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Jack’s Passion
Bill Kinsella
Jack’s Passion
Copyright © 2019 Bill Kinsella. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Resource Publications
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019911534
paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-8299-5
hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-8300-8
ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-8301-5
Manufactured in the U.S.A. 10/11/19
For “GiGi,” Georgette Underwood Kinsella
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to acknowledge Maureen Brady for her insight and encouragement throughout the writing of this book.
The race is not to the swift,
Nor the battle to the strong,
Nor bread to the wise,
Nor riches to men of understanding,
Nor favor to men of skill;
But time and chance happen to them all,
For man also does not know his time:
Like fish taken in a cruel net,
Like birds caught in a snare,
So the sons of men are snared in an evil time,
When it falls suddenly upon them.
—Matthew 10:38
And he who does not take his cross and follow
after Me is not worthy of Me.
—Ecclesiastes 10:11–12
1
Early June, 2001
As a young man he had his whole life ahead of him but just after graduating Duke, he still hadn’t heard from the Wall Street firm most likely to bring him to New York. Jack Conroy always thought he’d end up on Wall Street. He felt that was his inheritance. It had to do with his father who worked there and with his mother who liked that his father did. And because of his competitive nature and need to continually prove himself, Jack thought he wanted to work on Wall Street. But so far the firms who’d responded to his interest encouraged him to go on and get his MBA and then reapply.
Consequently, Jack found himself forming a contingency plan; an interim solution to the problem of what to do should Wall Street pass on him this time around. The odd thing was he wasn’t that upset about it. You could even say he felt a sense of relief, as if he’d been spared or released.
He thought he might be able to work the summer at the Durham Nursery. The owner of the nursery liked him. He had worked there throughout college part time and felt confident he could again. This morning he got up with the sun and drove out to talk to Carlo Bellini.
The nursery sat in a valley some ten miles out of town. This morning the valley appeared as peaceful as heaven, bathed as it was by the soft light of the new day. The sun ascending seemed to grow larger before Jack, like a giant golden eye that watched and followed him. A spotless sky assured their communion. For him, being in the country early in the morning with the sun coming up always felt like a blessing. His eyes brightened taking in the countryside: mist clinging to poplars along the river outside of town; dew softening the hard edges of clumped grasses in an expansive field he passed by; and then, too, the luxuriance of late spring flowers that seemed to spread everywhere around him.
He knew what to expect at the nursery at this time of day. Bustling activity: flatbed trucks crawling out of huge garages, dump trucks loaded with soil, grinding their gears pulling onto the roadway, fork lifts scurrying about like giant yellow bugs, moving stacks of fertilizer. At the center of it all, directing everyone and everything, stood Carlo Bellini, a bulky, tall man, waving his arms like a traffic cop and grumbling out directives to his small army of workers. Jack exited his Jeep eager to be recognized. Always aware, the man with fingers the size of sausage waved hello. “Jacky,” Bellini said in clipped speech, his voice as resonant as a kettle drum. Jack smiled and waved and stood to the side waiting for Bellini to approach him. The big man read his expression.
“Give me a minute,” he said, one arm waving rapidly in a circular motion to get a sleepy truck moving. That finished, the stirring lot became suddenly calm and Mr. Bellini walked toward Jack. Watching him walk, Jack imagined he could feel the ground absorbing the shock of each step. When his old boss stood before him, looking like an Italian Paul Bunyan, Jack wondered if the man had ever been small.
Bellini relocated to North Carolina from Brooklyn thirty years before to open a nursery that, he was proud of saying; he’d started from seed and grown into a good business. Jack began working for him his freshmen year. They got along well immediately. Jack regarded Bellini as an unpretentious, hard-working man, who admired those qualities in his workers.
“I thought for sure you’d left for New York,” Bellini said.
“Not yet.”
“Nothing from the Street?” Bellini asked.
“I’m still waiting to hear from one firm.”
While he said he was still waiting to hear, Jack’s mien suggested he was also fairly certain what the reply would be.
The two walked together toward a large warehouse that resembled an airplane hangar. Jack was nearly as tall as Mr. Bellini but more slender although more athletically built. His broad shoulders outlined against the white linen shirt he wore suggested power at rest. He had on faded jeans and sandals with thick leather straps and his golden hair shone brilliantly in contrast to his companion’s thick crop which was as black as a crow’s wing. Bellini’s power was the power of raw nature, as if he were the marble mountain from which the beauty of Jack had been carved.
The inside of the warehouse was as long as a football field and had a cool dampness the way large warehouses can. They walked under fluorescent lights past rows of stacked planting materials: fertilizer, manure, peat. Strangely, Jack felt his muscles relax to the familiar alkaline smells of fertilizer and lime that gave way to the pungent odor of peat as he made his way down a wide, brightly lit, corridor between the floor-to-ceiling shelves that loomed like mythic giants on both sides.
Just past the shelves of manure, Bellini said something he always
