Story 4, and an awesome story

Been busy with travel and hanging out with old friends. Last night we were sitting around my parents house watching the padres game, which was tied in the bottom of the 13th inning. I turned to my friend Austin and said "I have a feeling this game is going long. Let's drive down to the stadium and I bet it'll still be going on." So four of us got in a car and made the hour long drive to the stadium, we sneak in, and run to seats on the third base line (it was the 16th inning, almost nobody left in the stadium). I rush to the front row, sit down, and then a split second later I stand up screaming in joy because Padres catcher, Nick Hundley, hits a towering fly ball. We hug and high five each other as the ball sails out for a walk off homerun. Padres win. We only saw one pitch but all agreed it was the best BB game we had ever been to.

Enjoy this story. It's one I've tried to revise so much that it's to the point that i have to post it now or I never will.

The narrator is a stylized version of myself I've been toying with using as the narrator for a series of interconnected short stories. The events are mostly fictional. To my knowledge there aren't underground fight clubs in Provo.

Story #4 Reasons for Leaving Utah.

My last winter in Utah, I rented out a small upstairs office in quaint downtown Provo with two tall windows. The windows looked east across University Avenue to the brown-yellow brick of a six-storey building. On top of the building a crumbly façade read “Knight Building, 1902”. Extended families of pigeons roosted there and instead of writing a master’s thesis, I spent my afternoons looking out those tall windows and watching the birds fly lazy ovals and then, in unison, settle again. I would watch them until the windows of the Knight Building sent back at me the fierce orange of a reflected sunset and it hurt my eyes to look. Then I would remember my deadlines and slog out some poem. I was 26. That last winter I wrote a lot of poems about pigeons.

The overhead lights in that office were harsh-bright and I never liked to stay long after the refracted sunset. I would get lonely and then chide myself for feeling so lonely when I had a wonderful girlfriend and three fun-as-hell roommates waiting for me at my apartment complex. Too blessed to feel lonely, I’d think to myself, and then I’d get in my car and make the short drive home.

One late weeknight that winter, thoughtful, having just come from poems about pigeons, I pulled into the underground parking structure of my Provo apartment complex. There was a loose circle of people blocking me, hoodies and fleeces and some wrapped in blankets congregated in the wide middle lane of that covered space. It was a concrete pad, one floor under the apartments, with parking spots on either side and ramps leading out to the north and south. On winter Sunday nights it was a place people in the complex often gathered to say a group prayer. This wasn’t a Sunday. Seeing me, the circle broke open to let me through and I parked in a stall beyond it and got out. My girlfriend walked to me from the loose circle and met me by the driver’s side door. She put her right hand on the side of my stomach and let her momentum carry her, hips first, into me. I was real heavy then and she liked to use her small body to test how hard it was to move me. She spoke into my eyes. She looked excited and flushed, like someone who has just come in from a long time in the cold.

“there’s going to be a fight”

“Like a fight, fight?”

This was BYU. We were religious kids or timid ones or both. We never fought. We used that concrete space for group prayer.

“I think it’s more like a boxing match. Jason set it up.”

“Who’s doing the fighting?”

“This kinda nerdy kid named Jon and that one kid you always call the German”

“OK? So what are they fighting over?”

“Me, silly. No, just kidding. I don’t really know. I don’t think it’s anything but friendly. They’ll have boxing gloves on. Is your camera still in the back? Jason asked me if I would take some photos.”

This whole time her hand was resting on the outside of my stomach and her hips were up against me. I opened the car door for her and she reached in and got my digital SLR from the backseat. Then she turned to me and curtsied.

“You’ll excuse me, sir, if I stand with my girls. They get lonesome for me.”

“No worries.”

She made me smile. She turned to leave. I touched her and she turned back. “Hey. You look beautiful. Like you’ve just come in from a long time in the cold.”

“Thanks baaaaaaby.” She said, then quick turned and catwalked away towards her roommates, exaggerating her hips for me and modeling the camera to them with a sweep of her hand over it. I couldn’t see her face but I knew she was smiling.

