16

LATER, MAX AND I WENT DOWN TO OUR boathouse, where we sat across from each other in the dark on the twin docks under the sloping roof. We said little, each lost in our private thoughts about the evening. He, falling in love (at least in his novel); I, still a little brain-dead from the million-volt shock of Suzanne’s embrace, and happy to be safely back home. The stars were coming clearer as the moon settled behind us. Across the lake, only a single light glowed in the upper story of Hermitage. Laura had not been allowed to come with us—early-morning pickup for Albany and the train back to New York. Like a time traveler returned to his own place and time, I was just a little spooked, a little drunk, but happy to believe that nothing had really changed. There was the lake as I had known it from earliest childhood, an obsidian smoothness mirroring the comforting stars, the woods a silver-gray palisade, the night a huge encompassing diamond-studded shield against encroaching chaos. It was a world of predictable habit and seasonal cycles upon which I could depend. Except it was emptying fast.

“Here,” said Max, coming over and handing me his joint. I finished it off quite expertly, waiting.

“Who were those people they kept mentioning at the dinner table: Kim and Anthony?”

“No idea.”

“You’re lying to your best pal, again. I saw your eyes light up like beacons at the mention of those names.”

“You’re imagining it.”

“Who you gonna trust if not me? You think Virgil really gives a damn?”

I felt the world shifting on its axis, and I closed my eyes, wanting the images on the canvases to fade away, as if I could just wake up, relieved. . . because that corrupt version of my grandmother I’d just glimpsed simply would not fit with the world as I’d found it.

I thought again of her in her last illness, and how alone she had seemed, though I think my presence at her hospital bed helped. My mother was at best useless and, worse, even hostile after getting wind of the restriction in my grandmother’s will. I loved the sound of my grandmother’s voice, with its high nasal vowels, which was the voice of her people, and all she’d tried to pass on to me. What extraordinary stories she could tell. How much she had lost . . . first a husband and then a son, denied their company in the house by the lake, where she had first come to love them. She could have returned to her own family place in Northeast Harbor, but she didn’t. Oddly, after Suzanne’s bizarre embrace on the piazza—as the sensation took root—I felt inexplicably empowered, as if her words had only heightened my family’s love for Elysium, something of them and their past renewed in me. You are loved. The thing burned in my blood, and my heart quickened at the thought of her hand moving to my crotch. My senses sharpened as I opened my eyes. Looking at the lapping water, I detected ripples come from an infinite distance, as if voices from all things and all places were opening themselves to me . . . where the solar winds stirred the stars.

If one could only listen hard enough, what stories—what answers might be voiced? Or was the answer simply a thing of flesh and desire, flesh moving through flesh? The oak-ribbed rowboat, which had been my father’s and his father’s and his father’s before him, stirred in the slip, the rope on the davit creaking as if whispering to me, perhaps of some new departure. In that craft, I had first learned the possibility of escape, of moving through space by my own exertions (at five or six, and I’d given my mother a terrible fright when once I’d gone missing for a whole hour). The boat rocked so gently. I thought about my father standing on the dock on the day he left and never returned. I wondered what had been going through his mind, as I had a thousand times before. Had he not loved my mother enough? Had he not loved me enough? My soul yearned to believe that he was a good man in a good cause doing his duty. And not a traitor. How much of his cold determination to do what he had to do was in me? And again I felt Suzanne’s possessive hands slipping over my body as if to know it as her own—to protect me or someone else?—but not enough to keep him here, to keep him safe.

And yet . . . and yet, in Bobby’s and Suzanne’s eyes I had glimpsed something of his return.

I looked out at the lake-reflected starlight and wondered if there had been a time of joy before such uncertainties and sadness had entered my world. And I imagined how it might have been with those Chinese lanterns drifting over the lake as a violin or saxophone sang out, to be joined by others, and the desires unleashed in their wake. Oh, the aching beauty of such a thing. Or were such times of joy simply the rare exception, surrounded by times of sadness, and there was no such thing: one without the other? Youth wants to believe in a golden age of heroes, of innocent, untrammeled desire; it is an instinct as old as the race. I sensed such preoccupations in my father’s scholarship, and couldn’t help wondering if such a romantic quest, such a belief, had proved more a hindrance than help to his ultimate fate.

