A Way With Words - Chapter 4
Do it, Ennis. Two weeks after Joe returned to Washington, on a Saturday afternoon before July 4th, Ennis walked from the Government Center subway stop, under the Central Artery overpass and down Hanover Street through the North End toward the harbor. An older woman wearing dark trousers, a Hawaiian shirt and a long, gray ponytail met him at the entrance to the Coast Guard station. Seeing her, he was glad he had thought to remove his earring and dressed neutrally in blue jeans and a plain, white button-down shirt, because in his usual garb they would have made a strange pair. He spared a thought for his family, greeting each other with hugs and firing up the grill somewhere in Oklahoma, and was surprised to feel a tiny tug of regret.
They entered the main building and approached the guard manning an imposing, circular desk. When Carolyn explained their mission he phoned over to another building, where another guard would meet them and escort them upstairs. As they walked between the buildings, she explained they would be visiting a group of three Iranians. They had refused to fight in the war with Iraq; two had been tortured, a third was Kurdish, which brought its own set of problems. One spoke English well, one less, another not at all. Each had fled the country and attemped to enter the United States through Boston on false passports.
Carolyn had brought news magazines, paper and stamped envelopes, soap, dried dates, figs, apricots. Over time, the group of six middle-aged and older Friends who had begun the visits had been reduced to four and they divided the nationalities among themselves. After the two of them had been led upstairs in the second building, Carolyn’s bag was searched while they presented IDs and wrote down their names and addresses and the names of the men they were to there to visit. Then they were directed to a plain, fluorescent-lit room furnished with worn formica top tables and metal folding chairs. The guard surveyed the room through a large window.
When he’d first spoken to her on the phone the previous week, Carolyn had explained to Ennis that an Episcopal priest without a parish had convinced the director to let her act as the detention center chaplain. She conducted a service there on Sundays for any detainees who wished to attend, and Reverend Beers passed the names of new asylum seekers to the Quaker group. Most of the eighty detainees were resident aliens with criminal charges, mainly South Americans, who had finished a prison sentence in the US and were about to be deported. The rest, about fifteen men from the Middle East and South Asia, had entered the country illegally, been caught and subsequently filed asylum applications.
Ennis was nervous about meeting men from Iran. The word recalled images of blindfolded hostages and screaming, bearded Muslims that had dominated the news in his last year of high school. So when the three men shuffled in wearing slippers and mustard yellow jump suits, he was shocked. They were docile and polite, but also clearly startled to see a friendly young face. Carolyn introduced Ennis but didn’t say he was there as a journalist. She asked about the progress of their cases, which was slow. They had been in detention for several months and were sick of being in limbo, surrounded by people who didn’t understand them. And, Ennis sensed by their interaction, by compatriots with whom they had only nationality in common. He felt a sudden, surprising empathy with them.
In early August he made another visit, this time with a middle-aged woman named Gail who had taken charge of the Afghans. They wouldn’t have as much trouble winning asylum in the US because of the Russian invasion of their country, she explained. The two young men they met were educated and from well-off families. Even Ennis could tell that a judge would be disposed to letting them stay in the country.
As he and Gail were ending their visit and saying goodbye to the men, Ennis saw a lone woman greet the guard and sign the log book. She was short and slight, in her mid-forties with a pleasant face but a determined expression.
“That’s Reverend Beers,” Gail murmured. “She says she welcomes our support but I think she really only tolerates us.”
From the other side of the glass, the priest noticed Ennis and eyed him curiously.
“Hello, Gail,” Rev. Beers greeted the other woman when she entered the room. “I see you have a new visitor in your group.” She gave him a searching look.
“This is Ennis Del Mar,” Gail replied neutrally. He offered his hand and the priest shook it perfunctorily.
“You explained the rules to him, Gail?”
“I believe Carolyn did, Alma.”
“I have a good relationship with the director so I’m able to win favors for some detainees,” she said to Ennis. “Sometimes he’ll release them early, before the paperwork is complete, if they’ve had a favorable judgement. If there are any… complications with the visitors, it gets back to him and I have to smooth things over.”
Ennis nodded, wondering about the complications and why her expression as she stared at him was almost wistful.
“We’re just leaving. Goodbye Alma, have a good holiday,” Gail said, turning away.
“Uh, you don’t seem to be that friendly with her, for someone on the same side,” Ennis remarked once they were outside.
“Reverend Beers doesn’t know what to make of us. The Episcopal church is real hierarchical and the Society of Friends is the complete opposite. She’d be more comfortable with us if she knew there was a leader to complain to.”
