a tale by Chris Lewis Gibson
part two of CHAPTER ONE
Published on November 27, 2004 By Owen Ellis In Blogging
A wind picked up that night and rocked the boat on the river. Waverly, not used to sleeping
on water, sat bolt upright from his pallet and looked around at the neat little floating living
room. He climbed out of bed in his boxers and walked around the warm cabin and then
headed out to the deck with his cigarettes.
He did not feel right, and he hadn’t been feeling right for a long time now. It was
before Cindy. The thing about treachery, Wave observed, was that after it had happened, you
wondered how you could have missed it.
Along time ago, even back in college, he had been so sensitive to things. That was
when he was still writing songs and stories, when everythign was coming so naturally to him.
He had deadened that sense or else wouldn’t he have known what was going on in his own
apartment?
While he sat smoking the last of the cigarette, his distracted fingers played with the
gold cross hanging from his neck.
Everything was wrong right now.
That was as much as he could pinpoint the whole situation. He also knew that he was
not really ready to be honest with himself, not about everything. If he were honest a lot of
things would have to change. He pushed himself up off of his feet and moaned a little bit
with the creaking of his twenty-three year old joints.
Like, for instance, he had kept his distance from his old friends. He hadn’t meant to.
But that wasn’t really being honest either. It wasn’t like him to keep distant. Something was
wrong. Something was wrong and he had been hiding it because he knew that Rush or Cass
would smell it. Or maybe in his own way Nelson would smell it. Or perhaps old Cecil
himself would smell it.
And then he would have to do something about it.
His father had always said, “When there is something wrong in your life change it,”
and Waverly believed this. But his problem right now was that all of his life was wrong, and
that meant he would have to change the whole thing, and he was not ready for that. Not right
now.
“But part of it has already changed itself for me,” Wave said, smiling sadly. And then,
to remind him of how much his life had changed, his bladder called him.
The burning had been mild, not really a matter to trouble himself over. It had been
when he’d gotten faint and it felt like a knife, cutting him, when he’d watched blood spurt
into the toilet that he’d gone to the doctor. He had nearly blacked out from panic and fear.
Tonight it did not hurt, but remembering that first time did.
He washed his hands and crawled back into the pallet, looking up at the ceiling. He
could hear Cassidy and Rush snoring in near unison, the gold cross was cool and light on his
breastbone.
He thought of himself that first day, bleeding. He thought of Cindy tonight, yelling at
him, snarling at him.
How could I be so dumb?
Can people who love you really do something like that and not feel sorry?

And then he thought of Cindy the night he’d confronted her.

Wave, I’m not sure I do love you.... or that I ever did.

Suddenly his hands gripped the cross around his neck so hard that his palms hurt.


Waverly woke up on time Friday morning. He anticipated the weekend. He had no idea of
what would happen, but he knew what wouldn’t. He could not make that long drive
northeast out of Izmir. He would stay here and... do whatever people did when they rested
and when their whole life turned out to be a lie.
On the floor Rush and Cassidy sat, like children in day care, half lotus style, their
knees touching, their foreheads pressed together, Cassidy’s hands in Rush’s. Every morning
they started the day this way, though Waverly had never seen it. They didn’t look like they
were asleep. They were too vigilant for that, though they had a look of peace Wave envied. It
was like they were in church. For Cassidy this was church.
Cassidy Smith had shown up from California four years ago to attend Sainte Terre
College, and also in hopes of finding Delorian Matthews who had become a sort of
underground legend. He had made fast friends with Waverly and through him found Rush.
Rush was alone at the time, as contentedly alone as his uncle Delorian had always
been. But Rush had had a past and one of his pasts had involved a man. So was said, so was
never denied. Everyone knew about Jess. And overtime it had become a light running joke
that Cassidy, broken off from his longterm girlfriend, a free spirit from out West, should
make a stab for a life with Rush. It was evident that they already liked each other a great deal.
Rush had crushed any such suggestions with a raised eyebrow.
“Once I may have... tried the other side. That was a while ago. It turned out badly. It
won’t happen again. Certainly not with Cassidy Smith.”
Cassidy Smith, who sat in this room now, his hands in Rush’s, one of Waverly’s
good friends, had an abundance of blond hair and a huge smile on a nearly homely face with
bright blue eyes. He was loud and all over the place, intense about nearly everything.
Everyone had always admired how his passion never got in the way of his courtesy. Cassidy
was the kind of young man who might have been at the head of a war protest back in the
sixties, and taken out a flower to stick in a rifle man’s gun. He was always funny, always
surrounded by a circle of admirers and always able to be without them. On his own he
looked perfectly happy. He laughed out loud to himself for no particular reason. He wanted to
try everything and be open to everyone and in classes he could dissertate intelligently about
anything, and then sit down, pass notes and whisper dirty jokes to his class mates. He had
come out of California with the sun in his hair and the blue sky in his eyes. He’d brought
roller blades--useful-- and his surfboard-- not so useful.
And after about a year and a half of him forming a deep friendship with Rush he had
moved into the houseboat, and then when his junior year had started, though there were no
really visible changes in their relationship, everyone knew that something had happened.
That was the only way to phrase it, Wave thought. Something had been happening for over
two years now.
“Yogurt is in the refrigerator,” Rush informed Waverly, as the heads of the two boys
separated.
“But,” Cassidy said, “I was going to cook.”
“You were?” Rush looked at him dubiously.
“You act like I never do.”
“Because you never do.”
Cassidy got up and plodded to the kitchen followed by Rush followed by Waverly.
“Sometimes I ask myself why I stay with you and endure this abuse to my phyche,”
Cassidy said, rummaging through the cupboards.
“I know why,” Rush said, and leaning forward whispered something in the other
boy’s ear that made him drop the box of Jiffy Muffin mix.
“My God, you’re uninhibited, Rush! Do you have any limits?”
Rush turned back to Waverly and said, “You’d think by now he’d know that I
don’t.”

