The Kind Earth

Michael leans his head against Jay’s, and as the shadows of the sun through leaves roll over his closed eyes, he remembers arriving in North Dakota, finding it home, getting down to the work, for there was always work, and he remembers the first letter Jay sent. The one that said, “I have decided to be a writer…”

It was like Lent when Michael went away. Jay had to explain this to himself. He had always felt hopeful about Lent, like when they began in the midst of winter, the trees still frozen and the river still black under its ice, he knew they were headed toward spring and a spring in his heart. All of this penitence, all of this fasting and looking forward was truly looking forward to something new and wonderful, and he felt like that now

At the moment he was living off savings, old earnings and his classes at the university, and he went into the city once a day to lecture. In class he heard the ills of his students and on the bus he looked out of grimy windows and saw miserable people walking, pushing shopping carts, bundled in three coats and sleeping in the corners of old buildings. He knew if he went south toward downtown he’d see more than that. At home, at peace, in his apartment on the far north end, he saw, as if from another planet, the riots in the West End that had gone on toward Collingwood. Heard about boys black but not quite like him shot, one by a cop and two by each other. Saw an old woman with a gold tooth say, “If things keep lik this, this city’s gon explode.”

The truth was, with everything that had happened, living up in the far northeast toward Rawlston, rarely heading toward downtown or the West End, it was easy to be removed from that world, easy to forget about it, But lately the unhappy world seemed to be coming closer and closer.

Fridays, Jay did not teach, and that Friday it snowed again, but lightly. The last two days there had been a warming trend that melted the ugliness, and now the world looked pretty in January. He was going to visit his mother tomorrow. This evening he walked three blocks up to Dorr Street and bought some cigarettes from Raleigh,

“I had to call the cops again on the homeless guys cause they were sleeping under the door.”

“I saw them at the corner, but under the door of the shop?”

“Yeah. How do I get customers if there’s a bum in front of the door.”

“Fair,” Jay said. “Did you hear about the tent city around that church in Monroe Park?”

“Yeah, but they broke it up, and now they’re all over the city.”

“It seems unfair,” Jay said, “that no one wants to shelter you, but no one wants to let you shelter where you need to. I don’t see it’s much cause to block a doorway, but homeless people need to sleep somewhere.”

“What about the cemetery? Or what about the homeless shelter?” Jay heard someone new in the shop say.

“Or what about getting a job,” the man just come in grins at Jay, waiting for support.

But Jay knows he is blessed and privileged and in another world might be on that street too, so he says, “Where from? The job tree?” lays down his money and sets back up the road for home.

These are old beautiful apartments, and the snow is falling softly outside on a street that’s almost the country. Out here they are by Boston Township which is as peaceful as it sounds. Jay Strickland is not one of those people who believes watching the news makes things better and that his feeling bad makes suffering people better off. But he simply cannot not think of the other people. The other people are practically at his door. His heart is disturbed. He sits down and writes.

“I have decided to be a writer…

MICHAEL

Maybe if Jay is going to be a writer, then I should at least be a thinker. I feel like people believe that if you’re depressed, it’s because you think too much, but that’s not really true. For me there are all these hallways and corners that I just won’t look down, and all the crap is in them, or behind the doors. Jay said thinking is opening those doors, looking inside and deciding what to do. It’s having a good hard look at things. He said it’s like house cleaning.

I have tended to walk away from things. I walked away from Jay, and when I say that I mean the first time, back in high school. When Mom couldn’t pay for school anymore and I ended up at Whittier. It never occurred to me to pick up the phone and call him. I never tried to find him. I just went on about my life. But if I say went on, that makes it sound like I was happy instead of miserable and in a black hole, and now I wonder, was I unable to do anything because I was in a black hole or was it the other way around? I think this without trying to blame myself.

The first time we hung out, me and Jay, we drove out of town, west past Woodland, till we got to the quarry lake, and then we were in that beautiful wildness and that was when we saw those kids partying. They’re definitely kids to me now, and we saw that one drunk girl and she was being raped, and we didn’t do anything. I don’t know what we would have done, but there it is, another moment of doing nothing. And I was able to put it out of my head. I was able to walk away from it.

At Morelton the people weren’t very helpful. Not the ones who were supposed to be. But the patients were. There was this one patient, Millie, and she said to me. “Just cause you don’t look at the shit doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

She was right. She ended up killing herself, and for a few years I spun it like it was a triumph, cause she wanted to do it and she finally did. But, now I don’t know. Being here on earth kind of seems like the triumph.

