by David Xavier
“A girl?”
“The best girl.”
“How’d you meet a girl out here?”
“I met her on campus at one of the games. We were dating for a month before we shipped out.”
“You never told me you were seeing a girl.”
“I didn’t know if she would let it amount to anything. You learn an awful lot about a girl through letters. You’re going to love her. I can’t wait.”
That was all he had said about her and I had been numb all week and forgotten. I looked at my hands on the table, the small half-circle of condensation from the bottle between us.
“Do you know him?” she asked me.
“There are many soldiers named Peter.”
“Peter Conry.”
I was back on the ground then and the lump that I had fought hard to push down had come back. I wanted to be away from it and away from her. She played with the bottle, anxious for me to speak. I could feel her eyes on me, and when I looked she had a probing expression in them, and for a moment I thought she could see right through me. I did look like Peter, but I hoped my younger, rounder face would put her questioning eyes at ease and she would knock it up to chance. Peter had a much harder, leaner face than me. Peter was very handsome.
“Did he ever talk about family?” I asked. I noticed that my voice had changed.
“Peter? No.”
“Have all the girls been waiting all day?”
“Some of us. Some showed up just minutes before the bus came up.”
“But the faithful waited all day.”
“We are all faithful.”
“Are we?” I was angry about the whole thing. Angry with Peter and angry with this girl, although I knew she was as much of a victim as I was. Peter was everything I ever wanted to be and could not be, and here this girl sat clueless, watching the window for those qualities to embrace her once again.
“Of course we are,” she said. “What kind of a soldier would question that?”
“One who does not have a girl to greet him.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Which group were you in?” I asked.
She turned in her seat to face the window. She was short when she said, “I waited all day.”
“What’s it like to wait all year for a man?” I asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“To know you have a man over there who might not come home. What’s it like to wait for that?”
“None of your business,” she said.
Her words had lost the easiness that had carried them along, and although she remained polite, the kindness, the innocence, that made her so easy to talk to before was now behind guard.
“I’ll wait outside if you don’t mind.” She gathered herself.
“I mean, don’t you care about getting on with your life instead? Do you wear all this lipstick every day?”
“What?”
“Man goes away and out comes the war paint.”
“You are being rude. You might have a girl waiting for you here if you weren’t so rude.”
“I might have dressed with a big red bow around my chest.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You might have done the same. We’re each other’s surprise. It was nice to meet you.”
She looked at me. I stood and pulled my bag over my shoulder.
“Peter’s not coming home. He was killed a week ago.”
Chapter Two
They gave him a military funeral in the South Bend Cemetery. The groundskeepers removed their hats and stood respectfully in silence as the ceremony began, their work set aside for a moment. My aunt and uncle were there along with a crowd of Peter’s friends, larger than I had expected, and Father Donnelly spoke from the Bible. A short ceremony. I saw her standing under a tree, all alone in a navy-colored dress. I accepted the folded flag with tears in my eyes as twenty-one shots fired over his stone.
I did my best to forget the war. I enrolled in studies at Notre Dame for the fall and spent the summer on the rooftops of South Bend working for The Callahan Roofing Company. In the heat of the day I could see the spires of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, the football players in two-a-days near the silent bleachers at Notre Dame Stadium, and the greens of the God Quad. The bells of the Basilica rang for miles.
Emery Callahan had bad vision. If you walked into a room, he wouldn’t know it was you until you started speaking. He never wore his glasses except in class because he did not want to look studious. He said Gregory Peck never wore glasses. Women don’t like coke-bottles on your face, he’d say, and he would walk around all day squinting at things. He might have been handsome if his face wasn’t scrunched all the time. He sat with me on the rooftop and opened two beers.
“Dad says we have to finish this up by tonight,” Emery said. He took a giant bite of his sandwich and pointed across the street, squinting hard. “We’re working there tomorrow.”
“Double turkey and ham sandwich,” I said. “It must be Thursday.”
“Lord, bless this food and this rooftop. May it not collapse under Sam’s shoddy workmanship.” He held his head to the heavens as he spoke, a crust of bread falling from his mouth as he crossed himself with a quick hand.
I shrugged.
“Dad says you can stay in our basement as long as you’re of a mind to swing a hammer. We can get a mattress for you if you want.”
“I’m used to the cot.”
“He’d take it out of your pay anyway,” he said. “Are you enrolled?”
“Sure.”
“Geology?”
“No. Journalism.”
“Why the switch?”
“I figured out that I don’t like rocks. I don’t know a thing about them and I don’t give a damn how they’re formed.”
“Oh Sam, oh Sam, he lost his rocks and gives no…darn. What’s in journalism?”
“Anything. Everything. There are a million topics to write about. All you need is an opinion.”
“What’s yours?”
“What’s my what?”
“Your opinion.”
I looked at him. Emery was in theater so everything had a dramatic undertone to him. Everything needed a Shakespearian reply.
“The world’s going to hell,” I said.
