Works and Days

Retreat

3

Russell got a large bag of Doritos, and a sausage of questionable origin about which Niall commented, “I hope you’re feeling lucky tonight.” But as they were all at the counter buying their purchases, Russell kept looking at the rows and rows of cigarettes. Since Anigel had given him his first last week—was it just last week?—he’d been wanting another one. He would wait for Thom or Patti to sneak off and take a few of their Benson and Hedges, puffed in private with the large ceiling fan on, and all his windows and the balcony door open. But he wanted a Red. And he wanted his own.

All the way up the line, Russell kept wondering what they would say if he told the woman, “A pack of Reds please.” Part of him felt a little dirty doing it. He felt like his father going to get maxi pads for his mother, or like those older boys at school going to buy condoms. Then suddenly he heard himself say:

“A pack of Reds, please?” pointing up. He sounded so professional. The girl brought them down. He looked at them and asked, “One hundreds?”

She brought down the larger pack and said, “Can I see some ID please?”

Russell felt all of his skin prickle. To have asked for cigarettes in front of these people he did not really know—who might let it slip to their fathers who would let it slip to his... all to be asked for ID he didn’t have!

But while he was beginning to sweat, Russell scarcely felt someone move beside him and then, in a surreal moment, he heard Cassidy saying, “He was ordering for me. I felt lazy.” And Cassidy took out his ID, the woman accepted it, and Russell was amazed.

Outside the gas station, Russell shuffled the bag of Doritos off on Niall, and unwrapped the cigarettes. Cassidy snatched them from his hand and said: “You gotta cash ‘em,” then doing so, handed them back to Russell who took out, with difficulty, his first one, and swore. Cassidy held out a lighter then said, “Hook me up with one, too, okay?” and Russell, feeling strangely close to Cassidy, did. He watched the older boy suck on the Red, then exhale it from his nostrils.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Russell said.

“I quit,” Cassidy said. Then he laughed, and Russell, sharing the bag of chips with Niall as they passed it back and forth, learned that it was difficult for him—cigarette novice that he was—to walk and smoke as Cassidy did. Oddly enough, it was not Cassidy’s Christianity, but the promise of his impending lung cancer that made Russell like him.

“I think Russell’s a really great kid, though. I do! No, thanks,” David Armstrong waved the bottle away from Diggs..

“Well, thanks,” Thom found himself accepting the bottle. “I think Dave Jr.’s good too.”

“But it’s really the way you and Russell get a long, it is,” David was going on. “I mean, firstly, your boy’s really smart. When I’m talking to him I forget he’s only fifteen for one hting. But you all, you just get along really great. You all’ve got a great relationship. We don’t.”

Dave shook his head. This time he took a swig from the bottle as Jeff Cordino passed it to him. “I don’t know what I’d do with a kid like Russell. My own Dave’s starting to get... Like a stranger.”

“Well,” Thom admitted, “if it helps, I don’t know where he’s coming from either. I don’t take any credit for Russell. That’s mostly Chayne’s doing.”

Chayne looked over at Thom, surprised.

“Yeah,” Thom said, feeling unusually boisterous. “You, Chayne.”

“Thom Lewis, I never thought the day would come when you’d give me credit for.... Not corrupting your son.”

“My son would have died of boredom if not for you,” Thom said.

“Yeah well,” the large nosed Bill Dwyer started, “maybe you need a crack at my son.”

“Aw, Bill!” Dave said, clapping his best friend on the shoulder.

“Everyone else... their kids look up to them. I don’t get Niall. I mean, I’m glad Chayne let the boys go off on their own—”

“Where are they anyway?” Jeff Cordino looked around in the darkness.

