THE ORDER OF THE DRAGONFLY
It is in my heart to praise thee, O my God;
let me never forget thee,
what thou hast been to me....
When the floods sought to sweep me away
Thou set a compass for them,
how far they should pass over.
When my way was through the sea,
and when I passed over the mountains
there was thou present with me;
when the weight of the hills was upon me thou upheld me, else had I sunk under the earth;
when I was as altogether helpless,
when tribulation and anguish was upon me
day and night, and the earth without foundation;
.... Thou wast with me, and the rock of thy presence.
-- James Naylor
PART TWO
Chapter Five
THE LOVE THAT SAVES YOU
“The only love that matters is the love that saves you.”
-- Delorian Matthews
When Fred was seventeen, he folded his hands, blew out his cheeks and then looked at the little boy who was waiting for him to say something.
“Once there was a boy,” he said at last. “And he lived in.… Arabia.”
The boy cocked his head. Fred raised his eyebrow and then said, “Africa? Oh, well, a far off land.”
Now the boy nodded, pleased.
“And he was very, very poor,” said Fred. “He was so poor that the mice had left the house because there was no food left to steal. So poor, that the thieves donated goods to their family. That’s how sorry they felt for this little boy and his family.”
Fred stopped, and gestured to the little boy.
“But the boy was happy,” said Delorian, “until at last it happened to him, that which happens to all boys. He fell in love.”
At this turn of events and this turn of phrase, both Fred and Monterey paid closer attention to the boy.
“And she was very beautiful with hair like a waterfall at night and eyes that sparkled like the stars at midnight. And as the boy was going to sell the pots his family made for a living, and she was walking, to the bazaar, the two of them ran into each other. At first they were both embarrassed and apologized to each other. And then they looked at each other and that was when the two of them fell in love.
“Then he heard a voice, and it was a loud man calling her name: ‘Aila.... Aila!’ And the boy, whose name was.... Hassham... looked up and saw a large man with rings all over his fingers and rich robes, and he was calling to the girl for this was his daughter. And she was very rich.”
Delorian stopped, turning to Monterey.
“He followed her,” Monterey said, “very distantly, so that he could not be seen. And saw that in the richest part of the great city, in a great palace of white stones the girl lived, and she sat at nights in her window and wept until....”
Monterey turned to Fred who raised an eyebrow, stopped. He turned to Delorian who took the thread of the story.
“Until the boy Hassham appeared at her window and said, “Fair maiden, why do you weep?
“And her face lit up and Aila said, ‘Because I am lonely, and I have not been this lonely until when I think of you.... And how I may never see you again. For I am fated to marry a man twice my age.”
“And that,” Monterey said, “was when the magician came....”
Justin was tired, his eyes felt tight. His body was tied, but he was not ready to sleep just yet. A few cigarettes and a bit of water and he’d be ready for bed again. There was nothing, he realized, that he had to get up for.
In his boxers, hair sticking up, Justin thumped around the house looking for his cigarettes and his little brother who did not need to be left alone.
There was no Waverly. Justin shrugged, went and got his cigarettes, and while he smoked, waited for his brother to return. After the second cigarette, when his body was being called back to bed, he worried. But only a little.
“He’s probably up at the house and.… he is a big boy.”
But when Justin woke up there was still no Waverly. So he got up, put some clothes on and walked up the hill to the house.
Monterey and Cecil were up doing their various businesses though it was early. Cecil was on his second pot off coffee.
“No,” Cecil said. “We haven’t seen the boy.”
“Don’t worry,” Monterey looked at him, echoing back Justin’s own words. “He’s a big boy.”
When Justin got home he heard the shower water running and Waverly’s voice singing. It was on key for the first time in twenty-four years. He sounded strong and alive and a few moments later, a towel wrapped around his thin waist, he came out and said, “Good morning, Judd. You look like I felt. You ought to take a shower.”
He did not grin or smile, but Justin could tell that his brother felt better.
“Where were you?” Justin said.
“Were you worried?” This time Waverly did smile, looking up from the coffeepot.
“A little bit, yes.”
“Well, I didn’t drive into the lake or anything. You want some?” he gestured to the coffeepot in his hand.
Justin nodded, and Waverly poured.
“I was in the cemetery, though.”
“What?”
“The cemetery,” Waverly repeated.
“Doing what?” Justin mixed cream and sugar in his cup and then into Wave’s. “Writing. Doing what I haven’t done in a long time.”
“Like stories?” Justin picked up the cup. All through childhood and into college Waverly had been a writer, had wanted to do nothing more than write and now his younger brother nodded.
“Sort of. I just started writing down things. I sat down under a tree. I needed to get out of the house and get out of myself. So I just sat down and started scribbling stuff in a steno pad.”
“That’s what you’ve been ding since...”
“Sunrise,” Waverly said. “Just about. And I feel great.”
Waverly shrugged, sticking out his bottom lip.
“Well.... just about.” He sipped form his coffee mug.
“No, you know what?” he said. “I don’t feel great. I feel really disturbed. I feel like all these little roots are sticking up. And I’m the dirt. I feel really disturbed and upset and like something needs to be done. That’s how I feel. And like there’s not time to just sit around. I’ve got to do something. Even if it’s just going back to that cemetery and writing in a steno pad.”
Justin surveyed his brother for a while. Waverly was still wrapped in his bath towel when he looked back at Justin and said, “What?”
“It’s just.... I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so.... Desperate before.”
“It sounds like an insult.”
I t wasn’t meant to be.”
“I know, “Waverly waved it off. “It’s just the truth right now.”
He shook his head, and then said, “I need to sit down.”
“You need to put some clothes on,” said Justin.
When Monterey Matthews was seventeen, he was given over to high passions and the certainty that “if he didn’t do” this or that or the other he would then surely die. This did not change in the next nearly thirty years, but the first time it reared its head to dangerous consequences was then, when he was seventeen.
Tom Nolan never loomed large in the chronicles of the Dragonflies because he passed out of them. He was never a main character, for he never fully became a Dragonfly. Fred was adamant against this. Tom was too stupid and too untrustworthy. Fred always said that there was no worse crime than stupidity, that one could lump a hundred different sins under an idiot’s hat. This phrase came down from Mrs. Wehlan, but in the course of his seventeen years her first born son had seen it enough-- first hand-- to make it his own.
He could never say why his world was in such a tizzy. Possibly because he was a year away from high school graduation, maybe because he was in love for the first time. But after watching a film in class about a Buddhist monastery, Monty had decided this was just what he needed. He had saved up money, taken time off of work and was getting ready to leave with Tom Nolan.
“Are you Tom is going?” Cecil said.
“Of course. I can trust Tom.”
But Cecil raised an eyebrow that said: “Can you really?”
Tom was one of those people who never outgrew the childhood habit of, when being called to give an account, shuffling his feet and murmuring in a hurt voice, “I don’t know.” Monterey could scarcely deal with it. Cecil, who had short shrift for stupid children and none for stupid white children always wanted to cuff the boy in the mouth. If Tom were called before God’s throne and Jesus Christ himself said on Judgment Day, “What have you done?” then Tom Nolan would shuffle his feet and say, “I don’t know...” And Jesus, the Lord of infinite mercy, would throw back his head and scream.
Even the Virgin Mary wouldn’t be able to take it.
So Cecil declared.
Well, on the last minute Tom did not so much as call or return messages to say he was not going. And they were leaving in his car and there was really no other way to travel. Monterey felt himself pass through rage to a certain calmness which told him that he had gotten rid of Tom for good. He learned in friendships what it would take him nearly another decade to learn in marriages. No matter how sane you might be, when you link up with someone who’s not right, you’re not going to be alright.
Since the first day that Tom had shuffled over to the house behind Fred and Monty, looking stupid, Cecil had thought: ‘This boy could not last,’ And when Cecil returned to the house and found Monterey still waiting, his brow knit and his eyes went flat. Cecil knew that Tom had better not last.
“The world is full of fools,” Cecil told his son. “Don’t have any part in ‘em.”
