Common Sons

by Ronald Donaghe

  At the front, the preacher came out from behind the pulpit and took his son’s hands, and they knelt on the floor. When the music stopped, Tom got up and faced the crowd. His shoulders were shaking; his face looked tiny and sharp-featured, like a Kewpie doll won at a sideshow. The preacher stood next to him and put his arm about his son’s neck. “Be seated, please, brothers and sisters,” he said. His voice was husky with repressed emotion. “One of us has come forward this morning. Let us rejoice! Rejoice in the power of the Holy Ghost! Oh, flesh! You have been vanquished. Let us pray!”

  And that was it. Joel walked outside. The little kid, Pete, followed. Joel turned to look down at him. “You want something, kid?”

  The kid looked grim, head down. To Joel he seemed jumpy as hell. “Yeah.”

  “Well?”

  “I…ah…that is…Tom and you…He…told me.”

  Joel was losing patience. He could see that the kid was really nervous. He tried to be nice. “Look, kid, I won’t bite. Just spit it out.”

  “You and Tom. You’re best friends, like Tom says. He said you had a fight, right? He says serious. So, I know that. I can tell, and this morning, well, he gets, you know, the Call. But don’t worry, man. His head is screwed on right, okay?”

  “Sure, man. Nice meeting you,” Joel said. Pete smiled and, in spite of himself, Joel grinned. The kid disappeared quickly into the crowd.

  The men and women of the congregation ran to their cars in the dust storm that had begun. The wind had grown violent, and it gusted through the trees, blasting the new leaves with flecks of sand.

  Joel sat in the pickup and waited for Tom. He was revolted. He looked over the hurrying crowd, suddenly afraid of them. Under their fluffy dresses and white gloves, beneath the suits of dignity and fine brotherhood, they seemed to Joel to be hungry, appetites merely whetted by Tom’s repentance. Through the thickening sandstorm, Joel waited, hearing the wind roaring over his pickup like gigantic waves over a dam. He waited an hour, but Tom never came out of the church. Joel cried as he drove through the storm.

  * * *

  The wind blew furiously, bending the trees along the street. There wasn’t so much sand blowing in this neighborhood and, as Joel pulled up to Coach’s house, he killed the engine and rolled his window down, letting the hot wind dry his sweat and tears.

  The MG came roaring down the street and Coach made a neat, quick turn into the driveway. Joel jumped out of the pickup and ran to open the garage door. Coach drove in, waving.

  Mrs. Hoffins got out, smoothing her dress and fiddling with her hair. She rearranged hairpins as she passed him. “Hi, Joel,” she said, and hurried across the space between the garage and the kitchen door on the side of the house.

  “You look like you’re about to puke, Kiddo,” the coach said.

  Joel shook his head. “Naw. Just got outa church.”

  Bill Hoffins laughed at that. He followed Joel out of the garage and shut it behind him. The wind blew his blazer out and whipped his necktie into his face. “Didn’t know you went.”

  “I don’t, Coach, only that was the only way to see my friend.”

  Bill’s eyes still smiled. He put a hand on Joel’s head and gave it a hard, affectionate shove as they entered the house by way of the living room. Once inside, the sound of the wind dropped. “JoAnna and I are going to have lunch right now—”

  “Oh, sure! Sorry, Coach, I’ll take off—”

  But the coach gripped his neck. “Settle down, Kiddo, I was trying to invite you to stay.”

  “Oh. Thanks. Mind if I call my parents?” Bill showed him the phone and left Joel in the living room.

  JoAnna was automatically making a place for Joel at their small, kitchen table. She looked up at her husband when he came in shaking his head. “What happened?” she whispered so Joel couldn’t hear.

  Bill opened the refrigerator and pulled out two beers. He opened one and handed it to her. “I’m not sure, Jo. He seems worse off, for some reason. Maybe it’s beginning to sink in.”

  They heard Joel put the receiver down. “Coach?” he called from the living room, “can I use your bathroom?”

  Bill showed Joel down the short hall and went back to his wife. They were seated when Joel came in. He had washed his face, but it was obvious he’d been crying. His eyes were bright and glassy. He tried a wide smile, but it sagged and Bill eyed JoAnna quickly. She was doing her best not to look embarrassed for Joel.

