Ben Soul

games. We got an unexplained absence mark on our records if we didn’t. Unless we had a signed note from the Doctor, of course. He was a big football fan, and couldn’t understand why anybody wouldn’t want to go.” Dickon put his hands behind his back and clasped them. He bent forward and gazed up at an oak tree shedding its leaves. A squirrel chattered at him angrily.

  “I met Larry Ott and Benny Fitz my senior year of high school. We fooled around under the bleachers during the games.”

  “Fooled around?”

  “Fondled each other. Jacked each other off. That’s as wild as we got. I graduated, went to college, and never heard from either of them again.”

  “Then what?”

  “While I was in my first year of college, in engineering, I ‘received the call’ as we say in Presbyterian circles. I woke up one night, convinced I should enter the clergy. I switched my major to English, and prepared myself for Seminary.”

  “All this time you didn’t have any boyfriends?”

  “No, nor girlfriends, either. It was easy to waste myself on celibacy and religion. That way I didn’t have to explore my fantasies about guys in tight jeans with big cocks. Religion teaches the unwary mind to thoroughly compartmentalize.” Dickon unclasped his hands and brought them around in front of himself. He massaged his left hand with the long sensitive fingers of the right hand.

  “I prayed a lot, of course, about it all. Kept bugging God to make me straight. Same thing in Seminary. Then I met Vanna. She seemed like a perfect choice for a preacher’s wife. Love didn’t enter into it, of course. Not on her part., and not on mine. I did fall in love with her, eventually. In some small way maybe I still love her.” Dickon looked up at Ben. “I’m a fool that way,” he said. Ben didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.

  “We were married almost ten years,” Dickon said. “A lot of the time I was miserable, and didn’t know why. Even after Vanna dumped me, I didn’t let myself go exploring. Not until Dr. Sicknell.”

  “Dr. Sicknell?”

  “Dr. Sicknell. The Presbytery sent me to her for grief counseling. The damned old harridan ripped my closet open and told me the church should lock me up for being homosexual. This was in the seventies, of course. A lot of therapists thought that way. She was more of a bitch than most about it. Probably a frustrated dyke.”

  “Probably,” Ben said. “Dangerous breed, frustrated dykes.”

  “Well, she pulled the closet door open, but I shut it again as fast as I could; only it wouldn’t really stay shut. I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. I was wired for guys, not women.” Dickon smiled ruefully. “That complicated my feelings and dealings with the church, of course.”

  “I can imagine. Churches are mostly narrow.” Ben started to reach out to touch Dickon in sympathy. He sensed armor around Dickon, something he’d never sensed before. He let his hand drop. Now was not the time for touch.

  “Not all of them, not these days. It was worse, then. Vin Decatur brought me out, finally. An unwitting gift from Vanna, I later found out.”

  “A gift? From Vanna?”

  “Unwitting, as I said. I was an assistant chaplain at City College, part time. Vanna found out, and it infuriated her. She recruited Vin to embroil me in some kind of scandal. It worked out Vin was my first serious lover.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Vin was a hustler, pure and simple. I didn’t realize it, until Father Roman Hands, my boss, showed me an article about Vin’s latest arrest. For soliciting a policeman. I can’t prove it, but I suspect Vanna set the whole thing up.” Ben was startled to see a tear in the corner of Dickon’s eye.

  “He went to prison, down at La Lechuga. He didn’t last long. Somebody stuck a knife in him. He had time to write me a letter, before he died. I never got the chance to thank him for what he did for me. Kind of like what your Professor Dill Doe did for you.”

  They had circled the track in the park, and come back at the car.

  “So that’s my big tale,” Dickon said. “At times I’ve considered it a crucifixion with a happy resurrection ending.”

  “Religious to the end, Dickon?”

  “In some ways, Ben.”

  “Let’s go home, Dickon. It’s time. The human soul can only take in so much confession at once.” They got in the car, and drove in companionable silence down river to San Danson Station.

  Ben Breaks

  After Dickon left, Ben could hear the silence walk in and sit right down like an elephant. Without quite realizing it, he strained to hear Len’s footsteps in another room. He shook himself, went to the living room, and sat in Butter’s chair. She leaped up in his lap and settled down for a nap. He let himself drift.