I walked over and stood in an empty spot of the thickening circle, near my roommates. Jason was already there, in the middle, with a microphone made out of tinfoil. He was introducing the fighters. I knew Jason. He was new to the apartments, but he was a legacy. His family owned one of the units and his older brothers, as they attended BYU, had lived there previously. He had just moved in for winter semester, fresh from being the most popular kid in high school. He played rugby now, and had a loud smile.

Jason introduced the kid I called the German. He called him the German too. The kid came down the stairs in a black tank top with wristbands on his biceps. He had red boxing gloves and he was holding the edges of a German flag draped around his shoulders. He was short, five foot something, with close cut dirty blonde hair and all his baby fat. I remember thinking how determined he looked to fight, like there was no fooling around in him. Usually he just walked around like a wannabe badass, ready to mad dog you in the hallway when you weren’t looking, but never to your face. He always wore fresh sneakers and low cut jeans and kept his hair buzzed and he talked way too much about who his parents knew and pranks he had supposedly orchestrated and hot tubs he had supposedly been in with girls. But the thing was he always told the same stories. Plus, he was always talking about his German heritage, not the Nazis overtly, but you could tell he admired their stereotyped coldness and stoicism. So I called him “the German” sarcastically, to mock just how far he was physically from the chiseled Aryan stereotype. As much as he acted proud of the nickname, I think a part of him knew it was mockery and that just made him angrier. It turned your insides a bit to think about it.

But now he just shuffled around the circle, trying to dance on his feet but he wasn’t nimble enough. So he went and carefully draped his flag over the windshield of his hatchback, then stood in a corner away against a concrete wall and stared at the ground, talking to himself and punching his fists together. Then when Jon started coming down the opposite stairs he turned and stared at him and moved out into the circle to meet him.

Jon came down the stairs in a blue t-shirt, black gloves, and a flag of Guatemala draped around his shoulders. He was dark skinned, and just as pudgy as the German, but taller. I barely knew him, because he was so shy. But I knew he wasn’t athletic, and I knew he played a ton of World of Warcraft and I knew that he was probably doing this just because Jason had befriended him and convinced him. Jason had that kind of charisma. I imagine Jon was lonely for the attention. You could tell he loved it as he hammed around the now crowded circle, smiling and growling at everyone through a cheap mouthpiece. If he any fear or any idea how seriously the German was taking this exhibition, he didn’t show it. I should have said something to him. The German was small but he had so much anger in him. Instead, I just smiled along with Jon and the rest in the circle and the air charged a bit because we knew now that the fight was going to happen.

The motive was apparently trumped up from nationalism. That was the hook Jason gave the crowd at least. Jason brought Jon to the center of the concrete circle where the German was waiting. The fighters touched gloves. Jon was still smiling. The German looked angry and proud and round without angles. We cheered. And then they fought.

The German’s style was to lean his head way back out of harm’s way and punch upward with his palms out. There was no weight behind his punches because he didn’t turn his hips and drive his body behind them. He just punched upward with his head back so it looked like he was trying to block a falling rock or plug a leak in a dam above his head. Jon liked to slap the German’s gloves out of the way, or punch at them in a palms out stalemate, and then rush grunting in and hug the German. At least he leaned into his body punches. But he didn’t know where to punch and soon the outsides of the German’s arms were red, but nothing else.
They moved and grunted and people smiled at them and my girlfriend was opposite the circle from me taking pictures and my roommates and I chuckled at their lack of coordination and Jason was rushing in constantly like a referee to unclench them and urge them to open up and it was a cold night and their faces were red from rubbing and their breath came up white and fogged above them in the air.

Once they separated and the German actually leaned into his leak-plug of a punch and it caught Jon in the throat. Jon took quick steps back and circled a bit stunned that he had been hurt and after that the German must have sensed blood because he started pressing. Jon kept clenching, but the air in that circle was charged again with danger.

Then the German paused for a second. Aware now of danger, Jon moved in to clench. The German wound up and threw a perfect right hook. It was a miracle coincidence of clumsy physics. His feet set squarely on the balls of his toes, he twisted and moved his weight flawlessly behind the punch. To see something so beautiful come from such a clumsy man was a shock. I was shocked by it, then horrified when it landed flush two finger widths to the right center of Jon’s chin.

