Slow Eddie: A Cape Cod Story

By Bruce J. Jones

SLOW EDDIE is a story of friendship, race, class, love and loss that unfolds on Cape Cod. Eddie, a bike-riding school teacher, is friends with Harvard classmates Chip and Jamie, respectively a patrician lawyer and smart-mouthed Jewish doctor. Jules is Chip's wife, Jamie's nurse, and Eddie's fantasy. Supporting characters include Eddie's twin cousins, formerly incarcerated and now custodians at his school, as well as teaching colleagues Nettie, a "Reverse Freedom Rider" from the South, and Taylor, a privileged expatriate of Grosse Point, Michigan. Eddie's favorite is Perry, a promising Cape Verdean student and athlete.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 25, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450210089

Bruce J. Jones

Bruce J. Jones is an award-winning Cape Cod writer who has published extensively in New England press and periodicals. A keen observer of the Cape, SLOW EDDIE is his first novel Jones lives with his wife, Maggie Sullivan, in Barnstable Village. He spends part of each year in Walla Walla, Washington where he is a member of the Whitman College Admission Office.

Book preview

Slow Eddie

a Cape Cod story

Bruce J. Jones

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Copyright © 2010, 2014 by Bruce J. Jones

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ISBN: 978-1-4502-1007-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-1008-9 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 05/31/2014

Contents

High School

College

1 Fifteen Years Later

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

Acknowledgments

For Margaret Mary, a native

High School

His mother was a third grade teacher who died when Eddie was eight. She was diagnosed with breast cancer at Christmas and dead by Easter. His dad’s laughter died with her. At the wake Mr. O’Donnell was too immobilized to get out of his chair. He limply shook hands, rarely made eye contact, rarely reacted to the comments of family and friends. It scared Eddie.

Patrick and Ian, Eddie’s older twin cousins, book-ended him like sentinels as he shook hands with all of his mom’s solemn students, kids she lovingly and humorously talked about at dinner, but kids he didn’t know.

When Eddie was in tenth grade he took a class on world cultures and religions. Reflecting on the Christmas/Easter progression of his mom’s death, he thought there was some religious perversity to the timing. His dad must have thought the same—as regular as the tide, they never missed nine a.m. Mass before Mrs. O’Donnell died and never went again after she was buried.

Quietness descended on the house. Mr. O’Donnell lost himself in books, cigarettes and little home repair projects. Eddie became a quiet observer and a serious student. His mom would have liked that.

Mr. O’Donnell, a milkman in those days when they still existed, was gone before Eddie was up. He had dinner on the table at six every night and was in bed by nine. They talked, but said little. He asked Eddie about school and his races, which he often watched from his milk truck, silently smoking, not talking to anybody, driving quietly away after Eddie finished his race and waved to him.

He called Eddie, Boy. At dinner he would say, You ran a good race. I’m proud of you, Boy. And when it became clear that Eddie would be able to go to college wherever he wanted he said, Your mom would be proud of you, Boy.

Eddie met Charles Templeton Stone IV at a cross country meet the fall of their sophomore year. Chip ran for Chatham High School and Eddie was on the Hyannis High team, HiHi to everyone on the Cape. Chip and Eddie hooked up in a number of memorable duals over the next three years as they worked their way up to first man on their respective teams.

In that first race, on HiHi’s demanding course through the woods surrounding Hadaway’s Pond, Chip got the best of Eddie by a comfortable margin. After the race Chip playfully slugged Eddie on the arm and said, Maybe next time, Slow Eddie. Eddie’s silent smile masked his irritation.

Chip was built like a runner, long and lean. He was a gifted athlete in addition to being good looking, his long hair softening his chiseled features. Eddie was from more common stock, his compact Irish body driven by terrier tenacity. And with dogged determination it eventually got to the point where Chip saw more of Eddie’s ass than Eddie saw of Chip’s.

While Chip played tennis in spring—he was a ranking New England schoolboy—Eddie ran track in the wet, cold, windswept days of March and April. And May, still chilled by the cold waters of Nantucket Sound and Cape Cod Bay, was rarely better. By senior year Eddie’s hard, five foot nine inch, one hundred and forty-five pound body could take the measure of any runner on Cape Cod, and he placed among the elite runners at the big cross country meets at Boston’s Franklin Park.

