Comfort and Joy, Page 3

  His parents expressed relief at this breakup of what had appeared to be a vigorous college romance. Susan Warmer was far from the sort of girl they wished for their son—she was neither from Savannah nor of particularly good family. As for Ford, he accepted the approval of his parents as tacit evidence that he had acted properly in freeing himself of this entanglement. But as he continued to pick up boys in the gym, and as his delight in the subsequent acts of conquest continued unabated, he became aware that his own maturity was taking a different road than the one prescribed for him.

  As a college senior, with his parents beginning to wonder why he showed so little interest in the kind of women suitable for a proper match, he himself discovered mutuality of desire. With McKenzie Donnelly.

  McKenzie lived next door to Ford in a bungalow on Wyrick Street that had been rented to so many prior college students it had taken on the aura of a dormitory. McKenzie owned a dog named Hammond, a hulking brown mongrel with paws the size of grapefruit and a tongue so long it trailed the ground as he ambled through the neighborhood, terrorizing garbage cans in his search for gourmet tidbits.

  Ford had noted the presence of the homely dog in his neighborhood, but only met McKenzie one autumn morning while righting his own overturned garbage can. This was early, about the time garbage pickup was due, and Ford hurried out of his kitchen when he saw the mess at the street.

  McKenzie found him at the task. Hair disheveled as if he had only just stumbled out of bed, he bounded to the end of Ford's driveway and said, "Let me help you with that. Since it was my dog that did the damage."

  The two men introduced themselves, and Ford learned that McKenzie lived in the red-shingled bungalow with a graduate student whom Ford had only seen and never met. "I think Kenneth is getting a little tired of my dog," McKenzie said, taking Hammond's ungainly head by the ears and shaking it gently back and forth. "Of me too," he added, giggling, scratching the nest of his hair. "We got our marching orders last night, when I got in."

  "Your roommate kicked you out?"

  "Oh, yeah," McKenzie said, laugh still sparkling. "Put my ass right on the street, as of today. I don't blame him either. I'm such a son-of-a-bitch."

  As the conversation progressed, Ford found himself more and more intrigued. He invited McKenzie inside, and they sat at the kitchen table. The fellow was raucously good-looking, with a rakish, slant-grinned face that reminded Ford of the fair-haired villains in cowboy movies.

  He claimed to be the scion of an old southern house, the great-great-grandson of one of North Carolina's Confederate generals, and a troublemaker since the day he was born. When he laid claim to this heritage, his blue eyes glazed, and he spoke of his family with brittle callousness. Because of his endless misbehaviors his father refused any contact with him, and he existed on student loans and the occasional dividend from rarefied family stocks. He also attended the university, asserting himself to be a philosophy major and naming the requisite professors, whom he claimed to have bested in one classroom debate after another. Ford hardly knew whether to believe him or not; McKenzie spoke so glibly, it was easy to believe he could best even the experts in their chosen fields. The conversation amused them both to the point that Ford cut his morning class and drove McKenzie to the local package store, where they obtained gin and bloody Mary mix—gin being vastly preferable to vodka, even in a bloody Mary, according to McKenzie, because of the effects of juniper on the human dream state. "When I drink gin, I wake up with an erection the size of a telephone pole," McKenzie claimed. "If I could figure out how to write down my dreams before I forget them, I could have a pornographic bestseller."

  That they ended up in bed together before noon surprised neither of them. But what astonished Ford was his own reaction to the man. In the face of McKenzie's liveliness, Ford abandoned his own preferred game of self-absorption. McKenzie led him step by step, ravenous and lovely, his touch sparking heat in every line of Ford— in the living room of the Wyrick Street house, under the moving shadows of tree leaves on the carpet that had belonged to Ford's Grandmother Strachn. McKenzie's lithe shape drew Ford's hands irrevocably along its every plane, Ford fumbling with the buttons of McKenzie's shirt, almost tearing the T-shirt over McKenzie's head in his eagerness to get at the firm torso, the hairy chest, the pink, soft nipples. When the two men lay naked on the historic carpet and Ford brushed his lips down the length of McKenzie's cock, the fact of this initiation escaped Ford. He had lost himself somewhere within McKenzie.

