A God in Ruins - Leon Uris [32]
Wise man, his uncle, Quinn thought. His wisdom made him realize how lonesome he was for the rich food of ideas and conversations.
“There is one bottom line for me,” Father Sean said, “and that is the message of love from Jesus. All the rest of it, miracles and saints and whatever we’ve contrived or distorted, doesn’t matter. Love is the bottom line. Find something in that message you can weave into your life.”
Even as he spoke, Father Sean realized that Quinn would always inquire, always challenge a Church that did not promote inquiry and challenge. But no other religion would work for him, either, because he could never truly accept what was unacceptable to him.
* * *
It seemed that each turn in season, particularly coming out of winter, the divide in the father-son stream widened. At Troublesome Mesa School, with four hundred students from kindergarten through high school, Quinn was one of the campus heroes. A charming personality beamed from a charmed spirit. He was a nice person. Kids gravitated to him.
Father Sean, with great care and diplomacy, got Dan to thinking: Quinn’s quest for his birth parents was a natural human drive known by every orphan. It would not endanger his relationship with Quinn.
Moreover, Quinn was an intellectual. Yet they had the Dodgers in common and Duke Snyder and Jackie Robinson and Camp and Pee Wee Reese and Gil Hodges and Preacher Roe. But the Dodgers upped and left Brooklyn.
Maybe, just maybe, Dan began to think, there could be a real mending instead of the growing aggrievement if he could think along the lines of a great scholastic university for his son.
Constraint took over. When civility has to be practiced with caution, it becomes a draining way for two people to communicate.
They ceased doing things together. Fishing or the rodeo or canoeing or riding their dirt bikes. With graduation from Troublesome Mesa School, the time had come to make a decision, perhaps the first life decision.
Carlos Martinez wanted Quinn to come to Texas, but it was a selfish request. At the speed Carlos was pushing through college, they’d be together for only a year or so.
Dan O’Connell applied to a number of universities for Quinn, some “just for the hell of it.” In a moment of magnanimity, and to prove to Quinn he had his interest at heart, he sent Quinn and Siobhan back East to look over some of the great campuses. Not that anybody ever gave Dan O’Connell this kind of golden chance. I’ll never, Dan thought, get him to understand that sports is where a young man sets his mark for life. But his life is his life. If he gets into a fine Eastern school, then he’ll be morally indebted to return to Colorado. Dan was wrapped up in scenarios, and none of them thought through seriously.
Mother and son drove about New England, in a journey of realization. The East was not the West. In New York, during the second act of a Tennessee Williams play, all the characters on stage were crying out their misery and no one heard the other. If truth be known, Quinn wanted New York City and Fordham. But no one would hear the other’s misery.
Quinn knew if he went East, he might have serious trouble returning to the ranch. It would devastate his parents. Further, no one leaves Colorado without having inflicted a wound on himself. It was Quinn’s life, but he could not turn away from Dan’s legacy. Wanting a brother had long come and gone in Quinn’s fantasies. Quinn was it, alone.
Quinn and Siobhan made a drive from Washington state through Stanford and into Los Angeles. Quinn was awed by the greatness of America and felt his first urges of desire to do something of value for everyone.
They returned to the ranch to find Dan elated. In their absence something good had gotten to the man.
“Which school was your favorite, Siobhan?” Dan asked.
“I personally liked Berkeley.”
“Commies,” Dan retorted. “They eat protest flakes for breakfast. As for UCLA, it’s a brothel.”
The moment was at hand for Dan to pass to them a half dozen letters