by Greg Fields
In this way Tom McIlweath avoided any contact with Conor Finnegan for nearly a month. May passed to June, and graduation, an event to which McIlweath had looked forward as his final release, impended at last.
On the evening of the ceremony itself, McIlweath had no more places to hide, yet he expected that Finnegan would be far too busy with his closer friends to pay him any mind. For once, the young man felt protected by his anonymity. Besides, they would not be placed anywhere near each other in the procession. Finnegan, second in his class, would march in next to last. McIlweath had not attained the necessary honors to pull him out of the alphabetical lineup.
Fifteen minutes before the procession was to begin faculty marshals nervously attempted to put some order into things. While counting down alphabetical lists of names, they scoured faces and sniffed breaths for the faintest whiff of alcohol. At the same time they tried to herd students into line.
Into the midst of this neurotic chaos strode Finnegan, shaking hands and smiling like a politician. He was enjoying himself fully, paying what amounted to last respects to those with whom he had shared his time. As second in the class, he was to give one of the graduation addresses, but he showed no sign of nerves. He walked down the forming line, stopping to speak to those he knew, taking no more than a few seconds with each, resting his hand on their shoulders in a gesture of intimacy, then quickly moving on, the light blue graduation robe flapping behind him.
McIlweath saw him working his way through the alphabet and ultimately heading for the “m”s. Exposed, he instinctively looked about for some type of cover. In the open assembly area, locked into place by his name, he had nowhere to go. He hoped that, in the interval of several weeks, Finnegan might pass right by him, or stop only to wish him luck before moving on to more important people. Still, he did not wish to tempt fate. He shuffled to the side of Peter McGuiness, a tall, heavy, incredibly full specimen who was set to march ahead of him. Pete’s girth could cast a shadow, quite a large one, and provide some hope for concealment.
No such luck. Finnegan had arrived, his eyes twinkling squarely on Tom McIlweath. He dismissed the obstruction immediately.
“Pete, how are you? Good luck, buddy.”
“Right, Conor. Good luck to you, too.”
“Let me get to this guy back here.” Finnegan extended his hand around the great McGuiness. “McIlweath, where the hell have you been? I haven’t talked to you in weeks.”
“I’ve been around, Conor. Congratulations.”
“Never a doubt, Mac. For either of us. Listen, I’ve got to talk to you before we head east. You’ll be around this summer, won’t you? Are you going to work?”
“Yeah, I’ll be here. I’m lifeguarding at a swim club across town.” He tried to deflect the conversation. “What about you?”
“Nothing special. I’m a referee in a kids summer basketball league. Lousy pay but easy work.” Finnegan would not be deflected, though. He had an agenda, albeit a brief one. “But look, I’ll give you a call sometime after graduation. We’ve got to talk about next year. I’ve got some ideas about the whole thing.”
’No doubt you do,’ thought McIlweath. ’But, please, is there no way you can spare me your sickening enthusiasm? I can’t be bound to you.’
Finnegan concluded and moved down the line. “Congratulations again, friend. We’ve got great things ahead of us.”
Tom McIlweath was not so sure, and with Conor Finnegan’s words still warm in his ears, he felt the oppressive air of his anonymous youth little changed by graduation.
***
The metal grandstand bit into McIlweath’s back as he stretched himself across three empty rows. Below him, two teams of sweating adolescents ran up and down the basketball court. Order was being kept by two striped shirts, one of which covered the frame of Finnegan. The gymnasium seemed particularly cavernous. Only a handful of people, virtually all of them parents, watched the game. Their periodic shouts or cheers echoed around the building.
It was late July. Two nights earlier, Finnegan had phoned McIlweath suggesting they get together. They had not spoken since graduation night, and McIlweath had hoped hat that would be the end of it. Realistically, he expected to encounter Finnegan next year. That would probably be unavoidable. But Rutgers was a big place, and McIlweath anticipated keeping a goodly distance. He would go to class, he would live in his dormitory, he would swim, all apart from Finnegan and what he represented. At best, they should be able to travel in separate circles.