“But one of the reasons I brought Niall on this was because our relationship is so....” Bill shrugged. “Not even bad. Non-existent. I’ve never told anyone—not even you—” he said to David, “this. But... I don’t know what to do with my family. I really don’t. I don’t know how to get it back to what it should be. I don’t know what it should be. Everything. Everything with us just happened so quickly. Dena got pregnant my senior year. Right after I graduated we got married. Cameron came while Deen was still in college. Then two years later there was Niall, and I look up and it seems yesterday I was a kinda sorta kid and now I’m thirty-eight years old living in the Breckinridge. I don’t know up from down half the time and I look around and everyone I know is a lot like me.”

“Dena was still in college when Cameron was born?” Geoff Ford had fastened on this.

“Yeah,” said Bill, and David elaborated.

“Bill was my roommate. Then he met my sister, and they’d come back to my house for holidays. And one year I met Lee.”

“Did you all have sex in college?” Diggs asked gracelessly, which is when Chayne took the bottle from him.

“No,” Dave went on. “Lee... and myself, we both wanted to wait till we got married.”

“Plus they’d had to go through the drama of me and Dena,” Bill added.

“That’s not true,” David argued, then turned red, laughed and said, “Well, it’s a little true.”

“I just want to know,” Geoff Ford was about to stand up, felt the liquor and realized he shouldn’t. “Does anybody practice celibacy? Is it just me?”

“Oh, God, we’re all drunk,” Chayne murmured.

“No, I’m serious,” Goeff went on. “I want to know.”

“I’m not sure what the hell that means but...” Chayne started.

“Well, me and Chuck aren’t—” Jeff Cordino offered, “unchaste. And neither is Dwyer. I mean—who was there before Dena?”

“Dena’s the only woman I’ve ever been with.”

“Really?” Chayne cleared the pity from his throat and said again, “Really?”

“And I know Thom and Patti waited till the wedding night.”

“Half of you here know Patti wasn’t my first.”

“This is definitely men’s talk now,” Geoff Ford decided. “I’ll be embarrassed if the kids come back. Hell, I’ll be embarrassed if Heinz comes back.”

“Where is Heinz?” Chuck Shrader asked.

“Liz was your first?” Jeff Cordino said.

“No,” Thom smiled and blushed.

“What?” Chayne looked at Thom.

“No. There was a girl before Liz.”

“That you had sex with?” This from Jeff Cordino.

Thom nodded.

“How old were you?” Jeff Cordino looked delighted.

“What? Are we gonna compare ages now?” Thom demanded.

“Twenty!” shouted Bill.

“Twenty-two,” said Dave.

Chuck said, “Nineteen.”

“What about you, Chayne?” Thom said, and Chayne blinked at him.

“When have you ever been interested in my love life?”

“I’m interested now,” Thom said.

Ted Weirbach cleared his throat.

Chayne looked at him.

“My love life is rich,” Chayne began.

Ted said, “I would like to make an announcement.”

“What the fuck, Ted?” Chayne said.

“Chayne is gay,” Ted said. “As you know.”

“I didn’t know,” David said. Then he said, “I mean, I didn’t care. I mean, good for you, Chayne. I mean, I wish I was gay too! I mean.”

“Dave,” Bill said.

Dave Armstrong shut up.

“I’ve known Chayne most of my life,” Thom said, “so why are we talking about this?”

“Because we don’t talk about things,” Ted said, “and…. Chayne is my LOVER.”

“For real?” Geoff said.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Chayne looked at the priest.

“Nothing!” Geoff Ford threw up his hands defensively. “Just… I don’t see it. I expect you to be with someone more…”

“Dangerous?” Thom said.

“Like a criminal or something,” Bill Dwyer said, playing with his shoelaces, “definitely a criminal.”

“This is why I keep my business to myself,” Chayne said.

“Well, he’s with me,” Ted said.

And then he said, “Aren’t you?”

For a moment Chayne wasn’t sure he’d been spoken to, and then he said, “Well, yes, Theodore. Yes, I suppose I am.”

Ted looked very pleased and he said, “And I love making love to him.”

“Wow,” was all Jeff Cordino said.

“Awkward,” Chuck Shrader said.

Thom burst out laughing and said, “Chayne Kandzierski! Embarassed! I love it.”

