WAVERLY BLAKE WAS ULTIMATELY A MAN OF BUSINESS AND ONE OF ACTION, SO ON HIS SECOND NIGHT IN RHODES, AFTER HE HAD LEFT A MESSAGE WITH HIS BOSS, HE ASKED JACK, “What should we do?
“Whaddo you mean?” Jack had taken them to a coffeehouse called the Red Owl.
“After I leave,” said Wave. “It’s gonna be a few days but... “ He stopped talking and looked around the coffee shop, a comfortable enough looking place. “I hate to leave you alone. I mean, I know you feel better now, but...”
“Wave, I’m going to hate it when you go,” Jack said simply. “You’re right. I... you don’t know how lucky you are. I was never great friends with Rush and Cass, but they were great guys and... You’ve got so much family and friends around you. I’ve got my family, but... not my friends, I don’t think. I hadn’t really thought about what I would do when you left. I guess I didn’t want to.”
“I didn’t think about it either,” Waverly sipped form his coffee and grimaced. He had never been a big coffee drinker. “I just wanted to boost your spirits and then...”
“Go home?”
“Yeah. Say,” Waverly’s face lit up with inspiration, “why don’t you come with me?”
Jack stared at him and said, “Wave, that is so half cocked.”
“So?”
“I have a job. I have bills. College loans, Wave. You know that.”
Waverly frowned. “I’ve been living with Rush and Cass. They act like that stuff isn’t real. There’s got to be... something.”
“Maybe the something is just to remember what I’ve got. I’ve been thinking, you know, about how I didn’t know about Cindy and all. How... we weren’t really talking, really communicating and all that. I do have all these friends. I’ve got you and Sal and Jake and... I just haven’t been talking to any of them. I’ve been ignoring things until they got real bad. I should have called when I started to feel a little lonely. I shouldn’t have waited until I wanted to blow my head off. I’m always waiting till crisis moment.”
“So if I leave you... you’ll be okay.”
“I’ll be A.O.K!”
And Waverly laughed out loud.
“What?”
“You are the only person I’ve ever heard say that. A.O.K.”
“What about you, man?”
“What about me?” Waverly fingers played with the rim of the coffee cup.
“Are you gonna be A.O.K? When you go back home to that boss’s wife, to that job? Have you told Rush?”
Waverly shook his head.
“You should. You should tell somebody. What about Professor Matthews?”
“Delorian?” Waverly wrinkled his brow. “No. Besides, I’m supposed to be giving you advice.”
“No,” Jack corrected. “You’re supposed to be helping me not to kill myself. But I can still advise, even on the edge of a cliff. Wave, tell someone. Or quit hanging out with her.”
Waverly was silent.
“Let me ask you a question, Wave?”
“Hum?”
“How did it happen? I mean, what did she do?”
“She passed me a note. We went to a company dinner and she wrote me a note on a napkin, right in front of her husband. She passed it under the table. I put it in my pocket and went to the men’s room. When I opened it up it said, plain as day, ‘I want to have sex with you.’ “
“Aw, Wave, man!” Jack’s brows drew together. He finished the rest of his coffee in one gulp and then reached for Waverly’s cigarettes. “Now tell me... did you like it?’
“What?”
“How did you feel when you read it? Did it scare you? Did it make you think, Oh, my God no! Did it make you feel flattered and big? Did it make you want to fuck her?”
Wave sat back in is chair, drumming the rim of the coffee table.
“All of it,” he confessed. “And the more I think about it.... the more it’s the last two... I’m afraid of myself more than I am of her.”
3.
“You got a message,” Shawn told Monterey, dealing the cards. “While you were in the bathroom.” He was at the kitchen table with Fred, and Monterey joined them, looking momentarily at the hand he’d been dealt, but revealing nothing to his opponents.
“Okay,” Monterey sounded distracted, as he had been sense he came home.
“It was from Phoebe.”
“Really?”
“She’s coming to town.”
“Great,” Monterey said.
Monterey’s daughter had never really been a cause for victory dances in the Matthew’s kitchen, but the news of her arrival was met with enthusiasm nonetheless.
Now Shawn looked to Fred, and Fred looked to Shawn, and Shawn nodded.
“What’s up?” Fred said, at last.
“What do you mean, ‘What’s up?’ ”
“What he means, Shawn said, “is that you’re too silent.”
“Hum? Can’t I be quiet when I want to be? Who wants a beer?”
“I do,” said Shawn. “And no you can’t. You can’t ever be silent. It’s a Matthews trait.”
Monterey got up and went to the refrigerator saying, “Neither one of you treacherous white men better look at my cards,” and then he came back with three beers.
“If he doesn’t want to talk…” Fred said to Shawn.
“You can’t make him,” Shawn finished the statement, and they both unscrewed their beers with the edge of their shirts.
Monterey looked at one and then the other, and they looked at him, innocently.
“Well, I might as well tell you,” he said at last.”
“Yes,” Fred said, sensibly. “You might as well.”
“I just got back from my newest patient.”
“Newest hospice patient,” said Shawn.
Monterey nodded.
