Written by Rick Kempa
I have loaned Eric two hundred dollars. I never loan students money—this is my rule—and yet, last evening when he called me, panicky (having just been bailed out by a friend who borrowed the money from a friend who wanted it back right then or else) and apologizing, “I didn’t know who to call,” I hedged and hesitated and asked the questions that needed to be asked—it was a traffic stop, a warrant for an unpaid fine, paraphernalia under the back seat, two nights behind bars—and finally forced out, “Yeah, I can help you.”
Eric, my stringy-haired, wispy-bearded philosopher, always late, always eager when he catches his breath to seize the idea of the day—oh, such light sparking in his blue eyes, such pleasure in thought!—who knows how to listen as well as to talk, whose comments have such earnestness and depth that I forgive him his truancies, that three-week disappearance early on (from which he returned divorced), the sporadic nature of his written work. “I believe in you,” I’ve told him. “You have something no one else has.” Now he is taking the measure of my belief.
“Let me ask you one thing,” I say when he comes to my house for the money. “Are you in some kind of trouble that you’re not telling me about?” I am worried about his welfare; I’ll grant myself that much. But I am also seeing to the welfare of my wallet. Is tonight his last night in town?
“No, no. It’s nothing like that.” He looks me in the eye. “I will have your money back to you by 10 a.m.” I am calmed; I do not ask for the promissory note that my brother the mercenary would demand.
That night I dream he comes by at ten sharp with the money. I dream that he does not come by. In either case, in my dream, I am who I would like to be: nonchalant, nonplussed, the money a mote in the long view of our lives.
Not so in the light of day. The instant the clock strikes ten I think, he’s late. I stand at my office door, peer up and down the hall. Ten thirty. The phone rings; Let it be him, I think. It’s not. Eleven. I have been trusting long enough. I am sorry my student, my friend, but now I require proof.
With noon comes the thought, heavy as a rock, that he is gone. Particulars rearrange themselves in the cold light: The desperation in his voice last night was that of a cornered man. His too-prompt appearance at my door when I said yes, unlike anything he’d been capable of in class—as if he’d been parked outside when he called. The unnaturally intricate detail of his story. (It’s his mouth I see, glibly moving, not his eyes.) He hated to lie to me—I’ll grant him that much—but I could not be trusted with the truth. What’s a little more guilt in a life already swamped with failure? So blindingly clear. So blinding. He could not, he must not, be locked up. Wouldn’t I do the same?
I am seized by fear. I will stand before my wife and children as a man who has been duped, an anti-role model, a fool. The silence, theirs and mine, will speak volumes, the judgment in this silence well-deserved. Worse by far than any of this is the fear that he does not value what I hold most dear. Something is being taken from me that I cannot replace. I will be looking in my mailbox for months, for years, for a letter, apology and remorse. I will grow terribly bitter. I will close in on myself.
Where is the counter-argument? Where is the anchor of reason, the pillars of trust in my instincts, his self-worth? Who will speak for this young man, this student of religion, this poet, this survivor of dissolution, disinheritance, divorce; this navigator amidst the jagged reefs of the past, the suddenly surfacing shoals of despair that he must yet confront? Oh Eric, forgive me my doubt.
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Rick Kempa is a poet and essayist living in Grand Junction, Colorado.