And so Monterey found himself with money, itching feet, and a desire to go someplace. Fred was off in New York for six weeks. So Monty got on the phone, called folks and decided to get on the Greyhound, which was so much cheaper back then, and ride around visiting friends.
He came back into the house and told his father, “I leave tomorrow. But I’ve got to go today.”
And the only cure for his need to go was to hop on Izmir public transit and ride and ride.
So he ended up at Farmer’s Market, hoping to breathe all of his pain and confusion away.
Being a best friend, when Fred Wehlan called that afternoon and found out everything that had happened he went right on over to the Market. Fred had come back from relatives early, which was a euphemism for he was just too much trouble and had been sent—in a nice way-- packing.
Now Fred took a beat up old red umbrella that read “I Love New York” with him because the sky was darkening and by the time he’d reached the Market the color of the air was a sad greenish grey and bits of rain were just starting to fall.
There were not just fruits and vegetables at the Farmer’s Market, but food and statuary shops and shops that sold antiques; Far East stores with incense and ivory ornaments One could be lost in the sights and sound as well as the people. For it was always crowded.
And after a few minutes search, Fred was rewarded by finding Monty near an incense vendor. When the two friends saw each other they embraced with delight and surprise and then bought pretzels and sat at the cafe planning the demise of Tom Nolan.
“But actually,” Monterey said, “I don’t feel like revenge. I’m just tired. I feel like bed. I feel like I’m glad to get rid of him.”
“Good riddance to bad shit,” said Fred, and he toasted his friend with the end of a pretzel.
It was about six o’clock when they went to catch the bus and the rain was falling all slick on the ground. The sky was a deep wrinkly grey like an elephant’s ass. They stood waiting for the bus and waiting and waiting with only Fred’s quarter and all the plunder from Farmer’s Market. Finally someone walked by and said:
“Are you waiting for the bus?”
“Yeah,” said Monty.
“Oh,” the man shrugged. “There isn’t another one until tomorrow. It’s the weekend. Buses stop running at five twenty.”
Monty could have screamed. In fact-- despite Fred’s advice-- he did scream. Right at the man who ran away.
“What do we do now?” Monty turned on Fred.
Fred shrugged and said, “We call your dad.”
“Dad’s not at home,” Delorian said. “It’s just me and Judd.”
“Shit!”
“Such language, Monty.”
“Shush.”
“You know what?” Delorian said. “If you’re really good.... I think Justin and I can come up with a plan.”
“Like what?”
“That would be telling,” Delorian told his brother, and hung up the phone leaving he teenager perplexed.
“I could strangle that little boy, sometimes,” Monterey said.
And then about twenty minutes later they saw a gold Cadillac roll up into the parking lot and Fred whispered: “That’s Mr. Blake’s car,”
But they couldn’t see Mr. Blake or anyone else. And then the passenger door opened and Delorian was beaming brightly. The car honked and Justin’s head came up over the wheel.
“Oh, my--” Monty started.
Fred elbowed him, “Come on.”
“I thought,” Delorian began as he climbed into back and Fred took the wheel from Justin, “that seeing as you did it once for us we could do it for you.”
“You are much too much,” Monterey shook his head. “And I love you for it.”
“Imagine,” Fred said turning around to look at Justin and Delorian. “All this time we had tow Dragonflies and didn’t even know it.”
“Dragonflies!” Justin got excited though he didn’t know what the hell a Dragonfly was.
Delorian looked bored.
“Yes,” Monterey said. “I think it’s time you two got Dragonflied.”
Delorian was not thrilled at all. In the attic room that looked over the river he sat in the window seat and said, “ Now what’s all this Dragonfly shit involve?”
‘Hush up!” said Justin. “Who cares?” The gangly boy with wild black hair sticking up all over his head was just thrilled to be accepted into a club with real teenager.
“See,” said Delorian, “you’re the kind of fool who’ll just get up do anything! Like, I’m not sucking Fred’s dick--”
‘Delorian!” snapped Monterey while Fred’s eyes went wide.
“I’m not!” he insisted. “And I know some clubs do that. We’ve got like six of ‘em at school. All sorts of weird crazy shit. Well, I don’t want to be included in anything that bad.”
“You have already done what you have to do to be a Dragonfly,” Fred told Delorian while Monterey, shaking his head, lit the votive candle he’d stolen from Saint Alphonsus.
“What’s that?” Justin demanded.
“Committed a punishable offense. I mean you’re twelve and you stole your dad’s car. That’s pretty... Come to think of it--” a new realization was dawning on Monterey.
‘We all could have been arrested,” Fred finished Monterey’s thought, and placed the pink lei over Justin’s head and was placing the yellow one over Delorian’s when Justin said. “I don’t want pink!”
“Well, I don’t give a damn, so give it to me,” said Delorian.
“I proclaim you Dragonflies,” Monterey declared, and then said to his brother:
“This thrills you, doesn’t it?”
“I’ll never admit it,” Delorian said.
Now last Friday the sky had begun to cloud up and ever since there had been a regular cycle of deeply blackening skies with hints of green and grey. Then came the rain lasting all night and flooding the river that nearly rose up to Mernau Street. The next day would dawn a little cool at first and then grow so hot and thick that Monterey would swear the atmosphere was made from soaked cotton balls. Then the sky would be clear but by night it would be raining again. The lightning would streak from the sky like quick sketches of trees. Or it would explode in white pops in the heavens. Or the morning would greet you with a downpour of green rain.
On these mornings Delorian and Frances usually did not go to their house because they liked being in the large house on Mernau. It was good to get up early in the morning with cups of coffee and cigarettes in hand then go to the large wrap around porch, watching the devastation of the morning.
This morning, long before the sun came up, Delorian had gone out to shut all the windows on the first floor. For they were weak and flew open in the heavy rains. Waverly went out with him.
The two of them came back laughing, their mesh shorts and tee shirts plastered to them by the water, and Waverly wiping off Delorian’s glasses while the other man said, “Whaddid we do with the cigarettes. With the cigarettes?”
In the house, Waverly handed Delorian back his glasses and Delorian nodded at him. They put on a pot off coffee and heated up the bag of leftover White Castle sliders, sitting them on the table.
“It’s only one cheese left,” he said. “Here, you have it, Wave.”
“No, you have it. If there’s only one.”
“Well, Waverly, one of us ought to have it.’
“I agree. It should be you,” Waverly grinned. “I’ll go get the coffee.”
Delorian shrugged and took the little cheese burger.
“You know,” he commented while biting into it,” I don’t know why we even get the plain ones.”
“Cause they’re cheaper.”
“Yeah, but they’re just a consolation prize. Then everyone’s stuck looking at all the little blue boxes saying... I guess we’ll have a plain one.”
Waverly came back to the table with two cups off coffee, and Delorian leaned behind him to open the little cupboard where he pulled out creamer and sugar.
“Can I ask you a question, Dory?”
“That probably means you shouldn’t.”
Waverly cocked his head and smiled sideways. “Well, probably.”
“Ask me anyway,” Delorian picking an onion off of his hand and stuck it in his mouth.
“Have you ever.... Seen someone you loved, but who was unfaithful? Who wasn’t right with you? Have you ever seen that person again and still... felt something?”
“Yes,” Delorian said.,
“Well, I did today. I thought I would hate Cindy, but I saw her today and.... I felt--”
“You didn’t want to be with her again, did you?’
Waverly frowned and shook his head, “No. That wasn’t it. I... I wished that I didn’t know her. It was like the first time I saw her and was attracted. Only this time when I saw her I was still attracted, wanted to know her. But there was this voice that said, ‘You do. And look what you got!’ I wished that I didn’t know how bad she was. Or that she wasn’t bad. I used to say people who did stupid things just didn’t know how good they were inside. But how can you be good inside if you do horrible things?”
Delorian nodded and hunted around in the bag.
“I thought we had onion rings.”
“I threw them away,” Waverly said. “Onion rings are nasty reheated. And they stay in my breath for days anyway.”
Delorian nodded, and then he looked up at Waverly and said, “Frances likes to say that if two people ever loved each other the love never goes away. Sometimes I wish it did. But sometimes I think that’s the only thing that saves us.”
Waverly leaned back and blinked, rubbing his large hands together.
