Bells Above Greens (7 page)

“You’re the one hanging around puffs,” he mumbled.

“What do you mean?”

“What’s that kid’s name?  Follows us around all the time taking pictures.  Little guy.”

“Myles?”

“Yeah, that’s him.  Clings to you like a child.  I imagine he’s taken an interest in you.”

“I don’t know him too well.”

“He likes to think he knows you.  Sits against the wall all night watching us play pool.  He’s probably stalking you.”

“He’s harmless.”

He nailed down a series of shingles then dropped his hammer and whipped his hands back and forth to get the feeling back.  “We’re going to the game on Saturday.  You can meet her.”

“Who?”

“Claire.  You have someone you can bring?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you do or you don’t.  What’s her name?”

I looked around and said, “Liv.”

He looked at me and held his hands out after a moment.  “Well, what’s she like?”

“I don’t know.  She’s nice.”

“Oh Lord.”  He looked heavenward and crossed himself.  “Am I a dentist today?”

“What?”

“Pulling teeth.  Nevermind.”

“She smells good,” I said finally.

“That’s better than not, I guess.  We’ll save you some seats.  You want to bring her?”

“I don’t think she would come with me if I asked.”

“Why not?”

“I left her alone in the stands at the last game we went to.”

Emery rolled against the rooftop, his laughter sounding as a frozen cackle of hammer strokes.  The ladder against the gutter came alive, bouncing a hollow aluminum sound.  Mr Callahan’s head appeared.

“Cold enough for you boys?”  His fists appeared beside him, steaming.  He steadied himself.  “Brought some hot cocoa.  Just like a mama would.”

“Thank you, Mr Callahan,” I said.  I scooted down the rooftop to the ladder and took the broken handled mugs from him.  He made an immediate boxer’s feint to my chin when my hands were full. 

“Got the teeth rattling there.”

He came aboard, a barrel-chested man with legs forever bent in balance, his back ruined in a roofer’s curve, a paper silhouette against the white sky, his sunwrecked eyes searching about. 

“Season’s coming to an end,” he said.  “We’ll have a few houses through the winter.”

“How’d we do for the summer?” Emery asked.

“Good enough.”

I walked on my knees and gave Emery one of the mugs.  He curled his fingers around it and stared into it, the steam making frozen spikes of his eyelashes.

“No marshmallows?”

Mr Callahan looked about at the bare spots on the roof.  “Marshmallows are for the ladies.  I gave you extra.”  The old man bounced his weight twice on a new patch of shingles.  “Nails running low?”

“Nails?”  Emery made a wondering face of joked confusion that quickly turned to a smile.  His father circled his fist clockwise at his hip.  He stopped and studied the sky, the shades of white and gray clouds folding over themselves. 

“Won’t snow for a bit.”

Emery looked up and around.  “How can you tell?”

“Radio told me so.”

Emery nodded.  “Give Sam some old man advice, dad.”

“Advice for what?”

“How to court a lady.”

Mr Callahan shooed a passage of cold breath, tossing his hand in a gesture over his head.  “You’re asking the wrong man.”

“Sam thinks it’s best to leave them halfway through a date.”

“It wasn’t a date,” I said.

“Leave while you’re ahead.  Not a bad strategy if done right.”  The old man looked at me with kind eyes in a rough mask.  He grinned at the corner of his mouth.

“You’re fishing in the right hole,” he said.  He pointed off toward the bells on campus.  He pulled a fold of hot paper from his inside pocket and unrolled it.  Breaded fish fillets steaming in the cold.  He held it to both of us.

“It’s not Lent,” I said.

“It’s Friday,” Mr Callahan said.

I ate in gratitude.  “Thank you, sir.”

He settled in on the roof, a large man finding the softest way to drop himself, rolling back just enough to take the fall out of it.  Sitting Indian style he went to work on his fish fillet.

“Tell him, dad.”

Mr Callahan rolled a bite around in his mouth to make room for his tongue.  “When I was your age I would not even date a girl who wasn’t Catholic.  Bless your mother, Emery.  She was a handful, God rest her kind soul.  You’ll not have that problem if you stick to the girls here.”

“What difference does it make, sir?” I said.  I caught a glance of Emery’s face behind him.

“A whole hell of a lot of difference.”  Mr Callahan looked to the sky and crossed himself.  “You’ll be fighting an uphill battle the rest of your life.”