McIlweath dwelt on the idea of a clean slate, with no definitions, expectations or judgments appended from his past. The more he dwelt upon it, the more it drew him in, until Rutgers became for him the River Lethe, where all memory would be indelibly erased.
Even after Finnegan had called, McIlweath was unsure of what he wanted. Despite his best intentions he had agreed to meet. Still, he remained determined to keep himself unfettered for the coming year.
As the game ended McIlweath stood, stretched, and made his way down the bleachers. He did not think that Finnegan had seen him come in. Finnegan, though, had mastered the art of searching the stands while running up and down a basketball court. He had always liked to be certain of his audience. Consequently, after receiving his night’s pay at the scorer’s table, Finnegan headed straight for McIlweath. They shook hands, Finnegan smiling warmly.
“Mac, how are you, buddy? How’s the summer?”
“Not bad, Conor. Quiet. I’ve been swimming a lot.”
“At the beach?”
“No, with my team. Chlorine and natural sunshine.”
Finnegan led McIlweath to a small bag sitting on the edge of the bleachers. He reached inside it for a towel, pulled the referee’s shirt over his head, and dried the perspiration on his torso as best he could. Afterward he pulled on a polo shirt.
“Listen, do you feel like something to eat, pizza or a sandwich? I haven’t had dinner yet. I’ll pay.”
McIlweath consented. They agreed on the restaurant and headed there in separate cars. Although the place was a fairly popular gathering point for young people, McIlweath had been there no more than two or three times the entire year, and then by himself. They were seated by a server no older than they were. McIlweath noted that, even though Finnegan had toweled himself off after the game, he still carried the sharp, acrid pungency of dried sweat. On Finnegan such an odor was particularly noteworthy. He was one of the few young men of his age to wear cologne daily. Where that type of vanity would usually be mocked by his friends, Finnegan was able to pull it off with no comment by even the crudest among them. It all seemed somehow natural for him.
They ordered. Finnegan got right to the point. “Mac, how do you figure on getting to Rutgers at the end of the summer?”
“I thought I’d fly back, of course.”
“You think you’ll be able to take everything you want with you?”
“What do I want to bring? Just clothes. Maybe a few books. That’ll all fit into a suitcase or two. Everything else I’ll need I’ll get there. What’s your point?”
“Listen, Mac. I don’t want to fly back there. There’s no adventure in that.” Finnegan’s voice picked up its intensity. He sat on the edge of his chair, his elbows resting on the table. As he continued to speak, his hands opened and he made quick, chopping gestures for emphasis.
“I want to drive to New Jersey, cross-country. I want to take about two weeks and go everywhere I want between here and there. No schedule, no map. Just follow the roads. And I want you to go with me.”
Genuinely surprised, McIlweath could only ask, “Why?” in a soft, almost hidden voice. He could not imagine what purpose Finnegan might have in asking him along.
Finnegan had not expected anything less than a blind, shared excitement. The question caught him off-guard, and he stammered what passed for a response. “Hell, Mac, you’ve got to . . . I mean, Jesus, it should be obvious. You’ve got to get back there, too. If I’m driving back you may as well come. I think we’
d have a great time of it, and it would be a terrific way to start college, with that kind of trip behind us. Thrill of the open road, and all that. Read some Whitman.”
Composure regained, Finnegan lowered his voice slightly, and leaned across the table.
“Besides, Mac, you are my friend, you know.”
All pretense fell away in a single sentence that McIlweath would remember clearly years later. With the lightning-quick reaction of human thought, McIlweath saw it all through these simple words. It had not mattered to Finnegan, then, that he had kept his distance for the past several weeks. Perhaps he had not even noticed the estrangement at all, or, if he had, defined it as something without personal implications. Finnegan ran through his world with a Romantic idealization of man’s youth, aware of his own lofty station, accepting it as humbly as he could as some fruit of an unnatural, random selection, but accepting it nonetheless. So favored, he could love who and what stood around him. Everything in his existence up to this point had contributed to, or at least had not interfered with, his own ascent, and he perceived his life as a series of blessings personally bestowed by a kind Providence. Whatever he encountered—from his old car that still ran well enough to suggest a cross-country trip, to his friends at school, to the clothes on his back—manifested that special favor, that metaphysical embrace.