“SO WHEN HE CALLS--?”
“You should act like you never heard it from me,” Delorian’s voice came over the
other end of the line.
“Really,” Delorian told Justin, “it’s all we’ve been talking about this week, which I
strongly suspect has everything to do with the lack of anything going on in Izmir right now. I
confess to almighty God and you my brothers and sisters that right now I’m just about bored
as hell.”
“What you need is more drama in your life.”
“No, Judd. drama is exactly what I don’t need. I’ve had enough drama in the last
twenty years to last a hell of lot of lifetimes, and then the moment I stopped Rush started
and... my God, the Matthews have been being dramatic since my granddaddy got thrown out
of Mississippi for slapping a white woman.”
“Well,” Justin paused over that one, “drama could be overrated. But adventure...”
“When you gettin’ back?”
“In two point five weeks.”
“Well then there can be adventure in two point five weeks.”
“But I had no intention of staying.”
“This I know. That’s why there can be adventure. What are your intentions?”
“Well, now you know, I haven’t really figured that out yet.”
“Great. Me and Frances can help you figure it out. Are you staying at Le House or are
you going to camp out with me and Franny or do you know yet?”
“I had actually thought of popping in on the houseboat.”
“One: that’s a lie. Two: the houseboat isn’t big enough for Cassidy, Rush, your
brother’s head and your legs.”
“I was thinking,” Justin went on, “about a road trip. It would be sort of like On the
Road meets Pilgrim’s Progress.”
“Except that I hate both of those books.”
“Hey, what’s wrong with On the Road--”
“What’s right with it?”
“Pilgrim’s Progress?”
“Like msot allegories it’s bullshit. You don’t walk up to the Cross and a burden falls
off, and then you go tra-la-la-ing to the Celestial City. That’s some Puritan bullcrap that
should have gone out with Oliver Cromwell. You walk up to it and Jesus says, “Now here’s a
cross of your own. Like right now, my cross is--” Delorian shouted in the phone, “IZMIR,
INDIANA!
“I swear to God if shit keeps being this dull I’ll break down and teach at Sainte Terre
for the summer.”
“You are a classics professor.”
“Ah, shit. Don’t remind me,” Delorian said, grumpily, and hung up the phone.

Even four years later, Cassidy remembered that first school Mass in the large old church on
Sainte Terre’s campus. It was a wide building filled with marble and gold and incense that
day, and Cassidy had made fast friends with Waverly. They saw together in the east transcept
of the church, and Waverly said to the nervous Cassidy, “Just do what I do, and you’ll be
fine.”
Across from them, in the west transcept, Cassidy saw other people, and he was
pointing at them, asking who was who. But only the ones who gained his interest.
“Oh, those over there? Well, that one old man--no, he’s not really that old--that is
Cecil Matthews, and those are his sons. The taller one, the one with the long legs--that’s
Monterey. Oh, yes, I’ve know them forever and--”
“Is that--?” Cassidy’s voice died out, “Delorian Matthews?”
Delorian was in some old green pants and a double pocketed dark blue work shirt.
When he stood up, Cassidy noticed the tails were out.
“Yeah, that’s Delorian. That’s why the rest of them are here. Delorian-- also known as
Doctor Matthews.”
“No, he’s just Delorian,” Cassidy insisted, and Waverly looked at the freshman gone
all weird and said, “Are you a Delorian groupy?”
“I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Delorian,” Cassidy insisted, and the rest of the
Mass was a euphoric blur for him.


4.

