Casual Choices

by Tom Corbett

  “And do what, for Christ’s sake, blow up the goddamn Pentagon?”

  The wiry one looked across the circle with his typical intensity. “Perhaps, someday. But tonight, tonight, I only ask for one thing. I want each of us to pledge our trust and fidelity to one another.”

  “Mo is right,” added the intense young woman named Carla. “Change does not happen just by asking. Take women’s suffrage! That didn’t come about by asking politely. Female activists had been asking for decades. They got nowhere. Then Alice Paul disrupted Wilson’s inauguration in 1916, scores of her followers were beaten and arrested. But she kept the pressure on until it just became too hard for Woodrow to hide behind the war that he got us into. It was only then that women finally got the vote. Not by being nice, but by accepting nothing less than victory and by being total pains in the asses until they won. They went out and took it.”

  Morris picked up the argument. “We need to go beyond being pesky, inconvenient students. No, time to become much more. I’m asking each of you to join me.” With that, he put his hand out in front of him. “Okay, if you’re with me, put your hand on mine. If not, just leave. I’ll understand, we will understand. What I’m asking is great, and not everyone can make the sacrifice. Joining me now means breaking the law, risking your futures and your freedom. I can’t say how exactly but just trust me. If you stay in this room, you will affect history. The trajectory of your life will be altered, maybe for the better, maybe not.” He paused to look directly at each person about him. “I do not expect this commitment from all of you. If you choose to leave, all I ask is that you forget about this night.”

  “How can we commit if we don’t know what you’re asking of us?” someone queried.

  Mo looked surprised at the question, as if he had not expected it. “The commitment is everything, the details are incidental. Remember that. If you’re asking for specifics, I have none for you. You must simply believe in what we want to achieve. This is a choice about your conscience, your dedication to building a better world, whatever that takes. It is a huge undertaking but never forget the Chinese proverb that Kennedy favored…a journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step. First the pledge, then we can plan, but only among the committed.”

  An athletic-looking young man with a square face and short reddish- brown hair stirred, and everyone looked in his direction. He slowly rose and left the room with an expression trapped on his face that none could quite explain. Was it contempt, sadness, anger, regret? It would be a matter of debate in future weeks. Then the one called Josh rocked a moment as if he would join him but settled back into his position. He looked around furtively to see if anyone had noticed his tiny movement. One after another, they shuffled forward to put a hand on the growing number of symbolic commitments. Only Josh held back. He looked intently at the wiry leader. They had been together so long, but this was a watershed moment. He just knew it. It was as if game time was over, childhood complete. In this moment, you were crossing over into the unknown. All eyes were on him as he hesitated until his body seemed on the verge of exploding from the tension within. Then slowly inching forward, his hand found the top of the pile. He hoped no one noticed the imperceptible tremor in his fingers.

  Now, many weeks later, on this cold morning in the inky blackness, Jeremiah Joshua Connelly realized that further internal debate was useless. He had been thinking about what he should do ever since that night when he pledged himself to this group. The pranks and protests had turned into stronger actions that now crossed over the line to outright felonies. It was only a matter of time before the law caught up with them or, worse, someone died. In his own mind, he could accept his own demise, some nights that outcome seemed comforting in a way. The thought of taking another’s life, however, was beyond his comprehension.

  He suddenly felt he was running out of time, he had to escape or commit totally. Half-measures were no longer acceptable, not even to himself, especially to himself. There was a problem, though. There was no analytical method for making this choice. Feelings of loyalty, outrage, and principle incessantly swirled through his head. This conundrum was beyond conventional calculation. There were no acceptable metrics for comparing relative magnitudes among the emotions, values, principles, and normative dispositions that waged war in his brain and heart. He wanted to scream but bolted from the car instead.

  He stood in the cold searching the faces from that night. The visage of Morris Greenstein, or Mo, their natural leader, appeared before him. Mo had charisma, maybe emerging from a source found in his ancestral pedigree. His grandfather was a revolutionary leader among the Bolsheviks during the October Revolution, which he always reminded people took place in November. But his father’s dad stayed true to the original Communist principles and to Trotsky after Lenin died as the self-serving Stalin pushed his way to power. His grandfather knew he had backed the wrong horse and fled, eventually settling in America where his son and Mo’s father worked in the mills but mostly focused on organizing unions and giving the bosses a hard time. Fleeing Russia had proved a wise move. Stalin had virtually all the original revolutionaries killed off, even those handpicked by Lenin himself. After Stalin had Trotsky murdered in Mexico City, Mo’s grandfather feared he would be next for a long time.

  Then, other specters swirled before him as snow began to emerge from the inky sky. Carla Shapiro was the daughter of a rabbi. As an only child, she had been raised as if she might somehow become a scholar herself. But she was not permitted to pursue her dream by her conservative father in that day, so she substituted traditional academic studies instead. What she embraced from her religious upbringing was a sense of purpose, and a great deal of guilt. To her, life was pursuing something greater than herself for some vision of the good. From her traditional studies, she came to understand how the world worked. She instinctively sought to destroy the dystopian reality about her and seek a utopian alternative while her inbred guilt kept her pushing toward the unattainable. Social justice became her new God.

