Chapter Six
I spent Monday filling out more job applications, and hearing the standard round of rejections. I was tempted to ask a few employers, “If I can predict word-for-word the way you’re about to tell me you’re not interested, will you give me the job?” I would probably have had my pick of several different jobs, because the subtle “Thanks, but we’re not interested” message was basically the same every place I went.
On the way home, I had to stop for gas. The Tahoe was a thirsty truck, and as I stood at the pump watching the numbers ring up, mentally doing the math to figure out how much would be left in my bank account once the debit transaction went through, a pang of fear and worry gripped me. Would I find work in time? What would happen if I couldn’t? I was sure that Stanley or someone would offer to give me some money, would buy me groceries, would fill my car up with gas – but how humiliating would that be? There was no way I could accept their charity. If I couldn’t find a job, I deserved to bear the consequences of that; I didn’t need to be a burden on other people, as well as myself. I would find some way to get by. Always had, always would. If all else failed I could always go down to the day labor center where the illegal immigrants waited. I could do manual labor for fifty bucks a day. It wouldn’t be pretty, but it would get me by.
Maybe that’s why I didn’t sleep well Monday night, but whatever the case, I woke up Tuesday feeling like I’d been hit by a bus. It wasn’t the illness kind of fatigue that I’d felt on Sunday morning, merely an aching weariness from the mental strain of everything I’d been dealing with. I was pretty eager to see the aquarium, as long as I didn’t dwell for too long on the fact that Stanley was going to be paying for it.
I met him outside his apartment shortly before ten and we walked downstairs. Out in front of his car were a couple of guys who were going to go with us. Two of them turned around: it was Willy and Julius, from Saturday’s basketball game. Neither was smiling.
I looked sideways at Stanley, who was pulling his cellphone out of his pocket. “Oops,” he said. “I have to send a quick text. You go on ahead.”
I paused for a moment and looked back at Stanley, who was tapping, or pretending to tap, keys on his phone. Head down, I covered the dozen steps to the waiting crowd, raising my head at the last minute.
“I’m sorry for the way I acted on Saturday.” I wanted to say more, but the words just wouldn’t come.
Julius smiled. “Man, it’s alright. Everyone has a bad day.” He put out a hand, which I took, attempting to shake it, before he yanked me close to him and hugged me. Out of all the things I’d experienced so far in Texas, that was by far the strangest. I’d never encountered hugs as a sign of friendship before. I hugged my parents a couple times a year and that was pretty much it. But if that was the way Julius wanted to do things, I wasn’t going to protest – not yet, anyway.
I turned to Willy. “Are we cool?”
He nodded, smiling. “We cool.”
“Is DeRon around here? I owe him an apology too.”
“Nah, he’s sick, stomach virus or something. Jarrius isn’t coming, either; he has class on Tuesdays.”
I hoped I hadn’t been the one who got DeRon sick. “Where does Jarrius go to school?”
“Tarrant County Community College, same as all of us. He’s the first in his family to ever go to school.”
“Wow, that’s awesome for him.”
“He’s a good dude,” Willy agreed.
Stanley came over, slipping his phone back into his pocket. “Let’s have ourselves a day, gentlemen.”
We carpooled to the train station just north of the interstate in downtown Fort Worth, hopping the Trinity Railway Express to Dallas. I had never been on a train before, so I was wide-eyed as we gently lurched into motion, rocking back and forth as the train picked up speed, taking us through the heart of the metroplex.
We offloaded at the station in Dallas, as rowdy and boisterous as any elementary school field trip. There was no line at the aquarium at eleven in the morning on a Tuesday. I stood behind Stanley at the ticket window.
“I need two adult tickets, please,” Stanley told the attendant, a girl a few years younger than me.
“Coming right up.”
“One of them is for this man right here,” Stanley added. “I’m paying for him to come because he doesn’t have the money. Do you think there’s anything wrong with that?”
“What are you doing?” I snapped under my breath. I didn’t want him telling people about my money problems; it was none of their business.
“Erm…no,” the girl said, confused. “I think that’s very nice of you.”
“Do you think he should be ashamed of it?” Stanley continued.
“Not really, no. I think he’s lucky to have friends who would help him out like that.”
“Thanks, dear. Just wondering.” Stanley took the two tickets from her with a wink, and turned back toward me.
I was livid. “What did you think you were doing?”
“Testing your reality, son. You seem to think accepting help is something you should be embarrassed about. I hope to show you how untrue that is. What you just saw was Exhibit A.”
“You had no right to tell her I’m short on money! I could have paid for this myself if I wanted to, but you told me not to!”
He stopped for a moment, looking off into the distance as if to gather his thoughts before turning back to me. “I don’t know why it’s so important that you think of yourself as someone who is self-sufficient. I also don’t know why it’s so important that everyone else see you that way.”
“Because I am self-sufficient! I can take care of myself just fine. I’m glad you helped me out, but if you think I needed it, you’re wrong.”
“Would you have come if I hadn’t paid for your ticket?”
I hesitated. “No.”
