Point Pleasant (17 page)

Ben thought back to his history classes in high school; he had written a two-page paper on the Battle of Point Pleasant. He could remember that the battle lasted a day, was especially bloody, and prevented the British militia from forming an allegiance with the Native Americans; this was significant, but Ben could not remember why. He knew that the tribe of Native Americans involved had been the Shawnee, but he was sure that the Mingo tribe had something to do with Point Pleasant’s history as well.

The dusty information kicking around in his head from high school history lessons was probably irrelevant, though. The Battle of Point Pleasant had taken place at the convergence of the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers. A nearby plot of land boasted an obelisk monument to commemorate the event. From the area, there was a clear vantage point over New Silver Bridge. This meant that the site was miles away from the old TNT factory and the forest that lined River Bend Road. It might as well have been in Ohio given the bridge. Still, Ben scribbled several pages of notes for the library visit he had planned for the rest of his morning.

He wondered if Charlie Warren was still alive and living in Point Pleasant. Warren had been the history teacher at Point Pleasant High. Ben recalled that the older man had a keen, personal interest in the history of the town and its role in the Revolution. After Ben got some preliminary research out of the way, he thought it would probably be a good idea to talk to Warren if possible.

The Mason County Library was large and bore a surprisingly impressive collection. The library and Town Hall connected with a shared basement where historic records and documents were kept and preserved. Much like the Sheriff’s Department, the library had been refurbished to a modern standard with a heavy use of glass and steel, but its general architecture had obviously been modeled to mimic the statuesque facade of Town Hall.

Ben spent a few hours upstairs where he read through stacks of history books relating to Point Pleasant, including the battle of 1774. The building was virtually empty considering most children were in school; Ben supposed libraries were never exactly a popular destination anyway.

He grabbed the final book he had selected and flipped through its pages, but his eyes glazed over while he read. He would need to visit the records soon, especially as he had used about twenty pages for scribbled notes on the general history of the town.

He was thankful for the distraction, boring though it was. On the drive into town, his unease grew heavy and tense. Something felt
off
about Point Pleasant, but maybe that was just
Ben.
Even though he had only been back for two days, he already felt like his homecoming had turned him inside out like a soiled shirt thrown into a washing machine.

Kate was right when she said that Ben should not let Andrew dictate his life. Andrew’s disappointment in his son’s choices had been a point of contention between the two of them ever since Ben had called Andrew from Boston a few months after he first left Point Pleasant and told his father he would not be coming home, not any time soon.

“Did you find a job?” Andrew had asked. The groan he released when Ben revealed that he was bartending at a local dive called Flannery’s to supplement his savings from the
Gazette
had been just so typically
Andrew
that Ben had rolled his eyes and joked that he could make a hell of an Old Fashioned. Andrew had not laughed.

Life in Boston had not been so much a learning curve as it had been an awkward scramble up a perpendicular wall made of slippery porcelain. Every time Ben thought he was close to the top, he would lose his footing and slide back to where he started, grappling at the surfaces as he went. The heavy accent and peculiar phrasings often left him feeling like he had crash-landed on another planet. Kate had been hospitable, but her study sessions on criminal law often reinforced Ben’s own conception of his status as Loser Extraordinaire.

Ben was searching for something meaningful, he just had no idea what that was during his first few months in Boston. He had rented his own place after a month of setting up camp on Kate’s sofa. His studio apartment had been just shy of a matchbox, but Ben never minded its narrow walls. The rent was cheap, and he had worked extra shifts to fund what he had envisioned would be his
Travels with Charley-
esque journey of self discovery.

The anonymity of the road was compelling. He could be anyone anywhere and then move along to the next town. He would not be Ben Wisehart, the despondent, disenchanted boy from Point Pleasant who had no solid idea about what he wanted out of life,
oh well
; the boy who had sidestepped college because of a job offer at a small town paper,
oh well
; the boy who had no career prospects and no desire to settle into a nine-to-five and wear a tie to work,
oh well
; the boy who had been crushed under the weight of rejection,
oh well
; the boy who still had nightmares about his mother’s dead body on the kitchen floor and would sometimes dream of her opening her eyes to tell him it was okay to drive until he found
it
.
Oh well.