  Bob Wilson, a pleasant and likable kid, gave the Catholic seminary a shot. He studied for the priesthood for two years before enrolling at this decidedly secular college where his ideals drew him to the left-wing crowd. The switch in direction was semi-intentional. Soon, his passion for finding God quickly mutated from the transcendental to the political. If one could not achieve perfection outside of this world, then why not within it? After the fact, Bob came to realize his pursuit of the priesthood had been a misguided search for meaning in life. Josh had liked this quiet young man from day one, they had much in common.

  Helen Mueller was a late addition to his circle. She was from a wealthy family but found her privilege a burden. She always sensed that she never fit in no matter where she was. Though pleasant of appearance, she could not match her two sisters who dazzled with their beauty and poise. Helen had a roundish face and a body that leaned toward the chunky side. While her family glided through society with ease and the familiarity of those born to position, Helen struggled. Everything was conscious effort for her, and she grew tired of the perpetual pretense. She buried this overwhelming sense of failure in an anger that burned below a quiet exterior.

  James Daley was a follower. He wanted to belong. Unlike Josh, he did not have the athletic skills to compete and gain any notoriety. To compensate, he became a classic hanger-on, the guy who internalized the aura of others and did their bidding without question, sometimes in an annoying, obsequious manner. Josh always looked upon him as a slightly comical figure destined for either tragedy or anonymity, most likely the latter. Josh instinctively reached out to this underdog, sometimes speculating whether Jimmie might be better off seeking a life of quiet desperation as an accountant with a wife and 2.5 children. If only he had been fortunate enough to fall in with a different crowd.

  Then, there was Katherine “Kit” Olson, the outsider. She was a blond beauty who followed Josh like an adoring puppy, even to the point of mouthing revolutionary slogans and pret
ending the requisite fervor. Josh could never quite respond to her; her tendency to fall back on the usual feminine charms put him off. Perhaps his reticence is why she kept after him as so many boys made passes at her with total futility. Still, her attraction to him could not sustain her faux commitment to leftist causes as the small group drifted toward a scary cliff. Funny, he mused, how we evolve and mutate into something new, shedding old skin as we transform. Life really is not a constant, but not all can accept the flux and change.

  Josh had met Peter Favulli, his one totally comfortable friend in this cabal, through high school athletics. He did not know any Italians from his neighborhood. They were from a different tribe, and area, Peter growing up in the traditional Italian conclave of the North End. Josh, however, appreciated his skills on the playing fields and struck up a friendship. Besides, he was Catholic, ethnic, and working class, that was close enough. When he visited Peter’s home, he was struck by the sense of religious devotion that pervaded everything. It seemed to carry an aura from a different time. Two of Peter’s sisters would become nuns though one brother and a couple of cousins would wind up as mobbed-up wise guys. Peter himself inexorably was drawn into the religious life and almost entered the seminary after high school. His devotion to God never quite got off the ground, but like Carla, he brought forward a conscience burdened with guilt and a sense of responsibility to do good. When Peter had risen that night and walked out the door, Josh had almost followed him, almost. Why had he not? He wanted to. An answer came to him. It was easier not to, at least in that moment. He despised that answer.

  There were, of course, others from his past who were absent from Josh’s college circle. They mostly were the neighborhood Irish toughs destined for lives of mediocre aspirations and more modest results. They all hung out in one another’s homes until Josh began to drift in a different direction. The break was in slow motion. First, there were more silences. The jokes flew back and forth with less celerity and frequency. Then there were fewer excuses to get together, and finally the actual arguments started.

  His new circle had long been evolving, shedding old inhibitions as they became more focused and committed to stopping this war. The teach- ins, the marches, the never-ending debates of issues and evidence were no longer satisfying. Mo’s call for doing something dramatic seemed natural and inevitable by the time he uttered the words that committed them to dangerous acts. And yet, Josh wavered. He always wavered. His life always seemed to be on some transformative cusp as if the struggle between what was right and what was necessary would inexorably become a lifelong sentence in hell. Circumstances were cruel on occasion, not permitting paralytic indecision. Life in the end was a series of binary choices, one way or the other. How to decide, that was the question.

  Life must be so easy for those who see it as if all were black and white. Certitude is a calming anesthetic that rubs off most confusion and doubt. What if you could just live out a given script, not be required to confront deeper, more existential choices. Then you could simply grow tall and strong and certain, no deviations and few questions. He rather felt like a weak vine, weaving this way and that, looking for a tendril through which to attach his wandering path to something solid and permanent. He often saw himself grasping for something solid, but it was not there. Only doubt and discontent lay before him.

