Bells Above Greens

by David Xavier

  When I reached the first ledge I was able to stand and flex my fingers before carrying on. I could not hear him any longer, only the silent night and the rain over clay shingles. I shouted his name and there was no answer. Below me a few more students had gathered, they were still looking up, small now, their faces indistinguishable. I gripped the gutter once again, my fingertips clawed, my knuckles burning.

  At the bells, shiny in their arches, glistening and humming with rain, I flattened against the wall and found a corner to hug. I worked my way around the first bell to where I could climb the spires. And there he was. Myles was sitting under the bell arch as if it were a park bench, weeping into his hands and shivering.

  “Myles, it’s me. It’s Sam.”

  He did not turn in surprise. He looked at me and his sobs turned into a strange, watery smile, dull in the gray reflection of the bells. His teeth were like small, wet stones, his eyes were dark until he leaned his head against the wall. He had dressed up for the occasion, wearing a white shirt and tie, his hair had been cut recently and styled and was only slightly disheveled by the rain. There was a bruise around a slashing scab on his cheekbone, still subsiding in its swelling.

  “You came to see me, huh?” His words had sober edges. He spoke as though he had been expecting me, as if those curses were not curses at all but rather a calling for help.

  “Yes,” I said. I sat on the arch opposite of him, the bells between us. I straddled the stone bricks and ducked to see him. He had twisted around to see me as well, and when we looked at each other with nothing to say, he laughed.

  “Isn’t it strange how everything comes around?” He made a circle in the air with his finger.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I saved you once from these spires on a rainy night, and now you’ve come to save me.”

  “I never climbed the spires.”

  “In your mind you did.” The sadness had returned. “Remember, I can read your mind. You’re programmed the same as me. You’ve come to return the favor, come to save your friend.”

  “I’ve not come to save you. You wouldn’t do anything like this, Myles.”

  I turned my head and waited for his answer. He would not jump without my eyes to see it. I tried not to think of it, afraid he could read my thoughts, afraid my thoughts might somehow push him over.

  “No, of course not,” Myles said quietly, almost sounding disappointed in his lack of courage. I believed he hadn’t come to the spires to jump, but it was a relief to hear him say it in a tone that instantly gave it credibility.

  “You just came to take pictures, right?” I said it to give him a way out so he would not be ashamed. But he did not have his camera with him.

  He looked at me, grateful for my offer of an excuse. “The city is beautiful from up here.”

  He brought his legs up to be with him on the ledge and leaned with his back against the stones, the bruise on his cheekbone swelling out of the shadow.

  “I’m going home, Sam. I need some time to figure out what I’m doing. This plunging ahead, bulling my way through a brick wall that never ends is not for me. I need the clarity. I told you once that people like us need to keep moving ahead and life will sort itself out. I was wrong.”

  He looked at me and tried to find the humor in it. “It may surprise you, but I’m wrong more often than I’m right, as it turns out.” He looked around, at the bells, the drop below. “This is a strange place for a conversation.”

  “It wouldn’t have been my first choice.”

  “Why not?” There was genuine curiosity in his voice. “Are you afraid of heights?”

  “No, I don’t mind heights.”

  “You don’t like the view? Then what?”

  “The seating is uncomfortable.”

  He gave me a look of dark confusion that dawned into a laugh. Not a small laugh or a giggle, either. He squeezed his eyes shut and cackled, slapped his leg, and then pounded his fists on the bell, drumming it as quickly as he could.

  “Oh, Sam. Sam, how could one leave such a funny world?” Myles thrust his hands over the city lights, the droning of the bell fading quickly to rain patter. “Is that why you never climbed the spires?”

  “I was never going to,” I said.

  “You can’t fool me, Sam,” he waved his hand, “but have it your way.” He held the brick underneath him and leaned over as far as he could. “Look at them down there. It would make an awful spectacle. I do hate to disappoint people.”

  “How long are you going to stay up here?” I asked.

