Crossroads Read online

  “You—? It won’t take any time at all with two of us. Shall we?” The old man turned off the overhead light and said, again, “Don’t forget the records.”

  “If it takes no time at all with two people,” Clem said, “how much time can it take with one person?”

  “Clem, she really needs to get home.”

  “But if I hadn’t happened to knock on your door.”

  “I’m asking you a favor. Since when do you mind a little work?”

  His father held the door for Mrs. Cottrell, who emerged with a stack of old records. Everything about her was delicate, desirable, and it gave Clem an ill feeling. Even though he’d warned Becky that men like their father, weak men whose vanity needed stroking, were liable to cheat on their wives, it was hideous to think that it might actually be happening—that his father, having failed to be as groovy as Rick Ambrose, had gotten his hands on someone closer to his age. Couldn’t she see how weak he was?

  In the parking lot, in less densely falling snow, clusters of alumni were enjoying intermission cigarettes. While Mrs. Cottrell cleared the windows of her sedan, he and his father hacked at the mountain of snow in front of it. To get the car over the layer of hardened slush they uncovered, they had to push it from behind—just like the old days, dad and son working side by side—while Mrs. Cottrell rocked it with the accelerator. When it finally broke free, she drove a short distance and lowered her window.

  Out of the window came a delicate hand. It beckoned with one finger. Not the typical gesture of a parishioner to a pastor.

  The finger beckoned again.

  “Ah—one second,” the old man said. He trotted over to the car and bent down to the open window. Clem couldn’t hear what Mrs. Cottrell was saying, but it must have been fascinating, because his father seemed to forget that Clem was there.

  He waited for at least a minute, sickened by the spectacle of their tête-à-tête. Then he walked back toward the church with the shovels. He’d already noticed the family station wagon parked outside the main entrance, but only now did he see that the back end of it was maimed, the bumper missing, a taillight smashed. The bumper was inside the car.

  There was a squeal of tires, and his father came hurrying up behind him. “This is something else you can help me with tomorrow,” he said. “If we hammer out the dent, I think we can reattach the bumper.”

  Clem stared at the damage. His chest was so full of anger that speaking was an effort. “Why aren’t you at the Haefles’ party?”

  “Oh, well,” his father said, “you’re looking at the reason. Frances and—Mrs. Cottrell and I were badly delayed in the city. I also had to change a tire.”

  Clem nodded. His neck, too, was stiff with anger. “I wonder,” he said, “what she was doing in your office. If she was in such a hurry to get home.”

  “Aha. Yes. She was just picking up some records I’d … borrowed.” His father jingled his car keys. “I’d offer you a ride, but I’m guessing you want to stay for the concert.”

  Bumperless, the Fury’s rear end resembled a face without a mouth.

  “She didn’t strike me,” Clem said, “as being in any hurry to get home.”

  “She—just now? She was—it was just some business about the Tuesday circle.”

  “Really.”

  “Yes, really.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Excuse me?”

  A cheer went up inside the function hall.

  “You’re lying,” Clem said.

  “Now, wait a minute—”

  “Because I know what you’re like. I’ve been watching it my whole life and I’m sick of it.”

  “That’s—whatever you’re imputing, you’re—that’s not right.”

  Clem turned to his father. The fear in his face made him laugh. “Liar.”

  “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but—”

  “I’m thinking Mom is at the Haefles’ and you’re falling all over a woman who isn’t her.”

  “That’s—there is nothing wrong with a pastor attending to one of his parishioners.”

  “Jesus Christ. The fact that you even have to say that.”

  A drum intro, congas, drifted from the function hall, followed by another cheer. The last of the alumni smokers were heading inside. As if music ever solved anything. No more war, man. Gotta put a stop to that war. Clem’s disgust with the hippie-dippie Crossroads people intensified his disgust with his father. He’d always hated bullies, but now he understood how enraging another person’s fear could be. How the sight of it incited taunting. Incited violence.

