Wednesday, November 16, 2011
9. The Symplegades
When Jake first heard that Sundance was going to Fairfield, a Jesuit University, Sundance had to explain whom these Jesuits were. He told Jake of how a wounded soldier, named Ignatius, had a conversion experience and ended forming a new group of missionaries. He called his fledgling group of wandering missionaries “The Company of Jesus.” Sundance explained further that their use of the term “company” came from the Latin “cum panis” (with bread) which loosely meant for this group of sacred men “breaking the bread together (while on the journey…) with Jesus.”
Jake and Sundance’s group of Wanderers were not very sacred and nor were they on any real defined mission. Yet, at times their exchanges about different topics would court the edge of the spiritual. Sometimes they drifted to topics such as the purpose of meal gatherings, the origins of grace at meals or who brewed the first beer. These roundtable conversations were born either out of boredom or an untapped desire to gain wisdom. Billy started one of those explorations out of nowhere one evening as they all sat around a booth at Anthony’s Pizza Restaurant and Bar. They were all talking about how Anthony’s had the best pizza around and how they liked to gather together to have a slice and a beer when suddenly Billy lobbed a grenade into the conversation
“It wasn’t an accident that Jesus consciously decided to share a meal with his brothers and sisters, dining and drinking before he would be humiliated and put to death like a common criminal. Celebrating the holiness of friendship at a meal ranks second to the giving up one’s life for a friend as an expression of true love. Isn’t that right, Jake?”
Jake taken back by the new exchange
“Come on, what are you talking about?”
Sundance placed his hand on Jake’s to calm him down and added
“Blood oaths are not natural but when two or more are connected even death cannot separate those bound together”
Billy was on a roll and continued
“We all feel the need to find comfort in connecting with others. It’s about survival really. We are social creatures aren’t we? Even if we have strong family ties we often feel the need to affiliate with an extended family. Look at us as we go to college. At these campuses of wisdom seekers coeds have created gangs or packs called fraternities or sororities. These collectives to spiritualize their communities create secret oaths and ceremonies. Their public missions are social, academic and even philanthropic but these “brotherhoods” and “sisterhoods” were often covers for toga parties as well as passing around the answers of the reused exams developed by a few lazy professors and their teaching assistants. In reality these groups are there to help all the lonely academic pilgrims feel needed. Taking letters from the Greek Alphabet and then creating a slogan in Latin that was meant to represent their values is a common tool to portray their legitimacy. Ever notice though how these gangs always tend to eat together or travel around the campus quads in cohorts?”
Al chimed
“Hey my cousin’s luncheon club is a fraternity of sorts, at Princeton.”
Billy
“Yeh, in many ways they were one of the first to organize their groups. They used the meal as their central point of convergence ”
Chase hurried and ordered another pitcher of beer and mumbled
“It’s going to be a long night, isn’t it?”
Jake had once proposed to this paltry platoon that he wanted to continue “the Wanderers” through their college years. He suggested how they could transform their identity with a new name like “ I Phelta Thi” with the slogan “Duit en Mon Dei.” No one in the group liked the idea after they provided quiet giggles to the proposal. Jake didn’t want to bring it up again.
Their communal conversation became more convoluted. Topics of sports teams, rock bands and religious congregations converged or collided, depending on one’s perspective. Jake ordered another plain pizza pie. When it arrived he silently and solemnly separated and distributed a single piece to each one of the Wanderers around the table. He was the only one who was aware that this night was to be their last meal together as a group. He raised up his hot cheese dripping thin bread crusted slice and his glass of lager holding both above his head
“Remember this night always, guys. Don’t ever forget”
Sundance whispered for only a few who dared to hear
“Per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso, est tibi Deo Patri omnipotenti in unitate Spiritus Sancti, omnis honor et gloria. Per omnia saecula saeculorum. “
Responding to their unofficial brother they lifted their slices and clanked their beer glasses together and said
“Amen!”