“Not us,” he laughed. “The world crumbles around the Fighting Irish. There’s a quick-pass on our chests and Saint Peter waves us through without a background check.”
“If that’s true then I can imbibe without guilt.” I took a large gulp of beer.
“How are you doing without him?”
I held the bottle to my lips a moment longer.
“I mean Peter,” Emery said. “I didn’t mean to bring him up but now I have and I feel the need to ask.”
“You didn’t bring him up until just now,” I said.
“The world around us is going to hell. That’s not an opinion. It’s people like Peter who can save it. Sorry.”
He ate the rest of his sandwich in one bite and chased it with half the beer. When he came up for air he couldn’t stand the silence and had to fill it. He was like that.
“This beer is stale.”
“It’s heaven sent today.”
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked. “You’ve been mopey all summer.”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“You got a girl?”
“No, Jesus.”
“Lord, protect this blasphemer. He knows not what he does.” He dropped his chin and carried on. “You fall in love?”
“No.”
“You did. I can see it. You can nail me spread-eagle to this rooftop for the birds if I’m wrong.”
“You talk too much.” I slapped his knee with my glove.
“The Sam I used to know would be all in on an ideal like love.”
“I don’t have any interest in it.”
“You don’t have any interest?” He looked at me with an overplayed eyebrow, as if I was standing across from
him on stage and the audience in the back row needed to understand his confusion. “You have no interest in beautiful women who will take care of you and only you till death do you part?”
“Maybe. But who has time to look for it?”
“The war drained you.”
“I see guys like you saying they need a girl, saying they need a confiding soul, and when they get one all they do is complain about it and worry about the troubles that come with it. It’s strange to me.”
“You are a romantic one.”
“Have you ever met a girl who made you feel like you shouldn’t be alone?”
“Ah, we’re young yet.” He paused. “You didn’t fall in love with me, did you?”
“I hope not.”
“Oh, good. Saint Peter might have a few questions for you if you did. There he is again. Sorry.”
He finished the rest of his beer to shut himself up. At night we went to Blarney Stone’s Tavern and drank more beer. It was a narrow bar with single tables stretched along the wall, booths further in, and a pool table and dartboard in the back. A dried out dead cat, blacker than coal and shriveled, hung from the ceiling. Higgins insisted it gave the place an Irish charm.
Higgins was behind the bar. If he had a first name, nobody knew it. He was balder than any man I had ever seen, and he had a habit of putting his red face inches from the pint glass as he pulled the tap.
“Will you play football this year?” Higgins asked me. Emery sat next to me at the bar while the pool table echoed with bad shots behind us.
“No,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Why should I?”
“Because…you might be good at it.” He glanced over my shoulder to the wall and shifted his eyes back to me. But I caught him.
“Because Peter was good at it?” I did not turn to look at Peter’s jersey.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Sure it was.”
“We wouldn’t be here to drink your bad beer if he did,” Emery jumped in. “Do you even clean the kegs or do you just add new beer to the old?”
Higgins looked at him.
“Just kidding around,” Emery said. “Your Guinness is the real deal. Tastes like it trickled straight from an Irish spring.”
Higgins mopped the bar and threw the towel over his shoulder. “Sorry, Sam. I was just excited, I guess.”
I waved it away. That’s how it was that summer. I ducked the issue as much as I could. At night we prowled the bars or stood outside the movies and talked to the girls who waited alone for their dates, and during the day we put new shingles atop South Bend. There’s a lot that you see from the roofs of a small town. You see the blue-collars leave their porch steps early with lunch pails under their arms, their wives waving them off. Children ride bikes down the center of narrow streets, playing-cards clicking in their spokes, and old pickups rumble through stop signs. In the distance are the hollow eyes of the two lakes under the brows of campus trees. Then one day, on the shimmer of St Joseph’s Lake, an unleashed dog stirred the ducks to begin their arrow south. You feel the weary sigh of a football town, anxiously awaiting the first kickoff to the new season, and you hear the bells of the Basilica reminding folks to keep the Sabbath and not to swear too much.
God held a heavy hand upon me as autumn approached, a hand that I shrugged off my shoulder, unsure if I wanted the graces, unsure if I still believed. Religion is tricky. It tests your strength. When you want to give it up entirely, you feel weak for thinking that way, and you think He may not be there when you do need Him. So you hang on for appearances sake, but you question it underneath. It’s an odd thing to say, ‘thank God he died quickly.’
We watched the summer fade to fall with hammers in our hands. It came quickly one cool day and that was it. Then it was time for classrooms to fill and for gridiron giants to challenge school rivals. The trees on campus held the morning dew in hanging copper teacups that fell swirling upon youthful hearts.
Chapter Three
The green lawns on campus painted themselves with rushing waves of yellow and orange, the worn paths of late students crisscrossed, and the lingering crows bobbed black with yellow eyes, bold and unmoving. A groundskeeper pulled at the colors, making large piles, the edges drifting with the wind. He removed his cap and wiped his brow.
