A Perfect Union of Contrary Things

by Maynard James Keenan

  “All of a sudden, there was Jim,” Bishop would later recall. “I couldn’t imagine what it was like for Mike and Jim to be together after such a long estrangement.” When Bishop looked at Jim, he saw a sensitive young man uprooted from the familiar and forced to adjust to not only high school but a home life more regimented than the one he’d known.

  And he saw something else. Decades later, he would remember the quiet boy in social studies class and his insightful comments about the branches of government and the articles of the Constitution. He remembered the determined runner eager to see what might be beyond the next bend of the road or the next stand of red maples blazing against the October sky.

  The state cross country finals were held in nearby Clare, and Bishop, believing that all the boys, no matter how skilled or unprepared, should have the chance to participate in every event, arranged both a JV and a varsity race on the same course. Jim came in at speeds faster than anyone else’s—outpacing not only his fellow freshmen but the stellar members of the varsity team as well.

  His performance did not go unrewarded. At the cross country banquet that fall, Bishop presented Jim with his first varsity letter.

  He’d run as he had in the long-ago war games in the Ravenna field, understanding now that work and discipline spelled success—his own and that of the team. “Even though Bishop and my dad hung out, he didn’t cut me any slack. He expected a lot from everybody,” he would recall. “He was like, ‘We’re going to get things done, and we’re going to do them right.’”

  Jim sensed that his growing collection of awards was only a beginning. He recited his coach’s oft-repeated mantra: Never give up, and you’ll be victorious. He wondered if the letters weren’t the first small step toward some even larger goal he couldn’t yet imagine.

  Cross country in the fall, wrestling in winter, track in the spring: Jim’s sports triad brought structure and the satisfaction of knowing his talents contributed to a larger effort. The starting gun sounded and the race became a race against himself. The whistle blew and he was alone on the mat, his contest as much about besting himself as his opponent.

  By the end of his freshman year, Jim had excelled in mile and half-mile track events and earned another varsity letter. He looked forward to working with his mentor in the seasons to come, but his dream was short-lived. That spring, Bishop announced his resignation and transfer to a school downstate. Losing a coach was one thing; saying goodbye to the man who’d believed in him during those first uncertain Scottville days was quite another. Jim grieved.

  It wasn’t long before the effect of Bishop’s absence was obvious. His replacement lacked the skill and passion to coach the runners to anything near victory, and their morale and performance plummeted. By junior year, Jim’s frustration had reached the breaking point and he took it upon himself to reverse the situation. “The teams weren’t motivated and the coach wasn’t pushing them,” he recalled in a 2012 interview. “If we were going to succeed, I would have to step into Steve Bishop’s shoes.”

  Jim took charge of the underclassmen, who soon looked to him as their unofficial captain. He led them in training runs that looped from Gordon Road to the east all the way to Crystal Lake northwest of town. And he ran with them, just as Bishop had, through fallow fields and autumn woods, pushing them no harder than he pushed himself. They pulled on their blue and gold team T-shirts and tackled the marshy lowlands of Amber Road and the long, hilly stretch of Stiles, every practice a test of their endurance, a challenge to always run faster and longer than they had the day before.

  You can be a warrior on the field, on the mat, on the track, but at the end of the day, it really isn’t about pummeling your opponent. It’s about understanding how much better you can do.

  The other teams—the guys from Shelby and Benzie Central and Hart—they’re all snow shovelers just like you. I always thought you should go at the end of the event and thank those people for giving you the opportunity for another step toward finding your strengths or limitations. You should recognize that the hurdle is you, and then acknowledge the person’s role in your learning about yourself.

  Sometimes, weary of shin splints, blisters, and aching calf muscles, they complained about Jim’s punishing workouts, and their less-demanding coach would take over for a little while. But before too long, they missed Jim—his arduous regime tempered with his teasing humor. They missed the exhilarating sprints down unforgiving gravel roads and the intense camaraderie they felt when the team became a single being, each member a crucial part of the whole.

