Beer, Clams, and Cashmere

Beer, Clams, and Cashmere
By
Joseph Timothy

         Staying up past lights out one Friday night, a group of us seminarians exercised our rights to be teenage boys.  A lone bag of Doritos made the rounds among four sets of glowing eyeballs as hushed voices gossiped about who-go-caught-doing-what as well as our own close calls.  At a quarter past one the door to the dorm creaked in a wide yawn.  Our voices fell silent and eyes turned askance.  We each held our breath as we expected Father Eric to come around the corner of the partition at any moment, an eye-blinding and ego-scarring flashlight in hand chuckling his usual retort, “Gotcha Turkeys!”
         There was no flashlight, just an imposing shadow, which came to a halt in the middle of the partitioned square.  Instinctively we squinted our eyes and pretended to be misplaced furniture.  Bruce’s eyes widened first.
         “It’s Kevin!”
         “I thought he was awfully quiet over there,” I said.
         “ I guess we didn’t have to worry about waking him up after all,” giggled George.  George giggled and wiggled at everything.
         Kevin seemed to stand there quite a long time.  It was at least long enough for us to be able to distinguish little twigs and leaves meshed in his clothing, even in the dark.
         “Where have you bee?”  Bruce finally asked.
         “Whaaa?!!”  Kevin’s body came to life in a series of spasms as he saw us for the first time. Evidently he had been sleeping.
         “Did you just get in?”
         “I was at the carnival – in town, Father.  There were these single mothers with orphans and …”
         “This isn’t Father Eric.  This is Bruce and Tim and George and – “
         “Jelly-Belly!”
         “SHH!!”  We hushed Kevin in unison.
         “It’s Joe.  Just Joe.”  Joe Ravelli’s bulging eyes shook with a spasm.
         “Jelly-Belly!!”
         “Shhhhh!!!”
         “Okay.  It’s Jelly-Belly.  Just keep it down.  I don’t want to get caught out of the freshman area.”
         Kevin got quiet.  Real quiet.
         “The carnival closed at midnight.  How come you are just getting in?”  I asked.
         “I got lost.”  There was a growing suspicion that something was quite afoul with Kevin but none of us would know exactly how foul until later.
         “How could you get lost?”  Bruce asked.  “It’s only mile or two down the road until you hit the main entrance.”
         “I tried to cut through the woods.”
         “How can you get lost in the woods?”  George asked.  “It’s not even big enough to walk in circles.  You could see either the street lights or flood lights from anywhere in between.”
         Kevin smiled, laughed a little, and let out a large burp.  By the stiff smell of beer and something like old fishing gear we all knew now just exactly how Kevin got lost in barely a quarter mile of sparse woods.
         While he was pulling and kicking off random bits of clothing he blurted out enough clues to suggest he spent the entire night at the beer and clam booth thanks to the generosity of a concerned adult, sympathetic to repressed Catholics and misspent youth.  Kevin wanted to be sure to thank him in the morning.
         He then hovered at the foot of his bed for about five minutes, no doubt his National-Honor-student mind calculating angle and rate of descent, before plopping almost entirely onto his mattress.  We patiently waited for him to stop moaning so that we could get busy polishing our eyewitness accounts of the latest scandal.  When a few moments later Kevin complained about the room spinning, we just told him to close his eyes.
         So much for the collective wisdom of four teenage seminarians. 
         There was loud thump as his bare feet stomped the floor, and then the sound of a large bucket of water being dumped on linoleum.  This was followed by a momentary vacuum of sound before we could hear Kevin thumping and bumping his way to the lavatory.  From the far end of the dorm, the dean’s door creaked and a widening cone of light spilled out into the main hall.  We all bolted for our respective beds except for the freshman “Jelly-Belly Joe Ravelli,” who was on the wrong side of the dorm.  He crouched low behind a locker, his back to the lavs, his eyes now burning white with terror at either the sounds of sloshing and groans, cursing and prayers – or more probably, from the sound of Father Eric’s imported cashmere slippers shuffling down the hall.
         When Father Eric turned into the lavs Joe made his move and took off.  His path took him past the foot of my bed.  It’s hard to describe what happened next in detail as it was dark and I had a tunnel-like view between the lockers, which partitioned our cubicles.
         Joe’s body seemed to hang horizontally in mid-air for what seemed forever.  After a loud, abrupt shriek – which could best be described as “inhuman” – his body dropped from view.  Immediately there was a long, fast swishing sound from center to left followed by a very loud “bang” and the rattling of about a dozen coat hangers which seemed to go on for the next ten minutes.  Father Eric entered with determined steps from right.  At left there was the scurry of bare feet on linoleum of questionable traction and then the north partition rocked with a thud, reverberating down the length of the dorm.
         From half-shut eyes I could see Father Eric’s form at the foot of my bed, raised on the tip of his toes, following the stealthy egress of Jelly Belly marked by the sporadic noise of jostled lockers, a kicked shoe, the dull impact of a cast iron bed frame followed immediately by an “ouch” and a “hey!”  Then there was the sound of a single bare foot hopping about four paces, a slight ruffle of wind like that of a bird in flight, and finally the violent recoil of bed springs exactly three students from the dean’s own bedroom.
         Father Eric now turned his gaze down.  Straight down.  He took a deep whiff.  His head jerked back sharply and the light of the exit sign revealed the same grotesque expression which one painter rendered in his depiction of the damned.  Father Eric returned to the lavs, squishing in his expensive cashmere slippers to check on Kevin.  His voice surprisingly was not mad or bitter.  With the assured tone of a faith healer – or perhaps the experience of one who had been there – he told the young boy that he would be okay now.