The Smoke That Thunders Read online

  The Professor brought two six-packs and handed them to Peter. “Don’t worry. Don’t worry. No donation needed.” With that, The Professor retired to the study to continue working on his commissioned projects.

  With refreshments in hand, they went up to the attic.

  ***

  The attic was a wonderfully secluded hideaway for The Professor’s more favored customers – a place to escape and do some late night cramming. Though many went to just melt into the beanbags, guzzle cheap beer, and discuss the world’s problems or, more often, to forget about the world around them.

  Coors was on tap that particular evening. As they took their first sips, both declared they preferred Bud.

  Chad laughed and said, “There’s one thing we have in common.”

  “Probably the only.” Peter said as he lifted his can, inviting a superficial toast.

  “Your cold better?” Chad asked and quickly subdued a chuckle.

  “Riggght,” Peter said, with a look that stated clear and simply, Do not go there.

  There was a moment of silence as Chad finished off his first can, and then he began to chatter about football again. Peter wanted to tell him to shut up and declare such talk as inane and annoying, but instead he handed Chad another beer, waited for him to take a swig, and then began talking about how burnt out and inept his professors were. Chad agreed: another thing they had in common, something they both loved to complain about.

  With three beers downed and Peter’s inhibitions ebbing, Chad asked, “So, have you always been a hippie?”

  Peter tried to glare at Chad, but the alcohol buzz wouldn’t let him. He just smiled and said, “You ever hear that you shouldn’t judge the book by its cover?”

  “My assumption is ... yes, that you carefully chose a cover that would discourage anyone from wanting to pick the book up.”

  “Bingo.”

  “So what is in this book?”

  Silence. Peter studied Chad’s face, trying to detect whether sincerity or impertinence or alcohol – or some concoction of all three – had motivated the question. He wasn’t sure, but with alcohol continuing to lower inhibitions, he simply opened the book. “Do you believe in love at first sight?”

  Chad laughed. “Sheer fantasy. That is a train wreck waiting to happen ... a train I’d never get on.”

  Peter swallowed the last mouthful of his fourth can of beer, looked down at the floor, and allowed the words to come. “The summer after I finished high school, I went on this community service sort of thing, out in Kentucky. A place called Norwood, a little mountain town of about 900. Twelve of us went to fix the place up, remodel old houses so families could have more decent homes, that sort of thing.”

  Chad interrupted, “Down in hillbilly country? Like the McCoy and Hatfield feuds?”

  “They’d take that as an insult. They’re not hillbillies. They are mountain people. Anyway, I went to the first planning meeting, and there she was – eighteen, about five-four, a sassy twinkle in the biggest brown eyes I’d ever seen. Not so much pretty, I suppose, but cute. Yeah, really cute. She was one of the locals meant to take care of us, keep an eye on us, whatever. Our eyes met. It was weird, strange, like a light switch being flipped ... no, more like a match being lit. No. It was spontaneous combustion. I knew without a doubt she was feeling exactly the same.”

  “Spontaneous combustion? Trust me when I say that was simply lust doing its work. I speak from great experience.”

  “Naw, it was a connection, a knowing. Knowing something was going happen – something fine, real fine.”

  “My God! The train has left the station.”

  “Love at first sight. It’s movie garbage, I know, but that glance, that moment ... well, I just can’t explain it. Anyway, not to bore you, we talked, we hit it off. Started with the usual casual stuff. It was great, fantastic. Then … then one day this guy comes up to me and says, ‘You better be careful. She has a boyfriend. Lives in the next town. Word will get around. When it does, the shit will hit the fan.’”

  “Buyer beware. It was time to cut and run, buddy. Get off the train, Pete!”

  “Shoot! It didn’t bother me. I knew my instincts were right. I asked her about it, she says, ‘Yeah, but it’s nothing.’ Said she’d wanted to cut it off for a long time. I told her to let me know when she dumped him. She came over the next day and said it was done. Boy, that was it.”

  “Gaining steam.”

  “That night we talked late into the night. I walked her home, and we kissed. I know it sounds really, really dumb, but it was like those ridiculous movies, you know, where the fireworks go off? It was like a wave of emotions bursting Hoover Dam. I never experienced anything like that before … or since.”