“Because you wouldn’t have wanted to spend the money?”
“Well…see, it’s –”
Stanley put his hand on my shoulder. “Independence is not the measure of how successful you are in life, Eli. Here’s your ticket.”
Quietly fuming, I took it from him. “Thanks.”
“The ticket isn’t what you should be thankful for. Hey, Willy!” Stanley took a few steps over toward Willy and Julius, leaving me to ponder what he had just said.
Still bitter, though, I wasn’t about to do any pondering at the moment. I followed sullenly as Stanley led the group, eight of us total, through the turnstiles and into the aquarium.
The next few hours were a blur of fish, alligators, sloths, manatees, and the like. It was mesmerizing; I don’t mean to make it sound like it wasn’t, and I had fun with Stanley, Willy, and Julius. I didn’t know any of the other people, but that was fine; I had no problem being genial with strangers. I just had a nagging question in the back of my mind, and it came back to my reluctance to accept Stanley’s money, or at least, to have my need for it widely known.
The question, and I had no idea where it came from, was this: is that the way you really want to be? Of course it is, I insisted stubbornly. I liked being able to provide for myself, and I liked it even better when I could be in Stanley’s position and help out a friend who needed it.
The problem was, if everyone was like me, I would never be able to help them out, would I? They would be so reluctant to accept help or admit the need for it that I would never have the opportunity to be generous. But that was their prerogative, right?
We arrived back in Fort Worth around midafternoon, and I asked Stanley if I could borrow his basketball for some practice down at the park. No one else was out on the courts. As I stood there taking free throws, with the sun streaming through the tree branches overhead, I found myself wondering what exactly I was hoping to accomplish with my life.
I was in Texas looking for a job, so that I could make money and support myself, but tha
t wasn’t a “rest of my life” kind of statement. Making money was a means to an end, not an end itself. Who did I want to be? What did I want to accomplish? What did I want people to say about me when I died?
I didn’t know why I was thinking about death, and it was kind of morbid. My grandfather had only died the year before, at age 88. My own father wasn’t in great health, but he was only 55. But what was I hoping to do before I reached 88? I had heard someone say once, “If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’re going to get where you’re going.” What I was doing right now was treading water, killing time. Even once I got a job I wouldn’t be doing what I wanted to do. The problem is that I didn’t really know what I wanted to do.
“Hey, man.” I turned around and saw Jarrius there, backpack still on his shoulders, a fat textbook under his arm. “I’m looking for Julius and Willy. They still at Stanley’s place?”
“Yeah, they were all there talking when I left.”
“Cool, thanks. You working on your dribbling so you don’t travel again?”
I laughed. “You’ll find out next time, I guess. Bring your A game.”
“Consider it brung. Peace, man.”
I could feel Jarrius’ eyes on the back of my head as I took a few steps back and put up a long three-pointer, which banked smoothly off the backboard and into the basket. I couldn’t explain why I felt the need to showboat for him; I knew I was a good basketball player, and it was important to me that other people knew it. There weren’t very many things in my life that I felt really exceptional at, and I wanted respect for the things that deserved it.
After a while I had worked up a sweat, even in the December chill, so I started to head back to the apartment building. I went to return Stanley’s ball, and as I came up to his room, I could hear excited chatter coming from the open door.
I peeked in before knocking and saw Jarrius, Willy, and Julius sitting around a table, leaning in, and Stanley leaning on the wall behind them. Whatever they were talking about definitely had their attention.
Julius was gesturing. “How crazy is it that there’s all this stuff in the universe, you know, stars and nebulas and galaxies and all that, and humans are just now able to see it? It’s always been out there, shining God’s glory for everyone to see, even though we couldn’t see it.”
“And he knew we’d be able to one day, so he put it all out there anyway. Man. He was just showing off.” This from Jarrius.
I didn’t know whether to knock or just return Stanley’s ball later, so I started to sneak back to my room. “Get in here, Eli,” Stanley called from inside.
How had he seen me? He hadn’t looked up from the table. I slinked into the room anyway, holding the ball out in front of me. “Thanks for letting me borrow this.”
“Just set it on the ground,” Stanley told me. “You want some juice?”
It was either that or lukewarm tap water in my own room. “Yeah, juice would be awesome.”
Stanley looked down at the table, where the other guys were looking up at me expectantly, as if unsure whether to keep talking. “Back to what you were saying, boys,” Stanley instructed them.
“Well anyway,” Julius continued, “that really changed the way I looked at creation, you know? I’d never really noticed sunsets before, I mean I saw them and all, but I never thought too hard about them. But once I realized they were God’s way of showing himself off, and the fact that he designed the world in such a way that it would have a sunset every day and the sunset would be beautiful to us, man, that just changed everything.”
The others were nodding vigorously, and I felt like I should join them, but I didn’t know what he was saying and I didn’t want to pretend lest they ask what I thought about it.
Thankfully, Stanley came around the corner with my juice, and I downed it quickly, feeling as if my presence was making the other guys self-conscious. Stanley took the glass when I was finished and I rushed back across the hall to shower off.
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