Michael Thomas Ford - Full Circle (18 page)

"Thanks, man," he said, getting up and putting the album on the turntable. "This is great."

He sat down again and mimed playing guitar along with Ian Anderson. Feeling expansive, I got up and lit some sandalwood incense, which Andy kept on hand to cover the smell of pot. I also lit a candle, turning off the lights so that its glow turned the room into a rosy cocoon. When I sat down again, it was next to Andy. He leaned against me, still strumming his invisible guitar, and sang along to the song.
"‘Spent a long time looking for a game to play.'"

His voice was rough and out of tune, but the sound of it thrilled me.

He looked over at me and smiled, nodding in time with the music. In the candlelight, he looked so beautiful that I wanted to kiss him. I leaned toward him, my heart racing, hoping he wouldn't turn his face away.

"What are you dumb white-ass faggots doing in here?"

 

I jumped as the door crashed opened and Chaz walked in, two other black men behind him. Andy stopped singing.

 

"My brother," he said. "Where you been, man?"

"I'm not your brother, and where I've been is none of your damn business," Chaz replied, slapping Andy's outstretched hand in greeting. He noticed the tin of cookies and took three, handing one to each of the men with him. "These here are my brothers, Cornell and William J."

"Hey," Andy said. Cornell and William J. held their fists up in the black power salute, but said nothing.

"Who's been sleeping in my bed?" asked Chaz, looking at the rumpled sheets. "Oh," I said nervously. "I have. I hope it's okay."

"Who the hell do you think you are, boy?" he replied. "Goldilocks? Sleep in your own damn bed and stop getting your white dirt all over my sheets."

 

"Sure," I said. "No problem, Chaz." I looked at Andy, who had started playing again. "I guess I'll go," I told him.

"See you," he said. "Thanks again for the album."
"Yeah," I said. "Merry Christmas."

I got up, nodding at Chaz and his friends, who parted to let me through. Reluctantly, I went downstairs to my room. Jack was still working, and barely looked up when I came in. With nothing else to do, I got into bed and picked up the book I was reading, Joyce Carol Oates'sThem , which I'd recently checked out from the school library after hearing my literature teacher praise it as a masterpiece of American fiction. The bleak yet beautifully-written story of the Wendall family and their lives in Detroit had drawn me in from the first page, and in the novel's violence and turmoil I saw something of my own life. As only a young man in the grip of unrequited love can, I felt a connection with every soul who had ever longed for something and been unable to have it. Happily, I allowed myself to swim in self-pity until, twenty or thirty pages later, I found myself falling asleep.

Andy left the next day without saying good-bye. I found out when I went to his room to wish him a safe trip and found Chaz and his friends looking at a copy of Penthouse magazine. They were, surprisingly, not looking at the pictures, but arguing over an article suggesting that the man accused of killing Martin Luther King was a scapegoat.

"I told you Ray was just the fall guy," William J. said as I stood, listening. "Cracker's too stupid to shoot anybody."

"Bullshit," Chaz said. "This is just more government cover-up. Who do you think reads this magazine?
Uptight white men whose wives won't give them any pussy, that's who. They just put these shit-crazy articles in here so they won't feel like perverts for looking at a little cooch."

"This cooch don't look so bad to me," remarked Cornell, taking the magazine and holding it open. Chaz finally noticed me standing there. "You looking for Andy?" he said. "He left a couple of hours ago."

"Really?" I said, disappointed.
"Really," Chaz said, perusing the magazine spread.

Feeling stupid, I mumbled a confused thank-you, good-bye, and Merry Christmas and left them to their magazine. None of them responded.

The following morning, I made one more ride home with Jack. It had begun to snow during the night (the winter of 1969 would end up being Pennsylvania's snowiest on record) and we drove all the way through in a semi-blizzard. Forced to go more slowly than usual, the length of our trip was extended by almost two hours as we watched the taillights of the cars ahead of us blink like eyes through the flurries. When we were about halfway there, Jack suddenly said, "I didn't do it."

"Do what?" I asked, not understanding.
"Get a two-point-oh," he answered.
"How do you know?" I asked. "We haven't gotten our grades yet."
"I just know," he said without elaborating.
"But you were working so hard," I protested. "All that studying, and writing, and—" "It wasn't enough," Jack snapped, cutting me off. "It just wasn't enough, okay?"