  His father spoke again, in a low unsteady voice. “Mrs. Cottrell and I were making a delivery to Theo’s church. We got a bit of a late start, and then there was—”

  “Yeah, you know what? Fuck that. I don’t care what your story is. If you feel like going and boning some other woman, it’s a free country. If it makes you feel better about yourself, I don’t fucking care.”

  His father looked at him in horror.

  “I’m out of here anyway,” Clem said. “I wasn’t going to tell you this tonight, but you might as well know it. I quit school. I already sent a letter to the draft board. I’m going to Vietnam.”

  He dropped the snow shovels and stalked away.

  “Clem,” his father shouted. “Come back here.”

  Clem raised his arm and gave him the middle finger as he went into the church. The entry hall was empty. Laura Dobrinsky had left two butts and a mess of ashes on the floor. He paused to consider where else to look for Becky, and the door behind him burst open.

  “Don’t you walk away from me.”

  He ran up a flight of stairs. He still hadn’t checked the parlor or the sanctuary. He was halfway down the hallway when his father caught up with him and grabbed his shoulder. “Why are you walking away from me?”

  “Take your hands off me. I’m looking for Becky.”

  “She’s at the Haefles’ with your mother.”

  “No, she’s not. Becky is sick of you, too.”

  His father glanced at Ambrose’s open door, unlocked his own office, and lowered his voice. “If you have something to say to me, you could pay me the courtesy of not walking away before I can answer.”

  “Courtesy?” Clem followed him into the office. “You mean, like the courtesy of leaving Mom at the Haefles’ while you entertain your little lady friend?”

  His father turned on the light and closed the door. “If you would calm down, I would be happy to explain what happened tonight.”

  “Yeah, but look me in the eye, Dad. Look me in the eye and see if I believe a word of it.”

  “That’s enough.” The old man was angry now, too. “You were out of line at Thanksgiving, and you’re very much out of line now.”

  “Because I’m so fucking sick of you.”

  “And I am sick of your disrespect.”

  “Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to be your son?”

  “I said that’s enough!”

  Clem would have welcomed a fight. He hadn’t thrown a punch since junior high. “You want to hit me? You want to try me?”

  “No, Clem.”

  “Mister Nonviolence?”

  There was Christian forbearance in the way his father shook his head. Clem would have loved to at least shove him against the wall, but this would merely have fed his Christian victimhood. The only thing Clem could hit him with was words.

  “Did you even hear what I said in the parking lot? I quit school.”

  “I heard that you were very angry and trying to provoke me.”

  “I wasn’t being provoking. I was conveying a fact.”

  His father sank into his swivel chair. A blank sheet of paper was in his typewriter. He rolled it out and smoothed it. “I’m sorry we got off on such a wrong foot. Tomorrow I hope we can be more civil to each other.”

  “I wrote to the draft board, Dad. I mailed the letter this morning.”

  The old man nodded to himself, as if he knew
better. “You can threaten me all you want, but you’re not going to Vietnam.”

  “The hell I’m not.”

  “We have our differences, but I know who you are. You can’t seriously expect me to believe you intend to be a soldier. It makes no sense.”

  The complacency of his father’s certainty—that no son of his could be anything but a replica of himself—inflamed the bully in Clem.

  “I know it’s hard for you to imagine,” he said, “but some people actually pay a price for what they believe in. You and your little parishioner can go and be the nice white people at Theo Crenshaw’s church. You can pull some weeds in Englewood and feel good about yourself. You can march in your marches and brag about it to your all-white congregation. But when it’s time to put your money where your mouth is, you don’t see any problem with me being in college and letting some Black kid fight for me in Vietnam. Or some poor white kid from Appalachia. Or some poor Navajo, like Keith Durochie’s son. Do you think you’re better than Keith? Do you think my life is worth more than Tommy Durochie’s? Do you think it’s right that I get to be in college while Navajo boys are dying? Is that what you’re saying makes sense to you?”