Jake and Sundance really didn’t need a club or official fraternity with Latin letters. Sundance stayed more connected to their old friends while Jake preferred the path of the iconoclast. Though after a couple of years since that last meal with the Wanderers Jake and Sundance were still together on their semi-mutual mission to find something, anything. At Babe’s Bar they had grabbed their drinks from the bartender and clinking the froth topped mugs as if they drank from the same cup like two wandering crusaders they would honor their pilgriming companionship.
“Salute!”
Sundance had eyeballed a little out of the way cigarette-stained table in one of the darkest corners of the bar. They hadn’t noticed they sat underneath a framed plaque on the wall next to them. A simple skull with cross bones and the number “322” etched underneath. After a few laughs and beers three or four broad shouldered crew cutted chinoed desert booted and penny loafered guys stood over them.
“This is our table. It always has been and always will be. You are excused gentleman.”
Now this is what Jake had been waiting for. Sundance’s hand vice gripped Jake’s arm to the table . Jake was selectively ignorant. He looked puzzled and annoyed at Sundance. Jake’s arm with the restricted blood flow was slowly from his chair by Sundance. Jake’s other hand had wrapped around the neck of a beer bottle ready to crash it open to slash a jugular of his opponent if need be. Sundance noticed the fists on the eighteen and a half oversized necks of the preppies and said
“Hey put down that bottle Jake. I’ll get you another. We’re sorry guys. Our first time here and we didn’t know.”
Some people are silver tongued and Sundance’s words always sounded like the truth.
“It’s a gift.”
He was often told he should be a writer, actor or go into politics. He could have done anything well that required words! The biggest of the preppies loosened his fingers. Fists gone, Jake was completely confused and now irritated with Sundance. The two intruders slowly slithered to a corner as far away as they could from that end of the bar they and checked the walls around where they stood to see if there were any other plaques or pennants or signs or markings. There was a table with three chairs with only one guy sitting at it and he saw Jake and Sundance standing
“Hey you can sit here if you want.”
Sundance looked around
“Are you sure? We don’t want to take a seat that’s not ours.”
The fortyish unshaven man mumbled
“Up to you. These aren’t taken and you’re welcome”
Sundance quickly sat
“Thank you”
Jake continued to give the evil eye to the preppie thieves.
“I like that table. We were fine. We were there first.”
“Shut up an sit”
Sundance piled Jake down into his chaired and they continued as if their new table partner were a ghost.
“You have no idea who those guys were. They are Skull and Bones from Yale”
“I don’t care if they are Abbot and Costello from Hoboken. What right do the have to…”
“They are a secret …very secret club. Some say they rule New Haven. Some say the rule Yale. Some say they even rule the US.”
“You’re reading too many radical press articles, Sundance”
“Yeh , right. Look you don’t get it. Have a cigarette and a drink”
The slightly worn bourbon sipping smoking soloist looked up cracking a smilie …
“You guys are either brothers or is it more complicated than that?”
They all laughed. Well, Sundance had an uncomfortable laugh.
They introduced themselves
The man mumbled …
“They call me Bob. Want me to spell it backwards for ya ?”
Sundance felt for the guy and bought him another bourbon.
Sundance wanted to know about him.
“Where you from?”
Jake thought Sundance was nuts and asked
“What about finding girls?”
“Come on, Jake. Everyone has a story.”
Sundance could use his gift of words to charm others into talking. The man with the sorrowful eyes sipped his drink while smoking and spoke into his glass while brushing his longish gray-black oily locks with his right hand fingers. Without removing the cigarette from his lips he started by asking if the two were Yalees . Jake turned around staring down the brutes that stole his table
“Do we look like those assholes?”
Sundance explained how Jake was visiting and how Sundance was a student at Fairfield University and how they were just out and about.
Jake added
“We are on an odd Odyssey heading down an unknown river into some unchartered sea. Don’t know where we are headed and don’t care !”