  “Jim was a great leader,” recalled Ed Sanders, a freshman runner under Jim’s captaincy. “He made us work hard, because you didn’t want him coming after you. We’d heard stories about how tough he was, how if someone wasn’t working hard enough, he’d rip their shorts off and make them run back to the school in their underwear.”

  There was no truth to the stories, of course. They were tales shared in the locker room, myths repeated by boys in awe of the upperclassman’s drive and his ability to transform his visions into action.

  “We all wanted to emulate Jim. I wasn’t worried about disappointing the coach. I didn’t want to disappoint Jim,” said Sanders, who later would become Scottville’s phys ed instructor and cross country coach. “Jim showed us what leadership was all about. I use what I learned from him to this day: the respect he showed for others, the things he did to motivate us to work harder.”

  Another freshman on the cross country and track teams was Tim Genson, now Scottville’s high school athletic director. “Other than Jim, we were extremely young and not a very good team,” Genson would recall. “Jim’s prodding and pushing certainly allowed me to be better than I would have been.”

  On blue fall afternoons, Jim led Genson and his teammates along Darr Hill, the quarter-mile upgrade past his house and the bane of MCC runners, shouting encouragement every step of the way. Taking a page from Bishop’s coaching manual, he created a team of comrades who knew their success depended as much upon their shared empathy as upon their speed and stamina. He taught them to be always aware of the discouraged teammate in need of an extra boost of confidence or a heartening word and that celebrating triumph was as important as learning from defeat.

  “We were novice, wet-behind-the-ears runners,” Genson said. “But with Jim’s leadership, we got as much out of ourselves as we could. He made us care about what we were doing and helped me understand that teams are at their best when players, not coaches, hold each other accountable.

  “I remember the first time that switch clicked on for me,” he would recall. “We were coming back from Darr Hill and I was keeping up with the lead group, which was always Jim. Watching him, I thought, ‘I can do this!’”

  Once, we were at a conference meet, and we were all running strong. These guys aren’t even my team. They’re from Muskegon Oakridge. Those are some of the best times I ever ran, when we connected and pushed each other even though we were on opposite teams.

  Before the race, we’d all decided that we were going to let the younger brother of one of the runners win. Me coming in first or second or third wasn’t going to make any difference in the big picture. But we pushed that kid harder than he’d ever been pushed so he’d get his first first-place conference medal.

  He’d kept up the whole time and we were within milliseconds of each other, but this kid couldn’t get to the finish line without hanging with us. In the last 100 yards, he had to run faster than he’d ever run.

  The rest of us just slightly hesitated at the finish line to put him in, and we all went over the line together. He earned that medal.

  Drawing pen always at the ready, Jim whiled away a few spare moments during the invitational meet at Ferris State College that autumn. He laced up his running shoes, did a few stretches at the edge of the field, and before the race began, doodled an elaborate 12-pointed figure on his palm. And then he ran, his fo
otfalls a counterpoint to the wind rushing in his ears.

  At the finish line, he held open his hand to accept his medal. The coach pressed the award against Jim’s outstretched palm, where it fit almost exactly within the ink outline he’d drawn. He looked at it in wonder, this award for doing what he most loved to do, this award in the shape of a star.

  “Mike scared the hell out of me,” recalled Jim Allen, who joined Scottville’s wrestling team as a freshman in 1977. “As small in stature as he is, he was so intimidating. He always demanded respect.” Since coming to coach at MCC, Mike had led his wrestlers to dozens of league, district, and regional championships, and two of his men had won individual state titles. Allen had good reason to feel anxious.

  Choosing wrestling had been a most fortuitous move for Jim. He observed his father as the professional he was and learned the skills of the sport in their purest form. The hours they spent together in training and competition were the safe framework where they could explore their new relationship. Even Jan accompanied them to out-of-town matches, and, inching along the snowy Michigan roads in the Toyota, they imagined themselves—for a little while anyway—a real family.

