Read Online The Lost Highway by David Adams Richards - Free Book Online Page B

thought this was a great catharsis, but later on Jim would not speak to him, and looked away many times after. He was hurt, as men are when faced with something they always felt was incomprehensible.
    And Alex’s flaw was this: whenever he thought of Minnie he did something to harm himself, to end the body’s desire, so he would not masturbate again. Somewhat like Saint Rosa of Lima. He cut himself, and distributed these cuts, hidden.
    And it worked for a while. But still, in his deepest heart he knew this could not be sanctified, this was not what Christ wanted. So he tried harder to put all prurient thoughts out of his mind. But how could these thoughts, which were natural and overcame him at all hours, be unnatural?
    He decided he would impress them all, and disprove his own desire, by becoming a saint. His aunt said he might be a little naive in thinking this, but was nonetheless thrilled by the idea.
    “Saint—well, don’t try it all at once.”
    “But that’s what a saint does—tries it all at once,” Alex said. “Well, not Saint Augustine perhaps, but Saint Francis and Saint Joan of Arc, and so many others!”
    A saint had armor against the arrows of the world by not recognizing them as arrows. The great saints could walk through them because they did not acknowledge them. But on occasion, one thought would creep back into his mind. He would think of the day the wind blew her skirt high above her panties in the yard, enough to make him weak, and Sammy had laughed as if he had already seen it. And he remembered that she never left the house to walk down the Gum Road unless her blouse was pure and white—even on those days when her father had taken her socks—and one day, in the afternoon light through the trees, he saw that beneath her blouse she had no bra on, because the few she owned were on the line, her nipples taut as raisins in the sun.
    Still, what had started in bravado and pride—the idea to show her up, by becoming a priest—continued in feverish hope. After a while this desire, and obligation, became his entire life. It had to—and why, because of people who were watching him, waiting for the flaw that would take him down. So he could not go down, he must keep the faith in all weather, until people saw it was not a pretense. That is, if it was pretense he must disprove it even to himself. And so he gritted his teeth and bore it.
    The day before he entered the seminary of Holy Cross to study theology and Saint Augustine, his great uncle had a party for him, and invited every one of the young people. It was subdued because of the calling he had, because there was no beer for them, and because most of them did not know him well. But Minnie, whom he waited for, longed to see, did not come. Besides, though the venue was outside it was raining.
    He sat on a lawn chair by himself a little away from everyone, and waited for Minnie. He looked like a boy who can only appear in rural Canada: clumsy, coming to manhood half-sophisticated, understanding the rudiments of society yet lacking in much, and trying to hide it all with sayings and ideas gleaned from the fringes of the broader world, all of this making him look gangly, self-conscious, and overly suspicious. That is, he was like a boy from everywhere, but in some aspects like one seen only here.
    His uncle, with his tall boyish walk and his mat of white hair, stood above all, and impressed the young, as he could always do, with tales of the woods and war. He was filled with the kind of contrived outrageousness people have when they have little chance of being challenged. And he exuded the bravery that older naive men do in front of kids. And he sang old lumbering songs and told jokes to liven the party up, and drank homemade wine from his stash in the barn, and gave some to two of the more rugged boys who he wanted to approve of him. They drank and smiled at the jokes he told, and ignored Alex for the most part. He thought of their lives and wondered