“I don’t know about.... Anything.”
Delorian smiled pleasantly.
“What a coincidence. Me neither. Um, good coffee!”
Waverly looked at his cup, sipped and then said, “You’re a master.”
“I know.”
“But,” Waverly sipped form his coffee, “there’s no getting around this: You’ve been my friend my whole life. For years.”
“I used to wipe your bottom and change your diaper.”
“I didn’t need to hear that.”
“Yeah, but I’ve been wanting to tell you that. Just to see you squirm and turn red. Sorry, Wave. You sere saying?”
“That I can’t hide something I’ve been sitting here debating about telling you.”
“Which is?”
“That I slept with another man’s wife. Not too long ago. I...”
“Oh, Wave!”
“Waverly shook his head.
“I don’t understand anything. The last few months have been-- Do you know when it happened?”
Delorian shook his head.
The day you and Judd got back. Me and Judd got in a fight--”
“Justin and your father got in a fight too.”
Waverly nodded. “And I went over and spent the night with this woman. I-- I don’t think I can really talk about it... Even with you. But, that’s what happened and…. If I see her again I know I’ll love her. But that’s not the love I was taught was important and... I don’t know what’s important.”
Delorian shook his head as if he was about to give a lecture before a class.
“Love is important,” he said, taking out his cigarettes. “It’s the only thing, Wave.”
“But-what kind of love? What kind of love?
“I know I loved Cindy. But technically the whole time we were together almost we were living in sin. And then she did this to me. I know I loved Cynthia. Think I still do. And Rush and Cassidy.... That’s not supposed to be right.”
“Don’t forget Phoebe and Nelson who can’t commit.”
Waverly looked at him in surprise, and Delorian nodded.
“And,” Delorian said, “the love you had for your friend that made you drive to Rhodes and be with him, that cost you your job but gave him his life. And the love that brought my nephew and niece and me into the world and that holds us here together, sitting at this table in this house.
“Waverly, listen to me,” Delorian waved across the table. “I’m not trying to soft soap silly things. I’m not saying that adultery isn’t wrong and fornication’s great and ... whatever. But what I am saying is that the only thing in the world that holds us together and keeps us going is love--”
“What kind--?”
“And,” Delorian pressed on: “the only love that matters is the love that saves you.”
Delorian sat on the edge of the bed not saying one word but raising his eyebrow in that one movement that said everything.
“You think I’m being silly,” Monterey said as he tied the bed sheets together.
“No,” his little brother said. “I think you’re being a dummy. But if you have to do this I wish you’d hurry the hell up because I have to go to school in the morning.”
Monterey turned to his brother in shock and upset.
“Your only brother is going off to get married, and you tell me you have to go to school in the morning?”
“Well, I do,” Delorian said sulkily. “It’s the law. What’s a twelve year old to do? And what’s more: You don’t have to get married.”
“Oh, you don’t know anything about love,” Monterey said giving a vicious tug to the last of the sheets he was tying together. “You’re as bad as Dad, who won’t go to sleep and is sitting up all night or else I would be going out of the front door instead of sneaking out the house like a criminal.”
“Actually,” Delorian told his brother, “you would steal be leaving like a criminal. You’d just be doing it through the front door.”
“Whose side are you on, anyway?’
“The side of reason,” Delorian said.
Monterey humphed and pushed the line of bed sheets out the window.
“Help me out, will you?”
Slowly, with grace, the way the boy did everything, Delorian pushed himself off of the bed and helped his brother send the line out of the window.
“Now, what can we tie this to?” Monterey searched around the room.
“I’ll just hold it,” Delorian said.
“Are you sure you can support my weight?”
“A hundred seventy pounds? I think I can handle it.”
“One sixty-five,” Monterey corrected, and Delorian muttered, “If you say so…” as his brother prepared to climb out of the window.
“Now,” Monterey instructed on his way out, “what I want for you to do is to throw down my duffle bag when you’re done.”
“This is going to make me an accessory to a crime.”
“It is not a crime to get married.”
“When you’re seventeen it is in this house.”
Monterey kissed his brother on the head, ignored that, and said, “Goodbye, Dory,” as he climbed down the line of bed sheets. Delorian heard his brother saying, “This will be the marriage to end all marriages.”
“I give it five years,” Delorian muttered to himself, and held onto the sheet cord, surprised by how heavy one hundred seventy or one hundred sixty five pounds could be.
“Okay, so I was wrong,” Delorian said, as he hefted the baby in his arms. “It lasted two years.”
“Now what I need you to do,” Monterey said, “is take care of James tonight--”
“No,” Delorian snapped back. “I’m not the one that started shooting kids out before I was twenty, and I’m not the one who’s gonna be walking them and wiping their asses.”
James gave a ‘Wah!’ of protest at this, and Delorian laid him down in his cradle, “I’ve had enough of you, Rush!”
“Firstly,” Monterey said, “I’m not asking you to raise my child. I’m asking you to watch the baby tonight while I go to classes.”
The two of them looked very much a like now. Neither one of them was very tall, but just right, the same height now. At seventeen Delorian was all long hands and feet and slim legs, a creature of air, he and went around the house in shorts and tee shirts looking like he would blow away or like he would blow you away if you upset him. That’s what he looked like now, scowling out of his spectacles at his brother.
“Fine,” he said at last. “How’s that suit you, Rush?”
The baby didn’t answer.
“Yeah,” said Delorian. “Me too.”
“Why,” Monterey demanded, “Do you call my child that?”
‘Call him what?”
“Rush! He has a perfectly good name.”
“Look, I’ll call him Dirty Old Bastard if I want to. Don’t walk into my room telling me you need me to take care of the kid I didn’t even help to make, and then get pissy ‘cause I give him a nickname.”
Monterey sighed-- loudly-- swallowed, and then said, “Fine. Thank you, Delorian.”
“Yeah, Monterey,” his brother said, walking across the living room to flounce down on a sofa and flip through old magazines.
About an hour later, as the sun was getting ready to set, the phone rang and Delorian picked it up, bored.
“Hello?”
“Dory!”
“Shawn!” Delorian sat up. “I tried calling you. Where the hell are you?”
“I’m at Catholic Bible Camp.”
“What? I didn’t even know they had Catholic Bible Camp.”
‘Well, they don’t. I mean most Catholics don’t... But my mom and dad are into this whole charismatic Catholic thing--”
“Charismatic... Are you shitting me?”
“Look, Dory, I’m not. And there’s no time. I need to get out of here before we break into song and start hugging again. This is... this is the most awful thing I’ve ever experienced. One girl broke out into tongues.”
“No, she didn’t!”
“Yes, she did. I’m not playing around. I’m not trying to be funny. Please, come and get me.”
“Look, Shawn, I can’t get anybody right now. I’m babysitting James.”
“Can’t he... look after himself for a few hours?”
“He’s two.”
“Oh, uh--”
“Look, Shawn,” Delorian said, “you know I would get you out if I could, but right now I don’t know a single way that I can... So, let me think and then....”
“What?”
“Well, you can pray,” Delorian said, and hung up the phone.
A few moments later the phone rang again, and Delorian said, “Shawn?”
“No.”
“Judd? What?”
“Shawn just called me. He needs us to go rescue him. He gave me the address and everything. So I’m coming by your house to pick you up in a few--”
“I’m babysitting. And God knows I don’t want to, but I can’t just leave my own godson laying around the house.”
“No one’s home?”
“No one but us chickens.”
“I got an idea,” said Justin. “We’ll take James to my house and he and Waverly can hang out.... Or whatever babies do.”
Delorian sighed and Justin said, “Are you a Dragonfly, or aren’t you?’
“Fuck you very much, I am. Alright. Be here in ten minutes, or else I’ll completely change my mind. I’m going to get some stuff for Rush and throw some clothes on.”
A little while later they were out on the road smoking cigarettes and concealing a bottle of Wild Turkey while Delorian held the map out before him and tried to direct Justin.
“I’ve never heard of this place,” he told Justin.
“I have. It’s like forty-five miles south of here. Shawn made it sound like it was just awful.”
