The Lost Highway

by David Adams Richards

  But the idea of an ecclesiastical abandon surfaced in him—and the idea that he did not need these temporal things overcame him. For it was what he wanted her to believe, even if he was uncertain.

  He thought, What will I say, how can I say I want her with someone else? He even thought of the moment he came when masturbating. Still, in pretentious casualness, and suddenly misinformed about his own agony, he said: “Of course—I have decided to go into the seminary of the Holy Cross next summer.”

  “You are—you will,” she whispered, tightening her grip on his hand.

  Her face was completely open in its vulnerable gaze, saying, If I let go your hand I will let go forever. But he could not overcome the idea that he was wounding her with this, and that she had wounded him. This meanness of spirit he suddenly remembered in his father, and yet could not correct it in himself. It was not so terribly harsh, but it was terrible it was present.

  “And you have a good life.” He smiled, but his lips trembled slightly. He would never understand why he spoke these words. But he was proof of Aristotle’s disagreement with Socrates about men who have knowledge saying inconsistent things.

  It was as if something beyond him compelled him to say this, as if the words had been in his mouth for a hundred million years. Both of them were still children really, standing in the early morning air along the lost and broken highway. What was so distressing is when he remembered her soft skin when her skirt blew up, and the triangle of dark hair. It was a mystery, and there was nothing temporal in it but a wondrous spirit of life that beckoned to him. But there was this: if he let his guard down, would she want him the same way? That was the question he was too frightened to have answered. He was frightened to give himself over to her question, and let her then control what she said in return. In hindsight this was one of the most significant moments of his life, on a windswept lonely lane.

  He was pleased she had looked hurt, for a second.

  She let go of his hand, kindly, and left him there. She turned and walked along the far side of the lane, and disappeared toward her house, rushing in the morning air, her head down. He could not stand to watch her go. So he tried to call to her but no words came.

  And so he looked at his small Timex watch that his aunt had bought him for his seventeenth birthday and hurried home as well.

  He did not swear, smoke, or drink, and would look piously upon the world. But now his uncle’s former activities bothered him, and he took a moment to reprimand his uncle one evening. In fact, he had many of them written down.

  “Do you know how many times you whipped me?” he said. “I was chased outside in my underwear in February and slept in the barn. I was kept from friends. I never had a party in my life. I don’t mind that—but there were other things. You tell me all the time how bad my mother was. And things I say which I know are true—and this is the most important thing: I know they are true—and I say them, and you tell me they aren’t true. You say I made things up, when I never—and it torments me. Then you just laugh. And then, why did you have to tell me about my father—this Roach who hurt my mother—he is nothing to me.”

  The night was growing dark, and outside he heard the first robin of the spring twitter once in the trees. And so he spoke as if to the robin.

  “Yes,” Jim said, almost peevishly, “I know. But I want you to know something. I paid for your dad’s funeral—I tried to put him to rest, and I didn’t have to!”

  Alex thought this was a great catharsis, but later on Jim would not speak to him, and looked away many times after. He was hurt, as men are when faced with something they always felt was incomprehensible.

  And Alex’s flaw was this: whenever he thought of Minnie he did something to harm himself, to end the body’s desire, so he would not masturbate again. Somewhat like Saint Rosa of Lima. He cut himself, and distributed these cuts, hidden.

  And it worked for a while. But still, in his deepest heart he knew this could not be sanctified, this was not what Christ wanted. So he tried harder to put all prurient thoughts out of his mind. But how could these thoughts, which were natural and overcame him at all hours, be unnatural?

  He decided he would impress them all, and disprove his own desire, by becoming a saint. His aunt said he might be a little naive in thinking this, but was nonetheless thrilled by the idea.

  “Saint—well, don’t try it all at once.”

  “But that’s what a saint does—tries it all at once,” Alex said. “Well, not Saint Augustine perhaps, but Saint Francis and Saint Joan of Arc, and so many others!”

  A saint had armor against the arrows of the world by not recognizing them as arrows. The great saints could walk through them because they did not acknowledge them. But on occasion, one thought would creep back into his mind. He would think of the day the wind blew her skirt high above her panties in the yard, enough to make him weak, and Sammy had laughed as if he had already seen it. And he remembered that she never left the house to walk down the Gum Road unless her blouse was pure and white—even on those days when her father had taken her socks—and one day, in the afternoon light through the trees, he saw that beneath her blouse she had no bra on, because the few she owned were on the line, her nipples taut as raisins in the sun.

  Still, what had started in bravado and pride—the idea to show her up, by becoming a priest—continued in feverish hope. After a while this desire, and obligation, became his entire life. It had to—and why, because of people who were watching him, waiting for the flaw that would take him down. So he could not go down, he must keep the faith in all weather, until people saw it was not a pretense. That is, if it was pretense he must disprove it even to himself. And so he gritted his teeth and bore it.

  The day before he entered the seminary of Holy Cross to study theology and Saint Augustine, his great uncle had a party for him, and invited every one of the young people. It was subdued because of the calling he had, because there was no beer for them, and because most of them did not know him well. But Minnie, whom he waited for, longed to see, did not come. Besides, though the venue was outside it was raining.