  “Orgasmic?”

  “Yeah, no, I suppose. Summer went on, the relationship was great, she was great, it was amazing, it was perfect … beyond perfection.”

  “Full steam ahead. It’s too late now.”

  “So I went home and started my first year at OU. We wrote and we talked. I dreamt of getting married. We began to talk about it. Then … then in the spring, letters got shorter, less … less …”

  “Romantic?”

  “Well, yeah. Less personal. Then the calls got shorter. My head was tellin’ me something had changed, but my damn heart refused to believe it. Spring break came, and I had to see her, so I got some money out of my savings, hopped on a Greyhound and went to Harlen – a dump of a town, but as close as you can get to Norwood. I called her, gonna surprise her … that I was there in Harlen. So she answers and I say, ‘I really want to see you.’ Before I told her I was in Harlen, and she could come pick me up, she blurts out, ‘You’d better sit down.’ I thought, Oh shit! ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m back with—.’ ‘The asshole,’ I said. Then she slowly said, ‘I’m really sorry. Peter. We’re planning to get married. Don’t be …’ I hung up.”

  Peter stopped and opened another beer and gulped half of it before he continued, “I got on the next Greyhound back to Oklahoma. Slept ’til it got to Tulsa. I got off there. I couldn’t go home and answer endless questions from my parents, my sisters. I found a Motel 6 and stayed there ’til the next weekend. Went home and lied to my parents, told ’em it was great. Went back to Norman and muddled through the rest of the semester, like a zombie, the goddamn living dead. That’s when I found out about The Library and The Professor. He got me through. He felt sorry for me, so he didn’t charge much. He must have done about ten or twelve papers for me and gave me plenty of free beer. That’s when I stopped shaving … stopped caring.” He paused for a moment, leaned back in the beanbag, and poignantly said, “Paul Simon, he summed me up, ‘I’ve built walls, a fortress deep and mighty. I have no need of friendship. Friendship causes pain. It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain. I touch no one, and no one touches me.’ That’s me. That’s how you found me.”

  “Geez. So your parents? They still don’t know? About Norwood and all that shit?”

  “No one. You’re the first. It was too humiliating, stupid, painful … just too full of hate and anger. Couldn’t give it words. And now, here’s the thing, I still just don’t give a damn. I mean ... about anything. Chadwick, the world’s just a cruel, cruel place, and I can’t be bothered with any of it anymore. That’s what’s in the frigging book. And you’re right ... I don’t want anybody reading the goddamn thing.”

  “Poor Pete. Truly, a devastating train wreck. Poor, poor pitiful Pete.”

  Peter ignored Chad’s exaggerated sympathy and spoke with marked lassitude, “I don’t know how it was for you. When I was eleven and twelve years old, race riots were on TV all the time – God, it seemed like every night. I was scared to walk by a Black person, couldn’t understand why they hated White people so much … and why ... why they were torching their own places. Then … you remember, on the news every night, hearing how many more had died in Vietnam. Every night the body count plastered on the TV scree
n. You remember that?”

  Chad shook his head.

  Peter continued, “When I was in junior high, I despised those who were against the war. In high school, I protested the war. Then we pulled out last year, and now it’s becoming the hell we were supposed to prevent … the killing fields. Shoot. What’s the point of anything? Tell me that? Nixon was an ass. The war was a hideous joke. You tell me – what’s right, what’s wrong? Life is an illusion. There’s no right, no wrong – just the illusions politicians and corporations create. Tell me, Chad, what’s worth living for? Tell me, what’s worth dying for?”

  Chad shrugged.

  Peter sighed, “It’s all an illusion – a goddamn fucking illusion.”

  Chad leaned close to Peter’s face and with slightly slurred speech said, “If it’s an illusion, I think it’s a goddamn fucking wonderful illusion.”

  Peter replied, “Blessed are the illusion dwellers, eh?” He then shook his head quick and hard. “God, I’ve had way too many beers. I don’t mean to be a bore.”

  “Boring? Somewhat. Depressing? Incredibly. It’s time we get back to the dorm. I have enough arsenic to do us both in.”

  “I suppose it’s good to … what would Kingsbury say … have a cathartic moment?”