“I’ve had him for a while, but we’re not supposed to talk about them. They are confidential. And this one... he’s been extra, extra confidential. I haven’t even told Delorian or Cecil. That’s just the rule. But not even his children know, and that’s been weighing on my mind. Until tonight. He’s about to tell them.”
“That he’s dying?” Fred prompted.
“Well, yes. And has been doing so for some time.”
“Well, my God, and the kids don’t even know,” Fred shook his head.
“Can you tell us?” Shawn said. “Is that it. Do you want to talk to us about it.’
I think I have to. You know him.”
“Ih, well then maybe you shouldn’t said Shawn suddenly. “If it is confidential, and it’s someone we know and--”
“You don’t really know him,” Monterey put up a hand. “You know of him. You’ve met him. You don’t know him, don’t see him. Don’t deal with him.”
“Well, goddamnit Monty, I’ve had it,” Fred said, “please quit being so goddamned mysterious and just say who it is.”
“Gregory Blake.”
“Gregory---” started Shawn.
“Justin and Wave’s father?” Fred sounded incredulous. “Dying?”
“He’s been dying of throat cancer for a long time now,” Monterey said. “And they don’t even know it.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Shawn said quietly. “Poor... all of them.”
“Um hum,” Monterey nodded, distracted.
“Are you going to tell Wave and Justin, or is he?”
“I just said he is.”
“But what about when they come to you?” Fred said, “And ask why you didn’t tell them off the bat.”
Monterey just shook his head.
“I’ll tell them that’s my job. It’s confidential. For everyone, and it wasn’t my right. And that will be the end of that.”
Over Omaha the sky erupted into thunder and lightning. All night the clouds pulsed with light, and rain fell down as the heavens rumbled. The crash around one in the morning jolted Delorian Matthews out of his sleep and he sat upright in bed.
The lightning outlined Justin Blake in his boxers, sitting in the window. Rain ran down the panes and before Delorian put on his glasses he could see the dull glow of his friend’s cigarette that brightened when he inhaled.
Delorian put on his housecoat and crossed the room they were sharing with Nathan and Ara. He sat in the window, and Justin looked at him now.
“What?” said Delorian. “Or should I just go back to bed and leave you alone?”
“No. Yes,” Justin was only half present for both answers. He shook his head. “I don’t know. I had a dream is all. One of those dreams again.”
Delorian nodded. Then he said, “Was it about... him?”
Justin nodded.
“When I have those dreams it is just like we are sixteen... all over again. But we haven’t been sixteen in... years.”
Delorian reported dolefully, “Twenty three years.”
Justin nodded and frowned.
“Does it ever seem to you.... Well, not to you. I know not to you. But to me it seems like I haven’t gotten anywhere,” Justin said.
“I used to think that life was about all of these experiences and.... and I’ve had a lot of experiences, good and bad. I have been so far from home. I thought I’d really done something, but I haven’t. I haven’t done anything. I’m forty and I really haven’t done anything.”
“Just because you don’t have a wife and all that.”
“No!” Justin was a little louder than he intended. “No! Fuck that. I have never ever wanted that, but I feel like.... I can’t shake this. It’s like this big painful panic bubble in my chest, that I haven’t done what I’m supposed to do, that I’ve ignored... my quest. Does that sound stupid?”
“Not at all.”
“Well, then let me go on. It’s like we’re all supposed to go look for the Grail, go in the woods and find it. Or be like Buddha and go find enlightenment. And so I got up, right? And did all this traveling and went far from home and did all this wild shit, but only to make it look like I was looking for the Grail. Really, I was just walking around my own backyard in circles over and over again. I wasn’t doing anything.”
Delorian started to laugh, and then realized Justin was serious.
“But, you, you don’t feel that way, do you?” he said to Delorian.
“Thwarted?”
“That’s a good word. Yes, thwarted.”
“No,” said Delorian. “Bored, yes. Like some of my time could have been better spent. But... I don’t think I’ve ignored my quest, or my initiation. Or whatever. And, I don’t really think there’s only one. I think that life has a bunch of them. A bunch of different journeys and maybe people get caught up in the externals. I mean, you can go two thousand miles from home and never really make progress, still be the same person. Or you hate being bossed around at an old job, so you leave it to get bosses around at another. Right? Nothing changes. You don’t change.”
“That’s right, I don’t change.”
“I didn’t mean you specifically, Judd.”
“But it is me specifically. It is. I really have not changed at all. Not at all, Dory. I -- you’re talking about all these journeys people have throughout life and you know what?”
Delorian waited for the revelation.
“I haven’t even made the first one,” Justin said. “I’m forty and I haven’t even started.”
“Thirty nine. And most people haven’t started.”
“So what,” Justin said, crushing out one cigarette and picking up another.” Who gives a shit about most people. What about me? And thirty nine or forty… So fucking what? I have been really fucking deluded, I’ve been telling myself most people are bullshit, but you know what? I’m bullshit. That’s why I keep having these same fucking goddamn motherfucking dreams over and over again. Cause I haven’t done anything. I haven’t done jack shit. And it’s not going to change until I do?”
