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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781524603298 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 04/20/2016 |
| Pages: | 102 |
| Product dimensions: | 8.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.50(d) |
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Ten Short Stories
By Edward Grosek
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2016 Edward GrosekAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5246-0329-8
CHAPTER 1
My Winter in Britain, with Caesar
by Paul Smith
I wanted to be tough in high school. I was, in a way, but not like some of the other guys. Once I saw a junior push in front of Metzger in the cafeteria line. We were sophomores. Metzger put his finger through the guy's belt loop in back and hoisted it up about six inches. The junior yelped like a girl. The rest of us laughed. Then Metzger pushed him back where he came from. People like you when you're tough. I've never seen Metzger in a fight, but everybody respects him. Even the priests here at Loyola like him. I was going to say they respect him, but the Jesuits don't respect any of us sophomores, not even if you are first string on the football team that won the lousy Red Division this fall and vice-president of Sodality like Metzger is. Being tough was natural for him. Not for me, though.
One day we had a fire drill. It was the middle of January. We had just gotten our books out of our lockers, gotten a glimpse of father Beall patrolling the halls for latecomers, and arrived at Father Dunn's Latin class. Metzger was with a couple other jocks in the front of the room. They were laughing about something. They got quiet as I got near. I hate that. Schoeneker came in just as I sat down and opened my Latin book to Chapter Eleven of Caesar's Gallic wars. Schoeneker was my height, but slimmer and less of a jock than me. I went out for cross country. He didn't seem to care if anyone liked him, and the funny thing was they did. I watched Metzger to see if he would shut up with his jock friends Scala and Fieberg or keep talking. As Schoeneker went past, Metzger hauled off and slugged him on the shoulder to show him he liked him even if Schoeneker wasn't tough like the jocks. I put my nose back in the Gallic Wars.
Class hadn't started yet, and Father Dunn hadn't arrived. Suddenly Metzger left Fieberg and Scala and came over to talk to me. "Nice sweater, Smith," he said. I couldn't tell whether he was joking or not because Metzger always smiled. It was like he was playing a joke on the whole world. "Is that wool or the new polyester crap?"
I knew it was wool, but I wasn't going to let him know I knew. That wasn't tough. Anybody who was a jock knew that. Even I knew, and I wasn't a jock. You weren't supposed to know if the sweater your mother bought you was wool or polyester or even rayon. You just put the thing on when it was cold and forgot it. Or better yet, you didn't put it on when it was cold so that the guys could see you were so tough you didn't need one. But then I saw Scala and Fieberg with sweaters on so I decided having one was alright.
"It's just a sweater," I told him.
"Nice looking," he said. He touched the sleeve and started rubbing the material between his fingers. Scala and Fieberg laughed to themselves. I pulled my arm away.
"What's the matter, Smith?" he asked me as the smile went from his face. "Did I hurt you?"
"Hell, no."
"You're awfully touchy, aren't you? Maybe I should just forget it. Yeah, let's forget the whole thing."
He started to go back to Scala and Fieberg. "What? Forget what?" I asked.
He stopped. I couldn't see his face, but I could see Scala and Fieberg. Their faces lit up as a look got passed between them. Metzger turned around and came back.
"I was really admiring your sweater. You know, you've got a good build. Almost as good as mine. I was thinking, 'Hey, that sweater might fit me if I asked Smith to borrow it, just to try it on to see if his build is as good as mine.' But then I thought, 'Nah, he won't let me.' Then Speedy Scala told me, 'Hey, he does have a good build, so go ahead and ask him.' So what do you say? Could I try on your sweater?"
"What? Are you cold?" I asked. I wasn't going to make it easy.
"I just want to try it on. But as a matter of fact, it is cold where I sit. Very definitely. Cold." His smile came back.
"You sit in the middle of the room. In front," I said. "Right here it's cold," I nodded to the window beside me.
