A Question of Manhood

by Robin Reardon

  Do I? Well, maybe at the most superficial level. Be a man. I could get a sense of what that meant. But—be strong? Does that mean not having any feelings, or not showing them? And how can I just decide to grow up faster? What the hell does he want from me?

  I said, “Yes.”

  He laid a hand briefly on my leg. “Good. I knew I could count on you.” Slowly he got to his feet. “Now, go back to bed. And tomorrow, let your mother know how much you’d love it if she did make cookies for you.” He opened the door, and the hall nightlight created a silhouette out of him. He stood there, silently beckoning me out.

  Back in my bed, I lay there, one minute thinking I knew what he wanted, the next having no fucking clue, and in between thinking that being a man meant letting your father force you to do something so stupid it got you killed.

  Cookies? What does being a man have to do with asking your mother to bake cookies for you? What the hell does he want from me?

  That week in school was hell. I wasn’t planning to say anything about Chris, but there had been this newspaper article, going on about his heroism, his zest for life, his good grades in the past, all presided over by a shot taken of him in his uniform just before he went overseas the first time. Terry Cavanaugh seemed to be avoiding me, probably because his brother was safe in Canada and it made him feel guilty or something. Then for a day or so it looked like Bobby Darnell was my new best friend. His brother Ken was doing okay. In fact, they expected him home in January, for good.

  Friday I flunked a history test. An important one. Badly. It was part multiple choice and part essay. I’d tried to study, sort of, but stuff just kept falling out of my brain. Mr. Treadwell, the history teacher, asked me to see him after school before I went home.

  He looked all solemn when I got to his classroom. Solemn and sympathetic. Just what I didn’t need.

  “Paul, this isn’t like you. Your grades have always been fine, and sometimes even great, so I know you can do better.” He paused a minute to see if I had anything to say, but I didn’t. I just trained my eyes on my own reflection in his eyeglasses, the black frames making it look like they were too far away from the pale skin of his face. “I know your family has had some devastating news. I was very sorry to hear about your brother, and I’m sure it has affected your ability to concentrate. So I think what I’ll do is offer you a chance to improve on this one test by taking it home to work on it, open book, over the weekend. Christmas vacation starts next week, as I’m sure you’re aware, but if you can meet with me on Monday with satisfactory answers—and by satisfactory, I mean you must correctly answer all the multiple choice, and the essays must demonstrate that you understand the issues involved—then we’ll sit down again and decide on what grade you should get. Does that sound fair?”

  I shrugged. “I guess so.” And then I thought to say, “Thanks.” What I really wanted to say was to screw the test, that I didn’t give a fuck, anyway. But life at home was weird enough already. I didn’t need to go adding Dad’s wrath into the mix, and I wasn’t sure I could predict his reaction to much of anything these days.

  “Shall I come to your house?”

  “No!” I hadn’t intended it to come out sounding so sharp. “Um, can we meet for a soda, or coffee or something?” My folks could not find out about this, or they’d be watching me like hawks once school got under way again in January. “If it doesn’t snow hard Monday, I could bike to the Burger King at Thompson and Rutledge. Say, two o’clock?”

  He gave me this look like he was trying to see into my head. “You’re trying not to let your folks find out, aren’t you? And you’re probably right. They have enough to worry about right now. So I’ll do this one your way. But, Paul”—and he sort of looked at me over his glasses—“we need to get back at least to normal attention in January, or they will need to know. Understood?”

  “Thanks,” I said again.

  Be a man. I had to be a man. Did men have to do history make-up exams? I guess if I thought about it seriously, men did have to fix their own mistakes. At least, the good ones did. So I holed up in my room on Saturday, coming out occasionally for cookies—which my mom was baking now too frequently for even me to keep up with her—and working on Mr. Treadwell’s exam. It was the same one I’d failed in class, of course.