If, then, the world breathed such grandeur for his benefit, he could love it without qualification. Tom McIlweath was a small part of it, but part of it he was, and so Conor Finnegan accepted him as fully and as innocently as the sky accepts a sunrise. Even when McIlweath tried to resign from it, or, total resignation being impossible, tried to withdraw to its most remote corners, Finnegan’s world held him fast. McIlweath may have had very sound reasons for doing what he did, but in the glorious personal schema of Conor Finnegan, they could not be related to character, action or promise.
“Conor, I don’t know if it’s practical,” McIlweath spoke finally after the tides of sudden thought curtailed. “Do you think that car of yours is going to be able to make it? And even if it could, this little expedition would be too expensive. We’re poor, struggling students, remember?”
“If we do it right, it’s not going to cost much more than an airline ticket. Maybe less.”
“What do you mean by ’doing it right’?”
“We don’t have to stay in motels. Christ, that would be boring. We can camp out, or stay with friends along the way.” The excitement returned in Finnegan’s voice as McIlweath considered that there was no chance he knew anyone in Kansas, Wyoming, Indiana or any other state between here and there. “We probably wouldn’t have to eat much, either.”
“Conor, we’ve got to eat. What are we going to do, forage dumpsters for half-eaten sandwiches?”
“Think of it, Mac. We could go anywhere we want.”
They were interrupted by the server returning with their order. McIlweath had ordered only a soda. Despite Finnegan’s speculation on food intake levels, he had ordered big—a large turkey sandwich and a couple of sides.
“Anywhere we want,” continued Finnegan. “And at the end of it, we’ll be at college. Classes start September 12th, so I was thinking of leaving around August 28th or 29th. That’ll give us two full weeks.”
McIlweath caught his use of the plural. Already Finnegan presumed that McIlweath was on board. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he thought.
But the prospect of such a trip, totally inconceivable until a few minutes earlier, took on an immediately attractive luster. By the end of the evening, Finnegan’s grand enthusiasm for the plan claimed a fellow traveler. McIlweath told him that he would have to think about it. There were logistical problems, he said. He would have to quit his job earlier than he had planned, he would have to convince his parents, he would have to check his finances, and so on. But Finnegan knew underneath this subterfuge that McIlweath had been bitten, and that, when things settled, the two of them would make this trip together.
It was ambitious, thought Finnegan, this idea of two young men—boys really, in terms of experience and wisdom, boys who knew almost nothing about what was out there—traveling across country on their own. But how stagnant would man be without his ambitions? Besides, he could not predict when an opportunity like this might come along again.
As the time for going drew near, both Conor Finnegan and Tom McIlweath prepared for it in their distinctive ways. Both grew increasingly excited; both stared deeper and deeper into the face of what they were on the verge of entering. With their excitement there mingled apprehensions that each confronted alone.
Finnegan paid heed to his Romantic tendencies. He had always been a great believer in his own potential, the embodiment of the potential of all young people, had felt the strong surges of power flow through his veins and brace his spine, had felt frequently the joy and wonderment of discovery, of finding things within himself that he had not known were there, and which were always worth finding. But he had never ventured far afield to exercise that potential, to test his own capabilities. It had always been so safe. Although he had no shortage of confidence, he was untried, like a soldier on the eve of battle: sure of his own invincibility, certain of survival, but wary of the wounds he may have to suffer to procure it. Finnegan had shown his abilities only in small, secure, well-protected arenas. He was about to enter a new, more vulnerable dimension.