After Mass Waverly milled through through the crowds on the carpeted floor and passed the
altar. He genuflected, Cassidy looked at him strange, trying to master the move, and Waverly
said, “don’t worry about it?” They crossed to where students and faculty were chatting and
Delorian was trying to head out of the side door.
“Delorian!” Waverly called. “Delorian!”
Delorian turned around, looking distracted, and then his face lit up and pushing past
two professors said, “Waverly! I see you couldn’t avoid the first school mass of the year.”
“I’m a freshman leader this year.”
Delorian looked at Cassidy and said, “Are you the freshman whose being lead?”
At this Cassidy’s eyes widened stupidly, and he began to laugh like an idiot. Delorian
raised an eyebrow.
“He’s nervous,” Waverly told him in a hushed voice. “He idolizes you.”
Delorian looked at the boy again and then said to Wave, “This is my fan base?”
Delorian offered his hand, and Cassidy remembered to take it, saying, “Sir, I love
everything you do. I think-- I think more people should be like you, and I really hope I get to
take one of your classes next year.”
“I doubt that severely.”
Both Waverly and Cassidy looked at Delorian like they’d swallowed bad milk.
Delorian looked around the church and the milling crowds and said, “This professor
is not long for academia, I think. I plan to leave.”
Cassidy looked wounded, but said nothing and this was when Waverly finally said,
“Look, I know this sounds crazy, Delorian, but... Waverly came all the way from
California just to... meet you. He--”
“I’m a poet, sir!” Cassidy shouted suddenly. “I’m a poet and a journalist and--” and
then he realzied he sounded foolish and shut up.
Delorian blew out his cheeks and narrowed his eyes in what Waverly realized after
many years was the older man “pushing out old concepts and squinting to find new vision.”
And then he said, “Well, you’ll just have to come to... whatever class you want to.
Say, creative writing.”
“But my shcedule’s already made. It’s too late--”
Delorian’s eyes lit up and he said, “Cassidy....”
“Smith, sir.”
“Cassidy Smith, I don’t ever want to hear you say that again! It is never too late. I say
it’s not too late. My class is at 9:30, but never sharp. In Mc.Candless Hall. Room 203. Wave
is in it. So is my nephew.”
“Sir, I’d love to, but I have calculus then,” Cassidy said.
“It’s a second level course,” Waverly said. “I mean... Cassidy hasn’t taken the first
creative writ--”
Delorian held up a hand and said, “I repeat-- it’s at 9:30. Mc.Candless. Room 203.
Be there.... or don’t.”
And then Delorian was gone.

There was a tap on Cassidy’s room in James Hall. Waverly came in, the cordless in his hand.
“I just got off the phone with Judd. My big brother. He and Delorian are like this,” he
crossed his fingers. “And he says that Delorian was completely serious.”
Cassidy suddenly shut his calculus book and said, eyes alight, “Yes! Of course he
was.”
Waverly looked at Cassidy strangely.
“Of course he was,” Cassidy said again. “I hate math. I don’t even know why I’m
taking calculus. I cross the whole mother effing country and then I say, I can’t take your class
cause I’ve got calculus. Screw calculus!”
“But they’ll never let you take a second level course. Not when you haven’t taken the
prereks.”
“Bull!” Cassidy said. “No, this is life. Life is meant to be... lived! Enjoyed! Not to
cringed at. We can’t just be afraid of breaking the rules. To hell with all that!” he was
building himself up into a frenzy. “What did I come to Sainte Terre for? Tomorrow morning,
we’re going to class.”
And they did.

When Monterey was on his second divorce, years before there was a houseboat on the river
or a Cassidy, and Waverly and Rush knew nothing about love ezcept the free love in the arms
of their mothers and the warmth of the cradle, four boys--four young men really, gathered in
the little dormer overlooking the river on the high third story of the dark red brick house on
Mernau Street.
Monterey was twenty-three and still married to Betsy who was downstairs asleep with
Rush in her arms. Delorian was seventeen, slight and proud. Monterey thought his little
brother always looked like he was in a movie. He was never able to pinpoint what it was
about him, but Delorian Matthews had a quality about him that made everyone draw back at
the sight of him. The boys at school fell in love with him. Girls revered him. Everyone told
him their deepest secrets and he never abused their trust. He carried himself with a sort of
cool style that Monterey thought his little brother was going to need. Because people who fell
for you quickly, turned on you with equal quickness. Lesson number one from his first
marriage.
Of course Fred was there. Fred who didn’t let himself get snagged by love. Fred who
had seen his mother get snagged by love time and time again to the tune of seven children
and seen foolish men hurt foolish women. If you could just have fun and walk away the next
day, pain was escapable. So Fred said. Love was precious. You couldn’t just give it away to
everyone. Fred loved his friends intensely. Sometimes Monty thought Fred loved Delorian
more than he himself did. But a fuck was a fuck, and she was out of his mind before she out
the door.
Shawn, though, was the reason they were all gathered here tonight around the sky
blue candle Frances bought Fred for a Halloween present. Unlike Delorian who was plain
enough, but burned with some internal fire that made everyone step back, Shawn was a
heartbreaker and never knew it. Monterey had seen the boy once or twice, looking awkward
and strange, a friend Delorian had made his junior year at Assisi. But this time when
Monterey had come home he’d actually gotten a look at the boy with the high planed face, the
flushed cheeks, his sharp blue eyes and almost jet black hair. He was so kind and unaffected
that as Monterey watched him move around the house he thought, “The kid doesn’t know.
He has no idea what he looks like.”
Delorian had never been the kind of brother to tag after Monterey and Fred. He had
always been around and they had always been there for him. But he was his own person. He
seemed to live in his own world. The most startling thing was how he remembered the
mother Monterey could scarcely recall. From the day he could talk Delorian was telling stories
and when he learned to write he sketched pictures and put together little booklets. He
rummaged through the closets of the house and came out in all sorts of clothing, putting on
plays for the family. He was the delight of his grandfather in Gibraltar’s waning days.
He was full of life. All the children liked him. But he had no friends except Justin
Blake, and Monterey knew that relationship was filled with problems. No one else ever
entered the secret universe of Delorian Matthews. Justin had been the only little boy to ever
come home from school with Delorian, and then teenage years had put a strain on their
friendship as they’d begun growing in different directions. Often out of pity Monterey and
Fred would invite him to come with them, but he always sniffed out pity and he always
turned them down.
Then one day he brought home Shawn Camden.
Until then his closest companion had been Cecil. The two had been inseparable,
younger and older versions either of a child Cecil had once been or the man Delorian would
be. Monterey never envied this. Cecil was never stinting in love for either of his sons. It was
just that Monty had always had Fred and who had Delorian? Then Shawn came home one
day when Monterey was visiting and the older brother was a little skeptical because Delorian
was so loud and so outgoing and it seemed he was even moreso with Shawn who was so...
not any of these things.
“He’s the perfect audience,” Fred said one day, “for the theatre that is our Delorian.”
“That can’t work,” Monterey prophecied.
“Why not? If an audience really loves the actor it stays for the show. It claps at the
right times... And means it. And if the actor is really considerate then he cares about the
audience and plays for them.”
“You mean Delorian is in a fake friendship?”
“Not at all,” Fred tried to explain. “See.... when you’re watching a play you know it’s
a play and then you go into something.... deeper... Does that make sense? You start to
understand the performer. You love what you understand. You respect it. And the same with
a good performer and the audience. I’m not sure that this makes any sense but if it were
anyone else, just some randon vain asshole who wanted attention I’d say it’s phoney like
most relationships. But it’s Delorian and he is a spectacle.... He needs someone who can
create equally great spectacle... or just someone who can appreciate his.”
And it appeared that Shawn could appreciate it. Like any perceptive director or
producer, Shawn applauded his friend when it was worthy and criticized him when it was
necessary and so one night Delorian told Monterey and Fred who were both visiting that it
was time for Shawn to be Summoned.