It was times like this when Delorian kept silent and let Justin figure out things for himself.
“Isn’t that right?” Justin said. “I wait for the cosmos to swoop down and change my universe... and all this time it’s waiting for me.”
Over the hotel room in Omaha the thunder continued and the rain continued to fall in buckets. Randomly, Delorian wondered if this was flood country. It must be with the land so flat and all. Would the bus be flooded with water tomorrow? Would it be stopped?
Adventure, he told himself.
“Dory, what did you dream about?” Justin said softly.
“My mother.”
“I dreamed about the baby.... laying in that trash can, in a trash bag, all blue and dead looking.”
“But... it wasn’t dead? You never told me that part. I never.... asked... Never wanted to intrude on that part of you.”
“You could have.”
“No,” Delorian disagreed. “I couldn’t have. Not about that. And not then. But now I think I should. Was it dead?”
“No, but when I dream about it... yes.”
“In my dream my mother was dead,” Delorian told him. “Her hair was spread out in the water, and there were lilies in the water. Bright white, and yellow sunflowers and the water was clear and crystal, and there was nothing but crystal light.... And even though she was dead... in reality... in the dream she was just sleeping.”
Cassidy Smith awoke to an orchestra of gentle feelings playing a quiet tune for him. The birds twittered outside of the window and sunlight, after the night of rain, slipped through the window filtered by thick cream colored curtains. The warmth of the bed and the sheets of the bed felt good to him. The warmth of his body and Rush’s own body with the light scent of sweat, their limbs tangled together, their mutual hardnesses touching, the pulsing deep in Cassidy, behind his scrotum in the place between his legs that told him when he was in love, when he had first come to love Rush the way he thought he would only ever love a girl.
The other man’s chest was a pillow that rose and fell with its constant heartbeat, and Rush’s hand was in his hair. He did not want to move. They could not move. They wouldn’t have a hotel room every night and they wouldn’t have the privacy they’d had the night before. Rush was twenty-five. Cass, twenty-three, physical separation for even a day was like being parted for months. They could go at it for hours, take turns, think of strange ideas, consume each other greedily like forest fires, like infants reaching out with curious joy to touch everything in creation, nurture and give endless nourishment like mothers. In a private room, in a bed of reasonable size anything was possible until even they could fall into exhaustion and sleep for hours. Then get up ravenous, prowl the hotel and the room for food, eat everything they could get their hands on and make love again for half the night, not giving a damn who the hell heard, pass out again, sleep in the peace of each other’s arms.
Rush patted Cassidy’s head a few times by way of good morning because neither of them talked for about half an hour after waking. Cassidy pushed himself up and lay on his side looking down over his... his Rush, and then he lay on his back too.
After a very long time, Rush Matthews hopped out of bed, compact and brown, wide shouldered, thick legged, naked as birth and went to the bathroom, pissed for a long time and then, after rinsing his mouth and washing his face came out and stood over Cassidy.
“I need coffee.”
Cassidy nodded, went to the bathroom. The two of them dressed in loose jeans and tee shirts and went to the breakfast area to get some of the worse coffee in the world. Nate Wehlan was already there, eating a bit of day old danish.
“You guys should see the car,” said Nate.
Cassidy, who was wearing his glasses this morning, pushed them up the bridge of his nose and blinked at Nate.
Nathan gestured, and the two young men followed.
“Crud and crap,” Cassidy said.
“Cassidy, such language,” Rush murmured.
The parking lot was flooded and the water went past the wheels of the Volkswagon.
“This will be fun,” Rush murmured.
“I bet it won’t be,” said Cassidy.
A few minutes later they all stood outside of the motel. Ara, her hands on her hips stood on the sidewalk before the parking lot. The men were at the bus, Cassidy at the wheel, gunning the ignition, nothing happening, the wheels spinning ineffectually, the bus growling and roaring until Delorian said, “Stop! We’ll kill the damn thing.”
Cassidy looked at Rush, “We should have stayed in bed.”
“We should have checked on the bus last night,” Rush disagreed.
“It’s really nothing we could have done,” Cassidy said. “Short of driving it in into our room on the second floor. And I don’t really see how we could have done that.”
“Well,” Ara shouted from the curb, “I guess we just need to think of this as more adventure?”
FINALLY THEY DECIDE THE ONLY THING TO DO IS PUSH THE CAR OUT OF THE WATER. RUSH SITS AT THE WHEEL, KEEPING THE ENGINE RUNNING, HIS FOOT ON THE GAS, THE BUS IN REVERSE WHILE THE OTHER SLOG THROUGH THE WATER UNTIL THE WHEELS BEGIN SPINNING AND OUT OF THE ROAD THE CAR HUMS AGAIN.
“I had thought,” Cassidy said to Delorian, “that I might have to go under the hood and fix something, and I honestly don’t think I could have done it on a Volkswagon.”
“Cass, I didn’t know you worked on cars,” said Ara.
“Cass and Waverly too,” Justin says.
“Cassidy is a man of many talents,” Rush clapped him on the back. “And Waverly can fix anything.”