Staring out, I tried to conjure the image of a young woman, a widow with a young child, coming down to the boathouse late on a warm summer night, dropping her bathrobe and slipping into the lake, headed for that distant light, for the welcoming embrace of the artist who might immortalize her. She had been a longdistance swimmer since her childhood in Northeast Harbor. “My God, don’t be such a sissy. Eden Lake is like bathwater compared to the sea,” she’d say.

The rocking of the boat ceased and the sounds of lapping gave way to a deeper silence, to the myriad woodnotes, the cricketing stitches sewn into night’s tapestry. I turned to Max, who was sitting across from me like a silent twin, his back against a wooden support column, lighting up his second joint of the night, his deceptively careless features emergent in the glow of a match. We were both, in our different ways, early veterans of loss. But the full reality of that knowledge, the perspective that only the pastness of one’s own past can truly give, was not yet ours to share. Those images—Max’s “memory points,” brightening and polished by time—the dependable truths of experience, would accompany us on separate journeys. But for those few remaining minutes, we tried to hold on to the tiny paradise before us: between strokes, before the glide fails, before we must again get our backs into the race or yield to the returning current.

“You will invite her to the fall dance, I assume.” Max said this while watching his match flicker out at his fingertip. A dribble of smoke passed from his lips and drifted off.

“She said something about coming for a football game.” “Well, there you are—she’s crazy about you.”

“She’s nothing of the sort. . . . We’ve just been around each other since we were kids.”

“Believe me, I know the signs. I just wish it were me. Boy, her mom let me know in no uncertain terms—clearing the decks for you—that when I finished the drying, I was to go back to the piano. ‘Play a few more pieces, please, Max, for my husband; it will help him get to sleep,’” she said.

“We just talked.”

“Did you notice the way her mother looked at you?” “They’re a mess. That place gives me the creeps.”

“You lie. I saw you; you were almost as dazzled as I was. Even if they’re a dying breed—huh, like you guys. But what a way to go . . . immolated in a gemlike flame.”

“Did you notice the rot in the shingles, the broken gutters? And the faucet in the bathroom sink came off in my hand.”

“Well, maybe you could give them a hand. I’m sure it’s tough taking care of an old place like that—taking care of that poor old guy.”

The sympathetic note irritated me. “Here today, gone tomorrow.”

“Just don’t let anybody take this away from you.” Max gestured toward the lake. “And don’t let Byron Folley get his unctuous paws on you, either.”

“You keep saying shit like that—so what’s the latest on the faculty meetings?” Max had finally taken me into his confidence about his taping system in the headmaster’s study.

“Paul Oakes retires after graduation, if he makes it. They’d like to ease out your pal Virgil Dabney, too. Even Doc Steele isn’t planning to hang on much longer. And from what Mr. Williams had to offer at dinner, I’d say it looks like he’s all that’s standing between Folley and a trustees lynching party.”

“Good riddance.” “And how, brother.”

“They’ll be gone.” I sighed aloud. “We’ll be gone.”

I saw Max smirk to himself, as if he knew something I didn’t. “You’re such a bullshitter, Max. You and your little mysteries.”

“Hang tight, Hawkman, and keep your nose clean of Homer for a while, give the rampaging Achilles—a fucking maniac, man, and sacker of cities—and Odysseus a rest.” Max gestured again to the lake and the stars. “Remember, life is mysterious for a reason.”

“A reason?”

“Did I ever tell you about Mutianus Rufus?” “No . . . don’t tell me.”

“Mutianus Rufus, a friend of Erasmus—Luther, too. You know, that priest with the Oedipus complex.”

Max took another long drag on his joint, his head drifting back against the wooden pillar, eyes shining in the ambient light off the lake. Above us in the rafters, there was a slight rustle from the nesting barn swallows, presumably getting high. Beyond, the swooping of bats above the water as they dive-bombed the sleeping stars.

“Listen, tonight was plenty weird enough without your adding to it.”

“One fucked-up bitter dude—huh. But he was fucked-up dropping high explosives on the Nazis, so I’ll give him a pass. Besides, they were a pretty cool crowd. I looked at the scrapbooks in the library; the old man played a youth concert at Carnegie Hall before the war.”

