by Ward, Robert
On the other side of the aisle were Jeremy’s friends, the four of us who lived with him, Sam Washington and the suddenly reappearing Glitter Twins, jazz musicians from Monty’s, poets, artists, Sister Lulu Hardwell and her trucker friend, Dan, dressed in his green uniform and wearing a Big Cat hat, which Lulu took from him at the door. This crowd was dressed in their wildest duds for the occasion. Val wore the tightest dress imaginable; she said that Jeremy wouldn’t want her there looking sad and sexless. Babe wore a flapper’s dress she had found at a thrift store, and Eddie was resplendent in an old double-breasted gangster suit from his father’s closet that made him look like Nathan Detroit. Sam was dressed in a sneaky brim hat, a fire engine red sportcoat, and two-toned hustler shoes, while the Glitter Twins were dressed in skintight sequined sheaths and four-inch fuck-me high heels. The other artists and beats were covered with hair and paint, and there was one man I had never seen before dressed completely in a black rubber suit. I made it a point to avoid him; I was too wasted to hear his story. Also on our side of the aisle and in the rear of the church was Dr. Hergenroeder and five staff psychiatrists from Larson-Payne, all dressed conservatively, but they had brought with them a special caravan of mental patients, about nine or ten of those who loved Jeremy. One of them, Jimmy Crabtree, aged 67, walked around in circles and sang “Mary Had a Little Lamb” three times in a high-pitched, childlike voice. Another, a hugely fat paranoid, named Horace, sat on the end of the row and mumbled, “They’re looking at me. They’re looking at me. THEY THINK I’M A FUCKING QUEER!!!” about a hundred times. Jeremy would have approved.
And in the very back row was a black-shades-wearing Rudy Antonelli and three of his goons. They arrived late and sat down with a swooping flourish. I could feel their eyes boring into my neck as the Episcopal bishop spoke.
His name was Dr. Taylor Scott. He wore long black robes, and he gave a dull, predictable speech about the “tragic loss of one of Baltimore’s rising young businessmen, a beacon of light and optimism … a man whose career and fate seemingly knew no boundaries … now cut down like so many visionaries in the prime of his youth.” The WASPS mumbled agreement, Jeremy’s aunt cried silently on old Farlow’s shoulder, and a few of the stoned hipsters from Monty’s laughed out loud. They thought that Jeremy was a put-on artist, that pretending to do business was his own triple hip way of laughing at the establishment, making a mockery of all that was holy in the straight world.
They annoyed me more than the WASPS, because I felt that they should have known better. But I tried hard, through my own clenched teeth as I stared at the closed coffin, not to come down on any of them. That was my problem. Jeremy was beyond all that. Businessmen, artists, cons, teachers, shrinks: In life, he accepted them all and even loved them all. As we sang an old hymn that Farlow said was his favorite in church as a boy (“Holy, Holy, Holy”), it occurred to me that this was his real legacy.
With Jeremy Raines there were no wasted moments, and I swore to myself, as I held Val close to me, that I would waste not one more of my own, not one in guilt, not one in remorse, not one in wasted sadness, not one in self-pity. I would live life, by God, to the fullest, take up where he left off, feel his spirit inside of me, pushing me on.
In the graveyard old Farlow reached down and elegantly touched the edge of the coffin, and that pretty much finished me along with everyone else.
And perhaps that was the way it should be, for bankers, university presidents, hipsters, poets, mental patients, shrinks, and even murdering gangsters wept as one, wept for their dear departed friend, he who burned brighter than any of them. And it occurred to me that this is what Jeremy wanted more than anything else. That all the world would become one loving brotherhood.
But this could just have possibly been bullshit. I was too wasted and emotionally drained to really be sure. He may have just wanted money, sex, and a good time, but at least in that, he excluded no one, which was more than I was capable of. For as I left that sward of lawn, I stared with pure hatred and a little fear at Rudy A. who caught my glance and came toward me. Alone.
“Walk with me,” he said.