“Love conquers all, right?  Sometimes you can’t help it what the other person believes in.”

“I left a girl in the middle of a date once,” Mr Callahan said.  “Found out she was a Protestant.”

Emery was laughing with a mouthful of cocoa behind him.

“That’s close enough, isn’t it?” I said, trying to keep my face straight.

The old man shrugged.  “To each his own, Sam.  I’m just laying out the groundwork for you.  This girl of yours, did you find out she was a Protestant?”

“She goes to St Mary’s College.  She’s a Catholic.”

“There are wolves in sheep’s clothing.”

“She goes to church.  Christmas and Easter.”  I looked away to hide my face.  I heard Mr Callahan almost choke.

“Jesus,” he crossed himself with a half-fillet.

“Emery’s seeing a girl.  A cheerleader.”

Mr Callahan shifted and spoke over his shoulder.  “She a Catholic?”

“Yes sir.”

“She nice?”

“Yes sir.”

“Marry her quick.  Only half of a successful marriage is falling in love.  The first half is finding a Catholic.”  Mr Callahan nudged me with his foot.  “You know what I had to do with Emery?”

I turned to face him.  “What’s that, sir?”

“My wife, beautiful rose that she was, she wanted Emery to be brought up in a Pentecostal church.  A sing along service.  People are whooping and yelling, dancing like idiots right there in church.  You seen it?”

“No sir.”

“I took him out for a run in a stroller one day.  Told my wife we’d be back in a flash.  Had him baptized at Holy Cross instead.  Father O’Hara was there waiting with the oil and water, and me in my jogging shorts at the altar.  Not the first shotgun baptism he’s performed.”

“You baptized him without her consent?”

“Sure.  She named him without mine.”

“Did she find out?”

“Sure she did.  I told her.  Said I was sorry she missed the ceremony.”

“And then?”

He shrugged.  “And then she gave up on religion entirely.”

We sat there for a while, finishing our fish and cocoa.  A blackbird landed on the far side of the roof and ambled toward us before stopping sidelong and watching us.  It moved over the peak of the roof, big shouldered like a buzzard. 

I turned back to Mr Callahan.  “You don’t regret marrying her, do you?”

He looked at me with eyes that still burned with delight.  “Not a Goddamn bit.”  His chin swept from one side to the other.  I waited for him to cross himself but he did not.  His hands stayed by his sides.

He crumbled the paper in a ball, then stood and shuffled to the ladder, bending and twisting to find the best way to climb aboard it.  “Well, this roof won’t fix itself.”  He turned back.  “Will it?”

“We’d be out of a job if it did, sir.”

Stepping down, he disappeared a foot at a time over the edge.  He paused a moment when his eyes were even with the shingles. 

“But life is a whole lot easier when your wife is dragging
you
to church on Sunday.”

Then he vanished in a magical cloud of breath, the clacking of the ladder giving away his prestige.

Chapter Nine

I waited in the stands with my arms draped over four empty seats.  The aluminum stomp of thousands around me, a sea of school pride.  I was the only student in his seat when the helmets ran from the tunnel, spreading out to take the field, to take the stadium, with a rush of cheers.  The mystical shouts seeped into my bones and I came alive with the rejuvenated exuberance of an old man awakened from his bed, the pounding of green blood still ran hot in my veins.

Liv was the first into the aisle, followed by Claire and Emery.  I was swept up in the magic, caught in a banshee hoot, when I suddenly found myself surrounded by them.

“You
do
have school spirit,” Liv said.  I looked and found her with a smile.

“You caught me.”

“Don’t be embarrassed.  I like it.”

“He’s an Irish through and through,” Emery said with big-goggled eyes behind the thickest pair of frames in the stadium.

“We need you in the stands,” Liv said.  “We lost against Purdue.”

“But we walloped Pittsburgh,” Emery said.  “I bet we don’t lose another game all season.  Sam, this is Claire.” 

The brunette cheerleader stood in front of him.  She matched Liv in stature. 

“Nice to meet you,” I said.  “Shouldn’t you be on the sidelines?”

“Next year.  I’m a sophomore.”

“Emery likes younger women.  He practically stalks them.”

Emery reached behind and smacked me upside the head.  Liv took to my arm and huddled in.

“I wasn’t sure you would come,” I said.

“Emery convinced me.”

