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Wes Boyd’s Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
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Wes Boyd’s Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
After the introductions, people broke up into smaller groups, some standing around, some sitting in lounge chairs scattered around the yard. Beers were opened and sipped at; although a few of the members of the party were over the legal age, most weren’t, but nobody made a fuss about it. Scott didn’t plan on doing a lot of drinking at this party; there were only six cans of beer in the picnic cooler, and even if he wound up drinking the majority of them, that would be enough. Soon enough, he and Sonja were sitting on a wide wooden lawn chair, snuggled up to each other closely, each with an open can in their hands. “Think she got the message?” Sonja whispered with a smirk.
“I think so,” Scott whispered back. “We’re just going to have to make sure she keeps getting it, though.”
“My pleasure,” she grinned, and spoke up a little. “Seems like a pretty good group.”
“Well, yeah,” Scott agreed, now in a normal tone of voice. “We’re missing a few people, but like we were talking earlier, we’re probably going to be missing more of them as time goes on. Except for Aaron, and Andy a little, most of my best friends aren’t here. People are getting their own lives and leaving this place behind.”
“Boy, that’s the truth,” Dean said. Scott had had his attention so much on Sonja he hadn’t noticed that Dean and Joyce were plopped down in folding lawn chairs close by, facing them. “The place has really emptied out. I figured on some of the old buds being back in town this summer, and it just ain’t happening. Even the ones I know are still around I don’t often see very often.”
“I suppose that’s the way things have to work,” Scott sighed. “I mean, there’s some I can understand why they’re not around anymore, and others, well, you just don’t know.”
“Emily knows as much as anyone does,” Aaron told him, “and from what I hear from her when I stop in at the Spee-D-Mart, she’s lost track of a lot of them, too. Sonja, Emily was the class president, and she’s kind of taken it on herself to try to keep track of as many of the kids as she can, but it’s not easy. I mean, every now and then I hear some little something, and when I do I pass it along to her.”
“I suppose that’s the good part of being in a small school,” Sonja said. “I went to a huge high school, there were almost a thousand kids in our graduating class, and I hardly ever see anyone I knew anymore. Of course, I hardly ever saw anyone I knew out and around when I was still in school, either. I really doubt there’s anyone from the class trying to keep track of us. Or, if there is, I haven’t heard about it.”
“Yeah, that’s one thing,” Scott agreed. “Still, it’s tough to have been good buddies with someone all the way through school, and then to have them just disappear on you. I mean, Pat McDonald, for instance. I knew he planned on joining the Army when he got out of high school, and I guess he did, but I don’t know anything more about it than that.”
“He did,” Dean nodded. “I mean, he was gone like a month after we graduated. He was back later that fall, after he went through boot camp, but as far as I know he ain’t been back since.”
“That’s about all I know, too,” Emily said, coming from out of nowhere to join the conversation. “I’ve got an address I got from his mom, but that’s all.”
“Let me get that from you sometime,” Dean replied. “I’m not much on writing letters, but maybe I ought to drop him a card sometime.”
“Well, if you find out anything, let me know,” Emily smiled.
“How about Dave Patterson?” Dean asked. “We used to pal around some, and I ain’t heard nothing out of him in a couple years. He was planning to go to college out east somewhere, and that’s all I know.”
“He did,” Emily smiled. “Columbia, in New York City. I see his mom in the Spee-D-Mart pretty often. He’s got a girlfriend from, oh, Connecticut or Massachusetts or someplace like that, and they’re both working some kind of intern jobs for the summer in New York. He’s another one I doubt we’ll see back here very often. As far as I know, he’s not planning on being back here at all this summer. He’s left us behind, that’s for sure.”
“‘How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?’” Scott grinned. “I don’t know how much I’d like living in New York, but it sure has to be pretty different than living here.”
“According to his mom, Dave seems to like it,” Emily said, grabbing a seat in an empty lawn chair. Kayla came toddling over to her, and Emily scooped the little girl up in her arms and sat her on her lap. “I mean, I don’t think I’d like to live in New York, because I’m sure it has to be a lot more hectic than living in Bradford.”
“Me, either,” Dean agreed. “I’d think driving a truck through a place like that would just about drive me nuts.”
