The People in Rossford

“Okay, your problem is that you’re making too big a deal of this. You get carried away about the thing before you even read it,” Julian said.

“But it’s so much,” Paul said, opening up the purple lit book. “And look, the print’s so small.”

Noah chuckled, “That is some tiny little print.”

“Noah, if you’re not going to be helpful—” Claire began.

“All right,” Noah held up his hands.

“I just don’t get it!” Paul said desperately. “I was stupid. I shouldn’t have taken this course. I should have just taken the basic stuff. I haven’t been in school for ten years.”

“Paul,” Julian said.

Paul looked at him.

“If you don’t shut up, I’m going to hit you.”

“Just… just start from the beginning. Just read from—” Julian took out his pen.

“You can’t scratch up the book!” Paul shouted.

“Of course you can,” Julian said, placing a hand over Paul’s. “That’s why you buy the book, so you can mark all through it. You just read from here… to here. And let’s see… We’ll take it from here to here… and lastly here.”

“Class is tomorrow.”

“That’s right, Paul,” Julian said in a level voice. “And this is really all you’re going to talk about.”

“I’m not going to talk about anything.”

“You are,” Julian charged. “You’re going to put your hand up in the air, and you’re going to talk about these passages as close to the start of class as you can.”

“But I don’t know about them.”

“You will, because we’re going to talk about them. Now. Now read.”

Paul put his sharp nose in the book and began reading as if he were near sighted, his green eyes threatening the page. Julian gently tugged the book away from him and Paul looked at him.

“To me,” Julian said. “Out loud.”

“Oh… I… All right…”

“I wish I could be acquainted with the feelings and thoughts which must agitate the heart and present themselves to the mind of an enlightened Englishman, when he first lands on this continent. He must greatly rejoice that the lived at a time to see this fair country discovered and settled; he must necessarily feel a share of national pride, when he views the chain of settlements which embellishes these extended shores. When he says to himself this is the work of my countrymen, who, when convulsed by factions, afflicted by a variety of miseries and wants, restless and impatient took refuge here….”

Paul took a breath, and then continued reading Crevecour’s Letters From an American Farmer, and Claire thought, he reads so well, like the way he performs on stage. Like he is this person, and then she realized she hadn’t really read the passage yet, and now Paul put it down.

“He talks a lot,” Paul said.

“You should get the Cliff Notes,” Noah told him. Julian looked at him so sharply, Noah immediately clipped his mouth shut and said, “It’s not fair. You really look just like your uncle.”

Paul went on: “But basically he was talking about all the people. He was saying it was hard to describe America. And… right here he says, ‘This is a the great chain which links us all, dot, dot, dot, Nova Scotia excepted.’ But Nova Scotia’s in Canada.”

“But when Crevecour wrote, it was before there was a United States or a Canada, so when he says America, he means all of North America,” Julian explained.

“How did you know that?” Claire looked at him.

“Because I have an education.”

“No U.S. and no Canada. Just one big ole America,” Paul said. “I never thought of that.”

Paul sat there, looking dumbfounded.

“It’s neat, Paul,” Julian said. “But it’s not that neat.”

“No, no,” Paul shook his head and spoke faintly. “You don’t get it.

“I wanted to go to school because of when I was down in Florida. Remember when we went down to Florida?”

Noah nodded his head.

“I had this feeling. Like my head was opening, and I was learning so much, like the world was big and… wonderful, and I was like, that must be what learning is. The feeling you get when you learn something.” Paul smiled brightly.

“And I just got it again!”

They reclined on the bed, on the pillows, kissing and cradling each other.

“No one’s here.”

“No one’s here.”

“Should we check the house? Just to make sure?”

“No,” Todd said, hooking his hands into Fenn’s pants.

“No one’s here,” the word here was crushed by his mouth on Fenn’s.

They kissed for a long time. No one was going anywhere. Nothing was pressing. No one had better show up. It was like the first time, all that time ago, when the boy who had always been a fact, and a factor on the edge of his mind was a real thing, and a thing to be made love to, grown up now and free, and maybe then, for the first time he was grown up and free after all the years with all the others.

“Did you know…?” Todd wondered. “Did you know then… that I was your one, true love?”

Fenn did not answer.