He carried the same drive into the classroom and Chip and he both applied to Harvard, where Chip had lengthy connections, both undergrad and law school. Except for his mother and twin cousins, Eddie would be the first of his extended family to go to college.

They were both native Cape Codders but about as culturally distant as Arabs and Israelis. Chip was a seventh generation Chatham boy, descended from ship captains and lawyers.

Eddie’s forbearers left the mills of New Bedford between the two World Wars for the burgeoning phone industry on the Cape, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. By the 1970s all of the New England Telephone middle management positions, and some of the senior positions, were occupied by the Irish—the Callahan’s, the Sullivan’s and the Murphy’s, as well as the O’Donnell’s.

The O’Donnell’s lived in a Hyannis neighborhood commonly known as Little Dublin, an area of small, gray shingled, ranch-style houses laid out on tree lined streets a stone’s throw from Main Street.

Chip lived on Ocean Avenue—the name says it all—in a fourteen room Cape cottage commanding expansive views of the Atlantic.

The Cape League Cross Country Championships were hosted by Chatham their senior year. Chip’s parents invited the seventy runners to a New England clambake after the race. Eddie won, Chip was third.

Eddie knew about New England cottages. On his training runs he ran by a bunch of them in Hyannisport. His dad, who delivered milk to some of them, and a number of his relatives, told stories about cottages where they re-pointed chimneys or built decks or served at summer parties. Given how things worked in Eddie’s family, these stories were told at wakes and weddings and confirmation parties, all of which he went to, none of which his father attended after Mrs. O’Donnell’s death. Eddie assumed Chip heard his family’s stories on clay tennis courts, clubhouse putting greens and at the Atlantic Bars Inn, a five-star resort he had never set foot in.

Despite what most people think about the Cape, the finest time to be a resident or a tourist is fall. The clambake, held on a Saturday in the middle of October, was proof. The race was over by noon and by one, now at Chip’s, it was warm enough to get by wearing school sweatshirts over racing singlets. Proud of his sculpted legs, Eddie was too vain to pull his sweatpants over his red Nikes.

Most were awestruck by Chip’s home. It was huge and luxuriously appointed in that old dark, Oriental carpet kind of way. The clambake was on the expansive lawn on a bluff overlooking the ocean. The sun glinted off the glass-like surface, the multi-hued trees were as colorful as they get on the Cape, and the water, still summer warm, moderated the cooling fall air.

Big-gutted, thick-armed experts from the Harwich VFW hosed down the steaming mound dug in the sandy ground. Baskets of steamers, lobster, corn on the cob, sweet potatoes and spicy linguica sausage were delivered to the red and white checker-clothed picnic tables. Eddie was embarrassed to admit that it was his first clambake, a somewhat extravagant ritual more common to summer people, those with even tans, even teeth and European cars.

The Portuguese kids from P-town, almost all from fisherman families, the middleclass Sandwich kids whose fathers drove across the Sagamore Bridge to their Boston jobs, and Eddie and his Hyannis teammates were all intimidated by the affair. Only Connor, their teammate from gated Oyster Harbors, a wealthy enclave on the ocean west of town, seemed at home with Chip, along with two or three other Chatham runners. Even though Eddie was the star of the show—he had broken the fourteen-year old course record—he was ready to pile into Coach’s station wagon and head back home to frozen fish sticks and canned peas.

Or was ready until he saw Julia. Julia was Chip’s girlfriend and absolute perfection in Eddie’s eyes—despite her taste in boyfriends. She was one more reason to hate Chip, although, in an attempt at unbiased reporting, Eddie had to admit Chip was really an OK guy. He was friendly, generous in his praise of Eddie’s race (as only the number one, under eighteen tennis player in New England could be), and a gracious host. Eddie, potentially a cynic, thought, Are good manners, like good teeth, genetic?

Julia arrived on the Chatham scene their sophomore year. Eddie got to know her because she showed up at all the races. By her junior year she had lost a mouth full of braces and gained a cheerleader’s uniform. She forever altered his critical take on those perky girls because she convinced the Chatham cheerleaders to show up at spectatorless, geek-infested cross country meets. And oh my, Julia in a short skirt!

Julia was charming and approachable, not that Eddie was comfortable approaching her. She seemed at ease around Chip’s wealth but she wasn’t of it.

Her story, picked up in snippets over many years, started near Detroit. Her mother, young and attractive herself, was one of seven sisters. When her husband died of a heart attack in his late thirties, Janeen Jordan moved her fifteen-year old Julia and her three younger sisters to the Cape to live with her favorite sibling, a single woman in her forties who was the principal of Chatham’s only elementary school.

