Shannon: What about Dooeys or Tyler?
Oh, Little Dooey. That’s my favo-
Shannon: Lets do Tyler.
Me: Okay. Sounds great.
Shannon: Does 7 work for u?
Me: yeah.
Shannon: Can u pick me up from Shelbys? Im working in town afternoon and then staying w/her & Uwe.
Me: Sure. Ill get you at 645?
Shannon: Yay !!! Cant wait !!!
I arrive at the white house five minutes early. Father Will greets me at the door. There’s a good amount of people, fifteen maybe twenty but it seems more because the house is so small and there’s little open space inside.
The inside of the house is basically one living room that spills into a mini-kitchen. There’s a door to the bathroom. That’s it. The students are sitting on two couches, some on chairs, some on the floor. The small kitchen behind me has a sink, a microwave, and a refrigerator. There are two boxes of cereal on the counter: Captain Crunch and Reese’s Puffs. There are two pots of tea and next to that Styrofoam cups, sugar packets, and two bottles of honey each in the shape of a bear. There’s also a steel cup with milk. I help myself to a cup of tea. I add milk and honey.
On the wall next to the refrigerator is a bulletin board overpinned with Catholic paraphernalia. There are three posters encouraging members of the Catholic youth group to join Father Will on a trip to Washington, D.C. in January for the March for Life; a poster about Matthew Kelly’s books The Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic and Rediscovering Catholicism; a poster about Father Tad Pacholczyk and the National Catholic Bioethics Center; the latest St. Joseph’s church bulletin; and an advertisement for a “Young Catholic Mothers” group that meets the second and fourth Tuesday of each month. (Rumor has it the Young Mothers follow an opening prayer to their meetings with a team-building type exercise, a type of spin on the classic disco song Y.M.C.A., that involves the same type of dancing, same type of physical letter making, and to the very same song, but the twist being that it’s Y.C.M.A.—Young Catholic Mothers (are) Awesome!). (Haven’t seen it. Don’t want to see it. Might melt unto liquefaction from spontaneous cringe-spasms if forced to watch it).
There is a cacophony of noise. Everyone is talking and laughing, some are laughing loudly as if the punch line just landed. The youth minister is a high strung man-toddler named Bobby. He’s running circles around the room, high-fiving people, laughing, slapping guys across the back enthusiastically, laughing very loud, giggling and squealing.
I sit at the front of the room and watch him. He starts dancing, starts doing the Dougie and it’s predictably preternaturally abominable. He’s signing the lyrics as he dances, but his “teach me” sounds like “leech me.” Leech me, leech me how to Dougie. Typical youth minister. He’s wearing a T-shirt with Pope Francis on the front, the pope extending a radio with the words EWTN written on it. A caption below the radio reads: Say hello to my little friend.
I laugh out loud (and so look like an idiot, like a crazy idiot laughing at the movie playing in his head on a continuous loop) when I think how funny it would be if Pope Francis actually showed up to this boondocks, backwoods meeting in the middle of nowhere just to punch this guy in the face and then leave.
I notice this girl to my right. She’s the only one in the room that’s calm. She’s sitting on the far end of one of the couches reading a book. I try to catch the title but can’t. She is a bombshell, near mythological in beauty. Greek mythology. I force myself to look away. I’m not going to give in to staring. I’ve been trying to put Father Will’s counsel into practice: every time I feel myself lusting after a woman to offer a silent prayer for her. Since we spoke it’s been nothing but failure. I try to pray, but I’m immediately distracted and go right back to my fantasy. And what a fantasy.
No. No fantasy. I reach into my pocket and squeeze the plastic beads of a 99c, quad-colored rosary I got from the back of the church one time after Mass. I remember a story attributed to Padre Pio, one I’ve heard the (now super-polarizing, perennially controversial) ancien Qoheleth Father Corapi tell a few times, where the saint was calling loudly for someone to bring him “his weapon.” Your weapon? his brothers asked, but you’re a Franciscan, you can’t have a weapon! Bring me my weapon, the saint said again, bring me my rosary. Thinking of Padre Pio and his weaponry helps, but only for a fleeting moment. I resolve not to look at her. It’s so hard. She is so good looking. She’s basically a younger version of my girl Molls, so… maybe just one look, a tiny peek?
