Michael Thomas Ford - Full Circle (17 page)

Andy, his spirits bright as ever, continued to chat with whomever was at hand. Then, as the date of October 24 was called, he let out a whoop.

"What number am I?" he asked.
"Number 196," a boy closer to the TV told him.
"Right in the middle," declared Andy. "Maybe yes, maybe no."

He sounded pleased with his position. At any rate, he returned to enjoying himself and seemed to forget all about why we were all gathered in the room. I ignored him, continuing to wait as number after number was assigned to dates other than mine. I sat through the 200s, then the 300s, until finally I found myself drawn at number 324. By then I had stopped worrying. There was virtually no chance that men of my draft number would be called, even if education deferments were abolished. I could look forward to my sophomore year without worry.

Free now to remember that Jack hadn't been as fortunate in his draw, I left the few remaining guys to await the end of the lottery and went to my room. Jack wasn't there, so I donned my jacket and went outside, walking to the student center and using the pay phone there to call my house. My mother answered, and by the tone of her voice I knew that she, too, had watched the drawing. I asked her if Jack's mother was there as well.

"Clark took her home a few minutes ago," she answered. "Is Jack okay?"
"Yeah," I lied. "I mean, he's in college, so he doesn't have to worry."

My deception was based partly on wanting to reassure her, but more on the fact that I didn't want her to know that Jack and I had not watched the lottery together. She would find that suspicious, and I wasn't in a mood for answering the inevitable follow-up questions. So I allowed her to think that everything was fine, even though I was far from sure that it was.

I hung up and looked around, thinking I might see Jack among the students talking about the night's events. He wasn't there, though, and once more I walked outside. The night was clear, and the stars bright. Looking up at them, I tried to imagine a soldier on the other side of the world doing the same thing. What did he see in their patterns? Did he watch them and dream of home? Did he curse them for having directed his fate in an unexpected and unwelcome direction? It suddenly seemed so absurd, the decision to send all the men born on a certain day into battle together, as if somehow their all being Aries, or Capricorns, or Libras would provide them some kind of instant kinship with one another, and therefore an advantage over the enemy.

I was thinking this when I heard someone say, "What's your number?"

 

I looked behind me and saw Jack standing there. He had a bottle in his hand, and by the way he swayed I guessed he had already drained a few before it.

"Three twenty-four," I told him.
He raised his bottle. "Congratulations," he said.
"You should call home," I told him. "Your mother's worried."

He ignored me, taking a long swallow from the bottle and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. He sat down on a concrete bench beneath a lamppost and leaned back, looking at the sky. I hesitated a moment, then went to sit beside him.

"Don't worry about having a low number," I told him. "They won't take you if you're in school." Jack reached into his jacket pocket, removed something, and handed it to me. It was an envelope. "What is it?" I asked.
"Open it," he said.

I opened the envelope and removed the piece of paper inside. It was a letter on university stationery. I scanned the contents quickly, puzzled as to why Jack was showing it to me. It was a notice of academic probation. Jack's midterm grades were below what he needed to keep his scholarship, and he was being informed that unless he raised his grade point average, he would have to pay for his next semester himself.

"I guess this is where you tell me I told you so," said Jack as I folded the letter and returned it to its envelope.

 

"So you might have to pay for school," I said. "It's not the worst thing that could happen."

Jack looked at me. His eyes were glassy. "You don't get it," he said, anger in his voice. "It's not about the fucking money. It's about the grades." He took the letter from me and waved it in my face. "They only give you a deferment if your grade point is above two-point-oh."

I looked at him, unable to think of a response. Never having had to worry about my grades, I was unaware of the requirements for deferment. I didn't know where Jack had gotten his information, but I had no reason to doubt its accuracy.
"Now do you understand?" he asked. "Now do you fucking see why I'm so fucking screwed?"

He stood up and jammed the letter into the back pocket of his pants. I stared at his back, thinking. "You still have time to get your average up," I said quietly. "Finals aren't until the end of the month, and term papers are almost half your grade anyway."