“You doing a lot of truck driving?” Scott asked.
“Oh, yeah, quite a bit,” Dean said. “I’ve mostly been team driving with my brother to get some experience so financing a rig of my own will be a little easier. Probably this fall I’ll have it, and we’ve been told General will keep us about as busy as we want to be. We’ve been making a run every week or two out to LA and back on top of some shorter stuff, so it keeps us pretty busy. Hate bein’ away from Joyce that much, but that’s kinda how it’s gotta be to make the bucks. Gonna be on the road again tomorrow, we got a call at seven out at General. Just over to Cleveland and back, though.”
“I wish he was around more,” Joyce added in a squeaky voice, “but my dad is a trucker, so I know what it’s like. We’re kind of hoping when Dean gets his own rig he’ll be around a little more.”
“Probably not a whole hell of a lot more,” Dean shrugged. “Gonna have to pay for that thing, so I’ll still be on the road a whole lot.”
“I’m thinking I may get a CDL so I can go with him,” Joyce said. “It might make life a little easier for a while.”
“That might make an interesting life, at least till you have kids,” Sonja observed.
“Yeah, there is that,” Dean agreed. “Oh, well, it’s a life and I guess I can’t complain. Least I get to see something a little different, even if it’s the same four-lanes over and over again.”
“You guys see John Engler very often?” Scott asked. He’d heard a little about John, but not much other than the fact he was living in Detroit with Mandy Paxton.
“A little,” Emily said. “He gets down here, oh, once a month, maybe not that often. It’s not like last summer when he was here all the time. This summer he’s working for some ambulance service up around Detroit somewhere. His dad told me once he sees more gunshot wounds in a week than his dad has seen in over twenty years as an EMT.”
“Up around Detroit, not a surprise,” Scott shook his head. “I thought he was going to Eastern.”
“He did, for one year,” Emily reported. “Then he transferred to Wayne State last fall, and he ran into Mandy there.” She shook her head; Scott knew about as well as Emily did that John and Vicky had been going at it hot and heavy last summer, but it had come to an end when they went back to college. “It wasn’t the first thing when they got back to campus, but along in the fall sometime they ran into each other on campus and just about fell into each other’s arms.”
Scott was sure Emily was being nice about it. The story he’d heard elsewhere was that it was more of a case of John and Mandy falling into bed with each other, which wouldn’t be a surprise, knowing John. He was the class horndog if there ever was such a thing. That probably had something to do with why Vicky was apparently feeling frustrated.
“I’m a little surprised Jennlynn isn’t back this summer,” Andy joined the conversation. Scott hadn’t noticed him joining the group, but he was there, along with Diane. “She was going to Caltech, if I remember correctly. Did she spend the summer out in LA?
“That’s a story, and not a happy one, I’m afraid,” Emily shook her head. “Back, oh, the middle of May, I had a call from her. She wanted me to pick her up at the airport in Hawthorne and take her home to surprise her parents. I wasn’t doing anything at the time, so I did.”
“Hawthorne?” Scott frowned. “I didn’t know they had air service going in there.”
“They don’t,” Emily said. “Jennlynn was flying this little green and white plane. She said it had taken her two and a half days to fly it from California, and she was just tickled pink about doing it. Well, I dropped her off at her folks and went home. An hour later she showed up at my door, just all broken up, and bawling to beat the band. She wanted me to take her back to the airport, so I did. She was still crying every inch of the way. I didn’t think it was a good idea for her to go flying like that but I couldn’t stop her. She got in her plane and flew off. That’s the last thing anyone I know has heard of her.”
“A fight with her folks?” Scott asked.
“Must have been,” Emily sighed. “She never said anything about it, and neither has anyone else, but whenever she mentioned her folks she used the f-word, if you know what I mean.”
“Must have been bad,” Dean shook his head. “She was always so straight and square and religious I wouldn’t have thought she’d have said ‘shit’ if she’d had a mouthful of it.”
“Right,” Emily nodded sadly. “I see her folks every now and then. Once I asked if they’d heard from her, but without anything being said, it was made clear that her name wasn’t to be used in their presence. I haven’t worked up the guts to ask again. I’ll bet we don’t see her again for a hell of a long time, if ever.”