“So he must have been pretty good?”

“I read the Times review, polite—but hey, Carnegie Hall. And she— queen bee, she was the real deal, a prima ballerina before the war; she was front-page news in the art press whenever she performed.”

“All a little before your time, don’t you think?”

“There’s no such thing, pal.” Max snapped his fingers. “Time, it’s like that.”

“Yeah, well . . . easy for you to say: I’m stuck with the founding families thing. And I don’t want to have anything to do with them.” I motioned to the distant light across the lake.

“So you say, but you’re in queer city, man, so smoke your joint and cozy up to the distaff side of things. You could use a little love in your life.”

I took the joint from where he’d walked it over and left it next to a davit and lighted up.

“His bullshit about Vietnam pissed me off.” “I thought he had it about right.”

“You would: comparing the United States to Nazi Germany.” “I wouldn’t go that far.”

“It’s one thing to say we shouldn’t fight, another to pretend that the Vietcong are all sweetness and light.”

“Look at you, all set to become one of Doc’s boys. I guess when you’ve got this, and money, no one can touch you: You’re entitled to be a running dog imperialist.”

I held the smoke deep in my lungs as I had been taught, not that I was a big fan. But at least his stash was now out of the car and to be consumed before our return. I coughed.

“I’ll register for the draft, just like everyone else—except you, of course,” I said.

“If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t even bother about college.”

“That’s what never ceases to amaze me about you guys: Everybody mopes around, complaining about how bad things are, feeling sorry for themselves. Do you really agree with those people, Max, the SDS guys, Huey Newton’s Black Panthers, who want to tear down everything that made our country great?”

“A little housecleaning is always good for the soul.”

“Well, Stalin and Mao sure knew a thing or two about housecleaning. Maybe you can be the Cultural Revolution of the literary world—do a little spring cleaning of your own.”

“If I can take down a few imperialist flunkies, that’ll be just fine.”

“Well, I agree with Doc: I think we do have some moral responsibilities as a country, to try to help people who are being taken over by the Communists. People like you would be first on their hit list if they ever got a toehold here.”

“Oh, we’re back to dominoes, are we?”

“No, doing something because it’s right, that needs doing, like fighting Hitler.”

“Spare me your quaint morality tale, featherbrain. Next, you’ll be telling me America fought Hitler to save the Jews. Let me tell you something. Hitler declared war on us. And the Jews in Europe were being murdered long before the war started, and nobody did a damn thing about it. Who turned back the refugee ships—huh? And even when the war got started, nobody did anything to try to stop the Nazis from exterminating the Jews. FDR and Churchill knew all about the concentration camps. Did they even try to bomb the railway lines to the camps? And let me tell you something else: If Pearl Harbor hadn’t happened and the Nazis had gone quietly about the Holocaust,

I guarantee you, nobody would’ve gone to war to save them. It would’ve been business as usual.”

“So . . . we were wrong to do nothing then, but right to do nothing now?

“You can’t justify napalming peasants, women and children, as taking the moral high ground. Didn’t you listen to anything Charlie had to say? It’s none of our business; they don’t want us there.”

“Sin of hubris—huh.” I released the smoke from my lungs. “Well, Charlie fought for his country and was proud of it.”

“The Nazis are one thing; women and children are another.”

“So you blame Roosevelt for not stepping in and saving the Jews, but what about when the Communists take over and start butchering their class enemies? What then?”

“Who cares if some of the riffraff get knocked off; it’s a fucking civil war.”

“Easy, as long as you’re not the riffraff.”

“Who cares—I’m sorry, it’s far, far away. And like Charlie said, who are we to butt in? Who are we to demand the world be like us? We’re totally fucked-up, man. Look what they did to Martin Luther King and President Kennedy—how fucked-up. Half the people in this country carry guns and think evolution is a myth. Your Christian militia and the KKK are still using blacks for target practice—what do you expect the Black Panthers to do? Your problem is, you want the black brothers at school to love you for your good intentions—and your right arm. It’s not enough.”

“My father cared.”

