Spirit

I wrote this short poem in 2003.

Spirit in me
That is in you
Shedding dirt
Swimming on
Above a cascade
Super love in the way
The way you loved me
And will always ever do
We will see each other soon
Be mine 'til then and again
Stay as good as new

© Kevin White 2008

Chan

The three of us sat on a ledge fifteen miles north of campus.

“Ready to go?” yelled Jay.'

Nobody replied. We had driven out from campus in our bathing shorts and left my car on the far side of the bridge. We took off our t-shirts, walked out to the middle. We sat on that scratched-up guardrail in the middle of the bridge: a concrete ring on the finger of spidery Lake Anna. Around the bend a nuclear power plant warmed the lake’s water with its discharge, while the mixture of the water and the air blew a cool breeze on our ankles as we sat there, dangling on a rail. We stuck there and wondered whether to go. Patrick studied the current below. I felt a ball of mucous in my gut.

“You should go bridge jumping,” Chandler had said last night as we drank at Maldini’s restaurant in town. He couldn’t go of course. He had to go haul furniture for his girlfriend’s sister, who was moving. Chandler and his girl and the rest of us were seniors. The sister was a couple years older but we didn’t know her well.

“That pussy,” said Patrick.

“What?”

“Chandler is a pussy.”

“Yeah.” But he wasn’t. He had done this before. Why in all these years hadn’t he brought us along? I guess he had that little outside world of his, the living with his girlfriend, the ecstatic exterior where we didn’t belong. Jay, Patrick and I were members of the fraternity; we’d lived in that odorous old frat house long enough to be insane. But Chan was our guiding light, our twelve-step sponsor; we followed him lamely.

“Jay, it looks like you’re shaking,” I said.

“Damn right. I’m about to shit my pants.”

“Wait until you hit the water; that’s what Chandler’s girlfriend did.”

“When did he say that?” said Patrick.

“I don’t know.”

“He’s full of shit.”

“And a pussy,” I joked.

Patrick took it seriously, agreed with it. He couldn’t handle that Chandler split his time with us and with that girl. Patrick was very black and white. I don’t know how he got that way, growing up in that motel like he did. I eyeballed him as he sat there on the ledge fidgeting, smoking a cigarette and no longer looking down.

“You’re going to swallow that thing when you jump.”

“Fuck you,” he replied.

I turned over toward Jay and I saw how he sat straight up and stoical. He was tall with an athletic build, though he hadn’t played a sport since high school. His forearms bulged as he gripped the guardrail and his substantial veins pumped in measures. I could also see the veins in his broad neck and, as he scanned down, his ample muscles primed and gripped the rusty side. And he was the first to notice a deep rumble and a buzz in the air. I witnessed the tremors roll through his arm as his grip tensed further. Jay craned his thick neck and he looked beyond me. For a time Patrick just sat there, his cigarette dangling from his damp lip.

Around the bend a lone motorcycle appeared, roaring down the hill with ample speed. Then more choppers showed up and before I knew it there were fifteen sable horseflies buzzing around the bend, staccato, dicing the air and splaying molecules over our heads, over the edge, vectors of sound spreading over the chasm and collapsing into the water and in the thickets of trees. In retrospect there were probably only six or seven bikers but at the time it felt like fifteen: a laundry load full of leather and bandanas and chrome plating end-on-end that burbled toward us. They had smiles like jackals.

I looked back at Patrick and saw his frown and how he held that cigarette secure and close to his nipple. Then I glanced at Jay. His facial expression was serene but his veins popped more than before and I couldn’t tell if that was fear or if he were priming for a fight. Jay was the guy you wanted with you in a brawl. On the other hand … he might fight fair, so it paid to have Patrick: someone who would grab balls and kick shins.

Then the motors slowed to a halt. The lead biker unleashed his kick stand and blasted his metal heal against the concrete. Then he very casually took off his helmet but the sneer on his face wasn’t casual until he asked us “what are you scared?” And then he started to cackle and the whole blob of leather and denim and chains wambled like jelly with scornful laughter.
I guess his question meant “scared to jump” but now we were scared of him and his clan.

We sat dumb and I believe Jay was formulating a response when one of those bears lumbered over and shoved him in the back of the neck. Jay just dropped off the bridge, through forty feet of air. Patrick and I looked at each other with panicked quickness and before Jay hit the surface we jumped. We could hear the brutish laughter as we fell.

By the time we had swum through the swift warm water and over to the bank the bikers were gone and I laughed at the hilarious fun they must have had. Patrick was pissed off. Jay seemed indifferent.

“At least those motherfuckers got us to grab our balls and jump off.”

“They pushed you off, dumbass,” Patrick replied.

* * *

We headed to Tokyoe Bar on Wednesday night.

