Bells Above Greens

by David Xavier

“None that lasted through the week.” He smiled.

  “Then why do you give out advice for them?”

  “Because it’s the truth. If you don’t have honesty then there’s nothing else that matters. Don’t tell a lie up front or your entire relationship after that is based on it and you have to bend over backward keeping that lie alive.”

  I sat back and watched him.

  “But sooner or later the lie is uncovered and then your entire relationship is questioned. And I’m not talking about the big things like changing your religion for a day just so you can get close to someone. I’m talking about the little things like where you were born, or where you went to school, or what type of music you enjoy.”

  “Why would someone lie about that?”

  He cocked his head. “To impress the other. People do it all the time. Then it comes out that you weren’t born in the city, you were born on a farm, and then you have some explaining to do and some honesty to repair. Tiny lies turn into huge chasms of death. Death to the relationship. There’s only one thing you should lie about.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The number of people you’ve been with.”

  I leaned forward. “Only a lothario like you would worry about that.”

  “I’m just telling you. Protect that. Hold it close to you and deny everything. Only hurt comes from that number.”

  “That sounds like terrible advice. People see more than one person in their lifetime. It’s the way of the world.”

  “Yes, but nobody likes to hear about it. Especially a Catholic. Everything is sacred. Anything further than a kiss is promiscuous.”

  “I’m not a very good Catholic anyway.”

  He exhaled a dramatic sigh. “You can lead a horse to water…”

  I laughed and held out my hand. “Give me the book. I’ll finish it.”

  Myles handed it to me. “Sam?”

  “What?” I put the book under my arm and looked at him.

  “Tell me how it ends.”

  Chapter Eleven

  I sat by St Joseph’s lake and let the final rays of a peeking winter sun warm my sweatered back as the chill of evening swept in. They walked about me, the legions of students, still confident in themselves, their books at their hips. As evening fell, the legions donned coats. Each rung of the bell seemed to shake the water from the edge of lake ice, shake the cells of student blood, and remind everyone that they marched upon esteemed shadows.

  It was a reawakening each time to lift your eyes from book pages fading with the sunset, see the Golden Dome and hear the chimes of Notre Dame. Even the passing students whose trails would be forgotten in just a few short years were a gift to the mind’s eye of the reputation one must uphold with their name on the registrar.

  So when Emery asked me once to set those standards aside for a night, my judgment must have been impaired by the simplicity of his plan and its noteworthy goal.

  “There you are,” Emery said. He sat next to me. His backpack bulged at his back like it was overinflated with a tire pump, the zipper teeth were wide apart and large strips of duct tape were strapped over the top to hold it together. “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “A secret mission.”

  I took the last bite from an apple and pitched the core in a metal wastebasket ten yards away. Emery watched the core bounce from the rim to the basket.

  “Sam snags a point.” He pushed up at the bridge of his glasses and I noticed they were taped at the edges.

  “What happened to your glasses?”

  He took them off and looked at them. “Pat Carragher’s big ass happened to them. He sat on them in drama class.”

  I imagined Emery squinting his way through the scene of a play and finding his glasses crushed beneath the big boy when he returned to his seat. I closed my book and shouldered my backpack. “What’s the mission?”

  “Details will unfold as needed.”

  “What’s the objective?”

  “To acquire the swoon of a female.”

  I looked at him. “Count me in.”

  We sat under a tree behind the St Mary’s College dormitory like criminals waiting for the lights to go out. As night set in I wished I had brought my coat, and I stamped my feet for warmth. When the shadow of the dorm cast us in nearly pitch darkness, Emery pulled the duct tape from his backpack and a large, colorful flag or banner burst out of it in a gasp for freedom.

  “Details,” I said.

  “Yes. You know I’ve been seeing Claire now for a few weeks.”

  I stood over him and nodded in darkness. He was kneeling over his backpack, pulling what seemed to be handfuls of a parachute from it. I felt him look up.

  “You know?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He went back to work, down on bended knee if you will, ready to prove to Claire to what extent he would take things. “Well, St Mary’s College being a girl’s school and all, and boys not being allowed to prowl around on campus, Claire says I would not have the guts to step foot inside the dorm.”

  “So? We’re here now. I stand outside the doors all the time. That’s a respectable thing, right? That’s how you met her, isn’t it?”

  “No,” he said. “I was stalking her outside her classroom, remember?”

  “Ah.”

  “Anyway, she said it in play but I’m taking it to heart.”

  “Good. Good decisions are made when under the influence of women.”

  “Don’t joke. It’s just for fun anyway. No harm.”

  “What’s just for fun?”

  “This.” He stood and held the edges of a massive flag. I could see him smiling in the moonlight.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “From the stadium,” he whispered it. “Behind the bleachers. They hang them all around. It must be a hundred feet long.”

  “You stole a flag?”

  “Not just one.”

  He dropped the flag and walked to the bushes against the dorm. One by one he dragged out twelve hidden boxes filled with identical flags.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing.” He shrugged. “Just goofing around.”

  “Nobody saw you?”