Father Will speaks, his voice parting all the surrounding noise effortlessly, coming to my rescue just as my eyes start to wander and my fingertips lose feeling from escalating tighter squeezes.
“Okay, everyone. Thank you all for coming. We have a special guest tonight.” Father Will introduces me, reading a short bio he prepared. Greek mythology girl,
aka Molls la Plus Jeune, looks at me and smiles. I smile back. It would be rude not to.
Father Will leads everyone in the Our Father. He’s about to give me the floor when Bobby asks if he can offer a prayer too. Bobby prays a rambling, unconnected, catchall, every emotion spilling all over the place prayer. We think he’s done a few times only to have him keep going on. Even Father Will, who usually maintains a placid countenance, seems a little annoyed. Where is Pope Francis with that Jab-Cross-Left Hook combo?
I talk for about half-an hour. I answer questions afterward for about the same time. It’s a good group. The majority of the students are Catholics but there are a few Protestants, too. One of the Protestants, a guy named Myles who plays for the Mississippi State baseball team, asks me. “How do you think Christian athletes should approach their sport in trying to glorify God with it?’
I tell him that I’ve always considered sport as an art and that’s helped me in answering the question myself. Medieval cathedral builders made those churches so beautiful and so ornate because it was meant to be a gift to God, something beautiful for God. Christians can approach athletics in the same way, as an art to be perfected for God’s glory. I talk about the parable of talents in Matthew 25, probably in very imperfect fashion, at least as much as my status as laymen pretender “commentator” on Scripture—see: moron—allows me. I say, basically, if you’ve been given talent, use it.
Like Tim Tebow? Myles asks. Yeah, I say. Tebow is a good example of not being afraid to be a fool for Christ, of suffering the contempt of the world for love of Jesus, of not being ashamed of Jesus or his faith, right? Myles asks. I nod. I think so, yeah. The conversation broadens to other Christian athletes of recent note. One girl, a self proclaimed “MLS superfan,” mentions the recently ordained Father Chase Hilgenbrinck. Someone else brings up the baseball player Grant Desme. I feel at one point that I’m rambling a little so I finish by telling everyone to read some of the things John Paul II said to and about athletes during his pontificate, especially in his 2000 “Jubilee of Sports People.” Myles pulls out his phone and asks me to repeat the title.
Everyone heads over to the church afterwards. Father Will has encouraged the students to become more involved in their devotional prayer lives. This is the third week, he tells me, of what he hopes will be a weekly, every Friday of the year, praying of the Stations of the Cross. Everyone who was at the talk comes over to do the Stations, including the Protestants. They’d better be careful. Too much of this popery and they might soon become papists themselves.
Father Will has us do the Saint Alphonsus Ligouri Stations of the Cross. It’s the good version, the devout and truly beautiful version. Not like some of the new age compositions that come from that black hole that was the 1960s and 70s: those compositions with a fifteenth station, no kneeling and little reverence.
We finish the Stations and people make their way out of the church. I ask Father Will if he’ll see me for confession. I apologize. It’s not the scheduled time and I don’t want to inconvenience him. No worries, he says. He’ll see me anytime.
I confess my sins.
He talks to me some, g
ives me absolution and my penance, and then consoles me with a story attributed to Saint Catherine of Siena (or is it Saint Teresa of Ávila? Father Will says he’s not sure) who would wait outside the confessional for her fellow sisters and when they came out she would tell them, “Start again.” You’re forgiven, he tells me. Start again.
CHAPTER SIX
Shannon is being very bad to me. She makes me hold her hand as I help her down Shelby and Uwe’s front stairs. She has no idea what she’s doing wearing this perfectly cut yellow dress with her hair pulled up and all very curly tonight. She’s wearing small golden teardrop earrings and a thin layer of lip-gloss, just enough to make her naturally succulent lips look all the more so. We get in my car. Immediately the smell of her perfume fills the space. It takes every ounce of strength I have not to bite into the steering wheel, the way some of my dissertation characters had to bite into a piece of wood while their leg was amputated.
“And for you, sir?” the waiter asks me.