“I think we should go in and eat some form of breakfast,” said Delorian. “And then we can pay off our bill and go wherever we’re going.”
“Is there any sort of direction, or should I have even asked?” said Ara.
They all looked at her.
“I know. I shouldn’t have asked.”
Delorian said, “I think I have an idea.”
They turn to him.
“Today we will just drive where ever…” he closed his eyes and pointed, turning. When he opened his eyes he was pointing at Nathan Wehlan, “Where ever Nate thinks we should go.”
“What?” Nathan demanded.
“If you feel we should go left, we go left. If you feel we should go right, we go right. If you see some curious place, we hit that curious place.”
“That is a mad idea!” Justin declared.
But he was a fan of mad ideas.
When Delorian was nineteen years old he took his first real road trip. His life had become stillborn. From the day he was born it had been proclaimed that he was beautiful, that he was a child of grace and style and command. And he had been. He had always believed in this. At Assisi High School he had not been the tallest or the cutest or the most experienced. Actually Justin had taken all of those prizes. But he was the most respected, the most elegant. The chess team and science clubs wondered why he wouldn’t join them because outside of their circle he was the only one with whom they could have intellectually stimulating conversations. The priests wondered why he wouldn’t go into the religious life because when he talked of the spiritual he left them amazed and confused, excited all over again about the religion they had grown used to. The down to earth, downtrodden and close to the earth always felt Delorian never bullshitted them. He shot straight and spoke freely. Football players thought he was tough as nails, the members of he choir and drama club were amazed by his poise and gentility. He was everything and everyone loved him. But because these qualities were all genuine and deep he also had a few enemies -- but no one really liked them so he never worried too much about that.
The uniform of Assisi that eight of the nine Dragonflies, not to mention several of their parents was immaculately polished black patent leather shoes, fitting blue trousers, a trim blue blazer, crisp white shirt and bright red tie. No one wore it better than Delorian. There was never a nap out of place on the head of Delorian Jude Matthews.
And then after high school he turned down every college that wanted him, shut the blinds on his windows and refused all phone calls.
It was in this condition, the one where he had stopped bathing that Fred found him. Fred had returned from visiting Monterey and his current wife and was going from job to job, a life that Delorian, at the time, could see no attraction for.
“You’re going with me,” Fred told him.
“Where are we going?”
“I’m going to California to look for work.”
And because there was nothing in Izmir or indeed in the whole world to look forward to, Delorian bathed for the first time in a long time called all of his friends and told them he was going on an adventure.
Justin disapproved.
“Look,” said Delorian, “you’re really starting to get on my fucking nerves.”
“All I said-- “
“All you said, in that holier than though attitude you’ve cultivated lately, is that it is a waste of my time and I should be in school.’
“Well, really,” Justin, who had, in the last few years of high school cleaned his act up and gotten into Xavier in Cincinnati, said “I just think you’ve started to blow your whole life away. You used to be so... what you’re not now. You used to be so classy and now you’re just....”
“Oh, fuck you,” Delorian said and hung up the phone.
Wisely, Cecil had said nothing about the sudden change that had come upon his son after high school. He knew that it was only heartbreak to project what your children would be, and that there was just no use guessing what would come next. Besides, Cecil had always suspected that the previous perfect incarnation of his son was good for high school, but could not last. Not that it was bad, simply that, someone like Delorian was destined by all of his very perfections to explode like a phoenix and turn into a completely different bird. Cecil was patient. He watched his son’s implosion from afar excusing him from nighttime rosary and daily Mass.
Fred stayed over that night. Cecil had known the boy for almost twenty years now, and hoped he was finally up. Somewhere in high school Fred had taken to fucking around and every once in awhile when the high minded Monterey was home, Cecil could hear the two old friends shouting at each, arguing about morality. Now Monterey shut his mouth when Fred said, “I’m not the one who’s on wife number three!”
Wife number three, the one who had brought Phoebe into the world.
Cecil thought that Delorian, as strange as he had turned out, would actually help Fred to grow up. He that that somehow in the dark shadows of his room in those last few months when he should have been starting college like an average teenager then something had happened in that darkness to make him more than average. If he had been average to begin with, all the changes would have been somewhat painless and totally superficial. It would have taken years, long years before he really learned he wasn’t in high school and not the same person. By then it would be too late. But Delorian had crashed early, and Cecil was privately grateful for this, having experienced how good a crash could be, provided you knew how to recover.
It was nineteen eighty. A few months ago if Delorian appeared anywhere it would be in snug jeans and a dress shirt, button down. This morning he had hunted up some dungarees, too large, his hair was uncut, he was growing a bit of a beard and wore an old tee shirt. Flip flops were on his feet.
“Oh, my God, you look ridiculous,” said Fred, who was wearing what Delorian would have been in only a few months before.
“And you look like sex,” Delorian retorted. “I can see your nut sack.”
Before Fred could reply, Delorian bent down and ripped the knee out his jeans.
He glanced at his father.
Cecil hid a smile of approval.