  “Almost. I had to hide in the stadium dumpster for a half hour while someone was looking around with a flashlight. Took me the entire night to get them all. I hid them here last night.”

  “What are you going to do with them? Break in and unroll them in the hallways?”

  I could see him thinking. “That’s too easy. I’m not breaking into anything. We’re not felons. Just good college games. I’m going to drape the entire west wall with them. Encase the entire dorm in the great ND.”

  “You’re a moron.”

  “It should get her attention.”

  “And cause her to swoon dramatically into your arms? Aren’t there easier ways to get a girl’s attention?”

  “Probably. But none so dramatic. C’mon, grab one and let’s go. You’re not getting cold feet, are you?”

  “They weren’t hot to begin with.”

  Emery crisscrossed a hundred feet of flag around his upper body, over his shoulders and around his chest, looking like some sort of colorfully puffed up parade commando. I did the same. We used an access ladder on the sidewall to reach the roof, stealth movements in the darkness, Emery using a ridiculous crouched run across the dark lawn from the tree to the ladder, coming up to the roof with a new flag each time, his head popping out of the colorful mess.

  At one point, two girls stepped out and stood outside the doors with cigarettes in their hands, chatting like birds. Emery froze in plain view, stopped immediately in stride on the lawn. He was paralyzed in his decision to hide either behind the tree or behind the side of the dorm wall. His lack of movement drew no attention, and in the darkness he was dismissed as a discolored patch of grass in the corner of their eyes. If they had taken a closer look they would have seen the night’s reflection in two curious mirrors of eyeg
lasses.

  We tied the flag ends to steel rails on the rooftop, spreading the flag across as far as it would go before dropping the length of it over the side where it hung just a few feet off the grass at the bottom.

  When the first light of morning shimmered on campus, the girls of St Mary’s awakened and yawned in confusion at the sun-kissed flags curtained over their windows. The dormitory stood bright in the cold morning shadows, the fly-by-night circus tent flapping over respected ground. Professors scoffed as they walked to their classes, and we stood outside with dark circles under our eyes, an ever-gathering crowd of cheering Fighting Irish behind us. The Le Mans dormitory of St Mary’s College belonged to the boys of Notre Dame, conquered in the night.

  Chapter Twelve

  After classes, Emery announced to me that tonight was the hour he had been dreading since meeting Claire, and that Liv would be there to witness it, so I had better be there to help ease the burden of sure failure.

  Before we went to the lake we went to the barbershop across from Blarney’s for a shave and haircut. If we were going to look silly on the ice, Emery said, we could at least look sharp while doing it.

  The barber’s name was long buried under his professional moniker of Red Chips. He looked the part, a red wave of hair swirled on his head like hard butter, and he constantly spilled knowledge on us, knowledge gained from years of tipping back talkative old men in his barber’s chair.

  “What’ll it be today, boys? A little off the top it looks like.”

  “Top and sides,” I said. “And a close shave for both of us.”

  “Some lucky ladies out there tonight, huh? Lucky in that they get to feel the honest smoothness that ol’ Red’s blades can make. Unlucky in that it’s wasted on your mugs.”

  He ended his sentences with a three-ha laugh each time, a habit of hearing himself speak rough barbershop talk too much.

  His shop was clean and well-lighted. A row of bolted chairs lined up along a long mirror and a fresh scent wafted about the room. An old man sat at the far end reading a newspaper, laughing aloud at the funnies, and a radio was midway through the year’s top forty hits.

  I went from looking at myself in the mirror to staring up at the overhead lights as Red hit the lever, spun me around in the chair, and began to lather my cheeks and neck with a mint cream. His brush went right over my lips and I couldn’t speak for a moment.

  “Hey Red,” Emery spoke from the next chair over.

  “Hey what? You’re next, don’t worry. I’ll spread out my time evenly so you feel special too.”

  “I was going to pay you a professional compliment.”

  “Go ahead, boyo. I always have time for those.” He worked quickly and was already gliding the razor over my neck.

  “You’ve fixed a lot of us boys up for dates over the years.”

  “Yeah, one or two of you boys over the years.”

  “So we’re in good hands here is all I was going to say. We can rest assured that your work will get us to the next level.” Emery put his hands behind his head.

  “I can make you pretty, if that’s what you mean. What do you want to get to the next level for anyway? You wouldn’t know what to do if you had the chance. Good Catholic boys should be happy with a kiss.”

  “A kiss is all I meant,” Emery said with bright eyes.

  Red reached a foot out and kicked Emery’s lever, spilling him horizontal in a second.

  “You boyo’s and your dreams. Always thinking that the girl you have is the one. At your age, you should be going down the roster. A new one each week.”

  “At our age? We’re seniors. We’ll be out of here in a year.”

  Red put a damp cloth over my face and went to work on Emery. “How many classes you got left?”

  Emery mumbled through the barber brush. “Well, another year after this one. I fiddled around too much at the start.”

  I pulled the cloth off and stretched my lips, feeling the smoothness tingle all the way to my ears.

  “And you?” Red pointed at me with the razor.

  “I have another year after this.”

  “What do you mess around for? Get in and get out.”

  “Sam went away to war,” Emery said.

