House of Gold (16 page)

The most expensive item, a new handpump for the abandoned–but still active–well on the property, required the help of the Man to install one Saturday. (After discovering
on the Internet that handpumps were backordered at most suppliers, he called Buzz, who knew of a Catholic supplier in Vermont who had set aside a few extras for "good families.")

Mark stocked in his small game traps, most of his hand tools, and some basic over-the-counter drugs such as aspirin and cough syrup. A thermometer. Hydrogen peroxide. Two new hunting knives of the highest quality. Two
sets each of new thermal underwear from Land's End for himself, Maggie, Seamus, Meg, and Angela. He didn't plan for Sarah to come–she now had the last name of a bright young Catholic fella in California.

Two cases of "six day" holy candles that he had asked Father Dial to bless. Six heavy-duty scapulars from the Rose Scapular Company. One crucifix. One framed photograph of the Little Flower. Waterproof
matches. Four twenty-gallon propane tanks–he already owned a small propane camp-stove. A cast-iron dutch oven (which, to the uninitiated, looked like a huge skillet with a matching cover). He mentally set aside a place on the shelf and floor for their winter boots, sleeping bags, and heavy coats, which he would keep at the Avon house until–and if–he came here.

He spent one weekend foraging in
his woods for fallen timber, cutting it with his chainsaw, then splitting it himself, teaching Seamus along the way. This gave him four cords, and he had two additional cords of seasoned oak delivered; he covered these with old plywood sheets.

A case of twelve small Tabasco sauce bottles from Sam's Club. A split case of six bottles of Maker's Mark and six Jameson Irish, respectively (a man had
to have his pleasures after all, and heck, they would make great trading items in a pinch).

A Bible. A new
Catechism of the Catholic Church.
His paperback volumes of Butler's
Lives of the Saints.
His favorite Catholic novel by that guy from Notre Dame. Salt. Olive Oil. Sugar. Honey. He didn't go overboard on these latter items–a few bags or bottles each. Finally–again from Sam's Club–a few cases
of soup, canned fruit, and canned vegetables to break the monotony of the rice. Powdered milk. Three large cans of Chock Full o' Nuts coffee.

The cabin already had an unplumbed sink and a few pots and pans in the rough cabinets. A rickety old bunk bed, built into the wall. He added two portable, inflatable camp sleeping cushions. He went out back and poured a few sacks of lime into the privy,
which hadn't been used in years, and was in surprisingly good condition.

When the time came, he planned to bring his security items, his family, the winter apparel, and ten fresh cartons of Marlboros for trade.

The cabin was set off from the road, unseen behind a stand of trees. He had cautioned Seamus to work in silence when outside, praying to Our Lady. The driveway had been overgrown with weeds
for years, and he was careful to drive off to the side of it when it was practical. He thought better of adding new "No Trespassing" signs at strategic locations. Except for the new shingles, which he had carefully dusted with a few handfuls of dirt, the handpump (which was around the back anyway), and the newly-stacked cords of wood, the cabin did not appear all that different than when he first
began his project. He had talked to no one about it except the Man, Buzz, and Sam.

On a chilly afternoon in September, when he was finished, he called Sam for a favor. Sam promised to do his best to comply.

"What have you been up to out there?" Maggie asked him one time.

"Just buying a little insurance."

Chapter Seven

The Man

At Saint Philomena's, the Man received the Sacred Host on his tongue, then swallowed it before returning to his pew. He knelt, bowed his bald head, and offered his Communion for Buzz, Mel, and their children. Then he began an intimate dialogue with the God in his stomach. The thin black man had been offering up Communion as an act of gratitude for Buzz since his conversion,
the year the big lug had brought him back to the practice of his faith.

The Man looked up at the priest, and smiled. It had taken a hard head to crack a hard egg.

For that is what the Man had been: a hard egg. A hard case. A private, broken, silent wind passing over the earth, alone but not lonely, before Buzz barged into his insulated world in the summer of 1993 to pop open the carbonated top
of the universe.

Before Buzz, the Man had lived a solitary life. The last of seven children, born to a forty-five year old mother who died of diabetes when he was in second grade, he had not known his own brothers and sisters as peers, but rather as distracted surrogate parents. His next-oldest sibling, his sister Irene, had been eight years older than him. His mother's death had hardened his
father's heart–perhaps the already sullen boy had reminded Cameron Smith of his wife. His mother had taken the boy to Mass on Sundays, even perhaps prayed the Rosary as he fell off to sleep in her arms (the Man's memory was fuzzy about this), but Cameron, a devout agnostic, had not continued the practice of the faith after her death. As the father goes, so go his children.

The Man was the odd-brother-out
who had dropped off the face of the earth thirty-some years earlier when he had taken that scholarship to Notre Dame. His three brothers and one sister still living resided in Virginia, retired after careers in the civil service and middle-class bliss. Except for his father, none of them had bothered to contact him in years, though Irene had tried with Christmas cards addressed to the
hotel (where he worked as a concierge) before she died in an auto accident in 1974. Her funeral had been the reason for his last trip to Virginia.

