18. Chapter 18
Chapter 18
Dylan
“ P oetry is just a fancy word for garbage,” I whined as Elise and I sat on the hard steel bleachers beside the track with Bessey asleep by our feet. “I know you’re trying, and honestly, I’m trying too, but I can’t make myself like this crap. ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds?’ Who talks like that?”
Rubbing her forehead, Elise stood. “Alright, I’m done with this. It’s been almost an hour, and we’ve gotten nowhere. I’m just telling Pete that this is not going to work out. You should drop the class and hope you get a different teacher who doesn’t focus so much on poetry next semester.”
“Wait.” I grabbed her hand and gave her a pleading look. “Just give me one more chance. Is there anything else you can try, maybe a different method? Sometimes, I need things put to me another way.”
Her lips pursed, she glared at my grip on her fingers. I dropped my hand, and her eyes traveled to my sound equipment still set up along the edge of the track. Then, her face lit up. She grabbed her phone out of her bag and began tapping the screen.
“Guess what, friend, I hate to tell you this, but you actually love poetry.”
“I do not. That is an awful, disgusting lie.”
“Oh, but you do.” Elise pointed her phone in my direction, music streaming.
Ah, I’d know those brisk drumbeats anywhere. Next came the guitar and finally, Bono’s voice. He sang about wishing he could close his eyes, or make some horrible news go away.
I closed my eyes to more fully appreciate the tune’s sweetness.
“See, I told you.” Elise’s voice broke the spell the music weaved. She paused the song.
“So that’s an excellent song. What does that prove?”
Her grin was too smug. “It proves that I’m right. It also proves that you might not be completely hopeless.”
“How so?”
“That, my friend, was poetry, and you liked it.”
“No, that was music. If it was poetry, I’d be barfing all over right now.”
Elise rolled her eyes. “Do you know the story behind that song?”
I scrunched my face in thought. The lyrics were pretty direct. I must have sung them a hundred times but never really thought too much about their meaning.
“I give up. What’s the story?”
A few more taps and she slid onto the bench beside me, showing me her screen. On it was a black and white photo of people running with smoke bombs in the background.
“It’s about an event that happened in Ireland, where the band U2 is from. The British Army opened fire on a group of peaceful protestors. Fourteen people were killed, twenty-eight injured. Some of the people shot were only trying to help the wounded.”
“Oh wow.”
We sat in silence, the words of the song melting over me in new ways. How had I never thought more deeply about what they meant when they said there were bodies strewn over the street?
“So, the band was making a statement?” I asked.
Elise nodded. “Not just against that event but against violence in general.”
“And people still sing it today, but most don’t even know what they’re saying. Does the fact that I totally missed this make me stupid?”
Her shoulder nudged mine. “No. Lots of people hear, read, and say things without ever thinking to look for the deeper meaning. I do think it means you have the potential to understand and appreciate poetry, and maybe even music, beyond what you’ve assumed.”
I nudged her back. “Well then teacher, I’m ready. I am the clay, and you are the potter. Mold me.” I flopped back on the bench, demonstrating that I was ready to be sculpted.
Elise chuckled. “If this is your way of asking for a massage, you can forget it. Besides, I don’t do pottery. My dad tried to teach me, and my lumps of misshaped clay were almost as bad as my stick-figure drawings.”
“Now, I think we should start where you are,” she continued. “Why don’t you pick a favorite song, and we can analyze it.”
“Now you’re speaking my language.” I rubbed my hands together. “How about…It’s the End of the World as we Know it by R.E.M.?”
“Whew, that’s an interesting one. Okay, let’s do it.”
Forty-five minutes of surprisingly interesting discussion later, we packed up and headed for our cars.
“See you tomorrow,” Elise said.
“Oh no you don’t. You’re going to talk to Clive, and I’m coming with you.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because this is the first free minute you’ve had since we talked to Pete, unless you skipped your run to go talk to him last night, which you wouldn’t do.”
She had her hand on her door handle while Bessey danced, anxiously waiting to get into the car.
“You know I’ll just follow you again if you try to go alone. Besides, I thought you were going to let me help you.”
Elise groaned. “Alright, get in. But would it kill you to put a shirt on?”
“That depends. Is your air conditioning working yet?” Another groan was my answer. “Well then, it’s your car and no shirt, or my car and I’ll put a shirt on.”
She made a face like I was forcing her to pick between death by zombie apocalypse, or death by firing squad. Finally, she agreed to me getting into her car, but only if I brought my shirt along to put on when we got to the grocery store. She made it sound like she hated my being shirtless so badly, but I’d seen the way she checked out my abs, and I wasn’t buying it.
Once we were on the road and Bessey had licked every part of me she could reach from the backseat, I said, “So, I've been keeping an eye on Tara, like we talked about, but I’ve kind of hit a snag.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, I guess I should have expected it, but anytime I get close to her, she assumes I’m flirting with her…and she likes it.”
We both shuddered.
“Gross,” Elise said. “Makes you wonder what else she’s into if she’s willing to go there.”
“My thoughts exactly. Wait, was that an insult?”
She rolled her eyes. “No. Any fifty plus woman who’s still wearing clothes as tight and short as she does and throws herself at boys that are still in their teens clearly has issues.”
“Alright, that’s fair. Now this Clive guy, I know Pete said some things about him, but what’s your take? Is he a murder your BFF kind of guy?”
“Honestly, I doubt it, but I’m hoping that’s not wishful thinking. Growing up, I saw a lot of Pete and Clive. They’ve been like uncles to me, since all my mom’s family is back east, and my dad only has one sister. Clive’s just a really quiet guy. Keeps to himself, doesn’t show a lot of what he’s feeling or thinking.”
“H’mmm, who does that remind me of?”
Elise shook her head. “Anyway, he’s kind of pulled back, and I haven’t seen him very much the last couple of years. Mostly, I just see him at the grocery store he and his wife run. Clive inherited it from his dad a few years ago. I poke my head into his office and say hi every now and then.”
“Do you think something happened between him and your dad, and that’s why he stopped coming around?”
“Not that I know of. When I asked my dad about it, he said Clive just needed space, that sometimes, life was too much for him. He hates big crowds and being social, as well as loud noises and chaos. I remember him getting up and leaving without an explanation more than once when we had too many people over.
“Oh, and consider yourself warned- he likes two things, running and birds. If you want to have a conversation with him about much else, he won’t talk to you for long.”
“Noted. That’s going to make talking to him about your dad and his disappearance hard though,” I said.
“Yeah, about that, Clive also doesn’t like strangers. The less you talk, the better.”
I threw my hands in the air. “Strike that, this is going to be impossible.”
“Why, because you can’t possibly keep your mouth shut?” Elise smirked.
“No, because I can’t have any input. How am I supposed to help?”
That smirk turned wicked. “You can help me by not helping me.”
With that, she flipped on her blinker and turned into the store parking lot. Rolling to a stop in the nearest stall, she unbuckled her seatbelt.
“Let’s go.”