The Freedom in American Songs by Kathleen Winter

dollar a week out of his lunch money and he bought himself a Panasonic cassette tape player, into which he recorded himself singing the melody lines of all the songs Poppy had taught him. When his mother was at Bible study and his dad at the plant and Steve out playing hockey, he played his own voice back to himself and practised harmony with it. He loved this activity, and the longing he had for a friend with whom to sing did not feel quite so painful.
    He began to grow his hair a bit longer and to wonder if Xavier Boland might not be so unapproachable after all. Xavier was only one year older than Kerry, and there were friendships that crossed that boundary between grades ten and eleven: Loretta Howell and Gwen Payne, for instance, or Roderick Forestall who had won two peewee curling trophies and the boys on the grade eleven senior team.
    There was something of the beauty of America in the way Xavier Boland’s locker stood the colour of a wild rose in the otherwise grey-green corridor, and there was something joyful and carefree, like the freedom in American songs, in the very way Xavier Boland moved: not all crunched up and restricted like everyone else, but with his arms loose and long, and his legs too, so they sort of swayed a bit whenever Xavier was on his way somewhere. Kerry began experimenting to see if he too could let his limbs move free and easy like this. At first he did it on his walks home and in the hallway between his bedroom and the kitchen, and then he sneaked a swaying movement or two into his step in the corridor which passed Xavier’s locker.
    There is energy between people when they have never spoken but have noticed each other’s presence, and between Xavier Boland and Kerry this energy existed, but Kerry could not tell its exact meaning. From himself, he knew, came energy that admired, that longed for even a tiny recognition, that felt scared. Now that he had consciously given his own body echoes of the way he believed Xavier Boland walked and moved, this energy of Kerry’s felt more exposed and dangerous. He restrained it, but he could not resist lingering whenever he passed the rose locker in case Xavier should come to retrieve his chemistry book or his scientific calculator. And one Thursday Xavier did come—Kerry was on his way to Most Hated of Classes, gym class, when Xavier Boland, alone in the corridor because the bell had rung and they were both late, clicked his combination lock off and reached for a binder off his top shelf.
    Kerry suddenly needed to see if Xavier Boland had anything decorating his locker. He might have a music poster, and wouldn’t it be amazing if Kerry could know what kind of music Xavier Boland loved the most. He slowed down and looked. Incredibly, there was that sepia Jesus peering soulfully, the one everyone knows even if they are Pentecostal and not given to images of Jesus as much as to flames and doves and bare crosses with light coming off them to show how Jesus is not here any more but has risen to become the firstfruits of all creation. But the Jesus in Xavier’s locker had not yet been on the cross. He was praying to his father, his hair long and goldy-brown. He was wearing a pink robe and around him hung ruby-red glass beads, a rosary. Xavier Boland, Kerry realized, was either being sarcastic in his locker decor, or he was a practising Roman Catholic. The only thing Kerry knew about Catholics was that they could get away with anything. They could sin to their hearts’ content and then go confess it to the intermediary, the priest. Pentecostals had no intermediary but the Holy Spirit who did not, Kerry’s mother said, oppress and terrify the people like Catholic priests did. But still, Kerry knew, before becoming terrified the Catholics could do what they wanted. They could have babies as his cousin Poppy had done and they could parade those babies around in their own homes and even in their church, and all would be forgiven.