He unbuckled his belt, and Todd held him. Todd shuffled off his trousers and lay on his side, letting Fenn pull down his dark blue briefs, letting his sex fall slowly out of them. While Fenn pulled his underwear slowly down his thighs, covered in black hair, Todd pulled off his work shirt, and pulled off his tee shirt, and lay naked. All of his long body, that olive color, the dusting of black hair deeper, thicker on his chest, toward his groin where his sex was dark as Fenn’s nearly, and he pulled at Fenn now, at his trousers, at his underwear, while Fenn’s hands kneaded him, stopped to kiss him on his hips, on his stomach, stopped to take his penis deep in his mouth, as far as possible. Todd, who had gotten to Fenn’s pants and underwear and now had his hands under his shirt, and rubbing up and down, stopped, and moaned to receive this. He received it, moaning, and clenching his teeth, received it, hands opening and closing impotently, finally playing with his own nipples, rubbing his chest and stomach, swearing, before he sat up, and lying Fenn down returned the favor.

That very first time, which was eight years ago, it had been evening, gathering twilight, with not much certainty of what would come after, only what was right now, the crazy pleasure. After they’d been steady at it for the better part of an hour, when Todd dipped his finger in the olive oil, slid it into himself, and then, with deliberation, placed himself on Fenn, and pulled him inside, they knew that there was perfect trust here, and therefore perfect love and there would be no holding back tonight. In a future time Todd, who had no taste for church, would study Hindus and Buddhist and formulate what he always believed, that though Dena’s father had been the one who had initiated him into sex, and he had been fourteen at the time, his desire for this moment, his need for Fenn had come from before he was born, from a completely different place. He felt Fenn’s smaller, stronger hands on his waist, Fenn’s body under him, Fenn in him as he pulled him deeper inside and rode him, his neck arched, their mouths parted, his eyes wide and shining toward the ceiling. There was nothing else he’d ever wanted as much as this. Nothing in the world had ever mattered as much as this moment.

That moment stretched into this. In their fifth year together Todd had brought home a book. It counseled thusly:

“Use sex as therapy. The sex should last at least forty-five minutes. If in the course of it you scream out things like, ‘I hate you,’ don’t take it personally. It’s just that you all are going to deep places.”

And there had been another sex book which had advocated all sorts of positions which, by the time they’d gotten around to them—Todd was nearly thirty and Fenn well enough past thirty—had proved entirely too painful. There was a last book that advocated beating and pummeling each other while screaming.

“‘Screaming and shouting makes the sex more intense.’”

In fact, neither one of them liked to make much noise during sex, and attempting it just made it bad. So they went back to this. The deep, silent fucking with groans escaping, the tightening of thighs and nails raking backs. Todd, already throbbing from the memory of Fenn inside him, stood on the edge of the bed and fucked him deeply, Fenn’s hands on his ass. Ass pummeled and gently raked, pulled deeper into the mystery, his orgasmic shout came as a complete surprise.

Paul showed up at the house mortified.

“I made a complete idiot of myself,” he declared.

“Well, you’re human,” Dan Malloy, who had arrived an hour earlier said, “so it’s allowed.”

“It was horrible,” Paul sat down in his seat. “I studied. With Julian. And I felt so smart. I felt like I was really learning. But when I stood up to say something in class, it just came out all wrong. It’s like I just stood there and watched this idiot talk. It was so horrible.”

“No one laughed at you?” Fenn said.

“No,” Paul said. “But you could just imagine them saying, ‘Look at the dummy. He’s too old to be here, anyway.’”

“I bet they didn’t,” Fenn said.

“Nothing came out the way I wanted it to,” Paul told them. “In my head, everything sounded so much better. And coming out it was so much…”

“Worse?” Dan supplied. Fenn frowned at him.

“Yeah!” Paul said, as if this was just the right word, and he’d been long searching for it.

“But Paul, no one knows what was in your head,” Fenn told him. “So the only one who can compare what came out of your mouth to what you wished came out of your mouth is you.”

“That’s right,” Dan chimed in. “And you know what? As far as I’m concerned, all of my sermons are bad. I always doubt them.”

“Or any of my performances on stage,” Fenn said. “It’s a lot easier to think about doing something than actually do it. The idea is always so much more perfect. That’s why most people just think about doing things.”

“The real doing is messy,” Dan added. “And you always feel like you have egg on your face.”

Paul considered this and said, “I guess. But you know what? For ten years no one ever told me I was bad at what I did. People always said, you’re so good. You’re so talented.”

Neither Dan nor Fenn said anything to this.

“Well, I guess that’s why I stayed. No doubts.”

“Say, there’s this guest priest coming in. You should hear him,” Dan said.

Fenn rolled his eyes.

“What? He’s really good,” Dan said. “He was a few years under me at seminary, and he really knows how to speak to people. Why don’t you come to Saint Barbara’s this Sunday?”

“That,” Paul said, “would be strange.”

“You went to a monastery with me.”

“That was different.”

“Just come,” Dan said in that endearing, pleading voice.

Paul gave an obligatory sigh and then said, “I’ll think about it.”

Dan nodded.

“That’s all I’m asking.”