The Dark Path

by David Schickler

  Go to a movie.

  I need to fix that last line. It should be “Let’s go to a movie,” but that would be six syllables instead of five, which is breaking haiku rules. Still, I watch Caitlin, in case what I just broadcast to her rocked her world. She looks away, giving her hair a haughty flip. That’s okay, because I’ve secretly written another version of the haiku:

  Lesley! The best girl.

  I love how your brown hair shines.

  Go to a movie.

  Since it’s October and Lesley Hendrik doesn’t attend Saint Helen’s, I haven’t seen her lately, so I haven’t yet telepathed the haiku at her and blown her mind. I will do so over Christmas or next summer at the pool.

  After church my parents sit me down at home.

  My mother rubs my arm. “David, Dad and I have been talking. And we have a surprise. We’re going to build you a special bedroom in the basement.”

  “The basement?” I fret and think of fire exits. In my current second-floor bedroom there’s a chain-link ladder in my closet. If a fire blocks us from the stairs, it’s my job to attach the ladder to my window and get me and my sisters out.

  “What about the fire ladder?” I ask.

  “Anne Marie can handle that. Don’t worry, your basement room will have a special, wide window with steps leading out.”

  My heart calms down a notch.

  My mother rubs my arm more. “A boy needs his space. You don’t need to always be around girl stuff. You’re practically a young man.”

  Ohhh, I think. I get it. Me and the hair dryer. Me and the mousse.

  I want to tell them not to worry, that I’m not homosexual, that I’ve started having very specific thoughts about Caitlin and Lesley’s bodies. But I hold my tongue. They’re offering me a Fortress of Solitude.

  My uncle Travis, a carpenter, builds the room. When he’s done, it’s a wood-paneled den of a place. Before I move in I climb in and out of the fire window several times. Scott Barella clocks me and it never takes me more than five seconds from under the bedsheets till I’m standing outside in the freezing air.

  I stay up late one night in bed. No moonlight makes it through my window. Even with my eyes open, I see total pitch-black in one corner. I snuggle under my blankets. The darkness feels hidden from the world, given just to me. I feel a great calm.

  Is that You, Lord? I pray into the darkness. Are You down here with me?

  • • •

  IN JUNE WHEN I’m thirteen I graduate from eighth grade at Saint Helen’s School and I win the Religion Award. I hadn’t known there was such an award, and after I win it a guy in my class signs my yearbook, Nice Going, Jesus Tard!

  When it comes to Jesus, I’ve always known what the Gospel says or what church adults want to hear. But I have a Jesus problem. According to Scripture, Jesus is the Light of the World. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says that He has come as a Light into the world so that we won’t have to abide in darkness. Everyone makes it sound like Jesus is literally hanging out in the sunlight at Saint Helen’s during morning Mass, like He’s right there in the weave of the bright, nifty sweaters around me.

  My problem is, I like abiding in darkness. I like the dark path, the low, forever shadows among the trees. For me, God is in that darkness. He’s not a devil, or a tree, or a wood sprite. He’s the Lord, He just happens to be in darkness. I feel restful knowing that He’s there and I love Him, but I can’t explain why I find Him where I do. I’m afraid to try. I’m afraid it’s wrong. And I’m afraid that if I go talking about how God is in the darkness, He will leave it and I’ll be alone.

  One night that same June, Scott and I prowl through the country club woods, hunting for Tommy Marzipretta. We and some other kids are playing a chase-and-hunt game that we call Ghost-Ghost and Tommy is the ghost, the prey. I’m excited because Lesley Hendrik is playing and she’s wearing her blue jeans with the tiny pink suede frog sewn on the butt pocket.

  Scott and I have been searching for a while. We scuff along on the dark path. Rounding a bend, we come across Lesley and Tommy. They’re near my favorite spot on the path. Lesley stands leaning back against a large maple tree and Tommy stands close to her. Also, they’re not wearing pants and he’s fucking her.

  “Shit bomb,” says Scott quietly.