  Late in the evening, after they moved to the bed and continued their long ritual of acquaintance, McKenzie moved his few belongings into Ford's house. The next-door graduate student, Kenneth, watched the whole moving process coldly from his porch, lit by a single bare bulb. Finally Kenneth glared at Ford and said, "You'll live to regret this, let me assure you," before returning inside and slamming the door. Hammond, confused, dashed back and forth between the houses, his club-like tail wagging wildly. At last, with the move complete, Ford welcomed the ungainly mutt into his kitchen.

  The honeymoon with McKenzie lasted for weeks. To Ford, who had never before felt compelled toward anyone, the interval wore all the trappings of eternity. That he could lose himself completely in the presence of McKenzie came as a continual surprise; that he could desire McKenzie to the exclusion of nearly everything else shocked him even more deeply. He had never before had to wonder about his future, but with McKenzie in his house he began to do so.

  Already he had aimed at Emory medical school, from which his father and grandfather had graduated to their cool, ordered lives among the Savannah elite. Ford's choice of Emory aimed in part at family tradition and in part at a desire to appease his father, who had strongly disapproved Ford's decision to attend the Chapel Hill university rather than its perfectly good counterpart in Athens, Georgia. Ford had never doubted he would achieve admission to Emory, and, indeed, had never before doubted that he would go on from medical school to the requisite residency at Grady and the eventual ascent to the throne of his father: the house off Calhoun Square and the carefully established medical practice whose patrons included the best and oldest families.

  But in the wake of McKenzie, in the flood-tide of feeling the man stirred in him, he understood that he might never have a wife. Further, he understood that without the wife, the whole studied and perfect life that his family—that he—had envisioned became suddenly at risk.

  At the same time, the honeymoon with McKenzie ended, and the young man's self-destructiveness resurfaced.

  McKenzie drank. At first this seemed reasonable enough, and Ford took up the sport, too. He had nothing to lose, after all, being in the last weeks of his senior year in college, his grades earned, his admission to medical school assured. He allowed McKenzie to lead him, and drinking became part of his general infatuation. But Ford soon tired of it. Waking into a cotton-headed stupor each morning wearied him to the point that he began to quarrel with the need for the stuff, at first intermittently and then all the time.

  McKenzie reacted by descending more deeply into haze.

  When the quarrels between them began in earnest, McKenzie retreated, as he had always done. He went to bars and stayed out all night, stumbling home toward dawn or after, drunken and wrecked, falling over furniture and cursing Hammond's attempts at affection. Some mornings he had himself delivered to the door by whatever pickup had sheltered him for the few hours between bar-closing and morning light. At the first such incident, Ford withdrew from him in cool shock. After some weeks of this, Ford moved McKenzie into the second bedroom of the house. The quarrels ceased. The physical heat that had dictated their life together turned to frost.

  This cooling had not disturbed McKenzie while he was with other men; with Ford, he became terrified, flaunting his night encounters more openly. Taunting Ford, ridiculing him, doing anything to provoke response. But no response came. The arctic chill of the house reached even to Hammond, who wandered from one man to the other, utterly confused.

&nb
sp; When McKenzie brought one of his pickups home from the gay bar in Durham, a final, savage argument began. Ford, alone in the room he had reserved for himself, heard voices in his living room, one he recognized and one he did not. Instant anger flooded him, and he rushed out of bed wearing only loose pajama bottoms.

  In the living room he found McKenzie and a boy wrapped round each other on the same carpet where McKenzie and Ford had begun their tryst, what now seemed a lifetime ago. At the sight of Ford, the stranger leapt to his feet, backing toward the kitchen as he rearranged his clothing—later, Ford would wonder just how palpable his anger had been that the boy should feel it before Ford said a word. Ford gazed down at McKenzie, trembling, and said, "Not here."

  McKenzie, drunk, gestured beatifically toward the rug. "Come on, come join us."