  Red looked up at me. “No fooling?”

  I nodded my head. He came over to me and shook my hand, giving me a good hard look. “Thank you, son. Your shave is on the house.”

  “Thanks, but there’s no need.”

  “You’ll take it, ‘cause I said so.” He said it as a fact and walked back to hover over Emery. “But little nancy here with his fiddling around will pay double for his shave.” He laughed his three-has. “I finished college in three years. You should be ashamed.”

  “An hey you ahh,” Emery said.

  “What’s that?” Red held his hands still and leaned in.

  Emery smacked the lather from his lips and tried again. “And here you are.”

  “Ain’t wise to smart the man with the razor at your neck. Unless you want the jugular special. Yes, here I am. My own place, cutting the monkeyface off of smart boys who think they got it all figured out.” He winked at me.

  Emery mumbled something.

  “There was this one kid,” Red said. “A few years back. He’d come in to get spit-shined for a date with a new girl each week. Like clockwork. Every Friday he’d stand by the soda machine in a tie and wait his turn to be chopped and slicked by yours truly. Nice kid, too. Very respectful to his elders.” He spoke those last words especially clear and slow to Emery.

  “A real ladies gentleman, he was. Not like some of the kids out there with one thing on their mind. Used to buy a rose and set it right there on the counter while I made the gorgeous in him come out.”

  “A rose, Sam,” Emery said. “We should get us some. I didn’t think of that.”

  “Would you shut up,” Red said. “Won’t be doing much kissing at all if you get your lips cut off. This kid, he used to wine and dine the girls as best he could on a student’s budget and write the most Godawful poetry for the ones he liked. Spent all his money on roses and haircuts.”

  “Roses, Sam. Is there a rose garden near here?”

  Red paused and looked at him. He could not help but to laugh. “Not from someone’s rose garden, you dimwit. He paid for them like a gentleman. Top notch roses with a long stem and big, blooming petals.” He looked at me and shook his head, smiling. “Rose garden in the dead of winter? Great God, this boy. Where’d you find him?”

  I put my hands up.

  “Anyway, he must have seen them all. From freshmen to senior, he left no stone unturned. Good looking boy, too. Must have had all the girls in a sweat. I used to tell him the girls were taking a number and waiting their turns. ‘Give me the Red Dandy’, he would tell me. Because of my name, you see?”

  I nodded.

  “He would sit here in the chair and tell me their names. I think I heard a name repeated only a handful of times.”

  “And each one was the one?” I asked.

  Red wiped his hands on his apron and put a cold cloth over Emery’s face. “Nope.”

  I sat up with my elbow on the armrest. “He spent all that money and time and didn’t find the one?”

  “No sir.”

  “What was wrong?” Emery asked. “He didn’t – he didn’t like women after all? I mean, he found out he liked…you know, the other way?”

  Red looked at him. “You have got a pea brain in there, don’t you?”

  “Well what, then? You said he’d seen them all. I haven’t seen them all but I know the one when I see the one.”

  “And you think you found the one, do you?”

  Emery shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll see.”

  “Boyo, when I say ‘the one’, what I mean is someone who makes you better. I’m not talking about the one that makes you feel warm all over and looks pretty and that’s it. I’m talking about all that and she makes you a better man.”

  “You mean she
drags you to church on Sunday,” I said. “That’s what Emery’s dad says about girls too.”

  “No,” Red said. “That’s not what I mean. There are plenty of good girls out there that will drag you to church, but that won’t necessarily make you better. You just got to find the one.” He waved his scissors in the air. “You’ll know it when you see it.”

  “I’m confused,” Emery said, laying back down and covering his face with the cloth.

  “The one he was looking for wasn’t going to be found in any woman from here to France,” Red said. “Not even if he went looking until he was a nine hundred year old man.”

  “So what’d he do?” Emery said through the cloth.

  “You go to church on Sunday?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, when you do go, you’ll see him up there on the altar.”

  “Father Donnelly?” I said.

  “Yep.”

  When we arrived at the lake, long stem roses bending in our arms, the stadium workers were still taking down the flags from the dorm walls.

  Emery checked his watch. “Why are girls always late?”

  “They do it to build our anticipation. Nothing is more exciting to them than to watch our reactions after we’ve waited for an hour.”

  “An hour? I’ll be frozen stiff by then. They’ll have to chip us out of ice.”

  “Isn’t that part of the fun for them?”

  “What? Thawing us out for conversation?”

  “Exactly. Chip away at us until they find what we’re about.”

  He looked at me. “You’ve been reading too many books.”

  “Maybe.” I tilted my head back and blew a stream of fog above my head.

  “My ears are about to fall off. Red didn’t leave enough hair to keep the warmth in.”

  Claire and Liv came around the corner, dressed in peacoats that touched their knees, swaddled in hats and scarves, impeccably cheerful as if they had been conjured from a winter postcard. They saw us waiting and began a dainty run toward us, their ice skates in their hands. We stood with our roses behind our backs and watched every step of their approach, our excitement melting away the long wait just as they had planned.

  Liv leapt into my arms and kissed me.