By now, most of the group had pulled up chairs close together, or were standing around, mostly quizzing Emily about various Class of ’88 members. Sometimes Emily had good, recent information; for others she had a few words, and some she knew nothing at all about. Eventually the subject got around to Dayna Berkshire.
“Dayna, well, that’s different,” Emily smiled. “She still comes around quite a bit, although Vicky probably knows more about her than I do.”
“Maybe a little too much,” Vicky shook her head. “My birthday party would have been a little quieter if she and Sandy hadn’t been there.”
Scott laughed at that, as did several others who had been there – about half of the group gathered in the back yard. It had been an incredibly drunken evening, easily the worst Scott had ever experienced. Dayna and her friend and college roommate Sandy – with the planned collusion of several others – had gotten Vicky into a set of stocks that held her wrists away from her head, and then fed her strong drinks the rest of the evening. The only reason anyone got home safely was the fact that Emily was pregnant and couldn’t drink; she’d had to drive everyone home and pour them into bed, especially Vicky. She’d hadn’t had to drive Dayna and Sandy home though; they somehow stumbled out to a motor home parked behind the bar.
The story going around at Vicky’s birthday party was that Dayna and Sandy had cut a wide, wild swath through Central Michigan University. They were both musicians and good ones, and their music had helped liven up the birthday party a good deal. “They’re not going back to school this fall,” Vicky explained. “They got that old motor home somewhere, and from what I hear they’ve been out on the road all summer, playing gigs here and there.”
“They might have been here tonight,” Emily added. “Except they open tomorrow at the renaissance faire in Battle Creek. If I get the chance I want to make it up there. From what I hear from Dayna’s mom, they’re doing pretty good and put on quite a show. I’m not sure I want to get that far away from home when I’m this pregnant, though.”
“Dayna used to set up by the fountain in the mall in Hawthorne,” Scott explained to Sonja. “She’d have her gig bag out in front of her and played for donations. From everything I ever heard she did pretty well at it, too.”
“They haven’t quit doing it,” Vicky said. “I saw them several times, and the two of them are even better than Dayna was by herself, but get the two of them together, guitars or not, and they can get wild. I have no idea what they’re planning on doing this fall, but Dayna told me that both of them are tired of sitting on their dead asses in classrooms.”
“Well, I can understand that,” Scott agreed. “It does get a little dull at times, but Sonja and I have only got two more years of it, so I suppose we’ll survive.”
“It sure sounds like you’ve got at least one wild one in your class,” Sonja grinned. “Scott, maybe if we have some time to kill this weekend we could take a run up there. I went to a renfaire once and it was a lot of fun.”
“Dayna is the black sheep of the class, that’s for sure,” Emily grinned, “but I’ll bet she has more fun than anyone else, too.”
“Could well be,” Kevin said. He hadn’t said much all evening, mostly because he hadn’t had any class gossip to contribute. “I hate to break into this quality reminiscing, but the coals are about right to get some dogs roasting. How many does everyone want?”
That broke the discussion up a little bit; soon Kevin was herding a huge stack of wieners around the grill, while Emily, Vicky, and a couple others broke out things like potato salad, chips, baked beans, and condiments. Clearly there was not going to be any reason for anyone to go away hungry.
Scott and Sonja just sat back and watched – more people were just going to get in the way, anyway. “Looks like you’ve got a pretty good class,” she said softly.
“Pretty much,” Scott agreed. “We had a few jerks, but if they’re still around Emily wouldn’t have invited them to a deal like this anyway.”
“We had groups that hung out together in high school,” she shook her head. “I guess you’d have to call them cliques. But this is a pretty broad range of people, from college kids down to kids I’d guess had trouble making it through high school. There are lots of different interests. It sure wouldn’t have been that way back in my school.”
“Yeah, well, small town, small school, small class,” Scott shrugged. “It had to have been a bit different.”
“It would have been nice to have made friends like these,” she replied sadly. “I didn’t have as wide a range of friends as these.”