  Chad chuckled. “Well, Carl Rogers would be proud of me for enabling you to move into this new, uh, this new openness to life, encourage your ability to move away from … from defensiveness and the need for … oh, what was it … subception. Whatever the hell that means. Kingsbury and Rogers lost me there. Subception, Subception. Why do shrinks talk out of their asses?”

  Peter shook his head. “Yeah, but hell, don’t flatter yourself. You know it’s just the booze!” He closed his eyes and tilted his head back as far as his neck allowed. He had just revealed a hidden secret no human being west of the Mississippi knew about; he felt emotionally disrobed in front of this stranger. Peter looked Chad straight into his perfect blue eyes and said, “All right, so what about you, frat boy? What’s underneath that pretty-boy cheerleader façade of yours?”

  Chad winked, “Hey! Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

  “I assume your cover tells it all, but what the hell is a Jersey boy doing cheerleading at OU?”

  “The short and brutally honest answer is football. I wanted to go to a school where football is king. It came down to Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama, or Oklahoma. I decided Michigan is too damn cold, and I don’t want to be known as a Buckeye. Who the hell names their school team after a nut anyway? So it was between Oklahoma and Alabama. I flipped a coin and here I am. As simple as that. It’s been great. Heck, this year, we’ll be going to Miami for the Orange Bowl, maybe be playing for the National Championship.” Chad laughed and continued, “The cheerleading squad travels free. What could be better than that?”

  “Shoot. I don’t get the appeal. I mean … really, a cheerleader? A cheerleader? Seriously? Please!”

  Chad grew increasingly animated. “Oh, man! It’s amazing. Cheering on 70,000 crazy fans! Yeah, what an adrenaline rush! As good as sex … hell, better than sex! It’s fantastic.”

  Peter eyes drew in and his eyebrows twisted, “For the purpose of self-disclosure, I have to say near the top of my twenty most hated and annoying things in life are football and cheerleaders. Now that I know there are such things as male cheerleaders, that has to go the very top of my list. Sorry, I just don’t get it. Standing in front of mindless people, jumping up and down, waving your arms around like some stoned robot screaming out utter nonsense about a bunch of guys throwing a ball around. No. I just can’t respect that.”

  “Hey, don’t knock it ’til you try it.”

  Peter laughed. “I’ll never play the fool. I’ll leave that up to you.”

  “And I do appreciate that.”

  “But surely there’s got to be more than football, girls, partying, and road trips. I’d hate to think you’re that shallow.”

  “I am what I am. But you want a story? I’ll give you one. My dad, he’s a big-shot lawyer in New York. I’m the only kid. Boring you yet? I always lived under my dad’s expectations. He wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer, or – worse – a dentist. Yuck! Well, my dad’s a Harvard guy – to his crusty core. He assumed, of course, that I would be a Harvard man.”

  Chad stopped and took a slow sip of beer, then continued, “Now we live in Englewood, Englewood Cliffs, to be exact – the American headquarters of Ferrari and Maserati. It’s the hallowed home of 4,000 of Jersey’s poshest S.O.B.s. I went to an upper-crust private school, ole ‘D and E,’ Dwight-Englewood, a school full of rich, snotty, entitled, wonna-be farts. My grades were always pretty good, but not quite good enough for the Ivy Halls of Harvard. Dad decided I would go to Princeton, about fifth best in his frigging utopian world. He pulled in a few favors to get me in there. He went to school with the dean of admissions, and that always helps ... as does writing a hefty check. Goddamn Princeton! I hated it. I mean I really hated it! The academics weren’t that hard – just too much of it. But it was the campus life that bugged the hell out of me. Too boring, too serious, too posh. I flunked out my first semester, entirely on purpose. So, dad made me work the next semester. I ended up in a steakhouse cleaning tables, mopping floors, and serving up salad with an unrelenting plastic smile.”

  Chad paused and took a healthy gulp of Coors as he stared out of the attic’s diminutive oval window. Peter sensed he was working hard to corral suppressed anger, anger that begged to be set free whenever he thought about the forbidden secrets of his family life.

