by Greg Fields
Consequently he had never tried to bully his son, or prod him, or live out his own frustrations through him. He had merely sought to guide him. And Conor had rarely been disappointing. That the young man could feel strong enough to embark on his own at so tender an age was proof enough to his father that he had raised him well. Whatever loneliness might ensue, then, was worth it: his son had proved to be his finest labor.
Katherine Finnegan had never perceived herself as an independent soul before she married Edward, but their years together had instilled something of an appreciation for her husband’s proud character, even though she could not bring herself to emulate it. She, too, was well satisfied with her son. She saw in him that same spirit that distinguished her husband from other men, that same sense of justice, that same tenacity. But she felt as well that Conor was far more sensitive than her husband. He had fewer rough edges and tended to be more trusting of others’ intentions. She took credit for imparting in him that sensitivity. Yes, her son was an independent sort, as was her husband, and he would do well for himself wherever he went, but a mother cannot watch her child become an adult without pangs of sadness. She would miss him fiercely.
For the three Finnegans there hung over that summer an ominous air of finality. A part of their lives, irrevocable, tottered toward conclusion. No one spoke about it, at least not directly. Still, it pervaded their every action, their every word. And as the summer drew to a close and Conor’s boyhood flickered away, the atmosphere grew heavier despite their best intentions. The end of it all would be bittersweet: an exultation of what was to come, a rejoicing and release of the young man’s spirit, but a permanent rending of the security of what used to be.
Man’s life is full of passages. We come from the womb in a spasm of blood, a fit of crying. This, too, was a passage — another birth, another escape from another womb, another bloodletting for the sake of something that had to be.
Across town, Tom McIlweath spent the summer where he felt most comfortable—in and around a swimming pool. He worked out every morning with his club, trying to maintain his competitive edge and suitable conditioning in preparation for the coming year, and then spent eight hours lifeguarding. He was seldom bored.
He did not view his flight across country as an act of finality. Unlike Conor Finnegan, McIlweath did not spend his last few weeks at home remembering his past and romanticizing his present. He did not account as completely as did Finnegan what he would be leaving behind. His parents, of course, he would miss, but he considered their impending distance merely a redefinition of their relationship, which he deemed, for the most part, healthy. His father had set off at an even earlier age, and he had never stayed more than a few years in any one spot even after marriage, so Tom had a slightly different view of what might be regarded the normal course of things for himself. John McIlweath, once presented with his son’s choice, and recognizing that because of Tom’s swimming scholarship his expenses for four years of college would be far below what he had expected, viewed it with sympathy.
Tom McIlweath knew it was time to get away, had desperately wanted to do so, and consequently looked at the world he was leaving with a cold eye. As summer wound down his anticipation was no less than Finnegan’s, but it stood on different legs. He spent his summer working, swimming, and, until Finnegan called him that night in late July, he saw no one. Whatever Romantic tendencies he had during this restless summer were well suppressed.
At least until Finnegan proposed his cross-country drive. McIlweath had told him he would think about it, but there was really no need. A chord had been struck. Within two days, Tom had decided to go along, infused with a surprising new fondness for the purveyor of this notion. Now the method of escape promised to be as intriguing as the escape itself. He began to think Whitmanesque thoughts. A continent lay before him, and he would approach it, wide-eyed and care-free.
***
In late August on the morning of departure, Conor Finnegan took leave of his parents. He preferred to leave quickly, before the sun was up, before he was fully awake. He told himself that he would not be overly sentimental. The world, he thought, lay fresh then, in the pre-dawn.
His mother had made coffee and they sat, the three of them, as the kitchen table. Conor had packed the car the night before, taking care to leave enough space for McIlweath’s things. There was nothing left to do but drive away.
“How far do you expect to get today?” asked Katherine Finnegan.
“I’m not sure. We’re heading north. We can make San Francisco if we want.” Conor spoke slowly, measuring every word, knowing that he would remember this early morning conversation in all its particulars. “Does the car look okay, Dad?”
“Yeah, you’re in good shape. As good as that heap can be. Now, if you have any trouble, call me. No matter where you are.”
Conor chuckled. “Dad, what are you going to do, fly out with your tool box? I’m afraid we’re on our own this time. But you know I’ll keep you posted as we go along.”
“Well, I just want to know. Let us hear from you. Often. Call us whenever you can.”
Edward Finnegan, too, would remember this conversation, as simple as it was. He sat at the table, outwardly composed. Inwardly, though, his emotions tumbled and churned. He could not sort them all out. He felt again his intense pride in his son. But as he sat there looking at him, the father felt that, from this point on, the boy would no longer be his.
