Sometimes boy heroes never quite grow up to be men, even if they remain heroes.
When foolishness becomes the trademark of a man, there is often the devil to pay. And, at twenty-two and three quarters percent, that ain't hay.
Roger was known for his love of children, and children for their love of him in return. No football pass was thrown whose arc did carry a trace of his teaching. No baseball rocketed off the bat without his influence on the swing that launched it. No basketball swished without the telling reminder of his coaching. In the manly graces, no act of childish charity was observed from among his charges that didn't bear the indelible stamp of his example. He asked the boys to be heroes and they were only to happy to live up to his standard. Were there a castle in the neighborhood, the community would have expected him to live within its limestone walls. But it would have to be a large castle to hold their full esteem.
You get the picture. Roger was almost a sap. At least, that was what Claire said about him. "It's easy to be a hero to boys."
Then war was declared. Roger fought in Korea, and when he returned home to march in the Veterans Day parade, his chest was covered with medals and ribbons.
"Wars are fought so boys can pretend to be men by acting like animals." Claire said that and other things. "Just who was he trying to impress?" Certainly not her.
Roger joined the Jaycees, ran for the local city council, opened a half-way house for juvenile delinquents, and raised funds for a new wing for the hospital. The boys stopped thinking about building him a castle. There was not enough available land left in the town to build one large enough.
"Games." Claire said it was all boyish enthusiasm. To her, Roger had no social relevance. He was a dinosaur eating up the foliage much too quickly. Soon, there's be nothing left for anyone else to do, except honor Roger.
A war, camouflaged as a police action, broke out across still another ocean. He captained a brigade of reservists from the county. Many of the boys had served under him in Little League, the Catholic basketball league, Pee Wee Football; many had bivouacked under the stars for the first time with him as their Scout Leader.
Under his command, the brigade ran into an ambush. The arc of the enemy grenades were amazingly similar to the long throws to home plate he'd taught his boys years earlier. He came through the attack unscathed, except for the knowledge that he had failed to teach his boys about one thing: pain.
The splints they'd practiced as teenagers had been applied to smiling, giggling comrades. Now, as they tried to bind each others real wounds, the hands shook and the eyes filled with quite unexpected tears. Many of them learned about drugs in the hospital, though never with Roger around. He visited them whenever he could get away from the unit. He worried over their slow recoveries, marvelling at their high thresholds of pain.
Privately, he envied their ability to learn without him. He had one told Claire that teaching a boy how to learn was as important as the subject matter. She laughed at him. He left her, angry beyond words. By laughing at him, she was laughing at them. And they were, after all, heroes.
The parade of veterans was slower that year; too many wheelchairs. Claire stayed home and wrote a letter to her brother in Canada.
Using his position on the Council, Roger convinced the Jaycees to convert the new wing in the hospital to accommodate drug-dependant veterans. The half-way house served as an interim hospice.
Claire's brother wrote to her, saying he needed an operation that could only be performed in the United States. He was afraid to return, lest he be put in jail for evading the draft. Did she have any suggestions?
Claire talked to the family lawyer, the priest; wrote a letter to the Governor. She sent for information from the American Medical Association about the operation her brother needed. They wrote back informing her the technique had been perfected in a field hospital during the war. They knew of no other country in the world that performed the operation.
The lawyer laughed, the priest told her to pray for her brother, and the Governor sent Claire a picture of his son and a photostat of the telegram informing him and his wife of their son's death during a major offensive.
She sat in the park weeping. Roger detached himself from the group of boys he had been instructing in the proper technique for passing a soccer ball to a wingman from the half-line.
"Are you all right?" He asked puffing slightly.
Claire glared at his sweatshirt, the baseball cap he wore perched atop his head, the whistle around his neck. She turned away and he wiped some boyish sweat from his forehead.
"Are you all right? Can I do anything to help?"
And she laughed. She had to. A better question would have been, 'Is there anything I can't do?' Then she told him about her brother. There was a cynical challenge behind her words and she seemed to regain her strength. At the end of the story, she watched his face, taking satisfaction from the perplexed look her wore so seriously. The look was transferred to her face when he took her hand.
"I'll see what I can do."
One week later, the city council passed a resolution supporting her brother's conscientious objection to the war. This, along with letters from the mayor and a state senator, was sent to the draft board in the form of an appeal in favor of changing her brother's status.
One month later, the operation was performed successfully, and Claire's brother volunteered to work in the halfway house without pay for one year.
Later, she stood in the park, watching him teach the overhand serve to a group of nine-year-olds. Claire was still standing there when he sent them home. He walked slowly over to her, stopped when she pointed an angry finger at him.
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why did you do what you did for my brother?"
Roger stood silent for a moment, pointed at two of the young boys still within eyeshot.
"See those two there? Bobby and David?"
She nodded.
