Adam Henry Carrière

Fresh Man

 

 

It had been drizzling all morning. By noon, it had become a downpour. My dad arrived back home shortly afterwards. We were long since showered and dressed by then. He startled us both while we sat next to each other on the living room floor with our weekend homework spread out in front of us.  "What is this?" he laughed, "Saturday school?"

 

I sprang to my feet and let Dad embarrass me with a showy bear hug.  "What happened to your downstate bivouac?"

 

"I had a double blow-out.  Spent the night at some beer-drenched motel.  That was enough for me."  He turned toward Bartholomew and asked, "Who's this?"

 

Bartholomew stepped forward and offered his hand to my dad.  "How do you do, sir?  I'm Bartholomew Baird."

 

"Good to meet you, Bart."

 

"I go to school with your son."

 

"I didn't figure you were his date."  Dad laughed.  Bartholomew blushed.  I blanched.  A fibrous smile piped Bartholomew aboard the Good Ship Pops.  "How about lunch at the diner?"

 

*

 

It took fifteen minutes worth of hob-knobbing before Pops was able to join us in the corner booth, which overlooked the rain-swept interstate. As was his habit, he had already ordered for everyone. Bartholomew quickly fell for his well-rehearsed charm, not noticing the amiable interrogation taking place beneath the smiling banter and random queries.  I enjoyed a lurid vanilla phosphate and listened to the exchange with casual interest until I was pricked to attention when Pops sailed into uncharted seas.  "How's the medical front holding up, Bart?" Dad hid his probing eyes behind a deliberate sip of fresh coffee. "Your spirits seem fit enough."

 

Bartholomew met the volley without missing a beat.  "My spirits are great, actually."  Bartholomew raised his equally lurid Green River toward me.  "I've made some great new friends who've seen to that."

 

"Well done."

 

"It can't last forever, though."

 

"Who says?" I said angrily.

 

Bartholomew glanced at the downpour continuing outside.  "I wish I knew how much longer it'll be before I'm back to the hospital every other day."  He shrugged, as if we were talking about helium leaking from a balloon.  "If I make it through the rest of the year, I'll be happy."

 

Dad kindly asked, "What about your parents?"

 

Bartholomew shook his head with a grin that wouldn't fool a child.  "My Dad acts as if I've got a cold that won't go away.  Mom's just as bad.  She's a school counselor. She wants to talk about it every night."

 

Dad ignored my veiled glare.  "But you don’t.?"

 

"No, sir.  Most of the time, I don't want to even think about it."  Bartholomew hastened to butter a slice of rye bread, which he then dipped into the remnants of his salad.  "I feel better now than I've felt in a year, so I try to keep busy living a little bit before anything changes.  School helps.  So do my friends.  They help a lot."

 

My father regarded me for a moment. "I'm happy to hear it."  The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of our Blue Plate Special lamb chops. Heart-attack food, The Dad can do. "You might be surprised how far your spirit might carry you," he said. "A person's will, it’s a battleship. It's the only way to survive, sometimes."

 

The two of us dawdled over our food while I chewed over Dad's remarks, wondering who the bromide was really meant for.

Bartholomew went on.  "Mom's been helpful in one way, though.  She wants me to go to live in Edinburgh with one of her cousins from the old country."  Bartholomew looked down at his plate.  "Good ol' Mom.  She thinks I should experience my heritage and culture and everything else Scottish before, well, you know."

 

Dad gave me a protective look. He and Bartholomew heard the edge in my voice as I exclaimed, "Edinburgh? You're going to live in Edinburgh? When?"

 

"No," Bartholomew answered, "it would be more like a long vacation. I keep putting Mom off, though." Bartholomew held up his water glass but did not take a drink. "Sometimes the whole idea seems like scheduling a funeral before someone dies."