“I bet it is. A bunch of Catholics speaking in tongues and going to confession and crying all over the place. It must be horrible. “
“I didn’t know his parents went in for that charismatic shit,” Justin said. “Are they running around talking about making Christ your personal savior and all?”
“I think so,” Delorian said. “And I’m sorry, but we’re Catholics we don’ t do that sort of stuff. Well, we do. But not like that. Not that way. I just don’t trust anything that relies on emotions.”
“What are we going to do when we get there?” Justin demanded.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we can’t just walk up and say, ‘We’re here to get Shawn Camden.’”
“Why can’t we?”
Justin seemed at a loss for words. Then he said, “Because.... We should just sneak him out.”
“That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Delorian said.
“No, it’s great,” Justin said. “We’ll just find his window and tap on it and he can sneak out and--”
“No,” Delorian waved that off. “I’m tired of people sneaking in and out of windows. I’m tired of stealing cars and rescuing folks. I’ve got enough adventure for one night. We’re just going to knock on the door of this hoodlie doodlie place and get Shawn the hell out of there.”
And that was all there was to be said.
The retreat house was in a place called Olarange, Indiana and there seem to be nothing more to Olarange than that massive structure. In the night, track lighting lit up the white walls and Delorian murmured that it looked like a sort of cross between a convent, a resort and a penitentiary.
“Can there be such a thing?” Justin said as they drove up.
“Yes. See, there it is.”
A long brick walk went up to the large heavily polished wooden door, and they rang the doorbell several times, waiting for something to happen.
Nothing happening.
“Well, shit,” Delorian swore.
“Dory, my friend, don’t lose hope,” Justin said. “We shall knock loudly.”
And when they’d knocked for a long while, Delorian said, “Isn’t there something in the Bible about Jesus opening up to anyone who knocks.”
“Actually,” said Justin, “I think he says ask seek and knock. We need to seek a better way.”
“You wanna break in?”
Justin nodded. “I wanna break in.”
The first level of the house was white brick, the second Spanish stucco, and there were red tiles and parapets, many rises and lattices. Justin found one and they began climbing along the tiles of the second floor roof.
“If I don’t look down,” Delorian said. “I will be fine.”
“We’re just looking for a window,” Justin told his friend. “Since there was no other door we could get through.”
They found one open window, but a girl’s plaintive voice was singing from it:
“I love you Lord,
I love you Lord,
Let my song be a sweet, sweet, sound
In your ears.”
“Yuck,” Justin muttered to Delorian, and then they spent two and a half harrowing minutes maneuvering under her window and above the twelve foot drop to the ground.
Justin found a brightly lit window with no one in it, but it was locked and Delorian suggested, “Maybe what we should do is go back to the Jesusy girl and knock on her window and ask her to let us through.”
“I have the funniest feeling,” said Justin, “that she would say no, and tell the authorities. Whatever authorities there may be.”
And Delorian agreed.
Now it was night in earnest and the crickets were loud and the sky was dark, In the distance a truck roared down the thread of old highway.
“There, Dory!” Justin pointed a head of them.
And Delorian, who had actually forgotten why they were there, brightened now as he saw in the middle of the roof an old door that led down into the house. Quickly they ran across the room, hooting and stomping and then—
Falling.
It happened in a minute and Delorian was always sure that their guardian angels rose to the occasion. There was a rip like a hand through paper towel, a sudden lurching of stomachs, the disappearance of ground, a rush of air, a fall of dust. And then they were in a pile of plaster in the middle of a room full of teenagers and early twenty somethings in khaki shorts and white tee shirts. Justin turned around to see a priest and there was a giant crucifix and everyone was looking at them.
While Justin rubbed his shoulders and tried to find his bearing, Delorian sat up and told them all, “We’re here for Shawn Camden.”
He found the amazed Shawn, staring out of the mix of even more amazed teenagers.
“Come on, Shawn,” Delorian said, holding out his hand. “Get your bags and let’s go.”
Delorian knew everyone at the retreat. That was the amazing thing. He had not known so many Jesus freaks existed at Assisi and of course, those girls had all gone to Frances Warde. Delorian had always thought of himself as a Jesus Freak, but not like these people. Shawn said, “I’m so glad you got me out of there. I almost died.”
“I don’t like Jim Peters,” Justin, who was driving, said flatly. “Or Morris Lehane. Or for that matter, Patrick Haley. They’re all…. I don’t know, I know they’re holy and all, but I don’t like they’re kind of holiness.”
Later on Delorian would go to Sainte Terre with half of these people. Justin would leave the Church behind altogether, and Shawn would use it for Sundays, holy days, marriage and burial. But Delorian was devout, and as the years went by he understood the peculiar discomfort of the Matthews family devotion, that dedication that was a step away from cynicism that had maintained Cecil through the years.
“The church,” Cecil once said, “as the eternal body of Christ, the house of the universe, the place where all are welcome, where God’s love cost him his life and gives us life… is a beautiful, beautiful thing. But as an institution headed in Rome by an old white man—it’s shit. And I don’t believe in it.”
Cecil’s opinions were political. Delorian’s were as well. But they were visceral and raging, borne of personal experience. In later life he could never get on with the Catholics his age. He did not get tamer, but wilder. He did not cease to believe, but became more of a lightning rod for whatever was out there. Delorian was wild and his eyes flashed with power. You never knew what he would do. And in his early twenties, when he still involved himself in youth groups and such this attracted everyone to him at the same time it repulsed them. And he drove them away. Then he turned them away and would not deal with such people any more.
“That is the difference,” he thought, “between them and me. I am on fire. All the time. If I don’t do what I have to do I will just scream. I’ll cry. I’ll die. I’ll kill someone. I’ll explode. Passions run so deep in me. I cannot, I will not sit on my heart and smile. And then…. They’re just superstitious and afraid. And they don’t go very deep. Nothing drives them…. They’re like paper dolls and you just place them in a room with any steam and the little fools curl up on themselves.”
And so, even though in later years Delorian would have the raising of his nephew as much as Monterey, and even though he could be considered to be even more devout than his brother, though he knew the Bible backwards and forwards and said his rosary everyday, went to Mass every evening at Saint Alphonsus—when Delorian saw that his nephew manifested no signs of being religious…. He was relieved..
“You’ve got that look,” Delorian told Waverly.
Waverly, who had been totally caught up on looking the way that gave him THAT look, furrowed his brow and looked at Delorian.
“When you were little, it was the look that said, “I’m about to get into a lot of trouble. Now… it’s just the look that says you’re about to do something.”
Waverly shook his head and said, “I can’t hide anything from you, can I?”
“You can if you try, but I don’t think you’ve ever tried. And I thank you for it.”
Waverly stood up and said, “I’m going away. I’m going away, right now. I should have gone when you all left. Are you and Judd going away anytime soon?”
“I will go when Judd leaves and I’ll go where he goes,” Delorian said, faithfully.
“Well,” Waverly sighed, “I think I better leave today. I need to leave today. I’m gonna go see my dad, and then I’m going to drive up to Rhodes and asks Jack if he wants to come with me. And then we’re just…. Going to go. Jack needs to go. He needs it. But more than anything… I think I need it.”
Delorian nodded.
At his father’s house, Gregory Blake, from his bed, advised, “What you need to do is get a job.”
“I had a job.”
“And now you’ll just never have one again. Great, you can be like your brother.”
“Dad,” said Waverly with firmness, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the way Justin lives.
“And I don’t think you’re telling me the truth when you say that.”
“He’s moment to moment,” Waverly said, urgently. “He does what he has to when he has to. He’s alive—“
“And what’s that gotten him?”
Waverly wanted to say it was getting him a fortune by his fortieth birthday because Gregory was almost dead. He wanted to say that it got him staying young and healthy. He didn’t’ say any of these things, he just said, “I have to go, Dad.”
“Waverly, promise me something?”
Waverly had risen, and now he turned around, waiting.
“Yes, Dad?”
“Don’t be like your brother.”
Waverly sucked in his breath, and then said, “Dad…. I gotta go.”
And he found himself going to Justin, who was in the houseboat, trying to clean it, looking pensive and serious in his fisherman’s cap.