  Bill waved at a chair across from him. “Sit! Sit, Joel. JoAnna’s got some stew. Hope you like cabbage.”

  “Yeah, sure, Coach.” He pulled out a chair and sat down, bumping the table, getting the chair too close, doing a bad job of functioning. He crossed and uncrossed his arms. He stared mutely as JoAnna dipped the stew into his bowl.

  Bill studied Joel’s troubled young face. Kids kept getting younger-looking all the time. The freshmen last semester were like babies. Joel was an adult compared to most of them, except in one area. He hadn’t been surprised last Saturday when Joel told him about himself and his friend. Locker room talk always told him more than he wanted to know about his boys. Occasional banter included Joel, who was usually mute on the subject of sex, except when it came to the games in the shower with their own sexual undertones. Joel played around more than the others, although he was sure Joel wasn’t aware that these games were any kind of sexual experimentation. It was all innocent, Bill thought, and then he realized this was all hindsight. Even he hadn’t noticed the locker room gamboling as anything unusual.

  Joel picked up his spoon and ate politely. “This is good, Mrs. Hoffins,” he said between bites, then looked around. “Hey, don’t y’all have a little kid?”

  JoAnna smiled a little sadly at Joel and patted his hand. “Linton’s in the hospital, Joel. He’s autistic.”

  Bill watched Joel’s smile fade and something like embarrassment pass over his face. “Autism is a sort of mental illness,” Bill said. “Nobody knows what causes it, or what to do about it. Linton lives in his own little world. He doesn’t know us, maybe doesn’t even have a way to communicate with us or anyone else.”

  “Oh.” Joel looked up. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

  “We’re always hoping a psychologist or medical doctor will one day find a way to reach him. But.” Bill stopped. “Anyway…he’s well taken care of.”

  In the silence that followed, the three of them ate quickly. In the tightness of the house, the sandstorm was quiet, a steady moan, interrupted by the occasional banging of the front gate. “What will this storm do to your crops, Kiddo?”

  Joel shrugged. “I dunno, Coach. Depends on how long it lasts.”

  “We’ve been here three years, and the weather constantly surprises us.”

  “They say wait five minutes.” Joel’s voice trailed off. He dropped his spoon and squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m sorry, man.” He pushed his chair back and folded his arms across his chest.

  Bill pushed his bowl away. “Tell us what happened, Joel.”

  Joel’s eyes pleaded. “I thought things would work out.”

  “With your friend?”

  “I was supposed to meet him at church, because.well, he’s been freaked all week. His parents always answered the phone when I called. They never would let me talk to him. And then at church we couldn’t talk, and then he confessed in front of everybody! And I waited, Coach, but he didn’t come out!”

  “So your friend.” JoAnna smiled. She didn’t seem embarrassed now. “You think maybe he thought he had to ask forgiveness?”

  Joel shook his head. Then he looked up only with his eyes. “But why? For what, Mrs. Hoffins?”

  JoAnna looked at her husband. “You know it’s considered wrong by religious people, and your friend is religious, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, ma’am. But I’m his friend! Why wouldn’t he talk to me?”

  Bill sat back and let JoAnna piece together Joel’s confused feelings. She never ceased to surprise him. Younger than him by seven years
, at twenty-eight she barely looked older than Joel. Yet Joel became a kid with her, somehow meek. She brought out a side Bill had never seen in the Joel he knew—his super slugger. He saw something like a tender side, a vulnerable spot, emerge in his character. Joel was not so simple. The side of Joel that made him a boxer, the fighting side, was not Joel’s essence at all. That was a physical response; no matter how intelligently Joel behaved in the ring, no matter how perfectly timed were the rhythms of his body, his athletics were mechanical. Joel laid out a complex field of responses to his friendship with Tom. “We teach each other things,” Joel told JoAnna. “He’s real. Do you know what I mean? He doesn’t bullshi—He isn’t the kind of guy you put on a show for, I mean. Like with the other guys, I’m kinda nervous about some things. They don’t know me. I can’t get to know them. I never would be able to tell them things like I do Tom. Because he’s real. He’s familiar.”

  “But now you think you two might have gone too far, and he’s feeling guilty?” Bill asked.