I looked at Val and told her to wait for me by the car. Then Rudy and I strolled away from the departing circus of mourners, out among the white gravestones.
“I want you to know I’m very sorry about your friend,” Rudy said. “He was a great guy. Colorful, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said, “wasn’t he?”
“But a very bad driver.”
“Yeah,” I said, “very bad.”
“You think I killed him, don’t you?” he said.
“Why would you do that?” I said.
“You tell me? I wanted to do business with him. He was going to make me rich.”
I said nothing to that, but I understood what he was telling me. It was his dead solid perfect alibi.
“Maybe you think he had something to do with the death of Johnny Martello,” I said.
“Why would I think that?” he said. “I know who killed Johnny.”
He reached into his cape pocket and pulled out a battered envelope. Grabbing my right hand, he poured the contents into my palm. Four perfectly shaped four-leaf clovers. For a second I was stunned, uncomprehending. Then I nearly laughed out loud. Jeremy must have copped them from his desk that first day we had struck our deal with Mr. A. I hoped it wouldn’t mean trouble for Bobby Murphy; I’d have to call him soon and explain.
“These came in the mail. The Irish assholes did it,” Rudy said. “We’ll have to settle with them. Soon.”
I looked into his eyes for a sign that he was lying or playing with me. But there was none, which still didn’t mean he wasn’t putting me on.
“What do you want?” I said.
“You’re a smart boy,” Rudy said. “Smarter than the others. Now that Jeremy’s gone to his reward, you and I are in business together. I want you to stay on, run things. Jeremy was a genius, but he was a lousy administrator. Will we be partners?”
“I don’t know,” I said numbly. “It’s too soon to say.”
“Of course,” Rudy said. “But I thought I should put my cards on the table. You go get drunk, get laid, then you come tell me, say, day after tomorrow? Okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
“One more thing,” he said. “Since I now own the business, the house on Chateau is mine. You and your girlfriend Val are welcome to stay as caretakers, but the rest of that herd moves on out to pasture, like tomorrow? Got it?”
I said nothing to that at all.
Then he reached up and pinched my cheek hard.
“You’re a smart kid. Just cause your friend blew it don’t mean you can’t make some bread, huh?”
There didn’t seem to be any answer to that either, so he turned and walked off. He didn’t have to go far. His limousine had been trailing us the whole time, and he only had to take a couple of steps before the door flew open, and he ducked inside.
I walked back toward the parking lot and my friends, and I saw someone talking to Val. At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. It didn’t seem possible. But after a few more steps, I saw that it was no illusion.
It was my father hugging my girlfriend.
“Hey,” I said, walking toward him. It wasn’t really what I had in mind, but it was all I could get out without choking up.
“I’m deeply sorry, son,” he said.
Then he put his arms around me and squeezed me, and that was all she wrote. I felt great shivers come through me, shock waves after an earthquake.
“Dad,” I said. “He’s gone, Dad.”
He held onto me and said the words I hadn’t heard since I was a child: “It’s all right, Tommy. It’s all right, son.”
And then Val joined us and Babe and Eddie and Lulu and even—God love him—Dan the Trucker, and we stood there holding each other like some lost chiefless tribe who’d gotten split up in the deep woods and found one another at last by some sweet, still blue pond.
&nbs
p; There was a party down at Monty’s that afternoon, crab cakes and jazz and hashish and people telling stories, funny, sad stories about mad Jeremy, but I was all storied out, and I told Val I was exhausted and heading back to Chateau
Avenue to sleep. She held me, and she said she understood and that she would be along after a while and that I shouldn’t worry.
And I didn’t, because I knew she’d be there. Whatever there was between us, it was never cloying or dead, and I thanked God for that.
But I had told her a white lie, because though I was so tired that I could barely stand, I drove out to leafy, beautiful Charles Street and took a right at the winding road that led to Larson-Payne. It was about four when I got there, and in the shifting afternoon sunlight, which cast moody, elongated shadows of the great brick buildings across the lawns, I went inside to find Billy McConnell.
