Works and Days

Vernal

2

Chayne did not arrive at dinner until eight o’clock and when he did and they all looked up at him from the Lewis table, he said:

“Jewell Emery went into labor. It’s a boy. My second godson, and they both have the same birthday.”

The week after Easter, when the first fragile green buds became the white and pink blossoms and the brown grass became green, Chayne Kandzierski received a phone call.

“To the what?”

“On the what?”

“When?”

“Hell no!”

“No!”

Chayne hung up the phone.

“What was all that about?” Jewell Emery asked, rocking her baby.

“It was Geoff Ford,” Chayne said with irritation.

“About what?”

“There’s a men’s wilderness retreat this weekend. He said he knew better than to call me, but that Robert Heinz—”

“Father Bobby?” Jewell interjected with a laugh.

“Father Bobby put him up to it.”

“And I take it you said no.”

“That’s exactly what I said.”

“You can ask,” Patti told her husband while she was sitting in the bathtub reading and he was sitting on the toilet seat talking to her, “but I think he’ll say no.”

Thom shrugged and got up.

“Where are you going?” his wife shouted after him.

“To ask!”

Thom was in Russell’s room. The door to the large room was—surprisingly—open, and Russell was sitting on the bed working out some rifts on his guitar.

“Yes, Dad?” Russell looked up and pushed back the red hair that was growing into his face again.

“You had heard about—in church—the retreat?”

“The retreat?” Russell went back to strumming his guitar, the hair—which was not as long as it had been, and thicker, still curtained his face.

“The men’s wilderness retreat,” Thom elaborated.

Beneath the curtain of his hair, Russell could only imagine where Thom was going with this.

“Yes, Dad,” Russell went on strumming  “I think I’ve heard of it.”

“I was thinking,” Thom grabbed Russell by the shoulders so that now the boy had to look at him, “Son, I was thinking we should go.”

“We should...?” Russell started, ceasing his playing and smiling vapidly at his father.

“Told you so!” Patti shouted from the bathroom.

“Whaddo you say, Russell?”

Russell found himself saying, “Yes.”

“You said, ‘yes’?” Gilead slammed his locker and he and Russell set down the hall.

“What else could I say?” Russell demanded. “Gil, if you’d seen the way the guy looked at me. And considering last weekend, the fact that he even lets me out of the house...”

They set up the stairs to the fourth floor.

“What all did you tell him about last weekend?” Gilead asked.

“As little as possible,” Russell said, “that when Thom and Patti start in becomes everything, especially when my Aunt Jaclyn’s around.”

“They know everything?” Gilead was incredulous.

“Just about. What did you tell your mother?”

“Sharonda and I work by a don’t ask don’t tell policy. I told her nothing. She was pleased. I was pleased. Beautiful.”

“David!”

David Armstrong tapped on his son’s bedroom door, and then the gangly man came in. Dave Armstong Jr. was a weedy, brown haired boy that looked like a collection of twigs and was wearing a headset twice the size of his head which he now took off to pay attention to his father.

“Son!” David Armstrong said.

“Yeah, Dad?” the ‘Yeah, Dad’ was filled with the suspicion of adolescence that David pretended to ignore.

“You know what I was thinking?”

“No.”

“We haven’t had any... bonding in a really long time. I was thinking we should bond.”

“Bond?”

“Yeah, son. Whaddo you say we go to the wilderness retreat?”

“The what?”

Patti found herself doing what she hated—spending time with the wives of her neighbors or, as she called them, her husband’s neighbors. Thom, with Patti’s grudging permission, invited the Dwyers and Armstrongs over to dinner, and now Dena Dwyer (who was David Armstrong’s sister) and Lee Armstrong (who was Bill Dwyer’s younger sister and how sick was that?) were in her kitchen chit-chatting.

“And so I told Bill that he should take Niall to the retreat so the two of them can bond more...” was the only thing Patti paid attention to. And it made her want to laugh.

At school, Gilead and Russell heard Niall Dwyer, a usually mild freshman, slam his locker and exclaim to one of his friends, “I don’t want to go to that fuckin’ retreat!”

“Well,” Gilead commented. “Seems like you’ll be getting to know all sorts of people this weekend.”

“Chayne if you love me you’ll go!”

“I do love, and my answer is no.”

“Chayne, look at how wretched I am!”

“I never want to hear a fifteen year old use the word wretched again.”

“I’m sixteen.”

“Well, If you’re so grwon, then just tell Thom you don’t want to go.”

“Chayne, if you’d seen him! He’s so happy about it. You should have just seen the guy. I couldn’t tell him no.”

Chayne eyed Russell.

“Does that make me a punk?” Russell asked Chayne.

“Russell,” Chayne said, patting the boy’s red hair. “I’m afraid it does.”

While Mickey was cutting Chayne’s hair, there was a ring at the door and Chayne got up to answer.

“Hello—” he started and looked at the people on his porch: Thom Lewis, David Armstrong and Bill Dwyer.

“The fuck?”

“Chayne, we wanted to know,” Thom began, “if you were going on the men’s wilderness retreat?”

“Are you serious? You can’t be serious...”

“Chuck!”

Chuck Shrader looked up to see Jeff Cordino coming into his classroom.

“What’s up, Jeff?”

“Are you going to the guy’s retreat?”

“What?”

“Near Lake Chicktaw?”

“Why would you even ask?”

“Cause I don’t want to go alone, so to speak. Everyone’s going—”

“Then you won’t be going alone—”

“Oh, come on!”

Since kids were coming into the classroom, Jeff leaned toward Chuck and whispered. “Everyone’ll be there—except the women. Even Chayne Kandzierski.”

“Are you serious?”

“They cornered him last night.”

“And now you’re cornering me?” Chuck guessed as Dave Armstrong came in sulking and collapsed in his seat.

“Is there anything wrong, David?” Chuck Shrader asked as Jeff Cordino prepared to leave.

“My dad’s making me go on this stupid retreat this weekend...” Jeff Cordino heard the boy say as he walked out of the room.