Serpents and Doves
Author: G. Lloyd Helm
ISBN 978-1-62420-275-9
Excerpt Heat Level: 1
Book Heat Level:
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
REVIEW:
Reviewed
by Joseph Allen
Mr.
Helm’s touching coming-of-age tale starts as quietly as a light breeze as he
introduces Stephen Mitchell, who has just graduated from high school at a
private Christian academy in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles. We know right away that Steve’s hormones are
raging, and that he is very easily distracted from anything by the scent of a
girl. Charmingly told, by the way,
enough to make a grown man smile in remembrance.
Steve is
bound for a school in Tennessee that is run by a Protestant group that seems
pretty mainstream, but in spite of the southern flavor and the biblical bent of
the institution, this is a school and a faculty that are determined on all
kinds of equality. The year is 1967 and
Steve’s roommate is a black student whose father is a Protestant minister.
Steve
has an epic freshman year. His heart is broken by a Lilith-like character, he
is beaten up by a rogue cop and then by the new boyfriend of his would-be
love. He is on academic probation by
Christmas, manages to start smoking cigarettes and drinks enough bourbon to
experience his first awful hangover.
Never gets a haircut, and is aware of his body smells and his crotch
constantly. Boys will be boys.
He’s not
like me particularly, but he is the archetype of every kid who goes off to
college without a red carpet being rolled out in front of him. I cannot tell you how many times I had tears
in my eyes. All the issues of the 1960s
are built into this remarkable story – Vietnam, Arabs v Israelis, KKK v civil
rights marchers, the sexual revolution, closeted gays suffering from sin
complexes. Even Simon and Garfunkel.
And the
most remarkable part is that it is not the least pretentious, in spite of
telling a story of a very complicated and upsetting time with elegance and elan. I withheld a half star in my rating because I
think a couple of the arms of the plot were resolved more harshly than
necessary, and seemed unduly judgmental, which I do not think would reflect Mr.
Helm’s personal feelings.
TAGLINE
Stephen Mitchell did not know what he was
getting into at a small church college in Tennessee. Sex, protest, friendship,
and Civil rights.
BLURB
The
title “Serpents and Doves” comes from the warning Jesus gave to his disciples
as he sent them out to preach the gospel, knowing the dangers they were going
into. He said “Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” Stephen Mitchell
learns first-hand what that warning means when he goes to a Tennessee church
college in the midst of the turbulent sixties. He learns about friendship, war,
protest, the sexual revolution, and civil rights.
EXCERPT
The bunk creaked and groaned as Stephen
Mitchell rolled onto his back, but he hardly heard the sound. Years of sleeping
on the upper bunk with his younger brother Mike on the lower bunk made him
immune to the noises of the California night. Mike's soft breathing, the moans
from the bedstead, the musical chirring of the crickets in the ivy and the calm
hum of the breeze were all the mixture of silence to him.
Stephen didn't usually have trouble
falling asleep, but this was a special night, the night before the day he had
been thirsting for and dreading his whole senior year of high school, and
especially this past summer. College, but not just a trip over to Valley State
or even to UCLA to continue school, to continue life as it had always been with
Mother, Father, Grandmother, Brother, and friends. College was far away in
Tennessee. Two thousand miles, give or take a few, and that whole journey began
tomorrow at seven minutes after ten AM. Stephen pushed a leg out from under the
covers. His feet hung over the end of the bed. They had been hanging over that
way since he was fourteen. He'd gained a few inches since he first noticed he
was too long for the bunk, but they had crept up on him in such a way they made
no difference. He had been long and skinny since he could remember. A kid named
Dennis Conover had called him 'Stork' on the first day of first grade and the
name stuck. It bothered him a lot at first. He hoped to lose it when he transferred
from public school to Hardtwick Christian Academy in sixth grade, but he
couldn't shed the name even then. His new classmates looked him over like he
was some strange animal, and Lance Stanley, the class wise guy, said, "He
looks like a potato with pencils stuck in for legs."
"Mr. Potato Head, only walking,"
Joey Cushing, Stanley's best friend agreed.
"Betcha he stands on one leg when he
sleeps like one of those pink birds at the zoo," Stanley said.
Stephen was almost mad enough to fight,
but he bit back the urge. Fighting on his first day would get him sent right
back to public school and that was something he didn't even want to consider.
He hated that place much more passionately than he wanted to mash Lance
Stanley's slightly hooked nose all over his smirking face.