He was sitting up in his bunk when Dr. Hergenroeder let me in. He was as handsome a child as ever, but now there was something in those eyes, a confused but very obvious curiosity. He gave me a shy smile, which seemed to say that he knew me from somewhere, but that he could not name the time or place.
“Billy,” Dr. Hergenroeder said. “This is a friend, Tommy Fallon.”
Billy looked at me and smiled wider. But he said nothing.
“Let’s go for a little walk, Bill,” I said.
Billy looked at Dr. Hergenroeder eagerly.
“It’s all right,” Dr. Hergenroeder said. “But just a few minutes. And you have to bundle up. It’s chilly outside.”
Billy didn’t move. He only stared straight ahead, and for a terrible moment I thought he had slipped back into the dark hallway from which Jeremy had rescued him. Then slowly he was up and putting on his brown corduroy coat.
Outside the wind whipped through the trees, making a sound like howling wolves.
We walked down the long hill, and I felt a twisting pressure in my stomach. What was I going to tell him? It seemed to me that given the circumstances, the short time we had together, that every word I said to him should contain some grain of eternal wisdom, something that he could hang onto when the darkness threatened to descend on him again.
But as we walked farther and farther away from the great red brick walls of the hospital, no such words came and I felt a sinking sensation. Oh, God, if only I were Jeremy, if only it were me that had died out on that lonely Virginia road. Better, better by far that it had been me, for what the hell was I, a failed lover—my girl was going to move 3,500 miles away, a failed friend—I never gave as much to Jeremy as he did to me. I was headed down the path my father had plodded on all those years as surely as the moon ascended in the troubled sky. I would be a no-show like the old man, afraid to try at all, hiding behind my second-hand critical judgments as he hid behind his cynicism. And now, as we walked down the hill, I was failing again, failing to provide one whit of insight, philosophy, Christ—even companionship for young Billy, who needed it so desperately.
I was utterly paralyzed, and as we walked silently on toward the dark woods it seemed to me that this small boy, lost in his own well of fears, was really my twin, the two of us locked in some deep, mute blackness.
Then ahead of me I saw some white wooden lawn chair and a pile of old dead leaves.
And without knowing why or even what in God’s name I was doing, I patted Billy on the head and took off at a wild pace toward them.
I could see the breath blowing from my mouth, and I could hear twigs snapping beneath my feet and I ran faster and faster, and leaped into that pile of leaves, something I hadn’t done since I was twelve years old.
And I was filled with a sense of lightness and joy and felt—God knows I know it sounds sentimental but even so—felt that Jeremy Raines had propelled me across that green grass and I looked back at Billy, and he was still standing there, yes, but he was leaning, leaning toward me like a sprinter on the starting blocks, and I yelled to him at the top of my lungs:
“Come on, Billy … Come on!”
He looked up at me, and there was fear in his face.
“What about the Moat Monster?” he said.
Of course, I thought … what a fool I’ve been.
“He’s gone,” I said. “It’s okay. Come on …”
I opened my arms, but he shook his head.
“How did he die?” Billy said.
Oh, God, I had to think of something fast.
“The knight,” I said. “This knight came by and his name was Sir Jeremy and he had a great silver spear that he used to kill dragons, and he told the boy in the castle to stand back … and then … then … he threw the spear up right next to the boy’s window, and it stuck in the wall. The boy pulled it out, and Sir Jeremy shouted up to him, ‘The next time the Moat Monster shows his ugly head, you shut your eyes and you think of me, your friend, Sir Jeremy, and then you throw it with all your might.’ The boy listened and fairly soon, the Old Shoemaker tried to cross the moat and sure enough, the Moat Monster raised his head, and bellowed up at him. Listen Billy … he was a horrible looking monster with a huge, ugly mouth. He had double rows of the sharpest teeth and the sound he made was awful. But now the boy was almost ready. He shut his eyes and thought of his friend, Sir Jeremy the Knight, and then with all his might, he threw the spear, down toward the moat.”
