Jed Wolf

“Molto Bello Bambino,” said an Italian maid pinching my cheek as a pair of homely squabs blinked at me from the balcony of the Hotel Flora in Rome. All my memories of being dragged through Europe for six weeks by my grandparents include pigeons. While taking in as many historic sites possible, at age eight, I preferred watching them swirl among the crowds, to the fountains, friezes and murals writhing with naked bodies that the crowds flocked to see. Christians seemed more interested in nudity than divinity as seeds of necrophilia scattered like cracked corn beneath the savior’s sensuous physique.

No one asked after I emerged from the hospital the year before bloody and bowlegged, if I wanted to trapse around Europe, or explained to me why I was circumcised so late or should say “Grazie” after being told I looked beautiful. It was all I could do to tug like a bird dog towards pigeons until travel-weary and eyelevel with photos of genitalia brazenly printed on keychains and coffee mugs in Copenhagen, I finally saw another pecker like mine.

“Dick?” Johnathan Byrd said incredulously. “Johnathan?” my father answered equally surprised by their stars crossing at, of all places, the Barlow School in Amenia New York. The two had met next door at the Halifaxes party the summer before and by kismet, Johnathan Byrd kept insisting, he wound up not only my English teacher but head of the dorm I’d been assigned to. I recalled his passionate laugh from the party and wanted to feel reassured by his delight to see us bordering on hysteria but was suspicious. He’ll take some getting used to, I thought as Byrd eagerly shook my hand telling me with a vein of brilliance bulging down his forehead that he was at my service.

With his chestnut stache and slicked back hair, he would’ve looked like a standard academic if not for his wildness, which made me feel more at ease and in charge the longer I studied him. Mesmerized and bit bored as he soliloquized about the adventures awaiting, I was glad he was an atypical male but began to wonder what my father saw in him that summer before.

Expecting their party to be tedious, my parents hadn’t wanted to go to the Halifaxes but with no viable excuse, they sauntered over with cocktails. “Don’t drink too much,” my father said. “Don’t talk too much,” my mother jabbed back at his tendency to take over conversations. I heard my father and Byrd laughing all night over the wafting Bossa Nova and well past the music’s end, when others had left.

“You paid no attention to anyone else the entire night, Dick,” my mother slurred, returning through the dewy yard. “For Christ’s sake Ruby, he was the most interesting guy I’ve met in years. What are you insinuating?” The following day, even Rory Halifax who was my age and not outwardly petty or cruel, mentioned how everyone had been whispering about their mutual attraction.

My mother looked lost sitting patiently in Byrd’s apartment but brightened up when an androgynous-looking woman entered. “I’m Erin,” she said extending her hand as serenely as her husband wasn’t, “Johnathan’s wife,” she added from her side of their puzzling moon.

“Ruby,” my mother said almost curtsying. “Dick Katzman and their son Jed,” Johnathan Byrd interrupted, introducing the two of us with a Dickensian hand flourish, “and this,” he said bowing to the large red dog that followed Erin in, “is Molly.” “We’ve been for a run,” Erin added, drying her forehead and short feathery hair as their pretty dog lapped from a water dish.

Despite knowing dog breeds from years pretending I was one; I couldn’t explain Molly’s fox-red color and white blaze. Unlike a collie, her dark eyes and pointed ears were pure shepherd. Her coat and intelligent expression were also, but unlike a guard dog, kind and trusting Molly walked over to me with her ears back, sat without being asked and gently presented me her paw. I knew that moment; the Byrd’s were good people as dogs never lie, and felt prepared for my parents, who might embarrass me at any time, to leave.

After disguising my emotions during my parents’ departure, once free of them, I prowled the woods avoiding everyone the rest of the day like a fugitive. Returning after dark to the New Dorm, I was prepared to meet my dreaded roommate, but was pleasantly surprised to see he hadn’t arrived. “Your boarder will appear tomorrow my liege,” Byrd said passing me in the hall. “I didn’t see you at dinner.”