  “Why? Have a date you don’t want to miss? How’s that pretty little dupe you’ve been seeing? Sam, the world looks so large up here, how are we ever going to dupe all the girls in it?”

  He was speaking slowly and calmly, holding the people below in pinched fingers, squinting through them with one eye like rifle sights. “They’re so small down there. All the troubles become small from this angle.”

  “What’s your bruise from?”

  He gave his little giggle. “Oh. Your friend finally said hello to me.”

  “Pat Carragher?”

  “It wasn’t his fault. I asked for it. Don’t go looking for trouble. I wanted to get hit.” Then he looked at me like an investigator. “Where were you tonight that you came so quickly?”

  I cleared my throat. “I was taking a walk.”

  “What is it about you taking walks in the rain? You were right below me, weren’t you? What were you doing in the church? Still searching?”

  “I wasn’t in the church,” I said. “I was in the grotto. And don’t talk to me about searching when you’re up here like Peter Pan.”

  Amusement leapt from his lips. “That’s even more of a search. What is it, Sam? You’re even more confused than I am. Bless the poor devil who takes advice from me. I can hear Him telling me to go here, go there, go home, look at your schedule. It’s all so confusing. What does God tell you?”

  “I don’t hear Him at all.”

  Myles looked at me then with the same concern that I had brought with me to the bells.

  “Can’t hear Him?” he said. “What do you mean? You hear Him all the time.”

  “Where?”

  “Here. There. Everything is God. You here in the tower, those students down there, the rain on our faces. You heard me from the grotto. That was God. He was there with you in the grotto. Everything. Your meeting me on that rainy night. God put us together. Your being there when I was in the trunk, the books we share. Your little dupes that teach you things. His fingerprints are all over the place. You just have to blow the dust away to see them.”

  He sat there looking at me, waiting for a response. I was not expecting such a testament from Myles.

  “Alright already,” he said finally, sitting up. “Let’s get down. Let’s get you to your blonde dupe who smells so nice and isn’t so pure. There’s a door here in the bell tower.”

  “As it turns out, I was the dupe.”

  “How so?” He froze in his movement.

  “She doesn’t want to see me anymore. I don’t share enough.”

  “I agree with her. You don’t. What did I tell you about the little lies? About our small omissions that seem like such a small seed to grow into such a monstrous weed? I’m sorry, Sam.”

  “It’s not a big deal. I didn’t like the way she turned out.”

  Myles shrugged. “On to the next one,” he said. “On to the real one.”

  I decided to destroy all the little omissions in my life. “Your sister has been worried about you.”

  “Naturally. It’s sneaky of me to put everyone all in a fright about me. I crave the attention,” he said. “Do you know my sister?”

  “Yes. Her name is Elle. She’s my brother’s…” Then I corrected myself. “Was my brother’s. She was the first person I spoke to off the bus. She’s become a very good friend.”

  “And now what?” Myles asked.

  “And now I’m in love with her.”

&n
bsp; I heard him sigh, and when I looked he was rubbing his hands on his pant legs. “She’s not one of these other girls on campus. You can’t lie to her.”

  “I just told you what I thought of her.”

  “If you’ve learned anything from me…don’t hold anything from her.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  A thought crossed his features. “Don’t tell her about me. Don’t tell her about tonight, Sam, please.”

  “About your photos?”

  He smiled then and we sat with the bells between us, listening to the rain.

  “I’m glad it’s you,” he said at last. “You haven’t been searching for God, Sam. You’ve been searching for yourself, fighting your brother’s shadow.”

  I looked at him.

  “I’m guilty of little lies too. I knew who you were when I first saw you, Sam. Peter was the biggest name on campus. You look just like him.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The ducks were back to bobbing in St Joseph’s Lake, tail feathers in the air, little black dots in the yellow glare. They move on instinct, they pick up and go without a specific destination in mind, but a direction in which they are absolutely positive of. It’s built within them, a compass that they summon when another instinctive reaction under their feathers tells them the seasons have changed.

