The Angel Of Mercy-From The Sam Eaton-Ralph Morris Series 

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

As long as Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris had known each other they never spent much time or effort discussing their various romantic interests. Never spoke of little rendezvous or trysts, never spoke of their two divorces much beyond recording the facts of the disengagements even though Sam had been Ralph’s best man at his first wedding to Clara, his high school sweetheart from Troy, New York whom he married after the dust of the 1960s settled down and people, “movement people” too were going back to some of the old norms. (Sam had been not designated as ‘best man” but rather “truest friend and witness” or something like that designation since they were beyond bourgeois martial norms at the time but we will use that former designation here to signify that they were close enough for Sam to gladly take on that task).

Maybe it was the Catholic reticence to speak of personal matters, personal sexual manners with another male (probably female too but let’s stick to male here) both having come up “old school” working-class Catholics when that meant something before Vatican II in the 1960s when the “s” word was not used in polite society, not used, God no, from the pulpit (even when discussion came up of the obligation to, unlike the bloody Protestants with their two point three children, of propagating the faith; having scads of children to bump up the Catholic population of the world).

Maybe closer to home it was the “theory,” probably honored more in the breech that the observance, of “not airing one’s dirty linen in public” drilled into them by their respective maternal grandmothers, especially when the “s” word was involved (certainly no parents gave the slightest clues probably assuming that the birds and the bees story line would suffice and both men learned like millions of their generation of ’68 kindred about sex on the streets, most of it erroneous or damn right dangerous). 

Maybe it was the times they met in “the liberated 1960s” where the Pill (and having capitalized that word no one should have to ask what pill) had made the whole subject somewhat bland to discuss (as opposed to doing the act, or as an old friend of Sam’s, Bart Webber, used to say taking his cue from the old bluesman Howlin’ Wolf “doing the do”) and that extended to the individuals they were involved with either through those collective four marriages and divorces or other relationships. It was not, as both were at pains to declare when the subject came up one recent night which will be discussed more fully below, that they were not friendly with those respective spouses, or when the spouses left then the one-night stands, the flings, the affairs to use an old-fashioned word for it and the flame dreams but their thing had been heavily weighted toward the male bonding that drew them close together back in the early 1970s.

And maybe it was the way that they had “met,” a story that they have endlessly repeated in one form or another and which had been told so many times by Sam mostly in the old days in small alternative presses and magazines and more recently in 1960s-related blogs that even they confessed that everybody must be “bored” with the damn thing by now. So only the barest outline will suffice here since their meeting is not particularly relevant to the story except to help sort out this reticence about relationships business. Sam, an active opponent of the Vietnam War, and Ralph an ex-soldier of that war who had turned against the war after eighteen months of duty there and become an anti-war activist in his turn with Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) after being discharged from the Army “met” in RFK Stadium in Washington on May Day 1971 when they were down there with their respective groups trying to as the slogan went “shut down the government, if the government did not shut down the war.”

For their ill-advised efforts they and thousands of others were tear-gassed, billy-clubbed and sent to the bastinado (ill-advised in that they did not have nearly enough people on hand and were incredibly naïve about the ability of the government to do any dirty deed to keep their power including herding masses of protestors into closed holding areas to be forgotten if possible although Ralph always had a sneaking suspicion the government would not have been unhappy seeing those bodies floating face down in the Potomac). Sam and Ralph met on the floor of the stadium and since they had several days to get acquainted were drawn to each other by working-class background, their budding politics, and their desire to “seek a newer world” as some old English poet once said. And so they stuck together, stuck politically mostly, through various peace organizations and ad hoc anti-war committees fighting the good fight along with dwindling numbers of fellow activists for the past forty plus years.                               

There were thick and thin times as Ralph stayed close to home in Troy, New York working in his father’s high-skilled electrical shop which he eventually took over and had just recently passed on to his youngest son and Sam had stayed in the Greater Boston area having grown up in Carver about thirty miles south of Boston working in a printing business that he had started from scratch and from which he in turn had just turned over to his more modern print-imaging tech savvy son, Jeff. The pair would periodically take turns visiting each other sometimes with families in tow, sometimes not and were always available to back each other up when some anti-war or other progressive action needed additional warm bodies in Boston, New York or a national call came from Washington. Lately now that they were both retired from the day to day operations of their respective businesses and also now both after their last respective divorces “single” they have had time to visit each other.