  “Damn it!” he yelled into the darkness. Then he walked to a nearby lamplight as he pulled out a quarter. A new layer of snow was accumulating as larger flakes surrounded him with greater intensity. He flipped the coin into the air and watched it tumble through frigid air. It struck a jagged piece of concrete and bounced off the sidewalk into the shadows of the street. For a moment, he could not see how it had landed. On moving closer, he saw that it had settled into the puffy snow, the face obscured. Even now, he thought, the Gods are still screwing with me. He kneeled beside the coin…trying to decide if he really wanted to see the result. Nope, my choice, dear God, not yours. Besides, it’s not like this is forever. “Okay then.”

  He returned to the car and started off again. Maybe he would slide off the road and kill himself. Not a bad outcome, he thought. When he reached the highway, he paused only slightly before turning on to the west-bound ramp. For a couple of hours, Josh drove through occasional snow squalls and the haze of early morning. Eventually, he slid into a northbound lane after he had passed into New York State. Many hours later, he stopped near a sign that said Welcome to Canada and Bienvenu au Canada. He took one deep breath before continuing. Things would never be the same again.

  CHAPTER 1

  DAY 1: DAY BREAK

  “Do you know what a tendril is?”

  “A root? A young root, I think,” responded Rachel, breathless. “But I’m sure you’re about to set me straight, oh wise and omniscient one.” She had rushed from the house to catch up to her brother on realizing he had slipped out even before the first hint of dawn. She had recalled him saying that he always walked Morris, his beloved pug, before sunrise. It was then that solitude could be guaranteed. That, and the fact that Morris, being a small dog, had an insufficient bladder.

  “Close.” Josh smiled. “It is a threadlike organ found in climbing plants like vines. They typically encircle both the plant and some other structure. They don’t flower or anything like that. But they do perform an essential function—they grasp onto these other structures to keep the thing from falling over…from dying. Rather amazing. Okay, not amazing but interesting, at least to me.”

  “So, this is what you think about before the damn sun is up. Okay, so just what’s the point here, that I’m rootless or that I like clutching to things?”

  “Hell, Rach, you’ve to get past thinking everything is about you. I’m talking botany here.”

  Rachel threw her head back and forced a harsh chuckle. “You really are a piece of work. We have hardly seen one another since I was in high school. I commit to making this, your official university retirement, into my first vacation in forever and our long-delayed rapprochement and what happens?” “Rapprochement?” Josh emitted a tiny chuckle. “I didn’t think doctors so literate.”

  “Don’t joke when I’m about to yell at you.” She went into serious mode. “First, you do your usual dance so that we only exchange meaningless pleasantries when I finally arrived last night after the trip from hell. Next, you retire early, because you were tired. Hell, I did the travelling. Then, I hear you escaping this morning in the middle of the damn night. So, I sprain a damn toe stumbling around in the dark to get some clothes on just so I can race to the beach to find you. And what do I get? A botany lesson from the kid that hated all that sciency stuff, at least he did when I last knew him…really knew him, that is.” Her voice caught a bit, and she hated herself for it. This wasn’t turning out as she had pictured it in her mind.

  “Morris!” Professor Jeremiah Joshua Connelly, universally known as Josh, was looking down to the squat rumples of fur ambling happily alongside his feet. “How many times have we talked about women, what pains in the asses they are?” Morris slowed his waddle to look up at the human he adored. This was different, he must have thought. The morning walks were usually just the two of them, accomplished in silence where man and pet could meditate while focusing on their private issues of the moment. “Really now, how many times have you told me that broads are nothing but trouble? But do I listen to you? No, I don’t, and much to my own detriment, I might add. Think about this, my friend. I’ve spent my whole life in school and you not a day, except for that ill-fated obedience training and I apologize for putting you through that, buddy. But at least they gave you a social promotion for being cute. No matter, you remain the wise one while I continue to be the dumb ass. When will I learn? You may look a bit slow, but you carry in that ugly head of yours the wisdom and insight of Solomon himself.”

  Rachel knelt over to the pug. “Oh, sweetie, let me take you away from this hell you are in. My evil brother is such a bad influence on you. I would just love you to bits.” Sh
e ran her hands over his wrinkled coat as he squirmed in delight at the attention. Morris was in his element; he loved attention. “Oh see, he loves me.” Rachel was glad for the diversion to regain her self-control. Why did she let him get to her?

  “Hah, so much you know. Mo would love the Ripper if Jack scratched his ears.” Josh looked out over the inlet. The beach he walked most mornings ran eastward from the north end of the campus, stretching along the southern edge of Burrard Inlet leading into English Bay and the city of Vancouver. Directly across the water, the mountains, still snowcapped, appeared to rise out of the water. To the right lay central Vancouver, shimmering in the receding blackness.

  He never tired of this view. He walked along the beach most mornings, particularly since he had adopted the pug from a colleague who found a dog too much of an inconvenience once his children were off to college. He would amble along the shore often just as the ink of night yielded to a faint light. Then his thoughts would overtake him until he realized that the world was in transition. What had been blackness pricked with tiny spots of light melted to a hazy gray. Another pause and then gray fused with a hint of blue punctured by the outline of a city center and dominant mountain peaks.