The Lords of Folly

by Gene Logsdon

  Patroux did not often laugh out loud, but now he did. “That is one thing you will not have to worry about with my clientele.”

  Blaze watched Fen take on a new life, feeling slightly jealous. Who would ever have guessed that all that guitar-strumming might lead to a good job. Fen no longer needed him. Gabe no longer needed him. Nobody needed him. Marge was his last chance. Carpe diem.

  As soon as an occasion presented itself, he went to Prior Robert’s office. “I would like to volunteer to take classes at the university in Minneapolis,” he announced, trying to look as earnest as a saintly nun on her deathbed.

  “But Oblate Blaise, you have more than once begged me not to send you to the university,” Robert replied with open astonishment.

  “I changed my mind. It appears we’re going to be sent away anyhow, so maybe I should get used to the idea.”

  “I don’t suppose your decision has anything to do with the closing of Ascension?”

  “Closing Ascension?” Blaze’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. “What are you talking about?”

  Prior Robert never swore, not even to himself, but now he almost did. This impossible young man always outmaneuvered him, even when he did not know he was doing it. The closing of Ascension was a closely guarded secret which usually meant that everyone knew it. Now the Prior, overwhelmed by Blaze’s surprise request, had let it slip.

  “You can’t close this place,” Blaze snapped, suddenly forgetting the respectful voice he was supposed to maintain when addressing his superiors. “This is my home.” He seemed embarrassed then, realizing that he had said something totally honest for once.

  Blaze’s words cut like a knife into Robert’s heart. The seminarian had said better in four words what he had tried to say in four thousand, in opposition to the closing.

  “Look, Blaise,” Robert said, “Can I trust you to keep this news to yourself? I am not supposed to say anything just yet. The announcement will be made soon, but if it becomes known now, I’ll be in trouble.” His voice actually became pleading. “I’ve kept you out of trouble on occasion, you know.” Blaze stared at his boss with a new appreciation. He had noted that for the first time the Prior had addressed him by his name without the loathesome “Oblate” tag ahead of it. And he was asking Blaze for trust. Oh, wow.

  “Sure. I can keep my mouth shut.”

  “What subjects do you wish to pursue at the university? I believe you have an interest in writing, do you not?”

  Blaze was surprised again. Being a writer was another of his fantasies, but how did Robert know? He asked as much.

  The Prior shrugged. “You strike me as someone who ought to be a writer, that’s all. You write well on essay test questions. You might be good at it.”

  “Do you think so, really?” Blaze was exposing his real self now, vulnerable, serious, lacking confidence. Writing was the only way he had as yet thought of that might allow him to make a little money when he left the Josephians. He had no skills, no training, no degrees, no experience in anything except farming. But to actually make a living as a writer seemed as far out of his reach as to actually make a living as a farmer.

  “Yes, I really think so, Blaise.”

  Oh, wow. “I wonder if I might take some courses in Psychology too,” he said.

  Robert looked pleased. “You really do want to help Jesse, don’t you?”

  “What I really want is to learn how to tell sanity from insanity,” Blaze said. He was telling the truth even if he were also into an elaborate scheme to be with Marge Puckett.

  Prior Robert understood that a gifted leader does not try to do much leading of the gifted. He had known Oblate Blaise for nearly three years now, during which time he had learned that he did not know anything about Oblate Blaise and neither did Oblate Blaise. The boy was either doomed or destined to make his own way and no spiritual persuasion that the Prior might muster was going to mean anything one way or the other. Furthermore, he had promised God not to stand in the way of Oblate Blaise.

  “I think going to the university for some classes can be arranged. I’m not personally convinced that it is the right course for you or for any of the seminarians, but those in higher authority think otherwise. I believe they will be pleased with your request. God has given you the talents to be anything you want to be, you know. In the meantime, get some money from the Procurator and get yourself a decent suit for the university. You can ride in with Oblate Daniel.”