"Yeah, but you have a heater here, too, along the floor. Up front, for some strange reason, we have a breeze, and it's cold. Brr, is it cold. If I could borrow your sweater, just for Latin class, I'd appreciate it." He punched me on the shoulder like he hit Schoeneker. "Good build, man."
Metzger's reasoning sounded pretty funny to me, but if jocks like Scala and Fieberg needed sweaters, I guess he did, too. I took off the sweater and gave it to him. My shoulders were getting a lot bigger. I worked out after school.
"Wool," Metzger said as he looked inside the collar. "That's the best kind, Smith." He threw it over his shoulders. I started comparing how he looked in the sweater compared to me, but gave up. He was a jock. He smiled and went back to his desk just as the bell rang and Father Dunn came in.
The jocks didn't like Father Dunn. He was not like the other priests at Loyola. It was his first year here, and he wasn't used to things here. That's what I heard. How would I know? This was my second year, and I really didn't know anything about anything. Loyola was only for guys. It was supposed to be special because it was all Catholic and up in rich Wilmette, which is safely outside of Chicago. I wasn't that crazy about it, but I liked Father Dunn.
Father Dunn was that age between young and really old, a big span, somewhere in the middle. He wore glasses, had a sarcastic smile, and a way of putting you down so that he was the only one who enjoyed it. One day we had a surprise Latin test. We all did terrible, and Father Dunn picked out one bad test paper and read it aloud to us. "'And Caesar crossed the Rubicon on a forced march with three legions of soldiers, archers and galley slaves.' Now, one might ask oneself what galley slaves were doing three hundred miles from a galley, which you would normally find on a ship. Unless one is so tired or pre-occupied with football practice that the sense of the translation doesn't mean a damn thing to him." Then Father Dunn crumpled the test paper up into a little ball and dropped it into the wastebasket. The room became dead quiet, and he told us the test wouldn't count. Normally, that would have caused a riot of applause, but the room stayed quiet, and everyone felt uneasy because he said 'damn'.
I liked him, though. He didn't play up to the jocks like Father Bowman and Father Boyle did. He put the jocks down and didn't try to get a laugh out of it like the other priests. The priests all had their own lunchroom, but one day I saw Father Dunn eating lunch in our cafeteria. He sat at a table all by himself.
Father Dunn came in, went up to his desk where he made the sign of the cross and told us to stand up.
"Oh, Lord, we thank Thee for this day that we might partake in Thy knowledge and we ask Thy blessing that our wisdom might serve You better. Amen. Be seated."
Father Dunn looked briefly at the ceiling, left the desk and walked directly to the center of the room. He was tall and lean, lonely and gaunt in his black cassock before us. I experienced a sudden, terrible fear that this was the kind of lonely man I would become when I got older and discovered that I had no friends. I was glad I'd given my sweater to Metzger.
"Does anyone have any idea what Caesar's frame of mind was when he spent his first winter in Britain?" he asked us. "He describes the cold for us in Chapter Eleven, and his best friend Maximus has just been killed. Yet he still has hope, doesn't he? Is he brave, or just pretending? Is he being brave for the other soldiers? Would anyone care to comment?" He scanned the room with his narrow nose pointing from one side to the other, unable to find a hand in the air.
It was the kind of question we could b.s. our way through, but nobody liked to answer the first question in class. It was like you were a brown-nose if you did.
Finally, Metzger's hand went up in the front of the class. His arm looked really good in my sweater, especially at the shoulder. His muscles were well developed, like he'd lifted a lot of weights. But then, so were mine. I did pushups after school. They were tougher than weights. I dropped cross country because it made me throw up. But I still did pushups.
Just as Father Dunn was getting ready to call on Metzger, the fire alarm went off. It was funny. Fieberg looked at Metzger almost as if it wasn't a surprise. I was behind them, but I could see each guy lift his head up slightly the way they said hello in the halls when Father Beall was around and you couldn't say a word. Father Dunn looked at the clock and the door and said, "Stay calm, everyone. This is just a routine fire drill. We'll file out the door and into the yard by the door beside the gym."
