The Angel Of
Mercy-From The Sam Eaton-Ralph Morris Series
From The Pen Of Sam
Lowell
As long as Sam Eaton
and Ralph Morris had known each other they never spent much time or effort
discussing their various romantic interests. Never spoke of little rendezvous
or trysts, never spoke of their two divorces much beyond recording the facts of
the disengagements even though Sam had been Ralph’s best man at his first
wedding to Clara, his high school sweetheart from Troy, New York whom he
married after the dust of the 1960s settled down and people, “movement people”
too were going back to some of the old norms. (Sam had been not designated as
‘best man” but rather “truest friend and witness” or something like that
designation since they were beyond bourgeois martial norms at the time but we
will use that former designation here to signify that they were close enough
for Sam to gladly take on that task).
Maybe it was the
Catholic reticence to speak of personal matters, personal sexual manners with
another male (probably female too but let’s stick to male here) both having
come up “old school” working-class Catholics when that meant something before
Vatican II in the 1960s when the “s” word was not used in polite society, not
used, God no, from the pulpit (even when discussion came up of the obligation
to, unlike the bloody Protestants with their two point three children, of
propagating the faith; having scads of children to bump up the Catholic
population of the world).
Maybe closer to home
it was the “theory,” probably honored more in the breech that the observance,
of “not airing one’s dirty linen in public” drilled into them by their
respective maternal grandmothers, especially when the “s” word was involved
(certainly no parents gave the slightest clues probably assuming that the birds
and the bees story line would suffice and both men learned like millions of
their generation of ’68 kindred about sex on the streets, most of it erroneous
or damn right dangerous).
Maybe it was the
times they met in “the liberated 1960s” where the Pill (and having capitalized
that word no one should have to ask what pill) had made the whole subject
somewhat bland to discuss (as opposed to doing the act, or as an old friend of
Sam’s, Bart Webber, used to say taking his cue from the old bluesman Howlin’
Wolf “doing the do”) and that extended to the individuals they were involved
with either through those collective four marriages and divorces or other
relationships. It was not, as both were at pains to declare when the subject
came up one recent night which will be discussed more fully below, that they
were not friendly with those respective spouses, or when the spouses left then
the one-night stands, the flings, the affairs to use an old-fashioned word for
it and the flame dreams but their thing had been heavily weighted toward the
male bonding that drew them close together back in the early 1970s.
And maybe it was the
way that they had “met,” a story that they have endlessly repeated in one form
or another and which had been told so many times by Sam mostly in the old days
in small alternative presses and magazines and more recently in 1960s-related
blogs that even they confessed that everybody must be “bored” with the damn
thing by now. So only the barest outline will suffice here since their meeting
is not particularly relevant to the story except to help sort out this
reticence about relationships business. Sam, an active opponent of the Vietnam
War, and Ralph an ex-soldier of that war who had turned against the war after
eighteen months of duty there and become an anti-war activist in his turn with
Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) after being discharged from the Army
“met” in RFK Stadium in Washington on May Day 1971 when they were down there
with their respective groups trying to as the slogan went “shut down the
government, if the government did not shut down the war.”
For their ill-advised
efforts they and thousands of others were tear-gassed, billy-clubbed and sent
to the bastinado (ill-advised in that they did not have nearly enough people on
hand and were incredibly naïve about the ability of the government to do any
dirty deed to keep their power including herding masses of protestors into closed
holding areas to be forgotten if possible although Ralph always had a sneaking suspicion
the government would not have been unhappy seeing those bodies floating face
down in the Potomac). Sam and Ralph met on the floor of the stadium and since
they had several days to get acquainted were drawn to each other by
working-class background, their budding politics, and their desire to “seek a
newer world” as some old English poet once said. And so they stuck together,
stuck politically mostly, through various peace organizations and ad hoc anti-war committees fighting the
good fight along with dwindling numbers of fellow activists for the past forty
plus years.
There were thick and
thin times as Ralph stayed close to home in Troy, New York working in his
father’s high-skilled electrical shop which he eventually took over and had
just recently passed on to his youngest son and Sam had stayed in the Greater
Boston area having grown up in Carver about thirty miles south of Boston
working in a printing business that he had started from scratch and from which
he in turn had just turned over to his more modern print-imaging tech savvy
son, Jeff. The pair would periodically take turns visiting each other sometimes
with families in tow, sometimes not and were always available to back each
other up when some anti-war or other progressive action needed additional warm
bodies in Boston, New York or a national call came from Washington. Lately now
that they were both retired from the day to day operations of their respective
businesses and also now both after their last respective divorces “single” they
have had time to visit each other.