In the dead of night Shawn Camden was awakened, gagged, and with chuckles and
encouraging pats on the back dragged out of his house in his pajamas, taken down the half
mile to the Matthews’ house and up to the third story where he was given the name
Chuzzlewith the Brown and proclaimed the Fifth Member of the Order of the Dragonfly.
“What do we do?” Shawn’s voice was full of excitement.
“Use your powers for good and not for evil,” said Delorian with mock solemnity.
“Fire,” Monterey said, ruffling Fred’s red hair, “Earth,” pointing to himself.
“With not a few quakes,” Delorian commented, laying back lazily on his older
brother’s bed.
“And you’re air,” Monterey told Delorian, who shrugged... airily and told Shawn,.
“You are definitely water.”
“And now the circle is complete,” said Fred.
“We could never find a water,” Delorian told Shawn. “Justin was too like Fred. Fire.
Fire. Fire.”
“Only four elements?” Shawn said.
“There are only four,” Fred told him.
“Boron, Carbon, Magnesium, Radium,” Delorian began ticking off. “Man, Fred, I
don’t know what the elemental table looked like when you took chemistry, but I’m sure there
are more than four.”

If Ara were an element it would be uranium, she thought as she
sped down SR 341. Everyone who handled her always seemed to come off badly from
it, and when she met the wrong man-- poof-- she exploded. Meltdown was her whole world.
Ara Tolliver needed her few girlfriends. She could tell them what she would not be
telling her brother who wanted to maintain his own ideas about her. Like, she would not be
telling him how there was really no feeling more unpleasant than waking up and being fucked
to death by someone you didn’t like--which was exactly how she’d come into the world this
day. What she needed was renewal. What she needed was to get the hell out of Izmir.
“I don’t know what the hell I need,” she said.
She stopped at the red light where 341 intersected with Mc.Cord. She was on her way
to her brother’s apartment. She turned on Mc.Cord and, seeing Mc.Donalds, pulled in.
“Number one, I need a fucking Egg Mc.Muffin or something to clear this shit out of
my head. Number two, I need a notebook so I can start writing resolutions in my brain.
Number Three, I need to go back to school next semester and finally get my degree. Number
Four, I need to reconcile myself with the fact that Rush Matthews is officially gay and not
coming to rescue me from my life of sin. Lastly: I need to leave white men alone.”
After she’d gotten her Mc.Muffin, she suddenly turned right back up Mc.Cord and
hit 341.
“What I need is NOT to see my brother, right now,” Ara told herself and blasted up
the radio, not giving a fuck what she was listening to, letting wind blow through her hair,
before starting to tie it up with a scrunchie and asking herself, “How do white women put up
with that windswept shit anyway?”
Twenty minutes later Ara Tolliver found herself in that haven of lost souls, The
Boathouse.
Rush, Cassidy and Waverly were sitting on the deck smoking cigarettes and playing
cards when she came rolling down the hill in a tight dress from last night, bare feet, and a
cardigan over her shoulders. Wave’s mouth dropped opened at the sight of her. Ara did not
notice him. She stepped onto the boat.
Rush opened his mouth, but Ara put her hand up.
“Don’t fuck with me. Don’t say a word, boys. My life is hell right now.”
With that, Ara Tolliver walked into the cabin and collapsed on the pallet where Wave
had been sleeping for the last week.
“Well,” Waverly said with resignation. “At least it’s a consensus. Ladies and germs:
LIFE IS HELL.”