  “He probably does. Yeah, man. He’s scared stiff.”

  “And you don’t feel guilty?”

  “No! He started it, man! I just went along, until I…No. I don’t see why it’s wrong, do you?”

  This, of course was the danger Bill and JoAnna had been aware of—that question that now hung in the room. And Bill recalled JoAnna’s warning: “You certainly can’t tell him to engage in sex of any sort! If the school board found out...”

  “Let’s just say that’s something you’ll have to work out yourself, Kiddo,” Bill said.

  “I need him, Coach. We were happy all the time. Do you think that’s stupid?”

  Bill breathed easier. It wasn’t the sex Joel was concerned with, he saw, but these feelings of closeness that he was afraid of losing. There was no question that his needs were decent. Under his rattled exterior, Joel was still holding onto a basic need that outweighed the physical act of sex, although to Joel, of course, there was no way he could separate them. It was emotional satisfaction. That it just happened to be another boy was unfortunate. That made things tough. But he had to lay the facts out, which came close to saying they thought it was wrong. “No, Joel. It’s not stupid to feel affection for another guy. What you’ve got to understand, though, is you can’t be reckless.”

  Joel’s biggest flaw was a sort of reckless honesty. In that, Joel was naive. That had been amply and painfully illustrated by the fact that Joel had jeopardized himself by even coming to him, a teacher, for help. If Joel had gone, say, to his ag teacher, Russell Thorpe, all hell would have broken loose. He had learned unsavory things about some of his fellow teachers, in control of children’s minds. Bill Hoffins often said, “You have a grave responsibility to bring out the best in children.” The biggest challenge a teacher faced, he believed, was to challenge the students’ minds and bodies to reach.

  JoAnna apologized, but said she had work to do, and Bill took Joel into the living room. “Sit down, Joel. I want you to know that JoAnna and I are your friends.” He straddled the arm of the big chair and tapped Joel on the knee. “But I’ll be straight with you.” He held up four fingers. “Look here, Kiddo.” He held the little finger. “This is Tom’s church, his religion. Hell, Joel, all religions probably hate homosexuality. Okay?”

  Joel nodded. “I figured that, Coach. The way Tom reacted.”

  Bill curled that finger under his thumb. He touched the second finger. “This is the law. I looked it up, Joel. It’s a felony in most states to commit homosexual acts.” He folded that finger down and touched the third. “This is medical science. In the field of psychology, homosexuality is considered a mental illness, but you’ve got to understand that the research is…vague.” He folded that finger under his thumb, and there was one finger left. “And this is each person you’ll meet in your life. It’s me. It’s JoAnna. It’s your friends at school.” He shook the finger at Joel. “It’s your parents and the rest of your family. You’ll have to decide for each person you meet, if you’re going to tell them who you are. Sometimes, Joel, you have to keep some things private. It’s society I’m trying to tell you about. There are good people, like your parents, but there are also unfriendly people. You’ll meet some people who are just plain mean. And these people make up society, and they don’t like homosexuality, because it’s against their religion, against their law; they’ve been told it’s a mental illness as well, and most people get shivers at the thought of two men having sex. You understand?”

  Joel looked up. His face was opaque, his eyes full of questions, but he didn’t respond immediately. He nodded so slightly that Bill wondered if he’d even been listening. He realized he was still pointing his finger and dropped his hand.

  “Coach?” Joel’s voice was quiet and flat.

  “Yeah?”

  “Most guys.I know they hate it. It scares them. It doesn’t bother me, except that it bothers Tom. I’m not religious, and I don’t feel sick in the head. And if it’s against the law, the cops can put me in jail. But it can’t change how I feel.” He touched his chest with the fingers of both hands. “Right now, I just want to see Tom.”

  The coach found himself breaking into a soft chuckle. He looked at Joel’s confused face. “I’m sorry, Joel. I’ve been making a mistake. I went to the university and did a little reading—the psychiatric stuff. I copied down some notes if you want to read them. But I can see you wouldn’t be concerned, would you?”

  “What?”