When I get back to Clouds everyone is happy to see me, and the Abbot says, “We’ll just treat you the way we treat the postulants. Except, you can sit down in the chapel or take a nap while we pray.”

They pray five times a day. They march double file into the church and then when two of them come to the altar, they bow to the altar, and then they bow to each other and turn in opposite directions to stand in the stalls that are on opposite sides of the chapel. It’s then that they start singing. I sit in the regular church part and just listen. The chapel is a modern kind of place full of exposed wood beams, and the winter light is always good. The monks make cheese and fudge and cakes and work from eight in the morning until twelve, when they pray. There are two goggle eyed novices about my age and they study during the afternoons, but the afternoons I have to myself, to wander the flat lands. One day I go to town to eat with the Pottersheds, the folks who helped me out at Christmas, when the car was stalled and I went walking and walking, waiting for death and ended being rescued by them.

But mostly I am thinking. Mostly remembering. I am trying to make sense of things. I used to try to talk to my dad about life, but it was weird because he could never remember things properly, and my mother never liked to remember the past at all. I love them. They’ve never been to a crazy house, but I think maybe they should try it because they live their lives in a crazy way. I feel like if you can’t look back and get an accurate read of what was, you won’t be free to live in what is.

But I’m skirting around shit. I’m skirting around a few years ago, the year I left Jay, when I packed my stuff and left our apartment and moved back in with Mom. Jay said, “Don’t move back in with your father because you’ll be crazier there.” I listened, but only for a little while. Living with my dad was almost like living alone, which is what Jay meant. But I wanted that, and we were never home at the same time, so it really was like living alone.

Up toward the north of Lassador, it’s like you run out of city and we’ve got two townships and gravel roads and old houses filled with humble folk... okay, borderline hillbillies. But not meth hillbillies, just sort of like, shabby white folks like me. There’s not a lot of trouble up here, and it’s almost like not being in Lassador. It’s almost like not being anywhere.

Who should come down the street but Mormons? They’re both tall and good looking, but one is taller, the other broader. They look good the way missionaries are supposed to, wearing those night black coats and carrying briefcases and I say what the hell, come on in, because they look like someone should treat them decently, and I start listening to what they have to say. I already know about the Golden Tablets and Nephi because Jay told me all that, and the truth is I’m just very lonely. I want some people in my life, and so I invite them to come back. I always have questions for them, but one day Elder Nelson, who is very tall with dark hair and dark eyes asks, seriously, if he can baptize me under the One True Baptism to the church of Jesus Christ established in these Latter Day by the One True Prophet Joseph Smith?

I am bowled over, though I shouldn’t be. I say, “Well, I’m already baptized.”

This leads to a little bit of an argument and Elder Redmond, the shorter one, who looks like he might lift weights or something, marmalade haired, thick legged like Jay, ends up saying, “We’re men! We’re just men!”

This makes me want to laugh because they’re scarcely boys. When they leave, I wonder if they’ll ever come back again.

***

When they did come back, Elder Nelson took the petulant approach.

“Why are we here, anyway? Are you going to get serious or what?”

By then, Michael had been hospitable and brought out water for them and he is sitting between the two elders on the sofa.

“Yes,” Elder Redmond said, “if you have no intentions of joining the Church, then there’s no need for us to keep coming.”

Michael knows why he wanted them here. He liked them. He liked to talk. He enjoyed the company. But if he could get to why he did what he did next, if he could turn that weird little jewel over, he feels like he’d get somewhere. And what he did could have gone so wrong. Well, now it did go wrong. Because it was wrong, but…

When Elder Redmond said, “There’s no need for us to keep coming…”

Michael looked at his marmalade hair, at his green eyes, at his pleasant face. He looked down, between his well made thighs to the not bulge—Mormon missionaries wore clothes that didn’t quite fit, that didn’t really expose, and then he deftly opened Redmond’s trousers. The boy froze. Everything froze. Behind him Michael felt Elder Nelson’s breath stop. And then he pulled out Redmond’s penis, bent down and began to suck it.