“I’m sorry for what I’m about to say,” Ara told the men, as she sat up on one elbow. “Which
means that I’m not sorry at all for what I’m about to say, but I’m about to say something I
shouldn’t. Only I really should say it cause it’s true but after I’ll say it you’ll all look at me like
I’m crazy even though you know I’m not crazy and you’ll wish you had the balls to say it
yourself.....”
Ara stopped in the middle of her recitiation and then said, “What did I just say?”
“You had said that you were sorry for what you were about to say--” prompted Rush,
and Ara nooded, “Um, hum, that’s right. I’m sorry for... Yeah, well, what I was about to say
is that I’m not sorry I’m not a virgin anymore. I mean-- are you? Or you? Or you?” she looked
at each young man in turn. None of them answered.
“Well, then why the fuck should I be?” Ara went on. “But I am sorry for all the sorry
as motherfuckers that I have fucked. I am sorry that in this day and age when people ought to
know nobody can fuck, and I’ve wasted all my fucking time looking for a good fucking man
when there is really none to be had--except for Cassidy and Rush and they’re fucking each
other--”
“My God,” Cassidy muttered.
“Fuck!” Ara croaked, then went on. She turned to Waverly in sympathy, “And you
know... it seems like all anyone wants to do now.... is fuck. And nobody can. Nobody can
fuck. I just wish someone would love me or fuck me but goddamn it it’s just people who love
to fuck me, and nobody is any good at it and I’m sick of laying on my back going ooh, baby,
ooh yeah, work that... when I can’t even feel what’s being worked and I.... “ she put a finger
up in the air and finished off her gin and tonic, “I just want somebody who’s gonna fuck me
till my shit falls out.”
At this point, while all three men looked at Ara, blankly. she stuck her index finger
out and belched.
Then she said, solemnly, “Fuck!”
And passed out.
“She’s certifiable,” Rush pronounced.
“She’s beautiful,” Waverly said, his voice full of passion.
Cassidy and Rush raised eyebrows at each other.

“It’s just like we’re on Real World or something. You know? Because it’s all these different
people together in this one space,” said Cassidy, munching on his toast the next morning.
“Or maybe not ... Because if this were Real World we’d all be fighting and everything and
then we’d have money and really neat jobs to go to and we’d probably be all having sex with
each other. So when you think about it, I guess it’s not Real World at all. But it’s better than
that because it is the Real World--”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Excuse me?” Cassidy really hadn’t heard Ara who was finished her English muffin.
“I said shut the fuck up.”
“Well, now it really is like Real World,” Waverly said.
“Have soem manners, Ara,” Rush said, shortly.
“I’m sorry, Rush. Cassidy, PLEASE shut the fuck up.”
Cassidy looked at her blankly, and then she hung her head and started to laugh.
“I’m sorry!” she said. “Look, it’s Sunday and it’s early and we don’t all have that
spring in our steps that you seem to roll out of bed with.”
“I’m not always happy,” Cassidy protested. “And I have a hard time getting up in the
morning sometimes too.”
They all looked at him and he said, “I do. Really. You act like I’m nothing but
sunhine. But... I have cloudy days too.”
At this Rush laughed out loud and threw his arms around Cassidy, who seemed
totally perplexed by the reaction he had caused but patted Rush back.
“We better finish eating,” Cassidy said, at last, “or we’ll be late.”
“Are we really going to a Quaker meeting?” Ara said.
“Of course we are,” Cassidy replied. “It’s Sunday.”
“This is going to be so weird,” she said.
“It won’t be weird for me. It’ll be just like going to Mass,” Cassidy said with a straight
face, “except that there will be no music, no priests, no scripture readings and no
communion.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to tell when you’re serious,” Ara noted.
“I like to keep you on your toes.”

“Cassidy, do you have a minute?”
“Did I do something wrong?” immediately flew out of the boy’s mouth, and Delorian
turned and looked at him, puzzled, and then threw back his head and laughed.
When he laughed Cassidy hoped Dr. Matthews really wasn’t going anywhere. He
seemed so unaffected by life. Much younger than he was, and his laugh was too loud and
happened at all the wrong times. Cassidy had never seen this man walking around troubled
or as if there was some heavy weight on his mind.
“No, you don’t do anything wrong, Cass. Except for that whole calculus thing, but
you had the sense to get the hell out of it and switch to my class. It’s just I’m one of those
nosey, hands on teachers who actually wants to get to know my students. Especially when
they have talent.”
“You think I have talent?”
“I think you know you have it or why would you be here?”
Cassidy went red, but he managed to say, “I thought I was here because you told me
to come to your class on pain of death.”
“Not on pain of death,” said Delorian. “But on pain of living like a dead man. Now
this one poem you wrote... I’ve seen the line or something like it. It’s a paraphrase The end
of it. Sort of like when someone uses bits of a psalm.

