Part Twenty Five

This is why we were all – “we” being everyone who cared a bit for Preacher, “we” being a fairly large number of St. John’s students – more than a little annoyed with Preacher that last year:

Spit Rats.

That what they call the college kids who go to Alaska to work in the canneries during the short, frenzied summer fishing season. Spit Rats live in tent cities down by the bay in places like Homer and Valdez. They promised them $20,000 for three months’ work; of course, a loaf of bread costs $5, but still, $20,000. In return you stand up to your knees in fish guts 10 hours a day, six days a week, all summer long.

And this was what Preacher decided to do.

When the rest of us took the MCATs and LSATs and GREs and applied to graduate schools, Preacher decided to go live in a fish camp.

Now, this was St. John’s. If Preacher had spurned g-school for the Peace Corps or to spend a year in Tibet or to backpack across South America following the trail of Che Guevara, nobody would have been too surprised. These are all acceptable post-graduate voyages of self-discovery. An internship at some company’s junior executive program would have been OK; sneered at, but OK. Going to work for your family business would be similarly tolerated.

But to go stand in fish guts?

He was resolute.

Look, I said, at least take the GREs. Then go to Alaska. Take a year off. Once you’ve decided you’re tired of fish, you can apply to graduate school for next year.

He just laughed.

This is going to be your life? This is going to be your career? I said to him.

You sound like your mother, he replied.

Oh, that’s low. Listen, I’m just trying to understand this. Don’t you think this is a waste?

A waste of what, he wanted to know.

A waste of you. Of your mind. Of… of everything. Hell, you could have done this right out of high school. Don’t you think you’re capable of a lot more than this?

Yes, he said. But I don’t have any more specifics than that. You tell me. What do you think I’m supposed to do? Law school? Medical school? Go get an MBA somewhere and make a million dollars? Academia? I’m open to suggestions.

You could do any of those things, I said to him. That’s why this is such a waste. If you didn’t have any particular abilities, then OK, but…

But I have to pick one, he said. I have to pick one and live with it. What if I pick wrong? What if I wake up in 20 years as a, I don’t know, as a lawyer, with a wife and mortgage and everything, and realize with a start that I was supposed to be an English professor? What if I get the MBA and make a million dollars and spend the bulk of my life regretting I wasn’t a writer? I’ve spent my whole life with people – like you – telling me that I can do anything. Everything. But I can’t do everything. I know I have something I’m supposed to do. But I don’t know what it is, and I’m… if I make the wrong choice now I might miss it entirely.

So instead, I said, you’re going to do nothing.

“I can think,” he said. “I can wait. I can fast.”

Herman Hesse? You’re quoting fucking Siddhartha to me?

He shrugged.

I know that all of us had this conversation with him at one point or another our senior year. What made it so irritating was that he himself didn’t particularly want to go to Alaska. He was paralyzed by indecision. Overwhelmed with options.

But I guess it worked out for him. Sort of.

At any rate, he turned in his thesis and rang the bell with the rest of us. Defended it orally, and I’m certain he did a fine job.

Me, during my oral defense I ended up making a series of sarcastic comments belittling one of my panel members, but that’s just me. I took the GREs with all the fervor of someone escaping a job at his father’s plumbing company and got accepted in the American History graduate program at Kent State.

And Preacher prepared for Homer, Alaska, the Halibut Capital Of The World.

Ellen was our valedictorian. No surprise there. My parents were coming down from Philly with my sister to see us graduate. I remember the weather was nice.

So the night before graduation there were a few different graduation parties and I went to one of them with Marc and Drew but got bored early and came home. Preacher had promised to catch up with us later.

When I came back I came in through the kitchen door – that’s what we did – and the house was dark except for the light over the kitchen sink and the tiny lamp that was always on at the bottom of the stairs. But I could hear Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds playing on the downstairs stereo, which told me (a) Preacher was home, and (b) he was entertaining.

Only Preacher would put on Nick Cave. “Kicking Against the Pricks,” played without a trace of irony, I’m sure.

OK, that’s maybe a little harsh. Preacher had a sense of irony. He was just a little ashamed of it.

So I figured I would go into the living room, turn off the stereo, watch a little TV. Maybe once the sex noises died down I could go upstairs and clean my room for the first time in two years – after all, my parents were going to be there the next day.

Maybe not.