It had been on
Ralph’s last visit to Sam who now resided in Cambridge that he tentatively broached
the subject of whether Sam was “seeing” anybody. Sam had been somewhat struck
by the question since he could not remember the last time that term had been
used by either man. Sam wondered if Ralph was about to tell him that he was
“seeing” somebody or, worse, a thought he kept to himself for the moment, that
Ralph had heard something from somebody about him. Of course all of the
wondering and “liberated” talk about relationships occurred one summer night at
Jack’s, the well-known bar in Cambridge a few streets up from where Sam lived,
while both men were drinking high-shelf whisky, and not sipping so perhaps
neither man should have been surprised when Sam blurred out. “Well, yes I am, I
am seeing an angel of mercy.” (Before we go on that high-shelf whisky reference
should be noted since in the old days when they were “from hunger”
working-class kids drinking rotgut low-shelf whiskies they could not afford to
drink the stuff on Jimmy the bartender’s third shelf behind him on the back
wall.)
Ralph took a double-take
and maybe the liquor getting to his brain a little said, “What are you dating an
ex-nun or something, you old devil I thought you swore off those Catholic
virgins with the big novena book in one hand and the well-worn rosary beads in
the other.” Sam laughed and then explained that his “angel of mercy,” Laura
Perkins, had been no nun but had saved his soul anyway. Then Sam proceeded to
tell his little story, tell it as best he could as both men were getting a little
drowsy with the hour (another virtue of Jack’s being near-by Sam’s dwelling when
last call came):
“You know I had a
very hard time with that last divorce from Melinda, she tried to take me for
all I had, all I will ever have although Frankie Riley as usual with his sharp
lawyer’s wit eased the sting a little and I survived with the business intact
which Jeff runs now under a trust arrangement that Frankie worked out. What you
don’t know because I never told you and you never asked and if you had I probably
wouldn’t have told you anyway was things had been bad with Melinda for several years
before she left the house three years and moved into that apartment in Plymouth
that cost me an arm and a leg to pay for although I did it gladly at some level.”
“What you also don’t know
is that about seven, eight years ago when I went to my fortieth class reunion
from Carver High I ran into an old flame, a minute old flame whom I ditched for
some other faster girl at the time but whom I would occasionally think about, think
I had been a horse’s ass to dump. We talked into the wee hours that night, Melinda
as usual didn’t want to go to the reunion since she didn’t want to go to her own
Olde Saco High reunion why should she go to mine. That’s the way Melinda was,
particularly the last few years when I think we both realized we have been
ships passing in the night for a long time. Laura and I agreed to talk and e-mail
each other more and we did. You know the routine as well as I do, we talked a
lot for several weeks and e-mailed cute stuff or sent links to songs we liked
from YouTube, told our life stories since high school. Laura too had been married
twice unhappily, that twice seems to be the norm for our “liberated” generation
and eventually although she knew I was still married agreed to a “date.” A great
date at a small out of the way restaurant I know in the North End where I took
a woman I had a short fling with about twenty years ago. And we hit it off, hit
it off like we were still fresh and starry-eyed as in high school. Naturally we
went to bed together not long after that and while she was not happy (nor was I
really) with our “arrangement” she “understood” what was what.”
“And that “understood”
is important because Laura was really an angel of mercy. Maybe Melinda sensed
something was up, maybe she was having her own affair although she was always
home when I called but Laura kept my spirits up, kept me on keel and I knew before
she did, well before, that I was falling in love with her even though things looked
bleak at home. And even though she was naturally very hesitant to love me back.
Still we knew something was there, some strong bond which may have been there
since high school. I like to think that in my mushy moments. Well, there are
some tender mercies in the world because one day Melinda said she couldn’t stand
the marriage anymore, wanted out, wanted her own “space” and she got it for my
arm and my leg. Like I said Melinda tried to grab everything and would have if
she had known about Laura but Melinda was just Melinda in trying to grab everything.
Nothing new there. Laura lives in Arlington since we still are figuring out
about the future but maybe we will go tomorrow and see her. Okay.”
Ralph answered back, “Okay”
as they exited Jack’s and walked up the street toward Sam’s apartment and then Ralph
turned his head to Sam and said, “Does your Laura have any spare ‘angels of
mercy’ hanging around?” They both laughed as they walked along in silence after
that.
