Part 25 (2/2)
We were sitting on the rocks, fis.h.i.+ng. I strummed on my guitar while we waited for the fish to bite. Noah stared at the water with a deadly earnestness, as if he could make the fish bite his hook by his stare alone.
”I can think of a more interesting story,” I said. ”h.o.r.n.y single father meets hot nurse dude from the wild blue Yankee yonder. They make out on the riverbank. They fall in love, adopt eight children, and become the first couple in the state of Mississippi to become legally gay-married. It could work.”
”All that from skinny-dipping?”
”I'd have to add the nurse dude has kind eyes. Not squinty, untrustworthy eyes. Not provocative, l.u.s.ty eyes. But kind eyes. Like maybe he's a kind man. He also has a smooth, hot body, as though he does a lot of sit-ups or something, which writers are too busy to do. He also has a gorgeous c.o.c.k. Overall he looks like he might have been an athlete in some other life, one of those Greek guys running around nude in the first Olympics.”
”And what would you say about the h.o.r.n.y single father?”
”I'd say he was a bit of a mess. Lonely and looking for something he can't seem to find. Everything he touches turns to s.h.i.+t. He's sarcastic because he's so angry all the time. But he doesn't really know what he's angry about. He's almost thirty-three and it scares him because he feels like a failure. All he has is his kid, but his kid has so many health problems, and sometimes he gets a little tired of taking care of him, but he could never admit that so....”
I fell silent, feeling I had said too much.
”Maybe the nurse guy is lonely too,” Jackson suggested. ”Maybe he's been looking for someone to spend his life with, to grow old with, someone to honor and cherish. Maybe he feels he'll never meet the right man. Maybe he sort of gave up, but then one day he met a beautiful man, a single father... and something just sort of happened and then they were in love, got gay-married, and lived happily ever after.”
”That would make it really interesting,” I admitted.
”What are the chances of a story like that coming true?” he asked.
”You left out the part about eight kids.”
”Did I?”
”That's the most important part. Don't you want kids?”
”I never thought about it.”
”I've always wanted more kids.”
”Why don't you adopt?”
”I need to get gay-married first, have a nice house and a career, and something to offer. I need at least one pot to p.i.s.s in.”
”And if you had that?”
”Well, I've always wanted a daughter, so we'd have to start with that. Then I think we'd have to adopt eight or nine kids just to round it off a bit. One of them would probably turn out to be gay so we'd pick that one as our favorite and we'd send him or her to college. As soon as they become teenagers, we'd send them off to boarding school because I am not going to put up with the sort of c.r.a.p that I put my mother through when I was a teenager. Then we'd decide which ones to keep. I don't know. Maybe we'd keep them all if they were nice. Or maybe we could sell a couple on eBay and recoup some of our investment.”
”Sound like you've got this all planned out.”
”That's the problem with me. The things that I want are never going to happen. I always feel like I was born at the wrong time, in the wrong body. I'd make a great mom, you know. I'd love to have a mess of kids, spend my day wiping noses and cleaning up baby puke while my husband went off to work and brought home the bacon. I would have had a great time in the sixties with all that free love-I would have been a huge hippie. I would have walked around San Francisco with a flower in my a.s.s and my d.i.c.k hanging out and been quite happy living in a commune. When I was little I used to daydream about being an Indian boy, riding my pony, shooting a bow, living free under the sun. I always feel like I was meant to be somewhere else, doing something else, being something else.”
”What's wrong with right here and now?”
”If other people would let me get on with it, it wouldn't be so bad.”
”Why do you let it bother you?”
”Family. Can't kill them with kindness. Can't use a hammer, if only because it's just so G.o.dd.a.m.n messy. It's a real b.i.t.c.h to clean up, and I should know. So you're just kind of stuck with them. Anyway, it reminds me of the difference between a Northern fairy tale and a Southern fairy tale.”
”What's that?” he asked.
”In a Northern fairy tale, you start off by saying: 'Once upon a time' and all that. In the South, we start off by saying: 'Y'all ain't going to believe this s.h.i.+t!'”
He laughed.
”Hey,” he said suddenly.
His pole was wiggling.
”You got a bite,” I said.
”Good deal!”
38) Father Ginderbach
WE HEADED HEADED back Sunday morning on the four-wheelers, making an unnecessary detour through the woods since Jackson had decided he liked riding and wanted more wheel time. back Sunday morning on the four-wheelers, making an unnecessary detour through the woods since Jackson had decided he liked riding and wanted more wheel time.
By ten we were scrubbed and dressed and ready to go to the ten-thirty ma.s.s at St. Francis in New Albany with Mama. Jackson had never been to ma.s.s, so he didn't know what to expect. Papaw didn't go to ma.s.s anymore, having sworn off what he referred to as the ”G.o.dd.a.m.n Christless Catholics.”
While I had many fond memories of St. Francis, it was the scene of much tortured hand-wringing and endless moral conundrums.
We found an empty pew. Mama sat down on one side, Jackson on the other.
Noah and I knelt on the kneeler for a bit, saying some prayers, being pious. I wasn't really saying prayers, just going through the motions and hoping that whatever G.o.d there was up there was a kind G.o.d, a merciful G.o.d, not the horrible old b.u.g.g.e.r who used to scare the s.h.i.+t out of me and now only bored me.
We got looks. Lots of looks.
My mom was happy to get looks at Noah, and chatted quietly as friends and acquaintances came over to make a fuss about him. She wasn't so happy about the looks she got because of me, with my long hair, my bad att.i.tude, my irreverent ways, and the cute man sitting next to me who was so clearly out of place.
It was common news that I was a f.a.g, which was all the paris.h.i.+oners needed to know. Their imagination and indignation did the rest. The eyes that looked at me seemed to suggest the wish that I could somehow contain myself and stop having s.e.x and stop being a gay boy and stop embarra.s.sing my poor mother and family. Perhaps I was reading more into it than what was there. Perhaps not. There was no denying the way it felt.
The younger members of St. Francis were a somewhat different breed, though, and some of them smiled at me. Some smiles were of amus.e.m.e.nt, or encouragement, or simple friends.h.i.+p. Some were smiles of curiosity.
I was happy to see a fuss made over Noah. We attended often enough that most of the regulars knew him, or were aware of him, or had heard of him. It didn't take a genius to figure out who he is, what with the stunted growth and extra pinkie finger and his occasional honk or hoot. He also had a darkness about his eyes that was unmistakable, like he was not getting enough vitamins or enough sleep or something. When he opened his mouth and displayed those gapped teeth, the doubles along the bottom jaw, all questions were answered.
”Mrs. Oppy told me her daughter calls Noah 'The Boy Who Lived,'” Mama said, whispering to me and frowning with disapproval.
”That's a reference to Harry Potter,” I pointed out.
”Still,” she said.
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