But when I sauntered out of the kitchen and into the living room I saw that Preacher and his guest hadn’t quite made it upstairs. They were there on the landing and hadn’t heard me over the stereo and their own heavy breathing. And I didn’t want to look but I wasn’t anticipating them, wasn’t prepared to avert my eyes, and the light at the foot of the stairs made an almost perfect golden pool for them, and I saw. Ellen astride him, her hair long and black and straight and reaching almost to her waist. If her eyes had been open she might have seen me. I couldn’t move. I stood there like a deer in the headlights for what felt like an hour and was probably 30 seconds. Heard the sounds from her. Saw Preacher’s hands on her hips.

Then I stumbled back into the kitchen, mind reeling.

Ellen and I had been over for more than a year. We’d both dated other people. I was fine with all that. There was no reason for me to be upset. She could be with whoever she wanted to be with.

I sat there at the kitchen table wondering if I was furious or just shocked. Now that my ears were tuned to it, I could hear them over and under and through the music. After about 45 minutes of unrelenting cries from my former girlfriend I decided that he had seen me, somehow, even though I was never in his field of view out there, he had seen me, he had known I was coming back early, he had planned this whole thing, and he was just showing off. Just… just taunting me. I'm better looking that you; I'm smarter than you; and I can fuck your girlfriend fifty times better than you ever did. Never screamed like that for you, did she, roomie?

Even as I thought it, I knew it was ridiculous. But still, 45 minutes? Nonstop? I got up and opened the freezer and pulled out the bottle of Stoly that we kept in there. It was mostly full. I poured some into a juice glass. Cold and pure and clear.

The CD ended eventually, and Preacher decided to stop tormenting the poor girl, and the screams died down, and then I heard giggling, and they scampered up the steps. It sounded like he put the Smithereens on upstairs. Green Thoughts. Perfect.

By the time he came downstairs I’d finished about half the bottle. I felt nothing, no effect at all, but I also figured I probably shouldn’t stand up too quickly. He came into the kitchen wearing the same ratty white shorts he’d had on the first day I met him.

Jesus, he said, jumping, I didn’t know anybody was here. What happened to the party?

Got bored, I said. Company?

Yeah, he said, unexpected. Listen, it’s…

Don’t keep her waiting on my account, I said. Let me guess. Out of Seven-Up.

Gave the mini-fridge to a freshman, he said. Most everything’s packed up.

Marc and I were going to be there for another two weeks or so, but he was leaving the day after graduation.

I think there’s still some in there, I told him, nodding toward the refrigerator. When I did so I felt my brain slosh forward in my skull and nearly pull me over.

You OK? he said.

Thrilled, I told him. Go upstairs and finish giving your farewell address to the troops.

He looked at me with concern and fished a couple of bottles out of the refrigerator. Are you sure you’re all right? Do you want to talk…?

Get the fuck upstairs and don’t leave whoever it is waiting any longer, I said.

The thing is, he was serious. He knew something was bothering me and he was perfectly prepared to give up a nice warm bed and a nice warm girl in the bed to help me with… whatever.

I was overcome with disgust for him for that, more than for who was upstairs. And I knew that he wanted to tell me it was Ellen, and at the same time didn’t want to tell me – not because of me, but because of her. He never named names, not without their prior approval. So it was easy for me to keep him from saying it out loud.

He stood in the doorway, half naked, bottles shining in his hands. You sure?

Go, have your last bang as a collegian, I said.

He looked at me a minute longer and then went upstairs. Shortly thereafter I heard more creaking bedsprings and headboard-thumping.

I had some more vodka and then stood and walked into the living room, thinking I would use the TV to drown them out. That journey proved more difficult than I had imagined, but I made it there. I turned on a light and could see a pink bra draped over the arm of the couch and matching pink panties on the floor by the TV. I didn’t have the strength to look around for Preacher’s clothes-pile.

Great, I said out loud, now I have to sit on a sticky couch. I turned the TV on and sat on the sofa and tried not to think about them humping away on it before I got there. I clutched the bottle against my chest and the chill soaked right through me.

The next morning I awoke to the smell of eggs and bacon. The television was still on – Joan Lunden was babbling something about Michael Jackson – and the empty bottle of vodka was on the floor next to me.

I remember thinking, did someone hit me on the head with that bottle? How many times? And why was the TV turned up to 150 decibels? And who the fuck is cooking bacon in my presence?