While they all laughed, Chayne laughed a little too loudly, and when they had stopped, Chayne kept laughing and said, clasping Chuck’s hand and then Thom’s, “It’s almost as awkward as Chuck dating your wife.”

Niall clapped Dave on the back.

“No, like this,” he told his coughing cousin.

Under the large elm, Niall sucked on his cigarette until the tip gleamed bright orange.

‘    Cassidy laughed low and drew his legs to his chest. “Russell, pass the Mountain Dew.”

Cassidy tossed a cigarette stub into the brown earth.

“We’ve smoked all of Russell’s cigarettes. We’ll have to get him a new pack.”

“I thought you said you quit.”

“I’ll quit again on Monday,” Cassidy promised.

“I didn’t even know you smoked,” Niall told Russell.

“It’s a new hobby.”

“And you’re getting Confirmed along with Dad.”

“I’m a flake,” Russell said.

“Whaddo you mean?”

“After all I said, after asking Chayne to be my sponsor. After all of it… No.”

“No,” Cassidy said. “Why? Is it cause you see me smoking?”

“No,” Russell shook his head and frowned at something that ridiculous.

“It’s cause I see you happy. And Mr. Cordino. And you all are taking a step toward something, and… I’m not. At least, what I’m taking a step toward isn’t that. Does that make any sense? I’m glad you found God where you found him, and I’m glad your Dad loves the Church, but… that’s not me. I thought it was. I though it would be. But it’s not. I… I wanted to see the light. And I did. And it was bright, and it was what mattered and…”

“Yeah?” Cassidy said.

“And it was not at St. Adjeanet’s. I don’t know how to describe it,” Russell shrugged.

Cassidy nodded and held Russell’s shoulder.

“I think you just did.”

But at that moment Dave Armstong broke the intimacy demanding: “Russell, Is it true your Aunt Jackie’s pregnant?”

“Um hum. How’d you know?”

“It’s a small town.”

“That’s a shame,” Niall shook his head. “That’s a fucking shame. She’s a really hot woman. I mean hot.”

“You sound like pregnancy is the only obstacle between you and this woman having a relationship,” Cassidy remarked. “You’re fourteen and she’s.... How old is she Russell?”

“Thirty.”

“Oh, well only thirty!” said Cassidy

“Cassidy! Russell! Niall, Dave!”

The boys heard a voice behind the trees and tried to crush out their cigarettes, all of them knowing it would be to no avail, Cassidy whispering, “I’ll just say they’re mine.”

Out of the shadows emerged, to everyone’s mutual surprise:

“Father Heinz?” Cassidy said, scooting the half empty pack toward Russell so the other boy could hide it in his pocket.

Cassidy pressed on his smile.

“You’re still... walking around in the woods?”

“Yeah,” said Robert Heinz, then, “Yes.”

“We were just,” Cassidy’s words attempted to fill the darkness, “having some fun.”

“I noticed that,” Robert Heinz ‘s eyes roved over the cigarette butts.

“I smoke,” Cassidy told him, laughing. “It’s a bad habit, and I usually quit. But this weekend for some reason…”

It was sort of touching to Russell to see Cassidy simpering and making up stories for his sake.

“Don’t worry,” Robert Heinz put up his hand, looking surprisingly weary, as if he did not feel like hearing this right now

“What you guys do tonight... I mean what Cassidy does tonight, is his business. I was never here,” the priest told them. “Carry on.”

Robert Heinz began to walk back into the woods and Russell called out, “Father Heinz!”

Robert Heinz turned around.

“Would you like to sit down with us?” Russell asked him, “:For a while?”

Robert Heinz looked as if he were considering this proposal, and then he smiled and said, “Yes, Russell. I would like that. If it’s alright with the rest of you?”

“Yeah, Father.”

“Sure, Father.”

“Sure thing.”

Robert Heinz sat down beside Russell, picked up a cigarette stub and said, “So, Russell, I see it’s Reds for you? Like father, like son, eh?”