"They are called flamingos,"
Stephen began with a light contempt in his voice. He'd used this tactic before—a sort of verbal
jujitsu. See where the other guy is going and give him a strong pull in that
direction. "I'm no flamingo, I'm a stork. Storks build big nests in
chimneys. Dutch people think they are good luck." He ran his eyes up and
down Stanley's form and, with a good deal more contempt than before said,
"You probably think they bring babies," then turned back to the book
which was open on his desk.
Stanley didn't quite know how to cope with
this kind of verbal jiggery-pokery. He thought maybe he had been insulted, but
he wasn't sure and he didn't have time to come up with a riposte because Mrs.
Hudson, the steely eyed, steely haired teacher, stepped into the room.
Stephen was pleased with having shut
Stanley's mouth but the outcome of it wasn't much to his liking. He wound up
with the nick-name he had hoped to leave behind. Consequences. There were
always consequences, he told himself as he lay awake. He closed his eyes, tried
to force sleep to come, but he found himself staring at the reddish haze inside
his eyelids. That was dull. At least with eyes open there were less dull
shadowy lines in the ceiling and walls.
He reached into his underwear and
scratched his groin. The itch went away but Stephen felt a thickening in his
loins. Blood was trickling into him, making him harden. He hadn't wanted that
to happen, but there was hardly any way he could touch himself anymore without
the stirrings. Sometimes when he went to pee the very act of opening his fly
and taking himself out to do what must be done caused his penis to harden.
It embarrassed and shamed him, though he
mostly covered it well. There was a knot of guiltiness about it that he hated,
but that was with him almost constantly. It intensified when he tried to ignore
it and the desire to satisfy that hunger was almost unbearable. It wasn't so
much the act of stroking and fondling himself that had guilt with it as it was the
pictures, like movies, which unreeled behind his eyes as he did it. Naked girls
who wanted him, who touched him, who offered themselves to him. Sometimes they
were blank-faced strangers who conformed to the idea of voluptuousness he had
formed. "Dirty Magazine" women with large breasts and legs coyly
closed. There was never any hint of pubic triangle hair in those pictures. Some
artist with an airbrush erased any such hint of humanity from them. Other times
his fantasies were more specific. Girls from school whom he slowly undressed
before making savage thrusting love to them. In ways these girls were like the
others. Somehow he could never picture the reality of what a female human
looked like between her legs. A mental airbrush wiped out the detailing.
This time Stephen's mental movie was
Sherry Kinert. She was a junior when Stephen was a senior. She was pretty, but
not beautiful. Her long brown hair hung fetchingly down before her breast all
the time. He had taken her out to a movie a couple of weeks before.
The date came about rather strangely.
During all the summers since Stephen was fourteen he had worked for the school
he attended during the winter. Hardtwick Christian Academy was constantly
building on land acquired through gifts. It was being built by those most
concerned with it, the students and their parents. Stephen started working by
donating his labor. After a month of coming in every day five days a week,
Harry Elton, the school supervisor, hired him at below minimum wage.
This summer was different from all the
previous summers. This summer, for the first time, a girl was hired on. Sherry
Kinert. Stephen found himself working with her, painting the inside of new
classrooms. They talked as they worked and after hours of painting and talking
they began to talk very intimately. Stephen found himself admitting to his
desires and fantasies and hearing Sherry's admissions. Her admissions brought
the question, "What would you do if a guy tried to put his hand down your
pants, Sherry?" The question caused his loins to thicken, but he didn't
even try to hide the growing lump in his faded, paint-spattered jeans.
"What do you mean, Steve?" she
asked, not put off by the question and apparently not noticing the rising in
his groin.
"I mean, would you let him?"
Stephen asked. His mouth was dry and there was a burning at the back of his
throat.
Sherry stroked paint on the wall for a
moment then said, "It would depend on the guy. If I liked him a lot and
was pretty sure he wasn't going to hurt me or go telling his
friends—maybe."
She looked over at him and the serious
consideration she had given the question showed in her clear golden eyes. She
didn't give any other indication, neither a "come along" nor a
"hold it buster," just the thoughtful, considering look.
They stopped painting for a moment and
stared at each other, embarrassed to have been so frank. Both blushed under the
speckles of light green paint on their faces, then went back to brushing paint
on the wall with a little more vigor than a few moments before. They painted
quietly for the rest of the afternoon, only speaking in short non-committal
sentences.
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