The elder Finnegan had marked his life through his son the same way he had marked off young Conor’s growth on the kitchen wall. When Conor was born, Ed Finnegan had lived thirty-four years. It is a late age for a man to become a father. His own boyhood had lacked a mother, who died too young, and, with a father consumed with feeding himself and his four sons, Ed Finnegan was too often left to his own devices. He had never been taught to plan a future. Even after several years of marriage he still lacked a long-term vision for himself and his wife. Not that he squandered money or behaved irresponsibly. Rather, Ed Finnegan simply made no plans. He had worked at a number of jobs—auto mechanic, light construction, assembler in a farm machinery factory—staying at each only until he became bored. He had tried the military, too, staying three years and rising to the rank of staff sergeant. He left the Army having given no thought to a military career. He was looking forward to sleeping late for a while.
When his son was born, less than a year after Katherine, fearful of a ticking biological clock, had virtually demanded a child, Ed Finnegan settled himself. The change took subtle forms. At the time he was working as a grocer in a small store owned by an old man from northern Italy. Within eighteen months he changed jobs again, but this time the choice was more reasoned. He saw no future with his Italian friend, so he left him to join a large, multistore supermarket chain with a pension plan and unionized job security. He had a family now; he had to work himself along. In an instinctive way (for Ed Finnegan did not think in philosophical terms), his son’s birth had forced him to consider his own mortality. Such was the whisper that someday he would die. While he was here, he had an obligation to take care of his own. Ed Finnegan remained in the grocery business for the remainder of his working life.
From then on, the father reckoned his own life by his son’s. Years later he would be able to identify the day, the time and his frame of mind when Conor reached milestones of growth: his first word, his first day of school, his first report card, and so on. Ed Finnegan’s perception of himself in his own maturity became woven around his son as young Conor shed, one by one, the trappings of childhood.
This morning, too, was another of those sheddings, but Ed Finnegan knew it to be the final one in the framework that had defined his life for the past eighteen years. What would come after this could only be foreign to him, and so his own uncertainties ran far deeper than his son’s.
“I suppose I better get going. I’m supposed to pick up Mac five minutes ago.” All three had been reluctant to state the obvious, or to make the first move. Th
ey had remained at the table well past the coffee, well past the limits of ordinary conversation. With Conor’s pronouncement they rose and went outside to his car parked in front of the house. The extra weight of the packing caused its rear to sink lower than normal.
“Nice night.”
“You’ve got a good day to travel, it looks like.”
The three reached the car at the end of the front sidewalk. Conor, who was a step ahead, stopped first and turned around. His heart beat rapidly, adrenalin pumping through him in tiny darts. At that instant he felt a silent, invisible hand squeeze his chest like a child squeezing a handful of clay, wrenching it with all its unseen might. He could not hesitate now. The realization he had hidden all summer could not catch him, not now. Please God, not now.
“Well . . .” he paused, could think of nothing to say. His mother grabbed him.
“God be with you, son.” She felt warm as he held her against the morning chill.
“Mom, take care. I’ll be back soon.” She was not crying, but neither could she speak.
Conor released her, and she him. Both he and his father stood motionless. Their eyes met. Neither wanted to make a move, and the few seconds they stood so fixed seemed frozen, so that years later Conor could remember his father’s face, set with a firm chin, brown eyes glistening with a rich pride, and think then that there could be no greater confirmation of a father’s love.
Conor reached out his hand, his father grasped it strongly. Conor followed his father’s grip into an embrace.
“Be good, Conor. God bless you.” Ed Finnegan’s handshake had been much firmer than his voice.
“I’ll do the best I can, Dad. You take care of Mom. And thanks. Thanks so much.”
Conor pulled himself away, turned sharply and half ran around the car to the driver’s door. He got in and started it up, noting oddly that he could see his breath. He put the car into gear, and, as it began to move, looked up to capture, consciously, a parting impression.
His parent stood there on the curb. They did not touch. Both father and mother smiled rigidly, a final forced benediction. ’They’re trying too hard,’ thought Conor. His mother’s robe was white, his father’s plaid, and now one plaid arm and one white arm were raised in a wave, moving very slowly, scarcely moving at all. It was his movement, the movement of the car, that gave any sense of motion at all.
Conor waved back. He did not smile. He was grateful that there were no tears from any of them. At least not there, not then.
CHAPTER IV
It was at the highest point in the arc of a bridge that I became aware suddenly of the depth . . . of my feelings about modern life, and of the profoundness of my yearning for a more vivid, simple, and peaceable world.
—John Cheever, The Angel of the Bridge
The midday sun was hot, the landscape unbelievably dull. In every direction, a solid dirty-white monotony ran to the horizon. This was, after all, the desert, and what could they expect? This was reality: no Romantic Grand Canyon Suite-like setting here, only a hot, dry, earthy plain, less intimidating certainly than to those who first challenged it by foot, horse or wagon, but no less boring.
Finnegan and McIlweath had roared down the Sierras of Northern California in an exhilarating bolt. They had left San Francisco early that morning, before dawn. They had seen the city lights below them and the great bay beyond. It had been cool then in the darkness. There in the hills of the East Bay the air had been fresh and bracing. Finnegan had paused as they packed their camping gear and stood for a few minutes gazing at the lights and the water, conjuring images of porcelain and crystal. He had been able to make out the Golden Gate Bridge with little trouble, for the night was totally clear even into the Bay. No fog shrouded his view. The whole city, and everything within sight, appeared to be papier-mâché.