  Chad continued, speaking slowly, “Dad was trying to teach me a lesson, give me a reality check. Then he’d get me back into Princeton. He had already arranged it with his puppets there. All I had to do was to go before some committee and plead my case. I was supposed to feed them some bull-crap about how I hadn’t adjusted well, but felt very confident now. I’m sure my dad had already slipped them another impressive check to show our family’s love and support for their prestigious and wondrous school.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I refused to go to their goddamn committee meeting. And that morning, Armageddon broke loose right in our front living room. We got into it like never before. Oh, there’d been words before and Dad had slapped me a few times – lots of times, actually – but this? This was different. I was ready to fight to the death. Words got ugly. I bucked up … he bucked up. Honestly, I have no idea who landed the first punch. When it was over, Dad was in the dining room cabinet. Mom’s Royal Dalton china set was shattered, and her engraved Derwent Crystal collection sat in Dad’s lap. Dad disappeared for the night, to his firm’s apartment in Manhattan.”

  “And then?”

  “The next day, Mom sat me down and asked me what I wanted to do. I told her I needed to get far away. She didn’t argue. She knew I had to get out of the shadow of Dad’s expectations and out of reach of his wrath. She said she’d talk to him and told me to come up with a plan.

  “So here I am. Decision made on football, partying, and low-key academics, and the flip of a coin. I told Mom they have a solid pre-law program just to make it sound sincere, and I told her I’d work to get back to Princeton for graduate studies. That was just a necessary lie to keep the financial aid coming in. So here I am, a Jersey cheerleading boy, enjoying the illusions of life to their full extent. The cover pretty well says it all.”

  “You and your dad? You talk much?”

  Chad’s mouth twisted. “Same as always. Curt and to the point. ‘Please don’t bother me with trivials, son. Can’t you see I’m busy? Another time, son. Eff off, son.’ Hell. I know orphaned kids who have better fathers than me.”

  At one a.m., the stairs creaked, and The Professor entered the now-chilly garret and placed two beers on the table. Smoke from his pipe enveloped the room with its pleasant and exotic smell. With a measured smile, he said, “Bedtime for me. Take your time. You know what to do, Peter. Turn the lights out. Exit through the back door. The front d
oor is, of course, bolted. Good to have met you, Chadwick. Yes, very good indeed.” With his pipe clenched between his teeth, he turned and went down the stairs.

  Peter wanted to dig deeper. He had seen a new female slip into Chad’s room about every three or four weeks. “What about … well, what about the chapter on Chad Daley’s love life in that book of yours?”

  Chad’s eye’s widened, and half his mouth curled up, “Oh, Peter, the joy of being a cheerleader – with chicks all the time, joking, teasing, flirting. Throwing them around, lifting them over your head, getting quick looks up there. But love life? A disaster! Utter disaster. Life is miserable when I’m not in a relationship and miserable when I am. Explain that to me. When I’m without the superficial love of some female, I’m bored, scared, lost. I feel like crap. So I latch on to someone, and it’s great. I’m happy, satisfied, content as hell. That will last for about four weeks. Then, without fail, I start feeling trapped, smothered, inadequate, scared, lonely, and depressed. Like clockwork, the apology comes. ‘Chad, I’m really, really sorry. It’s not you, it’s me, but I don’t think this is going to work out. It was fun, Chad. See you around, Chad.’ That speech frees me. It cuts a tight noose right off my neck, and I can breathe again. But at the same moment, a dreaded abyss begins to grow in the pit of my stomach. I’ve started betting myself how long each new chick will last. I’m betting on five weeks for Jen. Let’s see, it’s been—”

  “Three weeks.”

  “Damn, you’re observant! That is a bit scary. But, yeah, about two more weeks. I think I can make that.”

  Peter, emboldened by alcohol and his Southern drawl taking hold, said, “Sounds to me like you just need to be single for a while, to find yourself. Be happy with who you are. Be content without having to have anyone else around. If you can do that, you’ll be ready for a relationship.”

  “Really? That must mean you’ll be waiting for eternity. Here’s the man that makes Eeyore look like a raving optimist giving me advice. I wonder how long it will take for you to be so happy with who you are.”

  “That’s why I am not looking for anyone,” Peter retorted. He began to feel it was time to go back to the dorm and let his inhibition level – and his blood alcohol level – return to safe mode. “Hey, I’ve had enough of the tearing off the scabs of wounded souls. We’d better head back to the dorm before we sober up.”