I read that somewhere.”