The girls made sure to include the concrete of Notre Dame as part of their walk to the neighboring St Mary’s College, the girl’s school, and they were eager to show off their new sweaters, crisp and well-fitting, looking back with flirty eyes upon the boys who adjusted cowlicks as they watched them.
Boys held the new smell of uncracked pages in their hands, pages that would remain a mystery to many throughout the semester. Mother’s boys walked with rounded shoulders in buttoned sweaters and innocent eyes on the ground, discovering a new world in which they did not easily fit. The autumn breezes circled about, breaking the careful waves on boy’s heads, lifting girl’s skirts, and removing any doubt of a late summer. With the ring of the Sacred Heart bells, the first day of the semester spun differently in every stomach.
Watching them all walk by, I felt somehow that I did not belong. I had walked these sidewalks of campus before, but now I felt like an intruder to be carefully watched or ignored completely.
I stopped by the practice field to watch the players. They were hitting hard, the smack of shoulder pads, the grunts of the A-gap blocks, and the desperate yells of a new coach replacing a legend carrying high-pitched in the air.
There were two girls next to me, their books held against their chests, one of them pointing out a player to the other. The player was taking snaps at fullback with the second team against the defensive starters. He hit the hole hard and carried a linebacker several yards before being gang-tackled. He was quick to his feet, a clump of grass hanging from his helmet, and he waved to the girls on his way back to the huddle. They giggled to each other like grade schoolers and walked away.
My first class was in an auditorium. It was creative writing 101 for journalists. I felt like I was starting over. I might have been the oldest student in the room. I sat in the back as the professor came out and stood in front of the room. He was a short fellow with slicked hair, high pants, and a thick accent. He turned to write his name on the chalkboard and I left the room while his back was to us.
The practice field had two rows of bleachers. I sat at the top and stretched my legs over. There was a girl with pretty hair standing on the sidelines, a notepad held close to her chin, scribbling down names and talking with one of the assistant coaches. When she turned to give her profile I saw catlike, librarian glasses on her nose. Her red lipstick was gone.
I left before she saw me and walked past the Golden Dome of the commons. I picked up a copy of the Fighting Irish Journal and the South Bend Tribune and sat at St Joseph’s Lake. The lake was a mirror to an early season, doubling autumn’s brush. When the wind picked up, the waves flattened out and the mirror rippled apart.
There was an article about an upcoming pep rally, friendly competitions between the dormitories. There was an article about the game and the new football team, the new coach with high hopes, but Elle Quinn did not write it. I should have spoken to her, but it was easier to avoid her. I contemplated going back to the practice field, but then nobody would be here to watch the water flatten out.
At night I went to Blarney’s. Emery was on his second beer, Higgins was leaning against the back of the bar, and two students with scraggly facial hair sat at a table nearby. The pool table cracked with a cue ball not yet under bleary operation.
“How goes the classes?” Emery asked.
“What classes? I skipped.”
Higgins poured me a closely watched pint and placed it on the bar.
“First day of classes and you skipped. What for?”
“The chairs were uncomfortable,” I said.
“And tomorrow?”
“They may be more comfortable by then.”
On
e of the students at the table spoke, his sparse beard hardly covering his chin. “You’re Peter Conry’s brother, right?”
I turned with the beer in my hand. Their table was under Peter’s jersey. Next to his jersey were two others: Bob Dove and Jim Martin, all three in glass frames with their names scribbled underneath in Higgins’s handwriting on white paper. I shrugged and sipped my beer.
The student looked up at the jersey and then back to me. “Are you? You look just like him.”
“Sure.”
He stood at once. “I’m Garrett and this is Jake. We were friends of his. It’s a shame.”
“This is Sam Conry,” Higgins said to them. “He doesn’t play football.”
“What do you have these jerseys on the wall for, Higgins?” I asked. “Why not Guglielmi or Lattner?”
“They played offense,” Higgins said. “I like defensive players. Besides, I liked your brother.”
“But nobody’s heard of Peter Conry except you. Put the guys who carried the ball up.”
“Defense wins championships. Or haven’t you heard?”
“We knew Peter,” the student named Garrett said.
“I’ll add you to the list under Higgins,” I said. They just looked at me. “Just kidding.”
“He was well on his way,” Garrett said. “We were in the stands when he ran that interception in for a touchdown. Against Michigan.”
“We all were,” Higgins said. “He hit like a load of bricks. Could hear it in the parking lot.”
“Well, it’s all over,” I said.
“And you’re not playing?” Garrett asked.
“No.”
He stood there looking at me with his thumbs tucked in the back of his belt. “Shame about the war. We liked Peter.”
“We all did,” Higgins said again.
“What did he say to us, Jake? Before he shipped out. Football is a boy’s game, but the world needs men. Needs heroes, that’s what I say. He might have been an All-American if he had played the whole season.”
“Might have been,” I nodded.
“I remember this one time he ran with the track team.” Garrett looked at his friend. “Remember that, Jake? Practice had just ended for him and we were walking together, the three of us, to the library. The track team was sprinting on the other side of the fence and Peter took off with them.”