Jon was close to me, very close but I was too stunned we all were to catch him as he fell, like fluid, with no attempt to brace himself. He fell on his right side and the outside of his right leg hit first, then his right shoulder then the wave force of his fall snapped his limp head into the concrete like a stretched rubber band released against skin. I was right there and the sound was horrible. Like coconuts. Everyone heard it.

I swore, then I knelt down and turned him on his back, supporting his neck. I looked up and saw the German standing there above us, gloating, with the light behind him, breathing hard face set hard in the horrible embodiment of his mock stereotype. I made eye contact and there was so much rage in me. Then his hardness was gone and he rushed to Jason, shouting at him to take the boxing gloves off but Jason wasn’t listening paralyzed mouth-open mouthing “o shit o shit” over and over again. And half the crowd seemed to melt backwards, the collective wish to get the hell out of there and the other half came forward in shocked concern making a new and tighter circle with Jon and I in the middle. Somebody asked me what to do. I dunno why they asked me. I must have been the oldest. I just said “911”. There was nothing I could do. Jon was paling there shallow breathing on the concrete with dots of blood cooling on the spot where his right ear had first made contact with the ground.

I stood up and a nursing student roommate of my girlfriend took my place beside Jon. When I stood up I could see some of the eyes in the circle looking at Jon but most of them looking at me. I looked away and saw the German alone near his car outside the circle, kicking the tires and swinging his arms around as if he could throw the boxing gloves off with the twirl-force. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so horrible. Then the German made a strange keening cry from deep inside and rushed up the concrete stairs crying, gloves still on. He left his flag limp and wrinkled on the windshield of his parked hatchback.

A night earlier that winter. Up the canyon with my girlfriend. Stopped at the parking lot by Nun’s park, near the river:

“Tell me a dream you had, any dream”.

Her voice is always deeper after we make out. My mouth is hot. The muscles in my face are loose from the kissing and I can feel a spot of pain on my lower lip where her canine caught me. I’m stretched out on my back across my reclined seat and angling into hers. My head is up against the outside of her left arm and the leather of her seat. She has my right hand palm up in her lap and she is absentmindedly massaging my forearm with both thumbs. There is the tinted moonroof above me, obscuring all but the brightest of stars. There is the smell of her arm and the yellow hue of her soft blouse. There is the dig of the gearshift as it presses my love-handle and with the nerves in my right elbow I can feel the delicate heat of her lap. Then there is her presence above me, the nebulous shape of her head and hair as she cranes into my vision to speak, moving like an unfocused eclipse in front of the moonroof.

“Go on,” she says, “any dream.”

“I can’t remember any dreams right now, silly.”

“Make one up then. But tell it like you really dreamt it”

“Yes Maam. Ok… I dreamed I was one of the pigeons that lives on top of the building across from my office.”

“Were you lord of the pigeons or just a worker pigeon?”

“I was the pigeon king.”

“Ooh I like this dream”

“Yeah, so let me tell it”

She scrunches up her nose at my mock impatience, a cute affectation.

“So I was this pigeon king and I was pure white and bigger than my fellow pigeons, and it was my Job to tell all the other pigeons when to take off from the roof and circle around, and then it was my job to tell them all when to fly back down again and sit on the roof.”

“And that’s it, you had no other responsibilities as the pigeon king?”

“Well the mating and such with eligible young pigeon damsels, but it wasn’t that kindof dream.”

“You mean a pigeon based wet dream?”

“Wow, you had to say it. Yeah. It wasn’t a pigeon based wet dream.”

“Ok, you may continue.”

She says that coyly and she looks at me lovingly, like a toy. Like her absolute favorite amusement.

“The thing was in this dream the pigeons weren’t even letting me do my kingly duty. They seemed to know when to go up and down before I did and everyone was just kindof in line with the program. I just sat on my royal perch, feathers all puffed out and watched while everybody did their thing. Left out mostly.”

“Did you have a pigeon queen?”

“Yeah, sure. But you weren’t listening to me either”

“Hah. My kind of dream”

There is a pause of two unhurried breaths, then a total eclipse as she cranes to kiss my eyebrow. Such a perfect child. Then she asks,

“How long had you been pigeon king?”