“I’ll have the Duck Burger.”
“Very good. We’ll have that okra out for y’all very soon.”
Restaurant Tyler is supposedly Starkville’s best restaurant. Supposedly because, with food so subjective, how can you say that definitively? I like Little Dooey the best because I love classic, fried southern food. Little Dooey’s pulled chicken sandwich is one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. Other people say The Veranda is Starkville’s best restaurant. It really depends on who you’re talking to.
Restaurant Tyler is very good. It’s located on the end of Main Street, the same road that becomes University Drive when you get closer to campus, and is kitty corner from another popular Starkville eatery, Mugshots. Above Tyler, in the same building, is the “Greek Tavern” Zorba’s. Tyler has a nice interior setting; low lighting, an exposed brick wall, dark mahogany chairs and tables, and a white floor with a small black diamond pattern, almost like a checkerboard. The dinner menu is great and so is the breakfast fare. Sometimes at breakfast they’ll bring you your coffee with milk and honey on the side. Not some imitation creamer, real foam-thicked milk. And you don’t have to even ask for it. They just know.
The waiter comes back and pours Shannon some more wine.
He then places our appetizer on the table.
“Can I ask you a question, Holly?” Shannon says, taking a bite of okra.
“Yeah, of course.”
“What color do you think girls look best in?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like dresses, shirts, style. I’m going to be putting on a fashion show and I want your opinion.”
I laugh. “Why do you want my opinion?”
“I just want it. What do you think?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I think it depends on the woman. I don’t think it’s about a color.”
“Yeah, fine. But what do you like best?”
“Yellow, I guess,” I say, my eyes glancing away from hers and onto to her dress. “Yeah. Yellow is probably my favorite color. What do you think?”
“Teal,” Shannon says, setting down her glass and making this big sweeping motion with both her hands. “The ocean, like the top of a big wave right before it’s about to break. Any woman in teal looks good.”
I nod.
“I broke up with Mark,” she says, “like you told me to.”
“I didn’t tell you to break up with him,” I protest.
“I know,” she says, tapping her finger on the table. “I know you didn’t. But that night at Shelby’s, when we were talking by the stream, those things you asked me really made me think. When you asked if I loved him. Have you ever been in love with someone?”
I gulp, hard. “I don’t know. No, I think.”
“How do you know if you are?” she asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Oh my golly, Holly!” she says, grabbing my arm across the table. “I saw the funniest thing today. It was this video of a baby and a cat. The baby,” she starts giggling, putting her hand, clenched in a fist, up to her mouth, “the baby is like two years old and she goes over to the cat and grabs it by the tail. The cat,” now she’s laughing, “gets frightened and jumps up and runs away. And the baby looks at the camera and just starts bawling her eyes out.”
The waiter brings our food. For a good five minutes, maybe even ten, we hardly speak. We eat. The duck burger is so good. The duck bacon on top of the breast is a nice addition. Shannon gets her third refill of wine. Shannon is one of those southern girls who tries to conceal her accent. I don’t know why. She does a good job because normally it’s barely detectable. But when she has had a few drinks it comes out in full force. It is musical and invigorating to me. My insides begin to melt like the cheese on my duck burger.
“How-lee,” she says, twirling her hair. “Could y’all bah-leeve when—
Shannon mentions a celebrity couple I’ve never heard of who just broke up and how, apparently, it’s this really big scandal and everyone is talking about it. I’m not paying attention.
“How-lee,” Shannon says, shaking my arm. “Isn-that crazeee? Mean they were like royaltee an if they doan make it what hope is there for thuh rest of-us?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I can’t believe it.”
“Whas wrong with me?” Shannon asks. “How come I cain’t find love? Every guy I date juss don’t work out. Juss ends up not workin’. Why?”
I have no idea what to say. She continues.
“Think I’m not bad lookin’, ya know? I’m kind. Sweet. Fuhn. Y’all think I’m fuhn, Holls?”
“Yes,” I say. “You’re very fun.”
“They-n tell me whas the matter with me? Tell me when I’ma find the guy that see things in me? Not like all them stupid boys I usually date,” she picks up her napkin and flicks it back down, “stupid ‘suh-thern gent-men’ in their sillee little suits and ties, bunch a dumb ole’ boys wantin’ one thing from me. I’m juss tired of it. Thas all.”