AT THAT TIME DELORIAN JUDE MATTHEWS IS CERTAIN THAT HE WILL NEVER BE FRIENDS WITH JUSTIN BLAKE, SO HIGH AND MIGHTY NOW. Monterey, the brother he could always depend on, is gone. Not everyone is fortunate enough to have a big brother who really acts like a big brother, but Delorian has been. Now Fred steps in. As long as Delorian has been conscious Fred has always been there, putting up with him, teaching him to drive, acting as if he had inherited the job of big brother by virtue of being Monterey’s best friend. So now Fred takes the wheel and Delorian follows. Fred takes him into a world of truck stops, lost souls, liquor, marijuana and sex, all the time wagging a finger as they go from motel to hotel saying-- “Do as I say and not as I do.”
For the first time Delorian is sure he is seeing the world and seeing his old friend. Fred Wehlan has experienced his mother believing in love and marriage and being messed over twice to the tune of seven children with two different last names. Fred has seen what wealth can do to people. He believes in having just enough money to manage and just enough love to manage as well. Really, the love that counts is the love that exists between him and his family and friends. He will never tell a woman, “I love you.” He will never mislead her. And he doesn’t believe a woman would love him, or should have to be saddled with him. In this much there is an ethic to what he does. He never explains it, but Delorian understands it. Besides it is not too far off the mark from Justin.... Goddamned Justin who is off becoming a doctor....
Best to forget about him.
Fred is never with ugly women or stupid women. Just sad women. And Fred is sad with them too, and they smoke pot and sometimes snort cocaine and talk honestly about life, or as honestly as they are able. But neither of them knows what to do about life, and this makes questions and longings arise in Delorian’s innocent mind. And then, after Fred has fed Delorian, and thinks he is asleep in the best bed, Fred takes the girl to the second one and fucks her brains out which, if Delorian really is asleep, wakes him up. And hearing the two of them go at it with such naked urgency arouses for the first time all sorts of desires and longings in different places throughout Delorian’s virgin body.
Fred takes him to the Black Hills. At a Lakota dance Delorian sees Fred start to weep.
“We’re all one,” says Fred. “Why can’t everyone see that?”
At the approach of California, the two young men both light up at the site of three wildflowers growing by the side of the road. Delorian gets out and picks one for himself, one for Fred and Fred laughs wholeheartedly. Every single thing about Fred Wehlan is wholehearted. Delorian realizes for the first time that Fred is his big brother and truest friend, the best gift Monterey could give him.
A half hour inside of California they stop for a piss break. Delorian comes out of the lavatory and sees a scrap of paper nailed to a post.
“Fred, give me a pen,” he says.
Fred obliges.
Delorian writes.
“We are born in splendor, live in splendor and return to it. All our days we are covered in beauty. Even the mud is beautiful, and if we are still I am convinced we all shall see that we are all the face of God, the revelation of his glory. I did not receive this inspiration in any church, but on the road, in the middle of the state of California, two months after having passed through a great darkness. And I have seen that at the center of all things, even the bleakest, there lies Love. Love is the only thing that holds us together.
--- Delorian Matthews, aged 18.
And then Delorian hands Fred the pen, and they climb back into the car and drive off.
4.
WHEN HE WAS A CHILD HIS GRANDMOTHER USED TO SAY, “DO NOT FORGET WHERE YOU COME FROM. WHERE YOU COME FROM IS THIS HOUSE AND THIS HOUSE HAS ROOTS.”
And Mary Smith would tell her grandson the history of the family which, as far as she was concerned did not begin until 1659 when Mary Archer of Pembrokeshire received the Inner Light. By the time she was thirty she had settled down in Rhode Island with her husband, Rowland Smythe, and given him three children, converting him to Quakerism. But before that she had nearly been burnt for witchcraft in Boston, escaped execution in Rome for having wormed her way into Vatican to inform the Holy Father he was the Antichrist, and sailed to Arabia to confront the Sultan and inform him that the Inner Light was in him. She had also lived among the Indians of Massachusetts. And because the Smiths were Quakers above all else, they traced their history to her and not to her husband and not to the Smythes who had lived before Rowland.
There was also Lafferty Smythe who had married an Indian and his sister Laura Smythe who had died in Salem as a martyr, perhaps a little unnecessarily, declaring that she was all things and all things possessed the light and so she did not deny the charge of witchcraft. And the town council had not denied themselves the pleasure of hanging her.
There were other Smythes, but Cassidy’s family went from Lafferty and his Indian wife and indeed most of their blood had passed to Indians and -- it was said-- to Blacks, for there was time when the Smythes had not hesitated to buy slaves, free them and marry them to prove the quality of all men.
There was Magdelena Smythe, the Black Quaker. This was all Cassidy knew about her. She was in his blood somewhere. Her grandson was Jedediah Smith, who had gone to the Mexican War and nearly been killed for siding with the Mexicans. There was Nazareth Smythe, a poet and a wound dresser during the Civil War whom family legend had said loved men a little too much but then, being on the liberal side of the Children of the Light, the question was asked, “How much is too much? Can you ever love anything too much?” And no matter what was said about him and his “good friends”, he had brought two children into the world, one was Morley Smythe who had, “defended Catholics,” and Morley’s son was Aiken who had , “moved to California and changed the spelling of the family name.”