“I dunno. Long time. Since 1902 I think.”

There is another pause, and she tightens the grip of her thumbs on my forearm.

Patter, then Story # 3

I'm halfway through 3 new stories (2 of which I'm very angry at right now) and nothing new is ready for today. So I will reach into my bag of tricks and pull out an old story (written 3 months ago) that I was saving for a slow week. I feel like I'm using a lifeline on a 200$ question, but I gotta keep the 20 story run going somehow.

In other news, I've abandoned TV. Said I was going out for a pack of cigarettes...which made the TV ask me if I was picking up smoking, which justified my saying back to the TV, "see, you don't know anything about me. You never listen to me. I don't know why I'm in this relationship in the first place". The TV apologized, but I was angry and it wasn't enough. I unplugged her and put her in the closet. Facing the wall because I can't stand the blank look of reproach on her face. And, it's been good, so far. Lots of Hulu. Lots of rediscovering my love of music through Pitchfork and Pandora. Lots of writing excercises. Lots of being sociable. Maybe I'll sell her on craigslist. Maybe I'll just keep her in the closet. Maybe I'll destroy her with my antique ball-pen hammer. If I destroy it, you can blame it on Robert Bly's "Iron John".

Story # 3

The Palest, Most Beautiful Boy in the World

I dreamt of a pair of riverside beggars, man and woman. Itinerant wanderers who had camped on the slow bend of an s-curve on some offshoot of the Mississippi. We were uneasy friends and sat on plastic milk crates and worn camp chairs around a fire. There were fireflies at the edges of the light, and mosquitoes.

Excitedly, over canned beans. In the late evening:

-“It was nothin’ but a glint under the water from the setting sun when my Charlie saw it. It’s just me and my Charlie here. He’s the first one ever to have seen it.”

Charlie nods his head in agreement. Then speaks.

- “’Bout two months ago. Out in the middle of our bend. It was the square outline of a sunken houseboat. The light has to be right or you won’t see it. And I swam out to it and I dove down.”

He flicks his wrist towards the river with the worn steak knife he used to open the can of beans.

-“And tell him, Charlie, what we found.”

-“Well, first thing I found is a houseboat, square and sound looking, just sittin’ there on the bottom as if it was made for it. No gash in it or nothing. So the door was open and I swam through it into the kitchen and found everything as it should be, as if it’d never sunk, as if it weren’t underwater. The trash bag waiting by the door as if ready to be taken out. Post-it notes still stuck to the side of a cabinet, waving all sleepy-like in the current. The fridge still working cooling away the water inside it…”

-“Even the toilets, my Charlie says, even the toilets flush, or try to flush. Make a swirl in the room like they trying to swallow the whole damn river. Whole houseboat is like that. Still working like the day it was made. Ain’t it nothing but magic?

She stares at me. I look down at my can of warm beans to avoid her stare. She presses,

-“You like them beans friend? Them beans is from the houseboat. Charlie found them just sittin’ in the cupboard yesterday.”

-“We figured they wouldn’t miss ‘em. I been taking things from that houseboat since I found her. It ain’t true looting. I’m sure the couple wouldn’t mind it. Lots of this camp come from that houseboat. Tarp and tent were in the hallway closet. Took a bunch of blankets that we dried out and are real warm. That grill was mounted on the front deck. We got so much of the houseboat up here now it’s like we’re rebuilding her right here on the shore.’”

-“A Couple?” I ask, confused.

He looks at me with surprise then regret on his face. He looks at his partner as if asking an apology and permission.

-“Charlie ain’t never told nobody about them but me. But seeing as he let it slip, we might as well tell you. Charlie say there’s a couple down there, in the living room”.

Charlie takes over, speaking slowly.

-“Yeah, Woman young and pretty, just a laid out on the couch as if she’s sleeping. Pale man sittin’ Indian style on the carpet at the foot of the couch, as if he’s giving her room to sleep. Both their hair all black and wavy in the water.”

