The Obstacle Course

by JF Freedman

  “I can explain,” I told him, my eyes begging. I wanted to explain in private; I didn’t want it all to come out in the wash here.

  Admiral Wells looked at me with a questioning stare, like he didn’t know what was going on, but didn’t like whatever it was.

  “What is it, Roy? What do you have?”

  Slowly, I opened my hand and showed them the statuette.

  “Oh.” Mrs. Wells had her hand to her chest, like she’d had a heart attack.

  “I didn’t take it,” I said, talking feverishly. “I didn’t. I found it. Here,” I pointed to the chest of drawers, “it was hidden behind this picture.” I looked at the admiral, who stared back at me. Everyone else was staring daggers at me, all except Melanie, who had eyes as big as saucers.

  “It’s true, I swear to God!”

  Melanie started hiccupping, like she couldn’t breathe. Her mother put an arm around her shoulder, glaring at me with pure hatred in her face. If looks could kill I’d be a dead man already, the way she was looking at me.

  “That’s a disgusting lie,” old Mrs. Prescott yelled, turning to Admiral Wells and Mrs. Wells. “He took it out of his pocket, I saw him do it. Look at him,” she said, pointing a bony finger in my face, “he’s trembling like a leaf, he’s been caught red-handed and he’ll say anything to get out of it.” She was spitting she was so angry. It wasn’t me she was angry at, though, it was herself for being found out, but me and her were the only ones that knew that.

  Mrs. Wells looked at me. She had tears in her eyes.

  “Roy, how could you?” she pleaded, in her soft, smoky voice. “After all we’ve done for you?”

  “I didn’t, Mrs. Wells, I swear to God! I would never steal from you, you’ve been nicer to me than anybody in my whole life.” I really was shaking, not only because I was scared shitless, but also because I was angry as hell. I hadn’t done it; this was outrageously unfair. “Why would I steal something and then a month later bring it with me here? Nobody’s that stupid, not even me!” I yelled.

  “Give it to me,” the admiral said, his voice flat and quiet. He stood there, his hand out.

  I walked over to him and placed it in his hand.

  “Go to the car,” he ordered me. It was the way you would talk to a dog.

  I pushed past them and ran down the stairs and out the door. The only thing I remember was the look on Melanie’s face. It was a look of pure pain, and I knew that even though I’d never see her again it was hurting her as much as me.

  We sat in the admiral’s study. Me and him. Mrs. Wells had gone up to her bedroom as soon as we’d gotten back. All the time we’d driven to their house in her car she hadn’t said one word, she’d just sat by herself in the back seat, stone-faced.

  I was wearing the clothes Admiral Wells had bought me; my own were bundled up in a sack, at my feet. The little silver statuette was in its place of honor with the others, in Mrs. Wells’s drawing room.

  “Do you believe me?” I asked him. I knew everything was fucked, that it had all fallen apart, but at least I hoped he knew the truth of it—that I would never steal from them in a million years.

  He looked away for a minute, then looked back at me. I tried to read him behind his glasses, but I couldn’t—he was a Navy admiral, he knew how to play poker.

  “Why would I?” I pressed on. I had to convince him, if I did nothing else I had to do that. “Why would I want something like that anyway? If I was going to steal anything I’d steal some tools or something I could really use. But I didn’t,” I added quickly, “and you know it.”

  He got up and walked across the room, stopping by a shelf that held some of his model collection, including a couple we’d built together. He picked one up, an early Civil War Union fighting yawl. We’d celebrated the day it was finished—the first of many, he’d promised me then.

  He looked at it sorrowfully, then carefully put it back.

  “That doesn’t matter, Roy,” he said, turning to face me. “Not now.”

  “It does to me!”

  He shook his head sadly. “You shouldn’t have been in that room. You shouldn’t have touched it.”

  “I know,” I told him, “but that doesn’t mean I stole it.”

  “It was in your hand. Helene Prescott saw you take it out of your coat pocket.”

  “She’s a liar! You know she is!” I was crying now, I couldn’t help it.

  “That’s not the point!” He took his glasses off and rubbed his hand across his face. “That’s not the point,” he said again, this time quietly, almost a whisper, like he was trying to convince himself it really wasn’t the point.