  Mike wasn’t one to play favorites. He expected his son to complete the same rigorous training exercises as others on the team—and then some. On the way home from school, Jim listened as his father repeated theories about fitness and dedication and the importance of sensitivity to an opponent’s every nuance. And on practice nights, he joined his teammates in the gym for round-robin matches, pull-ups, and what Mike called “killers.” The boys would drop from standing to a push-up position, then pop back to their feet in one sharp motion—again and again and again. “Then we’d run laps in the halls until we about bled,” Allen would recall.

  Up and down the halls they ran, past darkened classrooms and tall windows overlooking the courtyard where snow swirled and drifted against the foundation, their steps echoing from the metal lockers lining the empty corridors. The halls smelled of chalk dust and sweat, of tomorrow’s bread baking in the cafeteria oven, and of the strong detergent in the custodian’s wheeled scrub bucket. The boys’ flat shoes played havoc with their arches and shins, but at Mike’s command, they ran. He was free with praise for a job well done, but the boys knew if they slackened their pace or lost focus for even a moment, they’d hear Mike’s shout—“Get over here!”—and be subjected to a punishing bout on the mat with him.

  Jim completed his wrestling career at a respectable .600, consistently winning more matches than not. Early in his freshman season, he proved himself a key member of a winning team—a team that placed first in the annual Scottville Optimist Wrestling Invitational in January. Every Scottville wrestler placed, Jim Allen third and Jim fourth in the consolation finals in what the Ludington Daily News called an “awesome display of team power.”1

  “Mr. Keenan expected so much of everybody,” said Allen, Scottville’s wrestling coach since 2009. “I coach the way he did to this minute. If you expect a lot, you get a lot.”

  Jan watched from the bleachers, and Mike stood nearby, arms akimbo, as his son approached the mat. Jim, his body and his instinct tuned to the job at hand, faced his opponent, aware of his every movement and intention. It was as if some inner voice directed him in the grappling dance, created the image of the next step he must take. He heard Mike’s voice, too, the words he’d repeated in the hallway, in the Toyota, in the one-on-one practice matches: “Make it a challenge and not a chore.” The task was up to him, and he stepped into his vision’s reality.

  Wrestling and running wouldn’t guarantee Jim a place in MCC’s inner social circle. That honor was reserved for the quarterbacks and point guards destined to date homecoming queens and be named Most Popular in the mock election come senior year. Always under the watchful eyes of Mike and Jan, he wasn’t included when classmates ventured down remote two-tracks to experiment with strawberry Boone’s Farm and a pack of Marlboros.

  He hung images of Devo and the Pretenders and the Plasmatics inside his locker where others taped the homecoming week schedule and pictures of the Bee Gees and Olivia Newton-John. His awareness of the latest hits only distanced him further from peers whose only music exposure was the local Top 40 radio station.

  Jim’s grades had convinced him he was at best an average student. Scottville’s administrators were convinced, too, and placed him in introductory courses separate from his college-bound classmates. While his Sugar Ridge friends tackled Algebra I, he was relegated to the remedial course and spent the entire year studying concepts they covered in two weeks.

  They stuck me in pre-algebra because based on my junior high grades, I supposedly couldn’t count or add. I just wasn’t challenged enough during my time in Ohio’s so-called educational system.

  Pre-algebra was all repetition and open-book tests. I was pretty bored. It didn’t exactly inspire me to learn, so my grades hovered just above who-gives-a-shit.

  And then there was Boots Newkirk. Beloved and feared by generations of students as the teacher who provoked them sometimes to tears, Boots was known as much for his unexpected outbursts as for his love of knowledge. He wasn’t past crashing his history textbook to the floor if a student dozed in class, and he was vocally intolerant of the teen angst that led to dramatic locker slamming after a romantic breakup. He called out students he’d seen the weekend before tossing Budweiser cans from their cars into what he sneeringly called the “puke weeds” alongside the road, and challenged their naïve political views, often switching sides mid-debate in an attempt to force them to examine their preconceptions.