Everyone got up. I was going to freeze to death without my sweater. "Metzger," I half-said, half-whispered.
"And no talking."
"Can we get our coats?" Sennet said.
"No coats and no talking."
Father Dunn led us out of the room into a busy but rather quiet hall. Sometimes the halls were noisy because the lockers made lots of noise, but not now. All the classes were being taken out into the snow. There were black cassocks all over the place, shoving guys into lines and shushing us. It was like a prison movie. Father Beall cruised up and down the hall, supervising us and the black-cassocked priests and looking for somebody to say just one word. No one did. Everyone was thinking to himself it was twenty degrees out and sometimes the fire drills took an hour.
As soon as I followed Schoeneker out into the yard, I felt the cold air go right through my thin shirt. Metzger was ahead of me. Father Dunn got us all in line in the yard as it filled up with shivering students.
"It's a bomb," I heard Scala whisper to Schoeneker. "Somebody put a bomb in the basement."
"No talking," Father Dunn said as he passed us. "Mister Scala, I'm watching you."
I had to find out what was going on. Scala shut up. The only one between me and him was Schoeneker. Everything we did was in alphabetical order. I knew more about the back of Schoeneker's head than his own mother. Scala, Schoeneker, Sommers, Sennett. I knew when they all got haircuts. But I couldn't say anything while Father Dunn was right here. The L-shaped courtyard formed by the gym and the east wing was half-full, and there was nothing but us and the silent cold. Father Beall disappeared into the east wing again, but Father Dunn stood there shivering with us in his frayed black cassock. I had to be careful. One thing about the Jesuits – they popped out of nowhere when you didn't expect it and heard what you said. I did not underestimate them. We didn't move for ten minutes.
Then we heard the siren from a fire engine or a police car on the street beside the campus. I was going crazy wondering about what was happening. Scala said a bomb. Why were we standing here right where it could explode? Every time the wind gusted, the cold went deeper inside me. My hands were in my pockets, my ears were ready to fall off, and the wind went right through my shirt. The worst thing was that Metzger probably knew, and he had on my sweater.
Finally Father Dunn went all the way to the front of our line, by Adams and Barton. I thought I saw Adams turn around to say something. As soon as Father Dunn went beside Adams I asked Schoeneker, "What bomb? Where?"
"Shut up."
"Come on, I'm freezing my ass off. What bomb?"
Without moving a muscle he whispered back at me. "We're going to get the rest of the day off. It's a false alarm."
"Who did it?"
"A guy from New Trier."
"New Trier!" I didn't have any friends up in Wilmette or Winnetka. But maybe the guys from St. Joe or Faith Hope did. "New Trier," I repeated, as it started to make sense.
Then I felt a big hand on my shoulder. "You are the one I want," a deep voice said. I didn't need to turn around to recognize that voice, but I did anyway and saw Father Beall standing above me, with that wise Jesuit smile of his. The grip on my shoulder tightened.
Nobody said another word for five minutes until Father Bowman came out to whisper something to Father Beall that not even I heard, and my shoulder was still in his cold hand. Then Father Bowman and Father Dunn started marching everyone back into the east wing.
Everyone but me.
Father Beall stayed right there above me in the cold yard and waited till it was just me and him and the wind.
"Do you have any idea," he asked, "of the danger and the disruption you have caused today? And the expense, and the embarrassment?" With each inconvenience he poked a stubby index finger into my chest.
"I didn't do anything."
"New Trier, you said. I heard you say it twice. Somebody called in a bomb scare so everyone would get the day off. It didn't work. We just had the campus checked, and there is no bomb. And we're going to stay here until you tell me which of your friends at New Trier did it, and who at Loyola knew about it."
"I don't have friends at New Trier. I live in Skokie."
