Mean Dads for a Better America

by Tom Shillue

  When I arrived at camp, however, and saw the dynamic among the scouts, I quickly got the sense that it would be best to keep my little friend out of sight. I know it’s hard to believe, but it seemed the Boy Scouts were bigger ruffians than the choirboys. So in the footlocker he remained.

  One thing was for sure, I certainly did not want to end up like the Gaynor Brothers. Tommy and Jimmy Gaynor were the fairest of boys. They had red hair and freckles the color of cantaloupe, their skin was so light it had an almost translucent quality to it. On sunny days you could actually see right through it and into their bodies. I distinctly remember watching Jimmy on the dock one late afternoon, cautiously dipping his toe in to test the water. With the sun low in the sky behind him, I swear I could clearly see the internal organs sloshing around beneath his soft exterior, and the veins and arteries pulsing blood to and from his heart, blue going in, red going out. He looked like an out-of-shape version of the Slim Goodbody exhibit at the Museum of Science in Boston.

  Everybody always gave the Gaynor Brothers a hard time. Their name, after all, did them no favors. That kind of stacked the deck against them. At some point in the family line you’d think someone would have had the decency to move a few letters around and thereby prevent future generations having to endure the teasing. It might also have been useless, since young boys have an uncanny ability to re-anagram any name at all into a homosexual slur, but with Gaynor, you are really handing it to them on a silver platter.

  As expected, the Brothers had to leave camp early. Their mother was forced to pick them up halfway through the month because they could not stand the name-calling. At least that’s what the scout leaders told Mrs. Gaynor. “There’s a lot of razzing going on here. It just got to be a little much for the boys,” they said.

  In reality, the scout leaders were doing their share of the razzing. Older Eagle Scouts who volunteered as camp counselors taught some of the merit badge courses. On the archery range, one of these counselors drew his bow back as far as possible and announced “This is what you should never do!” and shot an arrow toward the horizon. Then he turned to Tommy Gaynor and said, “Go get that.” Tommy ran off, and all the scouts (including me) began to snicker. When he returned ten minutes later, sunburned and mottled with wasp bites, the scoutmaster said, “And never do this!” Then he turned and fired an arrow deep into the woods. “Go get that!” Off Tommy ran again, toward certain Lyme disease. Everybody could tell which side the scout leaders were on.

  With the Gaynors gone, I knew their tormentors would look around for low-hanging fruit to pick on, so I made sure to keep on my toes. I thought I was doing just fine until one night when I was going through my footlocker my tent mate Danny said, “What’s that?”

  “Doughboy,” I said, as offhandedly as possible. “Got it free because I ate a ton of crescent rolls,” I added with a laugh.

  Danny didn’t say anything else, but I knew that I should remain on alert. It was hard to tell how he’d play the situation. He could immediately tell the other scouts or hold the information for a later date. Ready for anything, I went to sleep.

  I didn’t have to wait long. I awoke to the sound of laughter outside my tent. The sound of laughter at Boy Scout camp can only mean one thing: someone is being victimized. I pulled back the canvas flap and saw a circle of boys about twenty yards away. I pulled on my pants without even bothering to shake out the spiders and stepped outside to see what all the fun was about. As I walked closer to the circle, I could see they all had their scout knives out. Then, briefly, I saw him, pierced on the end of a knife like a marshmallow. They were tossing my Pillsbury Doughboy from one knife to the next.

  They were all participating, even Michael Madero, the Eagle Scout with mild cerebral palsy. They saw me approach the circle, but continued on, intent on keeping the knife-toss game going. It wasn’t much of a game, really—the Doughboy was not ideally suited for tossing cleanly from one knife to the next. Mostly one boy would thrust it at another boy, who would try to stab it and fail, then it would fall to the ground and the boy would place it on the knife and hurl it on to the next. This is the way it went, on and on, as the scouts waited for me to do the inevitable: run into the circle and scream in protest.

  “Be Prepared” was the Scout Motto. I took it to heart. As I walked toward them, I made sure there was a smile on my face. I pulled out my scout knife, opened it slowly as I edged into the circle . . . and joined in the stabbing. I stabbed my own Doughboy with a spirited energy, laughing along with them as they stomped on him and stabbed him again and again.

