Over and Under (30 page)

The summer I graduated from IU, Tom married Shelly Stemler, and I was right up there at the front of St. Mary of the Knobs with him, the only person in the front half of the church, including the priest, who wasn’t a blood relative of either the bride or groom. As the only non-Catholic in the bunch, I had to step awkwardly aside as the rest of the wedding party took communion. While I waited, I saw Don Strange’s grave through the window, a stained-glass depiction of a suffering saint.

After college, I swapped my redneck for a trader’s red jacket, and took a job at the Merc in Chicago, where I participated in huge, abstract financial transactions related vaguely to the price of milk. As a mental exercise, I try sometimes to calculate the effect my actions are having on
the shelves of Miller’s General Store. I ride a train home at night to a condo that’s pure big-city sophistication, without a Mason jar or lard bucket in sight, although my M6 is tucked deep inside my closet, in violation of a dozen gun laws, city and state. I just can’t bring myself to get rid of the thing.

I’ve hung on to that kiss from Taffy as well, and the lingering feeling that we both were cheated out of something special. I still scan crowds for her, as my eye-rolling friends will attest, especially in bars where beer and seventies rock are both being served in overly generous quantities. It is not a completely insane notion. Lots of Indiana kids attracted to bright lights and skyscrapers end up in Chicago, and I have, once or twice, actually spotted other Borden expatriates walking down Rush Street, or in the bleachers at Wrigley. But I never see Taffy. I’ve tried to just be grateful for what I have, the photograph and the kiss. But I know now what I think Taffy completely realized at the time. It was a kiss good-bye.

A few times a year I make the long drive back from Chicago to Borden to see Mom and Dad, and Tom’s growing family—he’s up to four kids now. I like to drop by his place unannounced, so they don’t make a big deal of getting the kids scrubbed clean and dressed up. I like walking over from my parents’ house and just watching for a few seconds before they all spot me, the scruffy, shirtless boys shooting arrows into hay bales, the tomboy daughters trapping lizards in Mason jars. Tom always meets me on the front porch with a smile and a firm handshake, looking more like his dad every time I see him.

Shelly, like my mother, has a strict no-dead-animals-in-the-living-room policy, but a few reminders of those eventful days are still visible in their home. Tom keeps his dad’s union card in a small frame right by his high school diploma. On the same wall is a picture of Tom and me together on our dirt bikes just before the strike, shirtless, smiling, and bushy-haired, the Borden Institute looming in the background. The most striking memento of that summer is proudly displayed over the fireplace, above a mantel crowded with framed photographs of sons and daughters in white celebrating the holy sacraments. On wrought-iron hooks, looking not at all out of place, hangs an ancient German sword.