“It wasn’t difficult,” Emery leaned across the girls to me.  “She finds shy boys irresistible.”

“Is that true?”

“It must be.”  She stood on her toes and kissed my cheek. 

Within the hysterical shouts, I heard nothing.  The game played out close, an exciting back and forth, and yet I remember only a few plays from the field.  I was in the stands and there I stayed to play my own game.  We huddled together in the cold, a pocket of happy warmth.  When she stood to cheer, so did I, and then we would collapse again into the squeeze of sweaters, coats, and smiles.

It turned out they did need me there.  Notre Dame won by one point. 

Strolling through the campus afterward, flag-carrying greenmen running by us with victorious yells, Liv told me it was my voice in the stands that made all the difference.

“You seem to know a lot about football for such a little girl.”

She hugged me tight.  “I should.  My father once played here.”

“No kidding.”

“It runs deep.  My grandfather played before him.”

“Who’s your grandfather?  Knute Rockne?”

She laughed in a way that showed she recognized the name but not the details behind it.  “You wouldn’t know them.  They sat the bench mostly.  Only played on special teams.”

“Well that’s more than most kids get.  Does your father still watch the games from the stands?  I bet he can still play.”

“He passed away,” she said.

“I’m sorry.  I got carried away.”

“Don’t be sorry.  It’s nobody’s fault.”

“Well, he probably watches from above.  He’s probably smiling down at us right now.”

“Is that what you think?”

“Don’t you?”

“I don’t know.  When a person is gone, they’re gone.  It’s strange to think they’re still around somewhere, listening or watching.  But people do become more important when they pass on.  Don’t you think?”

“I do.”

Emery and I took the girls to a small sandwich shop off campus called The Ragged Trouser for a late lunch.  The tables were filled to capacity and the line poured out the door and followed down the sidewalk, people fresh from victory, the excitement still breathing in their chests to keep them warm.  The open door exhaled the smell of fresh bread.  After the games, hungry or not, people followed their noses in flocks.

Two boys stood off the curb, waving their shirts at passing cars like matadors, the bulls honking in shared triumph, the crisp sun glinting off their chrome horns, their windows marked with winning slogans in white shoe polish.

“Let’s go somewhere else,” Emery said.  “There won’t be a line.”

“My vote is for Blarney’s,” I said.  “Higgins will serve us on the side.  We won’t have to wait.”

Emery looked at the girls.  “Do you like stale bread and oversalted ham?”

“The beer is good.”

“Anywhere where there’s a warm place to sit,” Claire said, bouncing in a little red coat.

“Emery will keep you warm.  Right Emery?”

“Every time the chaperone looks away.”

We walked under the gray sticks of trees, the scattered swirls of leaves crisping at our feet, cutting through a neighborhood to get to Blarney’s.  People had ND flags on their porches, and banners slung gold and navy over fences, waving in breezy victory as we passed.

The tavern was busy but Higgins had a booth open up against the wall and we filed in with the girls taking the inside spots.  The dishes from the previous customers were still on the table.  Claire rubbed her hands together and Liv released her short ponytail.  Her blonde hair framed her red cheeks.

“I just love your hair,” Claire said.

“Oh thanks.  I thought I could do waves with it, but it’s just too short.”

“It’s beautiful.  The perfect color.”

Emery had removed his glasses and was squinting around.  Claire flattened her hair with smooth hands, her eyes on Liv’s hair.  Liv squirmed out of her coat, the mothy smell of a deep closet passed under my nose.

Higgins rushed over, wiping his hands on his white apron.  “Beer tap is self-serve for you boys today.”

“Looks like dishes are too,” Emery said.  He began to gather the plates and cups.

“Give me your orders and I’ll put them on to burn.”

Liv was looking at a menu.

“Just four Flappy Shoes for us, Higgs,” I told him.

“Okay.”  He looked back over his shoulder.  “Just mark down your beers.  Don’t steal nothing.”

“I’ll have a Coke,” Claire said.

“She’s underage.”  Emery had the dishes in his hands and came back with his fingers dipped in the lips of three pints and a Coke.

“Hell, Emery.  Fingers clean?”

“I washed yesterday.”

People continued to stream through the front doors looking around for a seat.  The place carried the loud murmur of conversation.  We had another beer while we waited.  Higgins rushed over with the sandwiches and slid them across the table.