Bells Above Greens (3 page)

Higgins was behind the bar.  If he had a first name, nobody knew it.  He was balder than any man I had ever seen, and he had a habit of putting his red face inches from the pint glass as he pulled the tap. 

“Will you play football this year?” Higgins asked me.  Emery sat next to me at the bar while the pool table echoed with bad shots behind us.

“No,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Why should I?”

“Because…you might be good at it.”  He glanced over my shoulder to the wall and shifted his eyes back to me.  But I caught him.

“Because Peter was good at it?”  I did not turn to look at Peter’s jersey.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Sure it was.”

“We wouldn’t be here to drink your bad beer if he did,” Emery jumped in.  “Do you even clean the kegs or do you just add new beer to the old?”

Higgins looked at him.

“Just kidding around,” Emery said.  “Your Guinness is the real deal.  Tastes like it trickled straight from an Irish spring.”

Higgins mopped the bar and threw the towel over his shoulder.  “Sorry, Sam.  I was just excited, I guess.”

I waved it away.  That’s how it was that summer.  I ducked the issue as much as I could.  At night we prowled the bars or stood outside the movies and talked to the girls who waited alone for their dates, and during the day we put new shingles atop South Bend.  There’s a lot that you see from the roofs of a small town.  You see the blue-collars leave their porch steps early with lunch pails under their arms, their wives waving them off.  Children ride bikes down the center of narrow streets, playing-cards clicking in their spokes, and old pickups rumble through stop signs.  In the distance are the hollow eyes of the two lakes under the brows of campus trees.  Then one day, on the shimmer of St Joseph’s Lake, an unleashed dog stirred the ducks to begin their arrow south.  You feel the weary sigh of a football town, anxiously awaiting the first kickoff to the new season, and you hear the bells of the Basilica reminding folks to keep the Sabbath and not to swear too much.

God held a heavy hand upon me as autumn approached, a hand that I shrugged off my shoulder, unsure if I wanted the graces, unsure if I still believed.  Religion is tricky.  It tests your strength.  When you want to give it up entirely, you feel weak for thinking that way, and you think He may not be there when you do need Him.  So you hang on for appearances sake, but you question it underneath.  It’s an odd thing to say, ‘thank God he died quickly.’

We watched the summer fade to fall with hammers in our hands.  It came quickly one cool day and that was it.  Then it was time for classrooms to fill and for gridiron giants to challenge school rivals.  The trees on campus held the morning dew in hanging copper teacups that fell swirling upon youthful hearts. 

Chapter Three

The green lawns on campus painted themselves with rushing waves of yellow and orange, the worn paths of late students crisscrossed, and the lingering crows bobbed black with yellow eyes, bold and unmoving.  A groundskeeper pulled at the colors, making large piles, the edges drifting with the wind.  He removed his cap and wiped his brow.

The girls made sure to include the concrete of Notre Dame as part of their walk to the neighboring St Mary’s College, the girl’s school, and they were eager to show off their new sweaters, crisp and well-fitting, looking back with flirty eyes upon the boys who adjusted cowlicks as they watched them. 

Boys held the new smell of uncracked pages in their hands, pages that would remain a mystery to many throughout the semester.  Mother’s boys walked with rounded shoulders in buttoned sweaters and innocent eyes on the ground, discovering a new world in which they did not easily fit.  The autumn breezes circled about, breaking the careful waves on boy’s heads, lifting girl’s skirts, and removing any doubt of a late summer.  With the ring of the Sacred Heart bells, the first day of the semester spun differently in every stomach.

Watching them all walk by, I felt somehow that I did not belong.  I had walked these sidewalks of campus before, but now I felt like an intruder to be carefully watched or ignored completely.

I stopped by the practice field to watch the players.  They were hitting hard, the smack of shoulder pads, the grunts of the A-gap blocks, and the desperate yells of a new coach replacing a legend carrying high-pitched in the air.

There were two girls next to me, their books held against their chests, one of them pointing out a player to the other.  The player was taking snaps at fullback with the second team against the defensive starters.  He hit the hole hard and carried a linebacker several yards before being gang-tackled.  He was quick to his feet, a clump of grass hanging from his helmet, and he waved to the girls on his way back to the huddle.  They giggled to each other like grade schoolers and walked away. 