  It satisfied the bully to see his father’s confusion, as it dawned on him that Clem was serious.

  “No American boy should be in Vietnam,” he said quietly. “I thought you and I agreed on that.”

  “I do agree. It’s a shitty war. But that doesn’t—”

  “It’s an immoral war. All war is immoral, but this one especially. Whoever fights in it partakes of the immorality. I’m surprised I have to explain that to you.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not the same as you. Dad. In case you hadn’t noticed. I don’t have the luxury of being born a Mennonite. I don’t believe in a metaphysical deity whose commandments I have to obey. I have to follow my own personal ethics, and I don’t know if you remember, but my lottery number was nineteen.”

  “Of course I remember. And you’re right—it was an immense relief, for your mother and me, that you had a student deferment. I seem to recall you feeling the same way.”

  “Only because I hadn’t given it any thought.”

  “And now you’ve thought about it. Fine. I understand why student deferments seem unfair to you—you raise a legitimate point. I also understand feeling obliged to serve your country, because of your lottery number. But to go and serve in that war, it makes no sense.”

  “Maybe not to you. To me there’s no alternative.”

  “You already waited a year—why not wait one more semester? Most of our troops are already home. Six months from now, I doubt they’ll even be taking new recruits.”

  “That’s exactly why I’m doing it now.”

  “Why? To make a point? You could do that by giving up your deferment and conscientiously objecting. The son of a CO, from a family of pastors—you’d have a very strong case.”

  “Right. That’s what you did. But you know what? The man who took your place in 1944 was probably white and middle-class. That’s a moral luxury I don’t have.”

  “Luxury?” His father banged the arm of his chair. “It wasn’t a moral luxury. It was a moral choice, and the fact that most Americans supported the war made it harder, not easier. They called us traitors. They called us cowards, they tried to run our parents out of town—some of us even went to prison. Every one of us paid a price.”

  Recalling the pride he’d once taken in his father’s principles, Clem felt the reins of his argument going slack in his hands. He gave them a savage tug. “Yeah, luckily for you, plenty of other people were willing to fight the Fascists.”

  “That was their own moral choice. I grant that, under the circumstances, their choice was defensible. But Vietnam? There’s no defense whatsoever for our involvement there. It’s senseless slaughter. The boys we’re killing are even younger than you are.”

  “They’re killing other Vietnamese, Dad. You can sentimentalize it all you want, but the North Vietnamese are the aggressors. They signed up to kill, and they’re killing.”

  His father made a sour face. “Since when do you parrot Lyndon Johnson?”

  “LBJ was a fraud. He signed the Civil Rights Act with one hand and sent ghetto boys to Vietnam with the other. This is what I’m talking about—moral hypocrisy.”

  His father sighed as if it were pointless to keep arguing. “And you don’t care how I might feel as your father. You don’t care how your mother might feel about it.”

  “Since when do you care about Mom’s feelings?”

  “I care about them very much.”

  “Bullshit. She’s loyal to you, and you treat her like garbage. Do you think I can’t see it? Do you think Becky can’t see it? How cold you are to Mom? It’s like you wish she didn’t exist.”

  His father winced. The punch had landed. Clem waited for him to say something else, so that he could knock it down, but his father just sat there. He was defenseless against Clem’s superior reasoning, his intimate knowledge of his failings. Into the silence, through the door, through the floor, came the pulse of a distant bass guitar.

  “Anyway,” Clem said. “There’s nothing you can do to stop me. I’ve sent the letter.”

  “That’s right,” his father said. “Legally, you’re free to do as you please. But emotionally you’re still very young. Very young and, if I may say so, very self-involved. The only thing that seems to matter to you is moral consistency.”

  “It’s hard work, but somebody’s got to do it.”