Luckily the waiter comes back. My hero. He’s really bailed me out of a pickle. He asks if we’ll be having anything else. I say no, but Shannon demands we get dessert. She gets raspberry ice cream and orders a small chocolate cake “for me.” Please, Holls. I doan want them thinkin’ I’ma pig. She eats her ice cream and asks if we can share the cake. She eats practically the entire cake by herself. The waiter returns once more, this time with the check. I reach into my pocket but Shannon says,
“Oh, no. No, no, no, no, sir. I’ma inda-pendant woman, Rhett Lawson. I’ma mah-dern business woman. Ain’t not you nor any man gonna pay for me.” Shannon hands the waiter a library card.
The waiter looks at me, trying to keep it together. One split-second longer of eye contact and we both would have lost it. “How about we split the check?” I ask him, handing him my credit card.
“That’s a great idea, sir,” he says, giving me a slight nod. “I’ll be right back.”
“I guess that’ll work,” Shannon says, finishing the last piece of cake. “That’ll be juss fine.”
We get in the car and Shannon’s mood has completely changed. She starts singing Jo Dee Messina’s “Bye Bye” at the top of her lungs, forcing me to join in with repeated slaps, hard slaps, on my shoulder.
We arrive at Uwe and Shelby’s house. I park out front. Just as I turn off the ignition Shannon reaches across and kisses me on the check, right under my earlobe.
“Eye had thee most wonderful time tonight,” she whispers. “Thank you.”
Shannon’s kiss gives me sealegs. I almost fall onto the road as I step outside the car. I walk Shannon up to the front door. Shelby is waiting for us. Shannon goes right inside.
“You been drinkin ta-night?” Shelby asks me.
“No ma’am,” I say. “I had tea because I knew I’d be driving.”
Shelby nods. “You’re a good boy, Rhett. Thanks for takin’ care of her sa-well. Come-ear.”
Shelby gives me a big hug and a kiss on the top of my head. “Get home safe now.”
&nb
sp; CHAPTER SEVEN
It’s the middle of October and I’m making good progress with the dissertation. Since my dinner with Shannon I’ve hardly left my house except to go to Mass or the library. I do at the library what I do at home: write. I’ve gone a few times to Strange Brew for the same purpose. I’ve hardly talked to anyone in this time, the past three weeks or so. Shannon sent me a text the day after our dinner apologizing for being a “hot mess.” Hot? Yes. Mess? Debatable. Dr. Molls? Still so fine.
I submitted my re-worked introduction to the afore-mentioned, always on my mind, Georgia, Georgia, the whole day through on my mind Doctor Weathers. She said it was “much better, but in need of further revisions.” Then she spelled out what that meant with lots of red ink and arrows.
Today I get a break from my work. It’s a needed break. I’m going to go and play basketball at the Sanderson Center with guys I met in the rec league two years ago; the very same time I met Brent and David. We all played in the intramural rec league for a year and then decided we, the eight of us total, liked playing four on four by ourselves better so that’s what we do the times all of our schedules match up. Today is one of those days.
We’ve all become great friends in that short time. Four of us are black, three are white, one is Hispanic. It’s a diverse group of guys and one of natural diversity. The kind of diversity where you’re all so much like brothers you can make fun of one another openly and little is off limits. This the complete opposite of the constructed and painfully awkward “diversity” of the modern American university system, the kind of “diversity” where each group takes turns arguing that they’re the most victimized by some other group and so should be given fill in the blank because of it and the gold medal goes to those who are most easily offended.
I’m not an economist. But I am convinced that a significant contribution to the national debt is all those new I’m Offended Gold Medals that are minted each year. I know one guy who is a seven-time I’m Offended Gold Medalist. It’s remarkable. I wish there was an I’m Offended professional league because this guy would be the annual MVP. Kids would buy his jersey and wear it to school only to get made fun of for it, which ironically would be a mysterious type of double victory for both the MVP and the jersey wearing kid because the latter would be getting made fun of for honoring a man who’s gone pro in being laughed at.
The Holdout Page 9