Bells Above Greens (18 page)

“Anyone with the talent to knock it out of the park should give it a try.  Don’t you think?”

She gestured to the field, no, not the field, but to the ball that I had clobbered.  One of the players had hopped the back fence to retrieve my homerun, searching the grass for it.  I looked back at Elle and she had her eyebrow raised.

“Trick question,” I said.

Chapter Nineteen

The bicycle shop on the corner survived on the lean budgets of students.  Anywhere else and it could have made a decent earning, but the former student who started the shop twenty years ago never could bring himself to move beyond earshot of the Sacred Heart bells. 

Students were the bread and butter of his shop and there is nobody on earth who needs a bicycle more than a student.  They hovered in swarms around the shop like bees.  But with a generous student discount in place, written in black marker on his store window twenty years ago, the shop owner’s earnings were meager.  His business was never empty, his tasks never completed for the day.  Hundreds of students were on a first name basis with him, his hands ached at the end of the day, and yet his pockets were never filled, his bank account never over a thousand, his meals were plain, but his heart spilled over with a joy he would not be able to find elsewhere. 

His name was William, shortened to Will, turned and twisted into Wheel and then finally to Wheels.  Go see Wheels, he’ll get you fixed up.  I think Wheels has one like that, just around the corner.  He was as thin as a fence post, he rode a bicycle wherever he went, and he darted around the shop, inside to get a wrench, outside to change a tire, always in a sort of dance on his feet as his radio played on an outside speaker.

“Here you are, Sam,” Wheels said, holding a pair of bicycles at his sides.  “Pumped, jumped, and ready to hump.”

“Thanks, Wheels.”

I pulled a couple of dollars from my pocket, flattening them out and putting a crease down the middle lengthwise.  Wheels snatched them, and with a lick of his thumb he counted the two dollars as if it were a hundred, tucking them into his shirt pocket.

“You’re probably coming into your busy time of the year,” I said.

“Indeed,” he said, his knobby fingers wiped grease on the thighs of his jeans.  “The first sign of spring sends everyone in a dizzy.  Peter used to come by and turn a wrench for me when he had the time.”

It seemed that everyone knew Peter or had some sort of connection with him.  I was still learning the breadth of people that loved him. 

“Shame about the war,” he said.  “I was at his funeral.”

“Seems like everyone was.”

“You were only a year behind him?”

I nodded.

“Catholic twins,” he said.  “Close in age like that.  I have three brothers and we were all born within a year of the last.  Dad used to call us that.”

“You’re the oldest?”

He spat to the side.  “You bet.  We lost the youngest in ’44.  Jim.  He was in Normandy.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I wish it was me sometimes.  I should have been there alongside him.  I have bad vision.  They wouldn’t let me go.  Jim was colorblind but he could see for miles.  Being colorblind is a plus for soldiers.  They can see through camouflage.  You know that?”

“No, I didn’t know that.  Is that true?”

“I think it is.  Jim wasn’t but four years younger than me, a grown man, but I always thought of him as the baby, you know?”  He took a large breath.  “It’s something you don’t get over.  There was still a lot I wanted to show him.  I bet Peter is looking down thinking the same thing.  He’s probably glad it was him and not you.”

Being a brother is a strange thing at times.  There are so many things that go unsaid, things that stay under the surface and are only understood by actions.  Peter was more than an older brother to me, he was also the man I looked up to and he filled the roles of protector and teacher to me since we were children.  There was so much I wanted to learn from Peter still, and I realized now it was a two-way street.  There was so much he wanted to teach me still.

Wheels must have felt that he had overstepped a boundary, saying too much, because he half-turned away and wiped his hands again on his jeans to fill in the silence.

“If you ever have a day when you need to earn some extra cash, come on down.  I’ll have more work than I can get to.”

“Thanks, Wheels.”

“Sure.”  He looked around, taking in the day.  “Well.  Swell day for a spin.”

“Thanks for the loan. Have them back to you tonight.”

“Keep them for however long you need them.”  He waved his hand. “They could bring you luck.  Love happens on two wheels.” 

