Bethel's Meadow (28 page)

Then POOF! She was gone.

I’d heard about “poling” in the years I was in Norman. The fun began with dragging a screaming kid to the football field. Under the control of several football players, the screaming kid’s body was manipulated in such a manner that his crotch was rubbed violently against one of the goalposts until he was “blue-balled.” The only other thing I knew about poling was that I never wanted to become a victim of it.

My mind was in a manic whirl as I stood at my locker in the ninth-grade hallway. I was trying to think of how the hell I was going to deal with Bobby Clark’s minions once they began looking for me. Bobby Clark was a senior, a star football player who had signed a letter of intent to play for the Oklahoma Sooners following his impending graduation. He was the school’s star quarterback, the Golden Boy. I couldn’t imagine why he held any grudge against me. I had never spoken to him. But I had little time to mull over that conundrum. I had two class periods left to figure out how to deal with these cruel meatheads. Running away wasn’t an option. If I didn’t deal with them now, they’d just keep coming for me.

The final bell rang less than two hours later. I beat it the hell out of my algebra class and ran to my locker. I had to lighten my load. As I stashed my notebooks and texts into the locker, Bobby Clark strutted down the hall, headed straight for me. He was flanked and trailed by dozens of his teammates and excited spectators. As odd as it sounds, I remember standing there trying to figure out if monsters were born or if they were bred.

I looked at Clark and made a quick assessment. He was six-two and weighed about 210 pounds. I didn’t weigh more than a fucking paperweight back then. He was fair skinned and had fine blond hair that was feathered on the sides and parted down the middle. He was muscular and looked like a lumberjack in the flannel shirt he wore. I looked around to see if any teachers were nearby. Naturally, there weren’t any to be found.

I made a decision right there on the spot: Today was going to be the last day that anybody fucked with Bethel Smith. I had to make a statement so bold and so violent that word of my insanity would spread far and wide. But I was going to have to improvise.

“Hey, Lezzy-Beth,” Bobby Clark shouted as he slammed my locker door closed. I reacted barely in time to avoid having my hands sliced off by the sharp edges of that locker door. I still had the algebra textbook in my grasp: my weapon of choice. “We have a special treat for you, you little bitch.” He smiled and looked about to acknowledge the cacophony of demented laughter from his cheerful throng of followers. “We’re going to give you the greatest glory your sorry ass will ever have on a football field.”

What happened next went by so fast that to this day I remain convinced I was possessed by a spirit of some sort. Maybe it was just survival instinct. Whatever it was, it was a force of nature that was about to cut short a promising athletic career for a certain asshole Oklahoman.

The volume of laughter intensified as more kids surrounded my locker. I felt like Piggy must have felt at the bottom of that cliff in
Lord of the Flies
. I turned and faced Clark directly. He then swiveled his head all about yet again to further acknowledge the fawning adoration he was being showered with—that provided my opening. With a quick sweeping motion I circled my right foot around Clark’s right calf and executed a reverse kick, causing his leg to bend. That rendered the big dumb bastard off-balance enough for me to slam my algebra book into his now very surprised face. He fell to the floor, straight to his back, and I jumped on top of him and smashed his nose with that glorious textbook. His head snapped back and hit the tile floor—it sounded like an egg had cracked. I hit him again, this time underneath the chin. The egg cracked again.

I quickly stood up. I’ll never forget those kids’ faces. It looked like they had all just seen the devil himself. They sure as shit weren’t laughing anymore. I looked back down at Clark and kicked him between the legs. He was already crying, but the swift kick to his nards caused air to expel from his lungs, producing a sound similar to that of a balloon being popped.