  I stop dead still. I’ve never even kissed a girl. I blink rapidly to make sure that those are Lesley’s jeans lying disembodied in the grass. Yes, there’s the pink suede frog. As for Lesley herself, her startling, pale white ass rubs up and down against the tree bark and I look at her startled, lovely face. Tommy casually raises his chin in greeting to us and keeps plunging into Lesley.

  “Took you faggots long enough to find us,” he says.

  I can’t breathe right. It’s a sin to fuck a girl you’re not married to, and it’s probably an even bigger sin if you fuck a girl you’re not married to up against a tree. And Tommy is fucking my Lesley on my path. There’s a knife dicing me up inside.

  More ghost-searchers wander up behind me. It’s the Langini brothers and Lesley’s best friend, Theresa Whelan, another Raven Road girl. They all see the rutting couple and stop.

  “Minghia!” says Mike Langini.

  “Yep,” says Tommy. He stops thrusting and just stands there with his naked middle trapping Lesley’s naked middle against the tree.

  Theresa laughs her nervous laugh and waves. “Hey, Lesley.”

  “Hey, Theresa.” Lesley waves back weakly. No one seems to know what to say. None of us except Tommy is even fifteen yet. Lesley looks like a specimen in science class, a butterfly spread and pinned to a board. I need her to feel embarrassed and terrified by what’s happening to her, the way I feel, but she turns her face away so I’ll never know.

  “I’m inside her,” clarifies Tommy.

  I can’t take it. I run home, alone. My mother and sisters are at a dance show, like they often are, and my father is in Detroit on GM business. When I get into the house I sit on the living room floor, anxious. I need release from what I just saw.

  I go down to the basement, to the carpeted area outside my bedroom where we have a stereo and where my sisters work up their dance routines. I put on the Grease soundtrack and cue up “Summer Nights.” Then I perform the routine that I—on previous occasions—have worked up to accompany this song. Dancing is what my sisters do to figure out their feelings and, when I’m alone, I sometimes do it, too.

  I play the song through three times, performing the part that I’ve choreographed for Sandy, complete with falsetto high notes and skipping and flouncing. Then I play the song through three more times, performing Danny Zuko’s part. Performing this girls-versus-guys duet is as close as I can come to processing thoughts about sex.

  I am in mid-pirouette when the music cuts out.

  “David?”

  I yelp and turn around.

  My father has his hand on the stereo volume knob. He’s wearing a black suit and looking at me, astonished.

  I pray, Thank you, Lord, that I did Sandy’s part first.

  “Dad . . . I thought you were in Detroit.”

  “I just got back.”

  I hug him and hold on for a while to let my blushing die down.

  “David, what were you doing? Was that one of the girls’ routines?”

  I step back from him. “Sort of. I just . . . like that song.”

  He studies me. I know he worries that I act too much like a girl, but he won’t freak out about my dancing. In our family we all love to cut the rug. At weddings my father jitterbugs with my mother, but he’ll dance solo, too. During fast songs he has a move where he crouches down close to the floor and then shoots up, splaying out his arms and kicking, with a loopy grin on his face. When he does this, his stern authority melts and he looks joyful.

  “David,” he says now, “you look keyed up. What’s the matter?”

 
In my mind I see the girl I adore getting fucked in the dark place I adore. There isn’t supposed to be fucking on the path. Only contemplation. Only God.

  “Nothing,” I lie.

  • • •

  I GO TO an all-male high school, McQuaid Jesuit, and for four years I run cross-country. I do other things, too—tons of schoolwork, small chorus parts in a few plays—but cross-country is my obsession. The most addictive part of it is the Five Hundred Mile Challenge.

  This challenge takes place in the summers. Our coach asks each of us to run five hundred miles over ten weeks to get ready for the fall season.

  Each summer morning, rain or shine, I run three or four laps around the edges of Black Creek Country Club. Each lap is two and a half miles. I run shirtless, in shorts and Nikes. I run through woods, skirt the rough beside the fairways, climb grassy hills, and then run down into the cool pockets of air along Black Creek. I know every snarled tree root to dodge, every mossy or brittle patch of ground. I pound my feet extra hard as I cross the shoddy wooden bridge over the creek on the second hole, and the mother duck under the girders flaps out and bitches, Seriously? Again? I’ve got kids here!