  God may be around, if I was to believe what Myles did. And if I did believe that, then I should believe that Peter was here too. I always did feel his presence, just not in the way I had when he was living, the way I had become accustomed to and expected would last forever. He was always the protector, the guiding light. With that silenced in death, he was now the golden cloud above I could put my hand in but never grab anything from. He was the jersey on the wall and the blank space next to it. He was standing next to God, larger than God.

  I watched as one plump duck waddled the banks and marshaled several sunny brown ducklings back to the water’s edge. I tossed the crust of my sandwich to them before I left, one duckling breaking the ranks for a quick sprint at a meal.

  The manicured practice field near the stadium was empty, the grass growing slightly longer in the offseason, the early leafhoppers crossing the slanted sunrays like floating dust. The team would be starting summer drills within a month. In the distance I could hear the cracks from the final days of baseball practice.

  I went to Blarney’s. Emery was sitting in the only quiet booth in the tavern.

  “We’re moving the wedding date up,” he said. “Three weeks from today.”

  He held himself there, not looking for a chance to explain why. I nodded and kept my questions to myself. There was no need for an explanation.

  “We’ll have to rent you a suit. You’ll be my best man?”

  “Of course. Thanks, Emery.”

  “You understand my rush? I’ll need you on the rooftops, Sam. As many hours as you can give me this summer.”

  “All right.”

  “And during the school year. Claire will want a house with a nursery.”

  “I’ll do what I can. I want to finish school. I was thinking of switching to an English degree.”

  “What for?”

  “I might want to write.”

  “You’ll be pushing your graduation another semester or two away. Are you sure that’s what you want to do?”

  “No,” I said. “But I don’t need a destination. Some people count on that clarity. They need a target, an endpoint. As long as I’m headed toward finishing school, I’ll be fine. I just need a direction. Like a duck.”

  “Like a what?” He had to shout over the noise.

  “A duck. I’ll make a move when I’m ready. Until then I’ll stay in the pond and learn how to swim.”

  I read his furrowed expression and saw the question mark escape his lips.

  I said, “Guess what I’ve come to realize? Just now I thought of it. Nobody has anything figured out yet. What a boring world that would be. It takes all the fun out of life if you have all your choices made up before it happens. So, I have my direction. I’ll cross the goal line when I’m ready.”

  He nodded. “Just as much time as you can give me, okay? The rooftops? Do what you can.”

  Emery turned in the booth and raised his hand for another round. Higgins was pouring beers from the tap as fast as he could and, from behind the foothills of backs at the bar, he did not see any hands beyond the fists on the bar top. Emery stood and pushed his way to the counter, muscling his way through a loud circle of drinkers.

  “Let’s have these and go,” he said when he came back. Then he looked at me. “Boy, I’m already becoming a boring married guy. Once the ring goes on the finger the late nights go away.”

  “Here’s to late nights,” I said, raising my glass.

  “Here’s to a direction.”

  “Here’s to Hollywood and squinty movie roles.”

  Emery gave me a challenging grin. “Here’s to not knowing a single damn thing about anything.”

  “Here’s to hammer shoes.”

  I could hardly handle a sip after that, and Emery was laughing so hard with his mouth full that he had to put both his palms flat on the table and concentrate on forcing his gulp down before it erupted in a geyser from his nose. He held himself rigid with hysterical but very serious focus, and I practically saw the beer go down his throat in a jolting lump.

  Our futures were a mix of best guesses and complete mysteries, neither of them developing in the way we envisioned, if we were lucky to have ever had a vision at all. That was life and it came at me fully as an understanding that had always escaped before. There was just one detail that made a splotched watermark on the blank page of my life. It was Elle. She was Peter’s. I would have to write over her.

  Emery turned to the wall. “Here’s to Peter.”

  “To Peter.” I touched my pint to the glass on the jersey frame.

  A bouncy fellow with a slicked-down cowlick hanging over the center of his forehead noticed my gesture, turned from his spot at the bar, and slid over to our booth with a beer in his raised hand. “To Peter!”