And this was the great-great grandfather of Cassidy Smith who heard all of these tales at the feet of his grandmother whose maiden name was Smythe because after twelve generations in America there were many branches of Smythes and Smiths and Smithees and it turned out that Margaret Smythe was a third cousin to her husband, and an able keeper of the family history.
Cassidy had gone to class one day with his family tree and his teacher had said, “You have a huge tradition to live up to.”
He had reported this to his grandmother.
“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about!” Margaret Smith said. “You listen to me, Cassidy Raven Smith, you are a Child of the Light, and that means you cannot stand on the shoulders of those who followed you. The Light is not passed through the blood. Every Quaker is the first Quaker. Every Child is the first. Remember where you come from, but open your heart to Jesus and your lungs to the Spirit and when it is time, then he will hit you, wherever you are.... Whoever you are.”
“Because I’m a Quaker?”
“We are all Quakers,” his grandmother said. “Before Christ.”
To Cassidy this had been Christianity in a nutshell. He had learned not to talk about religion. Public school was not religion free. It was full of religion and full of Christians, and he didn’t understand any of them, but he understood why no one wanted to be them. Everyone thought he was right, and there was a great deal of tut tutting and thou-shalt-notting. No one seemed to be happy unless they were sure that someone was going to hell, that the sacrifices they had made and were making meant that they were going to paradise and that the people who weren’t were doomed.
Cassidy waited for the Light, and when it struck him he moved in it. When he found the current it was like a river, and he let it carry him downstream. It led him to Rush. It scared the hell out of him when he came to Rush. It led him to push away his old self and the old ideas and fears and go wherever fire and love burned. It led him to trust in Jesus even if it wasn’t a Jesus anyone else understood. The Light made him laugh and dance and cry. It woke him up lying beside Rush, and made him stand up in Meeting to prophecy. The Light made him drive halfway across the country to attend a school in Indiana for the soul reason that Delorian Matthews taught there.
When he was eleven, still waiting for the Light and going to a lot of Evangelical churches with the permission of his parents, not understanding how anyone could get anything out of sitting in meeting in silence for an hour, reading his Bible, knowing his Bible, but not really knowing it, not really feeling anything, his family had been on their way to visit relations -- Catholics, on his mother’s side -- in Nevada, and they had stopped at a rest area. There had been a piece of paper many times taped to a pole and faded out. Cassidy read it and suddenly he was struck. He felt as if lightning had not come from the outside, but from the inside and for the first time he got it -- whatever IT was. He copied the paper down in his careful handwriting that exceeded the wild and ugly scrawl of most boys.
In the back seat of the car he read it over and over again.
“We are born in splendor, live in splendor and return to it. All our days we are covered in beauty. Even the mud is beautiful, and if we are still, I am convinced we all shall see that we are all the face of God, the revelation of his glory. I did not receive this inspiration in any church, but on the road, in the middle of the state of California, two months after having passed through a great darkness. And I have seen that at the center of all things, even the bleakest there lies Love. Love is the only thing that holds us together.
--- Delorian Matthews, aged 18.
“He must be a Quaker,” thought Cassidy.
Waverly left for home Sunday night. He and Jack went to Mass together and, after services were over at St. Antonin’s, they both stayed kneeling in the silence of the church for a long time, the heavy residue of incense still in the air.
After about ten minutes, Waverly whispered, rising from his knees, “I haven’t really prayed in a long time. You know?”
They genuflected and left the church, cutting out the side door, genuflecting before the altar and the Virgin again before they left.
“What have I been doing?” Waverly asked his friend. “I used to go to church all the time. But I almost felt like the prodigal son. Like: where have I been all this time?”
Jack was driving; Waverly got in the passenger side.
“Like you were lost of something?” quizzed Jack. “Cause that’s how I felt.” He put the key in the ignition, they came out onto Aramy Street.
“Not lost like.... in the Bible sense,” said Waverly. “Or maybe it was, I don’t know. Not lost in that esoteric, you’re going to hell, you need to go to confession kind of lost but a real lost. I mean something that doesn’t have anything to do with heaven and hell or at least... not the kind you learn about in Catholic school. I felt like I had lost my bearings, and my intuition, the part of myself that told me where to go and what to do and made me... feel alive.”
“Yes!” Jack said suddenly and slammed the horn of his car. “Yes, that’s just it!”
Waverly almost had a hard attack on the corner of Aramy and Belmont, but he nodded and grinned. “That’s exactly it. That’s the way I’ve been feeling a lot lately, but at Mass. I wanted to stay a little longer, I wanted to give something back. I honestly don’t know where I’ve been all this time.”
Waverly ate dinner with the Seth’s, and then Jack helped him pack and they went out to his car.
“You sure you gonna alright?” Waverly whispered to his friend, holding him by the shoulders.”
Jack nodded.
“When you need me. Even if it’s tonight, you call me, man,”
Jack nodded.
Waverly thumped him in the shoulder and grinned, then hugged him and climbed into the car. He honked, waved and pulled away, lighting a cigarette and making for state Route 6, out of town and back to Izmir. He looked forward to the drive.