  Blaze interpreted “decent suit” as broadly as possible. Instead of the customary black that the seminarians usually wore in public, he bought a navy blue blazer (well, almost black), a pink Elvis shirt with white stitching, and black jeans cut western style. He wore a white shirt when leaving the seminary and changed into the pink one in the car.

  CHAPTER 27

  Blaze had felt remorseful as he left the Prior’s office. He was taking advantage of the one Josephian who really seemed to care about him as an individual. He also felt guilty over the enthusiasm with which Danny and Banana greeted his decision to join them at the university. They thought that he was entering into their scheme to play baseball. Blaze let them continue in their thinking because scheming to play baseball was less despicable for a seminarian than scheming to win the hand of a coed.

  His first impression of college life was one of numbing cultural shock. He had no idea that so many beautiful women could be gathered together in one place. He concluded immediately that if the Josephians carried out their plan to send their seminarians to public universities, they were signing the Order’s death warrant unless they also planned to change the Church’s mind about celibacy. He found it impossible not to stop and gawk at the girls. Girls on the sidewalk, girls in the halls, girls in the classroom, girls in the dining room, girls in the gym, girls in the dormitories, girls, oh God, in the swimming pool, girls, girls everywhere. Fen would not last ten minutes here before he would tear off all his clothes and chase after them. And from the way many of them acted, they would not be hard to catch.

  But Blaze was not to be deterred. He stared at girls mostly to find Marge. The fact that she would certainly turn up very soon, coming down a sidewalk or emerging from a building, set his spine to tingling right down to the end of his tailbone. To meet her finally without fear of parents or priests or gossips or friends casting suspicious eyes at them, to meet her totally on his own terms in his new clothes, oh, wow, he could hardly contain himself. He imagined the look of surprise on her face, since he had not told her that he was coming to the university. She would stare at him, realization slowly dawning, and then she would smile that big open smile of hers and fly into his arms.

  It happened almost like that, except for the last part. The embrace ended clumsily because when Blaze moved to kiss her, she pulled back. She did not seem to be against kissing, Blaze made himself believe, but only that the moment was inappropriate.

  “That’s some outfit,” she marvelled, eyeing the pink shirt. She wondered if Blaze were color-blind. “So you finally left the seminary,” she said, still holding his hands.

  “Well, not officially,” he said, noting that the remark caused a split second of disappointment to flutter across her face. “I’ll be leaving after this semester. I’m going to live with Fen then until I figure out what to do. Fen and I just might farm that place for Hasse for awhile.”

  She continued to stare at him with an open fondness but with her head shaking from side to side ever so slightly. He was so totally naive about the world. “C’mon, let’s go get a Coke,” she said, leading the way.

  It would probably have been impossible for Blaze to study his coursework anyway, what with a trillion girls dancing before his eyes, but seeing Marge regularly sealed his fate as a scholar. He could not concentrate on anything except her. The psychology textbooks turned out to be boring, concerned almost entirely with making up new words for various suspected mental abnormalities and then trying to justify their definitions for these new words. He turned to reading case
histories of autism. He could not find a case that paralleled Jesse’s exactly but it became evident to him that he, Blaze, had at least a touch of every mental illness that psychology had found a label for, and so did everyone he knew. Also, he learned that autistic individuals often had phenomenal memories. Jesse must be suffering from some form of autism but apparently not much was known about the problem. If Josephians were going to be helping people, why weren’t they studying autism instead of an Arabic Hebrew dialect no one had spoken since the fourth century B.C.

  Because Danny and Banana had drivers’ licenses to get to and from the seminary, Blaze and Melonhead had to check schedules with them often to make sure they had a ride home. That meant the foursome often ate lunch together in the cafeteria and attracted the attention of the whole dining area with their loud, carefree laughter. Danny and Banana were doing indoor workouts with the ball team and wondered why Blaze hadn’t joined them yet.

  “Haven’t had time,” Blaze lied.