  He threw down a swallow, the Guinness flooding the corners of his mouth. He seemed unaware of who he was toasting, he was just a student with enough drink in him to make him want to be a part of something, and he found us. He clinked his mug into mine.

  Another guy jumped over from the bar and repeated the toast.

  The circle of bar drinkers opened and Pat Carragher emerged from the center of it, a dark pint in his fist. He walked over with a few beers in his legs.

  He stood over us without saying a word, looking from me to Emery and back again. Then he looked at the jersey on the wall, tipped his glass back, and finished the stout without taking a breath. He exhaled in open-mouth satisfaction.

  “I’d toast to you too,” he said. “But I’m out of beer. Have one on me.”

  A few of his pals had gathered behind him, peeking over each other’s shoulders. The crowd of Saturday night drinkers carried on in the background.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “We were just leaving.”

  “Well, now hold on. Sit right there, Sammy-wonder. You and me got off on the wrong foot. It seems a little hostile of you to cut and run when I was just about to buy you a drink.”

  He leaned forward on the table, his short sleeves moving up on his thick, freckled arms.

  “I’ve already had a drink,” I told him. “But thanks. And you and I are fine.”

  “Chummy pals you and me, huh?” He stood and pulled a bent cigarette from behind his ear and let it hang in his lips. He did not move to find a matchbox. “Gosh Sam, I just don’t think you’re being level with me.”

  Pat Carragher looked at Peter’s jersey and read the white name card. “You know, I used to come to the games when your brother played. He was an inspiration to me. I was a senior in high school and I was running over pimple-faced linebackers every Friday night. I told myself I’d never get hit by anyone, especially a hard-hitting strong s
afety like Peter Conry, without them getting their bell rung by me first. I like your brother, Sam.”

  “I do too.”

  “Why don’t you play, Sam?”

  “Because I don’t care to.”

  “Why not? Are you afraid of getting hurt or are you afraid Higgins won’t put your jersey on the wall?”

  “Have a good night, Pat.”

  Emery and I stood to leave, finding ourselves in the standing beer-breath of Pat Carragher. I went for the door and he grabbed my arm and pulled me around.

  “Now, you wait a minute.”

  He stepped forward with a suddenly red face and breathed down on me with the flared nostrils of a bull. I could see the whites of his eyes and I again noted that I was looking up at them from about two inches below. His neck and shoulders might have grown over the school’s off-season fitness program.

  “You keep that little puff away from me,” he said. “You keep him the hell away, hear me?”

  “Takes a big man to hit a little guy like that.”

  “He pushed me. He was asking for it, begging for it. I had enough,” he took a step forward and jabbed his finger into my chest. “You keep him away.”

  Emery moved forward and one of Pat’s friends barred him back with an arm.

  “He’s done,” I said. “He’s going home. You won’t hear from him again.”

  Disappointment might have been what crawled into his features then. He said, “That’s good for you. The next time I might have come looking for you instead. You were ready to take his lumps before. Now, let’s get a drink and put all this behind us like a couple of men.”

  One of the floating heads disappeared to the bar. Pat Carragher seemed to relax a bit. He put his hand, a big bear mitt, on my shoulder.

  “I didn’t want to hit him, Sam. I hate that I did it. He’s a nice enough kid. But he pushed me until I snapped. He just wouldn’t leave well enough alone.”

  “I know that. He told me so. But you’re wrong about one thing.” I closed the space between us a little more by taking a half step. “You would not have had to come looking for me.”

  I was feeling good. I wasn’t especially hateful of Pat Carragher or insulted by him. He wasn’t a bad guy. He was rough around the edges and he hadn’t met someone who could cut him back yet. He was just a big guy who knew he would one day be the largest thing stomping around the Notre Dame grass. But he wasn’t there yet, and I was beginning to feel a surge of what had not yet been determined by our first meeting. That crash on the pep rally field.