As a result he became mindful of the world he was about to leave. He took notice of its physical details and tried to memorize as many of them as he could. On certain evenings, when he had nothing else to do, he would sit on the patio and stare at his backyard, absorbing the shape of every tree, the line of every bush, the texture of the grass. He would consciously remember the moments that had taken place there—throwing a baseball with his father, running the length of the yard with his dog, the heavy sensation of mowing the lawn on a hot summer’s day. Or he would walk down his street and around the block, looking seriously at the colors of each house, noting the different designs, the way the asphalt changed hues in certain places, and the roll of the sidewalk. He became sensitive to the sounds with which he had grown up—not the voices of his friends or family, but the normal mechanical sounds that helped punctuate his daily routine: the resonant ticking of the living room clock, the springs in his bed, the squeak of the garage door when it was raised, the metallic cracking of the patio awning as the sun heated it. Finnegan tried to absorb it all, to make a complete record of what had formed him, so that he could better carry it with him.
He noted, too, the feeling of the place. In the early evenings his bedroom would capture all the heat of a summer’s day. The sun would be low enough to cast the light-colored wall in orange or yellow, and the room would turn perceptibly warmer than the rest of the house. There he would sit and read in that special light, or review his books, or look through old pictures, and feel that warmth that he knew was part atmospheric and part emotional, knowing that this could never be felt anywhere else.
In the mornings he would lie in bed and let his body sink into the contours of the mattress, noting as he did so a softness made for him alone. The blue bedspread would be kicked to the bed’s edge, or onto the floor altogether, and he would be wrapped in a sheet and light blanket. Then only was his whole physical existence turned to comfort—rested, softly spread across his own embracing space, thoroughly at ease.
The days themselves held no pressures. Because he worked only two or three hours each night, he had a great deal of time to himself. He took care to see his friends, but his attitude with them betrayed no apprehensions. He tried to continue as he had before: amiable, self-confident, universally excited. If anything, he added new pretensions, rarely letting an opportunity slide to remind his friends that he would be going away. Around them, he felt again in himself the ambitious daring that had allowed him to take such a step.
Above all, Finnegan took note of his parents. And during this summer of preparation he marveled at them as he never had before. They w
ould be losing him, at least as a child, yet their demeanor was unchanged. They had not become sentimental or overly solicitous. As they had always done, they gave Conor whatever space he needed or wanted while making certain that he knew he had their confidence.
Yet despite their appearances, Conor surmised, they must be terribly puzzled. The specter of mortality presents itself in whispers and hints. He became attentive to them, and sought for ways to soften the impending blow. He spoke often of coming home for the holidays, of the following summer, or writing them long, descriptive letters.
For Edward and Katherine Finnegan, the process of watching their only son prepare to leave was indeed a painful one, but not without its rewards. Edward Finnegan, as his father before him, prized independence. ’I will bind myself to another man for wages,’ he reasoned; ’my spirit no one can have.’ He had raised his son the same way.
Ed Finnegan had always been proud of young Conor. Ever since his son’s first few steps, he believed the boy was rare. Conor possessed intelligence, he had strength. Ed sought to guide his son gently in such a way as to allow him to bring out his best qualities, to try new things so that he could discover more of himself, and come to know the world around him, always assured of a safe haven in his own home. When Conor was a baby, Ed Finnegan one night leaned over his crib and whispered to his sleeping son, “I promise you that you will have everything you need, and most of what you want.” As Conor grew, Ed remained true to that pledge.
Ed Finnegan also had a firm conviction of what was right and what was wrong. He believed in the inherent dignity of the human character, that everyone he might encounter had value no matter who they were or how they presented themselves. If any act curtailed a man’s freedom or insulted that dignity, then it was wrong. Such acts should be condemned when seen, and shunned when tempted. He had little concern about being in the minority on even the simplest issues of personal justice. A man had the capacity every day to do something that might be of benefit to someone else, he believed. He needn’t try to change the world, but he did have an obligation to make his part of it as gentle as possible. If he could raise his son with some of these values, keeping him mindful of the world around him and his responsibility to it, then Ed Finnegan could allow his boy to set his own course without worry.