“Judd, I’m leaving.”
Justin nodded, and then said, “Where to?”
“I’m going to get Jack. You know. My friend from college. And we’re just going to…. I don’t really know where I’m going.”
Justin nodded.
“I just need to go. I just need to go somewhere… For me. Does that make any sense?”
“Yes,” Justin said. “Lots of it.”
“Dad doesn’t think---“
“No,” Justin cut his brother off. “He doesn’t.”
Justin Blake does not really ever forget. Memories hold him together and course through his blood, calcify in his bones and pulse in his marrow. They throb some place behind his balls. Every memory is a part of him. Making love, all the loves he ever made are part of him. All his good deeds, all of his sins, every friend, every place is still in him. Those who have been in his thirty-nine year old life the longest are deep in him.
For Justin Delorian is like a ring and he is the tree. The first coat of Delorian settled in him when he was seven or eight, and with every year there is a new coat until all he does is close his eyes and it seems like his best friend and their arguments and struggles, all the things they overcome together and apart are right with him. All those times when he thought with despair, or fear or anger, it’s over, we’ll never be friends again. Or, it’s over, and only Delorian can save me from this.
He remembers the year they came back from the retreat with Shawn and how the three of them sat up, swiping Gregory Blake’s liquor and cigarettes and toasting their ingenuity. After Monterey came home—Monterey who never knew that Delorian had left Rush for a period of two hours, the boys sat up in the attack and got drunk and smoked out until Shawn threw up out of the window and they all passed out on Delorian’s bed. None of them was so drunk they did not take two aspirins before sleeping, and they were up bright and early for Mass on Sunday morning.
And he remembers the year that they had just come through, the frightening year when the first cold war between himself and Delorian had come to a close. Justin smiles. The cold war resumed. That was too bad. But for that year or two it was closed and they were close.
Justin had been fourteen when he’d had sex for the first time and, naturally he told Delorian who said, “I don’t think it was right.”
That was all he said, but that was all he had to say. He had no idea then how fragile Justin or any other fourteen year old could be, or that his opinion mattered so, or that Justin was already worried about if he’d done the right thing. And a long battle had commenced full of name calling and accusations that led to pugilistics; Justin’s long limbs, Delorian’s quick punches, and they had broken apart and gone their separate ways. Delorian became more dignified, popular, but slightly distant. Justin was loose as the day was long. The two of them loved each other, any boy at Assisi could see that. But they annoyed each other, and this was clear as well.
It had been hard to repair the gap. They were still best friends, but with a wall until the phone call came and Delorian picked up the hone and said, “Judd?”
And the other end of the phone had been quiet accept for a long space of troubled breathing.
Finally, Delorian said, “Justin, Blake, is this you?”
“Dory, I need you to get over here, right now.” The words came out in a rush.
Well, Delorian didn’t have so much as a bicycle at the time, and it took about twenty minutes for him to get to the large brick house on Palatine. When he knocked on the door, Justin was still in his school uniform, looking two shades paler than usual. His black hair was in is face. He looked like an El Greco.
Justin gestured Delorian into his room and closed the door behind him.
“Judd, what?”
“Dory,” Justin said, but that was all he said, he just looked at the floor a long time.
Then he spoke.
“I…. I think I got a girl pregnant.”
Delorian said nothing. When he was silent for what Justin judged to be along time, Justin began to repeat himself
“Dory—“
“Justin,” Delorian interrupted him calmly. “We will get through this. I promise. You… and me.”
And they had gotten over that hump. In the end the pregnancy scare brought Justin and Delorian closer-- if only for a brief time. Years later, when both of them looked at friends, and in Justin’s case-- multiple lovers-- who had come in and out of their lives they both realized that they had far more people than just the Dragonflies. But these had not lasted. Most of these relationships had been outgrown. Storms had not been ridden well. The truth was that people changed, the whole world changed, and if two people were ever going to stay together they had to agree to change together, and work together. Even when things were very bad, Justin had always remembered that Delorian was his oldest friend, and Delorian-- even when he couldn’t stand Justin, or thought Justin didn’t understand.... anything.... had pretty much remembered the same thing.
But that summer things were especially good. Shawn came home and for the first time was very forcible with his parents about the fact that he did not want to go back to Bible Camp or be scheduled for any retreats.
“I’ve got to find my own way,” he said, simply.
Mr. and Mrs. Camden may have respected this, or they may have simply known that there would always be a Justin, a Delorian a Dragonfly to rescue their child and unmake whatever they tried to make of him.
Fred came home that summer and he brought his sister with them. Frances went to the school of her namesake, Frances Warde, sister school to Assisi, and she was one of the up until then faceless siblings of Fred. She was pale and looked like a boy with pale reddish hair hanging in a ragged ponytail. Her eyes stared out pale green from behind glasses. She surprised Delorian and Justin by having a personality, for no one had distinguished any of Fred’s siblings one from the other.
“What game are you playing?” Monterey said to her, pushing Rush off his lap, and telling the boy, “That’s enough now. You can walk.”
“No game.” Frances stopped shuffling the cards. She turned one of their faces to Monterey. “Tarot deck.”
She had expected Monterey and the rest of them to laugh. Boys did that sort of thing. Grown ups did that sort of thing. She’d had no experience with Fred’s friends.
“I brought them from Nevada,” Fred explained. “Old deck I found in a second hand store.”
“I like the pictures,” Frances stated.
“Can you read them?” said Monterey.
Frances looked blankly at him.
“Can you read a Tarot?” he said again.
“I, uh.... I never tried. It’s... If Grandma caught me doing something like that--”
Monterey waved a hand and said, “She’d make you go to confession. But I’m not your grandmother. Read mine.”
“Well, alright,” she said, and began shuffling them. “I guess. I don’t really know what to do.”
‘Shuffle till you think you’re done. Give them to me. I shuffle until I’m done. Hand them out. You deal out a bunch of them. In the shape you want, turn ‘em over and tell me what you see?”
While Frances began shuffling, Fred said, “Isn’t there usually a book with meanings, and instructions and all that?”
But Monterey did not care. When Frances was done she handed the cards to him and he shuffled before handing them back. Frances put out five, like a wheel. She started with the second one, the one to the left of the card that that pointed toward her. She lifted it up.
“It says The Lovers,” she told Monterey. “And I like this card. This little couple, holding hands and at peace or something. I don’t have a book or anything, but I guess it means what it looks like it means. Only yours is upside down,” she said guiltily. “So I would guess what it meant is that you have trouble in love. But you keep on looking for it.”
At the look on Monterey’s face, Frances began to say, “But I could be wrong--”
But Monterey waved it away and said, “Fred, how much have you told your sister about me?”
“Nothing,” Fred shrugged. He stretched his legs under the table.
“Fred never tells me anything,” Frances rolled her eyes at her brother.
“Go on,” Monterey told her.
“This next card is.... “
“Will my situation get better?” Monterey asked her.
Frances flipped the card over and it was the Three of Swords, three swords piercing a bleeding heart.
“No. Not in marriage or romance. But you’ll always know how to love.”
Frances flipped over the next card, and the next and the next. The advice was general, but fairly accurate and then Delorian leaned forward and said, “Do me.”
Frances looked apologetic the whole time she did her readings. This time when she read Delorian’s it was five cards in an undulating line and she said, “This will be.... the journey of your life, let’s say,”
Delorian nodded.
“Right now you have the Magician, and he is someone who knows how to make the whole universe work. He’s really powerful and in control and in command.”
“That,” Justin said with a mixture of pride and teasing, “is Delorian in a nutshell.”
“But this card is the Fool. Only I don’t think he’s really a fool. He’s going on a journey. He’s leaving stuff behind and looking for something.”
“I don’t know if that’s me,” Delorian said dubiously. “I’m kind of happy just to stay at home and mind my business.”
Frances shrugged and read on, skipping the next card. “The next is Pope, Someone who knows the order of things but.... He doesn’t care. See. He’s his own person.”
“But why did you skip over that one card?” Delorian said.
I had a bad feeling about it.”
“Turn it over,” Delorian told her.
She obeyed and it was a dead man filled with swords.
