We Are the Light(18)
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ve got you on speakerphone. Eli is with me.”
“I’m going to pray for you too, Eli. And I’m glad to be here on the phone with you and my favorite counselor of teenagers. What can I do for you two gentlemen?”
That’s when I quickly explained my plan to get Eli a high school diploma. I asked Isaiah to give me carte blanche regarding a senior project that would earn Eli the necessary credits to graduate. I made it clear that I didn’t know what it would be or how long it would take. And then I relayed Eli’s desire not to return to school, saying he never wanted to set foot in the building again, but perhaps Eli might be interested in completing his high school degree under my supervision.
When I finished, Isaiah said, “Eli, you’re in good hands. I’ll take care of everything on my end. If Lucas Goodgame says you’ve done enough to graduate, you will graduate. No questions asked. I would, however, like to be kept abreast of your project, and if I can help in any way whatsoever, do not hesitate to call me. You hear, Eli?”
The boy looked at me with amazement, so I nodded at the phone on the table, meaning, Please respond, at which point Eli said, “Yes, sir.”
“That goes for you too, Lucas,” Isaiah said.
To which I also replied, “Yes, sir.”
“Well, Sunday worship is about to begin. I’ll put in a good word for your project with the Big Man,” Isaiah said, and then ended the call.
Eli searched my eyes and then said, “You’re going to be my teacher?”
I thought, I’m going to be your Karl, but I didn’t say that. Instead I told him to help me make lunch, and then we were filling ziplock bags with peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and nuts and dried fruit, which we shoved into a backpack along with bottles of water. Before I knew what had possessed me, we were in my car driving out of Majestic. And soon enough, we were at the bottom of Raptor Mountain. We hiked up the rocky trail toward the lookout, where we sat on a boulder and watched birds of prey soar through the sky, surfing the invisible air currents.
“Why did you bring me up here?” Eli asked.
I told him how Darcy and I used to come to Raptor Mountain almost weekly, saying, “This was one of her favorite places in the world. Every time we visited—and we climbed this huge pile of rocks hundreds and hundreds of times—she’d talk about how she had always wanted to fly. With burning envy, she’d watch the birds through a pair of binoculars, all while saying things like, ‘I’d cut off an arm if I could only soar like that for a single hour. Look how majestic they seem. How they just are up there in the sky without any of our complicated emotions. Life is simple for raptors.’?”
“Mr. Goodgame, I’m really sorry about your wife,” Eli said, which was when I realized that maybe he felt uncomfortable talking about Darce, considering what his older brother had done, so I decided to change the subject.
“What do you want to do for your senior project?” I asked.
“What even is a senior project?” he said, because that wasn’t a regular thing that Majestic High students did anymore. So I explained that once upon a time, each senior took the fourth marking period to research a topic of their choosing and then they were required to give a presentation. The rules were intentionally lax to encourage academic freedom and creativity.
“Why did the school stop doing them?” he asked, but I didn’t have a good answer, so I just shrugged. At which point Eli said, “So this is just something you and I are going to do together? No one else will be involved?”
“It can be whatever you want it to be,” I said, shielding my eyes from the midday sun as I gazed upward at an eagle circling high above. Then I wondered if winged Darcy ever came here and if she now flew with the hawks and eagles and vultures, and if so, had she, in some way, finally—and maybe even ironically—gotten exactly what she had wished for so many times when we were sitting on these very rocks?
Eli and I leisurely ate the food we had brought, as we continued to watch the birds of prey command the air like avian sorcerers.
And then on the hike down, I asked if his mother knew where he was, which produced a long string of expletives. Apparently, he didn’t care what his mother knew or didn’t know and he held her personally responsible for the tragedy at the Majestic Theater.
“When we were little, she used to lock Jacob in a dark closet for hours. She beat him with a wire hanger,” Eli said in a way that let me know his mother had, of course, done similar things to him, and probably worse.
I didn’t verbalize that particular observation. Instead, I asked if his mother would come looking for him, to which Eli proudly replied that he was eighteen and therefore a man, so it was an irrelevant question.
Karl, I remembered your telling me—during one of our first sessions—that I was almost fifty years old and yet I was still not a man, which made me feel sorry for Eli, who was trying to will himself into manhood without doing any of the necessary tasks. And here I was trying to help him when I hadn’t even been able to finish my Jungian analysis with you and therefore was in some sort of transitional state between puer Peter Pan and true manhood. But the circumstance was what it was, and so I took a deep breath and settled into the role with which I had been tasked.
We were both tired on the ride home. At one point, I looked over and Eli’s head was resting on his left shoulder and his eyes were closed, so I tried to remain very quiet and concentrated on staying awake so we wouldn’t crash.