  “Hildy showed up the first day, can you believe it, still conniving to get a game between us and the university,” said Banana. “He made a really big deal over how we beat Chaska’s triple A team. But I don’t think he needed to brag us up. The coaches watched Danny pitch to me just five minutes and put us both on the roster. Can you believe it? Hildy said not to tell Robert just yet.”

  “You guys are fantasizing and so is Hildy,” Blaze said, suddenly becoming the practical advisor that had been Gabe’s role before the fence post hit him. “Robert’ll never let you play, you know, I don’t care what Hildy does.”

  “We’re prepared for that eventuality,” Danny said, suddenly serious. But he did not explain.

  Melonhead would hardly let them talk sports, however, as he praised the brilliance of his professor, Dr. Armbuster.

  “She’s terrific,” he said, more to himself than to them.

  “Ooooh, sheeee’s terrific,” Blaze teased. “Now I get the picture.”

  “Nope, not that at all,” Melonhead replied, blushing. “She’s just very supportive. I told her that I wanted to start a center for herbal medicine at Ascension and she didn’t think that was crazy. She said she would help raise some money for it, in fact.” Blaze wanted to tell him that Ascension was doomed, but had given his word not to. Let Melonhead enjoy his dream as long as possible.

  Mostly, Blaze spent what time he could find at the university talking to Marge. She was much freer in her attitude toward him now that they were away from home. They actually held hands. They came very close to kissing. Blaze was sure he was winning out over Al. They would get married, Blaze plotted to himself, and take over her father’s farm. But Blaze did not say anything like that out loud, for fear it would force her to tell him that she was not really in love with him, even though he was sure that she really was and didn’t know it. Instead he just talked about farming and how, if he could once get to buy some land, he would need only the barest smattering of money to live happily ever after. Often she would start to tell him that he should think more about writing or teaching. But she would stop, knowing how it angered her when her parents suggested similar occupations when she expressed a desire to farm.

  “Why is it that no one thinks a woman can handle a farm?” Marge said.

  “Why is it that no one thinks of farming as an occupation requiring just as much intellectual acumen as any professional career?” Blaze said.

  He tried to write a story for his creative writing class about a young man who thought he had been raped by a succubus. He included some lines from Fen’s song. He received a D on the paper and a tart note from the professor saying that shock value did not substitute for writing talent. Blaze showed the story to Marge. Like everyone else around Wassermensch Lake, she by now knew about poor Fen’s fantasy, so she was not shocked. She thought the story definitely showed writing talent.

  “But I don’t see how you can write so intimately about sexual relationships if you are a virgin,” she said, pretending to be merely bantering with him, but in reality keen to see how he would react.

  “How would you know that I’m writing intimately about sex if you’re a virgin?” he bantered right back. They both laughed, nervously.

  “Did you ever wonder what virginity really means?” Blaze asked. Marge was embarrassed. She thought herself sophisticated after four years in college, but her virginity was not a subject open for discussion. Blaze was, however, honoring her intelligence again, something few men she knew did to women. In fact he always acted as if he thought she were smarter than he, a rarity for males. And she was overcome with curiosity about his virginity.

  “As I understand it, your poor Fen thinks he lost his virginity,” she said and then added, as if jokingly, “Does that mean he really did lose it even if he really didn’t simply because he believes he did?”

  “Oh, wow, Marge. That’s the greatest question yet.” She was surprised at how enthusiasticly he reacted. “Wait till Gabe hears that one. Well, the former Gabe anyway.” And Blaze did his usual cackle. “Yes, if you think you’re not a virgin, you must not be one. How does anyone know where subjective thought ends and objective reality begins? If you’ve been so close to losing your virginity, whatever that is, that you think you have lost it, what’s the diff?”

  “I’ve always thought virginity was kind of a meaningless concept,” Marge replied, nodding in agreement. “And if one loses what is considered virginity, could she not in her mind, repudiate her mistake, if that’s what it is, and become a born again virgin?”