Ben never
really
embarked on his epic road-based adventure. The closest he got to his idea of the freedom of the road came in the form of night drives to Concord or Cambridge. Between bar shifts and writing, Ben almost never left Boston except to occasionally visit Kate in New York. After she moved, Boston was never quite the same, but Ben lingered because the casual familiarity of the city was less daunting than the idea of starting over again. Boston fit Ben like an old winter coat that was a size or so too large, but it was easier to wear for its warmth than suffer the cold.

At some point, though, Ben found
it
, just as the dream version of his mother had often assured him he would.
It
was writing about his flurries of strange ideas and the syncopated memories he connected with them.
It
was cheaper than the therapy he probably should have engaged in before he disappeared from the stability of everything he had once known and loved.
It
made him happy when nothing else—not the night drives, the late shifts, or the casual encounters with patrons from Flannery’s—made him feel content, important, or purposeful.

Five years earlier, long after Ben had been able to give up his job at the bar, he had finally ventured from the stale safety of the East coast. Elliot Morris, Ben’s literary agent, had booked signings in ten different cities for Preston James’ first official press circuit. Ben had insisted on driving.

He had hated every stop. The hotels were all full of the same pre-packaged individual soaps, and the local diners all served the same greasy burgers. Ben would long for the comfort of his record collection as he flipped through pay-per-view and slept in beds that were too soft and perfectly made for his liking.

He tried to be adventurous on his own time. After a visit to New York City to check out Kate’s new apartment, Ben had driven upstate to Kerhonkson specifically to see the World’s Largest Garden Gnome.

At over thirteen feet tall, Gnome Chomsky had been impressive in a surreal
did-I-actually-drive-all-that-way-for-this?
kind of way. While other sightseers took pictures of one another beside the monstrous lawn ornament, Ben regretted the gasoline he had burned to make the trip. What was the use of visiting the World’s Largest
anything
if there was no one there to laugh at the spectacle with you?

Gnome had been dethroned from his place as the Guinness World Record holder the summer before Ben’s return to Point Pleasant. Ben had seen an article online about how a competing gnome in Iowa had been constructed to tower at an intimidating fifteen feet, and he could not help but feel a tug of sympathy for old Gnome. Ben knew it stung to feel like second best.

He had spent his years away from Point Pleasant trying to figure out who he was, what he wanted to do, and how he wanted to live. These years had isolated him from his father, but they were years that had been hard earned nonetheless. In Ben’s estimation, it was not too much to ask for Andrew to respect the life that Ben had finally settled into, was happy with, and offered him a decent income. His five novels had grossed enough to allow him to live comfortably, and the advances from his publishing house afforded him the time to continue with more writing.

Ben knew he was lucky; many writers barely earned enough to buy a bottle of nice wine with the yearly revenue checks they received from publishers who struggled to sell a few thousand copies of their books. Ben might not have written the next American classic, and he probably never would, but he made an honest living. It did not involve hard labor, or long days pent up in an office, a courthouse, or an operating room, but it was enough for him.

It was not enough for Andrew, who had once very proudly proclaimed that he had yet to read any of his son’s books because he simply did not have the time. “Maybe when I’m retired,” he had said. “When I don’t have to work for my living anymore, Benji.” Andrew was due to retire next summer, but Ben doubted his books would be high on his father’s list of priorities even then.

Somehow, Ben still cared what his father thought. He cared enough to fall into the exercise in futility that had helped land him in jail for an afternoon.

