“In those days,” McGovern said, “if you were from central Maine and not one hundred percent heterosexual, you tried like hell to pass for it. That was the only choice there was, outside of moving to Greenwich Village and wearing a beret and spending Saturday nights in the kind of jazz clubs where they used to applaud by snapping their fingers. Back then, the idea of ’coming out of the closet’ was ridiculous. For most of us the closet was all there was. Unless you wanted a pack of liquored-up fraternity boys sitting on you in an alley and trying to pull your face off, the world was your closet.”
Pat finished his drink and tossed his paper cup on the ground.
His mother told him to pick it up and put it in the litter basket, a task he performed with immense good cheer. Then she took his hand and they began to walk slowly out of the park.
Ralph watched them go with a feeling of trepidation, hoping the woman’s fears and worries would turn out to be unjustified, fearing that they wouldn’t be.
“When I applied for a job in the Derry High History Department-this was in 1951 -I was fresh from two years teaching in the sticks, way to hell and gone in Lubec, and I figured if I could get along up there with no questions being asked, I could get along anywhere. But Bob took one look at me-hell, inside me-with those X-ray eyes of his and just knew. And he wasn’t shy, either.
“If I decide to offer you this job and you decide to take it, Mr.
McGovern, may I be assured that there will never be so much as an iota of trouble over the matter of your sexual preference?”
“Sexual preference, Ralph! Man oh man! I’d never even dreai ed of such a phrase before that day, but it came sliding out of his month slicker than a ball-bearing coated with Crisco. I started to get up on my high horse, tell him I didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about but I resented the hell out of it just the same-on general principles, you might say-and then I took another look at him and decided to save my energy. I might have fooled some people up in Lubec, but I wasn’t fooling Bob Polhurst. He wasn’t thirty himself yet, probably hadn’t been south of Kittery more than a dozen times in his whole life, but he knew everything that mattered about me, and all it had taken him to find it out was one twenty-minute interview.
“’No, sir, not an iota,” I said, just as meek as Mary’s little lamb.”
McGovern dabbed at his eyes with the handkerchief again, but Ralph had an idea that this time the gesture was mostly theatrical.
“In the twenty-three years before I went off to teach at Derry Community College, Bob taught me everything I know about teaching history and playing chess. He was a brilliant player… he certainly would have given that windbag Faye Chapin some hard bark to chew on, I can tell you that. I only beat him once, and that was after the Alzheimer’s started to take hold.
I never played him again after that.
“And there were other things. He never forgot a joke. He never forgot the birthdays or anniversaries of the people who were close to him-he didn’t send cards or give gifts, but he always offered congratulations and good wishes, and no one ever doubted his sincerity.
He published over sixty articles on teaching history and on the Civil War, which was his specialty. In 1967 and 1968 he wrote a book called Later That Summer, about what happened in the months following Gettysburg. He let me read the manuscript ten years ago, and I think it’s the best book on the Civil War I’ve ever read-the only one that even comes close is a novel called The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara. Bob wouldn’t hear of publishing it, though. When I asked him why, he said that I of all people should understand his reasons.”
McGovern paused briefly, looking out across the park, which was filled with green-gold light and black interlacings of shadow which moved and shifted with each breath of wind.
“He said he had a fear of exposure.”
“Okay,” Ralph said. “I get it.”
“Maybe this sums him up best of all: he used to do the big Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle in ink. I poked him about that once-accused him of hubris. He gave me a grin and said, ’There’s a big difference between pride and optimism, Bill-I’m an optimist, that’s all.”
“Anyway, you get the picture. A kind man, a good teacher, a brilliant mind. His specialty was the Civil War, and now he doesn’t even know what a civil war is, let alone who won ours. Hell, he doesn’t even know his own name, and at some point soon-the sooner the better, actually-he’s going to die without any idea that he ever lived.”
A middle-aged man in a University of Maine tee-shirt and a pair of ragged bluejeans came shuffling through the playground, carrying a crumpled paper shopping bag under one arm. He stopped beside the snackbar to examine the contents of the waste-barrel, hoping for a returnable or two. As he bent over, Ralph saw the dark green envelope which surrounded him and the lighter green balloon-string which rose, wavering, from the crown of his head. And suddenly he was too tired to close his eyes, too tired to wish it away.
He turned to McGovern and said, “Ever since last month I’ve been seeing stuff that-”
“I ness I’m in mourning,” McGovern said, giving his eyes another theatrical wipe, “although I don’t know if it’s for Bob or for me. Isn’t that a hoot? But if you could have seen how bright he was in those days… how goddam scary-bright…”
“Bill? You see that guy over there by the snackbar? The one rooting through the trash barrel? I see-”
“Yeah, those guys are all over the place now,” McGovern said, giving the wino (who had found two empty Budweiser cans and tucked them into his bag) a cursory glance before turning to Ralph again. “I hate being old-I guess maybe that’s all it really comes down to. I mean big-time.”
The wino approached their bench in a bent-kneed shuffle, the breeze heralding his arrival with a smell which was not English Leather. His aura-a sprightly and energetic green that made Ralph think of Saint Patrick’s Day decorations-went oddly with his subservient posture and sickly grin.
“Say, you guys! How you doon?”
“We’ve been better,” McGovern said, hoisting the satiric eyebrow, “and I expect we’ll be better again once you shove off.”
The wino looked at McGovern uncertainly, seemed to decide he was a lost cause, and shifted his gaze to Ralph. “You got a bittl spare change, mister? I gotta get to Dexter. My uncle call me out dere at the Shelter on Neibolt Street, say I can have my old job back at the mill, but only if I-”
“Get lost, chum,” McGovern said.
The wino gave him a brief, anxious glance, and then his bloodshot brown eyes rolled back to Ralph again. “Dass a good job, you know?
I could have it back, but only if I get dere today. Dere’s a bus-” Ralph reached into his pocket, found a quarter and a dime, and dropped them into the outstretched hand. The wino grinned. The aura surrounding him brightened, then suddenly disappeared. Ralph found that a great relief.
“Hey, great! Thank you, mister!”
“Don’t mention it,” Ralph said.
The wino lurched off in the direction of the Shop in Save, where such brands as Night Train, Old Duke, and Silver Satin were always on sale.
Oh shit, Ralph, would it hurt you to be a little charitable in your head, as well? he asked himself. Go another half a mile in that directt’on, you come to the bus station.
True, but Ralph had lived long enough to know there was a world of difference between charitable thinking and illusions. If the wino with the dark-green aura was going to the bus station, then Ralph was going to Washington to be Secretary of State.
“You shouldn’t do that, Ralph,” McGovern said reprovingly. “It just encourages them.”
“I suppose,” Ralph said wearily.
“What were you saying when we were so rudely interrupted?”