  “The Prescotts are our oldest and most cherished friends,” he went on in this real earnest tone, like he was explaining something important to me; or more accurately, convincing himself of the honesty of what he was saying. “I served under Sherman as a young man; I rose under his tutelage. If it hadn’t been for his guidance and support I might never have achieved what I did.” He paused for a moment, looking at me to make sure I was taking this in.

  “It doesn’t matter who’s lying,” he continued, “you or she. What matters is our lives, and our friendships. Regardless of what I feel personally, I can’t take a position against a dear friend. I can’t, Roy.” He paused again. “And even if I could,” he said, “I wouldn’t.”

  “But that’s unfair! That’s totally unfair!”

  “Perhaps it is. But that is the way it is.”

  He walked over to his desk and picked up the letter I’d gotten from Farrington earlier in the afternoon, the letter that had promised me that my life was going to change. He held it up to the light, looking it over.

  “When I decided to sponsor your application to Farrington,” he said, “knowing that if you did apply you would be accepted—let’s put all our cards on the table, what military academy is going to say no to me, or to Admiral Prescott—I knew what kind of person I was recommending. I knew where you came from, I knew what your background was.”

  “You did?” I asked dumbly.

  “Of course. I checked up on you. Thoroughly. I looked into your school, your grades, your attitude in class. The reports I got back weren’t very good, Roy. In fact, they were awful, across the board. A bad student; a nonstudent would be a better description, a disciplinary problem, an all-around troublemaker. The last person one would associate with achievement of any kind.” He paused, looking down at the letter again.

  “But I saw something in you that perhaps—no, obviously, others had not. I saw intelligence, I saw perseverance, I saw commitment. I saw you, Roy, I saw you better than anyone has ever seen you. And that’s why I stuck by you, that’s why I pushed you, that’s why I made my own commitment to you. And it paid off. This letter says it paid off. And I knew that in the future it would pay off a hundredfold more.”

  He dropped the letter back on the desk, as if it suddenly didn’t exist, as if what the words on the page said didn’t exist anymore.

  “I can’t stand behind that commitment now. I wish I could, because there’s promise in you, real potential. But if I were to stand up for you against her, that poor old lady, I would be doing more harm to my family, to my friends, to my own life, than I’m willing to. I feel like a coward in saying this, but that’s how it is.”

  “That stinks,” I spat out.

  He picked the letter back up again.

  “I’m forced to withdraw my recommendation,” he said. “It’s out of my hands.”

  He looked at the letter for a minute, then back at me. “Why did you go in that room?” he cried out. “For God’s sakes, why?”

  I was staring at the floor. I had no answer, because there was no answer, none that had any sense to it. I just shook my head, like a dumb dog.

  “I should never have pushed you this fast,” he went on in a rush. “You’re a boy, you don’t know these things, you have no experience.”

  “I know more than you think,” I told him, darkly, under my breath. I knew
about lying, I’d gone to school on that today for sure, all the little lies I’d told over the years were peanuts compared to him and his bullshit society friends. And I knew about women, something about them, anyway, I knew that Melanie Prescott, his friends’ precious granddaughter, wanted to fuck me more than anything in the world. Maybe I still would, I thought, one time, a revenge fuck, just to teach them all a lesson.

  “You think you do,” he said, sadly. “That’s the most regrettable aspect of it all.” He buried his head in his hands for a minute. “I have to take the blame for this. You’re the one who’s going to suffer the consequences, but the blame is mine, mine alone. I refused to acknowledge what a huge change this would be for you. I didn’t give you the time you needed to digest it. You trusted in me, and I didn’t protect you the way I should have. I should have taken better care of you, Roy.”

  The way he was talking, it was like it was me that should be feeling sorry for him, not the other way around. But I didn’t. He’d fucked me over, plain and simple, and no amount of him feeling sorry for himself was going to change that.

  “Sometimes the only course of action is no action,” he said finally, exhaling his breath. “That’s the lesson we learned today, you and I, and a bitter way to learn it it was.”

  I looked up at him. “That’s not what I learned.” I stood up to face him. I was almost as tall as he was. I’d never realized that before.