For only a little while he flipped from bad radio station to bad radio station and finally he smoked his last of his cigarette, pulled over to the side of the road, and reached around in his glove compartment for the tape recorder. And then he turned it on.
Waverly Austin Blake
Age: twenty-three.
He began driving through the darkness.
I just came back from saving the life of a best friend. I really do think I saved his life and that we do save each other if we’re willing to take the responsibility. Only it seems nobody is. His name is Jack, and though I didn’t realize it we have been out of touch. Not because he did something bad or I did something bad, but just because we were both a little too lazy and not enough awake, and it took crisis point for us to both realize how important it is to stay connected.
I went to church for the first time in a long time tonight, and maybe I just let it slip away. Or maybe I was trying to hide something. You know, I don’t think there’s anything magical about prayer, or at least I don’t think there’s anything rare about magic. I think it’s all about staying plugged in, keeping connected and... Wait a minute.... Holy shit! Shit.”
Wave clicked off the tape recorder and pulled to the side of the road again. He was more than an hour out of Rhodes. He reached into his back pocket.
“My wallet....”: he muttered.
He began to think. His wallet with all of his I.D.; his credit cards, his drivers license, his money.... was in Rhodes, Ohio. He looked at the gas tank -- half full.
“Shit,” Wave muttered.
But what could he do? He turned the car around and headed back to Rhodes.
In a place that Justin had nicknamed Bofo, Nebraska, the Volkswagon was camped out in the parking lot of a Wal Mart and Rush, Ara and Nate had gone to get supplies while the doors were open and the smell of Justin’s barbecue came from the parking lot. On Cassidy’s boom box the Mama’s and Papas were singing:
I never thought I’d cry
for the love of Ivy!
I never thought I’d try
For the love of Ivy!
Somebody hide me!
from the love of Ivy!
It takes up all of your time
To fall in love with Ivy!
Delorian stood over Cassidy, who was stretched out in the back in half sleep.
“I believe the vote is left to you, Mr. Smith,” he said, sitting next to him.
Cassidy blinked and sat up.
“Wyoming or Colorado? I vote we hit Colorado. Never been.”
“You’ve never been to Colorado?”
“Nope. Why, have you?”
“No,” Delorian shrugged and yawned. “You just look like the sort of person who would have gone to Colroado alot.”
“And skied in Vale?”
“A little bit.”
“I thought you knew me better than that,” Cassidy said with feigned sorrow in his voice.
“I’ m a surfing man. I would rather go to hell than go to Vale.”
“Well, I’m with you there,” Delorian said and yawned again. “We can sleep in the car tonight. But it’s a hotel tomorrow. I’m getting a little old for.... Well, now, that’s not true. Even when I1 was a kid traveling on the road we always stayed in a motel or something. Well, we’d better find one tomorrow. Who knows, maybe we’ll stay in Vale.”
“Delorian?”
“Yes, Cass?”
“Just listen a moment.”
Delorian listened.
“Whaddo you hear?”
“Mama Cass, and Justin singing to himself.”
“Cassidy grinned and said, “But past that, I mean.... It sounds different than in Indiana. It’s quieter, but it’s also.... the sound of a different land. Does that make any sense? I know it must make a little sense to you.”
‘Why cause I’m just as crazy as you are?”
“Well, yeah,” Cassidy said. “That’s part of it. I--- “Cassidy sighed and stretched out. “Everything’s so wide and open here I don’t know if I should scream or run naked through a field.”
“Your chances of arrest are much lower if you just scream. Oh,” Delorian looked as if he’d been struck by something and he said, “Cass, a scrap of paper, please.“
Cassidy got up and rummaged in his knapsack, and then gave Delorian paper and pencil. He filled up a whole page and, in his jeans and tee shirt, looking for all the world a little like Rush’s twin and not his uncle, he climbed out of the car and went into the Wal Mart where he pasted up what he had written.
When he came back Justin and Cassidy were looking at him.
“Some kids going to find that years from now, and try to track you down,” Cassidy said as Delorian returned his paper and pen to him.
“And I will be decrepit and old and bitter, trying to cut hair, which reminds me, Judd-!”
“I can trim the back of your hair,” Justin made clipping motions. “Size one, all the way around. I--” and then he suddenly stopped talking.
“What?” Cass spoke before Delorian did.
“I had this feeling.... that... all sorts of stuff is going on back home, and we should get back before long.”
That was not what Delorian wanted to hear.
WAVERLY WOKE UP FEELING GOOD.
Since he’d come to Rhodes, and even before: in those first days on the houseboat, he’d felt good. Because he had been getting over Cindy and a great deal of deception, it had been hard to realize how good it felt even those first few days sleeping on water. Here, Cindy was pretty much in the past and there was less to distract him from the feeling of freedom.
He’d left a message at the office last night. He was good for the vacation time. He and Jack went to Mc.Donalds early, before Jack had to be off at work. The city smelled of the morning and of the lake, and there was a fresh chill in the air. All the grass was wet with dew. Wave felt like singing Morning has Broken. But he didn’t.