Jake likes to exaggerate a little - sometimes. Then the stranger began.
“ I was Jesuit trained too! I went to Jesuit school, St. Joe’s in Philadelphia. The Jesuits there would tease you with tips of the truth. If we were to know the whole truth the church as we know it would crumble “
A puff and the ramble continued…
“Me and a roommate at Hawk Hill went on a little pilgrimage once too like you young fellas. We started by going to a local watering hole one day, The Muddy Duck, and before we knew it we were on the road hitch hiking to somewhere. Some guy and his gal picked us up driving their big rig cross-country. We thought ‘perfect!’”
Well, he got Jake’s attention…. trucks and hitting the road.
“ Well, what happened?”
“Getting there son. Hold on.”
The guy chain-smoked and lighting another cigarette he took a gulp of the freshly filled glass of bourbon.
“ We didn’t really care where that trucker was headed, as long as he was heading far away from where we were. We were both excited as we both started to fantasize about seeing Florida or Texas. Neither of us had been west of the Mississippi and we couldn’t wait to get going. But we soon discovered great passages are not always what we dreamed they would be. The couple that picked us up were, let’s just say a little different.”
Jake thought “Ok now this is going to get good.”
“Well, It wasn’t that we didn’t appreciate their generosity. Did I say they would treat us to meals at all the truck stops? There was never any foul-mouthed talk or smoking or any signs of alcohol. “
Jake started to change his opinion quickly
“My God.”
“You are right son. In some ways they were quite boring. I think they were using their truck driving as some type of ministry of sorts. The woman read from the Bible out loud and both would ‘thank God’ or ‘Praise God’ for this or that. They weren’t proselytizing evangelicals they just who they were and if we wanted a ride we had to live with it. Anyways, the trip was taking longer than we had planned .All that God stuff made the days a little tedious. But funny though before we knew we were in Denver and we thought we might want to get off the road for a day and decide what we wanted to do- you know to go forward or to go back. I read once that ‘not to decide is to decide.’ So we decided. The truck driver and his gal wished us ‘God’ speed’ and they were gone from our lives but not from our memories. That’s when and where we met two other guys who were on their own road trip and they were headed east or at least we thought that was the case.
Magically coming up over the hill through the foggy mist of the morning a big black Cadillac crept up alongside of us as we were standing on the side of the road debating where to go. The passenger window came down carefully and slowly with cigarette smoke bleeding from the inside to mix with the outdoor mist and no faces yet seen a voice seeped out
‘Hey you guys looking for a lift east?’
“ It was providential .We didn’t think twice and jumped in joining these two guys on their way to Chicago. My roomie was suspicious about all this. He always had some lack of trust in others he didn’t know. All that witnessing by our recent driver and his lady did have an impact but changing one’s life is not that easy, ya know. The driver took off like a maniac rocket man. For a moment there we both regretted leaving the trucker and his companion. Sometimes we don’t make the right decisions when we run from rather something than run to something. “
Sundance and Jake stared at each other shrugging their shoulders. Jake giggled. The man kept on.
“We got away from those two those guys in Chicago and never said bye or anything and never heard from them or saw them again. The last we saw was smoke blowing from the exhaust as a cigarette was flicked out of a partly opened window. We were convinced that we didn’t want to end up like these two! Ya know in some ways you two look like younger versions of those two guys.”
He puffed the cigarette and sipped the bourbon. Sundance looked over at Jake and tried to telepathically say “What’s this all about?”
The sip done the man went on
“ Anyways, we hurriedly grabbed the next bus to Philly and were soon back at school. When we got back to St. Joe’s I found a note in my dorm room door to call home. My parents had died in a car accident just the day before. Everything changed in a split second. They never knew I was away and well I um…I went home for the funeral and never returned to college. I ended up getting my CDL and took a job driving cross-country trucks and have been on the road since. My roomie graduated and ended as an Assistant Attorney General prosecuting child sex abuse cases and he still lives just outside of Philadelphia.”