And all my life I was a thief
without any truth, just the words

“Now, I believe that’s Margaret Fell,” said Delorian and Cassidy’s eyes bulged out.
“You’re pretty well read, Mr. Smith.”
“I’m a Quaker, sir.”
Delorian cocked his head and narrowed his eyes as if looking for something, and
then said, “That’s about right. You’re not silly enough to be a Catholic. I don’t think. Poor
you, was that your first Mass the other day? The School Mass?”
Cassidy nodded.
“How was that for you?”
“It was.... the music was nice. It was really. Actually, sir, I was caught up in the seeing
you, because Waverly told me he would introduce me to you.”
“Let me take a breath,” said Delorian, “and savor this moment.”
Cassidy found himself grinning, and then he said, “But really. It was so beautiful...
But it’s like no one really understood it. I almost feel like I understood it better.”
“That’s about right,” Delorian said again, dismally. “Well, sir, I’ll check in on you
and your writing and---” A new thought struck him, “Are you devout? I mean, do you usually
go to Meeting?”
“At home all the time. I was in youth group.”
Delorian started to laugh again and now, Cassidy felt drawn out enough to say,
“What?”
Delorian contined laughing, raising a hand to say that he would stop any time.
“When you said that,” the older man explained, “all I could think of was a bunch of
kids dressed like the Quaker Oats Man, and girls with bonnets on their heads and.... I don’t
guess it’s anything like that.”
Now Cassidy was grinning and turning red. He shook his head and holding back
laughter said, “No, sir, I can honestly tell you it’s nothing like that. But I miss it. And I miss
being able to go somewhere on Sunday is all. I like it here.... But it’s a little lonely.”

What Cassidy did appreciate was that there was no reason to get up on Sunday. Around
eleven o’clock he heard feet tramping all around the dormitory, and then there was silence.
Everyone was on their way to Mass. Usually he chose to eat around now. The cafeteria was
halfway empty. There was a marvelous communion of the Protestant, agnostic and totally
damned in those hours while the good Catholics were at worship. Then everyone would
return to their still empty dormitories. For by now, the kids coming out of Mass would be
going to eat. Sundays were nice like that.
The tap on his door was totally unexpected. Cassidy croaked something and crawled
out from his bed covers.
“Look at you!” Waverly pointed and laughed. Waverly was dressed in chinos and a
blue Oxford, sleeves rolled up. He smelled of aftershave and Cassidy, hair sticking up,
smelling his own armpits, raised an eyebrow.
“Get up! Get up!”Waverly said. He took out a sheet of paper and handed it to Cassidy
who was having a hard time computing this early on a Sunday morning.
“Addresses?” he said to Waverly.
“Every Quaker meeting in the area. “Wer’e gonna find the closest one. Come on.”
Before Cassidy could decide how he felt about this change of events, he began pulling
on his clothes from the night before.

OVER THE COURSE OF THE DRIVE, WAVERLY BEGAN TO DOUBT HIS
WISDOM IN GOING TO A QUAKER MEETING HOUSE.
“It’s not like we take your blood or anything,” Cassidy said with a laugh as they
zoomed down Maberly Street.
Waverly looked at him oddly, and Cassidy said, “What?”
“It’s just that you said, ‘we’.”
“Well,” Cassidy pointed out, “I am a Quaker.”
“Yeah, I know. Just... until now you’ve been Cassidy Smith-- a Quaker--and now it’s
odd to think of you as one in a larger group of people just like you.”
“I doubt you’ll find anyone just like me,” Cassidy said, confident in his uniqueness.
“Plus, I bet you’ve met tons of Quakers.”
“I can say with confidence the only one I know is that guy on the box.”
“President Nixon,” Cassidy said. “Oh, here we are,” he pointed to a very ordinary
looking house.
“Are you serious?” said Waverly, looking for a parking spot. Cassidy pointed to one
under an old oak.
“About this being a meeting house or about Nixon?”
“I mean about Nixon.”
“Well,” Cassidy shrugged, “We’re not exactly proud of it, but he was a California
Friend.”
“Friend?”
“Quaker. It’s the--”
“I know what it means. Come on, Encyclopedia Britannica.”

5.

What Waverly had been impressed by that time was Cassidy’s complete lack of self
consciousness, how it was as if he belonged to this. Which he did. There was really nothing
odd about it except that it wasn’t odd at all. They came in behind some other youngish
people. Upon entering the house a man smiled and handed them a pamphlet. Cassidy
nodded, smiled back, took two and led Waverly into what seemed to be a living room but was
completely empry . There were lots of chairs with cushions. They sat down side by side. The
room was filled with people and filled with the most profound silence Waverly had ever
known.

It was the silence Waverly felt now, this Sunday, four years later, a week into one of
the most harrowing experiences of his life, when he came to this same house with Cassidy
again, now accompanied by Rush and Ara who seemed, despite everything, to fall into the
silence without trouble. There were no robes, no incense, not a bit of singing, no sacraments,
but it was like that quiet part in the Mass, after they had all sung, “Holy! Holy! Holy!” when
for a moment the entire huge congregation stopped and waited for something to happen.
Then something had happened. The priest was holding the Body and Blood of Jesus.
Everyone at Saint Alphonsus or the huge church on Saint Terre’s campus would be
waiting about now for Jesus to become this bread and wine and then they would look to the
altar and then they would eat him and then he would be in them and==according to very bad
teaching--he would then depart. Cassidy explained that he belonged to a church without
sacraments-- not because they didn’t believe in them, but because they had entered them so to
speak. Sitting in this house they did not wait to see the bread changed so that they could look
at Jesus and then eat the Jesus and become the Jesus. This was Jesus. The moment they sat
here they were the Sacrament. They were in the middle of it.
Of course, everyone was not in a state of silence. Cassidy and Rush dropped off easily
into the presence of God. Even Ara did. Some, the very old among them, looked like they
were about to fall asleep or just looked bored as hell, and Waverly realized that all these
thoughts would not be going through his mind, he wouldn’t be seeing all these things, if he
weren’t distracted too.
But he knew that they were all upheld and knit together by something very real here.
He felt incredibly safe. He felt as if everything was all good and all right and then he felt
himself pulled out of himself.
Usually nothing but this great grand silence ever came in Meeting. Today the wind
outside shook the trees and blew up a gauzy curtain and suddenly it was Cassidy who stood
bolt upright and pleaded:

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb,
like flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake,
wind and fire,
O still, small voice of calm !


