Untitled Chapter one: A Family table Dinner Discussion

I thought about Al and I’s conversation over and over in my mind as I rode on the bus.

It was the first time someone close to me has ever mentioned sexuality, and it made me unquestionably uncomfortable. It wasn’t because it was Al, no, if it was anyone else but Al, I would have not even tried to discuss it.

I thought of the Vietnam war and all the protests going on, and the so called Hippies and revolutionaries who believed in peace, free love and drugs. They did whatever they wanted in order to ‘find their true self’ or so forth. It reminded me of when my father and I had our first argument. It was during middle school, and I believe I was in the seventh grade.

One day when my father was talking at the dinner table he was telling us about the Hippies and how they were ruining our countries image.

Mother had made homemade macaroni and cheese and oven fried chicken with sautéed mixed vegetables. Everything was very good, so good in fact, Al and I were quietly and steadily eating our meals without a word.

“How was the job, dear?” My mother asked quietly, her brown eyes locked into father’s stern amber ones. My father was also a part time electrician and did side jobs every now and then, a trade he learned from his uncle and father. His father had owned a small business called Elbridge Heating Incorporated and passed it down to my father when he passed away years ago, but it was a slow business and he didn’t get much work, so he got a second job at the Davenport hotel for added security. The job stuck, and now he was manager for the hotel.

“It went fine, as usual. Just the place was full of delinquents and hippies.” My father said under his breath. “Couldn’t stand the smell in there, it was a little too ripe of smoke, it made me nauseous.”

“Oh, dear,” Mother commented softly. “Did it make it hard to concentrate on what was going on?”

“Well, I had to go into the basement to inspect their heater, it had stopped working, so they called me as an emergency since it seemed I had the fairest price. It wasn’t too bad down there, just dirty.”

“What was wrong with it, dad?” Al asked suddenly.

He smiled at Al. “Well, firstly there was a lot of dust and dirt built up within the thermostat so it became faulty, because of that there was no contact and it caused a loss of power.” He paused to have a drink of water. “I shut everything down and cleaned it up, replaced the fuse and checked the circuit breaker as well. That fixed it right up, and I was out of there, thank goodness.”

I nodded at him. “What was with the hippies?” I said with a slow smirk. He grimaced at me and I started to take a bite of his vegetables.

“They think they know what liberty is.” He said shortly. “As I was working down there, I heard them all yelling, things like, ‘Oh no, we won’t go!’ and ‘Get our boys home!’…protesting as they were listening to the radio about the news in Vietnam. Kids today have no respect for anything. Don’t they realize that if it weren’t for our forefathers fighting and dying, we wouldn’t even have the right to say anything, much less have protests?!” He took a swig of water as if it were hard alcohol and started eating again.

“They just want to have peace.” I said.

“You can’t have this country’s people looking like a bunch of silly little lily-livered tyrants; parading themselves in their scantily clad, colorful clothing, their talk of open love or whatever it is. It is all foolhardy and sinful.” He said with a testing impatience. “It’s a short step to a God-less nation, where hippies have their love fests and sleep with whomever they please, never mind the consequences. It makes us look like immoral hoodlums.”

Mother sighed. “Would any of you boys like seconds?”

“No thank you, honey.” Father said softly to her. Al shook his head.

“Love fests?” I said with a sarcastic humor. “That sounds gross.” I sniggered.

Al cut in, “Shush it, Ben.”

Father gave me a harsh look. My face became still and I shut up. “This is why we go to church every Sunday. It is a family day to learn about our lord, and the truth of our nature. It is wrong to lose sight of that, and we need to be in constant scrutiny of ourselves, lest we be tempted by cruelty, fear or worse. If we think that certain things are okay, then we will fall in deeper into sin, and make it harder to see the light.”

“I do agree with you to a large extent, dad, but how can we be happy with life if we are always criticizing and demoralizing ourselves all the time?” I asked suddenly, and as soon as I said it, I shut up. He looked positively fuming at me.

“Because,” He started, looking at me with a concentrated look of wise anger, “in this life, you have two choices, to be with God, or not.”

I was so mad when he said that, I stood up at the table. “No, I don’t think that’s true. God forgives people, even if they aren’t with them. What about the tribes in Africa who are uneducated and have no access to information, and they cannot find out about God. Then what, dad? Are they to blame?”

“Sit down, son!” He said to me with a fury I could not withstand, so I sat down quickly.

“You are a troublesome little mouse, Ben. You need to keep your temper in check, I promise you it will help you in the long run.” He sighed. “And as for the African dilemma, that is what Missionaries are for. They go to those desolate and uneducated places for just that reason.”

I shut up the rest of the time, and my mother gave Al an incredulous look across the table, and said meekly, “Who wants dessert?”

I replayed the scene in my head and I chuckled. It was interesting to remember it, for me, as I was riding to see Noah.

But it was a temporary relief to the reality of my bigger problems.

Noah.

He didn’t believe in God, but he didn’t deny His existence either. Was that just as bad as being against God?

I had always believed it to be so. But it made it harder to say yes when I thought of sweet, brilliant Noah.

He cared about others, and he was a good person.