  At the end of each lap I zip through the woods and up the hill on the dark path. I can feel around me cool shadows touching my skin. I breathe these shadows in and they’re more than oxygen, they’re a dark essence thrilling my blood. When I charge along the path like this, alone, I feel words gathering at the tip of God’s tongue. If I can just run fast enough or purely enough or with the whole of my being, He’ll let loose the words. He’ll speak and tell me my one sentence. He’ll tell me my life.

  Chapter Two

  IT’S SEPTEMBER 1987, and my parents are dropping me off for my freshman year at Georgetown University. As they’re preparing to leave, my father hugs me close.

  “Don’t get mono,” he warns. “Schickler men are highly susceptible to mono.”

  “All right, Dad.”

  We’re standing in my dorm room. My mother is getting something from the car while my father gives me last-minute advice.

  “Have adventures.” He pulls me close once more. I smell his aftershave and another smell that’s just him. I’ve always loved the mix of these smells.

  “I love you, David. Don’t get mono.”

  “I won’t.”

  A week later I have mono. I lie alone in my dorm room all day each day, missing classes, losing weight, spitting up blood, staring at my Morrissey poster.

  I’ve never been so sick. My neck is hugely swollen, and any word I try to speak scrapes like a razor blade in my throat. Despite being bedridden, I can’t sleep day or night. Even just raising my head off the mattress is a blinding-white mistake, so I just lie here, scared that I’m dying.

  My father knew what he was warning me about. He had mono severely once and it almost killed him.

  He too attended McQuaid High School, back in the fifties, and he worked his ass off there to get a full college ride to General Motors Institute. At GMI his nickname was Saint Jack because he got flawless grades and never slept around or did anything to impede his path toward marrying his sweetheart back home—my mother—and rising like a comet through the GM ranks. He pulled all-nighters in the library and lab, and this frayed him so badly one season that he collapsed with mono and ended up in the hospital.

  I guess I’ve frayed myself, too. At McQuaid I did five hours of homework each night and graduated fourth in my class. Over this past summer I put in ten-hour days at an auto dealership to earn college tuition money. Weird older men customers kept gripping my shoulders and saying I was bound for great things. One imparted to me what he described as the key truth of living.

  “A nigger will work for ya,” he said, “but not a nigra. Learn the difference. There’s niggers and nigras, and nigras are useless. Remember that.”

  Another man frowned when I told him excitedly that I’d spoken on the phone the night before with Adam Goldman from Bethesda, Maryland, my soon-to-be roommate.

  “Adam Goldman,” the man repeated. “I bet he’ll be a very earthy and unspiritual person. They all are.”

  “Hoyas?” I asked.

  “Jews,” he said.

  • • •

  I LIE LIMP in my dorm bed, all energy sucked from my body. I’ve been here a month, but all I’ve seen of campus so far are my room’s concrete walls. Painted pale yellow, they look jaundiced and sickly. They look like the mucus I keep spitting up.

  “Do you need blankets?” asks my roommate. “Should I call the doctor again?”

  Adam isn’t earthy and unspiritual. He’s kind and funny and on the football team. When his mom finds out about my mono, she moves Adam out of our room for a while, but she drives in from Bethesda with soups for me. My own parents, after dropping me in D.C., flew to Europe for a vacation, their first time abroad. They don’t know yet that I’m this sick.

  Each day the hundred other guys on my floor herd past my closed door, laughing and firming up friendships. I live in New South, a dorm of hard-charging strivers. One midnight as my throat aches there’s a thump out in the hall, followed by love grunts. A toga party is raging downstairs in the common room and some probably-sheet-clad guy and girl are getting Roman up against my door.

  “I’m going to fucking rupture you,” growls the guy.

  “Yes,” begs the girl.

  “Gonna split you in half.”

  The girl makes a sound of agreement. Then they’re screwing against my door. Each time they bang against it I feel it in my swollen tonsils.