Several hours later the freshness had vanished. They cleared the Sierras and drove through the high desert plains of northern Nevada, east of Reno, until boredom and fatigue forced them to stop early at a shabby campground near Elko. After a fitful night’s sleep, dreamless and uninspired, they hit the road the next morning, to find more of the same dull, dusty, flat tedium.
Despite only a light shirt and blue jeans, Finnegan perspired freely in the afternoon heat. Driving a car presented no physical challenge in the typical sense. He had to stay awake and keep the car where it should be, but that required no strength at all. Still, he felt drained. The sweat clung to his body, dampening his brow, cheeks and forearms without cooling him. It lined him with a clammy, sticky film. His shirt adhered to the seat so tightly that from time to time he would reach behind himself and pull it away with a muted swish of wet fabric. The air conditioning in the old car was dead on arrival when Finnegan bought it a year ago, so all windows were wide open. But the cross-breeze did little to cool him. The wind that blew in was dry, almost abrasive. McIlweath sat next to him in the same condition. Boxes, books and clothing that did not fit into the trunk packed the back seat. It was a small space they had, and this afternoon for the first time it closed in on them in a hot, cramped, sticky, boring contraction.
“Hey Mac, aren’t there any towns out here?” asked Finnegan. “I feel like stopping for something to drink.”
“No towns. No one lives in Nevada.”
“I guess not. If there were anything coming up in the next fifty miles we’d be able to see it, it’s so damn flat.”
McIlweath opened a road atlas and perused it for a few seconds. “There’s some town coming up in about seventy-five miles. At least there’s a dot on the map. I don’t see anything between here and there.”
“Whose idea was this?”
They drove on without speaking. McIlweath had turned into good company for a trip like this. In fact, Finnegan had been pleasantly surprised by McIlweath’s broad knowledge and relatively quick wit. He also seemed to know about a number of things which to Finnegan had always been remote.
Such as camping. When first conceiving of this trip, Finnegan had assumed that he could save money while savoring the great outdoors by camping along the way. The fact that he had neither camping equipment nor had spent so much as a single night without a firm roof over his head never entered his mind. Fortunately, McIlweath had a large enough reserve of both gear and experience. He had a tent that would do, a pair of sleeping bags and some cooking equipment. More importantly, he had served a term as a Boy Scout and knew what to do with it all. Finnegan hadn’t a clue. That first night they pitched camp, illegally, in a wooded park outside the San Francisco suburbs, Finnegan had fumbled about with the tent pegs and support ropes while McIlweath drove out to get something to eat. By the time McIlweath returned, the tent was firmly rooted on the corners but sagging in the middle, and Finnegan was thoroughly confused. Within five minutes McIlweath had run a rope along its spine and tethered it to two trees. From then on, Finnegan would leave all practical camping matters to his friend.
The drive up the coast to San Francisco had energized them both. Finnegan and McIlweath talked the whole time, about friends left behind, about family, about women, about sports. They had spent two days in the bay area where McIlweath had not been an outsider, and had several friends with whom they spent good time. And now, on the drive out, for the first time Finnegan was bored. A perfect complement to the physical discomforts, he thought. He presumed, too, that, from his silence, his friend felt the same way.
Nevada had no speed laws, at least none that were ever enforced. Although Finnegan maintained his old car at seventy, faster vehicles whipped by them. At one point a late-model Jaguar appeared in the rearview mirror, grew larger almost immediately, changed lanes, buzzed by and disappeared in the distance, all in the span of two or three minutes.
’Easily a hundred and thirty,’ thought Finnegan.
At once, a glint came into his eye, and he straightened himself in his seat. “Mac,” he said, “do you think this old thing can break a hundred?” Finnegan looked over to the other seat with a sly grin.
“I bet it will. It’s really not in bad shape for a car with this many miles on it.”
“Conor, small sedans weren’t built to go that fast.”
“Then why is the speedometer graded up to a hundred and twenty?”
McIlweath leaned over to check it out. “It is, isn’t it? I hadn’t noticed that before.”
“We haven’t had the opportunity to consider it before. Mac, it’s only right. We’re within a couple of hundred miles of the Bonneville Salt Flats where they set all the land speed records. I think we owe it to ourselves to try to set a new record for a twelve-year-old Dodge.”
Finnegan depressed the accelerator gradually. McIlweath leaned over again across the bucket seat to watch the needle. Slowly it crept upward . . . seventy-five . . . eighty . . . eighty-five . . . ninety. The car began to shake slightly. Finnegan leveled off for a moment to make certain all parts were still intact. Satisfied, he continued the climb.
Ninety-five . . . ninety-six . . . ninety-seven. The accelerator was fully depressed and the car’s vibration had intensified. McIlweath, his arm around the back of the driver’s seat, stared hard at the speedometer.
“Come on, Conor,” he shouted above the rushing air. “We’re almost there.”