  With free access to the book the multiple-choice questions were relatively easy, though there was always the possibility of some kind of tricky wording that would bite you in the ass. The essays scared me, though. Treadwell had said I’d have to demonstrate that I understood the issues. So I went back and forth between my class notes and the textbook, starting about five new pages every time I tried writing about one of the three topics on the test. When I got to the third one I noticed that there was a fourth topic. There’d been only three in class; what was this? Mr. Treadwell had scribbled in a fourth, with a note saying he’d added it because I was getting this opportunity the other students hadn’t. Joy.

  So I deciphered his handwriting, dreading what it might be. Here’s what he’d written: “Describe briefly a day in the life of a medieval French farmer who had fled three weeks ago into the safety of his nobleman’s hilltop castle to avoid an attacking army. Since that time, the castle has been under siege.”

  Is he kidding me with this? What do I know about the life of a French farmer, now or a long time ago, under siege or not? Okay, maybe we’d been studying the castles themselves, and we’d already had a pop quiz on the architectural parts of the typical fortified castle, but—even so. I threw my pen down and sat back hard in my chair, arms crossed. One of my legs started bouncing up and down, heel thudding against the floor. I got up, found my jacket, and went outside.

  It wasn’t fair. This wasn’t something Mr. Treadwell had covered in class. We hadn’t gone into the daily lives of anybody, really. Memorizing dates, who fought who (“You mean ‘whom,’ Paul,” I could hear my mom’s voice say), who won, who lost, and maybe how things might have been different if the other side had won instead.

  Then I remembered he’d done something like this on the test at the end of October. “What if,” the question had said, “Hitler had won World War II?” We weren’t even studying twentieth-century history yet, so it had thrown me for a loop. But it had been included as extra credit. I’d ignored it at the time, but afterward it had got me thinking. Didn’t do me any good, of course; too late to add any credit, days after the test. But this new one was like that question, in a way. It made me imagine things.

  Okay, I thought, marching down block after block of my neighborhood, staring down at my feet, hands shoved into my pockets. Okay, so I’m a farmer in medieval France, and some army is attacking. They’re burning houses and generally pillaging and raping. I hear they’re on their way, so I take my wife and kids, maybe a cow or a pig, we each grab whatever food we can carry—we don’t have anything else of value—and we head up the hill to the castle. It’s hard going, uphill with all this stuff, and trying to keep the cow and the pig in line.

  Wait—why does it have to be uphill? Oh, right; if the castle is on the hilltop, it’s harder to attack, and from inside it you can see all around.

  But the question said “three weeks ago.” What would I be doing now?

  I turned a corner on my walk and had to slow down to get past some trash barrels that should have been taken into somebody’s garage days ago. What would I be doing now? Probably not much. My family and I would be huddled into some corner of the lower bailey, maybe near the stables, maybe even with no roof over us. There aren’t exactly going to be rooms at the inn for everyone who scrambled up that hill. There’s no inn of any kind. Maybe I’d have fought with the blacksmith for a sheltered spot my family could live in for however long we’d be there. Every day one of my sons and I (I would have at least two, of course) would scour the grounds and any buildings we could get into for bits of food. We might have to frighten dogs away from garbage if our nobleman isn’t generous or if food’s just plain running out after three
weeks. We wouldn’t have anyone to send us care packages.

  I pictured myself brandishing a stick in each hand, threatening the dogs, while my younger son threw stones at them and ran in to grab stuff while I kept the dogs at bay.

  This was all pretty grim, and here in suburbia I was getting colder by the second. On my way out of the house I’d grabbed nothing but my jacket, and it was icy out. I picked up my pace and took another corner that would point me toward home.

  I’d probably have to leave one son, the older one, with my wife and the daughter I’m sure I’d have, to protect them from unscrupulous men. Possibly even from the nobleman’s guards or soldiers, who probably thought they had a right to take anything they wanted.

  I was just pondering how badly everyone would stink, with no way to wash, when I got to my own front door again. And stopped.

