Author: Tim Doyle

Selma’s Farm

Fiction

Set on an edge of a forest of tall oak trees sat an old white farmhouse. It was a fairly large two-story home built high off the ground to avoid the floods. The paint on its sides was almost completely chipped away. Some panes of glass were replaced by plywood. An old, but sturdy slate roof protected it from stormy Mississippi nights. A large front porch, which ran the length of the house, looked out onto a cotton field.  The forest ran around the home, and around the huge rectangular field, but now the field was a sea of weeds and dead plants.  The only farming that took place was a vegetable garden growing in the field.  An old barn laid out back, empty except for some chickens, its doors hung on by only their top hinges. A well that looked as if it had been there since before the Civil War sat near the faded red barn. A grave lay on the north side of the home. An old bumpy road meandered through the forest, leading to the road to town.

The downstairs of the house was decorated with a few chairs and tables. The area looked large with the scarce furniture, and the kitchen was almost empty. Once white drapes hung from the windows, but now they were yellow with age. Three bedrooms lay upstairs, although there was only one resident. Every morning when the sun rose, Selma Johnson would wash her face, put on her overalls and shirt, and slowly make her way to the front porch. She would watch the light pour through the trees as the sun rose in the east. The morning light brought such a big smile to her face that her glasses would fall off her nose. She would wait until the sun rose above the trees, then go get some eggs from the barn for an omelet. She usually sat on the porch all day rocking her old creaky wooden rocking chair. Selma would not read, or sing, or find something to do; she would look at the field and the trees.  Selma smiled when the sun rose, and when it set, her glasses would fall off her face, again, and onto the porch.

One fine April morning, Selma’s neighbor and main visitor John Crey came by to visit.  John walked out of the trees across the field. He was a large eighteen-year-old, whose body was built hard and strong. He walked slowly through the field of weeds. The sun shined brightly on his chest, and the morning dew dampened the bottom of his pants. His face was somber until he caught sight of Miss Selma. Then he smiled at his old friend. He walked to the front of the porch and asked,

“Good mornin’ Miss Selma, do you have any butter’?”

“Now Johnny, you always comin’ over here asking me for butter when you know I have gone and sold that cow over a year ago.  I can’t take care of no cow, always shittin’ everywhere, makin’ smells, just for some milk.”

“I know Miss Selma.  How’s everything?”

“All right, Johnny.  Now listen I might be old and white-haired but that don’t mean I can’t take care of myself. Now I’m fine….  How’s your father?”

“Good….  This sure is a nice field for farming.  I like a farm like this.”

“You got your family’s, but I know it hasn’t been farmed since Cleatis died eight years ago, it’s as fertile as a Carolina virgin.”

“You dirty, Miss Selma… our farm is so much smaller, filled with rocks, and it’s my dad’s.”

“Johnny, you’ll have one of your own someday.”  John looked at little Miss Selma and shook his head.

“I ain’t never going to have no farm.”

“Bye Johnny.”

Selma smirked and watched Johnny walked back into the forest.

“That boy sure is nice,” Selma said out loud.

****

Before he died, Cleatis Johnson had walked through rows of cotton plants as the sun sunk and the day died. Selma had rocked in her chair on the porch and watched the million colors at her husband’s back as she smiled at him. Cleatis had itched his head as he approached the house.

“Why yous’ always working to all hours of the night?” she had asked.

“Someone’s got to bring the money in this family,” Cleatis had replied.

“But you old, Cleatis.”

“I might be old, but I can work,” he said as he climbed the stairs to the porch.

“Not for much longer.”

“Selma, why you always tellin’ me how old I am.”

“Cleatis, we don’t need this farm no more.”

“There you go, talking crazy about how we going to sell the farm, I ain’t selling, and that’s final.”

“I know you love the farm. Me too, but it scares me seeing the way you work, at your age.”

The couple made their way through the front door, and Cleatis sat at the dining room table as Selma prepared supper.

“Sure was a nice day, Cleatis.”

“Sure was.”

****

As the warm breezy April day fell to a close, Selma fell asleep, and the rocking chair slowed to a halt. Selma’s head sunk to her chest and her glasses slid across the floorboards of the porch.   Her shoulders shook from side to side, and her body tumbled over the arm of the chair to the north.  The chair crashed onto the porch and its legs shattered; splinters of wood spraying across the porch.  Selma lay still, curled like a baby, as the darkness of the country night set in.