  "Fuck you," Ford said. "Get him out of here."

  "But I can't," McKenzie said, still smiling the drunken smile. "He doesn't have anywhere to go. Do you?" Turning from the frightened figure huddling in the kitchen doorway to Ford. "His parents won't let us go to his house."

  "I said, get him out of here, I don't care where you take him."

  McKenzie laughed. "Come on, Fordie, it's all right. We'll be quiet. Don't spoil my fun."

  Ford turned to the stranger, a scared kid. "Wait for me outside. I'll take you home."

  "Now you wait just a minute," McKenzie said, struggling to rise.

  "Shut up!" He trembled, looming over McKenzie. Who froze in the midst of clumsy attempts to right himself and buckle his belt. "I said I'm taking him home, and I mean it."

  "Just because you won't fuck me anymore doesn't mean I can't have any fun."

  "You can have all the fun you want," Ford said, "but not in my house."

  "Oh, yes," McKenzie said, "your house. That your parents buy for you. But they wouldn't, would they? If they knew what you do in it."

  "You're drunk," Ford said.

  "Oh, yes."

  "So shut your mouth."

  "Oh, no," McKenzie said, "I'm planning to use my mouth. As soon as you get out of my way."

  "You're too drunk to do much," Ford said. "You probably can't manage sex anyway. Why don't you put yourself to bed, if you think you can manage that. And get plenty of rest. Because tomorrow you're getting out of here once and for all."

  "Fordie doesn't like us faggots, does he?" McKenzie turned to the frightened boy, who fumbled with the doorknob trying to open it. "Fordie doesn't like being a faggot. Fordie doesn't like being a fucking cocksucker like the rest of us, oh, no. But Fordie is a cocksucker, and when Mommie and Daddie find out—"

  The sound of the harsh slap echoed. McKenzie fell flat again, the side of his face reddening. Eyes glazed, he lay silent. Ford's palm stung. He looked at the hand, at McKenzie's face. Stunned at himself, he felt the shock of the moment reverberating, and for a moment he longed to say something tender.

  But then he heard the door closing, the shadow of the terrified boy falling against the glass from outside. Anger returned; Ford whirled to the bedroom, found his car keys and a robe and stormed outside. Through this, McKenzie lay motionless on the rug.

  Ford drove the boy home. Few words passed between them, but Ford did learn that the boy's name was Johnny —no last name—and that he claimed to be eighteen. Beyond that, Ford felt no need to know anything, leaving Johnny to contemplate this sudden end to what must have seemed a wonderful adventure. His home lay beyond Durham, a twenty-minute drive. From the small size of the house and the old truck parked in the front yard, Ford wondered if this were a standard evening for the kid, but all night and no one to care. Ford parked the car momentarily, and Johnny studied the house, suddenly lost and frightened. He turned to Ford and appeared to want to say something. Eyeing Ford up and down. Ford became acutely aware that he was in pajamas, in a strange town in the middle of the night-Johnny opened the door and bolted from the car, and Ford watched him fumble for keys. The slim body slid into the house, and Ford drove away.

  Till dawn he drove around Chapel Hill, parking for a while near Kenan Stadium, watching the silhouettes of the sentinel pines against the moonless sky. He cruised residential streets, drove around University Mall, even headed the car toward Sanford and opened the windows, letting the cool night air flood the interior. The lump of anger refused to dissolve.

  When he finally returned to Wyrick Street, he found the house open, lights on throughout, and McKenzie's car gone from the yard.

  Inside, except for the lights, all was in perfect order. McKenzie had cleaned out the bedroom; nothing of his person or his possessions was to be found. Not even a note.

  Ford expected never to see the man again, but late the next afternoon the battered Chevrolet returned to the driveway and McKenzie, haggard and unshaven, stepped one foot out of the car, standing in the open door with the motor running, to ask if Ford had seen Hammond.

  Ford came to the door and waited there. He could see the bruised side of McKenzie's face, the nearly blackened eye, and wondered if the single slap could really have left such a mark. The question of Hammond surprised him, since he assumed the dog had moved out with McKenzie. Ford answered no, calmly. McKenzie nodded. "He ran off last night," McKenzie said, "I can't find him."