We pulled off the paved road down the narrow gravel lane, bumping over potholes to enter the rippled parking lot behind Tokyoe’s kitchen. Chandler tossed his cigarette out the window as we rounded the corner and found a spot between two Buicks. Patrick clung to his cigarette as always. The rest of us didn’t smoke. After stopping we opened the doors and rustled out like a deranged football team, whooping and clapping before the kickoff. So we were drunk. We had pre-gamed the bar.

Old rainwater rolled down the stream on the opposite edge of the parking lot. It hadn’t rained for a few hours but it was catching up to us, flowing down. This all made a gothic background to our swiveling feet as we shuffled past the kitchen, back up the driveway on foot, and into the side door of Tokyoe.

Chandler was our designated driver. His old lady saw to it he didn’t drink, but he smoked like a chimney at any rate. We all loved his girlfriend though, strange to say. She let him come out with us.

The side door swung open like Old West. Smoke hit our faces, invaded our nostrils, and mixed with the smell of stale beer, which seemed baked into the hardwood floor. Tokyoe is a dark place, restaurant booths all around the edges and a sunken island in the middle. It was packed. We were wasted even before we got there, except Chandler, who drove.

Big chief entered the Old West door. Chandler had swagger. Hard to believe he didn’t drink. Called out to some girls. And we rode his coattails, rode.

Nothing like old Tokyoe, haunt since freshman year, when we weren’t even twenty-one.

The girls giggled, shaking like paper streamers hanging off lanterns. We stretched in eight directions, swaying like octopi, shaking the hands of boys and patting the girls on their bottoms. We passed the leather green booths, gathered back up, reverse octopi, strolled like Reservoir Dogs to the other side of the bar, flipping our shades up on our foreheads and winking to whomever might be near.

“This is what it’s all about,” said Chan.

* * *

Thursday night. We headed out to the Iron Monkey, another bar in town. The fraternity’s Pig Roast would be that Saturday. But Thursday was our pledges’ last night of hell week. We pre-gamed again.

There was one thing about the annual Pig Roast: last year I stood beside Chandler on the rotten back deck of the fraternity house, and listened to him rattle off about how much it sucked and the girls were ugly and the pig was all burnt. All the while Patrick and I had hung our heads over the railing, smoking lonely cigars, holding back laughter, looking all stoic and serious.
This year would be different. Chandler had taken the weekend by the balls, shaken its shoulders and told it to shape the fuck up. We were seniors. This meant all we had to do was just show up at the right time, the right hour, for the finale of hell week, and then laugh our knowing laughs and smile our mocking smiles at the freshmen.

At the Iron Monkey we ate sandwiches. Most of us drank beer while Chan had sweet tea. Then Chan did us a senior year favor and picked up the tab. Some reason it took the bartender forever to process Chan’s card. Maybe it just felt that long ‘cause we were in a hurry.

Patrick and I waited in Patrick’s Explorer while Chan and Jay sat at the bar styling limericks and the bartender crawled around adjusting glasses and just generally wasting time.

Finally we left. The boys bounced out of the bar. Jay fired up the engine and had the car in motion before Jay had his feet off the pavement.

“Shouldn’t I drive?” said Chan.

“It’s just a couple blocks, dude.”

“You should have seen Jay’s face when that burly motherfucker pushed him offa the bridge.”

“Hahahahahah.”

* * *

On the way back to the house we stopped at Ali Mart. Two of us – Jay and I – bounced out of the car and into Ali’s. Ali wasn’t there, so we had to deal with some little redneck pussy who gave us shit. I bought a case of Coors Light, and waited impatiently while the clerk talked shit about whether we were old enough and smoothed out our dollar bills like he hadn’t seen money before.

* * *

The house: a shit-hole. When we got there I stowed my Coors Light behind the upstairs bar and I made for the bathroom upstairs. Walked down a boomerang-shaped hall to the rear of the building where there was a bathroom, clad from head to toe with grimy off-white tiles. Some were yellow and some were almost red with age and dirt. I entered the chamber. To my left was the cavernous shower – no curtain, three shower heads. There were three sinks at the right, oversized holes in the tile for the pipes. Shit like toilet paper and cigarettes stuck in the extra space there. A mirror above each such sink, glass adorned with zebra streaks of toothpaste and god-knows-what. At the back of the bathroom were three stalls whose doors hung loosely. There was one urinal, between the entrance to the shower and the first stall, and I headed for that one. It gave off a ripe stench. The smell of old recycled Natty Light: recycled through so many dirty digestive systems, now caked to the porcelain and boiling in the shallow frothy water, recycled and recycled again by microorganisms.