I shut my mouth and sat silently for a minute, watching the wipers wage their vigilant battle against the snow. Jack, both hands on the wheel, stared straight ahead.

"What are you going to do?" I asked finally.
"I don't know," said Jack.

I didn't have any suggestions for him, at least not any that seemed reasonable. He could go to Canada, or hope for a medical deferment. Neither of those seemed likely, however. Maybe, I thought, he was wrong. Maybe he had managed to squeak by. But he seemed so certain of his failure. Never before had I seen him admit defeat.

"It's my fault," I heard myself say.
"It's not your fault," said Jack.
"Yes, it is," I argued. "I should have helped you."
"I can take care of myself," Jack said. "We're not kids anymore."

He was right about that. We weren't kids. We were men, men who after walking the same road together for many years were now at a crossroads, each of us looking in a different direction. Where the paths we chose would take us, I had no way of knowing.

"I'm sorry," I told him for the second time in our lives. This time, I meant it.
CHAPTER 18

Why is it that so many people who never otherwise step foot inside a church decide that they will make an exception on Christmas Eve? This is a rhetorical question. Yet it bears asking. To me, it's rather like making an annual birthday visit to a convalescent home so that a bilious elderly relative whose failing internal processes and yellow, thickened nails fill you with revulsion might be moved by your expression of devotion into leaving you something in her will. Do we really believe that God, if he is indeed keeping score, will forgive our general lack of attention simply because once a year we come to wish his son many happy returns? Perhaps the understanding God of the New Age might overlook such blatant attempts at currying favor, but he of the New Testament would surely not. Still, even for those of us who find faith a challenge, there is something magical about a Christmas Eve service. Each December 24 for the past fifteen years, Thayer and I have become temporary members in the congregation of St. Gregory's Episcopal Church, our tenure lasting for exactly the length of that evening's service. We go because it is a tradition, and because we like the music. Also, we go because there is something undeniably beautiful about a church viewed through gently falling snow and lit from within by candles. Entering such a place, even a confirmed old pagan such as myself cannot helped but be moved by the eternal story of hope arriving on Earth in the form of a child. On Christmas Eve of 1969, I was not feeling so hopeful. I was, in fact, filled with great sadness and agitation. Since learning of the almost certain loss of Jack's scholarship, I had been punishing myself for what I had determined was an obvious desire on my part to see him harmed in some way. Why, I asked myself, could I not have helped him? Why had I outright refused to do so? There was, in my mind, only one answer to that question: I was a terrible person.

In the days since arriving home, I had tried to lift my gloomy spirits by throwing myself headlong into the familiar holiday rituals. With my father I had selected and set up the tree, a full-figured spruce whose top reached almost to the ceiling. Together we had strung the lights, and together we had cursed when a single failed bulb caused the entire string to wink and go out, resulting in our having to replace every single one in the line until we found the troublemaker. Then came the decorations, an involved process during which my mother kept us supplied with a steady stream of hot chocolate and cookies while providing a running commentary on the origins of each painted wooden bird and jolly glass Santa. The house, filled with the cheerful voices of Mitch Miller and his gang, was near to bursting from all the Christmas spirit.

And still I was depressed. Even my parents' murmurings of a mystery gift of extraordinary wonder failed to lift my flagging mood. I feigned joy for their sakes, but alone in my room I lay on my bed and tried to think of some way to make it up to Jack. Because of me, he was perhaps going to end up fighting a war that had nothing to do with him.

Then came Christmas Eve and the annual rite of attending the Ebenezer Lutheran Church nativity pageant. We'd been coming for years, at my mother's insistence, although we were neither Lutheran nor religious, apart from the occasional saying of grace at meals. I think my mother chose the church because she liked the stained-glass windows, which as I recall were indeed remarkable. For whatever reasons she'd selected it, we'd come there since I was a baby, and if any of the regular attendees found our presence irritating, they were kind enough never to let on.

The program was the same every year. It began with a procession of tiny shepherds. These were followed by the three kings, Melchior, Balthasar, and Caspar, carrying their gifts for the baby Jesus. Jesus, along with his parents, was already ensconced in his manger at the front of the church. Once all those who wished to adore him had arrived, the angels appeared singing "Hallelujah!" and the rest of us joined in welcoming the Son of God into our midst.

