The Hearts of Men

by Nickolas Butler

  “And then, somewhere along the way, all of that . . . stopped. The travel, the culture, the food, the dancing, the sex . . . It just dribbled away into nothing. And that wasn’t my decision, okay? There was no dialogue about all that.”

  He’s pointing at his chest now, feeling his blood rise, the alcohol in his bloodstream. “I love you,” he says to Trevor. “You’re the best thing your mother and I ever did together. And nothing that happens on a move-forward has anything to do with that. Nothing will change that. I’ll always love you. And, in a way, I will always love your mom. But our job is done now. I mean, look at you.” He reaches across, takes—seizes Trevor by a tensed-up shoulder. “You’re a man now. Right? Well on your way to Eagle, no less.” He laughs. “My work is done.”

  The table is silent, just dining room din now. Outside the window, evening shadows have collected in darkened pools beneath the pines, and the moon is low over the horizon, just a skinny little crescent.

  Trevor’s head is in his hands.

  “What is it, son? Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “It’s just that,” the boy begins . . . His voice trails off, disappears. He cannot look at these adults, this father of his, leaning back just slightly in his chair, with the repose of a poker player holding a straight flush. Or this woman, her arms crossed, eyes aimed away from him. She stands suddenly, white napkin falling to the floor, and marches toward the bathroom, sandals sliding beneath forceful calves, purse clutched tight in her right hand.

  Nelson gazes after her, then back at the dinner table, docilely scratching at the back of his skull. He removes a plastic toothpick from his Swiss Army knife and scratches at his gum line . . .

  “I don’t understand why you’re doing this to me,” mutters Trevor.

  “I’ll tell you why,” his father says, leaning forward. “Because you’re naïve, Trev. Because you’re dating this girl and—I can see it—you’re going to get your heart broken. You’re what the shrinks call codependent. So . . . Why wait? Would it have been better to do this at home? During the school year? What? You think that’s how it works? You think we have a family powwow and your mom and I just amicably explain that our marriage sucks, that it’s sucked for years? Come on, Trev. Grow up.”

  “What does this have to do with Rachel?” Trevor pipes up now, no longer sad, but defensive, angry, ready to pounce.

  His father shrugs. “What? You want me to outline the whole thing for you? You want me to map it out? What do you want? Best-case scenario or worst? Okay, let’s go worst first, get that out of the way. So: You two go to the same college. Lovey-dovey all the way. Everything’s copacetic. For about a year, maybe eighteen months. Then she realizes she’s in love with somebody else. Nobody’s fault, but . . . there’s another boy. Lives in the same dorm as you, in fact. Talks to her in the hallways when she’s on her way to class. He’s more handsome than you, more forceful, more exciting, too. She can’t break it to you, that’s she’s no longer interested, so she starts messing around with this other guy behind your back. Now she’s a little distant from you, a little, you know, aloof. You’re twenty years old and for some reason you’re not having sex. So you pour on the adoration, the affection. You’re buying flowers for her every week, and then, every couple of days. Only, the more you do, the harder you try, the less attractive you seem to appear to her. So now she’s listening to different music, music that’s unfamiliar to you. It might as well be a foreign language, and she’s pontificating about this music, about specific lyrics that you can’t even understand. Until one day, you pour your guts out—the old hara kiri kind of emotional confession. And she just tells you, ‘Trevor, I’m not in love with you anymore.’ And now what? All those years. All those opportunities that you shunned just to preserve some kind of romantic notion about young love? Why?”

  The boy’s face is red and he exhales deeply, worrying his hands through thick brown hair. “I don’t understand,” he continues. “I just don’t understand why you’re telling me this stuff.”

  “Because,” his father says, “this is the real world.”

  “So you don’t want me to believe in love? What? You don’t want me to become good or decent . . . Is that it? Jesus, Dad.”

  “I just want you to take those fucking blinders off, is all.”

  “But, I mean, if I can’t be good now, if I can’t believe in love now, when I am supposed to? You don’t, obviously. Deanna doesn’t. Mr. Doughty isn’t married. I mean, what the hell? What’s the moral here? Don’t get married? Or, get married, but then feel free to cheat on your wife? Why did you even put me in Boy Scouts, then? What the hell am I doing here?”

