IMMORTALITY

we live on in others,
in what we love and do. 
we live on in others,
if a father only knew.

what a father only knows,
a daughter saw him do. 
we live on in others,
so a daugher is true.

"immortality"
Joe Ivory Mattingly

 

FIRE AND WATER When I was growing up, one thing was sure. The fire house whistle blew at six o’clock. That meant it tested true and it meant it was time to get home for family dinner.  We always ate at an announced six, which translated to six ten if you didn’t start heading home until you heard the whistle.  If you were later than that, my mother would have something to say. 

There was no way you couldn’t hear that whistle. That whistle was the alarm to the volunteer Fire Department. Any time other than six, if that whistle blew, you would see cars speeding with a light on to get to the Fire House on Round Swamp Road.  A friend of mine is convinced to this day that some of our high school friends volunteered just so they could speed to the firehouse.

My Catholic grade school pulled in people who lived in the next town over. Neither god nor parishes  care about arbitrary political lines.  So Bobby Hassett was in my class and Tommy Hassett was in my older brother’s class and Nicky Hassett was in between. My mother was friendly with Rae Hassett in a Rosary Society way. Bobby’s dad came to all the kids’ parish league games. He wore glasses and didn’t say much. His hair was lighter than his wife Rae’s, whose hair was inky black.  Bobby played CYO ball with me in baseball and we both were altar boys together. He was a smooth quiet, skinny kid. Smooth, lightly tanned skin in summer, smooth eyes, never raised his voice. His hair was brown, headed to black, darker than Tommy’s, not as dark as Nicky’s.

Bobby Hassett became a fireman in the Bethpage Fire Department as soon as he could.  You could see how proud he was when he pulled up in his car with the Fire Department decal on it at the Jack in the Box on Old Country Road and South Oyster Bay Road, where we’d all go after we had done what we’d done with whoever we’d done it with, where Bethpage and Plainview and Hicksville all met. Somebody would ask him to turn on the flashing light firemen slap on their cars when they respond to a call. That was not Bobby’s way.

I got home early one evening before the whistle blew.  My mother was on the kitchen phone.  I set the table. My mother didn’t look up. The stove timer went off and the meatloaf was done.  I turned the timer off.  My mother did not even look my way. The six o’clock whistle blew. No one else was in the house yet but my mother and me.   I remember taking out the pans. One for tonight, the second pan of meatloaf for sandwiches later in the week, my mother’s Tuesday masterpieces, crisply crusted on top. My mother got off the phone with a  thank you, Susanna.

As I recall it now, my mother put her hand on mine and simply said, “Bobby Hassett got killed today.”   She gave me the details. I have had them tucked away all my life.  He was the first of my grade school friends who would remain forever a boy.

I remember the wake, the half happy, half sad affair. Bobby’s hat, the crisp fireman’s dress hat, stood stiff on the coffin, a picture of him on the table, and him still shiny and smooth, even in death, him with his hair dark, kissed by the sun lightly browned. And I will never forget his mother, whose hair was so dark and her husband more gray.  Men talk too much on such occasions, or loudly not at all.  Rae Hassett started to stand as my mother came near. My mother’s hand reached out and said no.  My mother came along her side, her arm out like a wing, without a word.  And the dark beauty leaned into my mother’s shoulder, my mother in a crouch. There they stayed as I felt my mouth go dry.

My mother was the mistress of knowing when no words are needed and this was one time when nothing meant more.  I remember still the tilt of their heads. My mother said nothing, just was there, nothing more. And I remember the nodding of Rae Hassett’s beautiful head, how her cheeks bones raised themselves again up from her face, and the light in her eyes through the glistening tear, how she held out her hand before I could say a word.  So there we were, the three of us.  My mother in a crouch, now me on my knees as when Bobby and I were altar boys.  The beautiful mother with hair so dark, with the husband so gray, put her arm around me, and gave me a soft kiss on my cheek, her dark hair soft and shiny like her boy’s now gone.  “He always liked you, Joseph,” Rae Hassett said. Then she smiled the way only Catholic women in the moment of tragedy can.  She bit her lip. And then the tears fell like water splashing over rocks in a gentle stream searching for a sea.

As my mother and I drove back in the Comet from Wagner’s Funeral Home, the one that advertised in the parish bulletin, I was thinking of how myfriend had died and what he must have thought, if he had had a chance to think at all.  I was wondering if he had any doubt when he went into that storefront on Hempstead Turnpike through the back door.  Bobby never burned in the fire or had a chance to breathe in too much smoke. Chlorine gas from the pool supply store next door took him early where
I have not yet gone.  No one knew it until the knowing was too late.

Bobby Hassett was too quick in life, too quick to die. I have thought this again and again. I told my mom I didn’t know what to say to his family, to the woman with the dark hair or the man now gray.  She gave me the familiar two pats on the knee with the slightest look over.  “People talk too much,” she said, “when just being there is  more than enough.”

What we do lives on in others. All I have known live on in me.  They fall away early in tears salty and hot, then float again alive in the soft sea of memory.  No whistle need blow, but a kind wind picks up and comes to shore.



Thanks to  Lance Mannion for stirring the water of memory HERE.

Comments

[Karen]

Wow! Sorry about your friend. An amazing story. Reminds me of the 3 who have died from my graduating class (that I know of). One of them lived in the house I grew up in before I grew up there. He moved when we were 5 (was only a month older than me). Wow! How old were you? Interesting how some things sear themselves into your memory - or is it seer? Hats off to your friend.

[jen]

you are such a great writer. i'm sorry about Bobby. your mom sounds amazing.

[Missouri Mule]

I love it when you write like this, Joe. Your mother was very wise and yes, we talk too damn much and say very little.

[Blue Blade]

{{Joe}}

[Night Bird]

A bittersweet story, Joseph.