  He sat on a lawn chair by himself a little away from everyone, and waited for Minnie. He looked like a boy who can only appear in rural Canada: clumsy, coming to manhood half-sophisticated, understanding the rudiments of society yet lacking in much, and trying to hide it all with sayings and ideas gleaned from the fringes of the broader world, all of this making him look gangly, self-conscious, and overly suspicious. That is, he was like a boy from everywhere, but in some aspects like one seen only here.

  His uncle, with his tall boyish walk and his mat of white hair, stood above all, and impressed the young, as he could always do, with tales of the woods and war. He was filled with the kind of contrived outrageousness people have when they have little chance of being challenged. And he exuded the bravery that older naive men do in front of kids. And he sang old lumbering songs and told jokes to liven the party up, and drank homemade wine from his stash in the barn, and gave some to two of the more rugged boys who he wanted to approve of him. They drank and smiled at the jokes he told, and ignored Alex for the most part. He thought of their lives and wondered what would become of them. The old man also flirted with one of the young girls who had come, who responded to him out of politeness he misunderstood, and this made Alex embarrassed.

  He took out his photos and showed his medals and spoke of his doings, and Alex himself sat alone. His aunt came to him and said, “I’ve had many dreams lately about Minnie—”

  “Oh, I haven’t,” he said, lying, to bolster his virtue, though he had masturbated that week thinking of her.

  Muriel knew he liked to sculpt and asked him if he wouldn’t like to go to the School of Fine Arts in Halifax, she was sure she could make his uncle see the virtue of it. That he would someday be a fine sculptor. But he thought of the clay pieces he had done of those birds he once sketched, now lying in torment about the junkyard behind him, and said with perhaps as much naïveté
as his uncle, “Well, we are all clay.”

  —

  WHEN HE HAD BEEN IN THE SEMINARY A YEAR AND A HALF, and wore a silver cross on his chest, and had passed through his first series of exams, went to mass every day, and said prayers from seven until nine at night, was silent in certain parts of the seminary, he believed that he was better for it, and that he himself one day, as his older brothers in Christ had, would lay prostrate on the altar in the hope of attaining the pleasure of Christ while snow fell on the dark ground. He wanted to be a young priest on the Bartibog and say his first mass where he had once served on the altar. He thought of pleasant afternoons in snow-laden February walking to small country houses to see the children—just as priests had done in the long ago. So many people his age wanted the same thing and sought so many ways to find it. But not he. He had already found it. He would return to it—to the idea of caring for the children’s souls by loving them as human beings. He would do this for the memory of his mother. He tried not to think of his father, that failed musician who had died some time ago.

  Great men had come from the Bartibog and great healers as well, and in truth great priests, who were known and written about. Priests who gave their lives for others, and served in the wars—walking into battle unarmed, like Father Morrissey and Father Hickey and Father Murdock. He knew this, and loved the idea of that kind of pure understanding, especially when the world understood so little now. And it did understand so little. He could tell Minnie understood so little, about true love and happiness, that he was as always awash in sympathy for her. And it was only this spiritual sympathy that allowed him to love and not want her, he believed.

  He wanted the comfort of snowfall in the late autumn and picking out the decorations for Christmas celebrations at his little church. This is what he thought about. And so, in those moments, she did not matter.

  But one thing plagued him. He was angered by something he had been angered by before—just one thing, and it was this: his own false obsequiousness, the kind he had seen when his uncle met the nuns. He talked to MacIlvoy, a young man, a fine hockey player, who was studying for the church too, who simply said: “Give all these matters up—for there are other matters in the world far more important.”

  This was from a man who was drafted by the Montreal Canadiens and didn’t accept because of his calling.

  Then he received another postcard from Leo Bourque.

  Dear Alex—I have read a book on Balzac. I remember you once saying that about Balzac he was very good as a righter as any England person, and I am sure you will be able to tell me other books I would like to get now. I am going with Doreen LeBlanc and she is very popular and I am sure to make a fool of myself, but if you got some news to me about other books I could read—your friend Leo Bourque.

  He thought of answering it, but the address was obscured by a stain. And he didn’t want to remember how he had been tormented by Leo. But there was something else: it was the basic instinct of pleasure he had at knowing Leo was trying to emulate him after once having tormented him and thinking, That’ll never happen again.

  He laughed at the fact that Bourque was short and lifted weights. It all seemed so ordinary to him.

  “It’s good he saw the error of his ways.” He smiled, folding the letter up. He imagined as time went on how Leo would come to him, ask forgiveness, or do him unsolicited favors. And he felt special when he thought of how he would refuse all of this, all of the favors Leo would want to do for him.

  He plunged into Saint Augustine and Thomas Merton, into the liturgy of the church, into masses and saints and fasts and feast days and calendars. To him, Saint Augustine was brilliant but obscure. So Alex thought Merton a man to emulate and a very great man. Yet what bothered him about The Seven Storey Mountain was Merton’s mocking of physical love. If Merton, who Alex considered a great man, was wrong (as Alex believed he was) in this salient point, then might not other things be wrong?