Last night he reached Rhodes at about nine o’clock after falling asleep at the wheel twice. When he fell asleep in Jack’s house while gathering his forgotten things, it had been Mr. and Mrs. Seth who said he wasn’t going anywhere. As long as Waverly could remember, if he forgot to eat he fainted, and if he did not sleep or eat enough, then he simply fell asleep during long tasks.
So he got in the car this morning, chalked this up to one more day lost on vacation time, spent in doing a good deed for a necessary friend, and headed back to Izmir.
What he thought about that brought him joy: the wetness of the grass. His desire to take off his shoes and sink his feet into it-- which he had rejected. Returning to the houseboat and seeing Cassidy and Rush -- not that they would be there. And so the houseboat to himself was also a happy thought. But as Waverly began to compile a list of happy things the further he headed down the road, he realized that most of these were events of the past.
He clicked the tape recorder.
Waverly Austin Blake
Age 23
almost twenty- four.
Right now I am composing a list of happy things in my life, why I am fortunate. I have a good car, good friends, a good job....”
Waverly clicked shut the button. He didn’t feel like paying attention to his own voice, and he wanted to keep his eyes on the road. So as the cars and trucks passed up and down in the morning with him, and the farm fields went by he thought of Willowfield and its large brick, stone and wood houses, the small streets with the large green trees overlooking their children playing in the front yard.
Being a heavy smoker, Waverly Blake received a lot of smoking magazines and in them were directions for road trips where young healthy friends hopped into a car and drove across country kayaking and mountain climbing, skiing and camping, and doing all the things which-- quite frankly-- no heavy smoker he knew would ever have the stamina to do. And these people were all healthy and fit and sexy and relaxed and apparently had no office to go to on Monday morning.
When he went into the outlets to buy clothes -- he had always allowed himself once a month to be really good to himself, treat himself to nice clothes, there were screens that displayed the same young sexy, blond people on skiing trips, sipping mugs of something hot, just having a really, really good time. There were posters of hot young guys with surf boards and ripped up swimming trunks, half clad girls with beads of sweat on their brown chests, sitting on the beach or -- more impossible -- at a dude ranch.
Where the hell are these people? Why don’t I know them.
And then:
Where the hell do they go on Monday morning? Don’t they work?
Waverly knew a lot of white, middle class twenty-somethings. And, like him, they all got up to sit in a cubicle and click at a computer for eight hours a day thinking, vaguely, that they were meant for “something finer” and worrying about all the bills they had to pay, looking just a little bit older by the day.
Well now, Cassidy and Rush did live that sort of life. But it was hard to imagine Rush on a dude ranch or a ski trip, and it was hard for Waverly to imagine himself living the way they did, without work, without a reliable source of income, with a constant middle finger lifted to society.
It’s not a bad way.... if you can manage it. But who the fuck can?
Except for Justin who drove, and Delorian who rode shotgun, they slept coming into Denver. Dusty Springfield was singing, on the radio
I was only
twenty four hours from Tulsa
only
one day away
from your arms!
And Cassidy’s was snoring loudly, his mouth wide open as he lay back on the unconscious Rush.
“What would you say?” Justin said, “if I told you we had to go back?”
“I would say please don’t do this to me,” said Delorian. “After wanting an adventure with my best friend for so long and -- I admit it-- we’re midway to having a hell of one, but... for you to want to turn back for Izmir when we’ve been on the road three days...”
“What if I promise you that as soon as I found out what’s going on, why I have to go back, we’d get back on the road and just go... in a completely mad direction?”
“What’s going on?” Delorian demanded. “I mean, firstly, you come back home. And that hardly ever happens. And now you’re on the road again, and you want us to drive all the way back to Izmir? Really!”
“I don’t know what’s going on -- and keep your voice down. Let’s not wake everyone up. I don’t know that I want to go back home but.... Delorian? Do you remember the other night when we were talking about making that journey, going where you have to go, and I said I hadn’t even begun, and you said that it wasn’t always about physical distance. It was about doing what you need to do? Well. I feel like what I need to do, what I need to face is in Izmir.”
Delorian looked out of the window and watched the sun begin to rise. It lit the hills, illuminating black and blue shadows, the white of the snow.
Delorian did not answer right away. When he spoke he said, “My God.... Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Yes it is, Dory,” Justin said softly.
Then Delorian said, “Well, yes, I understand. Turn back. Maybe... Maybe I’ll hop a bus and go someplace interesting.”
Justin cleared his throat.
“What?”
“Delorian, I was actually sort of hoping that.... Whatever it is I have to face you would be there with me.”
“Well, yes,” Delorian said again. “I can do that. I’ll do that.”
Then Delorian frowned. “How much money do you have?”
“Maybe a hundred. I hope. Why?”
“I think we’d better leave them with the bus. “ He pointed to Ara and Nathan, Rush and Cassidy. “I don’t think it’s fair to cut their trip short.”
Justin agreed, and the sun came up bright and full on Denver. He said, “Does this make you feel like Jack Kerouac?”
“Not at all,”
Justin shrugged.
“Just checking.”