-“And no decay, right Charlie? Dead two months sure, skin all cold but not a critter in sight. Eyes closed just like they was takin’ a nap. Like they got tired of watching the tube and just closed their eyes and took a nap. Nothin’ but magic. Charlie thinks it must have been a gas leak, don’t you Charlie?”

-“Yeah, no signs of struggle. Must have just passed out from the gas and floated down the river til some eddy took ‘em and twirled ‘em down into the middle of our bend. Done swam all around that boat though and can’t find a reason why she would have sunk. No gash in it or nothing.”

Charlie looks down into the small fire and moves a half burned mesquite branch with the toe of his boot. The woman looks at me as if waiting for me to speak.

-“It’s amazing,” I say. “I don’t know what else to say. Sounds amazing.”

-”It is. It’s nothin’ but magic.” She is eager. “I can’t swim down just yet. I’ve been sick, you know, on the inside.” She waves a hand below her belly. “Charlie’s been nursing me back to health. But I can sure see the glint of it in the water off the bend there.”

She is leaning forward in her camp chair, legs together. She looks well into middle age with a creased but clean face. Her clothes are dirty. I hadn’t noticed how thin she was. Charlie is still looking down at the hot base of the fire. It’s hard to look pale in the red-orange light of a fire, but the woman still looks pale.

“And there’s one more thing friend, secret and real special. Charlie ain’t even told me this ‘til bout a week ago. He says there’s kid toys all about the living room. You know, a real young boy’s toys. And he says there’s a door he hasn’t checked yet in the hallway cause it just don’t feel right to open it yet. Ain’t that the truth Charlie, that there’s another bedroom but it just don’t feel right to swim in there yet?”

-“That’s the truth, love.”

He glances over at the woman, then back down to the fire, then up at me. The woman speaks:

-“I tell you friend, that boat’s nothin’ but magic. I bet you…” Her voice lowers to a whisper “I bet you there’s a boy in that room, all cold and sleeping in a crib like his parents. Hair all wispy and wavy in the slow water. I bet he’s the palest most beautiful boy in the world. Don’t you think so Charlie? Don’t you bet he’s the palest most beautiful boy in the world?

Charlie looks down again at the fire.

-“I do, love.”

The woman’s voice lowers even further, takes on heavy intent. She is very eager, pressing words out with great effort.

-“And one of these nights friend, when Charlie feels right about it he says he’s going to swim into that room and find that boy and take him in his arms and bring him up here to the surface. And who knows with the magic in that boat if that boy won’t just take a deep breath when he hits the moonlight, like he’s been holding them breath them whole two months. And we’ll adopt him and keep him right here so he can grow up strong and be close to his other parents and dive down once in a while to see them all peaceful and sleeping, all young and in love like the day they was married. You think that’ll happen, don’t you Charlie? Like the day they was married.”

-“I do, love.”

She relaxes and sinks back into the camp chair, looking small and exhausted. Away from the direct firelight she looks ghostly white, whispish, like a moonbeam. Charlie stands up slowly from his milk crate, takes a small red blanket and tucks it around the woman’s shoulders. He comes back to the crate, sits down and begins to unlace his boots.

-“You close your eyes and sleep a bit now love, you’ve talked yourself out. Me and our friend here’s going to the river now and see about the houseboat. Would you like I bring you back one of the toys from the living room? I ‘magine I could do that for you.”

The woman answers weakly, as if from far away.

-“Oh thank you Charlie, thank you.” And to me: “He likes to go down in the moonlight, says there’s less chance of being seen that way. I like to sit by the fire and fall asleep to the sound of him diving down in the water.”

She closes her eyes and turns her head. Charlie and I walk towards the bend in the river. Charlie is barefoot and takes off his denim shirt as we are walking. His torso is hunched and hairy and covered in raised, pink mosquito bites.

-“You should take her to a hospital” I say as we reach the river.

-“I did. They did a bunch of tests then gave us pain pills and sent us back. Said it was bad. ‘Advanced’ they said. Said there was nothing for it. Been two months now.”

I pause, taken aback. Charlie pulls off his jeans and stands on the bank in worn white underwear, shoulders hunched against a cold I cannot feel. A half moon shines on the ripples of the river.