  Stabbing him came easily to me. It reminded me of when I was very young and Joey Reichart flipped my plastic swimming pool over and began kicking it with his heel. He put his foot through it and laughed. I laughed, too, and did the same thing. Then we each took turns kicking holes in my pool. By the time we were done, the entire bottom was covered with heel-shaped chads. “Why did you do that?” my mother asked as she was putting the pool out on the curb with the rest of the trash. I had no answer for her. I liked the pool. But I suppose it was preferable to join in and help destroy your property than to stand there crying while someone else did.

  Soon Doughboy was dirtied and covered in lacerations. His head was coming off and hanging to the side. When he arrived on my knife again, I decided I should be the one to bring this morbid event to a close. I opened up his side with my knife, scooped in a bunch of dirt and rocks to fill him with a good bit of weight, and then hurled him into the lake. That was it. It was over.

  The scouts folded up their knives and began to disperse. Michael Madero looked at me with what appeared to be a smirk (it was sometimes hard to tell with the cerebral palsy) and nodded as if to say, “Not bad, kid. Not bad at all.” I had handled it perfectly. This would be the last razzing I got from them, and I’d escaped with barely a scrape. I certainly wasn’t going to end up like the Gaynor Brothers. I had passed the test and turned the skidding car in the direction of the skid, righting the vehicle.

  I got halfway up the hill to the mess hall when, like Lot’s wife, I turned and looked back to the lake. To my surprise, there he was, my doll, looking back at me. At that moment he was a doll, not some cool mascot. He had spent years resting on my headboard, and I liked his face. His little chef’s hat had filled with air, creating buoyancy, and he bobbed up and down on the water. He looked at me with that permanent smile of his affixed to his face. Did he understand? Was he at peace with what happened? Or behind that smile was he thinking, Why, Tommy? Why’d you do it? I thought we were friends.

  The lapping water seemed to wash away his wounds, which appeared less mortal now, as he floated along cheerfully. My impulse was to run down the hill, jump in, and swim to him, but I would not. I could not. He had to be sacrificed so that I could flourish.

  I turned and walked into the mess hall. Everybody had a laugh about it over breakfast. And later that night in the main tent, I showed them how to make a moth disoriented by pulling out its antennae. It was something one of the Eagle Scouts had shown me in forestry class. As the big moth bounced off the floor and my fellow scouts laughed and hooted, I knew the next few weeks of camp would be just fine.

  Camp, like the neighborhood, was a place where violence and fear were staples. It was not the kind of violence that would leave you really hurt, though, only your pride. It was Lord of the Flies every day back then. It was tough, but if you handled it the right way, it made you more resilient. I wonder if my kids could take it. I wonder if I would let them.

  I WAS AN ALTAR BOY AT ST. CATHERINE OF SIENNA PARISH. It was either become an altar boy or join the choirboys, so I went with the less risky choice. The choirboys were the tougher of the two groups, although most people would probably expect it would be the other way around. I think the reason was that the choirboys rehearsed all together in one big group, which is a formula for rank pulling and macho posturing of all sorts. There are many opportunities for bullying in a choir. The basses and baritones tend to be the o
lder boys, so they exerted a natural dominance over the higher ranges. But hazing and intimidation really only happened among the second-stringers, the minions. The top soloists were immune because they were too talented to mess with, so they operated in a separate, safe space. All in all, there was just way too much jockeying for position in the choir for my taste.

  We altar boys only mixed with the choirboys when we rehearsed together before special Masses like Christmas and Easter, or for the occasional group outings.