He took a another quick swig and puff and as he exhaled
“Ya remember in the story about ‘Alice’ and what the Cheshire cat said to her when Alice asked which path she should take? The cat said ‘That all depends a good deal on where you want to get to’ and Alice said something like ‘I don’t much care where.’ The cat answered ‘then it doesn’t matter which way you go.’ Well, it matters boys. If ya do just what you think pleases you, you’ll end up like me always on the road goin' nowhere fast…”
Jake thought that being a truck driver wasn’t such a bad thing. He asked the guy
“If that’s true then how will I know when I get to where I am supposed to be?”
Jake drifted as a simple soft sullen smile ran across his face as he self-reminisced about the time in eighth grade Jake had to write an assay of where he saw himself as an adult. Jake wrote about driving a truck across the great divide through canyons where hawks soared and miniature dust tornadoes whipped along the plains below. “Ah , the heartland, wheat fields and dust bowls , real life, real values.” Trucking up the coast roads of southern and northern California stopping to witness the great sun disappear in a flash of bright yellow-orange-red sky into the ocean. The witnessing of Big Sur would be a sacred experience that could last a lifetime. Maybe he would see the illusive green flash? The road could be his home. Jake believed that this stranger they met in this strange location of libations was just tired from his journey and forgot about the gift of the being on the road.
The guy started to light another cigarette. With the flash of the match three tight sweatered young sirens appeared like genies magically seeping out from the bourbon bottle hovering over the three men at the table.
“Hey you guys want to go to a sorority party?”
Jake got lost somewhere between the stranger’s monologue and the sudden request. Decisions, decisions. Sometimes intuition takes over. Jake jumped back to his reflection on his admiration of Roger Maris. Jake just wouldn’t let go of it.
“You know, Maris proved that he made the right decision by making the long throw to stop Matty Alou from scoring the tying run on a double by Willie Mays in the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World Series. The next batter was out and the Yanks won the World Series again. It would have been the easier decision and play for Maris to put out Mays. But then the game would have been tied. Even though he made the right decision and had executed it perfectly the Yankees still traded him. So much for good decisions. Everyday is filled with choices, turn right or left, eat this drink that, stay here or go there. Desires unknown, desires unfulfilled. Different motivations influence different decisions. Can’t always worry about where each decision will take you. Can’t always get what you need either.”
Sundance was trying to be patient. Smiling uncomfortably at the girls, he knew had to get Jake focused and nudged him while saying
“Let it go, Jake!
Jake lit a cigarette held it straight up between his right hand fore finger and thumb and watched which way the smoke drifted. He had in his mind that if the smoke would rise for an inch or two then bend in the direction of the girls, he would know what to do. The smoke drifted immediately towards the girls.
“Never can be too sure”
The girls giggled and thought it was cute.
Sundance turned to the man at their table
“You coming with us?”
The stranger smirked
“Seriously?”
“Well, will you be here later? I would like to hear more. Besides, thanks for the story and the advice.”
“ Well, I never have any plans. So I expect to be here for a while unless something changes. ”
Sundance really didn’t expect to return. He was just being…Sundance.
The storyteller took another gulp of his drink, toked his butt and didn’t lift his head or eyes again to acknowledge Jake and Sundance’s departure. When Sundance quickly glanced back the table where the three had been sitting he noticed just like that ….it was empty, even the beer and shot glasses were gone. It was almost as if the three had never been together at that table. Sundance motioned to the girls.
The five then sauntered smoothly with a sway this way and that to the bar’s exit. Sundance putting his arms around two of the ladies as they sang the ole Sam Cooke tune,“We’re having a party, dancing to the music, played by a dj, on the radio.”
Jake was in a half good mood.
“Mission just about accomplished.”
He shouted over the music and added.
“ By the way good choice on the bar, Sundance!”
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