-“It’s a real nice thing that you’re doing for her, then” I say “with the houseboat and all…”

-“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about friend”

Charlie’s words are measured. He looks through me. I lower my voice,

-“I mean, there’s really no magic houseboat down there is there?”

An uncertainty, which is hope, makes my voice tail off at the end of the question. Still, as soon as it’s out I regret speaking. Charlie looks at me and then back down at his feet standing in the mud of the riverbank. He looks very tired in the moonlight. He slaps his arm at a mosquito and waits a long time before speaking.

“Listen friend,” He says, seriously, “All of us, we all do the best we can.”

He swallows. Then he lurches into the river from the riverbank and swims clumsily crosscurrent towards the center of the bend.

Story #2: Telemachus. Telemachus!

Telemachus. Telemachus!

So they finally came to Telemachus and said, “What should we do now?” You see, Ithaca was a small town, and people never stopped caring, because that’s what happens in a small town. They knew Odysseus was missing, that he should have been home by now. Everyone knew the war was over. Other soldiers from other boats had come home from Troy. From the few rumors they got of his whereabouts they knew it looked grim, but they never stopped hoping and they did all they could.

The first few years Ithaca kept watches so there would always be someone scanning the seas for the rocking prow of his galleon or the dip of a bow light if it was night. Later they had to stop the watches as the hopeful watchmen called out too many false alarms—Ringing the bells and running into the marketplace with huge, happy eyes only to have the boat be some messenger from Menelaus or worse, some trick of the eye in the twilight. The next few years all the denominations got together and held prayer vigils on the anniversaries of Odysseus’ departure for Troy. Priests mixed with pastors and preachers and they all held up white candles, translucent where the flame was, and they all said prayers and hugged each other and the women cried and some felt secretly jealous of all the warm sympathy Penelope was getting.

The High School football team, even wore yellow “O” decals on their helmets for a full season in his hopeful memory. The coach called the team together before the first game. They were dressed already in their pads and milling around the locker room flexing their young muscles. The coach had them all take a knee on the concrete around him in the chlorine smelling space outside the showers and then he told them they would be wearing a patch for Odysseus because, God Damn it, Ithaca was going to stick together and not lose hope. Then he handed them out and each kid sat on the wood bench outside his orange locker and, carefully because the shoulder pads made his arms clumsy, stuck the decal on the back center of the helmet, right where it should be. And none of them said anything when Telemachus stuck his decal right on the front of his helmet above and between the eyes. Wasn’t that his right? They thought. Star QB and Odysseus’ only son? Didn’t he need to not lose hope more than anyone? And the whole town cried, even the fans of the other team, when he went out that night and threw four TD passes and ran for two more in an emotional Ithaca win. The strong men wiped tears from the corners of their eyes at his filial loyalty. All the cheerleaders dreamed of easing his pain with their young bodies. Even the old mothers, wombs long dried and husbands dead, wished against wish that they could be young again just to marry a boy as loyal and as hopeful and as honorable as Telemachus.

In Ithaca, in those times when Odysseus was long overdue from Troy, that whole town coped with it’s sorrow like the passing of a collection plate, hand to hand and everyone puts a little bit in and no one takes any out until Odysseus comes home. Because that’s what happens in a small town. And as long as that plate keeps moving from hand to hand it’s kinda alright. So it’s not that they ran out of caring when they came to Telemachus and asked, “What should we do now?” Ithaca never stopped caring. It’s just that any town eventually needs closure from so constant a tragedy. They would have gone to Penelope and asked but she was so distraught, so caught up in her grief and stuck to her loom that the only one they could reason with was Telemachus. They said kindly:

“Son, it’s time. Let’s all collect our memories of him. The women will sow quilts and the men will record their stories of him. Then we’ll put it all in a coffin and have a symbolic burial. It’s what we should do. Look at your poor mother. We know you’ll never give up hope, and we won’t either, but you have to come to terms that there’s a time to move on, like the Bible says. A time for everything, including, hard as it is to hear it (trust us we know son), a time to move on.”