  "Tell me where you're staying, and I'll call you when he comes back."

  "Never mind," McKenzie said, "I'll just check again," sliding behind the steering wheel and hurriedly backing away.

  For a moment Ford felt the fleeting return of that first feeling, that ache for McKenzie; but this soon fled, and in its wake came hollowness and sorrow. He closed the door and returned to his house.

  If McKenzie ever returned to check for the dog, Ford never saw him. As for Hammond, Ford presumed him lost as well, until a week or so later the dog showed up at the kitchen door, clumsy tail wagging heavily, tongue trailing the window glass as he begged for entrance. Ford let him in, fed him, scratched his ears.

  Since he knew of no way to find McKenzie other than to patrol the bars, he simply waited, assuming that the man would someday return to claim the animal. But Ford's senior year of college soon ended, the commencement ceremony came and went, his parents flying to town for the occasion and taking the opportunity to comment on the astounding ugliness of the hound. When Ford moved from the Wyrick Street house to Atlanta, Hammond moved with him. After that, Ford stopped thinking of the mutt as McKenzie's dog and simply referred to Hammond as his own.

  Four years later, on a night in late July, Ford unlocked his front door and found a curious stillness. At first Ford thought the problem was that he had entered by the front door, when Hammond was accustomed to welcoming him in the kitchen. But Hammond always found him, wherever he was. In the absence of the dog, Ford's spine tingled, and he called quietly, "Hammond. Hammond, fellow."

  He searched the house. Finding Hammond stretched out on the floor of the bathroom, flat and motionless, fur stiff, nostrils spilling a little pool of blood onto the white-and-blue checked tile. Behind him, along the bottom edge of the porcelain bathtub, lay most of Hammond's disgorged breakfast.

  Ford sat stupidly and watched the dog for a long time. He had no idea what to do or who to call. He had been awake for nearly two days and wanted rest, but now he could hardly think of anything except Hammond, the fact of Hammond, cooling and stiffening before him. Finally he called the veterinarian who had last given the mutt his shots. Wrapping the hound's corpse in a blanket, Ford drove the necessary blocks in the twilight of Druid Hills.

  Hammond had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, the veterinarian concluded, days later. What had caused the hemorrhage? The veterinarian offered only that the skull appeared perfectly intact, that the cause was internal, that there was really no way to tell exactly what had happened. The veterinarian charged him a small fee for disposing of the body and a large fee for the autopsy that Ford had required.

  The silence of the house first offended and later frightened him. Each night, when he entered the house, he heard the emptiness anew. Afte
r a while, not only the silence but the largeness of the house brought Ford disquiet, and he wandered from room to room, restless, through the few hours of off-duty time his schedule afforded him. He understood his reaction to the dog's death to be disproportionate, out of kilter, but he only watched himself as if totally detached, as if happy to note that he was capable of a reaction that frightened people.

  Frightened, at least, his parents, his mentors on the medical school faculty, to the point that someone suggested psychotherapy, and his parents agreed. Ford had begun to lose weight, his eyes had gone dark-circled, and, though he remained mentally precise in his hospital training, he showed signs that his fatigue might soon affect his thinking. He confirmed everyone's suspicions of his instability by breaking up with his girlfriend even more abruptly than he had broken up with his past girlfriends. Ford could feel himself slipping into a fog.

  But he already understood his fear quite well. For this reason he could be helpful when the psychotherapist, a friendly woman with wire-screwy hair that wafted in a cloud around her face, offered her hand at their first session, introduced herself as Shaun Gould, and asked, "Why are you here?"

  "My dog died and now I'm so lonely it's driving me crazy."

  His directness brought her forward in the chair, and she said, "I'm, very sorry you lost your dog. That must have hurt you."

  "Yes."

  "Did you know you were lonely before the dog died?"

  "No. But I know now."

  "What do you know about it?" Shaun asked, and the question bore just exactly the right ring of interest, nothing feigned or enacted.