  I stood there, shivering by now, not really wanting to go in. If Dad was home, he’d be practically grafted onto his recliner, either watching TV or reading something. Mom would be attacking invisible bits of grime in obscure areas of the house or baking yet more cookies, in which case she’d expect me to ooh and aah and generally act like a little kid, all while I’m supposed to be acting like a man.

  I opened the door as quietly as possible, sneaking into the warmth, wondering if I could get up to my room without being noticed. My eye fell on the door to the basement. That was closer than the staircase to the second floor, as long as my mom wasn’t in a certain spot in the kitchen. I listened for any sounds she might be making and decided she was polishing the dining room table. So I made my move, successfully reaching the door without being detected, and tiptoed down the stairs. Some of them creaked, so I had to be careful. At the bottom I strained my ears again: nothing. No one knew where I was.

  First thing I did was head for the furnace corner. I picked up Chris’s old air rifle and sat on the ground with my back to the foundation wall, gun across my knees. Of course, my peasant farmer persona wouldn’t have a gun. But would I be expected to help ward off attackers anyway? Very likely, really. And when you consider what the attacking army would do to me and my family if they got in, I guess I’d be motivated to do some warding.

  I leaned my head against the stone foundation behind me and closed my eyes.

  I’m on the parapet. Is that the right word? I think so; it’s the part you walk on that’s just inside the…crenellations, I think they’re called. There are soldiers wearing chain mail and a little body armor, maybe just helmets, shooting arrows at the other army below. I get pushed down the walkway to a group of men in a tag line, handling buckets of hot water to pour onto the attacking soldiers who’d got over the moat and are trying to scale the outer wall. The curtain wall, I think; yeah, that’s right. I have to take a place in the line of bucket handlers, and I try to get into the line taking the empty buckets, but of course everyone wants that line; who wants to get their own hands scalded with splashes of boiling water and have to lift the heavy wooden buckets besides?

  They take my son, the one who’d been throwing stones at the dogs, and put him to tending the fire where the water is being heated. Those of us in the bucket brigade take a break while we wait for more water to heat, and I look around. I hear a sound like “whack” and then a thud and then this large stone goes sailing overhead. They’ve got enough space in this particular castle for a catapult, and when it was peaceful they’d put away a huge supply of stones for just such a contingency. Maybe at some point the villagers—like me—were even forced to help gather the stones and bring them up to the castle.

  Suddenly there’s a hue and cry (see, I’m getting the hang of this) at the wall, where attackers were able to get a ladder up and are coming over the top at us. Our soldiers are too close to use their arrows now—no time to get the thing strung before an attacker is on them—and it’s hand-to-hand, with swords and knives and, if you’re lucky and skilled, maybe a mace. Not me, of course; I’ve got none of that. Just my two fists, and my feet, and my teeth, and anything else I can fight with. Though if I can get that knife that somebody just dropped…Got it! Okay, now I’m armed, at least, though I’ll have to be careful where I thrust; I’ll ruin the knife or hurt myself if I try to stab into mail or armor.

  It’s a weird feeling, pushing the metal blade into human flesh, and freaky when you hit bone. Plus you get somebody’s blood all over you. The smell of fired iron meeting the wet iron of blood is mingled with an acrid smoke. Can’t tell whether the smoke is coming from our own fire or if the attackers have set fire to something inside. No time to figure it out.

  Suddenly a huge pain happens. That’s the only way to describe it. It happens. At the base of my neck. And I can’t move. I’m on the ground, and through a fog of pain I see legs and feet and the bodies of others who have fallen. Someone steps on my leg, but it doesn’t hurt as much as my neck.

  Someone has a hold on my other leg. They’re pulling me, and I’m too out of it to fight. Feebly I try to dig my fingers into the grit I’m lying in, but it’s no good. Then I see who’s pulling me. It’s my older son; he’s found me!

  He’s just got me out of the worst of the fighting, I’m rolled onto my back, and behind him I see where another ladder has allowed attackers up, someplace where we don’t have enough men to hold them. One of them lands, brings an arrow to his bow, and fires.