Telemachus thanked them for their care and went home to sleep on his decision. He tried to talk to his mom about it but she was far-gone in grief and doing all she could to avoid any men, even him. So he went for a drive up the canyon near his suburb and he played his favorite music and he thought about the few memories he had of his father—the scabs and wrinkles on his father’s knees. Once when his father had chased him, growling like a strange beast and how fast he had run with that sound at his back. And strongest of his memories, the farewell call and the pure copper glint of sunlight off of spears as the army had massed at the wharf to leave for Troy. He must have been six years old then.

When he went before the town the next day Telemachus said that he thought all night about what Odysseus would do in his place. He told the town that everything they said made sense but that he couldn’t let go of hope. He said, “My father would go looking for me. He would get a ship and he would go back to Troy. So, with or without your leave, I’m leaving.” And everyone tried to talk him out of it, that he’d never find a willing crew to go back to that hell, that they couldn’t stand to lose him, that it was time to move on. He listened to everything, he nodded respectfully, but said he was still going, even if he went alone. And the bitter old men thought Oh, he’ll go alone alright, nobody’s going to follow that fool-boy into death. And the strong men expressed their willingness to go with him but begged out because of their families (and they were grateful they had families). And the young men, his high school friends, well, they agreed to go with him. Because he was Telemachus. It was in his blood to lead. He was their Quarterback. He’d thrown for four touchdowns with his father’s image right between his eyes. And he’d never let them down before and he wouldn’t now. And everybody in that meetinghouse cried at the boys’ loyalty and their mothers cried doubly and placed huge new sums (all they had) in that small town’s rich collection plate of sorrow.

In a month Telemachus’ last memory of his father was now real and his own and he stood at the wharf with his spear and his friends (and his friends with their spears) all glinting in the sunlight of an early spring. The whole small town was there trying not to cry and then Penelope came sobbing, shuffling down the street with her black mourning clothes trailing in the road dust. She broke her silence and forbade him from leaving, said she would die if he left, or worse, she would be forced to marry one of the out-of-towners clamoring for her hand and wealth. She said his presence was the only thing that protected her and she begged the town to understand and the town understood because it was true. The elders ordered Telemachus from the ship but he refused and this made his mother collapse on the slat wood pier. Then Telemachus left the ship to go to her and then the ship left. He turned and ran back towards it but the town restrained him and his friends covered their boyhood with stoic voices and called to him from the distancing ship, each cry fainter than the last, “It’s what you would do in our place. We go by choice. We will return with your father. We swear an oath. We’ve named the ship in your honor.” The small town had to fight to keep Telemachus back. The fathers and mothers of the boys who were leaving were not among those who held him back.

So Telemachus did his duty to his mother and stayed at home. His mother went back to her loom and he entertained the out-of-towners and like a butler deflected their coarse advances. Imagine him, Telemachus, like a butler. He longed to, but he didn’t have the strength to throw them all out and this mixed with the shame of being left behind and he missed his prom because of the shame and because of it he didn’t walk at graduation. He spent a summer begging off the young women that came calling for him and the colleges that came with their scholarship offers and within a year the bitter old men and even some women in that small town couldn’t pity him any longer and started to whisper that he was secretly enjoying the company of the out-of-towners. That he was getting drunk and eating swine with them. That he had turned his back on the rest of Ithaca. That’s how rumors start in a small town. And when the mothers and fathers of the boys-who-had-left heard the rumors, they spread them.

It became that half the town pitied Telemachus because he was left behind to play butler and forced to atrophy all the best parts of himself, and the other half thought him a squanderer and hated him secretly because he was still with them, whereas their sons were not. But whatever way they thought about Telemachus, they all talked about him—in the marketplace and the bathhouses, over iced tea on the verandas. And if you’ve been in a small town you know that kind of rumor talk is the talk that hangs in the air like chemical smoke, and you can feel it in your lungs with each breath and if you take in too much it gets you get sick, fatally. By the time Odysseus came back that town was rumor sick, and weakening.

When Odysseus did come back, in disguise, and alone, he slaughtered all the out-of-towners, tousled his son’s hair, and went upstairs with Penelope. When he came down he tousled his son’s hair again and commended him on his loyalty, said he had claimed a Trojan spear for him but had lost it with the rest of his spoils. Then he stood in the warm hall, an orgy of out-of-towners dead on the floor, and he called for wine. He sat down in a great wooden chair and asked his son to bring the paper. He had a lot of catching up to do.