Why couldn’t Sunday last forever? Why couldn’t he put off all the necessary things for more
than two days? Why did Monday morning start to haunt him right around six o’clock Sunday
night?
In this world you have to make money, and to make it you have to work eight hours a
day. There’s the big bad corporate bogey and it’s really too bad, but how can you not live that
way?
Life on the houseboat was fun enough, and this Ara was a new equation. Waverly felt
that if he could get to know her then all sorts of things would take off. He couldn’t help being
a romantic, seeing an adventure behind every door and possibility in every person, and he felt
that Ara Tolliver was the key to this whole new world.
“Every person is a new adventure, a new experience,” Waverly wrote in his journal
that night, though, at the age of twenty-three going on twenty-four, he had to admit this truth
had rarely been borne out in real experience.
He showered, dressed, neglected to eat, which meant he would probably go into
shakes at about eleven, put coffee in a thermos, tucked his Camels in his breast pocket, got in
the Sentra and made the half hour drive across town.
The Broughton Building was two stories and grey with no redeeming architectural
qualities. When he parked, he saw Nikki’s car across the lot and wondered if her stomach
lurched to at the approach to work too.
When he felt himself sickening, he sucked in his breath, stilled his breathing, and
then turned off his mind. What was it that they said? Only ten percent of the human brain
was ever used? Waverly believed it, and he was sure that not only could you get by for eight
hours of the day by shutting down eight of that ten percent, but that it was just much less
painful if you did.




DAY SEVEN OF THE NEW LIFE JOURNAL

This is the seventh day of the journal of my new life which I am writing in spare moments,
on this computer. I now have a mirror positioned in such a way that if Ross sneaks up behind me I
will know, minimize this screen, and my current project will immediately flash up. The mirror makes
people think I’m vain, but better to be vain than not to have a job.
Ha Ha!
Alright, it wasn’t really funny, and it’s hard to put laughter on a computer screen.
At any rate, I’m in bad enough with Ross. I am trying my best here. It’s just that my best is
starting to wear a little thin. There is so much less of me than I thought to put into this job. Why
can’t I be like Rush and-- See, there you go again! Wailing.
I DO believe that things are looking up, that life is going to get SO MUCH BETTER, and--”


His cellphone rang and Wave was quick to get it. Everyone else had a cell, but for some
reason he was sure that Ross would hear and know it was his, and that he was wasting
“company time.” Company, company time--
“Hello,” Wave, answered his own thoughts, whispering into the cellphone.
“Wave, what the hell is wrong with you?”
“I’m at work, Rush.”
“Well, I know,” Rush said. “That’s why I called. When you get off?”
“In about twenty minutes and.... I’m really not doing so great here so--”
“Waverly, I’m sorry, but I need a favor. Well, Ara needs it. Her car just broke down
on Douglas, and she needs someone to pick her up.”
Wave blew out a deep breath and thought, I can’t say no. I’ll be a heel.
“Yeah,” Wave said. “I don’t suppose she’d be willing to wait for me to get off
ofwork.”
“Well, I guess she could, but--”
“Nevermind, I’ll go get her now. Where is she?”
“34th and Douglas.”

Even though Wave was sure Rush had called Ara and told her he was coming, she looked
surprised when she saw him roll up.
“Shame, that’s a classic,” he told her by way of greeting.
Ara, tapped the Mustang and looked at it a little sadly before saying, “Thank you so
much for coming all the way out here. Rush told me you had to leave work.”
Waverly looked at the girl who was leaving her car to climb into his, and she said,
“What?”
“You’re very welcome,” Waverly told her.
Ara laughed. “You sounded so proper.”
“But so did you. That’s why I was surprised.”
“What? You left work to come and get me, and you’re surprised that I’d say thank
you?”
Waverly shrugged, and put the key in the ignition.
“I dunno, you just don’t seem like the sort of girl--woman--who would say thank you.
You’re... forceful.”
“Maybe that’s my problem.”
“I don’t think its a problem at all,” Waverly told her, frankly.
They stopped on Thirty-Fourth, a street that ran directly north and south. Here the
city was going to country, and there were tall trees with houses hidden behind them.
“And, like I said,” Ara said, “you left work and everything.... I didn’t think of calling
you cause I hardly know you... even though you know my brother.”
“Yeah, I know Nelson.”
“I can’t iamgine you’d get along with him, but anyway,” she said before he could
protest, “Rush had said, or you had said, how you weren’t getting along with your boss.”
“You know how that is... corporate world,” Wave shrugged as they zoomed on down
Thirty- Fourth falling down, and then rising up out of a dip in the land.
“Not , really,” Ara said, “I work in a diner. I mean, I know what it’s like to not get
along with people but... I wouldn’t consider the Meet and Eat.... corporate. P.S., you probably
don’t want to hear this, but Rush told me he wants us to stop and get bread. I love having a
cellphone when my car breaks down. Not so wild about it when I get messages like.... ‘Hey,
we need pudding.’ ”
Waverly started to laugh wildly, and she said, “I didn’t know I was that funny.”
“You are. I mean, I think you are.” Up the road was the plaza with the supermarket
and the busy intersection with Jonathan Avenue. Waverly slowed the car down as traffic
congested, and said, looking at her with consideration, “I bet you don’t take shit from
anybody.”
Ara sighed and looked at her own hands with the same consideration Waverly had
given her.
“When I was eight my mother and father sent me to this summer progam called,
Indiana Video. We were supposed to make this great movie about north Indiana, Amish
folks and all that shit. Maybe basketball. I don’t know. Anyway, the guy that directed it was
this mean little red headed Jew. And he didn’t direct worth shit.
One day this little girl named Stephanie==who is eight too, she throws up her hands
and declares in this real shrill voice, ‘This is bullshit! This is just bullshit!’ ”
“No, she didn’t!”
“Yes, Wave, she did. And then she walked out. We never saw her again.”
As they centered the parking lot of the plaza, Ara said softly, “Eight years old, and she
already knew what she didn’t have time for. Now, that’s a genius. I don’t know what the hell
Stephanie’s doing now... but I bet it ain’t bullshit.”