  “You seem to think you’re thinking clearly, but what I’m hearing is a person who’s forgotten how to listen to his heart. You think I don’t understand you, but I know how devastated you would be, how utterly shattered, if you had to see a child burned up with napalm, a village bombed for no reason. You can do all the rationalizing you want, you can try to reason your way out of having a heart, but I know it’s there in you. I’ve been watching it grow, my God, for twenty years. You’ve made me so proud that you’re my son. Your kindness—your generosity—your loyalty—your sense of justice—your goodness—”

  His father broke off, overcome with emotion. Until this moment, it hadn’t occurred to Clem that he could be anything but an adversary to his father; that his animosity might not be reciprocated. It seemed unfair to him—intolerable—that his father still loved him. Unable to think of a rejoinder, he jerked open the door and ran out into the hallway. For relief from the remorse that was rising in him, his mind went reflexively to the person who validated his reasoning, who shared his convictions, who freely and wholly gave herself to him. But the thought of Sharon only deepened his remorse, because he’d broken her heart that very day. Broken it violently, with merciless rationality. He’d shot her down with her own moral arguments, and she’d said it in so many words: “You’re breaking my heart.” He could hear the words so clearly, she might have been standing next to him.

  There was no telling how long Becky might have stayed in the sanctuary, exploring what it meant to have found religion, if she’d eaten anything but sugar cookies since the night before. As God’s goodness routed the evil of marijuana, leaving only a fluish hotness in her eyes and chest, stray wisps of strange thought, she was beset by images of the baked goods in the function hall. She recalled a moist-looking chocolate layer cake, a loaf of cheese-and-chive bread, practically a balanced meal in itself, and a tray of lemon bars—she’d noticed lemon bars. She was so famished that she finally gave up on praying. By way of apology, she stood up and kissed the brass of the hanging cross.

  “I’m your girl now,” she told it. “I promise.”

  Hearing her own words, she felt a quake in her nether parts, as if her promise were romantic. It was akin to the shudder of ecstasy with which she’d beheld the golden light inside her. She wondered if the satisfaction of accepting Christ, becoming his girl, might enable her to renounce more worldly pleasures, such as kissing Tanner. The wrongness of kissing him before he’d broken up with Laura was clear to her
now. So was the wrongness of her behavior in the ice cave of his van. Instead of celebrating the news that an agent was coming to hear the Bleu Notes, instead of sharing in his joy, she’d selfishly pressured him to dump Laura, and now God had shown her what to do. She needed to apologize for pressuring him. She needed to tell him that if he just wanted to be friends with her, see her in church on Sunday, explore Christianity with her, forget they’d ever kissed, she would cherish his friendship and be glad of heart.

  First, however, she needed to see if any chocolate cake was left. It was nearly nine thirty and the concertgoers would be hungry. Letting the sanctuary door lock itself behind her, she paused in the front hall to collect herself. There was a scraping rumble from a snowplow in the street, a nasty rip in her beloved coat. She pulled on the loose threads, wondering if it could be repaired. She’d reentered a mundane world in which it wouldn’t be so easy to stay connected with God. For the first time, she understood how a person might actually look forward to Sunday worship in the sanctuary.

  She must still have been lingeringly stoned, because her torn coat pocket had absorbed her for quite a while, without her reaching any conclusions, when she heard footsteps in the church parlor. Into the front hall came an older man with permed-looking hair and thick sideburns. He wore a wide-lapelled jacket of apricot-colored leather. His face brightened as if he knew her. “Oh, hey,” he said. “Hey.”

  “Can I help you?”

  “Nah, just looking around.”

  She waited for the man to leave, so she could proceed to the baked goods, but he approached her and extended a hand. “Gig Benedetti.”

  It would have been rude not to shake his hand.

  “Sorry, didn’t catch your name,” he said.

  “Becky.”

  “Nice to meet you, Becky.”

  He smiled at her expectantly, as if he had nowhere else to be. He was an inch or two shorter than she was.

  “Are you … here for the concert?” she asked.

  “That was the plan. Although, a night like this, it really makes me question. They already canceled the other show I wanted to catch out here.”