A Far Piece to Canaan by Sam Halpern

Author:Sam Halpern [Halpern, Sam]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780062233165
Amazon: 0062233165
Barnesnoble: 0062233165
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 2013-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

29

I awoke late the next morning and spent an hour in bed reading a novel that had won the Man Booker Prize. It was typically British, meaning that it moved at the speed of a crippled snail. Heresy, I know, for a professor of comparative English literature.

After breakfast I started driving. I had no plans, but apparently my subconscious did, because when I reached the entrance to the old Shackelford place, I stopped. What sixty years before had been a rutted lane ending at a farmhouse in need of paint, was now a two-hundred-foot blacktop driveway to an antebellum-style mansion. This was sacred ground. Rosemary Shackelford, the first woman I ever loved, lived where that elegant home now stood.

Until this moment I had never really considered the move from Kentucky to Indiana as a watershed event in my life. Once in Indiana, however, I found myself excluded from the mainstream community, especially when it came to girls. I had exactly two dates in high school. The girl’s name was Kendra and I had just gotten my driver’s license. We had fun, but when I asked her for a third date, she refused and said her father didn’t think it was right for her to go out with a boy who wasn’t Christian. That was a moment of real pain. Since I wasn’t a good athlete and was considered a hillbilly, I was pretty much at a loss for male companionship as well. I retreated into our farm and into reading, which I came to love because books afforded me a form of friendship and gave free rein to my imagination. During my senior year, one of my teachers insisted that I apply for a scholarship to an elite New England liberal arts college known as Collingwirth. How I got accepted is still a mystery to me.

My luck with girls was no better in college than in Indiana. Collingwirth was populated by the children of the rich. There were five Jewish kids there, all rich except me. And all male. I didn’t have a date in two years and eventually quit trying. Then a miracle happened.

Cheryl Marie Smith was a waitress at Tulley’s, my college town’s least favorite coffee shop. Tulley’s was perfect for me because it was devoid of Collingwirth students, whom I detested. It had four tables, twelve red plastic counter stools, two waitresses, one cook, and few customers. Cheryl was blonde, cute, divorced, a part-time student at a local college, and about twenty-three. I frequented the coffee shop as often as possible, sat at the counter chatting with her and trying to work up the nerve to ask her out on a date. One day she asked if I had seen the movie at the town’s only theater. I hadn’t, and she said, “If you’re free tonight, let’s go.” I had three papers due in two days. “Not doing a thing,” I answered, and a few hours later I indulged in the first non-self-administered sexual experience of my life.

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