  In slow motion I see my son’s body arch backward, his mouth in a huge gasp, eyes wide and unseeing. He falls beside me.

  “Chris!”

  Who said that?!?

  My own eyes were wide, now. And unseeing. Or, what they saw wasn’t our basement. It was my brother, brought down in the jungle as he tried to pull a comrade to safety.

  I closed my eyes. And I just let the tears fall.

  When I wrote this for my assignment, I left out Chris’s name. I wrote it like I was remembering the day from my deathbed, as gangrene set in through a wound in my side I didn’t even know I had.

  Chapter 5

  That Sunday I went to church again. I wasn’t going to. I mean, it occurred to me it would be a great way to “be a man,” to take my mom to church and—you know—respect her grief, whatever. But I wasn’t that great at being a man just yet. I still had a lot of the little brat in me.

  This conflict was going round in my head on Saturday night, or Sunday early morning, whatever the hell time it was as I lay there wide awake. And I tried to imagine what it would be like if I told her. I’d sit her down at the kitchen table one day after school, before Dad got home. I’d say, “Mom, I know how much pain you’re in. And I don’t want to do anything to make it worse. But since you loved Chris so much, I think I owe it to you to make sure you really know who he was.”

  “Paul,” she’d say, “whatever are you talking about? Do you think I didn’t know my own son?”

  “In most ways, I’m sure you did. But there was one thing. One very important thing. Something he told me the night before he went back to ’Nam. And he asked me not to tell you. But now I think that was wrong.”

  I’d wait until she asked for more. I’d laid two traps. One was the tantalizing nugget of information that was so important, that she didn’t know, that he’d told me. Only me. I’d give up my sole proprietorship of this amazing confidence from him, but she’d have to beg. The other trap was that Saint Christopher had done something that was wrong.

  So a number of heartbeats would go by, and then she’d say, “Wrong?” She’d start there because otherwise she’d have to face the fact that I knew something important about him she didn’t. “What was wrong?”

  “Not telling you himself.” Another dig. He’d told me, but not you, so there.

  “Paul, do I have to yank it out of you? What did he say?”

  I’d heave a soulful sigh, blink a few times while looking down, then raise my head. “He told me he was gay.”

  There’d be this silence.

  The thing was, my imagination had a hard time getting past the silence, because what seemed l
ike the most likely reaction—though it might not be her immediate one—wasn’t very satisfying. To me, anyway. I’m sure Chris would have loved it. It was that she’d accept it. She wouldn’t like it, because she’d be sure it would mean he’d be unhappy trying to live like that, but his unhappiness would be the worst of it. He’d still be her sainted son.

  So it would do only so much damage to tell her. On the other hand, though, I could never tell Dad. He’d punish me for just knowing it, though I’m not sure whether he’d want to hit me harder for telling him Chris was gay or telling him Chris was afraid.

  The fact is, Chris shot himself in the foot, in a way, by insisting that Mom not know, because she would have loved him anyway. On the other hand, telling Mom would be like telling Dad. Chris would have known this, of course, so maybe he didn’t shoot his foot after all but tried to keep me from the repercussions he knew would come from Dad. So why’d he tell me at all?

  Under it all was the fact that I’d promised Chris. Practically on his deathbed. So I couldn’t tell anyone, and there was no point in all this mental exercise.

  Wait. I’d promised him I wouldn’t tell our folks. Now, it’s true that if I tell much of anybody else my folks are likely to find out. And in truth, I don’t really want anyone to know. It’s too shameful. But what about Jesus? What could it hurt? And isn’t he supposed to know everything already? It would give me someone to talk to, and maybe it would even do Chris some good if I prayed for him. The church service I’d been to with Mom hadn’t left a lot of space for that; maybe we were supposed to do it on our own. So I tried.

  I felt like a retard, lying there in bed and talking to some guy who died like a couple thousand years ago. I’d done it as a kid, kneeling beside my bed. Should I try that? I got up and knelt on the floor, elbows on the mattress, head bent over folded hands. I felt like some kind of idiot. I whispered.