A Quality of Light by Richard Wagamese Read Free Book Online Page A

romantic in me picks that one spring out of the forty I’ve lived to nurture, re-enter and relive. I’ve become a seasonal prodigal, returning to it as full of expectation, comfort and release as my biblical namesake. Springtime will always be the birthplace of magic and light, though it wasn’t at first that spring of ’65. With the coming of baseball, school became a burden for the first time. Ralphie and the boys were relentless in their pursuit of a higher level of play and of ridicule. John Gebhardt and I were thrown together like prisoners. For that, I suppose, I owe a world of thanks to the smirking bulk of Ralphie Wendt. Still, my inability to come to terms with a seemingly simple game wore on me.
    But frustration, like so many things in life, has an alter ego. Mine was the budding friendship I was discovering with John. We helped each other in lessons and I found that he shared a love of learning and a hunger for a deeper understanding of the things around him. He was quick and he was funny, and he hated Ralphie about as much as we both began to hate baseball.
    “Josh,” he whispered one lunch hour, leaning forward in his desk, “you can really tell that Ralphie belongs on a farm.”
    “Really?” I asked. “How?”
    “Look at how he eats.” Ralphie had this head-down, elbows-up feeding position. “He doesn’t dine … he grazes!”
    I smirked and covered my mouth with my hand, horrified at the put-down as well as the pleasure I found in it.
    “It’s okay, Kane, it’s okay,” John said. “Yuk it up. It’s good for you.”
    “No wonder he’s good at baseball then,” I blurted.
    “Why’s that?” Johnny asked.
    “He’s more at home in a field!” I said, wide-eyed with excitement.
    He laughed. “Good one. Good one. There’s hope for you yet, Josh.”
    We began to spend every moment of our school days together. Naturally, this drew the predictable response from Ralphie and his buddies about birds of a feather, wieners in the same package and shit sticking together. John bristled at the slurs but I shrugged them off, as I’d been taught to do.
    “One of these days you’re gonna run out of cheeks!” Johnny said to me.
    I’d turn in my seat and catch him looking at me every now and again, but he’d always slide into that shy lopsided grin I came to know, look back at his books, out the window or across the room to the blackboard. We came together as easily as the confluence of streams, no turmoil, no roiling backwater, merely a curlicued blending, a sifting together of the textures of the countries between us, an elegant intertwining.

    W e groaned.
    “So the tournament will take place the third week of June, followed by the biggest picnic you can imagine, with presentations to the winners and those judged Most Valuable to their teams,” Alvin Giles was saying. He’d succeeded in setting up a small baseball tournament between our Grade Five class and the ones in Teeswater and Wingham. “This is a chance to show the kind of athletes we raise in Mildmay! Everyone will play, except those excused for medical reasons.”
    The rest of the class bubbled with excitement. Johnny and I looked at each other hopelessly. It was bad enough to be forced to play in phys-ed classes in front of our classmates, but now we were to be put on display for three whole communities. We’d taken to walking the perimeter of the schoolyard at recess and lunches, gabbing about anything and everything. The taunting had died down as our lack of interest grew, and we found ourselves looking forward to the privacy of our friendship rather than the acceptance of our peers. For me, baseball was extraneous effort I’d have sooner applied to my studies, and for John, it was neolithic goonery.
    “Neo what?” I’d asked.
    “Neolithic,” he said, his eyes blazing the way they did when he was chasing down an idea. “Neolithic. The age when man invented simple tools and crude weapons. Like bats.”
    “When was