He stood fully confident in his claim.  Bicycling on the first day of spring, when the sun suddenly appears in full and sprays the earth with so much more than rays.  It was a romantic thought. 

“Can it do all that?” I laughed.  “Much more than just transportation.”

Wheels nodded.  “Oh, Lord, much more.  A bicycle puts a smile on anyone’s face.  I should think the world would be a much better place if we got rid of cars altogether and sent people around on bikes.  If Jesus had come two thousand years later He’d have entered Bethlehem under His own pedal-power.”

“There’s always the Second Coming.”

“I’ll be here.”

Liv met me on the Le Mans roundabout.  I was standing there with the bicycles on kickstands.  Girls were streaming into the warm air as if it were the first day of the sun’s existence.  They were dressed in the thin spring sweaters and skirts, short sleeve shirts and shorts, ignoring the goose bumps that spread underneath, proud and excited to show off their long limbs.  They want you to look but you always feel that you should not. 

The opaque sticker of winter had peeled away the white and gray, all the coats and scarves along with it, to reveal a tender new world in bloom. 

“When you said a surprise I thought we were going somewhere.”

“We are,” I said.  “A bicycle ride.”

“I’m wearing a skirt.”

“Just be careful of the chain.”

We pushed off the curb and rode through the neighborhood lanes of South Bend, under the floating tree buds.  The early tulips sprouted in the sidewalk greens, the robins chirped from the fences, and the bees buzzed the blossoms.  Old men sat in rocking chairs and waved in short sleeves from their porches, women looked up from their knees in their gardens.  Everything breathed with warmth. 

There was a market along the main street, farmers with outstretched hands weighing their early greenhouse produce, women waving fists of flowers, fresh bakery items steamed from tables and small boys stuck their thumbs in the center. Trinkets caught the sun, pages of old books flipped with the breeze; wives tested the firmness of melons, carvings stood in piles of shavings, paintings jumped out from artist’s arms.  Little girls ran from sidewalk to sidewalk selling homemade hair clips and barrettes with butterfly buttons and ladybug beads.  The men whistled as they walked through the market and shook hands with each other while the women spoke in smiles and light voices.

Liv held a handful of flowers to her face and sniffed herself into a delicate sneeze. 

“There goes your first semester classes,” I said.  “I saw all the words jump out.”

She waved her hand at her face while her mouth and nose pulled together in another sneeze. 

“Now you’re working on your junior classes.  All your education, blown through your nose.”

She put her hand on my arm and fought the last sneeze hard enough to keep it in her nose and release it as an exhale.  “I’ll forget who you are if this keeps up.”

We moved down to a table of books.  A small boy was peeking up from behind rows of literature, his hands folded in front of him as though he was a banker with a table full of investment advice.

“A quarter a book, sir.”

“That’s a good deal,” I said.  “Are all these books yours?”

“My grandpa’s.  He’s a book collector.”

“Have you read all these?”

His eyes widened.  “No, sir.”

I began to point out different books.  “How about this one?”

The boy leaned in and read the title, making a great show of it.  “Yes, sir.”

“This one?”

“Yes, sir.”

I grabbed the first hardcover, a tattered copy with worn edges.  I held it close to my nose and breezed the pages.

“Ever read Mark Twain?” I asked Liv.

“No,” she said, looking away at the other booths.  “I’ve heard of him.”

“Everybody’s heard of him.  He’s a classic.”

The boy came around the from behind the table with several selections he must have thought any girl would surely seize with both hands.  He held them out to Liv. 

“For you, ma’am.”

“No, thank you.”

He had not managed to get her attention.  He gathered himself and tried again.  “Only a quarter a book.”

“No, thank you.”  She was looking away still and the boy lowered the books in disappointment. 

“I’ll take all of them,” I told him.  “Here’s a dollar for the books and another for your expert opinion.”

The boy exchanged the books for the money with a huge smile printed on his face, a new confidence in his service.

“That was awfully nice of you,” Liv said.

“It was just a couple dollars.  I have some of the finest novels in literature and I might have changed that boy’s life.”

“His life?”