"That doesn't make any difference," he scoffed. "You can have friends anywhere. You're young."
"I didn't do a thing."
"Both knowledge and action bear the burden of guilt. And we're staying here till you tell me." One look at him, tall, stern, built like a linebacker, told me he could last longer than I could in this cold before giving in. I wished I'd never asked Schoeneker a thing. I looked at the windows in the east wing, expecting to see faces, but there weren't any. Everyone was back in class.
Father Beall didn't budge. Something had to get me through this. Toughness wasn't it. I thought of Caesar in Britain. How tough was he? He was tough. Whatever Caesar did there had to be nobler than standing out in a schoolyard getting disciplined. I could be like him, noble, proud, a Roman. What did Father Dunn say? Caesar was being strong for himself or for the other soldiers, and he was sad because his friend died. That's what I was doing, being strong for me and my friends. I was protecting them, whoever they were. Protecting who? Nobody. I hated them, hated Metzger, hated Scala, hated Fieberg. They never included me in anything. The only reason I was being tough out here was so the guys in class would say I was tough. Now I was really miserable. Caesar was tough, and I was just plain stupid. As the wind blew through me for the umpteenth time I decided that being tough for others was when you liked them and didn't care what they said afterwards.
We shivered together another half hour, until I heard a bell ring outside and knew it was eight fifty and time for classes to change. A minute after that the door beside the gym opened, and Father Dunn came out. I was numb as a block of ice.
"Can I have a minute with Mister Smith?" Father Dunn asked.
"Go right ahead," Father Beall said. I think he was glad he could go inside. But he didn't move.
"How about if we go inside, father," Father Dunn asked.
"We're good here."
"I don't think it was him. Smith isn't that kind of guy."
"He knows something. New Trier. He said 'New Trier.'"
"He's from St. Lambert's in Skokie."
"Everyone has friends at New Trier. They're right next door."
"Heck, I don't," Father Dunn smiled. "I'm new here. I don't have any true friends here yet. I think Smith's a good guy, but not too many people know it yet. And I don't think he has a friend at New Trier who'd do anything this stupid. Smith's smart."
"If he's smart, he can tell us who's in league with him," Father Beall replied.
"Sure, but why not inside? I'm freezing."
"When Augustine went into exile in Africa he spoke of the 'purity of isolation' and how it shaped his beliefs. He says so in his 'Confessions'. Maybe the purity out here in the yard will help Mr. Smith confess."
"Let me take him inside to my office. I see him every day. With your responsibilities here, you don't see him as often."
"He needs to come clean."
"Yes, of course. I don't approach things as directly as you do, Father, but at St. Mary's, we were strict as well." He put a firm hand on my shoulder. "You know what I mean?"
Father Beall's face softened. "Of course there's another way." The priests looked at each other. What do priests think about, anyway? "That way works, too," Father Beall said. "Let me have just one word with you."
Father Dunn and Father Beall walked a few steps away and had a few private words together. Now I really had to be tough. They were getting ready to pull the old Inquisition routine on me. Now there were faces in the windows above, unsmiling faces behind semi-opaque glass that half hid them and their sentiments. The windows were frosty. The fluorescent lights inside made them glow. Then Father Beall went in and left me and Father Dunn shivering in the yard.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Ten Short Stories by Edward Grosek. Copyright © 2016 Edward Grosek. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
My Winter in Britain, with Caesar Paul Smith, 1,Miss Lonelyheart Pays Back Michael Humfrey, 16,
Family Confessions Joy Rewold Schneider, 25,
The Tree James Bellarosa, 35,
Tye Bruce Muench, 40,
A Day in Dallas: "What if" - the Eternal Question from History Alan Youmans, 44,
The Squirrels in Town Mike Bayles, 55,
A Smile for the Fry Cook Connie Kallback, 60,
Lady Luck Joy Rewold Schneider, 66,
The Palm Reader Edward Grosek, 79,