  “You are a good boy, and you’re going to become an even better man. Better than me by a country mile,” Jonathan says. “I just want you to get the most out of your life. I just don’t want to see your heart get broken.”

  “So . . . You thought you’d insult my relationship with Rachel, and admit that you’re not in love with Mom, all in the same night, and, like, that wouldn’t break my heart? What the hell, Dad?”

  Nelson reaches for a wicker basket where a burgundy napkin loosely embraces a half-dozen warms rolls, their steam quickly dissipating into the dining room as he selects one and replaces the napkin, then spreads a pat of butter onto the bread and chews dispassionately, staring out the window at the night calm of the lake.

  “What do you think, Nelson?” Jonathan asks. “Would you advise a sixteen-year-old boy to go all-in on a high school relationship? You think that’s a prudent decision?”

  Nelson reaches into the relish tray, gathers some baby carrots, some celery, some radishes, and spoons some creamy dill dip onto a small plate. He eats slowly, patiently, sipping his Scotch, clearly in no hurry to answer his old friend.

  “I think,” he says at last, “that I have no great understanding of why one person falls in love with another. And in my experience, trying to talk sense to a man or woman in love is useless. But then again,” he adds, chewing his roll, “love doesn’t make sense. Love is an emotion.”

  21

  WILBUR WHITESIDE ARRIVED AT NELSON’S HOUSE late that evening, long after the sun had gone down, the streetlights humming to life, illuminating the day’s bicycles and baseballs left helter-skelter on front lawns, dew already beginning to glisten on still spokes.

  He knocked gently on the screen door and it was Nelson who came to the entryway and found him, bathed in the yellowish porch light, moths flying erratically about his white-haired head. He held his hat in his hands, spun the brim between his fingers.

  “Nelson,” he said sadly. Then, after a moment, “May I come in?”

  Nelson opened the door and led Wilbur into the sitting room, where his mother sat in her rocking chair, wiping the edges of her eyes with her thumb and index finger, first the right side, then the left.

  Wilbur sat on the couch, his hat held low between his knees. He was quiet a long time. Then he said, “My father died before I ever met him.”

  Nelson’s mother began to tear up again.

  Wilbur looked down at his shoes as he continued. “He was a coal miner in Ohio, and the way it was told to me, a tunnel collapsed and a great piece of rock hit him in the back of the skull and killed him. My mother was eight months pregnant with me at the time.

  “I suppose we were poor, but I don’t remember it that way. I remember helping my mother make sauerkraut, and how she stored it in this great barrel beneath our basement stairs, that smell. I remember collecting coal that fell off the trains, which was technically stealing, but then, the coal mine had stolen my father, so to be honest, I didn’t give a damn what anyone thought.”

  Nelson’s mother laughed sadly into her kerchief.

  “I remember my mother’s blackberry preserves and her fresh rye bread. I remember her parents, my grandparents, speaking German. I remember a day where we ate a picnic beside a little stream and my mother gave me a bit of chocolate. I remember hearing about the flood in Johnstown and reme
mbering from my Bible studies all about Noah, and being afraid that water was coming for us. I remember moving to Wisconsin. Remember seeing Lake Michigan for the first time.

  “But I have no memory of my father, nor did I ever once wish I had a father, and I want to tell you why. There were many boys in my neighborhood, see, who were beaten every night by their fathers. And it wasn’t just them. The mothers were beaten, too, and I do remember that. These sweet women who fed me apples and grapes and their homemade cheeses, and then, one day they might smile at me but when their lips parted it was to reveal that they had lost two or three teeth, or one eye might never open all the way again, and it was those fathers, I knew, come up out of the mine and drunk on whiskey, and how they would destroy everything in their sight, and, ma’am, I am not lying to you when I say that there were many, many nights when I went to bed and thanked the stars above that I had no father, because my home was a happy one, and a warm one, and it was just my mother and me.

