House of Gold (6 page)

The champagne goblet of romantic allurement can be gulped time and again, with a series of partners–but the bubbles dissipate and the tonic soon goes flat. Motel beds are soiled, but no road is traveled. No flesh is created. It's over as soon as it starts.

To indulge in even the first sip (without the willingness to swim in the sweat, beer, milk, blood, water, and tears of
marriage) is to anticipate the death of the emotion.

Unlike the
real thing
Melanie O'Meara and Buzz Woodward discovered, chemical romance has no eternal ramification, no fertile firework exploding abreast the stars.

On the night at the convent, as Buzz blew on the coffee before handing it to his future wife, he was already hoping to teach his boys to headbutt, to snatch fireflies–how to place
sacramental charge-sticks into their souls as if they were real-live Gumbys made out of plastic-explosive–to let them cut their own things down and do whatever other tasks a happy, unpredictable God might require.

The roulette-ball-landing can be longed for, but can never be planned. The hope for this unique moment is sometimes dashed for decades, over and over, never fulfilled, even for those
sensitive souls who pine for its cosmic beauty.

Or the moment can come to inarticulate teenagers on the first skirmish, establishing a union which lasts a lifetime, then stretches forward in the vibrating lives of their progeny, multiplying into thousands of offspring within a deuce of centuries, peppering the globe–all from one single moment of
knowing.

The heresy of modern romance is the illusion
that moments with such staggering importance are anything other than guided and provided by Another.

Tis all pure grace, and only our last journey-step into heaven will unveil just how many times divine finger-touches landed on the heads of those who began the long walk hand-in-hand.

To desire another, but never experience the knowing, much less the merging, is worthy.

To be presented with another,
then spurn the choice, is tragic. Both give poets grain for baking their bitterest breads.

Buzz and Mel did not think these lofty thoughts.

They didn't sweat the cosmos.

As they enjoyed their one moment–the feathery feel of Buzz's fingertips on Mel's trembling lip, the mundane (but, oh so personal) conversations, the good coffee, their Perfect Chaperone, the rolling down of windows to bring in
the chill and make the warm hand-holding all the warmer, their inkling of divine serendipity–they simply lived it, as those who get a crack at it must.

It sure is hard to ponder the mysteries of life while living them at the same time. The mondo wave comes, and the surfer jumps up on his board, balancing, fearful and thrilled, and struggles to bring that baby home without falling off.

Mel said,
"Catch me if you can."

Buzz lassoed her with a diamond ring.

+  +  +

Buzz mentally returned to the party, unusually silent, thinking about the computer problem, and how in less than two years it could take all this away from him: the fun times, the backyard football games, the homilies by Father Dial at Saint Phil's, the kids playing together.

He was disconnected, looking at Tim and the others
with new eyes. Sam and Ellie had always been–lofty–just not social types. Nobody would ever describe Sam as the life of any party. Maggie and Mark Johnson, older, and like Buzz, transplants to Cleveland from New Jersey, had never quite jibed with the seemingly ultra-serious devout Catholics in Ohio. In the first few years in Cleveland, Buzz and Mark had sometimes talked about the lack of normal,
fun, yet completely orthodox Catholics in the area–until they found the Penny/Lawrence social circle. Finally–a bunch of regular guys who would just as soon take a drive to Jacobs Field as head to Saint Philomena's to catch a confession.

For Buzz and Mark, it was like finding an oasis–a peek at the Chestertonian Party of Heaven–where the music was playing and the beer was flowing on the Pennys'
front porch.

Tim Penny was a lot like Buzz–except that he was normal. He was almost as big, carried a smaller paunch, sported light brown hair, and had classic Irish features. His distinguishing characteristic was that the back of his head extended a couple inches farther than most heads. The length of his head was in the 99th percentile, for sure.

Even so, it wasn't a particularly noticeable
trait, but the Penny Head, which Tim shared with his brother Bill, and they with their sons, was sometimes a topic of conversation among the men. It was a given: all Penny men and boys required custom-fitted football helmets.