  Blaze erupted again. “Oh, wow, that’s rich. A born again virgin. Oh wow. No doubt immaculately conceived. Why didn’t I think of that.”

  “You men have historically demanded virginity—whatever it is—of the women you want to marry while you try desperately hard to de-virginize the entire female population before it has a chance to get married,” Marge continued. “The only thing dumber than that is the way women go right along, pretending to honor the concept of virginity just to please men. Shows how crazy the human race is.”

  “Exactly,” Blaze said, beaming. Then he paused just the right length of time. “But even understanding that, we both still want to know if the other is a virgin.”

  Marge blushed. Honoring a woman’s intelligence could go too far perhaps. Then she suddenly realized something. This was the conversation she should be having with Al.

  “Well, it’s none of your business,” she replied, laughing in spite of herself, “but I am a virgin. I think.”

  Blaze chuckled. “Me too. I think.”

  CHAPTER 28

  That conversation should have relaxed the sexual tension between them, but it did not. Marge still refused his advances even while giving the impression that she did not want to refuse. But at least now Blaze was more hopeful. If she had not yet had sex with Al, whatever that meant, it could be that she had not yet made up her mind to marry him.

  Blaze found out that Marge’s birthday was in May, quickly approaching. He decided to buy her something with the two twenty dollar bills hidden in the seam of his billfold. Parting with that money turned out to be more difficult than he had imagined. Forty dollars was a pittance for most people, but it was all the financial security he had in the world. That he was willing to spend it surely showed how much he loved her, he thought. Seeing her at lunch on a Friday, he told her to be sure to come to their usual meeting place on campus on Monday afternoon. Then he skipped a class, went to a jewelry store and bought her a necklace.

  Marge arrived at the campus bench where they often sat, displaying a nervousness so tense that Blaze knew before she spoke that something extraordinary was in the wind. He immediately deduced that she had decided to give up Al and collapse into his arms. But before he could wish her a happy birthday and draw the necklace from his pocket with great ceremonial flourish, as he had planned, she kissed him fiercely, then pushed him away. Her face had paled to the color of old ironstone. Losing her resolve momentarily, she wished that he were more aggres
sive. If he would just take her now like most men she knew would try to do, she could “surrender” with the excuse that he had overwhelmed her. But he did not. Never had tried. It was this characteristic that she most loved. He did not seem to have an ounce of aggression in him. The savage world of commercial competition would grind him to bits.

  “Blaze, Al gave me a ring last night. I accepted it.” She held out her hand so he could see it. He seemed to double over in pain. “I’ve tried every way to tell you what was going to happen. You must believe me, that I do love you, and that I’ve been having a terrible time in my head. I love you, but not in a marrying way. And because of how I’ve been raised, or perhaps my own innate caution, I don’t do sex outside of marriage. Our relationship is not to be, Blaze. Even without Al in the picture I don’t think I would marry you. At least not now.”

  “What do you mean, not now?” He seemed to be taking the news with more toughness than she had thought he would. For Blaze, the toughness emerged because at least he knew now that she really did love him.

  “I don’t know how to say this without hurting you. You are the most extraordinary person I’ve ever met. But Blaze, you do not know your own mind. The fact that you can’t quite leave your present life shows that, don’t you see? You are play-acting half a dozen different roles and you don’t know which one is the real you.”

  “That’s not true,” he snapped, his hard practical voice now in charge. She was surprised. She had expected him to collapse emotionally. “I act silly and kid around a lot because in my predicament, if I didn’t, I really would go crazy,” he said, harshly. “Can’t you see how mad the whole world is, especially mine? I got into this seminary business before I even reached puberty. If you would look at it in a fair way, you could see that the fact that I have stuck with it so long proves that I am steady. Too damn steady. Otherwise I would have just run off a long time ago. I don’t even like this stupid jacket and shirt I’m wearing. It’s just a way, I don’t know how to say it, to act nuts to keep from going nuts.”