My first class was in an auditorium.  It was creative writing 101 for journalists.  I felt like I was starting over.  I might have been the oldest student in the room.  I sat in the back as the professor came out and stood in front of the room.  He was a short fellow with slicked hair, high pants, and a thick accent.  He turned to write his name on the chalkboard and I left the room while his back was to us. 

The practice field had two rows of bleachers.  I sat at the top and stretched my legs over.  There was a girl with pretty hair standing on the sidelines, a notepad held close to her chin, scribbling down names and talking with one of the assistant coaches.  When she turned to give her profile I saw catlike, librarian glasses on her nose.  Her red lipstick was gone. 

I left before she saw me and walked past the Golden Dome of the commons.  I picked up a copy of the
Fighting Irish Journal
and the
South Bend Tribune
and sat at St Joseph’s Lake.  The lake was a mirror to an early season, doubling autumn’s brush.  When the wind picked up, the waves flattened out and the mirror rippled apart. 

There was an article about an upcoming pep rally, friendly competitions between the dormitories. There was an article about the game and the new football team, the new coach with high hopes, but Elle Quinn did not write it. I should have spoken to her, but it was easier to avoid her.  I contemplated going back to the practice field, but then nobody would be here to watch the water flatten out.

At night I went to Blarney’s.  Emery was on his second beer, Higgins was leaning against the back of the bar, and two students with scraggly facial hair sat at a table nearby.  The pool table cracked with a cue ball not yet under bleary operation.

“How goes the classes?” Emery asked.

“What classes?  I skipped.”

Higgins poured me a closely watched pint and placed it on the bar.

“First day of classes and you skipped.  What for?”

“The chairs were uncomfortable,” I said.

“And tomorrow?”

“They may be more comfortable by then.”

One of the students at the table spoke, his sparse beard hardly covering his chin.  “You’re Peter Conry’s brother, right?”

I turned with the beer in my hand.  Their table was under Peter’s jersey.  Next to his jersey were two others: Bob Dove and Jim Martin, all three in glass frames with their names scribbled underneath in Higgins’s handwriting on white paper.  I shrugged and sipped my beer.

The student looked up at the jersey and then back to me.  “Are you?  You look just like him.”

“Sure.”

He stood at once.  “I’m Garrett and this is Jake.  We were friends of his.  It’s a shame.”

“This is Sam Conry,” Higgins said to them.  “He doesn’t play football.”

“What do you have these jerseys on the wall for, Higgins?” I asked.  “Why not Guglielmi or Lattner?”

“They played offense,” Higgins said.  “I like defensive players.  Besides, I liked your brother.”

“But nobody’s heard of Peter Conry except you.  Put the guys who carried the ball up.”

“Defense wins championships.  Or haven’t you heard?”

“We knew Peter,” the student named Garrett said.

“I’ll add you to the list under Higgins,” I said.  They just looked at me.  “Just kidding.”

“He was well on his way,” Garrett said.  “We were in the stands when he ran that interception in for a touchdown.  Against Michigan.”

“We all were,” Higgins said.  “He hit like a load of bricks.  Could hear it in the parking lot.”

“Well, it’s all over,” I said.

“And you’re not playing?” Garrett asked.

“No.”

He stood there looking at me with his thumbs tucked in the back of his belt.  “Shame about the war.  We liked Peter.”

“We all did,” Higgins said again.

“What did he say to us, Jake?  Before he shipped out.  Football is a boy’s game, but the world needs men.  Needs heroes, that’s what I say.  He might have been an All-American if he had played the whole season.”

“Might have been,” I nodded.

“I remember this one time he ran with the track team.”  Garrett looked at his friend.  “Remember that, Jake?  Practice had just ended for him and we were walking together, the three of us, to the library.  The track team was sprinting on the other side of the fence and Peter took off with them.”

He smacked his hands together, one on top of the other with an excited smile to go with it.  “Remember that, Jake?”

Jake nodded.  “Beat the sprinters to the line.  He liked a good competition.  He could have been a sprinter.  The track coach was calling to him to jump the fence and try out.”