  We once went on a combined altar boy/choirboy field trip to the Stoneham Zoo, which is about an hour’s ride from Norwood, and as soon as we got on the bus one of the big baritones shouted, “Choirboys in back only, altar boys in the front!” (We are all aware, because we learned in our civil rights history, that “back of the bus” was where the oppressed had to sit, but clearly nobody told adolescent boys: to them the back of the bus is always the desirable place to be.) But the altar boys didn’t even object; we sat in the front and let the choirboys have their preferred seats, with the toughest ones huddled by the emergency exit, where they could moon cars when we pulled out onto the highway. We didn’t make a fuss, we knew who was who. Those guys spent the whole Mass in the organ loft. We were front-of-the-house guys, and had to act accordingly. And I was just fine with that. In fact, I loved being an altar boy, because ours was a culture of comradery. We needed to stick together and look out for one another, whether against nosey nuns or the ever-grumpy monsignor. (I had great respect and an easygoing rapport with most of the priests, but the tall, menacing monsignor at St. Catherine’s, with his slicked back head of Brylcreem and permanent scowl, was never fun to work with.)

  As an altar boy you were mostly working two per Mass, so it was easier to get along. If you were paired with an older boy, he’d be the dominant one, but since there was no one else around to see the dominance, he wouldn’t bother taking advantage of it. He’d just take the better jobs—you’d wash the glass fonts, he’d fill them with water and wine. He’d light the candles before Mass, and you had to put them out after. But if you’re working with someone one-on-one, it’s hard not to get along.

  Whenever Andy French, a friend of mine from school, and I would serve Mass together, we’d have so much fun, daring each other with bell-ringing contests during Mass. If you’ve been to more than a few Catholic Masses, you know where the bells come in. During transubstantiation, the bread and wine is being transformed into Jesus’ body and blood, and it’s time for a little wake-up call to the congregation.

  “It shall be shed for you and for all men so that sins may be forgiven. Do this in memory of me.” (Ring!)

  There is no set time for how long the ringing is supposed to go on; it’s left up to the discretion of the altar boy. Andy French and I would have contests to see who could ring the longest. The priest would lift the brass chalice aloft and wait for the ringing to stop, and we’d just keep ringing and ringing. Sometimes the priest would shoot us a look, and we’d quickly muffle the bells onto the red velvet pillow. After the look, it was game over. (We did this with any priest but the monsignor, of course, who scared the hell out of both of us.)

  As a new altar boy you had to start by serving at daily Mass, which is like when you get a job waiting tables and you have to take the lunch shifts nobody wants. Sunday Masses were like dinner shifts; you had to work up to them. And the most coveted, the Friday-night dinner shifts of Masses, were weddings. You got tipped at a wedding Mass. (Sometimes you got tips at a funeral Mass too, but you didn’t expect it. You always got a tip at a wedding.) It was an amazing feeling when someone stuffed a $20 bill in your hand after serving Mass, though it almost seemed wrong. But of course I stuffed it right in my pocket; I wasn’t going to argue with Sacramental Tradition.

  The 5:15 p.m. daily Masses, however, were a grind. They took place in the chapel behind the church. It had all the same ornate detailing of the church, but in a more intimate space, with just ten rows of pews. With the late-afternoon sunlight beaming through the stained-glass windows, washing the miniature altar in colored light, my every move was exposed. I could barely see the pews in the darkness, but I knew they were filled with mostly old ladies and nuns who knew every second of the Mass by heart. With them, the slightest error would be noticed—it was like having to perform a jazz recital in front of Miles Davis and Charlie Parker.

  The chief job of the altar boy was dealing with the priest’s Mass book, a massive tome that you were required to carry through the church behind the priest at the start of Mass. Once on the altar, you had to place it on the wooden stand in front of the priest, then open to the correct page. It was very intimidating at first: there were several pages to be turned during the Mass, but they were clearly marked with ribbons, so once you learned the proper order it was not too difficult. If you did make a mistake and opened to the wrong page, the priest would simply grab hold of a different ribbon and open to the correct section. They probably shouldn’t have trusted this task to the altar boys in the first place, because obviously the priest was much more familiar with the Mass book than we were. I guess it was, like most of our duties, an exercise in making us pay attention.