When Waverly came to work the next morning, there was a note on his desk that said, “SEE
ME.” He swallowed and shrugged before putting down his attache case and heading for
Ross’s office.
He tapped on the glass before entering. Ross was still on the phone and held up a
finger while he kept talking. Waverly’s eyebrow’s knit with a touch of worry.
It seemed that Ross would never get off the phone, never find the time to fire him,
and then, at last he was off and he looked at Wave consideringly, and Wave put a smile on
his face and said, “Yes, Ross?”
“Waverly, you headed out of the office twenty minutes early yesterday?”
“Yes, that’s right, sir. Someone needed me.”
“Well, now I need you,” Ross said, and this phrase completely took Waverly off his
guard, because he’d been waiting to hear, “Well, you’re fired.”
Wave took a few breaths, and then said, “Need me how?”
“My wife got tickets for some show, and I can’t go, and she needs someone. Doesn’t
want to go alone. Doesn’t want to waste a ticket. She said, well get someone you work with?
And so I wanted to know if you would do it?”
“Ah...”
“I know your friends trust you a lot and people like you, Blake, and that’s why I’m
asking you. Because I thought that you were the kind of person that would know how to
show Elaine a good time.”
“Well, ah,” Waverly was slowly letting out the breath he’d taken. “Yes, I would be....
delighted. I would be delighted to take Mrs. Pembroke out.”
Ross smiled and said, “Mrs. Pembroke is only twenty-five. She might prefer being
called Elaine.”

Waverly, feeling considerably better now, went to sit down at his desk and made to
check his e-mail quickly. He was surprised to find one from Ara.

Just wanted to say thanks for everything, and I hope I didn’t get you in trouble with your
boss. You’re real, Wave. Stay that way. P.S., I’m cooking dinner tonight.

: ) Ara

Well, what the hell is this?” demanded Rush.
“It’s Hamburger Helper,” Ara said, taking her spatula and slamming some onto his
plate.
“You said you were cooking.”
“Well bona petite,” she gestured to it. “Who the hell do you think I am? Martha
Stewart?”
Cassidy used his fork to toy with the food and told Rush, “You do have to admit, for
Ara, this is grand cuisine.”
“I don’t have to admit shi-” Rush grumbled, but Cassidy caught his hand and said,
brightly, “Let’s ask a blessing.”
And then Ara began:

“Good food, good eat,
Good God--”

But Cassidy said, “I was thinking of something a little more... traditional.”
“Um,” Ara commented, “and I thought Quakers just liked to fly off the handle and
do whatever whatever.”
“We can be a very reserved people when necessary,” said Cassidy.






Waverly woke up in the middle of the night. It was hot in the houseboat, and one slept
lightly here. He had something on his mind and he lay looking up at the ceiling a while
before he pushed the thin sheet aside and got up to wake Rush. He listened at the door a
second and then, pushing it open, came into the room with the windows open to the river air
where Rush lay on his back on one side of the bed, and across from him Cassidy lay sprawled
out on his side.
“Rush,” Waverly said, touching his friend.
“Uhhhh,” Rush moaned, and Cassidy whimpered in his sleep before shielding his
face with an arm.
“Rush, wake up,” Waverly said, gently, and Rush’s eyes blinked open and then
focused on Waverly.
“Wha?” he said, groggily.
“I need to talk to you.”

On the deck of the houseboat, Rush flicked the last of his cigarette into the river, and
said, “Well, don’t even think about it.”
“I think it would really be a good idea.”
“Let me ask you,” said Rush. “If it’s such a good idea, why are you waking me up and
pulling me out of bed in the middle of the night instead of her?”
Waverly didn’t answer.
“Exactly.”
“Exactly what?” said Waverly.
“Ara’s half nuts, coming out of bad relationship number one thousand and forty-four,
and you’d just ask her to go out with you, and she’d just tell you no, and I think you should
just let things be the way they are.”
“And why would she say no?”
And then they heard a new voice say:
“BECAUSE DON’T DO WHITE MEN.... NOT ANYMORE.”

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