The Ten of Swords.
“It’s disaster.”
“Shit,” Delorian looked around the table.
“But if that’s your journey,” said Monterey, “then the only way you can be the Pope… the Hierophant is to pass through the disaster.”
“Ask the last card if that’s true.” Delorian said to Frances.
Frances turned it over.
There was a tower, struck by lightning, burning to the ground, and people were falling out of it to their deaths in the intricately painted sea below.
“So after I have a breakdown I’m going to make a long journey and find myself?” Delorian said, dismally.
“Well...” Frances did not want to give a verdict.
None of them did.
The summer that Frances is sixteen, she is out of school along with Delorian who is out of his first semester of college back at Sainte Terre, and he is in the apartment they’ve all got for the month on the border of Baja California where it is always hot, and they are always running to the beach at night, to sit around bonfires smoking cigarettes and other things, drinking beer and eating fish and turtles, playing music, singing loudly into the night.
All of them means: Fred, his live in girl-- Meresell-- Franny and Delorian the two who re not allowed to touch drugs, Dan, Pinchot and Durango, the members of his band.
Delorian thinks, and Frances agrees, that one of the reasons for vacationing is to appreciate home again. Izmir, Indiana would get boring if not for these trips. Things like temperate weather, air conditioning, privacy, space, daily bathing would go unappreciated.
Here the moment of silence Delorian has, where he cleans the apartment, is a rare blessing. The wind blows back the curtains and he watches the blue waves roll in over the pale sand. They all think he is good as gold for cleaning. They don’t know how picking up beer cans, washing sheets, folding laundry and scrubbing dishes give him time to make a playground of his mind, run around in it and be free.
The apartment is a rarity. They only have it for this month while the Tortugas are recording. Often they live in a series of flea infested tents and their only bath tub is the Pacific. There is hardly change to scrape together for food. Such questions as how will we eat, what will we wear, how will these kids get back home are answered with a delirious laughter and the crazy exhausted trust in the universe and its goodness that finally comes when you realize you have to trust because there’s just not another goddamn thing that you can do.
With six people, two of them a couple, three of them always bringing home some girl, strung out, high or looking for company, the house is always filled with fucking and booze. Someone is always walking around naked or half naked. Some slut is always showing off her big tits or her small tits. Fred is always shouting, “Can you not do that. I’ve got a sister here!” Or: “Delorian’s here, damnit!”
And sometimes Pinchot or Dan aplogizes, and then other times they say, “Well, if they didn’t like it, they wouldn’t be here. Look, at em, they’re not that sensitive!”
And they’re not. Delorian and Frances love this life. At least for three months of the year, at least as long as they are only close observers. They have experienced many an acid trip, but they have never experienced acid.
Fred has never lost his big brother complex. With the exception of Franny he never uses it on his actual siblings. But when he is in Izmir he cannot stop brothering or mothering or smothering Shawn Camden for some reason. He just looks like he needs it. Fred is never fucked up around that boy. And even though Delorian is a great friend and equal who doesn’t seem to need anybody, Fred cannot stop brothering him. If he is stoned out of his mind-- which he usually is--, if he spends the entire night balling his girlfriend loudly--which he often does, if he is so fried on acid that his hands go through walls and dragons talk to him: he always knows when it is nine a.m. on Sunday morning, and that is takes twenty minutes to walk to Our Lady of Consolation, and that Mass begins at nine-thirty. And he always wakes Frances and Delorian up and tells them to get their asses to church.
And they know there is no refuting him
Today, when the door opens, and Delorian looks up from scrubbing the dishes, Fred is cheery faced and fresh looking as he comes into the apartment with Frances. She has a stack of papers and runs to Delorian, kissing him on the cheek.
It is a series of booklets, and the cover reads: Travels with Hooligans: The Adventures of Delorian Matthews: Journeys: 1979, 1980.
“They’re ready!” Frances says.
“Now what?” says Fred.
Now, Delorian throws the dishcloth down on the table:
“On the way back to Indiana, we just leave them laying around where people will find them.”
He shrugs: “Who knows what will come of it?”
By the time Cassidy Smith was fourteen he knew he wanted to be a writer. The problem was he did not know what to write. Any thing he did was too long and too involved for composition class. For Christmas he had written a story and told his teacher, Mrs. Daney, “I’ll have to shorten it. It’s fourteen pages.”
She gave him her usual frown and said, “You certainly will.”
She skipped over him when it came to selecting people for the young writers association. There was nothing he particularly wanted to write for the school paper. He wanted to write “great things” and had no idea what those great things were.
So, a little skinny white kid with wild hair and wide eyes and too much energy, Cassidy told his stories orally to his classmates and could keep them enthralled until the teacher came back. The stories were told in snippets, in two, three, four, ten parts between classes until his classmates said, “Write it down! Write them down!”
And then they were passed in notes. Note passing became an art form to Cassidy. He had never been caught, but he saw what happened when you were. And he began to take great care in passing the contraband stories through the classroom.
Sheets of notebook paper could be filled up, on both sides, could be rolled and rolled and then, as cylinders, inserted into an ink pen whose cartridge had been removed. In junior high teachers were so eager to wean the kids of pencils and printing that a shared ink pen was never suspected of holding a note. And so many kids lost pens so frequently that sharing one, lending a spare pen was not unheard of.
So when Cassidy was thirteen years old and every kid at Hannover Junior High was known for something, he was known for his wild stories that gained their popularity for being forbidden and underground. He was the most famous writer in his school.
Cassidy was popular at all the parties. He was so full of life and so into everything everyone liked him, even the people who teased him. He met his first and only girlfriend, Sara Naught, at her friend Julia’s fourteenth birthday party.
“I love your stories. They are so exhilarating!”
Sara was never a girl to use a small word where a big one would do. She never understated anything.
They began sucking face at that party, but went on to suck face and many other things for years to come. Sara was so excited to be dating the rogue intellectual of the eighth grade. She took him to the house. She introduced him to her older brother, Kip, who wore brown corduroys and black tee shirts all the time. He had books and electric guitars lining his walls.
“He just spreads his stories all over the place,” Sara told her brother. “They’re all underground and everything. Everyone knows about them except the teachers! They don’t understand Cassidy,” Sara said passionately. “They just don’t get him.”
“The establishment,” Kip said, fingering his stinger, “never gets a real prophet.”
Cassidy was not impervious to flattery, especially real flattery. But he could be humble and realistic and he told Kip that he might not be that great.
“You’ve got a vision and you’ve got a fire and that will make you good enough,” Kip insisted. Kip must know. He had to be an authority. After all, he was fifteen. “You’re a regular Delorian.”
At the look on Cassidy’s face, Kip said, “Oh, he’s a--”
Cassidy put a hand up and Kip silenced himself. Cassidy reached into his back pocket, into the ratty billfold he’d had so long and pulled out a slip of paper. He read:
“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.
“Yeah! “ Kip said. “That’s him.”
“You’ve got that quote too?”
“Quote?” Kip said. “Man, don’t you know? He’s everywhere. Tons of stuff. All over. Plastered to fences, in road stops, left lying around in libraries. His stuff is like.... Collector’s items. Come on,” Kip gestured to Cassidy.
“This is so cool,” Sara was saying. “You guys are bonding!”
Cassidy was amazed to see a whole shelf of, for the most part, folders full of little snippets and little booklets, some large but cheaply made books all bearing the name of one Delorian Matthews.
“Oh, my... Oh, my,” Cassidy kept on murmuring.
“Here,” Kip took one thick pamphlet off his shelf and handed it to Cassidy. “Read this. You’ll be back here, right?”
Cassidy nodded, dumbly, and then remembered to say, “Thanks.”
He read the title.
Travels with Hooligans:
The Adventures of Delorian Matthews: Journeys: 1979, 1980.