  “You want to know what I learned today, Admiral Wells? I learned that kids like me get screwed by people like you. That’s what I learned.”

  He turned away.

  “I was right back there, and you knew it, and you chickened out on me. All that bullshit you laid on me, about the code you live your life by, how you’re judged by your actions, not on who you are or who you know. It was all bullshit, wasn’t it? The Naval Academy code—what a joke! Just a fucking pack of lies,” I was really crying now, crying like a baby, I didn’t give a shit either, I couldn’t help it, it wasn’t my fault. Who I was, that was my only fault.

  “I wanted to help you,” he said. “That’s not a lie.”

  “Big fucking deal.”

  I had run out of steam.

  “Say goodbye to Mrs. Wells for me,” I told him, my voice flat, empty. “I guess she feels good now, knowing she was right about me all along.”

  “If it’s of any consequence, she doesn’t.”

  “Well, tough titty,” I said. I knew I sounded like a kid when I said that, but I didn’t care anymore. I just wanted to get the fuck out of there.

  “Roy.”

  I was at the front door, holding my sack of clothes.

  “What about your models?”

  “I don’t want those fucking models. You keep ’em.”

  He winced at that. For a split second, that made me feel good.

  “They belong to you. You made them.”

  “You touched them, so I don’t want them anymore. I wasn’t lying!” I yelled at him, starting to cry again. “Can’t you even say that? Can’t you even live up to your own fucking code?”

  He didn’t say a word: he just stood there. I slammed the door behind me on my way out.

  I stood on the bridge that crosses into Ravensburg, looking down at the Anacostia River. It was dark out; I couldn’t see the water very well. I was stripped down to my shorts and socks. The clothes the admiral had bought me lay in a pile at my feet. It was warm out, I didn’t feel the cold at all.

  He had used me, plain and simple. He’d wanted somebody to follow in his footsteps and he’d decided that was going to be me, to replace the son his wife had never let him have. All that garbage about helping me out, getting me into Farrington Academy, changing my life—it was a crock of shit. Maybe he had really wanted to help me, but to make himself feel good, not because of me, Roy Poole. He didn’t know Roy Poole from a fucking hole in the ground.

  I had been right. Earlier, in the Prescotts’ house, when I was thinking about it all, after being with Melanie, when I was thinking about how I didn’t fit in there. I had always known it, but like a dumb asshole I’d thought it could change.

  It couldn’t, now I knew.

  I put on my own clothes. They felt good, right. The only thing that still pissed me off was the haircut—it would take at least a month to grow out, I’d look like a pussy for a month.

  I wadded the fancy clothes the admiral had bought me into a ball, and wrapped the sports coat around them. Then I went to the railing and tossed them over, like Burt’s brother had done with his high school ring. I heard them hit the water, but I don’t know if they floated away or sank. Either way, I didn’t give a shit.

  ELEVEN

  PALM SUNDAY, A WEEK after my catastrophe, was for me just another fucked day. We’d been on school vacation—we get two weeks’ vacation, the same as Christmas. It had been a total waste of a week. My friends and I hadn’t done anything with it—we’d fucked off as usual, going down to the bowling alley and shit like that. Another boring week in Ravensburg, Maryland, the excitement capital of the world.

  Most kids I know go to church with their families on Sunday morning, then have a big early-afternoon dinner with all the relatives. Ravensburg’s a churchgoing community—for a small town it’s got a shitload of churches. At Easter-time people parade up and down the streets in their new fancy outfits, the girls especially. Not my family, though; my old man is not a churchgoer, to put it mildly. He hates anyone telling him what to do, so he hates preachers with a purple passion; church for him is one more scam for someone to take your money. He belongs to the church of Four Roses, that’s the only church he’s willing to attend, and he does it faithfully, every day of the week practically. Of all the crappy deals in our family that pisses my mom off, not going to church is at the top of the list, because she grew up in a strict Methodist family where going to Sunday school and church was as much a part of her life as eating or breathing. It wasn’t a major issue when they were courting because he let it go then, he knows to lay low when the tide is running against him; one thing he knew with certainty was that my mom’s parents would’ve made her break off their engagement if they’d realized how he felt about religion in general and churchgoing in particular, so he kept his mouth shut about it until they were clear of my grandparents; after they got married and the old folks didn’t have any say in the matter my old man showed his true colors: he put his size-eleven down hard. My mom’s too scared to cross him on it, like everything else in her sorry life. Once in a blue moon, if he’s not around on a Sunday morning, she’ll sneak out and go to service at First Methodist. Their minister is Reverend Boyer, and Mrs. Boyer is one of my mom’s best friends. She drags Ruthie and me to church with her sometimes, but the strain of doing it on a regular basis isn’t worth the wear and tear on her nerves. She prays privately, though; I’ve seen her sitting alone, studying on the Bible when she thinks no one’s watching. It helps her keep going through all her daily bullshit.