“Yeah, well look where it got him. And by the way, that roomful of guns back there is pretty fucking creepy. You guys could arm a militia.” I tossed what was left of my joint at Max and looked longingly at the rowboat. I was mad. I was hurt. We’d been around the block on these subjects a hundred times. Between the wine and the dope, I felt only a dull, remote pain, a loneliness I couldn’t put a name to. I closed my eyes, just wanting silence, everlasting silence, to forget everything. I told myself, keep your head down, go to college, get the work done, play football for Princeton . . . row your heart out on Lake Carnegie, and by the time you open your eyes again, maybe it will have all gone away.

The second toke seemed to do the trick. The lake had grown around us, a great window of silvery blackness through which the silent stars shone like beacons. In the treetops behind us, that still-unblemished moon hovered on the ridgeline, feeling its way into the underworld. More bats began spilling across the darkness, dipping wings to the lake, tapping out Morse code on that stellar membrane. The silence stayed with us for a little while longer, holding us close.

“Sorry,” said Max, “that wasn’t fair.” “It’s okay.”

“The truth is, I don’t have the guts to go out on the streets and. . . and bomb police precincts. Frankly, those dudes are such fucking bores—they’re idiots.”

I turned to Max, a little amazed at this near confession. “You’d rather read about it, or write about it—huh?”

“Sometimes, I just can’t believe Charlie’s dead. I see how beautiful your lake is and I can’t believe it . . . how anything bad can happen. Isn’t that ridiculous. Park me in that room of your father’s with a typewriter, looking out over this lake, and a tag team of Playmates of the Month couldn’t drag me away.” Max was staring intently, squinting, a tone of frustration as he began again. “And you know, there was so much fire and life and love in Charlie. It’s like he battled death for so long, fought it to a standstill . . . and then in an instant, he’s lying in the road and it’s all over.”

Max’s pale face was gently illuminated by the silvery iridescence that encompassed us. His curly hair dangled about his shoulders. He was older, but magically young, like an image of Gabriel I had once seen emerging from the gloom of a canvas by Caravaggio.

“You played beautifully tonight, Max. I was really moved. You have a great gift; you should be proud and happy.”

“I’ll take a good woman like Laura any day.”

“Well, now you can go back to Wendy.” Wendy was the restorer at Palazzo Fenway with whom Max had an on-again, off-again thing going. She’d been writing him, and Max read me her letters. She wrote the most unbelievable pornographic love letters, leaving nothing to the imagination. My suggestion was also to protect myself, and Laura, some part of me knowing that if it came down to Laura and Max, I’d always play second fiddle. “Or Susan—how is Susan, by the way?”

“Take her—Laura—to the fall dance, or, I swear, I will,” he said. “Gee, Max . . . I guess you really liked her, more than Wendy, huh?” “I do, it’s true, I do, and what a beautiful night for it, too. Outside, under the stars, like animals, when we can be most human.”

“You two were sure flirting up a storm at the beach.”

I thought I saw that infamous flicker of a smile.

“So, maybe we’ll elope and go to Venice and kiss beneath the Bridge of Sighs.”

“Ha-ha . . . you and Venice.” Suddenly, I was feeling no pain. “Venice,” he said quietly, with an almost sibilant reverence, “is the one place on earth where art and life have come together in timeless consanguinity.”

I squinted, the better to see his face, if his expression might betray his mood. The flicker of his eyebrows when he used a word he loved.

“Weren’t those Sargent watercolors something?” “The finest, shit, man.”

“Blissing out on truth and beauty—cool,” I added. The ocean of stars stirred before us.

“Art . . .” He wet his finger and held it up, as if testing for those solar winds. “Art, Pete, didn’t you feel it there tonight, in that fabulous place?” and he looked out over the lake to those dark French doors. “I mean, yeah, the Sargents, and there were Whistler etchings in the library.”

“Maybe you’ve missed your calling. Maybe you should be a painter.” “Their whole place was like that . . . radioactive.”

I sighed. “Sounds about right,” I said, and thought again of Suzanne’s and Laura’s watching eyes across the table in the candlelight, except the eyes seemed to merge as one in my mind, along with that craving embrace on the piazza.

“‘There’s not the smallest orb,’” he sang out, “‘which thou behold’st but in his motion like an angel sings, still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins; such harmony is in immortal souls; but whilst this muddy vesture of decay doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.’”