Of course Eddie never met Julia’s father but he must have been as handsome as his wife was good looking because it was clear that Jennifer, Janey and Jodie were going to be show stoppers like their oldest sister. This didn’t stop Eddie, a good English student, from rolling his eyes over the alliterative excess.

Eddie had a growing infatuation with Julia. It started the way it usually does for adolescent males—she was so good looking it was hard not to stare at her. They say JFK had an eye for a well-turned ankle. Eddie wasn’t sure what that meant, but he was pretty sure he was a leg man. Most of his male classmates were boob-obsessed. But Eddie thought a good pair of legs was a rarer form of perfection.

Julia, in her short cheerleader skirt, revealed calves that were slim but fully formed, subtly curvaceous from bottom to top. She had perfect, minimalist knees below firm, shapely thighs rising into her little skirt. Back, front, side views—all perfection. But it was from the rear Eddie liked to view Julia, so his eyes could linger without being caught.

The truth is, as he got to know Julia over the years, her appearance was frosting to greater substance. She was warm, competent, humorous, responsible, generous…..and sexy, Eddie thought, in that I’m-not-trying-to-be-sexy way.

Fall is the time of year for college applications and Chip and Eddie would be competing for a slot in Harvard’s freshman class. Eddie was wise enough to know that he was competing whereas Chip, even if he was dumb—which he was not—was a lock. Julia was planning on going to Mt. Auburn School of Nursing, just the other side of Harvard Square. So Eddie’s dreams of Cambridge included considerably more than Harvard. He figured if Chip and Julia ever split up he might have a shot.

But his dad questioned the preoccupation with Harvard. It’s really not our kind of place, Boy.

Eddie was surprised by his silent father’s opinion. You don’t want me to go there? I haven’t even gotten in yet.

Bridgewater was good enough for your mother.

His dad was confusing him. I’m turning my back on mom if I go to Harvard? You’ve told me that mom would be proud of me.

Boy, she would be proud of you wherever you went to college. But you could go to Bridgewater, buy yourself a good truck, and be around people more like us.

Eddie never saw this coming. He feels sick. Is it about money?

No, son. We put away your mother’s life insurance for your college. You know that.

Eddie stares at the floor in silence then marshals his words carefully. Dad. Harvard’s like a race to me—why should I settle for second if I can break the tape?

Mr. O’Donnell lights another cigarette and takes a sip of coffee. It’s your choice, Boy.

Eddie goes to his room and puts on his running stuff. Once out the door he slogs toward the ocean beaches, his mind adrift. It is one of the pleasures of running, his mind on autopilot, working things over. But this is hard. He assumed his dad would just go along with his college ambitions. He’s always left him alone. Eddie misses his mom, her fresh morning smell when she hugged him before going out the door. Replaced by his dad’s sour cigarette stench, the house so quiet. It was lonely at home, thus the diligent school work and the disciplined running, the attempt to exert some control over a world that took his mother, and in doing so, also took his dad.

He thought back to those first months after his mom’s death, his dad staring at the TV, filling the ashtray. And then coming to his room, Time to put that book down and get to sleep, Boy. Tucking him in, brushing his hair back with stained fingers and sad eyes. But no hug, no kiss goodnight. The light off, Eddie’s eyes would well with tears, Where’s my mom?

The next day Eddie stops by Mr. Mullen’s office. Mr. Mullin was a decent guy. A HiHi grad, a basketball star at Holy Cross, he returned home as coach and now counselor. Would he be counterpoint to his dad?

Mr. Mullen recommended BC. They could use your running. Maybe have a shot at a scholarship.

I want to apply to Harvard.

Mr. Mullen was surprised. He paused, twisted his mouth, then said, You know, Eddie, there are some neighborhoods in Osterville I could probably afford but I’m not sure I belong there.

Eddie left his office confused. What the hell did that mean?

In early April the fat envelope arrived from Harvard.

College

On a perfect late August day, the sky electric blue, the trees lushly green, Eddie O’Donnell headed for Harvard. Eighty miles to Cambridge, a world away from Hyannis. Eddie did his best to hide his embarrassment at being carted to college in his dad’s milk truck. They unloaded everything onto a sidewalk next to Grays Hall, a freshman dorm on Harvard Yard. Mr. O’Donnell, awkward whenever he crossed the Sagamore Bridge, shook Eddie’s hand, said, I’m proud of you, Boy, and beat a hasty retreat back to the Cape’s comfy confines.