“Sure.  He now has the courage to approach strangers with his ideas.  Maybe I revealed his calling.”

“Such a high opinion of your powers.”

“Well,” I shrugged.  “Maybe I just changed his day.”

I put the books in the basket on her bicycle.  “For you.”

“But I’m not a reader,” she said.  “I’ll never get around to them.”

“Sure you will.  You might love them.  It might change your life too.”

“I didn’t know you loved books so much.”

“There’s a lot of information out there.  We’re lucky people wrote it down.  It’s comforting to know that someone somewhere has faced all the problems that we have today and they wrote down the answers just for us to read about.”

“There can’t be anything in these old books that relates to modern society.  Things change.”

“Not as much as you’d think.”

I had to roll our bicycles alongside me after that.  Liv caught and dirtied the hem of her skirt in the bike chain, and yanked at it in frustration until it tore away.  She wasn’t up for riding through the market, saying she would rather walk because life is missed when you go rolling past it.  There isn’t enough time to be spent goofing around on bicycles.

We spent the evening watching the sunset from the patio of a café.  Liv spent the time talking about the world as she saw it.  How the world is full of people who have no morals.  How young men go to war without a single thought to the people on the other end of their rifles.  How she was becoming less and less confident in religion and the power it has invested in just a handful of lofty bishops in Rome. 

I listened and had seven cappuccinos. She drank five Irish coffees. 

“I’m talking too much.”

“It’s the drink.”

“The what?”

“The Irish coffee.  It’s spiked.”

She pushed the empty cup away, looking at it as though it were poison, and put her hands to her head.  “I feel tipsy.  I thought it was too much caffeine.  I was trying to keep up with you.  I didn’t want to seem dull.”

I pushed the cups away.  “You had too much.”

“I didn’t know there was alcohol in it.  I thought it was a special flavoring.  It tastes so good.  You might have told me.  Why did you have so many coffees?”

Because I didn’t like what I was hearing from you and yet I couldn’t help but to hear more.  “I don’t know.”

“The world isn’t fair.  Your friend, Myles.  It’s not fair to him.  If he doesn’t like it then he should change and do what’s right.  He should be reasonable.”

“I thought you liked Myles.”

“I do.  He’s perfectly charming, but he’s a rascal and he’s a fraud and he feeds off of those who are good to him.  It’s because he is the way he is that I like him.  I like the bad things in life.”

“What things?” I said. 

She shook her head back and forth in disgust.  “I’d rather hear about you.”

“What about me?”

“You haven’t told me a thing about you.  All I know is that you like sports.  I just learned that you like books.  How simple is that to tell someone?  You’re always – always hiding.” 

The spiked coffees had brought about the hiccups in her.  She was suddenly in a foul mood and it pulled her features downward - all those feminine features that I had so many hopes for were now drowning in a spitefulness that I found somewhat relieving. 

“I go to school here and yet I have so many disillusions about it,” she said.  “Everyone here is so devout on the surface and so different underneath.  Every Friday is Lent around here and every kiss has to be pure.  Life is better without rules.”

“It doesn’t seem real, does it?”

“And Saints.  Why so many Saints?  Why do you pray to a Saint when you can go to God directly?  And why confess to a priest when you can go to God?  Prayer doesn’t seem necessary anyway.  If God can see into us, can hear us, then why do we spend time praying?  A Novena is the same as wishing upon a star.”

I walked her through the shadowed campus lawns to her dorm.  The drinks affected her greatly and she spoke without a filter. 

“How many girls have you been with?” she asked me.

“I’ve been on dates before.”

“But how many have you been with?”

“None.”

“That isn’t real.  It isn’t real.  There are no rules about that sort of thing.  If you want to then you should be with girls and not feel guilty about it.”

“There are rules.”

“And you’ve followed them?”

“Yes.”

“Without fail?  Without even the slightest question about them?”

“I question them.”

“Rules are meant to be broken.  Wouldn’t it be easier to follow
most
of them, but only
try
to follow some of them?  If you make a mistake then it would still be all right.”

“Yes, that would be easier.”