Bells Above Greens (21 page)

“Was it an interview?” I asked.

“I guess you could call it that.  It wasn’t supposed to be.  I was just to leave the folder with the receptionist.  There was a box behind the desk with dozens of folders just like mine.  I didn’t want to get lost in the pile so I told the lady my name and the name of the
South Bend Tribune
.”

“Good.”

She held her head in her hand, looking at the ground as if retelling the details of a burglary.  “I asked how many women had stopped by with their folders for the job and she told me I was the only one today.”

“Good,” I said.  “They’ll remember you.  You’re already standing out from the crowd.”

“The editor came out and asked questions about my experience and what I could bring to the paper.  He didn’t even open my folder to take a look.  It was all for formality’s sake.  A big mistake, Sam.  You should have gone in for me.  I would still be a name in the pile.”

She looked delicate in the dusk, huddled against the wall a dozen floors below the offices.  I was proud of her.  She had shown great courage against her insecurity.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she whispered.

“Like what?  I’m proud of you.”

“The way Peter used to look at me.”  She sank against the smooth stone walls, burying her face in her arms.  “Don’t do it, please.  You’re nice to me and I know why.  Don’t say it.”

My heart wanted to speak but my head wouldn’t let it.  I sat next to her against the wall and we watched the streets rush at the hour.  She put her head on my shoulder, forgetting her day for a moment. 

“We won’t get out of here for another couple of hours with the streets like this,” I said.  “I’m not driving that boat through this traffic.”

“Sam, do you believe in soul mates?”

“What sort of a question is that?”

“Just a question.  I’ve seen you with that girl.”

“What girl?”

“That girl.  The blonde one.  She’s pretty.”

“Does that make a soul mate?  I might have a hundred then.”

“Do you think I met mine already?”

“Peter was wonderful,” I said.  “I don’t know.  Is a soul mate a Catholic ideal?”

“It’s for anybody.  Would God have given me my soul mate and then taken him away so suddenly?”

“I don’t know.  There’s a lot of things I don’t understand about God.  There’s a lot of things I don’t understand about war, about why Peter had to go, about people and why they do the things they do.  I don’t understand women either.  There you have it.  I’m a damn mess.  You better get while the getting’s good.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

I was twisting wrenches for Wheels at the bicycle shop the next week.  Not because I needed the work - I had a handful of rooftops in South Bend that I ignored - but because I lost his loaner bicycles outside the café the day of the street market. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Wheels said.  “Those bikes may have been old and rusty, but they make smiles just as well as the new ones.  Just give me a couple days and we’ll call it even.”

A boy was fiddling with the hand pump while I fastened his wheel back in place with a freshly patched tube under the tire tread.  The boy stuck the nozzle in his mouth and slammed down on the hand pump as if he was setting off a cartoon stick of dynamite.  His cheeks flapped with air and saliva, a round hole with teeth inside.

“Alright,” I told him.  “You pump for thirty seconds, and I’ll finish it off.”

“I’ll go the whole way, mister.”

“If you say so.  Go until the tire is too hard to squeeze.”

“I know it, mister.”  He was already pumping away, going up and down on the handle with the persistence of a railroad cart getaway.

I stood up and there she was, looking over the cruisers in the rack with the handsome trumpet player, his hand on the small of her back.  She was being agreeable and flirty with him, much the way she was when I first walked her through the darkness.  It was a small dagger in my side to see her with another, but I was strangely calm about it.

“Hi folks,” I said, making a great production of a fabricated smile.  “What can I do for you?”

Her laughter cut away in a gasp and she stood with her hand on her chest.  The trumpet player didn’t seem to notice, poking around at the bicycles.

I sauntered over to the rack with a big grin, acting oblivious.  “May I interest you in a cruise around town? There is a market every Saturday.  It’s loads of fun.”

“That sounds like a grand time,” the trumpet player said.  “Liv, what do you say?”

She didn’t answer.  She just stood there and swallowed any words that might have been trying to escape. 

“Liv, darling.  Doesn’t that sound like fun?  What’s the matter?”