That night he added some notes to the ones he’d written after the visit to the Iranians, but he didn’t feel inspired by this subject. Still, Jay was pleased and his co-workers were interested in what he was doing, which made him a bit nervous - he wasn’t used to discussing his personal life at work. He would go one more time.
Chapter 4b
“So glad you could come to Lawrence for this interview, Ennis. I know it's a long drive from out where you are, but it's easier than going all the way to Boston, isn't it? I'll just clear these books away so you can sit. My office here is bigger than the one I had at BU but it's just as cluttered.
“I probably shouldn't tell you this, but apparently the admissions committee was very impressed with your essay. Asking applicants to write about a significant life experience is pretty standard but they thought yours was awfully original. Very shrewd of you to draw on that story. You obviously guessed that none of them up there have ever been within two states of Kansas so of course everything they know about it is from the movie. You know, I've been here for four years and I've never seen a twister but I never mention that to my friends back east. And to think your mother's name really is Dorothy. Have your parents made a full recovery? I'm relieved to hear it. Your brother and sister were real troopers. You're lucky to have a family like that.
“I'm not surprised you're interested in the College of Communication. You certainly have a way with words. Tell me more about what you want to major in.”
When I told my parents in the fall of my senior year that I wanted to go to college in Boston instead of KU, they were shocked. My father wanted to know where I thought they'd find six thousand dollars a year to pay for it but it was the distance that distressed my mother. Lawrence was a five hour drive -- wasn't that far enough away for me? What was the name of this college in Boston, anyway?
I told them that if you counted every single school there were over forty colleges around Boston but the only one I was interested in was Boston University. Its College of Communication, specifically.
"You want to study what?"
"Uh, mass communication is the major, I'm thinking."
"You?"
Naturally I was indignant at their skepticism. But isn't that the way of teenagers? When Junior said he wanted to be a cop, didn't he get mad when I laughed?
But I was determined. I'd done well on the SATs and my grades were good. At night in bed I flipped through the catalog studying the pictures of the campus, which was right in the middle of the city. I stared for hours at the pictures, returning again and again to the photo of the Charles River, imagining myself on one of the little sailboats. I spent several weeks working on my essay, and rounded up teacher references. I decided to request early decision, so I would know my fate as soon as possible.
Two weeks after I posted the application, I had a call from an English professor at the University of Kansas. I had written that I wasn't able to travel to Boston for an interview. He had taught at BU for several years so they'd asked him to conduct it if I could get to Lawrence.
So one day in early November my parents let me use the truck to make the 5-hour trip to the eastern border of the state. The interview seemed to go well. Afterwards, I wandered around the campus, trying to imagine myself there because it was where I would wind up if BU rejected me.
At the side entrance of the Student Union I noticed a sign: KJHK. I went in and found myself alone in a small reception area. On a bulletin board were various notices and, to one side, snapshots of the student DJs for that semester. Near them, arranged in a column, were formal group shots of the DJs for each of the previous ten years with their names typed on a slip of paper tacked underneath the picture. I studied the group from 1978/79, looking for Jack; or rather, a student who resembled the image of him I'd formed in my mind. None of them matched it, and none of them was named Jack. Maybe he hadn't been there for the photo session.
"Hi! Are you here to audition for a slot?" A girl stood in the doorway leading to the studio.
"No, just... visiting the campus. I... used to listen to Jack Tornado's show last year."
She walked over and looked at the picture. "That was Chris Perkins," she said, pointing to one of the students. "His show was pretty popular, considering when it was on."
But I barely heard her; the guy she'd pointed to looked nothing at all like my fantasy. Red spiky hair, wire rim glasses perched above a long, sharp nose that swerved to the left. He was grinning and his teeth were crooked. He was even skinnier than me.
"His name wasn't Jack, then," I mumbled. I felt suddenly bereft; my friend hadn't just flown away, he'd vanished completely.
"No, that was just his handle. Doesn't look as dashing as that, does he?" she laughed. "He was a nice guy, though. Someone used to call him up during every show last spring and tie up the request line so nobody could get through. He said it was his girlfriend. We didn't have the heart to tell him to cut her off because I think she was the only one he'd ever had. Hey, are you okay?"
On the long dark drive home I tried to will my teenage heart into carelessness. After all, hadn't I lied about my family on my application? But then, Chris Perkins had told me no lies. Though he'd made up a new name for himself, his voice and his concern for me were real. Maybe we would have been friends if we'd met, but only if we'd been thrown together alone on a desert island because I avoided other misfits. I wanted to belong.
What I didn't know then, was that Jack Tornado had set the pattern for the next ten years of my life.
How Ennis imagined Jack Tornado:
This video was taken on I-70 in western Kansas not that far from where Ennis' family lives.
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