Then I heard Ellen’s laughter coming from the kitchen. Slowly I sat up, keeping the contents of my stomach in place by sheer force of will.

Light streamed through the front windows.

“OK, you win the bet,” Ellen said (screamed, to me) over her shoulder to where Preacher was making breakfast. “He’s still alive.” She laughed. She was wearing a baseball jersey that said “Conquistadors” and her hair was still unbound.

There were so many sarcastic comments running through my brain that they formed a logjam in my mouth and kept me from uttering a word. I just looked at them and concentrated on not vomiting.

“You want something to eat?” Preacher called out to me.

She came into the living room and gathered up her clothes. "This isn’t weird for you, is it?" she said. "I mean, believe me, this was just a one-time thing."

"No," I said, holding my head in my hands, "it’s the happiest day of my life, you kidding me?"

"Seriously," she said. "I mean it’s not like we both haven’t…"

“I’m fine with it,” I said, as loudly and strongly as I could muster.

Preacher appeared in the doorway with a frying pan in his hands. “Your parents are going to be here in less than an hour,” he said. “Let’s put something in your stomach and get you looking respectable.”

I looked at him and opened my mouth to deliver a withering retort, then clamped it shut again, then raced upstairs to the bathroom.

They ate; Ellen, I assume, found pants; she sauntered back home to prepare for the ceremony with that same loose-limbed stride and cat-plus-canary grin that she’d sported around the house.

Nothing like having your bell rung a few dozen times to relax you before a big speech, I suppose.

Preacher cleaned up the breakfast dishes, came upstairs, tossed me in the shower while I cursed at him, cleaned me up, left me in my room to get dressed, came back downstairs, made coffee, greeted my parents, had Marc start entertaining them, came back upstairs, poured some coffee in me, helped me tie my tie, helped me back down the stairs. I said little, except “leave me the fuck alone” a few times.

We graduated. I made it across the stage without falling. By this time I was more sick than drunk anyhow.

(Don’t read too much into this. I told you, I wouldn’t become an alcoholic for years yet.)

And we stood around at the little outdoor reception later and everyone was chatting and everyone was nice and Ellen came over and met my parents and gave Preacher and me the exact same peck on the cheek and I had a few more drinks at the reception, which helped ease the hangover, and everything was wonderful and perfect and fine and I couldn’t stand it any more. I staggered up to where Preacher was introducing my parents to the Dean, handshakes all around…

“You know what your problem is?” I demanded. It came out a little louder than I had intended, because I was dimly aware of other conversations stopping and people turning to look at me.

Preacher looked surprised. “I just have one?” he said. “Let’s walk over…” he started, and I yanked my arm away from him.

“Your problem is that you are too fucking perfect. You know what happens when you are too fucking perfect? You become too fucking perfectly BORING. Your problem is that you are PERFECTLY BORING. You do everything perfect, you fuck perfect – right, Ellen? -- of that there’s no doubt, you’ll probably cut fish perfectly, too, you piece of shit, and you have even taken boringness to new heights of perfection. You are fucking boring, Mr. Perfect, Mr. Fucking Boring Perfect Ken Doll, and when I open a can of sardines and see a perfectly gutted fish, I’ll know you’re still off somewhere being Mr. Fucking Perfect, you fucking asshole.”

My vocabulary deteriorates when I’m loaded.

There was a deafening silence. Everyone looked at one another. Preacher didn’t. Preacher just looked at me. Without any anger at all, the perfect bastard. He tried to put his hand on my shoulder. “Perfectly true,” he said. “Let’s go for a little walk and talk about it, huh?”

I wasn’t looking at him. I was looking at my parents, who were looking at me disdainfully and at Preacher like he was a saint. And I snatched my arm away from him again.

“Get. The Fuck. Away. From Me,” I enunciated, and rolled my hand into a fist and threw a roundhouse punch with everything I could muster.

Preacher didn’t really even have to duck. I misjudged the distance between us, missed, whirled around, fell into a table, and knocked a bunch of ice cubes and crab puffs into the grass. There was a low roar from the crowd and people scrambled out of the way of the flying crudités and I lay on the ground next to the overturned table, too drunk to get back up and too embarrassed to continue breathing.

My father and Marc and Drew helped me up. I heard Preacher say “I’m the last one he wants helping him right now.”

That was the last time I saw Preacher Haywood. And the last time I heard his voice. He sent me a couple of postcards from Alaska. I never responded.

College was officially over.