Soon the food was ready. Kevin, Andy and Dean moved a couple picnic tables together so they sat end to end, while Emily, Vicky and a couple others set the rest of the food out on a couple of card tables. Shortly, everyone was sitting around the picnic tables, eating and gossiping. Scott and Sonja wound up sitting across a table from Andy and Diane, who were teasing each other mercilessly, each of them giving as good as they got. They’d been pretty good friends in school, if not steady dates, and it appeared not much had changed. “Have the two of you been hanging out much?” Scott asked when he could get a word in edgewise.
“Oh, no,” Diane smiled. “This is the first time I’ve seen Andy all summer.”
“Could have fooled me,” Scott shook his head. “Looks to me like the two of you are closer than ever.”
“Well, it’s just us,” Andy grinned. “We’ve always liked to pick at each other, you know that.”
“You’re the one who looks like you’re having a romance,” Diane added. “Scott, do you know how many hearts you’re breaking by showing up at this shindig with the most beautiful girl present?”
“I don’t think I’m that good looking,” Sonja protested. “I’m just average.”
“Don’t pull my leg,” Diane laughed. “I don’t know if Scott ever told you, in fact knowing him, he probably didn’t, but most of the girls in the class had a serious case of lust over him, and everybody seemed to think like he was holding out for something better. I guess he found it.”
“You mean me?” Sonja replied shyly.
“Oh, yeah,” Diane grinned. “I mean, not wanting to sound catty or anything, but you have every girl here, even Emily, jealous of you for snagging the guy they all dreamed of.”
“Aw, bullshit,” Scott said. “Diane, you’re just as full of shit as you ever were.”
“No, she’s not,” Shelly piped up. “Scott, if you’d ever worked at it even a little you could have had a sack record better than John Engler’s. I don’t even want to think how many girls, me included, threw themselves at you, and you let them roll off like rain off a raincoat.”
“You and I had some fun,” Scott replied defensively. “I don’t think either of us wanted to go anything like as far as John wanted with every girl he ever went out with. We may have gotten hot and heavy a time or two but we never let it go too far. That was your decision as much as it was mine.”
“Well, yeah, I guess,” she replied. “I mean, I didn’t want to get hung up on someone too early. I still want to be a dentist, so I’m still not in the market.”
“I guess I felt pretty much the same way,” Scott said. Mindful of his plan to look unavailable to Vicky, he expanded his next statement a little beyond the truth of how he actually felt. “But I guess I found what I was looking for, and that changed things a bit.”
“And broke a few hearts in Bradford in the process,” Diane grinned. “Congratulations, Sonja. You managed to find yourself a great guy, and there are a lot of girls around here who envy you.”
“Well, I think he’s pretty special,” Sonja replied conversationally; it seemed to Scott that she was a little overwhelmed by what Diane and Shelly were saying, not that he didn’t admit to himself that there might be a little truth to it.
He’d never had a problem with getting dates, and he never pushed his dates very far. If anything, he’d reflected at one time or another that his dates seemed a little too eager at times, but he’d kept to his plan of not wanting to get too serious with someone while he was still in high school. If things actually worked out with Sonja, maybe the wait had been worth it. “Well, I think she’s pretty special, too,” he said, more to fill an awkward silence than anything else.
He was more than a little surprised when Sonja put her hot dog on her plate, turned to him, and planted a big, serious kiss on his lips. She acted like she meant it, at least more than just a show for his old high school classmates, and he found himself hoping she really did mean it. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t kissed before, because they had, hundreds of times, but just gentle little busses. This was different, perhaps the most serious, soulful kiss they’d ever had, and right in front of his classmates, too!
But still, he wasn’t about to let the chance slip by him. Her mouth tasted of relish and mustard, but it may have been one of the most wonderful tastes he’d ever enjoyed. The kiss didn’t go on that long – both of them were aware they were being watched – but it was wonderful, just the same. All too soon they let it break up; they pulled apart and gave each other a smile that said about as much as the kiss did. “I suppose we’d better get back to eating,” he whispered to her.
“I guess,” she whispered back. “Darn it.”
Scott turned back to his plate as Sonja picked her hot dog up again. In the process, he glanced down the table, and saw Vicky sitting there with a rather glum expression on her face, one she couldn’t hide with her normal exuberance. She’d gotten the message, all right, but then, maybe he’d gotten a message from Sonja, too – one he hadn’t been expecting but found very welcome.