  “I don’t mean to whitewash what you and Nelson are going through right now, and I don’t mean to suggest that your lives will be easy without your husband in the house, but I do want to assure you that it can be done, and not only that, but it just might make you and your boy both stronger.

  “I am also here this evening because I would like to offer to send Nelson to St. John’s Military Academy, near Milwaukee. I will pay the cost of his tuition and lodging. Nelson is a good boy—I can see that—and I believe in his future. This gesture would bring me great pleasure, ma’am, and it is my hope that you will see not only the wisdom in it, but the latitude it would give you, as well, to operate in the world without the stress of feeding or caring for Nelson without a father in the house. Oh, and I’d also like to give you this, if you’ll take it.” He handed her an envelope, thick with what looked to Nelson like a neat stack of bills.

  Nelson’s mother covered her mouth now with both hands, tears falling freely from her eyes. Her shoulders began to heave. The living room was dark, with just the light from the front porch to illuminate the floor of the entryway and, on the other side of the living room, a glow from the kitchen laying a rhombus of secondhand light over the couch. Dorothy rocked back and forth, Wilbur perched on the edge of the couch, and Nelson stood to one side, listening to it all.

  “What if he wants his son? What if he disagrees?” Nelson’s mother asked. “I can’t just send a man’s son off like this, without his say-so? Without so much as a conversation, now, can I? He could come back tonight for all we know. After he’s had time to . . . cool off.”

  Wilbur set his hat on a kneecap and tugged at the ends of his mustache. “I’ve thought about that, ma’am. Which is why, with your permission, I’d like to bivouac in your backyard, at least overnight. Look, this could have been an act of passion, and perhaps your husband will return tonight after he’s had a chance to cool down. Maybe he’s at a local watering hole right now, blowing off steam. And if that’s the case, I’d still like to talk to him, about St. John’s, I mean.”

  Dorothy stared at the old man a moment before saying, “Bivouac?”

  Nelson stayed up for hours that night, lying in bed, his face aimed at the window, half-wishing never to see his father ever again, half-willing their family station wagon to rumble right back down the street. Once, long after midnight, a throaty old engine did wheeze down the street, but it just rattled past, didn’t even slow down. And, fleetingly, from the backyard, Nelson thought he heard Wilbur’s snoring, a gentle rippling sound that was almost comforting, like an insignificant wind ruffling an untidy sail.

  And then it was morning. From his bed Nelson heard his mother and Wilbur talking in low voices, though there was light laughter, too, and the percolating of coffee, the sizzle and buzz of cooking bacon, and outside, birdsong and the vague sounds of an awakening world: car doors slamming shut, garage doors opening and closing, dogs barking to be let out or let in, a garbage truck’s steadily interrupted route and the heave, throw, and crash of big aluminum cans flying through morning air and back down onto grassy boulevard. He dressed quickly and entered the kitchen.

  They were sitting together at the kitchen table, Wilbur and his mother. Wilbur was already immaculately uniformed, while his mother very uncharacteristically sat in one of her better church dresses, hair and makeup done. Their faces turned to meet him.

  HE RETURNED TO CAMP with Wilbur that day, and a few short weeks later, in September, matriculated at St. John’s Military Academy, where his first year of schooling was a cold, cruel, agonizing period of intermittent hazing that bordered on torture. A favorite game the older boys liked to play was to force a group of, say, five or six younger students to clench a single maraschino cherry between their butt cheeks and race down the slippery granite hallway. A racer who “dropped” his cherry was forced to eat it. The older boys loved to bet on this game.

  But the following summer and fall, Nelson’s body began to stretch itself out, as if in adaptation to the many threats of his new circumstances. He would never rise over six feet, but neither would he remain a five-foot shrimp. And each summer he endeavored to make himself stronger, bigger, more capable. By the time he returned for a second year at St. John’s in September, Nelson looked like a badger or a wolverine: a low center of gravity, all armored in muscle and sunburned, hair cut close to the scalp, and eyes that no longer radiated warmth or compassion or apology, but simply a wary patience, or was it not in fact a latent anger waiting to detonate?