 

I coughed down too large a swig of my phosphate. Pops steamed to my rescue. "It sounds like a great thing to do. Nobody takes their own culture seriously any more. I'm sure it'll do you a world of good, Bartholomew. Talk about it some more with your mother," he urged. Thunder rumbled in the background as I listened to my personal chef lie through his beguiling teeth. "After all, it could be just the thing to help you get on top of this thing of yours.  Who knows?  Maybe we can arrange for your new friend here to join you while you’re there.  He'll owe me about a year's worth of pantry duty, but we'll work something out.  Let me know when you decide anything.  I'm already excited for both of you."

 

The Dad chose not to notice the mute sentiments vaulting between Bartholomew and his best friend. “You never actually mentioned what you were under the weather from, Bartholomew.”

 

Hi’s best friend smiled numbly. “I have AIDS, sir.”

 

*

 

We left the doors to the balcony slightly ajar, letting fresh but cold night air waft into my parents’ bedroom. We huddled under the covers of their king-sized bed in our birthday suits, close enough to feel the other’s body. The cavernous room was dark except for the soft green glow from one of Dad’s many stereos, which was tuned to the all-night jazz program from a nearby state college. Bartholomew exhaled, almost happily. "I like your dad. Cool of him to let us crash in here."

 

"He was on his best behavior today," I observed.

 

"Do you think he'll really let you fly out to see me in Europe?"

 

"He doesn't usually lie to me when there's a witness present," I replied matter-of-factly.

 

"What's going on between you two?"

 

"It's actually between me, him, and my mom."

 

Bartholomew rubbed my arm. "Do you want to talk about it?"

 

"Fuck, no."

 

He took my hand. "Pick a subject, then."

 

I looked at Bartholomew in the dark and demanded, "When were you planning on telling me about this Edinburgh thing?"

 

"Tonight. Right now, I guess. Whenever we got to bed."

 

"Should I get ready for another surprise tomorrow night?"

 

Bartholomew leaned his head on my shoulder and murmured, "No, I'm fresh out of surprises, that, and my stash, too. I’m in for a rough winter if the little gangster I buy from disappears again. Do you know anyone with a good hook-up?"  Dad’s night shift came to mind.

 

"How’d you get it?"  It sounded like I was asking how he got a bug bite.

 

"Transfusion.  Imagine the lawsuits.  By the way, thanks for inviting me over this weekend.  You’re the coolest friend I’ve ever made. Where the hell were you when I was finishing middle school in and out of the ER?”

 

Ha. “I was just in a different hospital, Bartholomew. I done drank myself blind when both parental units managed to miss my graduation. One of them found me unconscious the next morning. It’s a touchy subject, still.”

 

“Fuck. I’ll bet.”

 

“What’s your middle name?”

 

“Huh? Why?

 

“I’m just hoping it doesn’t start with a B.”

 

He laughed very quietly. “It’s Anselm.”

 

“Bartholomew Anselm Baird?”

 

“You don’t like it?”

 

“No, I fucking love it. It sounds like someone important, not a whiskey.”

 

“Well...I’m not so important.”

 

“Fuck off, you are to me.” I tried to clear my throat. “Thanks for not being mad about last night.”

 

“Well, back at you, Hiram. I feel like shit for not telling you...well, you know, before.” He wrapped himself around me as he spoke. I guess the sweetness of the sensation kept either of us from popping another boner with no place to go. The long minute ended when Bartholomew ran his fingers through the small nest of hair in the middle of my ribs. Hollowly, he said, "Edinburgh is my ace in the hole, Hi."

 

"What do you mean?"

 

"I'll be away.  No one will fuss over me.  No one will drive me nuts over this pill or that like Mom does every fucking night. Dad won't argue with the doctors until they throw him out of the room. And I won't feel like a charity case when people look at me, because I won't know any of them. Hell, maybe I'll get lucky and die over there."

 

The unspoken 'afterwards' hung over us like radioactive fallout.  I labored to keep my voice steady as I wondered, "What's so lucky about that?"

 

"It would kill me to see you looking at me in a hospital bed." Bartholomew made no effort to hide his tiny sobs from me.

"I'm gonna die alone no matter what, so why not really be alone?"

 

The misty winter rain danced in the background of a shared, restless sleep that was very, very slow in coming to us both. 