Like all of them, Tim Penny believed there were only three major sports–baseball, basketball, and football–and that every red-blooded American should be at least minimally
competent in each. And by gosh and by golly, under his constant tutelage, all his boys were well on their way toward that honorable goal by age five.

Hockey, volleyball, skiing? Diversions, perhaps. Real sports, no.

Unless you were a Canadian, then you–but not an American–could consider hockey a major. But you also had to accept that football in Canada was an absolute joke.

Soccer was beyond the
pale (although daughters could be given a dispensation).

Tim Penny lived for his wife Marie, and for his kids. His idea of a good day was one that started with Mass. His idea of a good evening was to come home from work and have his kids run to greet him, then dinner with the kids, then Nerf baskets with the kids in the living room–or whiffleball in the backyard, or throwing the football on the
front sidewalk. His idea of a good night was one that ended with the Rosary.

At the parties, in the Great Irish Tradition, he often repeated stories about personal triumphs over the Culture of Death that came during everyday battles, such as the time the guys at work asked him how he could afford to have so many kids.

"Look out the window there," he pointed with pride. "See that ugly old orange
Escort?
That's
how I afford it."

These stories, and similar ones shared by the others, might have seemed mundane to an outsider, but to those in the circle, the stories held great meaning–and rightly so. For devout Catholics in a modern world, every day was filled with challenges to a normal Catholic way of life. Normal–as defined by the group–was simply being open to having a large family, even
if you weren't married (yet).

In a subtle way, all his friends were spokes in Tim Penny's wheel. It was his porch, after all, and he was the one who knew all the words to the Irish standards; it was Tim who quoted the Second Amendment or Chesterton word-for-word.

One time, early on, Buzz asked the group with utter sincerity, "What do you guys think of the Conspiracy Theory of History?"

"Are you
implying that there is
another
theory of history?" Tim replied with a straight face.

Brian Thredda almost had his beer come out his nose he laughed so hard. Now, Buzz's question and Tim's answer were often recounted. The stuff of legend.

On this spring evening all these years later, with the millennium twenty months away, the wives had been gently shooed from the porch with conspiratorial looks
from the men. Buzz found himself sitting next to Sam on the same aluminum rocker where he had begun his relationship with Mel, facing a tribunal of Tim, Tim's brother Bill, Opus Dei Bill, Brian, and Jimmy. Mark Johnson sat in the back, behind Tim and the others.

Tim cleared his throat, then carefully refreshed the burn on his cigar with the community Zippo.

Court was in session.

"What's this we
hear about you guys leaving Cleveland?"

Oh crap,
Buzz thought.

He had been dreading this moment. The bug had come up once before, and the group, like most groups, had written it off.

He looked at Sam.

Sam will explain,
Buzz thought.

Before either could answer, Jimmy piped in, "Why are you running away?"

"Running away? Who said anything about running away?" Buzz asked defensively. "We're just moving.
You guys should consider what would happen around here if the food supply chain stopped flowing–"

Buzz saw Brian, who was sitting near the door, farthest away, make a disapproving face. Brian was a successful businessman in his own right–he owned three popular restaurants in Lakewood. Sam was not as well-respected in this group as Brian.

"Let's say it does get that bad," Brian conceded. "I still
don't see why you would want to move away. This is where you have your friends. Why not stay here?"

"Yeah," Tim piled on. "If it turns out to be as bad as you think, we can all deal with it together, right here in Cleveland. Or we could all be martyrs together."

Sam cleared his throat. "I don't see how starving to death makes anyone a martyr. Are you really suggesting that all our boys deserve
to starve to death when steps could be taken to avoid it?"

That was too serious. Too–realistic.

"I'm just saying there's little chance of that ever happening," Brian replied. "And if it does, at least we would all be together."

"The important thing is that my children go to heaven," Tim said seriously. "Maybe we will all die because of it–though I think that's a remote possibility–maybe not. But
I'm not afraid of my children dying."

But what if God wants them to live–to grow older and have their own children?
Buzz thought, but didn't say.