Ben sighed to himself as he idly turned a page of the book in his hands. He should have stood firmer with Andrew on the issue. He should have stood up for himself. But there had always been something about speaking with his father that made a part of Ben, even if it was only a small part, feel like the little boy who had raced through darkened woods to escape a winged beast. Ben wondered if that was because that part of him felt guilty, perhaps even cowardly, for leaving the way he did when he was twenty years old.

If that was the case, Ben knew it was foolish. He could not feel guilty for more than the distance it had created. He could not regret leaving Point Pleasant. He had not at the time, and he would not now. Leaving had led Ben to his current life and allowed him to grow up on his own terms.

But one night with Nicholas made Ben question his contentment with his choice to stay gone.

Ben was lonely. He had known it since his last sexual encounter with Peter. As the other man moved atop him and whispered words that should have delighted Ben, he felt nothing save for bitter antipathy.

Peter was simply the freshest gallon of milk on the shelf of Ben’s stunted relationships. Ben knew they were there, he knew all it would take was for him to reach out and take hold of one, but he never did. He liked his coffee black, after all. He could take home as many new gallons as he wanted, but he knew they would do little more than sit and spoil in the door of his fridge. Maybe he was just lactose intolerant.

Ben had loved Nicholas. There had been a period of denial after he left Point Pleasant in which Ben told himself that
maybe
he did not love his best friend. Maybe he had simply created an illusion within himself so that he could have a fixed point to reference when he attempted to understand his burgeoning sexual identity and the fact that it did not exclusively include an attraction to women. This was bullshit, of course. The memory of the bitter sting in his heart as he stood in his front yard the night that Nicholas walked away proved that it was bullshit. Yes, Ben had loved Nicholas.

It had taken him years to get over that love, to lock it away deep in his chest, and to pretend it had never existed. Every passing fling, every month-long affair, every whispered word of affection from someone who was
not
Nicholas had reminded Ben of that love, though. Ben’s own words echoed in his head with each empty relationship he blew through like a hurricane:
You should be so happy that you can’t stop smiling for days.

Ben never felt happy. And he certainly never felt happy enough to smile for days on end with anyone other than the boy with blue eyes back in Point Pleasant. The boy who told Ben, ‘
I don’t think of you like that
.’ The boy who said, ‘
And I never will
.’ The boy who grew into a very forward man who had apparently changed his mind about the way he thought of Ben Wisehart.

Not for the first time that morning, Ben grinned to himself. The expression faded as he thought of how removed from the situation he felt now. Nicholas’ words had been a shock, perhaps even more than the first kiss. Ben did not regret his years away from Point Pleasant. But what would have happened if he had returned sooner? Would Nicholas have been as forward with his feelings as he had been the previous night?

Nicholas’ approach had been no-nonsense; it was as if he had decided that enough time had lapsed and it was better to act now than regret later. Ben admired the sense of assuredness that Nicholas projected, but he pondered over what hid beneath the carefully pressed uniform and weighty duty belt.

Had Nicholas spent as much time thinking about Ben as Ben had spent thinking about Nicholas? Ben held his feelings for his old friend—ancient though they were—as a gold standard for what he understood as the holy-shit-
this
-is-what-
that
-feels-like sensation of love. Was it possible that Nicholas had done the same?

Ben wondered if Nicholas had been with a lot of women and how many of them he had shared his bed with. Had Nicholas shared that bed with other men as well? Nicholas had asked ‘
Since when are you gay?
’ that night in the yard. Ben pondered Nicholas’ preferences. Was he gay? Bi? Or was his attraction to Ben an anomaly? Was Ben the sole male blip on Nicholas’ potentially long line of relationships with women?

These were probably questions to ask, but he was not in a rush to find out about the women—or men—who had known the boy of his adolescent dreams more intimately than Ben.
Yet, at least.

Time
had
passed. Ben had been gone a long time. He had an idea of Nicholas from their youth, an idea that he kept close to his heart, but he was aware that the idea itself had become skewed over time. It had become a gold standard, yes, but standards were hard to live up to.