My heart was beating so fast, I felt giddy.

“The golden age . . .,” I replied, words failing me.

“Edward de Vere’s golden age,” he echoed back. “Exiles all . . . you and me and Eddy boy.”

“‘How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit and let the sounds of music creep in our ears.’”

I looked serenely across to where Max sat watching me, nodding slowly, playing silent notes on his kneecaps.

“Know what,” Max said, “there was another bit in Charlie’s notebooks, where he wrote, ‘The romantic mind is condemned to the misuse of knowledge, not for wisdom but as a resource for power, the dream for the actual, the deathless dogma for unflinching reality.’”

“Well, you should know: the great romantic fallacy—huh.” Somewhere far out on the lake, there was the sound of flapping wings, the honking of a nesting heron disturbed by a fox or snapping turtle. Then silence again. I thought of the flight of that great blue heron that my father had watched from the dock of the boathouse as he smoked his last cigarette, the rhythmic bellow of its wings as it sought altitude. Or that’s how I imagined it.

“I believe we were speaking of angels,” said Max.

“Yeah, yeah . . . the golden age, yeah . . . and the rebel angels—far-out.” Max nodded. “That’s it, you see. . . . That’s got to be it: Charlie saved his greatest sermon for last—like he knew.” “Yeah, Max; Charlie was the best.”

“Pretty cool customer—you tonight, with that grace . . . you almost got Charlie’s rhythms perfect.”

“For you, pal . . . friend.”

“Angels . . . it’s so fucking far-out, man . . .” “Angels . . .”

“Yes . . . wow, a nunnery of angels, a star nunnery—just think of it, an infinite hierarchy of bitches: angels and archangels, principalities, virtues, powers, dominations, thrones, cherubim, and seraphim . . . and that invisible celestial light beyond imagining . . . a whole fucking universe, man, of celestial pussy.”

“A long haul to get laid, Max. Like my grandmother always said, ‘A lot of track that needs laying.’”

I laughed. Everything felt hysterical.

“Maybe, like you always tell me about keeping it simple, maybe it’s just cold and dark and empty out there—like that guy Yuri said—you know, the Soviet cosmonaut: ‘I’ve been to outer space and there’s no heaven.’ Or maybe the best thing that’s ever happened in this fucked-up world . . . is that girl of yours—Laura. Grab her, man, before she slips through your fingers. Because, just maybe—what do you think?—she’s as good as it gets.” Max lowered his leg over the planking of the dock and tapped the taut surface of the lake with the toe of his sneaker. A ripple of motion spread out before us, a vibrant plea into space for the answers we never found. The reflected stars quaked and then gently returned to their places in the celestial choir.

“Here’s to love”—I sighed—“and celestial pussy.”

“Waters of Helicon,” purred Max, as if about to proclaim an invocation. But then his tone completely changed. “Hey, pal, don’t listen to me. My family’s even more fucked-up than yours. I hate my father’s guts, and my mother drives me nuts. And what’s more, when I’m here in this beautiful place—even hanging out with a fucking rich goy like you—I feel safe, like I belong. How pathetic is that. Like I could play that wonderful Steinway overlooking the lake—get the girl, and live happily ever after. Not the fucked-up bad dream from before we were born.”

“A Hollywood ending . . .”

He took a deep breath, as if he’d finally exhausted himself. I was worried he might be slipping into a downer, which happened a lot when he’d smoked too much. If I’d been sitting next to him, maybe I’d have put an arm around him, maybe I’d have hugged him—maybe not. Maybe he was waiting for me to talk him out of it. Not that he ever really listened to me. Then he went on, his voice very hushed.

“It’s nice to think the stars are our destination, but who knows, maybe they’re just the forgotten signposts of our failed journey. A bunch of burnt-out suns dead as doornails for a million years already.”

“A cosmic bummer,” I offered. “But I wouldn’t mind being one of those rebel angels and setting the world on fire—at least once.”

“Like your old man.”

The dope was having its usual effect on me. I felt the energy draining away, like at the end of a race when you’re totally done in, beyond exhaustion . . . lungs sucking in the sweetness of the glide, and the spreading wake its own dying reality.