* * *

On hell night we seniors were guided like foreign dignitaries up to the attic, where the younger brothers had blindfolded the seventeen freshmen. We saw these oddly barrel-chested guys with their five-o’clock shadows belying their young ages. They were all thrown together in wrinkly khaki pants and blue blazers and ties and the occasional Vineyard Vines belt, which we mocked. We were ushered into the special secret room. This room was stark, with only a couch and a coffee table. The walls were empty. There was no carpet on the floor, just the wood plank of the attic. In front of the coffee table sat a single bright desk lamp with its neck twisted so that the light shone upward from the floor.

“Move that fuckin’ coffee table,” yelled Patrick.

A younger brother moved it without an added word.

We were all on the sofa, crammed together, with Chan on the arm and the rest of us sunk down. The pledges were marched in one by one to have their blindfolds ripped off so they could stare into the light like suspects and answer quiz questions that had no right answer. They suffered such indignities for beer and a chance to score.

* * *

Friday night we stayed up all night to cook the pig. We bought more beer and stowed it in the ‘fridge in the closet behind the downstairs bar. We all sat on splintery chairs on the back porch. We laughed about the alumni who had in brought in the pig. Old redneck sons of bitches. One of them on the way out to his car took another nod at the dead pink carcass, its mouth open, cheek fast against the grate, and the alumnus said, “Looks like my ex-wife.”

We felt nostalgic now. Graduation was close.

“Glad this shit’s almost over,” said Jay, and I didn’t know whether he meant the frattiness or the drinking or the academics. Four long years – a little less than a quarter of our existence on Earth – had come and almost gone, like those bikers around the bend.

“Yeah, I’m ready to be done with all this theoretical shit and make some money,” Patrick said.

Patrick planned to go home to work with his dad as an insurance salesman. Jay would work for some bank. I didn’t know what the fuck I would to do. We didn’t know what Chandler had in store, other than marriage and kids and endless family and propagation of the species, but we didn’t care.

“Dude, I hope there’s some pussy out tomorrow,” Patrick said.

“Our last hurrah,” I replied.

“It’s gotta be better than last year,” said Chandler, drawing on his cigarette.

“Enough bullshit, I’m gonna get some pussy. I’m sick of this shit.”

Patrick got up and went back into the house, probably to behind the bar.

“Hey get me another one!”

“A’ight.”

Patrick had asked me if I wanted to come along and work with him and his dad. I thought four years might be enough of Patrick. Besides, I didn’t spend four years studying philosophy in order to sell premium.

I stood there staring through the darkness at the pavement of the driveway, which was about twenty feet off to the right of the back porch, the other end of the pig cooker. We didn’t talk much, didn’t need to.

* * *

We stayed up with that old bastard’s ex-wife until six in the morning, when some of the juniors came out and said they’d take it from here. That was the tradition but we still thought they were sons of bitches for getting their beauty sleep and leaving us out there all night.
We had naps until noon, when Chandler came around with an old broom handle and whacked it against our doors. My door was the only one that didn’t lock, so he came in and damn near whacked it against my head and, as it turns out, Chandler and I were the only ones who got up at noon.

“Let’s go to Almas,” he spat.

I’d never known a teetotaler who loved bars so much.

“Damn Chandler it’s barely noon.”

“I know you want to drink.”

I got up and threw on a ratty t-shirt and some jeans. We walked down the hall and out the front door. We had to cut through Snead Hall in order to shave a few minutes off our walk. The doors to Snead Hall were not locked in those days, so we went through. We walked through the lobby and out the back door of Snead. Stepping down from the concrete landing, we entered the narrower path that came out the rear of the building. The landing ran up against a berm that led up a hill and through a sort of forest to the other side of town.

The back path led up the berm, through the wooded hill, into a passage topped by a canopy of larch, hemlock, oaks and thorns.

After some paces Chan took out his cell phone and scanned a text message.

“It’s Jay. He’s already there.”

“What? I thought he was still in bed.”

“I did too.”

When the path finally clawed its way out of the woods you could see the town, and you hopped down another short hill on to the sidewalk of Washington Street.

Alma’s was a triangular structure at the corner of Washington and Jefferson. Its exterior was covered with a thick green paint, an eyesore compared to its stately white neighbors. We stepped through the lobby, past the ATM machine and a rack of brochures. Inside the bar the place buzzed even with a small crowd.

We went up to the bar and sat down. We didn’t see Jay.

“Where the fuck is he?” I said.

“I don’t know who cares.”

After I ordered a gin and tonic and Chandler ordered an iced tea, Chandler sat his little cigarette pack down on the bar and poked at it a couple times, looked a couple moments at the mirror behind the bar and then turned straight towards me.

“It’ll never be this real again,” he said.

© Kevin White 2008