The Man remained unmoved by his alienation from his family. Only his father, a judge in Alexandria, had stayed in touch with the occasional phone call before his death from complications related to Parkinson's in 1990, the year the Man had won the Revco
Ten Thousand Tournament with Buzz and Buzz's friends. The funeral had taken place on the day they won the tournament, and he had missed the funeral to honor his commitment to the team.

He was not uncomfortable with his seemingly obsessive desire to be alone–a desire that had simply been a part of him since, well, since before he could remember. In grammar school and high school, he had been the
contented loner. At college–oh, that had been easy, he a black at a Catholic college dominated by middle-class white kids, further insulated by the mystique of his athletic prowess. And because he was black and did not go to church then, his dorm rector at Howard Hall and the other students had assumed he was not a Catholic. In fact, his kinfolk were Catholics in Maryland since before the United
States was born, from a rare line of black freemen who traditionally worked as accountants and clerks for Catholic merchants in a state founded by Catholics seeking religious freedom. In the areas surrounding the capital, there were still many Catholic churches attended by generations of blacks–segregated, to be sure, from their prejudiced white bretheren right up until the 1960s.

Why had he played
sports? Certainly not for the camaraderie. For the love of the game, yes. The field of play was the perfect arena to simply be what he was without complicated relationships or intimate communication. Even before Notre Dame, on the many athletic teams on which he participated, he had formed no friendships, cemented no bonds.

Ara Parseghian had recruited him because he could cover and tackle and
return kicks–not because he was popular with the other players.

On the field of play, the others interpreted his aloofness as the mysterious coin of leadership–and perhaps it was–but the Man accepted his
aloneness
as simply the way he was designed. A fact, not a choice. Leadership, that impossible-to-define virtue which caused mighty struggles for most men because of their desire to be liked or
their desire for power, had been a natural, easy skill for the Man, who cared nothing of the esteem of men. Leadership was a requirement for order and a sure path to winning, and in situations where lesser men failed to step up into the breach, the Man had led.

The same attribute had made him the undisputed king and judge of the Rocky River courts in the early Seventies after he settled in Cleveland
and landed the position with the elegant Stouffers Hotel. A few of the white boys on the courts, trying to be hip in that pathetic way whites mimic black lingo, had taken to calling him the Man.

"You the man!" they had clamored after his patented, silky drives.

The mystique of the nickname had evolved slowly and organically, and it suited him and made his life easier. In the early years, a few
others had known his real name, but all had forgotten it by the time Buzz had shown up as a high school player. The nickname allowed him to indulge in the one social passion of his life–athletics–yet remain an island unto himself.

Besides Buzz, there had been one other to pierce his private world. The girl. The shy one at Notre Dame. Maryann O'Connor, who shared her own
aloneness
in common with
him–and his passion for history. She was a frumpy brunette with bad skin and thick glasses. She had a fashion sense that barely rose above a partiality for comfortable gray sweat pants and indistinct shirts. Her only apparently bold assertion of personality had been her habit of wearing the brown scapular outside of her blouse. (He never discovered that wearing it next to her skin caused rashes.)

Starting when he was a freshman, and she a sophomore, they had read books in silence near and often next to each other every night in the history section in the library. During his freshman year, they had merely exchanged looks. During his sophomore year, they began to say hello to each other; and she, to grace him with a delicate, bashful smile, as sweet and disarming and to his surprise–welcome–as
a warm day in February.

It was obvious to him that she did not know or care that he was a key player on the only team that mattered on campus. By his junior year, they were sharing books, and had two classes together in the history department, even though her major was the little-known General Program of Studies. GPs, as they were known amongst themselves, studied the seminal texts of Western
Civilization using the classic seminar method.

For all he knew, she had no friends either. She was an intensely devout Catholic. She suggested he read Cardinal Newman, Belloc, Augustine, Waugh , Knox, Chesterton, and others. Before Maryann, as a student of history, he had taken the Catholic Church for what it plainly was: one of the dominant forces of human history, if not the premier force of
history in the West, at least since the time of Constantine.

Because of Maryann, these great minds proved to him that if there was one true Church, it had to be the Catholic Church because it alone could demonstrate a direct line to Saint Peter, along with a purity of doctrine unchanged for two thousand years. He just didn't get Chesterton. The Man was incapable of understanding paradox. The skepticism
of the modern philosophers, such as Sartre and Russell, also had their appeal. He returned to his histories.

Yet briefly, because of her books, he had gone to one confession, and then to Mass several times (alone, of course). He had dimly anticipated that something might "happen" to him during Mass, but nothing did, even after-Communion.

He felt nothing. His senses, ever alert, registered no difference
in himself or his environment. He fell back into an indifferent, if open-minded, agnosticism. She did not know of his brief fling with the sacraments because he never told her. She graduated after his junior year, went to Stanford for her masters, and he never contacted her again.