  A week after that second fall term began, an older boy slapped Nelson’s glasses off his face in the steamy locker room. Three seconds later, Nelson had pinned him to the slippery ceramic tile, and pulled his arm behind his back until he heard a series of unnatural pops accompanied by screaming. There were three more attacks after that, but each ended similarly until finally he was left alone. And then, mysteriously, he began making friends. At first it was just a couple of other loners and misfits, but later, it became boys Nelson respected for their smarts, their kindness, their quiet inner strength. By the time he graduated, Nelson had been voted Most Likely to Succeed.

  Years later, after graduating from West Point, he was earmarked for Vietnam, his Boy Scout experience considered a boon by his superiors, and later, it was his relatively short stature that made him an excellent tunnel rat, able to be sent down into the Viet Cong’s subterranean tunnel system, the poor son of bitch, with only a flashlight and pistol.

  22

  DEANNA RETURNS TO THE TABLE UTTERLY COMPOSED and there is Nelson, already standing to pull her chair out for her and slide it beneath her as she resettles a napkin across her lap. Jonathan guzzles down his Scotch, sinking into the half darkness of the dining room, the cozy shadows, the golden light, the familiar smell of freshly baked rolls and popovers and melted butter. He seems not to even realize Deanna has returned until she rests her hand on his forearm and he is brought back to the table. He appreciates her gentle touch, this tiny act of solidarity. Across the table, Trevor is obviously still fuming.

  “I want to say something to you, Trevor,” Deanna says now, taking a sip of her champagne. “It’s not quite an apology, because, well, I’m sincerely happy to be here with you, to have met you, and I think you know that. I hope, though, that you can also find it within yourself to . . . relax, you know? And just have a nice evening. Recognize the moment for what it is—time with your father, and Mr. Doughty, two men who clearly love you . . . What your father’s trying to say to you—and, look, I know it’s a difficult thing to hear—but the reality is, he most likely is right—you and Rachel won’t last. And that’s okay; it’s nobody’s fault. It’s part of growing up, you know? Part of becoming an adult.”

  Trevor leans back on his chair’s rear two legs with the disconsolate posture of a teenager whose ear is close to overflowing.

  “But, the thing about love, Trevor, is that a person should foster it, foster that feeling as long as they can. And if you’re in love right now, then, you should ride that feeling for
all its worth. And I wish you the best of luck. Still, you’re a Boy Scout, you have to be prepared—prepared to understand reality, too. I won’t say another thing to you this evening to deter you or to make you feel bad, because you’re obviously a good boy with a good heart. Your parents, I can see, have done a terrific job in raising you.” Deanna settles back in her chair, now apparently finished. Outside the restaurant, night has consumed the landscape, leaving only a pale necklace of lights glowing around the far shore of the lake. The moon, it seems, is lost in the trees.

  “Yeah? What do you know about my parents?” Trevor asks. “What do you even know about my mom? Geez . . . I mean, honestly. She’s back home, probably—shit, I don’t know, folding our laundry, making sure Dad’s company runs right. Who do you think was his first bookkeeper? Who do you think laid off Dad’s workers when they first started, huh? What? Dad didn’t tell you that part? How he wasn’t man enough to fire someone? Had to send my mom in to do his dirty work? And what for? So Dad can meet up with his girlfriend while we’re up here, ostensibly learning how to become better men, better Scouts? What a fucking load of horseshit.”

  “And that’s exactly what I mean,” Deanna continues calmly. “I would hope that my son defended me the way you’re defending your mom right now.”

  But Trevor isn’t finished. “Did you know she lost both her parents before she was twenty years old? Both of them. Cancer. They died about a year apart.” Trevor grips his fork, aims his eyes at the table. “Did you know that? Did you know that she had three miscarriages before she was able to have me? Three. I just want you to know, ma’am. You think you’re in love with my dad, or maybe, I don’t know, you guys are just having a . . . Jesus, an affair, or whatever . . . But we’re all my mom has. We’re her family. And I never even thought about that before, you know? It never dawned on me until now, but . . .” He points the tines of his fork at his father. “She would never do this to you, that’s for goddamn sure.”