  He began recalling his life with Len, the high moments, like the time Len first asked him out, the time they spent in Egypt, the time they spent in China. He smiled to himself as he remembered Len caught in an upper bunk that folded up on his tall body, thus trapping him against the ceiling of their cruiser cabin in Alaska. Ben had found the whole thing so funny he laughed for several minutes before he could muster the strength to help the by-then also laughing Len unwind himself from the tangled bed and bedclothes.

  The elephantine silence overwhelmed him again. Only Butter’s very soft breathing stirred in the room. Loneliness oppressed Ben. The loneliness he had run from crashed in on him. Not even the warm sleeping dog on his lap could fend it off. Tears that had stood unshed in his eyes for months spilled out and ran down his cheeks. Ben did nothing to squelch them. He let himself experience the absolute aloneness everyone must endure at times going through life.

  Butter, still on his lap, raised her head and looked at him. With that wisdom dogs have, she put her head down and slept again. Ben began stroking her back as if his life were at stake. It was at stake. He yearned to run from the void that gaped within him, that empty place that needed some other to fill him. How he had hoped Dickon was the one! How had he missed noticing how much he had hoped Dickon would open to him?

  Suddenly he pushed Butter off his lap. Ben needed to move, to walk, or run. Fury with Dickon was rising in him. Anger at the way life had robbed him of so much by taking Len from him stirred him. His round face contorted with his anger and distress. Anyone watching him would have seen childlike hurt settle over his frown-wrinkled face. His tears had stopped, for the moment at least. He determined to walk off his frustration. He got Butter’s leash, snapped it on her collar, and took her out to walk, not toward Dickon’s end of the village, but toward the creek that flowed across the sand.

  Emma waved to him as he went by her place, but he didn’t see her. She looked after him, concerned, for Ben was generally very affable. “Private trouble,” she thought, and let it go. Ben continued down past the tantalizing smells coming from the Four Rosas Café, past the distant noise of traffic on the highway to the path onto the beach. He slowed his pace, lest he slide on the gravel and fall. Butter, still tuned to his moods, didn’t pull at the leash as she so often did when he slowed. Ben turned southeast, toward the creek, plowing through the sand, wearing the anger out of his system with the force of his pace.

  At the creek, Ben turned to walk upstream along it. He hadn’t come this way before, always preferring the open beach to the dark redwoods. Today the redwoods suited his mood better. And, he admitted to himself, made it very unlikely he’d run into Dickon on the beach. Looking carefully each way, Ben led a nervous Butter across the highway. A little way beyond the highway, he found a stump and sat down to lean against it. Butter sat at his side.

  Martyr’s Creek was at its autumnal low. The shrubs along its banks were yellowing with leaves primed to fall. Some aquatic creature splashed softly, apparently disturbed at Ben’s or Butter’s nearness. The weighty stillness redwoods generate bore down on Ben.

  “Butter,” he said to her, “I don’t know why I keep on going.” She leaned into him, and turned to lick his
ear. He smiled at her, and stroked her side. “I miss Len,” he went on. “I know you didn’t know him, but he’d have loved you, too, as much as I do. He gave out more doggy treats, too.”

  Butter listened to the rumble of Ben’s voice. Her canine intuition told her he was in a delicate state, and that she could only reassure him with her presence. She waited for him to stroke her side again.

  “You see, Butter,” Ben said, “guys like me need some other guy to be with. It doesn’t have to be about sex, that’s not so important. A guy can buy that, if he’s got the need. It’s about being with someone, and that someone being with me. I always thought I was so independent, until I met Len.” Ben leaned toward Butter, resting his chin softly on her back.

  “You see, Butter, I’m not made to be alone. Oh, I need my quiet time to myself, just like you do. But I need to matter to somebody who matters to me.” Ben lifted his head and stared out at the woodland. “I’d hoped Dickon and I could be that for each other.” Ben muffled a sob that welled up from some raw place in him. Then he let it go. Only Butter was here to hear his hurt, so again he wept. As his tears flowed, Butter licked them from his face, her cold nose and warm tongue teasing his cheeks.

  They sat there for a time Ben never measured. He let his tears wash the hurt and fear and anger from his psyche as long as