Was he seizing on the most desperate way to make them stay? This seems more likely than the desire to recreate a cheap porno. After all, along with dads and sons, Mormon missionaries and Catholic priests were the most popular pornos, and Michael had never felt the desires to fuck a priest or his father. But now, whatever was happening, Michael felt more alive than the time they’d gotten him to go to their church, more alive than he had in a while. He didn’t feel good or bad. He felt like he was past that, and he was on his knees now, his head forcing itself between Redmond’s thighs, his mouth full of cock.

Behind him he heard a sound sort of like an old dog with breathing problems, that was Nelson, and he placed his other hand between Nelson’s legs and began to stroke his stiff penis through the fabric of his pants. Redmond was making small noises, and then a wail, and then Michael’s mouth was thick with semen. He swallowed it and Elder Redmond looked surprised, drained and terrified, but he also didn’t stop Michael from doing the same to Nelson.

Nelson was his favorite anyway. Nelson could have been a best friend, so he wanted Nelson’s reaction, the flail of limbs, the twist of body, the hands in his hair, massaging, bucking his hips up as he got into it, murmuring, almost snarling, at last the sharp growl of “FUCK,” as Nelson’s cock leaped and Michael felt semen filling his mouth, gagged on the load as Nelson’s hands held his head down for the baptism. Michael made a gagging, belching sound, his cheeks ballooned and semen fell from his lips, but he tried to hold it in. Michael had swallowed Redmond’s semen because he thought he should. He swallowed Nelsons’ because he wanted it.

When he was done, Redmond was sitting on the couch, looking disheveled and his pants were still undone, his hair a mess. But his clothes were so baggy, his shirt so long he didn’t really look indecent. Nelson lay spent on the sofa, breathing in and out and staring at the ceiling, and Michael said the only thing he could think of:

“Do you guys smoke weed?”

***

O God, come to our aid.
O Lord, make haste to help us.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen. Alleluia.

As evening turns to night, and it does so early these days, the monks at the Monastery of the Clouds sing:

“Now that the daylight dies away,
By all thy grace and love,
Thee, Maker of the world, we pray
To watch our bed above.
Let dreams depart and phantoms fly,
The offspring of the night,
Keep us, like shrines, beneath thine eye,
Pure in our foe’s despite.”

***

There are two boys in this house. Their coats are on the chair, their shoes and trousers and special vestments, that don’t look very special, are abandoned on the floor.

He doesn’t feel like anything right now. He doesn’t feel like anything and he knows this moment will pass. The blinds are pulled and the light is that dark brown amber color of late day. He’s high as well, and almost floating, totally relaxed and thinking, if I could smoke weed all day all the time everything would be fine.

But no, this is not the time for thinking. This is the time to wonder how he never knew Elder Redmond had it in him, how he’s glad he could see those thick legs and suck that fat cock, and it was fat! And how all the talk about golden bibles and angels spinning around on Joseph Smith’s bedpost was bullshit, and deep inside they knew it was bullshit. But this is real, his face buried in the pillow, the low growl coming out of Redmond’s throat as his hands hold Michael’s shoulders down, and Michael’s ears are filled with repetitive the music of flesh slapping flesh, of Redmond fucking him.

He blinks and opens his eyes a little while his body shakes, and he presses back taking more of Redmond’s cock. Passed out on his back, half asleep and high, naked with his dick out is Nelson. His hand is half open and keeps reaching out to Michael. Michael takes it, remembers what it was like being with him.

“Home,” Nelson whispers, glassy eyed, looking at Michael. “We should get home… They’ll wonder.”

Redmond’s body bunches up. His strong hands are like claws. He gives a long hard, horrible groan and Michael feels him coming in his ass.

***

The first night he is at Clouds, as he is on his way to bed, old Brother Romuald pads toward him with the rocking and rolling step of an old man.

“This is for you,” he says, smiling, and holds out a slip of paper.

Michael takes it, and Brother Romuald nods encouragingly, and so Michael opens it and reads.

“I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.”

― Hafiz of Shiraz

“Is he a saint?”

“Of a sort,” Romuald says.

Yes, yes, but that was it, that was the thing of which he was most ashamed. In his bed at Clouds, Michael confronted it. At that time of his life he was so desperate not to lose friendship he not only cultivated it from traveling missionaries, but seduced them. He could never get over that shame, never deal with it properly. With all that happened that day, the largest memory he had was of finally shutting the door to the house, and standing there with the smell of weed and the flesh memory of two young men fucking him, but standing…. Alone.