 

*

 

The gymnasium pool was unlit and deathly still, even with me and Bartholomew paddling around in the deep end.  It was still dark and frosty when we had met outside the building minutes before; we had the pool and the gym to ourselves for at least an hour every morning.  Our coach thought we were crazy to trade sleep for ‘some laps’.  He’d been giving me a lot of orders concerning Bartholomew’s work-out routine that were classified from my friend’s knowledge, trouble signs, that sort of thing. One came up that morning.

 

After our first sloppy dive in, Bartholomew hung his arms over the floating lane divider, waiting for me to take up our usual tête-à-tête locale.  “Is it cool if we just hang out for a little while?  I had another bad sleep night.  It’s gonna be a bitch staying awake today.”

 

“Why don’t you crash in the office?  Coach will let the Principal know.  I’ll get whatever you need to catch up on.  Hell, I’m already doing half your homework as it is.”

 

 “How many times a day do I have to thank you for that?  Besides, you’ll take advantage of me if I take a nap in my bathing suit.”

 

I eyed him carefully.  “Are you sure you’re OK?”

 

“Yes, Nurse Ratchet, I’m just tired.  They changed my meds again.  I keep waking up while I’m asleep, but when I’m awake all I want to do is sleep.  Fuck, maybe I should try some crank instead of the damn meds.”  He gave my pony-tail a good-natured tug.  “How do I look, besides wet?”

 

I smiled away an honest answer.  “You look fine, I guess, except for those scrapes on your back.  Next time you go bike riding, dumb-ass, wear a jacket or something before you try to pedal through somebody’s shrubs.”

 

Bartholomew nuzzled his face below mine as if I were some sort of bargain-basement guardian angel. “What do you want for Christmas?” 

 

“For you to be around for the next twenty of them.” 

 

“That’s sweet. Definitely, you’ve earned a kiss for that.” Like a selfish sponge, I sopped up the feeling of Bartholomew's body so close to mine under the pool’s surface, only just wondering how I might have felt like to him. Breathless with the excitement of Bartholomew’s warm, wet mouth, I barely registered his feather-like grip inside my trunks until I felt a big mess was well on its way.

 

“What was that?” Bartholomew gasped, pulling away from me with a jolt.  Except for the cool water lapping away from his movement and a very distant classroom door closing, the gym and the pool were as noiseless as ever.

 

Trying to re-adjust my trunks around wood that wasn’t going away easily, I snipped, “Did anybody ever mention there’s a prep school upstairs?”

 

 “We better get ready for class,” he said. He slipped twice pulling himself out of the pool. The ‘scrapes’ on his back had been there a lot longer than his bike-riding story. Coach told me what they really were on the qt.  

 

*

 

I had been staring into our fireplace for so long my eyes hurt. Mom stalked into the family room behind me. I could feel her glaring the shower water off my bare back. "Are you getting dressed or not? We're already running late. You know how your aunt gets. Let's try and be sociable this evening, too. After all, it’s Thanksgiving. Pretend to be thankful for something, for once. I'm sorry you'd rather be in Dublin or wherever, but there's nothing we can do about it tonight. You're carrying on as if the two of you were in love!"

 

From the kitchen, Dad asked, "Who's in love?"

 

I have no idea if either of them noticed my bottom lip lose control as I stormed past them back to my room upstairs.

 

*

 

Another long and exhausting day at Cosmas & Damian’s came and went with the speed of a presidential campaign.  I dragged myself home through the grainy December sleet to find a letter addressed to me in the mailbox. I lost my breath when I saw a row of strange stamps, postmarked Inverness.

 

I sat on my bed, re-reading Bartholomew's love letter until my eyes burned. OK, maybe it wasn’t really a love letter, or he didn’t mean to write it the way I took it. But it felt like one, both the first and the fiftieth time I read it. I might have shown it to Dad, but he didn't come home that night. Neither did Mom, so I got to bawl away in peace. Some peace.

 

*

 

Coach barked at me, but the sound barely registered.  All I could muster in return was a blank look.  He sat down beside me and asked in another voice entirely, "D'you hear from Blondie?"