  Ruthie likes going to church with mom, ’cause she gets to dress up and mingle with her friends, but I find it boring, personally. All that fear talk about hell, damnation, and doom. To hear Reverend Boyer preach it, God hates a good time worse than anything. Since I love a good time, that shit don’t wash with me.

  I had planned on thumbing a ride to Annapolis this morning, but at the last minute I changed my mind. I didn’t feel like going to Annapolis today—I don’t feel like being anywhere near the Naval Academy, not right now.

  So I moped around most of the morning, finally meandering over to Joe’s house. His family lives down the block from St. Aloysius Catholic Church, which is where they go. Joe’s family is fish-eaters from way back, to Lord Baltimore practically the way they tell it. One of Joe’s uncles is a Jesuit priest, Father Martin, I’ve met him a couple times, he used to teach at Catholic University in Washington. He’s a pretty cool guy, he plays touch football and drinks beer just like any other of Joe’s uncles, but he’s a priest deep down, he’s committed. He can’t eve
r get married, he can’t even jack off, at least he’s not supposed to, although Joe says he bets he does, his uncle, since he’s such a regular guy otherwise.

  A lot of my friends are Catholics; around here you’re either a Catholic or a Methodist. There’s some Holy Rollers and Jehovah’s Witnesses and weird shit like that, but most people take their religion straight. Even when it comes to religion Ravensburg’s a square, old-fashioned, boring town.

  The other drawback about going to church, at least on a regular basis, is that if I did I couldn’t spend my Sundays at the Academy. Sometimes, though, I wish we did, just a little bit more, despite the phony piety, because sometimes you feel like you’ve got to pray for something. I know I can do it without going to church and I do sometimes, but I don’t feel I deserve to get what I’m praying for, since I’m not putting in the time. I could’ve prayed about getting into Farrington, for instance, but it wouldn’t have counted as much as if I’d done it regular, in a church. Anyway, being at the Naval Academy on a sunny Sunday morning beats the shit out of sitting in a hot, dark church any day.

  Joe and his family were just coming back from church service. He spotted me and came trotting over, running his finger under his shirt collar. He was dressed up, wearing a coat and tie, looking like a monkey and feeling like one, I’m sure. Like all the boys I know, Joe owns one crappy sports coat, from Robert Hall or Sears, which he wears every Sunday to church or any other special occasion, summer or winter. It’s dog shit compared to the expensive one I’d had from Saltz, the tweed the admiral had bought me. Even though I was pissed as hell at the admiral and didn’t want anything around that reminded me of him, I wish I hadn’t thrown that sports coat away. I’d looked good in it, it made me feel like I had class. No point in crying over spilled milk, though, that’s one of my mottos.

  “How’s Jesus?” I asked.

  Joe laughed: “Man, you are one blasphemous motherfucker.”

  We walked over to where his family was congregating outside his house, trading lies, gossip, and bullshit. Spring had truly arrived, the surprise nighttime cold snaps were no longer a worry, people were dressing lighter, the women more than the men, putting their heavy winter coats and wool dresses in mothballs and breaking out the lighter cotton ones. Some of Joe’s girl cousins, the ones in high school and a few years older, working girls now, looked mighty fine; I checked out their asses, which I couldn’t help but notice, seeing how tight their dresses were. They still treat Joe and me and all his buddies like we’re kids, even though we’re taller now than some of them. Little do they know how we think about them when we’re in bed under the sheets.