During his last conversation with her, on a sunny day in May, standing next to the Father Sorin statue on the North
Quad, she had told him a curious thing–and the only personal thing said between them in three years: "I love you. I'll always pray for you."

Then she stepped forward, eyes watery, to give him a hug that he returned half-heartedly, embarrassed. She stepped away, looking down.

"Good luck," he had replied.

Sometimes, when he picked up Chesterton or Belloc or Augustine, he remembered her words. What
kind of love had she meant? Boy-girl love or soul-soul love? Or both?

He would never know on this earth.

He had not loved her–at least not in those ways.

All these years later, he realized, with Jesus in his belly, that he had been destined for a life of solitude and prayer, probably as a religious, and that his neglect of the faith as an adult had closed that option. Perhaps he had even been
meant to be an abbot.

He would never know in this world.

Today he was retired, fifty-one, earning a modest income from the money he had saved after decades of working at the hotel. His outwardly social career had been another clever way to hide his true self.

The Man was not aloof with the customers, of course, but his relationships with them, even with patrons who had known him for decades and
fancied themselves "in" with him, had been strictly professional. His smiles were cool. His warmth was studied and directed toward the goal of service. He was in their worlds but not of them. The history books which lined his little home not far from Saint Philomena's Parish–these were his true companions.

Before Buzz, history, populated with its epic and tragic characters, seemed more real to
him than his very self. There they were, these heroes and villains, in black and white,
on paper.
They had
been.
By their very deaths, the figures of history had become
real.

Then came Buzz...

+  +  +

It was 1993. Late August. Soon the Rocky River courts would shut down for good as the sun leaped lower across the evening sky and the chill winds of autumn descended from Canada into Cleveland. Another
successful and satisfying reign as the Man of the courts was drawing to a close.

Dante Curry, the legend from Little Italy who had played the heavy-favorite-foil to the underdog Scaps three summers earlier, slowed by a severe knee injury which never quite mended, had taken to playing with "the Team," as Buzz's band of players was now known on the courts, making this summer's hoops all the more
fun. Even Tim Penny, who was cautious about spending time away from his family, showed up for a run now and again.

The Scaps had worn on the Man's resolve for solitude all summer, but he had held them off again without too much effort. Mark Johnson, Buzz, Sam, Bill White–they kept inviting him to their summer gatherings after the games at Tim Penny's, or to Mark Johnson's place for beer, or over
to Buzz's apartment for videos.

The Man really liked that Mark Johnson. The Man and Mark shared that unique thing–that leadership quality, that
I-don't-give-a-damn-because-I'm-moving-forward-and-you-can-follow-me-or-get-the-hell-out-of-my-way
quality.

Yet despite turning them all down, for the first time in his life, if only for the summer on the courts, he began to associate with these other
men as equals, and he looked forward to seeing them for the games.

But he did not accept their invitations. His refusals became a ritual unto themselves. He politely declined, then walked alone to his Oldsmobile and drove home.

Then, dammit, Buzz had followed him home one September night without him knowing it, and discovered where he lived. Two months later, the Man opened the front door on a
chilly Sunday morning in November and found Buzz reading his
Plain Dealer,
sitting on the wooden Adirondack chair on his porch.

"How did you get here?" the Man had asked, with not a bit of anger in his voice.

"I drove," Buzz replied, not looking up from the Sports Section. "Can you believe the Cavs lost again? They should trade Ferry."

"I don't follow the Cavs. May I please have my paper?"

"Sure
thing," Buzz replied, handing it over. He had his beloved Pepsi with him–a whole six-pack.

"Thank you, Buzz."

The Man took the paper and closed the front door without a word, smile, or grimace. Buzz stayed on the front porch for two hours that Sunday, even though the Man ignored him. What was he supposed to do, call the police?

Buzz returned the following Sunday, at seven in the morning, reading
the sports before the Man awoke, sipping Pepsi.

"Those pathetic Cavs," he said. No
hello.
No C
an I come in?
"Lost again. Ferry barely even plays."

"I don't follow the Cavs. May I please have my paper?"

"Can I keep the Sports Section?" Buzz asked. "It gets pretty boring out here with nothing to read. And have you noticed that Pepsi and Coke don't taste the same since they switched from sugar to
corn syrup? It's a conspiracy."

The Man easily held off a smile.
That is true about Coke and Pepsi. They taste awful without sugar. Buzz, you really are a one.

He took the paper, but left Buzz the Sports Section. Buzz stayed for three hours. The Man watched him out the corner of his eye through the lace under-curtains from the kitchen as he ate his Cream of Wheat. When Buzz was done with the paper,
he left the porch briefly to get a religious book from his car. The Man spied a picture of the Mother of God on its cover.

The next Sunday–same thing. Buzz berated the Cavaliers. The Man let Buzz keep the Sports Section again, but did not speak to Buzz or invite him in.

When the Man left his house to jog or run errands in the car, he did so via the back door, and did not greet Buzz as he pulled
his car by the front porch.

The fourth Sunday, Buzz didn't show up. The Man was relieved–and vaguely disappointed.