“She’s overcome with joy,” I said.  “Here are two of our best loaners.  Very easy to ride.”

I patted two seats, still grinning like an idiot.

“The lady will love them.  Keep her away from the book shelves and don’t let her drink any coffee.”

The trumpet player gave me a funny look and reached for his wallet.  “I suppose that’s the oddest bit of advice I’ve ever heard.  But we’ll take them for the day.  Liv, you’ll want the pink one.”

“Sam,” Liv said.  “Sam, you behave yourself.  This is Kingslips.  You remember the–”

“The trumpet player,” I said.

“Oh,” Kingslips said, holding out two dollars.  “You know each other?”

“Kingslips?  That’s your name?”

“Sam, be good, will you?  Please be nice.”

“My professional name,” he nodded with a proud grin.

I snatched the two dollars the way Wheels would have done and counted them as if I was holding a handful of cash before stuffing them into my shirt pocket. 

“Watch the steering on the pink one,” I said.  “It has a tendency to wander when you look away.”

“Sam, how dare you.”  Her face flushed with anger.  It could have been embarrassment.

“What’s the trouble?” Kingslips said.

“You could have told me, Liv,” I said.

“How dare you,” she said again.  “You never told me a thing about you.  I had to hear it from Emery.”

I looked at her.  Kingslips stood there, his head moving back and forth between us.

“What’s going on here?”

“Emery told me you were in the Army.  He told me you went away to war.  I didn’t even know that, Sam.  And your brother that you told me I would meet someday.  Emery told me about him too.”

“Whose brother?  Where?  What are we talking about?”

“I hardly know you, Sam.  You could have told me you were in the Army.  You know how I feel about the military.”

“Now just a minute,” I said.  “Truman called and I answered.  I lost a brother.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?  You didn’t tell me anything.  Why did you hide so much?”

She used the word ‘did’ instead of ‘do’, and I realized it didn’t matter.  I had let her go between her fourth and fifth cup of Irish coffee.  Liv was a chance at getting free.  She didn’t attend church and she held religion in contempt for putting up barriers in her life.  She could have it.  Kingslips could have it.  She wanted no rules, life was easier without rules, and Kingslips could figure that out on his own.

“Have a fun ride today,” I said.

“This is absurd,” Kingslips said.  “I’ll ask you not to upset the lady.”

“You go to hell.”

He stepped back into the ridiculous fighting posture of a musicboy who never so much as swung a fist at a fly trying his hand at being a boxer.  I could have placed a trumpet in his hands and watched him blow, the way they were outrageously spaced in front of him.  It was all for show anyway.  I put my hands up.

“You win, Kingslisp,” I said, intentionally.

“That’s more like it.”  He put his fists down and straightened his shirt.  “And it’s Kings
lips
.  Now apologize and we’ll be on our way.  And I’ll have my two dollars back to make up for your rude service.”

I gave him is money back and they went down the road without the bicycles, not even looking back.

I was connected to rules by religion and rules by the military.  If Liv wanted to walk hand in hand with a man who lacked any healthy walls to confine his behavior, I would not be that man.  I couldn’t be if I wanted to.  Peter would see it all, he would be hanging over my head every day.  It made me angry to think I would be a slave to his watch, a ghost to keep me in line.  It made me angry that Liv, and now this trumpet player with the silly name, could ignore their consciences and enjoy forbidden fruits.

The little boy nudged my elbow. 

“I’ll pump up any other tires you need, mister.  I can be here all day.”

“You’re fixing to be a good bicycle mechanic one day.”

He shrugged.  “I just want to pump things.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Sunday morning’s bells pulled me from sleep, the hand that woke me, the hand that I feared and the hand that I fought in grip.  Why won’t it leave me alone?  Life would be so easy without the hand of God on my collar. 

Why won’t I accept His presence?

Elle was there in the third pew, hiding under the doily, an empty seat next to her.  I sat in the back and watched her, all those hand gestures, the moving lips.  She could be so at peace with a God that binds her for life. 