I wish I would have had the guts to talk about Noah with Al, or even with Marisol.

But I got the feeling that Marisol wouldn’t have understood me, and came to the wrong conclusions.

She was lovely, no doubt, and sometimes when I kissed her… it sent me on edge, my heart palpitating in my chest, and I would want her so much, to be with her. But in all the time I knew her, we never did anything, only kissed, held hands, and, once I had taken off her bra, and I was nervous even then.

I wanted it that way, since it was proper, and I had it in my mind that she was a lady and I treasured that about her.

I told her, before I left on the bus to Idaho, what had happened to Noah.

She had met Noah a couple of times, and they seemed to hit it off. Though it seemed to me, in a very odd way, that there was this almost undetectable rivalry. It seemed the other would look straight in the eye, challenging each other, to talk to me, to be close to me, to prove somehow who was more important.

It was probably just my imagination, but oh well.

She was wearing a beautiful blue dress and a lovely white sash around her waist that showed off her figure and we were outside, it was warm out and she looked worried about me.

I gave her the letter that Noah’s brother sent me and she read it, looking at it for a long time.

I think I kind of cried before I came to see her, and she noticed. “Ben, what’s wrong, love?”

“Marisol, I have some bad news.” I handed her the note. At first she didn’t take it, so I said, “My friend Noah got shot,” And she took it from me immediately.

“So you’re going to visit him, no doubt?” She looked over the note again and handed it over to me.

“Yeah, I’m leaving tonight.” She gave me a sad look. “But…But I’ll definitely be back on Sunday for church.” We went to the same church, and honestly, I loved the church we went to (we’ve been going as a family there for years). We got to sing hymns a lot and though I tried to hide my voice, I sang along to every song, and my voice was horrible, but I really enjoyed it a lot.

“Okay, dear. You let me know when you are back.” She got a little tense. “It’s already enough you can be a stick in the mud and stay home all the time, I can’t have you moving to another state. Even if Idaho is our neighbor.” She said, and it sounded a little indignant, but she tried to smile to not make me feel too bad.

“You know I always love being with you,” I paused and she put her hands on her hips. “Hey, when I come back, we’ll go on a date.” I said. “We can go dancing, if you like.”

She rolled her eyes, though she seemed excited by the premise. “You can dance, love?”

“Sure I can, just not very well.” I laughed.

She laughed a little and then she said, “Ben, were you crying earlier?”

“Yeah I was.”

“Because of Noah?” Her bright green eyes stared at me strangely.

“Well… I’m really worried. I just hope he will be okay.”

“Yeah, me too.” She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. “You will be okay out there by yourself?”

“Of course I will.”

“You really care for the guy, don’t ya?” She asked me, and I didn’t say anything for a second, I didn’t know how to respond.

“Hun?” She asked me, her eyes not wavering.

Just then, I remembered Noah taking my hand, and it hit me suddenly like a falling ton of bricks.

“I care about him lot.” I said with an almost brazen honesty, and she smiled with a faraway poignancy that was in her eyes as well as her voice.

“Just know I care for you too, Ben.” She said clearly. I took her hands in mine, suddenly full of passion. I wanted her to know she was special to me.

“You are a treasure to me, Marisol… I will always care for you. You remember that.” I gave her a gentle kiss on those soft, pink lips, and she suddenly gave me a hug, wrapping her arms around me so tight I felt a part of her, almost suffocated.

She pulled away just then, and said, “Goodbye, love.”

“Bye, hun.” I said, and she went over to her bike and rode away, her black hair bouncing down the road.

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“Post Falls, next stop!” The bus driver called out.

I was so lost in my memories I was dead to the world, and finally realized my stop was coming up. Everything that replayed in my mind felt wrong, sounded wrong, and I had wished that my mind was uncluttered, unfettered to tell the truth, whatever the truth may be. It pained me that I was unable to be honest with the people I loved and cherished the most. God was even stronger in my prayers at the very beginning, and I desired to understand this frustration, this passion, this feeling.

I kept telling myself that because Noah had been shot, my feelings of shock had led me to this strange predicament. My prayers and my devotion to God have always been extremely aligned with my life, and always helped me to make the right decisions in morality and in my relationships, but now, in a strange sort of shock, my heart and soul has led me only toward Noah, a loyalty and affection that runs deeply in my mind, in my very bones. It terrified me to be so close to Noah, because the degree of the affection was what startled me, and the fact that my prayers were so hard to explain, I felt lost to God, and that scared me more than anything. I was terrified, not for my body, but for my very soul. I was scared for Noah, too, because I didn’t want to have him have this horrible estrangement lurking in his life.

My heart was starting to feel light, and my stomach queasy with anticipation. It has been almost a year since I had seen him or talked to him in person.

I was hoping I hadn’t come too late and he had already been released. Even then, I could look his grandmother up in a phonebook and call up Noah to visit.

I got off the bus, and immediately felt how warm and beautiful it was outside. The air felt and smelled so fresh and clean, and the way it made me feel helped me to relax and more in control with my emotions. I looked at my wrist watch and it was about four in the afternoon, Friday. I had left my home about two hours previously, and it seemed so far away, even if it wasn’t.