With other boys around playing stereos and settling in, I was on hyper-alert and wary of Byrd’s familiarity with me, I said, “I know,” closed the door to my room behind me and sat in the dark with my heart racing. Unable to bare it for a minute, I passed Byrd again in the hall on my way back outside. “Curfew is a ten,” he said, though it makes no difference to Erin and I, but tomorrow’s orientation is, compulsory,” he said genuflecting like a monk. Goodnight, Mr. Byrd, I said plunging open the steel door into the floodlit night. “Goodnight, my friend and call me Johnathan” he said watching me disappear into the shadows.

I returned after curfew but couldn’t sleep, lying on my bunk fully clothed and hungry, suspecting Byrd might be a homo. I leapt up before dawn and penetrated the farm country breeze in darkness to the distant sound of moaning cows. Ascending the spooky hill in blustery twilight watching for mental hospital escapees, I arrived outside the windy dining room breathless, without cigarettes. A wolf ambled up as I fished a long butt out of a can and lit it. “Hey there Molly,” I said feeling blessed by her calm company. I looked forward to bonding with every dog on campus as she leaned in to be scratched which was impossible without fingernails.

I stood in my hooded sweatshirt dreading more light as motley students arrived in an array of clothing fit for the dump. Avoiding the eyes of everyone in jeans with embroidered patches, paisley kerchiefs, bomber jackets and handmade sweaters, I crouched petting several other dogs that had arrived, beneath clouds of cigarette smoke. Most of the kid’s knew each other and hugged like grownups after the summer apart, while others I assumed, new like me isolated in less cool attire. “She’s pretty. Is she yours,” a bra-less girl asked, kneeling down to pet Molly. “No,” I answered casually, pleased to be engaged in idle conversation.

When the doors finally opened, we filed into a low-ceiling, wood-paneled room stuffed with tables and chairs. Proud to already know someone, I brought my self-service plate to an empty corner and was gobbling scrambled eggs pretending to be normal when the scary crippled headmaster I’d interviewed with, heaved his frame up on crutches and clanked a plate with a spoon to get everyone’s attention.

“Good morning 1970,” Dan Watson said grinning as a few faculty attempted to clap. Unlike Johnathan’s magical mystery world view, Dan Watson announced a mandatory Outward Bound-style orientation at noon where new students and teachers would bond over an obstacle course in the woods.

As I left the dining room to go on a hike, assuming dogs would follow, because dogs always did, some teachers said, “hey man,” as I passed while others sternly nodded as they had in boys’ school. Unsure as every other new student and too intimidated to explore the campus, I aimed towards the woods and immediately came upon an old school bus with washed out letters spelling “Viewpoint.”

Overgrown with grapes and Virginia Creeper, the foul-smelling old relic rotting beside the road with “Magic Bus” painted in multicolors on its rusty exterior was furnished with tin cans for smoking. Every other building was a firetrap, Watson reiterated at breakfast. After sitting in the bus’s ripped driver’s seat listening to the cheers of testosterone fueled ghosts, I gave into the anxious dogs, hopped off the bus as if at my stop, plunged down a steep embankment beside what was called the “Art Barn” to a stream where we spent the rest of the morning untangling wet burs and making dams.

I couldn’t tell if Dan Watson had any legs at all as he used only a knob on his steering wheel shuttling us through the woods in his suburban. I dreaded being forced to bond with and touch others as we jostled shoulder to shoulder down the rutted dirt road. I recalled how often I’d been shamed into climbing ropes as I stared at the passing woods longing to escape as I longed to so frequently from boys’ school.

We reached a clearing with a small log cabin where teachers and students slouched around its porch eating sandwiches. Johnathan Byrd’s charming antics made other teachers seem stuffy as I watched a short, corpulent man in penny loafers with beady eyes darting from behind his granny glasses like a reptile.

New teachers who’d met over the summer could care less about the obstacle course along the newly raked path and were eagerly talking to groups of students without it. Kids meandered to and from the woods getting stoned as not a single wall was ascended or beam balanced on. When the formidable six-foot two headmaster crutched over to the highest wall like a silverback, I expected he’d haul himself up or at least start lecturing, but he simply tapped his lost cause with his crutch, unwilling to create a scene, as if he knew nothing he built could build character in these characters.

Though orientation taught me about unnecessary obstacles, I had no idea, running barefoot down the blue trail back to campus how some of those quirky teachers, whose classes I might or might not chose to attend, would become lasting friends, nirvana would appear within reach and Barlow would set such high standards for everyone since.