****

A few days later, John Crey emerged through the forest and saw a crow walking around the front porch. He looked down to see her body sprawled out on the porch.

“MISS SELMA!” he yelled as he began to run towards the house through the sea of weeds.  He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, and he winced as he saw his neighbor lying dead.  He sat on the stairs, looking towards the field, and held his head in his hands. After a few minutes he slowly walked back to his house, and streams of tears fell down his cheek to the weeds to the earth.

John returned a couple of hours later, but this time he carried a shovel.  He walked past the house and began to dig a grave on the north side of the house right next to Cleatis’.  The shovel worked its way into the earth, and John dug the grave.  As he got into the hole, the dirt flew out at quick pace.  The earth was fine and light.

“John,” his father yelled as he approached the house from town with a pine box lying in the back of the carriage.

“Yes, Pa.”

“I went and told the sheriff ‘bout Selma and send me over to see if she had a will filed at city hall. They gave it to me. You should read it.”

John stepped out of the grave and opened the will as his father pulled the casket out.

“Sheriff will be out here soon to see all’s in order,” his father stated.

John read the will slowly. “January 28, 1928.  I Selma Johnson do solemn–nay be-que-ath all my earthly possessions to John Crey. A good boy who will take care of the farm, and he wants and deserves it more than anyone.” A large gaping smile appeared across his face and his eyes lit up like the August sun.

“The lady at City Hall told me that Selma sold that cow to pay for the legal fees for that will, and took out all her savings to pay property tax for five years.  You ain’t going to be poor no more!”  John spun around, looking at the trees, and the house, and he smiled like a man on his wedding day.  He threw his arms up, leaned backwards, and stared at the blue sky.

“Miss Selma!”

John walked around to the front of the house. He viewed the field for a minute, and turned to see Selma lying on the porch. The sun was setting again, and John watched it from the steps of his new home.  A gust of wind rustled the tops of the trees and swayed the weeds in the field. His father came around the corner, and they put Miss Selma in the pine box. They lowered her into the earth and filled in the hole. His father left and John kneeled on the fresh grave. He pulled her glasses out of his pocket, placing them on the grave.

This story was written in 1997 and never saw the light of day. So here it is. 

The Price of Loyalty

Stories

I can still see Flutie’s pass fluttering through the rainy night sky in Miami. Gordon’s kick soar up in the air in South Bend, gloriously fading left through the goal posts. Ryan’s across-the-body strike in Blacksburg to stun the Hokies. My great-grandfather, grandfather and father’s all experienced these moments as well. Moments when loyalty, devotion and yearning unknowingly flipped to ecstasy and joy. What if, what if us? Please let them contend for something big, someday. Please.

In 1919 my grandfather Jerome attended his first Boston College football game with his father, John B. Doyle, and his brother Dick. BC took on then powerhouse Yale in New Haven, Conn., and trailing 3-2 late in the game, star halfback Jimmy Fitzpatrick booted a 48-yard drop kick to give the Eagles a stunning upset. J.B., as he was known, was devoted to his alma mater, and he brought Jerome and Dick every year to see BC take on archrival Holy Cross in bloody games where fistfights ensued.

After graduating BC in 1931, and a long distinguished career at the FBI and Wall Street law firm Cahill & Gordon, Jerome and the rest of my New York-Irish family were sucker punched by sudden death of my grandmother Gertrude, in 1972. A couple of years later, he fled his Larchmont, New York home for the quiet Cape Cod hamlet of Osterville. There he became a pro-bono defender at the Barnstable County Courthouse and signed up for BC season football tickets.

As a kid, my brother, dad and I would putter from the Cape in his old Mercedes to Big East games. Below his plaid fedora, he would squint down at the hard astroturf field on crisp, sparkling autumn New England afternoons. He would force his hands together trying to clap, but his pinky and ring fingers crumpled in his palms – yellowed and balled up from decades of smoking unfiltered Lucky’s. He would wrap his frail body in a big tan coat, and a blanket when it was colder.  My jean jacket and mesh hat clad father would always sit next to him, in his ear about some player or coach. Periodically, my dad would deafeningly scream out at the game.

From the left, me, my dad, my brother and my grandfather Jerome.

From the left, me, my dad, my brother and my grandfather Jerome.