Today college housing officials send students lengthy questionnaires that are computer-coded, a database created, a compatible roommate identified: Neat? Messy? Born Again? Homosexual? Bi? PC? Conservative? Green? Vegan? Classical? Rap? Country? Jazz?

Harvard may have had a plan—social engineering came to mind—but Eddie didn’t know his roommates until the proctor led him to a large common room on the top floor. Comfortably laid out in an adjoining room with a view of the Yard was none other than Charles Templeton Stone IV. Eddie thought, You gotta be shittin’ me! He recovered to say, Geez, Chip, this is a surprise.

My father pulled some strings to get us this suite. It was his when he was here. Great, isn’t it?!

Yeah, it’s very nice. You knew we were going to be roommates?

Chip hesitates, Not really.

What do you mean?

Well, because of the family’s long relationship with Harvard they contacted my father to discuss housing and roommates. That kind of thing.

Eddie is feeling some undefined irritation. They ran my name by you?

No. They just asked my dad if I’d be comfortable with a roommate from Hyannis. Chip is smiling at Eddie as if to say, Isn’t that great?!

Eddie is speechless, thinking, I’m really out of my league.

But he also thinks this may work out—someone to show him the ropes and—better yet—a greater likelihood of seeing Julia.

So do you know our roommate?

I haven’t met him. I just know he’s a Jewish doctor’s son from Seattle.

Oh great, Eddie thinks, son of a doctor, son of a lawyer, son of a milkman. Maybe Mr. Mullen knew what he was talking about when he recommended UMass and BC over Harvard. Or maybe even dad was right about Bridgewater.

At this point Jamie Stern made his entrance. If Chip and Eddie had preconceived notions of a Jewish doctor’s son, Jamie Stern immediately wreaked havoc with such thoughts.

Howdy! he says. He is all of five-feet, seven inches in his cowboy boots. Even his cowboy hat can’t obscure this short fact. While Eddie is dumbly staring, the more civilized roommate introduces himself.

Hello. I’m Charles Templeton Stone IV, but everyone calls me Chip.

What a relief. And you, Jamie doffs his hat in Eddie’s direction, What might be your name?

Hi. I’m Eddie O’Donnell.

You have a shorter name than Chip?

Is this Jewish cowboy for real? Edward Sean O’Donnell.

Oy vey, thinks Jamie. I’ve got me a fuckin’ Mick and a fuckin’ prep for roommates.

Chip wonders if Jamie may be problematic but, his good manners surfacing, asks his roommates, Can I help move your things in? Jamie and Eddie look at the two remaining rooms. Eddie shrugs his noncommittal shoulders when Jamie indicates the one he prefers. The elevator on the blink, they are exhausted and sweaty by the time everything has been hoisted up the stairs.

The rooms are much larger than Eddie’s bedroom in Hyannis. Once moved in his space is relatively barren compared to his roommates. He feels a little overwhelmed and out of place. Eddie has been at Harvard three hours and is already feeling intimidated. He thinks, I’ll stop by and say hi to Mr. Mullen when I go back for HiHi’s homecoming.

That first week sped confusedly by. There was orientation this and orientation that. There were class selections with an academic advisor. There were prescribed mealtimes to get used to. There was a small fortune to part with at the Commons for books. Best of all for Eddie, there was cross country practice from four to six every day.

Despite the initial shock, Jamie was easy to get along with—he was cynical, profane and constantly insulting, but it was never mean-spirited, something that Chip seemed to quickly understand.

It turned out he wasn’t from Seattle. Jamie said, Ya gotta be shittin’ me! Nobody wears cowboy boots in Seattle. He was from Pasco, one of the Tri-Cities, east of the Cascades, about two hundred miles from the city and with a different cultural landscape. Jamie explained that Pasco was located at the confluence of the Columbia and Snake rivers. But don’t let that fool you. Pasco was built on a desert. It’s hotter ‘n hell in the summer.

Eddie has gotten comfortable enough to ask, What’s the Jewish community like in Pasco?

I reduced it twenty-five percent when I left.

Whadaya mean?

All that’s left is my father, my mother, and my miserable asshole of a brother.

Seriously?

"Seriously. It’s all