Jack turned around and looked at me. He shook his head. "The only way that's going to happen is if someone a whole lot smarter than me does my work for me," he said I understood what he was saying. He wanted me to help him. I looked away. Jack sat next to me.

"Come on," he said, his voice pleading. "It's just a few papers. Maybe some homework. Just help me out, Ned. You always have before."

I closed my eyes and breathed deep. I could smell Jack's stale breath as he waited for my answer. He was right. He could probably get his grade point up with a few spectacular term papers. And I could write them for him. I'd done it many times before. This would just be one more time.

"Please," Jack said. "I know I've been an asshole, but I still love you."

I opened my eyes and looked at him. He smiled the smile I'd always loved to see, the one that made me feel as if nobody else existed for him. How many times had he used that smile to get what he wanted? How many times had I given it to him?

I stood up, pulling my coat around me. "I'm sorry, Jack," I said, looking down at him. "I'm really sorry."
CHAPTER 17

Winter came early in 1969. By the end of the first week, we had experienced our first snowfall. The grounds were covered in a blanket of white, and across the campus groups of students staged snowball battles, pelting one another and unsuspecting passersby with frosty missiles. Inspired, a group of guys from Pinchot gathered outside one of the girls' dorms in the middle of the night for a secret mission. When the women woke up and looked out their windows the next morning, they were greeted by a snowman sporting a top hat, scarf, and an erection made from the largest carrot we could find. With Christmas break, and the end of the fall semester, only three weeks away, we were all thrown into overdrive as we rushed to complete work we'd put off for too long. I myself had three papers due on my instructors' desks: a critical analysis of Keats' "Ode to Melancholy," a comparison and contrast of Mohism and Confucianism during China's Hundred Schools of Thought, and a business plan for a mock company whose product I was supposed to select based on its likelihood of earning a substantial return. Of these, the last was giving me the most trouble. In response to the recent draft, I'd decided that my company would produce antiwar buttons to be sold at rallies, charging only enough to make a small profit, most of which would be donated to groups working for peace. It was a good idea, but it suffered from the fact that my instructor, an avid supporter of the military operations in Vietnam, hated it. After handing in my initial proposal, I'd been encouraged to develop a more "traditional" business whose purpose was to make money for investors. With two weeks left to go, I'd yet to think of an alternative product, and I was becoming slightly nervous.

Being around Jack didn't help. Since my refusal to do his work for him, he had, I suppose understandably, grown even more distant. I rarely saw him, partly because he was often out of the room, but also because I stopped seeking him out. Also, I'd returned to Andy. I told myself it was purely out of convenience. On December 4, Black Panther members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark had been drugged with secobarbitol-laced Kool-Aid by an undercover operative and then killed in their sleep by Chicago police during a predawn raid on Hampton's apartment. The next day, Chaz and several other Black Panther supporters elected to drive to Illinois for the funeral and had yet to return. Andy had offered Chaz's bed to me on a temporary basis after I'd complained of not being able to work with Jack around.

I was foolish to accept the offer, and I knew it. But I did it anyway. Although Andy had yet to acknowledge his role in the dissolution of my relationship with Jack, he seemed to relish having me around him more often. I, in turn, elected to take this enthusiasm for growing interest in me. I began to view Andy's affections, such as they were, as a prize to be kept out of Jack's hands at any cost. Like the holder of a ball in a game, I was determined to retain control. What I wanted, of course, was to hurt Jack. What I believed I wanted was Andy.

I did everything I could to get him. He without hesitation allowed me to resume my role as provider of sexual favors, all the while continuing to talk freely about Tracy and the other girls with whom he had affairs. As I had with Jack in high school, I considered these relationships inconsequential. What mattered to me was that Andy accepted my advances, and therefore me. I wove a relationship from these meager threads, convincing myself that I was in love with him.