When the catching up was done they went hunting, father and son. They built a deer blind in an oak tree at the edge of a clearing and waited for a buck. Telemachus had huge eyes then for his father, and he asked a thousand questions of the war and his father’s adventures and he was in the middle of a question when a 6-point buck breached the clearing and then the buck heard him and bolted. And Odysseus was so mad he sent Telemachus home and two hours later came home himself with that same buck gutted and across his shoulders.

Other times in those first few days they talked, father and son, but Telemachus was all questions and Odysseus was used to giving orders, not answers. And Telemachus couldn’t understand why his father was so God favored, and his shame over his high school friends made him question why he should celebrate the return of one man when so many still missing left with him, or because of him. He even said it once, obliquely, to Odysseus. He showed his father the decaled football helmet and told him the story of that game and the story of those boys-who-had-left and Odysseus looked away out over the sea and paused, then said “Athena protect them, but if it be not so, they were a worthy sacrifice”. Odysseus said it in a way that you had to believe it; there was no option to disbelieve it. But, still, a part of Telemachus began to disbelieve it, and things were never the same after that between Odysseus and his only son.

When word spread among the town that Odysseus was back they all came to see him. He didn’t go to them. They all came to see him and the kind old ladies kidded Telemachus when he opened the door saying “You selfish and handsome young man, keeping your father all to yourself. Don’t you know he belongs to us just as much as you?” And that small town massed at the door to see him. Civilly at first and then jostling, like sick people in line for the fountain of youth. And Odysseus sat in that great wooden chair looking the same age as the day he left and he was so charming and noble and he had so many fascinating stories that he became the hero-salve that healed that sick small town. And a lot of the anger of those mothers whose sons were gone left when they focused on Odysseus’ easy strength. And the rest of the anger went straight to Telemachus because, they thought, look, here was Odysseus, returned on his own (with Athena’s help), our sons didn’t have to leave to suffer who knows what fate, and no matter what way you looked at it, it was Telemachus’ idea to go after Odysseus. He wasn’t content with prayer vigils or night watches or decals. No. He had to go and try to be a hero. As if he could upstage a Goddess with his planning.

All those thoughts became talk and that talk was chemical smoke and it got in Telemachus’ lungs. He had a father, but no father he could talk to, and a mother like a dog in heat and half a town that saw their (perhaps) dead children in the way he moved and the youth of his shoulders. He wasn’t blind to any of it and he felt that when he held out the collection plate of his sorrow no one was there to pass it to, and he was forced to just hold it there in his lap with all that rumor talk burning in his chest. Sometimes that’s what happens in a small town, after many other things happen. After about a year it proved too much for him and he made the great failure of forgetting his oblations to the Gods, which was his duty as the heir and Odysseus’ only son. And after that, the other half of the town lost pity for him and then he lost it for himself and then he slipped away in disguise. He left Ithaca. And the next place he went he told no one who he was.

That’s why they never wrote any grand epics about Telemachus. Maybe even when I first mentioned his name, when I said, “So they came to Telemachus”, maybe even you didn’t recognize his name. Maybe you thought I was talking about a digital phone service, or a city in Mexico. Maybe you turned to your lover (as you read at a desk in the bedroom) and asked, “Love what’s a Te-le-mac-hus?” And your lover, born and raised in a small town, said, “come to bed. It’s a long story and it’s late.” And you said, “no really, who, what or where is Te-le-mac-hus?” And your lover noticed the tone in your voice required an answer so your lover said, “My grandma used to tell me that story. If I tell it, will you come to bed?” And you said, “yes” and your lover said, “promise?” And you said “yes” and your lover said, “it’s the name of the deadbeat son of a hero. But more importantly, it’s the name of a ship lost at sea with all hands. Now come to bed.” And you said, “no fair. That was a statement not a story. And now you’ve ruined it.” And there was real indignation in your voice. But your lover just smiled with white teeth and moved a bit under the covers. And, in that, you forgave the small injustice and came to bed.