 

I nodded dumbly.  "He's back in the hospital again.  The doctors won't let him fly home.  Or Bartholomew's told the doctors to tell everyone that."

 

"I don't blame him.  My daddy was the same way when he got sick.  Damn near threw us out, most visits."  Coach continued to talk without using any words.  It was weird.  He wasn't saying anything aloud, but I heard him just the same.  I still wasn't used to the language of silence.  I was learning, though.  I sure was learning. 

 

*

 

The Principal’s cramped drawing room was packed to the corners with its usual morning bedlam.  The badly lit, over-heated space made my surprise summons that much more oppressive.  Coach opened up a deferential path through the flock and stood behind my shoulder when, taking us aside, Father Neumann told me Bartholomew had died a few nights ago, just before he was supposed to fly home. The Bairds, aggressive atheists, had no plans for a local memorial service and objected to Neumann’s wish to hold one at school.

 

Coach's arm held me steady as he walked us back through school, leaving me in the courtyard when everyone else was on their way in. I wandered through the university campus until I got to a windy and deserted corner of the lakefront. I knelt down on the cold concrete shore’s edge, pretended to pray, and kept myself from crying without making a sound, wishing I could remember how it felt like when we kissed, and kissed, and kissed, goodbye.  I remembered it was beautiful, though, even if we were hiding from his creep parents to have those kisses in the airport bathroom. 

 

*

 

A carved wooden box arrived in the mail a few days before Christmas.  I stared at it through dinner.  Dad kept clearing his throat and pointing at it with his fork but was unable to dislodge a reply from my funk.  He went for a dessert smoke in the backyard before I opened the box to find a thick wad of artsy postcards Bartholomew had collected for me from throughout Scotland.  Below these was a genuine skean dhu, a short Scots dagger with a hilt made of what looked like bone. 

 

Bartholomew.

 

Dad glanced at me through the glass doors as I pulled the wooden box closer to me, feigning a polite smile.  All I could think of was holding Bartholomew's hands in the gym pool for the last time.  I turned on my heels to go hide in my bedroom before Dad hollered at me from the shadowy yard. "What's in the box?"

 

"Postcards," I hollered back.

 

"That was good of Bart," he called.  Tears were billowing inside my eyelids, but I refused to let them fall, or to whimper or even breathe in front of witnesses.  His fatherly ‘You know how sorry I am we couldn't swing your trip over there’ smile made me want to lock him outside in the cold. I wanted to shout something awful into that smile, but I kept quiet until I locked my bedroom door behind me. 

 

My shaky hands jumbled up the cards inside of the box, revealing one, a satellite photo of Scotland, which had been written on, in kiddy Latin so his blasted parents couldn’t read it.

 

The carols sung by the gospel choir on the radio made reading Bartholomew Anselm Baird’s second and final love letter to me particularly awful.  The postcard folded into an uneven ball inside my shaking fingers.  It took Mom’s sleeping pills forever to kick in.  I’d swallowed too many.  I only woke up when they started pumping my stomach.  Somebody was holding one of my hands.  I pretended it was Bartholomew before I slipped back unconscious, missing Christmas Day altogether.

 

 

 

Born on the South Side of Chicago, Adam Henry Carrière received last rites at the age of six, won a swimming pool at the track for his thirteenth birthday, has a master’s degree and half a doctorate yet no high school diploma, adapted Wagner’s Lohengrin into a screenplay, watched the sun rise through Stonehenge, swum with Beluga whales, gone snorkeling beside tortoises with Cuba near in sight, seen the Northern Lights, sailed through a typhoon, violated Vietnamese territorial waters, waved machine guns in the City of Rocks, reached 120 miles per hour on Pacific Coast Highway, walked up a Bavarian Alp, written poetry that bought him a car, and had cocktails where the Beatles played in Miami Beach, Janis Joplin stayed in Hollywood, and at the actual Hotel California. Seriously. He is the author of  Miles and Shant, and the poetry collections Faschingslieder and Rhododendrons of the Sea.

 

Fresh Man is excerpted from Hi’s Cool, forthcoming in Spring 2020 from Hammer & Anvil Books.