How is it that the sight of a small shepherd boy stumbling over the belt of his father's bathrobe on the way to stand beside a doll lying in a box of straw can bring one to the point of tears? It does now, and it did then. I remember that night watching the children assemble, the angels holding their tinsel halos to prevent them from falling off, poor Joseph peering anxiously at a somber Mary, as if terrified she might at any moment yell at him to stop fidgeting. As I looked at them, I saw Jack and myself at their age. Like them, we'd never worried about being sent to war. We'd never imagined that the games of soldier that we waged in backyards and school playgrounds would one day be undertaken in foreign jungles with real weapons. Their innocence, and the loss of ours, was heartbreaking. Together we sang "All My Heart this Night Rejoices," a hymn I have only ever heard sung in that church. "All my heart this night rejoices," goes the first line with its peculiar up-and-down meter, followed by the staccato second, "As I hear, far and near, sweetest angel voices." The cycle is then repeated, and the Nativity story advanced, with "Christ is born, their choirs are singing. Till the air, everywhere, now with joy is ringing."

Like so many of the songs written by Paul Gerhardt, the Lutheran church's prolific and beloved hymnist, this one has many verses. Fifteen, to be exact. With true Lutheran doggedness, we sang every one of them while the children held their poses as best they could, the wise men frozen on their knees before the baby Jesus and the shepherds restlessly swaying from side to side, ready for the cookies and cider awaiting them in the church's basement.

Nearly forty years later, I still recall the words to that hymn, although I will admit that I did require some assistance. Several years ago, wanting to share the song with Thayer, I sought out a Lutheran hymnal to refresh my memory. (Thayer would say that I stole it from a church in town while pretending to admire the architecture, but I argue that my need was pure and God forgiving.) At any rate, I did remember its place in the hymnal, number 77, and was pleased to see that my recall was only somewhat lacking. Admittedly tedious in its repetitiveness, the song is nonetheless blessed with some lovely imagery. My favorite of the verses is number eight: "Come, then, banish all your sadness, one and all, great and small, come with songs of gladness. Love Him who with love is glowing, hail the Star, near and far, light and joy bestowing."

The message, unfortunately, was lost on my 19-year-old self. I sang the words without hearing, and certainly not feeling, any of the gladness contained in them. Although I wanted to be happy, I wouldn't allow myself to be. I was too sad, and too angry. I was angry at Jack for allowing himself to fall so far behind in his schoolwork. I was angry at myself for refusing to help him and then taking pleasure in his failure. I was even angry at the baby Jesus for daring to offer his gift of salvation while so many were dying or preparing to die, and at the angels for proclaiming his goodness. My Christmas wish, had I been asked, would have been to switch places with Jack so that I, not he, would be facing the possibility of going to Vietnam.

We did not join the congregation for cookies following the service, instead returning home for a supper of oyster stew, a tradition which originated within my mother's family. In 1879, her grandmother had brought with her from Dublin a recipe for fish soup, long served in Ireland on Christmas Eve. Finding ling cod, the primary ingredient, unavailable, the resourceful woman (and many of her Southside Chicago neighbors) had substituted oysters, considered a poor man's food in 18th century America and therefore plentiful and cheap. She had taught my mother to make it when she was a girl, and she still did it the same way Brigid O'Reilly had a century before, tumbling the oysters into a pan of warm cream and melted butter and heating them until the fluted sides curled up indignantly. Served hot in a bowl with tiny crackers, it was a perfect precursor to the more substantial Christmas feast we would have the next day. Christmas Eve was one of the few days we did not share with Jack's family. In almost all other ways identical to us, on the point of religion they had declared their independence. While we went to Ebenezer Lutheran, they went across town to the Emanuel United Methodist Church. In recent years, they had also begun to go with much more regularity, to the point where Mr. Grace was now a deacon and Jack's mother occasionally found herself having to host lunches for the Ladies' Auxiliary. They also opened their presents on Christmas Eve, while our family waited until the morning. As children, this had presented Jack and I with an unusual dilemma. While he went to bed with his gifts revealed and often in his arms or within easy reach, I was forced to spend an anxious night wondering what Santa would leave for me. Both of us would have to wait until I was finished tearing the paper from the boxes beneath the tree the next morning before we could compare our bounty over our shared Christmas dinner. Our parents explained the difference in Mr. Claus' schedules for visiting our homes by telling us that our houses, though side by side, were on different delivery routes, a lie we accepted rather than accept the awful truth.