But then Max seemed to get a second wind. I could feel him reaching back with his oars, reaching out with his raised arms as if to embrace that fantastic night sky and the dwelling place of his gods.

“’Lo cielo i vostri movimenti inizia,’ was how Dante put it. Even Aquinas recognized the influence of the stars in our lives. Of course Augustine believed that spirits made use of the heavenly bodies to aid them in their evil sway over us. That is why I prefer Mutianus Rufus.

. . . Have I mentioned him to you already? I feel like I’m losing my mind here.”

“Yeah, you said something . . . a friend of somebody, you said.” “Erasmus, I think I said. Anyway, Mutianus Rufus wrote this really cool thing: ‘Est unus deus et una dea, sed sunt multa uti numina ita et nomina. . . . Sunt enim occulta silentio tamquam Eleusinarum dearum mysteria. Utendum est fabulis atque enigmatum integumentis in re sacra.’”

I was surprised at how good his pronunciation was, since Latin had always bored him. But he got by on his photographic memory. I asked him to say it again while I attempted to translate.

“There is but one god and one goddess, but many are their powers and names. They should be hidden in silence as are the Eleusinian mysteries. Sacred things must be wrapped in fable and enigma.”

“Silent Thalia,” he whispered. “Ah . . . Thalia,” I echoed back.

We sat inured to the silence a while longer, with only the creaking davit to remind us otherwise. At some point, Max got up and stood for a long while, leaning on the staff he’d made for himself on our walk, like an Arcadian shepherd in a Poussin painting, contemplating his scattered flock.

Suddenly, his voice came to me harsh and unyielding.

“Maybe you’re right, man, it’s just bullshit. Maybe without people like you, we’ll all get fucked up the ass by the bad guys.”

I saw him shrug his shoulders and look up with a lost expression at the dome of stars, his voice mocking—exhausted.

“‘Now my charms are all o’erthrown.’”

With that, Max broke his staff across his knee and tossed the pieces far out onto the lake, where they landed with a thin echoing slap, splintering the night and sending the stars careening. He turned and went back toward the house with his stash, where he would stay up half the night poking his nose into things.

The hell with exams.

I took my chance and got into the rowboat and quickly rowed myself out into the middle of the lake, until the boathouse became invisible against the wooded shore. I rowed and I rowed, getting my back into it so that I could fully test my strength and clear my mind, only shipping the oars every so often to feel the stars glide by overhead, and listen, and so lose myself in the spaces of time and memory . . . while along the nearby shore, the sound of Tibetan temple bells echoed like conspiring gods.

---

We arrived back at school the Sunday before exams, and I immediately went to my favorite carrel in the library and began studying. Max had been such a distraction at Elysium, treating me like his personal docent, that I’d gotten little accomplished. It was a cloudless late-spring day and I found myself frequently looking up from my work and staring out at the comforting y expanse of the Circle, where the stand of apple trees, those old bent veterans of centuries past, clothed in somber leafage, shimmered like miniature storm clouds against the sun-drenched grass. I saw Paul Oakes walk out of his dorm and go over to his wine red Thunderbird. He was very thin. I could see he was having a hard time walking. Everyone knew Mr. Oakes was dying. We’d seen it there in his weary, sunken eyes during the memorial service for Charlie Springfield. He’d given the eulogy for Charlie, telling us how he’d known him as man and boy, visited him when he’d been wounded at a military hospital in Avranches (two days after my father’s visit). And how he’d read to him from First Corinthians about the abiding nature of faith, hope, and love—and how love (the King James Version called it charity, but it was really love, so he assured us) was the most important of all these things. And how faith sustained by the work of charity toward our fellow men engendered love—love that got Charlie through almost a year of painful rehabilitation and then sparked his interest in returning to seminary on the GI Bill. He told us how he’d had a hard time convincing Charlie to return to Winsted after Charlie had spent two years as pastor of a small blue-collar parish in South Carolina. He told Charlie that Winsted needed him, needed him to demonstrate the efficacy of the Gospel in our daily lives, and how a man could fight and kill for his country and not lose his essential humanity . . . and remember, above all things, to love his fellow man. “‘The boys,’ I kept telling him, ‘need to hear this from someone who’s been there, who comes from a different world than they’re used to . . . and broaden their sympathies for those less fortunate than themselves. You can do it, Charlie; you can help them be better people, better citizens.’”