“Is that true?” Emery asked.

“Sure as hell is.”

Garrett was shaking his head at the ground.  “Well, anyway.”  He looked at his beer. “Here’s to Peter.”

They raised their glasses and I drank with them.  They shared more stories and laughed, and Garrett gave me the rascally one-armed hug that guys give to other guys when a friendship is felt.  Higgins poured a round on the house and clinked each of our glasses to Peter again.  We sat at a separate table and Higgins brought us sandwiches.

“Don’t worry about it,” Emery told me.  “Don’t get gloomy.  People are going to ask about your brother.  People liked him.”

“I know.  Just when I get to feeling good again someone reminds me of him.”

“Well, that’s good isn’t it?  You don’t want to forget him.  Nobody does.  Not even those guys.  Must have taken them a year to grow those beards.  Looks like an alfalfa garden.”  He pointed a potato wedge at me.  “You don’t want to forget him.”

“No, I guess not.”

“Don’t get gloomy.  What’s the first thing you do when you see a gloomy guy walking toward you on the street?”

“What?”

“Most people go to the other side of the street or they pass by without looking at him.  Nobody wants to be around a gloomy guy.  Don’t be the gloomy guy.”

“I give him a high five.”

“A gloomy guy?”

“Sure.”

“A gloomy stranger on the street?”

“I give him a high five.  Stranger or not.  I give him a high five.”

Emery laughed.  “You’ll be fine.  You’re coming back around.  Just don’t be gloomy.”

“Do I sound gloomy?”

He looked at me for a moment before he spoke.  “No, but it’s there underneath.”

I finished my beer and put my dollars on the table. 

“Where are you going?”

“I’m tired.”

“The night’s just begun.  You’re going to miss it.”

“I have a skipped class to catch up on.”

“You’re doing fine.”  Emery smiled and kicked out an attempt to hook my ankle as I walked by.  “You’ll be just fine.”

Chapter Four

The practice field was soggy from an overnight rain that lasted into the morning, evaporating in a mist under the sun.  I watched from the top of the bleachers as the team took the field in agility drills, their heads steaming through their helmet vents.  The head coach was blowing his whistle and yelling, and he soon set the team to running laps around the field, kicking the field beneath him and spinning in curses.

She didn’t come by that day.  I skipped a second day of classes so I could catch her, but all I got was a soggy pair of shoes and waterlogged books.  I stood outside the dormitories at St Mary’s College nearby for the last part of the day, looking up at each of the girls who came out.  The rain came on steady as the sun descended, darkening the cathedral shadows that stretched upon the lawns. When someone came out, I stepped inside the doors to stay dry.  When I didn’t see her, I was almost relieved.

A girl came down the stairs and stopped at the doors, peering out into the parking lot through the rain for a moment.  Then she asked me if I could walk her across campus to one of her night classes.  She didn’t want to walk in the dark alone. 

“They say to be aware of your surroundings,” she said.  “But I would be more comfortable walking with another student.”

She was blonde and I liked the way she looked.  Her voice was gentle and she smelled nice.  She had a charming lack of height. 

“I’m Sam.”

“Liv.”  She gave me one quick shake of her hand.  “You
are
a student, aren’t you?”

“Of course.”

We went out into the rain.  The sidewalks glistened where streetlights haloed like holy ghosts and the square beams of yellow from dorm windows stained the grass with church aisle silence.  She opened a small umbrella and spoke in a friendly way.

“I would ask you to join me under here but I’m afraid it’s too small.”

“I like the rain.”

“Were you waiting for someone?  How rude of me to take you away.”

“No,” I said.  “I was just standing out of the rain for a moment.”

“And here I asked you to come back out in it.”

“I’m as wet as I can get already.”

“Don’t make me feel worse.  It’s a cold rain.  It will be snow in another week.”

She walked quickly, two steps to my one.  I watched the rain patter on top of her umbrella, doing my best to catch the short waves of her perfume. 

“I suppose you think it’s silly of me to take a class so late at night if I’m scared to walk alone in the dark.”

“It was the only time the class was available,” I guessed.  “You must be a senior.”