At communion I took the Body and the Blood at the altar and crossed myself for Him and for Peter, but not for me, and not for Elle.  I stepped over the kneeling legs of the parishioners in Elle’s pew and found myself in the spot next to her.  She looked up for a brief moment and smiled - a sweet smile that was too naive, too stainless in existence - moving her purse to make room before folding her hands again in prayer.  I knelt beside her in the praying posture while the caboose of the communion line approached the altar.  The hymn’s final lines became loud without the shuffling of feet and moving bodies to cut into it.

Elle did not speak.  Her head remained bowed, her eyes closed.  I watched the prayer move about on her lips, still unaffected by tragedy, still pure.  I leaned in and whispered.

“How do I pray?”

She did not look up, she did not stop in her prayers, did not make the slightest change in expression to show that she heard me, except that she reached over and put a hand on mine. I whispered again.

“I cannot pray when I don’t hear Him respond.”

She tightened her grip on me, squeezing my hands, but she remained silent and still.

“Life is so much easier, so much more realistic when there is no God to answer to.  When there are no cables to strap us down, no arrogant faith to keep us grounded.”

Elle looked at me finally.

“Peter is dead and I have not heard from God,” I said.

Her eyes were suddenly heavy and moist.  I realized then the church was completely silent, the communion line had gone, the hymn had faded, and Father Donnelly had replaced the chalice in the tabernacle.  He was standing with his head bowed at the altar.  I wondered if I had been heard.

There was no ache inside me to hear God, no explanation I was looking for.  I had many questions but I had grown comfortable with them, knowing they may never be answered.

Father Donnelly raised his arms and the congregation stood.  Elle held her hand on mine and I stood with her.

“Pray with me,” she tried to whisper, and I pulled my hand away.  The hymn began again.

“I’ve prayed for everything,” I said.  “I’ve tried to remain faithful.  I’m not wasting any more time with it.”

“Pray for the small things.”  She tried to disguise her words to sound like verses of the hymn.

“I have prayed.”

As the church emptied to the praising tune, Elle genuflected and hurried out ahead of me.  I swam through the parishioners to catch her, shaking Father Donnelly’s hand at the door, putting on my mask of faith for him.  I caught her arm in front of the church and she turned to look at me through tears.  I was angry again, nothing had been solved, and Elle was there to bear the brunt again.

“How can you still pray?” I said.  “Doesn’t anything make you question?”

“Of course I question.”  Her sadness had changed to anger. “I question everything, but I have faith.”

“You lost Peter.”

“So did you,” she said.  “But there is a higher calling in it.  Everything happens for a reason.”

“That’s high-ground Catholic simplicity.  You can’t face the world so you give God credit and say it’s all part of His plan.”

“It is.”  She pulled away and I caught her again.  “Don’t touch me,” she said.

“There are other girls that see it plainly.  That blonde that lives in your dorm, she lives without all this prayer and guilt.  She knows the world out there will carry on with or without a God in it.”

“Leave me alone, Sam.  That’s a childish way to behave.”

“She knows that people die and people live and God has nothing to do with it either way.”

“Then go be with her.  If all you want to do is go from girl to girl and forget about life then go and do it without me.”

“I wanted to.  The only reason I didn’t is because I had Peter looking over me.  But girls like that are shallow.  Just the type of shallow that I need.  There’s never been a girl I was friends with that I didn’t try to sleep with first.”

“What about me?”

“You too.  That day at Fort Wayne I had one thing on my mind.  Girls like you don’t give any attention to a guy unless he tries to make a pass, and then and only then do you give them the time of day.”

“Go and be with your pretty little blonde then.”

“I’m not seeing her anymore.”

She stood there in the shadow of the Basilica as people walked around us, some hurrying away and some taking a glance at us.  I had spoken in anger and I had spoken words that were more for effect than for truth.  I had crumpled her.  She did not move to wipe her tears, letting them flow over her cheeks. 

“Then what do you want me to say?” she asked.

I spoke then in truth.

“I want you to (tell me that you love me).”  My words were drowned in a clanging of church bells. The tower rang above us, the bells swinging to shower the noise from under their metal robes, and when I looked down again Elle was walking alone down the sidewalk.