It had been on Ralph’s last visit to Sam who now resided in Cambridge that he tentatively broached the subject of whether Sam was “seeing” anybody. Sam had been somewhat struck by the question since he could not remember the last time that term had been used by either man. Sam wondered if Ralph was about to tell him that he was “seeing” somebody or, worse, a thought he kept to himself for the moment, that Ralph had heard something from somebody about him. Of course all of the wondering and “liberated” talk about relationships occurred one summer night at Jack’s, the well-known bar in Cambridge a few streets up from where Sam lived, while both men were drinking high-shelf whisky, and not sipping so perhaps neither man should have been surprised when Sam blurred out. “Well, yes I am, I am seeing an angel of mercy.” (Before we go on that high-shelf whisky reference should be noted since in the old days when they were “from hunger” working-class kids drinking rotgut low-shelf whiskies they could not afford to drink the stuff on Jimmy the bartender’s third shelf behind him on the back wall.)             

Ralph took a double-take and maybe the liquor getting to his brain a little said, “What are you dating an ex-nun or something, you old devil I thought you swore off those Catholic virgins with the big novena book in one hand and the well-worn rosary beads in the other.” Sam laughed and then explained that his “angel of mercy,” Laura Perkins, had been no nun but had saved his soul anyway. Then Sam proceeded to tell his little story, tell it as best he could as both men were getting a little drowsy with the hour (another virtue of Jack’s being near-by Sam’s dwelling when last call came):

“You know I had a very hard time with that last divorce from Melinda, she tried to take me for all I had, all I will ever have although Frankie Riley as usual with his sharp lawyer’s wit eased the sting a little and I survived with the business intact which Jeff runs now under a trust arrangement that Frankie worked out. What you don’t know because I never told you and you never asked and if you had I probably wouldn’t have told you anyway was things had been bad with Melinda for several years before she left the house three years and moved into that apartment in Plymouth that cost me an arm and a leg to pay for although I did it gladly at some level.”

“What you also don’t know is that about seven, eight years ago when I went to my fortieth class reunion from Carver High I ran into an old flame, a minute old flame whom I ditched for some other faster girl at the time but whom I would occasionally think about, think I had been a horse’s ass to dump. We talked into the wee hours that night, Melinda as usual didn’t want to go to the reunion since she didn’t want to go to her own Olde Saco High reunion why should she go to mine. That’s the way Melinda was, particularly the last few years when I think we both realized we have been ships passing in the night for a long time. Laura and I agreed to talk and e-mail each other more and we did. You know the routine as well as I do, we talked a lot for several weeks and e-mailed cute stuff or sent links to songs we liked from YouTube, told our life stories since high school. Laura too had been married twice unhappily, that twice seems to be the norm for our “liberated” generation and eventually although she knew I was still married agreed to a “date.” A great date at a small out of the way restaurant I know in the North End where I took a woman I had a short fling with about twenty years ago. And we hit it off, hit it off like we were still fresh and starry-eyed as in high school. Naturally we went to bed together not long after that and while she was not happy (nor was I really) with our “arrangement” she “understood” what was what.”             

“And that “understood” is important because Laura was really an angel of mercy. Maybe Melinda sensed something was up, maybe she was having her own affair although she was always home when I called but Laura kept my spirits up, kept me on keel and I knew before she did, well before, that I was falling in love with her even though things looked bleak at home. And even though she was naturally very hesitant to love me back. Still we knew something was there, some strong bond which may have been there since high school. I like to think that in my mushy moments. Well, there are some tender mercies in the world because one day Melinda said she couldn’t stand the marriage anymore, wanted out, wanted her own “space” and she got it for my arm and my leg. Like I said Melinda tried to grab everything and would have if she had known about Laura but Melinda was just Melinda in trying to grab everything. Nothing new there. Laura lives in Arlington since we still are figuring out about the future but maybe we will go tomorrow and see her. Okay.”

Ralph answered back, “Okay” as they exited Jack’s and walked up the street toward Sam’s apartment and then Ralph turned his head to Sam and said, “Does your Laura have any spare ‘angels of mercy’ hanging around?” They both laughed as they walked along in silence after that.