Chasing the Bear

Chapter 38

The low buildings of the Back Bay were dark. They looked, with the effusive sunset behind them, like a stage setting.

Standing on the little bridge, Susan and I turned and rested our hips on the bridge bulwark and looked at it.

"That's very pretty," Susan said.

"And it happens every day," I said.

"I've heard that," Susan said. "Was Aurelio really gay?"

"Don't know," I said.

"You didn't ask him?"

"No," I said.

"You didn't care," Susan said.

"No," I said. "Didn't then and don't now."

"Mexican either," Susan said.

"Nope," I said. "Mexican either. I never cared about that stuff."

I grinned at her.

"Besides, I was a little hazy on exactly what it meant to be gay," I said.

"Did they keep bothering you?" Susan said.

"Not bad, for a while. They teased us a little, but I didn't have to fight anybody."

"Were they scared of you?"

"Maybe a little scared," I said. "They knew I could fight. But, you know, I played ball with a lot of the guys. I knew most of them. They all knew I'd punched out Croy Davis, who was two years older than I was. And I kept telling them to lay off Aurelio."

"And they listened?"

"Some," I said.

"So you were able to stop walking to school with him after a while."

"I was, until a bunch of Mexican kids beat the crap out of an Anglo kid and everybody started taking sides."

"Which, unless you were more different in those days than I think you were, wasn't your style."

"No, it wasn't," I said.

"You've never been a joiner," Susan said.

"I wasn't trying to solve race relations in town," I said. "I was just trying to help Aurelio, because he was a nice little guy and because Jeannie asked me to."

"When I was at Harvard," Susan said, "the concern was mostly with larger problems, saving the world, that kind of thing."

"How's that working?" I said.

Susan smiled.

"Since I've known you," she said, "you have actually been saving the world, one person at a time."

I grinned.

"I guess I work on a smaller scale than Harvard," I said.

"Thank God," Susan said.