"They were on different football teams last Fall. They blocked and tackled each other. Today, they learned how to set each other up at the net in volleyball. The game changed and so did they."
Before she could stop herself, the words came tumbling out. "Don't you ever get tired of playing the hero?" Suddenly, she wished she hadn't spoken. "I'm sorry. You don't deserve that." She turned to leave out of embarrassment. Roger caught her arm.
"No. Please. I do get tired of playing the hero." He smiled ironically. "I'm still a boy, I admit it. But, as a boy, I can do things that men can't. Do you think the council would have worked to clear your brother if they looked on me as a man? As a man, I could never have gone to war a second time. Men go to war and hurry home. Boys like to stay and fight." His eyes crinkled, a sign of age. "Men are private creatures, boys are still public property." He pulled off his baseball cap. There were streaks of gray in his dark brown hair. He smiled.
"I cried when I saw the war turn my boys into men. I cried when I thought about your brother."
She took hold of his hand but he pulled it away.
"Please, I have something to confess to you." He hesitated. "All these years, I - you were the reason I did all those things."
Claire shook her head slowly. "I don't understand."
"I thought I did too, until I went to the council on your brother's behalf." He took two steps away, turned to look at the sky. "You were the only person in town who looked on me as a man. You wouldn't believe I was still a boy. I heard all the things you said, what you called me. 'Dinosaur', 'no one left to honor me' - all those things. I was afraid of you - your insisting that I was a man playing a boy." He turned to face her. "You were the only one who treated me with a proper disrespect."
"What are you talking about?" Claire asked wildly.
"I was afraid of you because you were right."
She shook her head. "Did it ever dawn on you that I might have said those things because I envied you?"
"Yes, and I used it every night." He swept his hand across the landscape of the park. "Every time I saw you in the street, you allowed me to remain a boy."
"I still don't understand," Claire said, her arms folded around her midsection.
Roger thought for a moment then laughed a little. "What does a man have that a boy doesn't?"
"Hair on his chest?" They both laughed. Roger pulled his sweatshirt over his head to reveal a chest that was thick with matted hair.
"A man has a woman, Claire."
Her finger toyed with her chin while she considered this statement. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Still a Boy Scout. Is that what you're trying to tell me?"
Now Roger laughed. "No. I've been with women. I don't think I can explain what I'm trying to say."
They stood quietly for a moment as the sun drifted slowly but inexorably into a red-limned soup bowl beyond the horizon. The park lights blinked on with a fuzzy, buzzing effort. They didn't look at each other for several moments before Claire broke the spell.
"Why did you help my brother?"
Roger sighed a no-escape kind of sigh. "I was being a boy. I thought if I could be a hero to you, you might - "
"Stop!" Claire panicked. "Please - "
Roger turned toward her with a look she had never seen in anybody's eyes. "Don't you see? That's the whole problem. I can't stop now. I'm stuck with it. Everything I do is heroic. It's a habit that everyone - including myself - has gotten used to."
"And you think that belittling your position will make you a hero in my eyes?"
"No," Roger said quietly. "I'm trying to save myself. Christ, I've got gray hair. I can't afford to be a hero much longer. I told you, men are private beings, boys are the public's domain." He took her by the shoulders. "You are the one person in this town who can save me from their adoration."
Claire's mouth dropped open. "What's this? A proposal?"
His eyes brightened. "Every other girl in town would have me in a minute. Some would even get divorced for the chance. And the upshot is that their husbands would probably go along with the idea."
She walked over to a bench and sat down. Roger waited for a moment and then joined her. They sat in silence for fifteen minutes. Finally, she shook her head.
"I'm sorry, it's a losing proposition."
"But why?"
"You've been in the public domain too long. The wife of a hero suffers from his publicity. If you miss one council meeting because of me, they'll all nod their heads. If a season goes by that you can't coach some team, I'll be the one who clipped your boyish wings. I'm not very good at losing by default."
His sigh rose deep from within his chest. "You're right of course. I couldn't do that to you."
Claire stood, incensed. "Why, you goddamned hero!"
"What's the matter?"
"I just told you that I couldn't marry you because of what 'I' would be doing to myself. And you take all the glory. You're right, it is a habit."
She rushed down the sidewalk and Roger could hear her curses. They made him smile. He had forgotten himself for a moment in helping her brother. And now he had almost lost his boyhood. But he knew she would never have married him. A hero always knows his enemy. And his stature would increase every time she told the story of his proposal. It would be her loss in their eyes. He had been doing her an honor, really.
All that junk about being afraid of her was only partially true . He knew what he liked, and he liked being a hero. He also knew what he didn't like, he would be foolish not to admit it to himself. Manhood is the price a boy pays to the devil for foolishness. And everyone knows what a man has that a boy doesn't.
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When foolishness becomes the trademark of a man, there is often the devil to pay. And, at twenty-two and three quarters percent, that ain't hay.