“He did?” Billy McConnell said.
“Yes, and it was a perfect strike. He stabbed the Moat Monster right in the jaw. The Moat Monster flipped and flopped and turned this way and that and made a horrible moaning sound and finally died belly up in the bloodstained waters.”
There was a slight smile on Billy’s handsome face.
“He did?” he said.
“Yes,” I said, madly improvising. “Yes, and then the Old Shoemaker was able to cross and he and the boy lived together, as friends, happily ever after.”
Billy listened, and I felt my heart pounding. Then he looked at me and said quietly:
“But what happened to the knight?”
My throat caught then and I found it hard to continue …
“He … he kept going on …”I said, “to another world … to help other people … because that’s his job.”
“And did the boy ever see him again?” Billy asked.
I didn’t know what to say. I was afraid of any answer I might give … and yet … yet … I knew better than to lie.
“No,” I said. “No, he’s gone on. But every time the boy shuts his eyes, and thinks of his friend, then it’s like they’re together again. You see, some people, Billy, you only need to know for a short time and they’ll be your friends forever.”
“Is that true?” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s true. Now come here … come on … Run … Run.”
But Billy still hesitated. So I picked up a great armful of leaves, and threw them in the air, and let them settle on myself, and laughed wildly. He smiled shyly and leaned forward, but it was as if he was glued to that patch of ground. So I did it again—threw the leaves in the air, and leaped around like a madman, and gave out a crazed whoop. I was so mad I didn’t even realize what I was shouting. And then I realized it wasn’t my voice at all … but Jeremy’s … and he was saying through me: “Come on, my boy, time’s a-wasting now.” And it was then that Billy started to run. He ran toward me with all his might and his little red face was smiling and he gave out a little shy cry of joy. And I began to laugh like a lunatic, and threw the leaves up in the air again … and then he leaped feet first into the pile with me, and he gave out a high-pitched cheer and I cheered with him, and covered him with leaves, and he tossed them back on me, screaming and laughing and we were like two mad idiots out there on the great wide hospital lawn.
And when we were finished and walked back, I didn’t have to say any priceless Words To Live By, because I knew we had all the time in the world.
In fact, all I remember saying to him, as I gave him back to Dr. Hergenroeder in the marble vestibule, was:
“Be a g
ood boy and don’t worry, because I’ll be here Tuesday. I’m your friend and I’m never going to leave you. Ever. You can count on that.”
“You won’t?” he said. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
Tears came to his blue eyes, and he looked up and hugged me, and I knew that this was it—I was in with Billy for life. And as I walked across the great lawn in the gathering dark, I felt that Jeremy was smiling down on me, and then it occurred to me that maybe mad Jeremy Raines had planned even this—and I laughed and looked up at the darkening sky, and said:
“Okay, Jeremy … okay, my boy … what else do you have for me?”
And the answer came three blocks away, as I maneuvered Val’s car over the old streetcar tracks on the York Road.
I didn’t really have to tell Babe and Eddie that Rudy A. wanted them gone. They were packing by the next morning, throwing things into their old Chevrolet.
“We’re heading to the West Coast with Val,” Babe said. “You oughta come with us, Tommy. Tell you the truth, we’ve been dying to make it out there for some time, but out of loyalty to Jeremy, you know …”
“What’s so great about it out there?” I asked. “I don’t get it. You guys don’t even surf.”
Eddie slapped his stump into his forehead.
“We’re not going to surf, man. We’re headed to Haight-Ashbury. There’s a whole new thing going on out there. I got a card from a guy I met in Tangier. He said it’s a meeting place for hippies. It’s wild.”
“Hippies?” I said. I didn’t like the sound of the word. It sounded soft, disposable.
“Guys like us,” Eddie said. “You know how in Baltimore we’re like freaks. Well, it’s like everybody in every state who is a freak is going to live out there together.”
“And secede from the nation?” I said.
“Maybe,” Babe said. “Tell you the truth, I’m about as cynical as you are about it, but what the hell, it’ll be an adventure.”