Jerome bought these seats at the 50-yard line, 22 rows up in the mid-70s when BC hardly mattered. But then a few years later, Flutie’s pass put Boston College on the map – football took a giant leap and applications surged. BC went from being a small New England institution steeped in tradition to a national, prominent university.

After his death in 1989, my father took over the tickets and watched the price climb to $50 a seat. Nearly a decade ago, begrudgingly and reluctantly, Boston College mandated 7,400 of its season ticket holders to “donate” $1,000 to $500 to keep their seats near the 50-yard line. The school was the last in the Atlantic Coast Conference to require giving for the best seats because the cost of funding scholarships, new facilities and team expenses are just as jaw-droppingly expensive as BC’s yearly price tag for tuition, room and board, now approaching $60,000. For years big-time programs in the South have issued similar mandates, but the heavy cost of big-time college sports now reaches buttoned-up BC and its medium-sized stadium in Chestnut Hill.

Jerome Doyle, 1931.

Jerome Doyle, 1931.

My dad, a 1968 graduate.

My dad, 1968.

But BC is different. Deeply Jesuit Catholic, chock-full of well-off kids primarily from the Northeast, charging New England old timers and families like mine that have endured many a bad BC teams was certainly a curious move.

As this all came down during the Frank Spaziani era, a particularly listless stretch in which our recruiting vanished and teams were pancake flat of emotion and ability. So the “donation” felt like a waste to our family, which resides outside Washington, DC. We passed on the donation and moved down to the 10-yard line. Still fine seats, with an excellent view I felt a bit lost at my first game. I kept looking down toward the 50.

As a freshman, I watched David Gordon’s fading 41-yard field goal fall through the uprights to beat then No. 1 Notre Dame. BC’s campus exploded even though the game was in South Bend with students running wild and tearing down our own goal post and leaning one on Gordon’s run-down townhouse, in BC’s beloved mods. We ended up #13 in the nation that year. As I neared graduation, the team declined and then precipitously plummeted into a gambling scandal. Unable to come or to unload the tickets, my dad would send me my grandfather’s seats. I’d sit there with a friend – away from the ruckus of the student section – and the memories would again wash in, somehow overtaking the terribleness on the scoreboard.

BC2

My grandfather and dad.

Life is expensive. As a father of three (9- and 11-year-old stepsons, Matteo and Luca, and our daughter, Romy, 4, who was named after Jerome) living in a DC suburb I understand this: bills, mortgage, nanny, more bills, camps, birthday parties and year-round soccer teams with professional coaches. But something is getting lost when a tier-two football program is trying to get a die-hard fan to pay nearly $2,000 a seat a season. That’s twice as much as most NFL tickets.

Yes, my family has a deep, nearly unprecedented relationship with Boston College and its football team. I don’t think we deserve anything for more than 100 years of loyalty. But charging so much for tickets cheapens loyalty and devotion regardless of who you are. It makes the game and being a fan about what’s in your pocket or bank account when it should be about how much you care. It should be about your willingness to sit there in a cold rain, not your ability to write a check with many zeros.

Sports is a great equalizer for any fan of any team. A 40-year-old dad with plenty of budget or an 18-year-old freshmen with 10 pennies shouldn’t have to make economic decisions about their loyalty. My dad has held onto those seats all these years after my grandfather’s death because of the memories of sitting there altogether reveling in the moment.

It’s been many years since we went together. We went up for a game before I got married. I think we played Notre Dame. I don’t really remember. We sat there together under the lights. There it’s hard to say what loyalty costs. It’s incalculable and any attempt to charge too much simply devalues that feeling and experience.

I wonder what my grandfather, a man of who successfully sunk a plan to install parking meters at the Barnstable County courthouse as a public defender in the twilight of his career, would have said about the soaring cost to go to a Boston College football game. I’m certain he would have uttered his signature curt line, “Is that so?” and rolled his eyes.

I haven’t brought my kids to Boston for a game yet, but I did bring them to a University of Maryland-Boston College game a few years ago. Andre Williams ran wild, and somehow led an improbable field goal winning drive at the end of the game. Ultimately, those are the moments that matter. The moments you remember sharing with your kids, father and grandfather. I want more of them and I don’t want to overpay for them. 

My brother and I after a game in the mid-80s.

My brother and I after a game in the mid-80s.