  But in the chapel there was no book stand. When it was time to read, the altar boy had to become a book stand. You had to stand and turn to face the priest, then clean and jerk the magnum opus up to your forehead, holding this position while he read from it. The priest was two steps up, so my method was to put one foot on the lowest step and one on the higher one, as it helped with balance. Oddly enough, this book-balancing act made me the least nervous of all my duties. It seemed so dated and courtly, and I knew it was ridiculous for the Church to expect anyone to be good at this. If a boy were to slip and the whole thing came toppling down, most reasonable people in attendance would have to split the blame between the boy and Rome.

  At one of my first daily Masses I had forgotten to wear black shoes; I still had my high-top sneakers on from school. These were a no-no—it said right there in the altar boys’ guide: “Remember, you are in the presence of Christ when you are stepping upon the altar—dress for the occasion!”

  At the time I was less worried about Christ than my immediate superiors. The sneakers had gotten past Father Curran in the sacristy, but he was the most laid back of all the priests at St. Catherine’s, with the encouraging demeanor of a basketball coach. He had a thick head of white hair, black eyebrows, and a nose that looked, as he described it, like it was stuffed full of nickels. “Wouldn’t you like to have a nose this this? Stuffed full of nickels?” he’d always say, as if we understood the reference. It would be thirty-five years before I found out he was quoting W. C. Fields.

  He’d sit with us before Mass and ask about school and sports, and whether we were holding hands yet with any girls.

  “You like any girls at school?”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “You holding hands yet?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Nothing wrong with holding hands with them after school. Holding hands . . . it’s a beautiful thing. Yep. That’s all, though! Remember that.”

  “OK.”

  “Nothing wrong with holding hands.”

  Some might see something inappropriate in this exchange, but I assure you it wasn’t at all. In fact, I was relieved that a member of the clergy was giving me the green light on romance of any kind. I took it as encouragement, and when it did come time for me to attempt some aggressive hand holding with a girl, I gave credit to Father Curran.

  There was no organ music in the chapel, so the sound of every footstep on the marble altar, and the lightest ping on the brass chalice could be heard by everyone. Sister Coleen, the sternest of all the nuns, was in the front row. I could just see her eyelids and nose from beneath the shadow of her habit. I wondered if she had spied my blasphemous footwear. When I was sitting I was fine, I could slide them behind me. But when I was standing, anyone could see the rubber soles sticking out from the bottom of my cassock, so during
the Mass I was trying to bend slightly at the knees to bring the black hem down just enough to cover the front of them. As a result, when I walked I had to shuffle noisily across the altar—and sneakers on marble make a telltale squeak. I was on a razor’s edge—I could be given away at any second by the sight of my high-top or that horrible sound.

  While trying to maintain my slight squat, I must have leaned a little too much to the left and gotten the large arm of my white surplus over one of the candles at the side of the altar. In seconds it caught fire.* I hadn’t seen it, but Sister Coleen had. Her eyelids flipped up to reveal two icy eyes and a pursed expression that said, “Take care of that right this instant!” I looked down and pulled my arm away quickly, but my surplus was aflame. I couldn’t cause a scene because everyone knows you can’t just stop a Mass because you’ve got a personal problem. So I tried to lightly shake the fire out. I repeated that a few times, but the flame only got bigger. As the instinct to remain alive suddenly overtook my desire to behave myself, I picked up my other arm and flapped repeatedly at the fire with the palm of my hand. The surplus must have been made with a somewhat flame-retardant material because after a few slaps the fire went out, and a tuft of smoke rose into the air.* The scent of beeswax was replaced by that of burnt polyester.

  Father Curran stopped speaking but kept his palms facing up as he looked over at me.

  “Everything all right over there?” he asked, calmly.

  I could hear the gasps from the pews.

  “Yep. It’s OK,” I said quietly.

  Father Curran continued. I looked from my crispy uniform down to the front pew, and God’s personal secretary Sister Coleen was looking me over. She wasn’t concerned with my safety. She wasn’t even looking at the hole I’d burnt in my vestments. She was looking at my high-tops. My carelessness had interrupted Mass, and it all started because I hadn’t shown the proper respect by wearing a nice pair of dress shoes. Well, at the very least, I knew I had something for confession that week besides “I fought with my brothers and sisters.”