  “Scootch me higher,” yells the girl.

  I send telepathy through the door. Please don’t scootch her higher.

  “Keep drilling me!”

  Please stop drilling her.

  “Oh yes! YEEEEEEEESSS!”

  I put my pillow over my head. Who in the hell are these people? I try to imagine any girl I’ve ever met telling me, out loud, to keep drilling her. Or for that matter to start drilling her. I had a couple second-base experiences in high school, but I’m still a virgin . . . Saint David. I pull my pillow tighter to my head to drown out Orgasma Girl. Finally she and her battering ram move on and I sleep.

  I dream of the path. I miss it: the Black Creek woods, the tart northern air, the shadows. Even from my dream, I pray to the Lord who somehow lives in that darkness back home. Where are You in this new place? I’m sick. Please help.

  A voice cackles from above: “A-HAW-HAW-HAW-HAW!”

  Is that You, Lord?

  “A-HAW-HAW-HAW-HAW!”

  I lurch awake. The cackling is music blaring from the room next door. My clock says two a.m., and the song pulsing through the wall is ZZ Top’s “La Grange.” It’s the go-to song of the guys next door, Pike and Brett. They play it about thirty times in a row whenever they come home drunk, which is virtually every night.

  I burrow my head under my pillow again. When the music quits, my room phone rings. I pick up but can barely speak a hello.

  A male voice says sneeringly, “This is the SS.”

  The line goes dead. My ears, clogged with mono, are unsure of what they’ve heard until the phone rings again a minute later and I answer.

  The same male voice says, “We are the SS. The train is coming for you.”

  I get similar calls for several nights. I’m enfeebled enough by the mono—and I guess innocent enough—not to comprehend what’s up until one night when I force my pained vocal cords to answer.

  “What’s the SS?” I croak.

  “Aw, fuck.” The voice on the other end leans away. “Hey, man, I think it’s the roommate.”

  “The Jew-mate,” laughs a voice in the background.

  “Whatever. Goldman’s not there.” The line clicks off and “La Grange” kicks into gear next door.

  Pike and Brett, prank calling. Duh, Schickler.

 
When my mono’s contagious stage is past, Adam returns to our room, but the late-night calls from the SS still come. After answering them, Adam often storms out and pounds on Pike and Brett’s locked door, challenging them to come out and fight him. They never open up. They just guffaw at him from their cave. One morning after such a night, Adam helps me walk down to breakfast in the dorm cafeteria—I’m too weak to go alone—and there Pike and Brett are, showered, eating pancakes, looking like good little Boy Scouts. Adam could lay into them, but he sticks with me, his hand guiding my elbow.

  • • •

  ANOTHER WEEK PASSES and I’m still not well enough to leave the dorm—I get dizzy just stepping outside—but my voice has healed enough that I can talk on my room phone. One night I speak with my mother and sisters.

  “You should’ve seen Dad at the airport when they got home,” Pam says. “When we told him you had mono, he was so shocked and worried that he grabbed the wall so he wouldn’t fall down.”

  “Don’t tell him that!” calls my father in the background.

  “He went white as a sheet,” Pam continues.

  There’s commotion and then my father’s voice takes over.

  “David? How are you feeling?”

  “I’ve lost twenty pounds and I look anorexic. But I think I’ve leveled off. I’ll try classes Monday.”

  “Good.” I can almost hear him nodding brisk approval. Then there’s a pause. My father hates speaking on the phone, but I can tell that he has more to say, something to do with how pale he turned at the airport. “You’re really out of the woods? Twenty pounds is a lot to lose. Do I need to come down there?”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  Another pause. He clears his throat, sounding normal again, relieved. “All right then. Go have adventures.”

  The next Monday I go to a political theory class. I’m in Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, which I applied to because my father said it would open up the world to me. This class is a two-hour lecture about Plato’s Cave. I pass out cold twenty minutes in. When I come to, I’m shaking and nose-bleeding onto my spiral-bound notebook. Some students escort me back to New South. I crawl into bed, exhausted and humiliated.