I wasn’t familiar with the concept of violence until that very moment in my life, and therefore I was unfamiliar with the concept of restraint. As I contemplated my next move, teachers converged on the scene, and it must have taken three of them to eventually prevent me from continuing to kick Clark, but not before I got in another half dozen kicks. In the grasp of the teachers’ arms I relaxed and looked down at the 210 pound lump of aching and moaning flesh. The Golden Boy didn’t have enough hands to cover his testicles, his ribs, his nose, his chin, and the back of his head. He cried in agony on the floor as his teammates knelt by his side. His fan club was staring at me, mouths agape, all of them looking completely stupefied.

“Are you fucking crazy?” one of the football players shouted at me. The teachers were multiplying like baby rabbits in the hallway. I wondered where they had been just minutes earlier. Then I considered the football player’s question as the teachers continued to restrain me.

I then replied: “Yes, as a matter of fact, I
am
the craziest motherfucker you’ll ever come across in your entire life.” I smiled at the kid, trying to smile like I thought Charles Manson would. “And my name is Smith!” I shouted to them all. “Not Bethel! Not Lezzy-Beth! Not Lizzy-Beth! Do all of you motherfuckers get that?” I was really enjoying the drama of it all. As the teachers escorted me from the scene, I just kept yelling like a madman. I was really milking it.

I was suspended from school for the rest of the year and also for the school year following that one. Because Bobby Clark had suffered mild neurological damage associated with the concussion I gave him, I spent the remainder of my freshman year in juvenile lockup (good times!). A civil suit was filed against me, but that went nowhere because of my status as an unwanted orphan—my foster parents had rid themselves of the little terror named Bethel Smith. I was then rewarded with a fourth set of foster parents. They home-schooled me until I was allowed to return to a different high school in neighboring Edmond, Oklahoma, for my junior and senior years, by which time I had been turned over to my fifth set of foster parents.

Once enrolled at the school in Edmond, I discovered that my reputation had preceded me. I never had to say a thing.

The kids at the new school simply called me Smith. And they never gave me a lick of trouble for the two years I was there.

…

“And as of right now,” Glory said, “I am going to be calling you Bethel.” She said it with complete conviction. She wasn’t going to budge. “In the company of your friends and associates, I will address you as you wish. But when we’re alone, I will call you by your birth name. You are Bethel Smith.”

I supposed the time had come for me to grow up a little bit, and to accept myself for who I was, and for who I had always been. I was still in touch with that skinny little kid who had been cornered by the pack of football players and their avid followers on that fateful day. I still went through periods when I felt alone, when I felt like one of the extras on an episode of
Star Trek
: an expendable crew member who almost always gets zapped to oblivion by an alien with two heads. I also remembered the prank the yearbook staff had pulled on me while I was still in juvenile lockup in Norman, when in the yearbook it was printed that Bethel Smith had been voted “The Most Likely to Commit First Degree Murder.” Yeah, they actually got away with printing that. . . .

I was still living with all of that crap. Over twenty years had passed, and I continued to carry that hurt and hatred with me. It was now time to begin letting it go. And it was Glory Nolan guiding me away from those painful years, showing me the kindness, understanding, and acceptance that no one else ever had.

“Okay,” I said. “Fair enough. To you, I am Bethel. And I guess I’ll let my friends start calling me that too, though some of them probably won’t want to. I’ve been just plain Smith for years to those guys.”

Our dessert was then served: a Kahlua and Irish crème fondue with a blend of milk chocolate, topped with crushed graham crackers and Oreo cookies. We delighted in it like children, laughing and smiling at each other in an innocent manner that held no expectations or demands. We were just two people enjoying each other’s company.

After I paid the tab we went for a walk in a nearby public park. As it was a late Tuesday evening, we were alone and it was very quiet. It was in the upper sixties with a light breeze, which at one point caused a chill in Glory. Perhaps it was instinct, or maybe an opportunity she’d been looking for, but when the chill came she stepped in front of me and gave me a big hug. Her head was buried in my chest and she was laughing.

“I’m sorry, Bethel,” she said, “but a girl has to keep warm in whatever way she can.”