  Boots’s students graduated able to defend and articulate their beliefs. Fearing his wrath if they came to class unprepared, they learned to list every U.S. Cabinet department and its purpose. They spent hours before the hanging maps in the school library and learned forever to identify a Mercator projection and the rivers of Africa.

  I did not see eye to eye with Boots politically or religiously, but I found a connection with him because he was adamant about the best parts of those things. He saw through bullshit. He didn’t expect you to adopt his views, but he did expect you to behave like an adult.

  Every day, he would ask, “What’s the price of gold this morning?” and no one would know. The next morning, same thing, and no one would know. Then the next day, you’d have the kiss-asses who would know the answer, and Boots would go, “So what?”

  He got you to pay attention, but just because you can answer the question doesn’t mean you know the why. So you know the price of gold today. What does that mean?

  Despite his often self-imposed isolation, Jim wasn’t lonely, and in truth was never altogether alone. He had only to turn and notice the blond boy from eighth-grade reading class, the one classmate willing to admit disdain for the superficial, ready to trade snide remarks about the contest for popularity, eager to share the unspoken dream of discovering just what might lie beyond their little town.

  Jim learned to chart the seasons’ cycle in the first trilliums emerging white in the April woods, the trout returning to the Pere Marquette River. In May, he awaited blossoms in the apple and peach orchards surrounding the Darr Road house and climbed the tall wooden ladders come harvesttime in July, earning for his efforts pocket money for new records, pens, and sketch pads.

  In the summer, he rose with the sun and knelt beside Mike in the gardens. Side by side, they removed weeds from the bleeding heart and iris and marigold beds. They trimmed Mike’s sculpted shrubbery and cleared debris from the winding paths between bee balm and day lilies and clematis while chickadees and nuthatches swooped to snatch birdseed from the hollow Mike had formed in the top of his cap.

  Clipper and trowel in hand, Jim watched chipmunks and squirrels approach from beneath bushes and brush, wary at first, then bravely scampering toward Mike, their tiny black eyes intent on his face as he crouched and extended his hand. They ate the seed he offered,
then darted back to their hidey-holes beneath the peonies. “It was my first exposure to the consciousness of nature,” he would later recall. “It wasn’t like the animals were hanging out and talking to us. It was all based on survival, on forgoing fear in order to eat, the natural process of the earth.”

  Jim called Judith when he could, eager to share with his mother news of his improving grades and mentions on the sports pages. Each conversation was more frustrating than the last as she struggled to find the words and Jim tried to be patient.

  The students in Anne Meeks’s junior English class responded with wide-eyed panic when she announced their English assignment. “Some of them said they didn’t like the ending of Lord of the Flies,” she would recall. “I asked them to rewrite the last chapter as they’d like it to end.” Jim faced the task with aplomb. Writing was almost second nature to him now, and the idea that it was permissible to alter someone else’s story was a revelation. Instead of passively accepting an outcome, he discovered it was within his power—was, in fact, his duty—to create it.

  The assignment changed more than the book’s ending. Reworking William Golding’s ideas forced Jim to place himself at the heart of the story, to understand character and plot more deeply and recognize his own importance in the creative process. The exercise was the catalyst to view his own art in a new way, to admit that it was no longer a solitary pastime to fill his empty hours. It was, in fact, his strength.

  Suddenly, it seemed imperative to take advantage of every moment that could be spent writing and drawing and discovering a new song. He decorated his binders and book covers with his sketches and carried them about the school for all to see. He made no secret of his adoration for Kiss and Devo, and poured his passion into his classwork. And this time, instead of marking him as introverted and aloof, his talents were recognized and supported.