A long minute passed.

"You could come with us," Buzz suggested to them all.

As soon as he spoke, he regretted the words.

Tim shook his head. "And what would I do for a living in Montana?"

It was a reasonable question. It answered itself. What would any
of them do? Buzz hadn't given a thought to what he would do. There was Sam and Sam's money when he sold Edwards. None of the men here, though they had good jobs, had a lot of money. The kids had taken care of that. Most of their professional contemporaries–their careers peaking during middle age–lived in larger houses in so-called better towns, their wives driving shiny new minivans for their one-point-eight
children.

Only Brian, who was single, had financial options. And he gave a substantial portion of his income to Saint Philomena's. (Tim had once joked that Father Dial should rename the grammar school after Brian.)

Suddenly Buzz felt–unlike himself. Normally, his words to his friends flowed easily. In his gut, he knew defending his position was useless–useless–even though Buzz also knew he was
right. He was stung because they implied he and Sam were cowards for "running." Real men don't run. He forgave them quickly, because he loved them.

They were right: he
was
running. He was afraid.

But he was right: he
should
run. He
should
be afraid.

And wasn't Tim also right, according to his own lights? Why should he and his friends run from a danger that was going to be everywhere? A danger
he neither understood nor believed in? Leave the town where he grew up? Pull his kids from the only decent Catholic grade school in the area? Leave Father Dial?

All based on Sam Fisk's conjectures.

In April of 1998, to the normal person, good Catholic or bad, the millennium bug wasn't a credible threat. And even if it was, it was a mild threat–not the kind which required that you obliterate your
roots.

Wasn't that the magic of the Penny Parties–that they were all tied together like roots beneath the surface of a huge oak tree?

Mark Johnson piped in, "Sam, I respect that you understand computers. And I'm still doing my own research. Even if the lights go out for two months, that won't necessarily mean they won't get things going again. I've got my little ten acres in Oberlin. We could
all hole up there until the worst is over. Why Montana?"

"Yeah!" Tim practically shouted. "We can all hole up at Mark's farm! It's only twenty miles away. Jimmy, you've been talking about getting something out by Mark's little place for years..."

Jimmy nodded.

"But not a real farm," Jimmy explained. "Kathy's always wanted something small–a few cows, a few chickens–for the boys in the summer."

There was always something calming about Jimmy when he spoke.

"I wouldn't exactly call what I have in Oberlin a farm," Mark added. "It's a run-down shack. I doubt it's been farmed for forty years."

"We could get some sacks of rice down at Sam's Club, ride it out?" Tim suggested to the whole group, warming to the topic.

"How would you go to the bathroom?" Buzz asked.

"I could install a septic system,"
Brian threw in.

"We could do that," Jimmy added. "But you don't even need that. Not if you're just a-holin' up. When I was a little boy, and we visited my aunt's place in Michigan, we all used a privy. All's you need is a shovel–dig a hole. That and a bag of lime..."

And the group was rolling now–building an imaginary retreat for a six week crisis. Buzz and Sam were off the hot seat. Soon, imaginary
kids would be having imaginary snowball fights in the fields of Mark Johnson's not-really-a-farm out in Oberlin. It was all a pleasant diversion.

Buzz looked at Sam. Sam gave a little, barely perceptible shake of his head.

It's not worth arguing when you know you can't win,
Sam's eyes told him.

Mel stuck her head into the window from the living room.

"Hey guys, it got kinda quiet out there. What
plots are you hatching?"

"Funeral plots, honey," Buzz whispered back, under the din of the new conversational thread.

Bill Penny was now standing in the middle of the porch, his hand over his heart, pledging allegiance to the United States of Mark's Farm. Another beer popped open. The laughter was back.

"Buzz, Markie's getting whiny. I think we should take him home."

"Okay," he told her without
enthusiasm. He was inwardly relieved.

Rescue!
Buzz thought.

Buzz rose from his chair.

It was official: Mark Johnson's not-a-farm was sufficient to take care of any possible woes that might be caused by a computer bug.