When she uttered my name like that, tears welled in my eyes. I couldn’t help it. It touched me in a way that I still cannot describe. But it did feel a little like . . . being born again.

Glory looked up and smiled. I placed my palms on her cheeks, feeling her soft, youthful, taut skin. The clouds that quickly passed overhead, which revealed the full moon in one instant and obscured it in the next, created a spectacular effect in her eyes, making them shimmer like blue emeralds. I swept the strawberry red curls from her face and kissed her on the forehead.

“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for giving me back my name.”

Glory’s smile slowly faded, worrying me for a second there, but then she placed her hands around my neck and pulled me near. She closed her eyes and tenderly kissed my lips. Her lips were delicately soft yet very firm and full of cosmic energy, giving me the sensational feeling that I’d discovered freedom, freedom from having to ever again kiss another woman’s lips. Somehow I knew this woman would be my last great love—my
only
great love. As she gently caressed my face with her loving hands, I felt a great weight lift from my troubled heart and my battered soul, and suddenly all of my pain and weariness had abandoned me.

She pulled away and smiled. “I want you to kiss me like a man should kiss a woman. Show me what you’ve got, Bethel Smith. Make me
feel
your passion, the passion that I know burns from
deep
inside of you.”

And so I did. As we French kissed we embraced like we never wanted it to end, united as one, knowing no one else could ever touch us. I could hear the fireworks and feel the magic I’d experienced when we’d first met, but now those fireworks had more meaning—they were symbolic of the freedom I felt I had now been given. With one hundred percent metaphysical certitude I knew that I’d found
The One
.

Both of us were breathing heavily now, and our hands were exploring one another cautiously. We were barely staying in bounds. She stopped kissing me long enough to say: “I love kissing you, Bethel Smith. Just promise me that for as long as we are together, we will never lose this fire. I’ll give you anything you want if you just do that.”

The whole damned planet could have exploded to bits all around us right then, but the apocalyptic destruction wouldn’t have harmed us at all. Somehow we’d have still been left standing somewhere in space, immune to the smoldering heat and shielded from the planetary debris.

Together, we were now bulletproof.

I swore to myself that I’d work my ass off for all of eternity to make Glory Nolan happy, safe, healthy, and secure.

I now considered her family.

33

I
DIDN’T SLEEP MUCH that night—only about two hours. But it was a blissful insomnia, a state of being I would have never thought attainable. My soul was at ease and I felt at peace with the world—the noise and pain that had been inside of my head for so long had completely abated.

I hadn’t showered before bedtime because I wanted the scent of Glory’s perfume to remain on my skin (she’d told me it was Chanel Coco Mademoiselle). I awoke from my abbreviated slumber somewhere around four a.m., and sure enough her divine essence was still with me. It was almost like having Glory there in bed with me. My heart longed for the day when that would actually happen.

The sun’s rays began peeking through the blinds of my bedroom window a few hours later. Instead of cursing the sun’s appearance, I sprung out of bed and opened the blinds and basked in its brilliant and promising glow, thanking God up above for the blessings I had received. I prayed that the emotions I now felt wouldn’t recede into the dark fog of hopelessness and despair that had loomed over me for most of my life.

Last night Glory, God bless her, hadn’t said a thing to me regarding the evening I’d left her apartment after Tricia the masseuse had gone Kim Basinger-from-
Blind Date
on me. I could sense that she wanted me to open up about it, but we’d had so many other things to talk about that we eventually got lost in conversation—and in each other. But hell, maybe Glory already knew how crazy that woman was without me having to explain it to her.

Glory was scheduled to work at the downtown branch of the library until midnight tonight—we wouldn’t see each other until tomorrow. So after I’d said my prayers to the Big Man I reluctantly stepped into the shower, and it damn near killed me to wash away Glory’s scent.
Man
, I thought,
you’ve got it bad, Smith. You might finally be done with the game
.

After I’d performed the three S’s it was almost eight o’clock. I called Vernon to inform him I was ready to get to work.