  He therefore now and then began to think of Minnie, and to wonder what she was doing at any given time during the long day—and if she ever thought of him. Twice, three times, he thought of phoning her—but did not, even though he walked to the phone booth on the highway. And then one day, out of the blue, he was struck by something. Rage. It just overcame him when he was in the field helping with the haying.

  He was very jealous of her when he thought of what she might be doing. And he could not remain pure in his thoughts or deeds, as he lied continually to himself, saying he was. And just as he thought this, he knew others there were lying as well, just by their look, and he knew this grave falsehood followed them. That night he helped put the horse into the stall, and fed it oats, and walked toward the chapel to pray. He believed prayer to be the only thing that could combat what he was feeling. But that night something peculiar happened. All those young men were rushing up the road, some of them hobbling between a walk and a run, just as the sun was going down. They passed through some shafts of light falling through the trees and onto the dusty road as they ran to see the new Corvette that Mr. Cid Fouy had bought. Though they were supposed to be in chapel they had all rushed to see it, for someone told them Cid was giving people rides, and there were only two Corvettes on the whole river.

  He could see them as they hobbled up the road, catching up to one another, shouting whispers. He was stunned by this covetousness, and stunned too by the naïveté of those young men, some born in poverty along the coast, who would rush out to see a car.

  He went back to his room to be by himself, angered that they did not follow him. He realized it was very easy for them to agree with him when they had nothing else to do, but at any other time they were worse than the kids on the school bus.

  Then, after a time, when he could not get Minnie out of his mind, Alex began to think that he would go to serve in some remote place in the north, among the Inuit, and not be seen here again. He was both kind and supportive of the native kids here, and he realized this might be for the best. Then in some manner—saving a village from the plague, a child from some plight—his name would drift over the hillocks of warm snow, south toward her. This daydream occurred in a necessary way, because of the feeble yet inextinguishable lamp lighted in some recess of his brain for Minnie Tucker. He heard too that she and Sam Patch had given up the idea of getting married, and that they saw each other only every couple of weeks.

  But this strangely did not make him consider leaving his study. However, it made him feel pleased.

  Yes, she would be a cause for concern as long as he lived—so best not to live on the Arron side of the great Bartibog. Hopefully if away, never a concern to be concerned about—however, he was still human. (He said this as if to anoint himself with the common ground without believing that it really applied to him.)

  But there were two incidents back to back that came after he had been in seminary a year and a half.

  The first was this: He had to go down to the reserve with a box of communion envelopes. There, the strangest thing happened to him. It was not reported about, no one found out, and in the annals of history it was perhaps never recorded. Coming out of the small church in the late afternoon, with drizzle in the air, he came face to face with a black bear suffering mange. Worse, her cub came toward him. The mother, famished from winter, gangly and cross, rushed toward him also. As he backed up he screamed, and tried to run. But just then a native boy about ten years of age, at the church preparing for his confirmation, jumped between the bear and him, and grabbing rocks from the dirt began throwing them. Two hit the mother in the head, stopping her up. She grunted and snorted but the youngster kept throwing. He kept throwing and throwing and would not give up. Each time the bear pressed forward the little boy, his hands bleeding, found more rocks in the frozen earth to dig up and throw. All this time Alex stood frozen to the wall of the church.

  Finally, the bear turned sideways, collected her cub with a swat, and headed back into the woods.

  “There you go, Fadder,” the boy s
aid cheerfully and breathing heavily, his black hair flat against his head. “That old bear’s gone back home, there you go—no need to worry anymore.”

  The boy moved off and Alex stood in the wet with his cross, his legs still trembling. This moment would stick with him for years. The child would have given his life for him, and yet—what could he have done?

  He went into the reserve and found the boy’s house, saw where he lived and especially how he lived. But though he was going to help this child, and promised himself he would, he never got around to it. After a while he deliberately avoided the small lane where the boy lived. Yet without that little boy, Alex might never have lived to later teach his course on ethics.

  The second incident might have been worse. A few weeks later, when he was sent out by Monsignor Plante to the store, he met a crowd of young men and women piled into one car going off to a party. There had been a thaw, the car was covered in streaks of dirt and salt, and now it was snowing mildly, with the gray sky almost meeting the ground, so he blinked incessantly as he made his way toward the village. As always when the weather turns warm, the young here dress like those in movies from the California south, wearing things unfit for our weather in order to belong to somewhere they never were and perhaps would never be.

  The car revved its engine as Alex approached. It backfired, and then the driver revved it again, put it in gear, and squealed forward, so that mud came up against Alex’s face.

  He had already walked three miles and he was sweating and tired, and now mud spotted his cheeks and chin. He had always feared these boys in their cars, for they were the kind who had little or no use for him. And this might be a reason he had gone to the seminary—so he would not have to face them until he wore a collar. That would make it easier, and safer. He knew this secretly. And he knew why. Still, if he could not overcome this aversion to their swearing and nonsense, how could he later on preach to them?