Cassidy never had very many friends growing up. When Sara came into his life, she also brought Kip, who was just the right age for Cassidy: old enough to be some form of example, but not too old to be a contemporary. Kip was seeing a girl named Monika who had black hair and a purple streak down the center. She was into rebellion and her parents were atheists, so this meant she was looking for some religion. The Naughts didn’t go to church at all, but were fascinated by Cassidy’s Quakerism and by the references Delorian made to Catholicism. Throughout high school these were his friends, and when they were not at the beach surfing or intellectualizing, they were investigating old, Catholic churches. Those were the most exciting. When they could find an Orthodox one, they went there as well. Kip and Monika began to attend Quaker Meeting, but it was Sara who eventually became a Quaker, thinking she would marry Cassidy one day, anyway. They’re relationship was intensifying and sex was a definite possibility. Cassidy would probably want to be married, or he would want her to be a Quaker. He’d want some form of commitment before they slept together.
When Cassidy was fifteen, Mr. and Mrs. Naught bought Kip a van and they all drove through the state “collecting Delorian.” They went into Nevada and into Utah and met a group of Mexicans with loud Spanish music blaring from their Buick and a wobbly Virgin Mary in the dashboard. They were “collecting Delorian,” as well.
“It must be a bigger thing that we thought,” Sara said, amazed.
So far Cassidy had two books of Delorian and a folder. He had found three booklets on this journey and Sara had found -- in Salt Lake-- a poem.
Read books
nice words,
quote back old quotes
all that you wrote
is nothing at all
compared to what falls
from my own mind
the time you have
on your own with open eyes
is all that matters.
-- Delorian.
And then they found another pamphlet that was a sort of manifesto and at its the end of there was a note that said, “When you finish this, don’t be a bitch. Pass it on to someone else.
Delorian. : )
“We should write him!” Kip decided.
“Like he’d write back,” Cassidy shook his head.
“But he would have to. He’s Delorian!”
Life was good, but Cassidy was discontent, and the poem he had found by Delorian still haunted him, especially the line about all that someone else wrote is nothing at all compared to what falls from my own mind… the time you have on your own with open eyes
is all that matters.... That began to get to him. He had been looking for that direct faith, that mysticism. Maybe he had forgotten he was looking for it. But it was all Delorian talked about in his writing, and all that he read about and all that his friends talked about.
“I haven’t been awake,” Cassidy thought to himself. And so when he sat in Meeting he began to pay more attention, to not just sit there, but to sit there and be ready for God.
It was around this time that he and Sara has sex for the first time. She began to worry about it so much, that he did too. It had seemed right at first. He had always been taught to do what was right in his heart, and though they weren’t married he was sure they one day would be married and they’d been committed for over three years, so it couldn’t have been wrong. He was sure it couldn’t have been wrong when it happened. It had seemed that he had been coming closer and closer to life and love when it had happened. It had seemed as if he were doing the right thing. But then he knew that all the other young people in Meeting and in Youth Group were still virgins. So he was confused.
In the midst of this confusion he had been sitting in Meeting, asking for guidance when he had felt jolted to his feet and spoken for the first time. His parents had been surprised. He could never really remember what he had said, but he had been elated. God had not left him.
After Meeting a woman came up to him and said, “What you said,,, It was just what I needed to hear.”
Years later when Cassidy told this story to Rush, Rush said, sarcastically: “So that was God’s blessing on your losing your virginity? I wish I’d had that.”
“No,” Cassidy had said sharply. “That was not the lesson I took from it.”
The lesson he took was that he had not been forgotten, and whatever happened, God was always there.
A week later a letter came in the mail for Kip.
Dear Kip,
thank you so much for troubling to write me. I know you must be a busy man with high school and all, so I will not take up much of your time with abstract thoughts. I am well. Thank you for asking. I’ve been in that part of California. Of course you know that or would you have found anything I wrote. Now, I’m back here, teaching in Indiana. It’s wonderful country--provided you can get away from it--but really that’s anywhere, isn’t it?
I do think your poetry’s quite good. And yes, so is your friend Cassidy’s. But I think it is more important that you think it is good, and that you can judge for yourself. It’s nice to be honored, but really I don’t think you should try to write like me at all. You’d better just write like yourself. Which you seem capable enough of doing already.
I have no idea if I’m cutting this short or not. If I write too much, I’ll bore you. If I write one line, I’m just discourteous. If you want to, don’t hesitate to write again. A writer likes to read and know he’s being read. And tell your friend Cassidy that I always return letters. It would be rude not too. And one thing I’m NOT is rude.
Your friend,
Delorian
“Whaddo you mean you won’t go?” Waverly demanded. He and Jack were in a Mc. Donald’s on Route 6 in Rhodes, Ohio.
“I can’t go,” Jack said, as if it were obvious. “Look, I’ve got a job and a life here.”
“Are you forgetting?” Waverly began. “Have you lost your mind? Less than a month ago you were calling me saying you wanted to kill yourself and you hated your life. And now when I say, let’s hit the road you tell me no.”
“Waverly, it’s not like that.” Jack sighed and stabbed the lid of his drink with a straw. “Can you tell me that if you hadn’t been fired, you’d be hopping up and leaving home? you know a job isn’t easy to come by.”
Waverly started to say that Cynthia Neary had promised him any job he wanted. He had not told Jack about Cynthia. Now, he didn’t intend to.
“Wave,” Jack said, tenderly. “Waverly, don’t look like that. I’m sorry. Hey, why don’t you call Sal and see if he wants to go?”
Waverly nodded and talked automatically, the whole time his mind going to the Tarot spread Frances had lain out for him in the back of Scarborough Fair.
“And the Seven of Cups?”
“Remembering and forgetting. Accurately. It is the Cup of nostalgia, and it is the cup of regret for not knowing when to let go. All three of these cards will happen at once and point to different sides of the same thing. The journey may not be physical, though it probably will. But it won’t mean anything if you don’t look inside, face grief and remember accurately.
“The Hermit-- solitude. In connection with the others it means you must journey alone, inside yourself alone. When you remember, it must be you doing the remembering--”
“Wait, I’m confused.”
“Waverly. Think, about most people. How no one can really remember anything or they get the details of stories confused, or they look at their lives and believe what other people tell them. If you’re going to get anywhere, learn anything, it will be by your being awake and you putting together the truth for yourself. Not what you’ve been told, but what you yourself know and experience. You’ll have to be your own guide. Not asking someone else how they feel or if they agree, but finding that... Guide... in you. That will require you knowing yourself. You alone.”
And what else had she said, had he said:
“And the last card. The Magician?”
“He is full power. He is young and ever renewed. There is gold light all around him. He is the intuition. He is your spirit when your spirit knows what to do. He is... your magic.”
“Magic.... isn’t real.”
“Magic is your power. It is your ability to know where to go and what to do, to move through the universe on sixth, seventh and eighth sense, to appear, to many who don’t have that sort of thing, supernatural. And this power is very real.”
Waverly had dismissed the whole thing, set it to the back of his mind. It was weeks ago, before Cynthia and learning about his father, but now it seemed that this experience, Franny’s words, had been the only thing that was real. His desire to leave with Rush and Ara and Cassidy had been real. Everything else: his going to Cynthia, his adultery, his father laying in bed begging him, “Please don’t be like your brother....” this was all surreal. Jack sitting here finishing a Big Mac and refusing an adventure, clinging to home a month after he’d wanted to take his life... all of this was actually subreal.
And as they went to the trash receptacle to dump their things, Waverly knew what he was going to do.
“You gonna stay here for the night?” Jack said, eagerly. “We can go to the Red, have a few beers. Shoot a little pool?”
“No,” Waverly sounded half distracted, though he knew he wasn’t distracted at all. “I have to go.”
It was not that Waverly was angry with Jack. He simply needed to get out of his presence. He did not even ask where a good barbershop was. He drove around town until he found one. He liked Rhodes. It reminded him of Izmir except there was broad Lake Erie, and this was a college town going up and down hills with many streets filled by brick three and four story shops. With friends it could be a good place to live in.
On a street called Aramy he found a barbershop. It was next to a bookstore, and Waverly wanted to go in there, but felt that the bookstore would take him from his intended purpose, which was to journey far and west and fast, out into the open.
He asked the barber to trim his top a little, but shave down the sides, almost to something military. He felt like he was going on a campaign. He wanted the sideburns trimmed thin, but still present. When the man was finished, he told Waverly to lay his head back, and gave him a shave with hot lather and a steaming towel.