I suppose I was in love with him, although I now find it contradictory to logic that one would fall in love with someone who did not return the feelings. Become infatuated with, of course, but doesn't love need to see itself reflected back in order to truly flourish? In the absence of its mate, should it not wither and die, or at the very least reveal itself as the inferior impostor it really is? How can we go on truly loving another who doesn't share the emotion?

I know, I know. It happens all the time. Perhaps. But I maintain that what we call love is often something less. It's only our need to see it as love that allows us to be blinded. In the end, though, it makes no difference. The agony we feel is the same. In matters of the heart, a counterfeit can be as intoxicating, and as dangerous, as the real thing.

And so I believed that I was in love with Andy Kowalski. I proved it by demanding nothing of him, probably because I knew that he would be incapable of fulfilling any requirements I might impose. Wearing my love like a ring around my finger, I set out to humiliate Jack by making sure he knew that I held first place in Andy's attentions. In addition to regularly sleeping in his room, I was careful to be seen as often as possible in Andy's company. I took to wearing his clothes, which he found amusing, and I delighted in riding in his truck with him, particularly when he would put his arm along the back of the seat and, purely by accident of design, around my shoulder.

Jack refused to take my bait, which only made me try harder. When he failed to start arguments I laid out for him, or to show anger after discovering evidence (Andy's lighter, a borrowed T-shirt) I strategically left in our room as proof of my flourishing romance, I responded by asking him how his schoolwork was coming. This alone sparked a reaction in him, which was to tell me to fuck off and mind my own business. I considered the slam of the door on his way out a victory claimed. I am not, by nature, a vindictive person. Like anyone, I hold certain grudges, and I resent deceit above all things. But I like to think that I am not unkind. During those final weeks of December, however, I was guilty of every imaginable hateful feeling toward Jack. I convinced myself that he had deserted me first, conveniently forgetting that long before his suggestion of different roommates, I had harbored feelings for Andy, and had, in fact, acted on them repeatedly. We were both guilty of the sin of omission, but I was the one who upped the ante by adding cruelty to my list of transgressions. That I might have gone too far didn't occur to me until a few days before the commencement of our winter break. Having handed in my final paper (I'd swapped my peace buttons for 8-track cartridge players and turned a tidy profit), I was now faced with the realization that I was supposed to return home in two days' time and that my means of transportation was the one person I'd been tormenting mercilessly. Jack had no reason at all to allow me to come with him, and I had no other way of going. I considered my options, which basically consisted of making up with Jack, at least for the duration of the holidays, or finding alternate transportation. I'd made a number of friends other than Andy, but none who lived near my town. I briefly considered trying to convince Andy to come home with me for Christmas, but I knew his grandparents were expecting him. Also, I feared I would not be able to hide my feelings for him from my mother, particularly were we to share my bed. With no other option, I approached Jack as he was trying to finish one of his many overdue assignments. Adopting a neutral tone, I asked, "Are you almost done?"

"No," he said sharply.
"Do you want some help?" I tried.
Jack looked up at me. "Not really," he said. "Why?"
"I just thought you might want some help," I said. "That's all."
"Well, I don't," he said, returning to his work.

I saw nowhere else to go with the conversation, so I decided to leave him and see what Andy was doing. As I opened the door to go, Jack said, without looking at me, "I told my mother we'd be there on Saturday around three."

"Three," I repeated. "Okay."

As we had so many times in the recent past, we'd come to a compromise without having to discuss it. My worries about getting home out of the way, I returned to Andy. Also done with his classes, he was getting into the Christmas spirit, taking the lid off a bow-topped tin of what looked like cookies when I entered the room.

"Look," he said, taking out a cookie shaped like a reindeer and holding it up. "This chick in my bio class made these for me."

"What are they?" I asked. "Gingerbread?"
"Even better," Andy said, biting the head off the deer. "Hash."

A half dozen pot-infused Rudolphs, Dashers, and Vixens later, I decided that I would give Andy my present a few days early. I brought out from under the bed a package wrapped in cheery paper. I handed it to Andy and told him to open it, then watched as he pulled the paper off to reveal Jethro Toll's Stand Up .