  “About what the psychiatrists say…Shit, I’ll give you the notes,” he said, and retrieved the spiral notebook. He ripped the pages out and tossed them onto the couch beside Joel. “Then later, you tell me what you think. About your friend, though, I can’t give you much advice. I certainly can’t tell you to experiment with him. But I don’t see anything wrong with his being your friend.” He put up both hands. “And that’s it, Kiddo.” He stood up.

  Joel didn’t. He folded the paper and stuffed it into the back pocket of his pants. “But how do I get him back?”

  “He’ll come around, I bet. Just don’t push him. JoAnna’s right about the religious angle. We’re Unitarians, Joel. That’s quite a bit different from his church, but even our religion is uncomfortable with homosexuality.”

  * * *

  When Joel left, Bill joined his wife. “Thanks, Jo.”

  She turned around to meet him. She was at the sink. She smiled, confused. She shrugged. “I wonder what his friend is like, Bill. Do you suppose one of them.pretends to be a girl?” She shook her head. “It’s so bizarre to hear that kid talk about being a homosexual. He’s so masculine!”

  “No. Neither of them is effeminate, as far as I’ve seen. Not like the Johnson kid. Now he does seem to fit the stereotype. It confuses me, too. At Joel’s age, though, sex is like drug addiction, I imagine. If he doesn’t at least get to see his friend, pretty soon.”

  “What? You don’t think he’s going to be okay?”

  “I’m afraid,” Bill said, “it all depends on that friend of his.”

  “Which reminds me, Bill. I was thinking, why don’t we talk to the Reverend Suskine?”

  “Why him?”

  “Since Joel’s friend is religious, wouldn’t it be a good idea to find out from Mr. Suskine what kind of problem that presents?”

  “Our Unitarian approach may be too alien for the Allen boy’s belief.”

  “We haven’t stuck to one specialist for Linton. But I was thinking of help for Joel. He needs to understand the religious angle, I think, before he can understand the Allen boy’s fears. If anyone can reach him, it’ll be Mr. Suskine.”

  Bill smiled at his wife. “Maybe you’re right. Mr. Suskine can at least give us a little perspective. But you don’t have to get involved if you don’t want to. The way I see it, Joel and Tom are at extremes right now. Over the summer, they’ll probably work things out. They’re definitely close. At school, if you saw one, you saw the other. I’m just surprised, now, that they waited so long to have sex.”<
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  JoAnna sighed. “It constantly surprises me how many problems kids have, even in a small town like this. I just wish my boss was more aggressive about it. I’m sure Joel and his friend aren’t the only kids getting messed up around here.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Joel sat alone in his room.

  Sunday afternoon was terrible. After he left Coach’s house, the wind had gone wild. It blew topsoil away from the fields and dried the acreage he had irrigated just the week before; and everywhere, the mountains were hazy ghosts behind the dust choking the wide desert. In town, the signs rattled above the buildings. Travelers ate in cafes, staring out across the billowing dust, listening to the incessant bumping of loose window panes. Birds foundered against the wind; feathers ruffling, they dived in sudden vacuums. Highline wires hummed and whipped in the wind along the highway.

  He couldn’t get the radio station because of the static. The television antenna on the roof of the house swayed violently in the wind and the television picture was a blizzard; without television, his parents sat at the dining room table drinking coffee, poring over the farm’s ledgers.

  It was the kind of day when doing chores would mean getting stung in the eyes and mouth with sharp flecks of hay when he broke open a bale to throw over the fence into the cow shed. His eyes would get red, tears would be slashed across his face, and the sand would get gritty in his ears.

  From his bedroom, he heard the sand soughing against the walls of the house. He hated being shut indoors. He avoided his parents, who tried to cheer him up but were really too worried with the sand storm to be bothered with his problems. But of course he couldn’t tell them anyway—not this problem, not just yet, not until he thought more about what Coach said. He’d been over this a hundred times. “It was just an argument,” he told them. “He’s been sick all week,” he said. “He’s busy with church.” He’d told them everything he could think of. What did it matter anyway? If he could walk in the desert he could think and learn from its vastness; from its indestructibility he could rediscover how to make the best of things. But the desert was also an inferno of boiling sand against an infinity of space. If he could be with Tom, he could at least enjoy companionship. But Tom had become a stranger. By now, Tom should have come to his senses, but he seemed to be growing worse and worse. What if he never came back to earth? Him and that fucking religion!