“This is a real barbershop,” he told Waverly. “Not some goddamned Bo-Rics. Son, you need to learn how to use a razor. You’ll tear your skin up. How old are you?”
“Twenty-four, sir.”
“See. You sort of look like a baby, but your skin looks like it’s thirty. That’s not healthy.”
When Waverly was done with the barbershop, or vice versa, he stroked his smooth cheek and looked across the street at the bookstore, trying to deduce a reason for going into it.
“An atlas,” he said, at last, and entered.
It smelled old and comfortable, a place he could read for hours, There were a few chairs and two wide storefront windows looked to the street. Weavers, the place was called. After he had allowed Waverly to walk around aimlessly for a while, the young man at the counter asked, “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for an atlas.”
Instead of pointing in the general direction, he came from behind the counter and said, “Follow me.”
And Waverly did.
On the wall furthest right, he pointed out “We’ve got world maps, Rand Mc.Nally Travel guides, maps of Ohio. What are you looking for?”
Waverly was surprised by the young man’s genuine curiosity and his willingness to help. He took a look at him, black rimmed spectacles, an eager face, grey eyes, small goatee, short hair, medium height.
“A United States map,” Waverly said, looking him dead in the eye, because he realized that this man had actually been looking at him, regarding him, and he had better do the same.
“Oh, this is our best,” he said chattily, reaching up and pulling down a thick atlas. “Where are you going?”
“I’m not really sure,” Waverly shrugged. “Out west.”
The man laughed and said, “I’ve bee thinking about doing that for a long time. Just me, my wife, maybe a friend or two.”
How could he be married? He looked Waverly’s age. But then, twenty-four was not too young to be married.
Waverly turned it over and looked at the price.
“Wow, this is a bit steep.”
“But it’s the best,” the man urged.
“I can’t afford this,” Waverly said, bluntly.
“Oh, just take it,” the man shrugged. Then he said: “I’m Weaver. It’s my store. My name’s Isaac.”
“Oh,” Waverly said in surprise.
“Actually it’s mine and my father’s so... you know, if I say you can have it you can have it.”
Waverly looked at Isaac Weaver in surprise, and then said,. “Thanks. Uh... really.”
As if the other young man were reading Waverly’s thoughts he said simply, “It’s a bad world and life is hard. We should do everything we can to help each other out. You know?”
Cassidy has spent half the hot morning under the bus, oil hitting him in the face as he tears apart, puts back together, knocks around and examines. Rush, who has zero knowledge of automobiles, stays by his side in the hot sun, passing cloths and water, wiping oil and sweat from Cassidy’s face and just generally offering to be uncomfortable with Cassidy since this is the best he can do.
“Alrigh’! Gun that bastard!” Cassidy tells Rush, who turns the key in the ignition. The bus roars to life.
“Woo hoo!” Ara shouts from the back where she and Nate have been all morning, hiding from the sun.
“Where to now?” Cassidy climbs into the car, his spare, bare chest grimy and sweaty. His hair is all a mess, and he sort of excites Rush right now.
“To a hotel!” says Ara as Rush hands Cassidy a towel and then, changing his mind, begins cleaning him off himself.
“I meant,” says Cassidy from under the towel Rush is administering, “What place? What state?”
Nathan hasn’t said anything. Just watches. It is not politically correct to say that Rush and Cassidy are “normal.” But it’s easy to forget they’re lovers until Rush begins to do something like wipe Cassidy’s torso, intimate and tender. Cassidy bows his head and lets Rush wipe his face and his hair.
When Rush is finished, he hands Cassidy a second towel and lets him do whatever he else he feels is left to do
“I mean, Cassidy says, as he dries his arms, “right now we can go into California, or we can hit Mexicali!”
“Where would you like to hit?” Rush asks him.
“I know Ara’s never been to Mexico?” Cassidy puts the towel down, reaching for a cigarette.
“But you want to go home, don’t you?” Rush guesses.
“You do?”: Ara
“I always think of Izmir as your home.” Nathan confessed.
The car is running, but they haven’t gone anywhere. Rush, heading down the road, smells Cassidy’s body and his cigarette smoke and thinks about the man who has been in his life for years now.
“Well, I do, too,” Cassidy is saying. “But... I guess for a few nights now I’ve been thinking about California and.... You know, what? We’re not even close to my home. I mean California’s a big state. We can go to Mexico right now. We can stay there tonight. We can head to California in a few days.”
“It is so nice,” says Ara, “to have nothing to do. I mean... nothing that I have to get back for. I don’t know that I ever want to go back to Izmir.”
While Rush drives, Cassidy lies back drinking from a water bottle and taking a long drag on his cigarette. The smoke shoots low out of his nostrils and his eyes closing he says, “Rush, hand me my shirt, would you?”
“No,” says Rush. “I like you better this way.”
Cassidy’s eyes opened up, and with a bright grin he turns to Rush, and kisses him.
It was a hot, dusty evening when they reached the village of Nactal. Rush surprised everyone, even Cassidy, by breaking out into Spanish and touching his curly red hair a lot when he talked to one man. The man laughed, embraced him and said a lot of words quickly and then got in his battered car and drove through the dust ahead of them to a hotel that didn’t look much different from a Motel 6.
“So this is Mexico,” Nathan said to Ara.
And she said, “I guess it is.”
In the lobby they paid for their room, though the man told him they had overpaid and handed some bills back. And then they received keys and were led up a metal stair to find their rooms side by side on the second floor.
“What did you tell him?” Ara asked.
“That my grandmother was born here. Dora Menendes.”
“I knew she died in Mexico,” said Nate.
“She was born in Mexico. She was half Mextizo, half Black, and when she was little her mother took her to California. But she always came back here. So they remember her. And when she married my grandfather, they came to live here. Dad and Delorian were born here,” Rush grinned as he fiddled with the key. “Not at this motel, precisely. But here. In Nactal.”
Cassidy started to laugh and Ara looked at him, waiting for an explanation.
“It’s just,” Cassidy said, “when I was a teenager I would have thought, ‘Oh, my goodness, Delorian was born here,’ and kissed the ground.”
“Well, you can kiss it anyway,” Nathan said.
“I think I will, just for the hell of it,” Cassidy told him, and got down on his knees and kissed the metal grille.
“Which is as close to the ground as we’ll get right now.” Cassidy said.
In their room Cassidy and Rush sat in chairs opposite each other, stretching their legs and Rush turned tiredly and said, “There’s a bath tub-- a little rusty. I thought there would be a shower, but…” he shrugged.
“A bath is nice,” said Cassidy. “Do you want some oily sweaty love right now?” he rose up and began unbuttoning his shirt, “Or should I get clean first?’
“In my head the idea of you sweaty and greasy is fun,” Rush admitted, “and the reality might even be fun. But that poor man downstairs is going to have hell of a time getting Valvoline out of his bed sheets.”
“Good call,” Cassidy agreed, pulling of his work pants after his sandals, taking of his hemp necklace and then in his boxers, going to the bathroom to run the water.
“We’ve got air conditioning,” Rush discovered, pointing across the room.
Cassidy ran a hand through his thick hair and said, cheerfully, “So we do! Is this an upscale motel?”
“For Nactal, I’m sure.”
Cassidy went to check the bathroom water and squirt in the soap they’d brought with them.
“The best thing about this bubble bath is how it disguises the face that the water is brown.” He pulled off his boxers and stood naked before Rush.
“This is a lot of water, James,” he told him. “I don’t think one person’s enough.” He offered his hand to Rush who stood up and began undressing.
“Does this mean we’ll have to share the rubber ducky?” he asked, as he crawled in after Cassidy.
“I’m afraid so,” Cassidy lamented.
“Oh, it’s hot!”
“That’s why it’s called a hot bath.”
Rush, lowered himself behind Cassidy so that his legs embraced Cassidy’s hips and torso, and he began scrubbing him with the cloth. Suddenly he dunked Cassidy’s head under the water and the other young man shot up, spluttering.
“What for!” Cassidy demanded.
“You’re Quaker. You never got baptized.”