None of us had even suspected that bond of faith and love that Paul Oakes and Charlie shared. “You see, Charlie was like a son to me. And on Memorial Day last, a day to remember our fight for unity and freedom and justice for all races . . . I lost a son and a friend.” Another drop of clarity in that painful sea of youthful insouciance. Paul had tears in his eyes when he made his way down from the pulpit, holding firm to the railing to keep himself from stumbling. In that fifteen-minute eulogy, the formidable Reverend Oakes had revealed more of his underlying humanity than in all his years of sermonizing.

After his story about the prison guard at Buchenwald, I didn’t know quite where things stood between us. He had been there in his wine red Thunderbird at every crew race that spring, watching me like a great old shambling horned owl from a distant perch. He’d always nod and smile at me at the beginning of a race, and give me a thumbs-up at the finish. But he offered no more advice, no more insights. I wondered if I was a disappointment. Maybe I should have shown more interest in Essays and Prayers. I really wanted to see more of him, to ask him more about my father. But he seemed so fortified by his faith, so intent on holding out over that last spring, for one more race, one more crew season. Virgil had told me, shaking his head sorrowfully, that he’d refused the final rounds of chemo. “Ah-da-dum . . . which might prolong the agony but not Paul’s life. They’ve given him lots of painkillers, but I don’t think he takes them, either—wants his mind clear.”

As I watched him that afternoon from the library window, he opened the door of his Thunderbird, took a book from the glove compartment, and tossed his keys onto the front seat. There was something decisive in the way he did that, I thought later. Mr. Oakes was that kind of man, the old-school kind of Christian who knows in his heart that in the end it must be his decision, between himself and his God . . . alone. And I was just sitting there in the library, remembering his words from the eulogy for Charlie, watching as he walked slowly to the center of the Circle and sat on a bench that circled the base of one of the apple trees. He sat facing the chapel. I realized how much he loved the chapel and the Circle, which had been his preserve for so long, the garden of faith, hope, and love he had cultivated for most of his adult life, except for the war years, when he had joined on as an army chaplain, to be close to his boys in need. It was such a nice day that I found it hard to concentrate on my studies—what with all the birdsong in the oaks and elms outside the window, and the shouts of boys playing stepball, and the bell ringers were practicing in the bell tower and some of their peals were not the greatest I’d ever heard. But I managed to get a little work done, and the afternoon drifted by like nothing had happened, and before I knew it, it was almost time to get changed for dinner. I gathered up my books and prepared to leave, when I looked out the window and noticed that Mr. Oakes was still there, sitting on that bench under the apple tree; not that it was unusual, because I was so used to him being there by then, and it seemed so appropriate, somehow, that he was still there: Hadn’t he’d been there all afternoon, sitting peacefully, reading?

And it occurred to me—Essays and Prayers be damned—that now was the perfect time for that little conversation. Just to thank him and wish him well and tell him how much I had enjoyed his eulogy for Charlie.

And with that thought, something inside me sort of burst, like a little bubble floating up from the bottom of a quiet pond, inexplicably, except you figured some complicated chemical reaction, some inexorable process of slow decay and metamorphosis, had occurred out of sight and mind to produce that bursting bubble. That was how I felt, so I went outside, where the newly mown grass smelled sweet and the green of the trees was such a delight because those damned New England winters were always so long. I made my way around the Circle until I was nearly in front of the chapel, and then I slowly turned, a casual turn, as if I had nothing on my mind, and gave a friendly wave over where Mr. Oakes sat under the apple tree. Then I boldly walked right up to him and said hello and stood in front of him and looked into his dull gray eyes, which looked blankly at the chapel. A ringless hand was pressed between the open pages of the worn King James Version in his lap, his head slightly tilted against the gnarled trunk of the ancient tree. Mr. Oakes was dead, possibly for hours. He seemed only dreaming to me . . . perhaps of his days on the Charles, or Henley, or various Olympic courses, dreaming of the glide, or maybe—just maybe—seeing one of my father’s fifty-yard passes breeze the air one last time.

He had taken every last one of the painkillers he’d been storing up for weeks.