Shortly after Stiverson left, Eunice turned to Eric and asked, “Are you planning on doing anything for the next hour or two?”

“Nothing in particular, other than maybe going out and working on the guest cottage a bit.”

“Could you put that off?” she asked. “I find I just want to sit here and talk about old times for a while.”

“Sure, I can do that,” he said. “Maybe I’ll boot up the computer and see if I can rough in what I want to say for the eulogy.”

“Thank you for agreeing to do that, Eric. I know I sort of sprang it on you as a surprise, but you’re far and away the best one to do it. I’ve been to too many funerals where the pastor has no idea of who a person is and just reads the obituary very solemnly to try to make up for it.”

“I’ve been to a few like that, too,” Eric agreed. “At least I know I can do better than that for Jeff.”

“I’m sure you will. It won’t be hard to do better than most I’ve heard.”

“I’ll try, but it’s hard to boil down a lifetime into perhaps a couple thousand words.”

She settled in her favorite chair, picked up her current knitting project and set it out. It was something she could do with her hands; she enjoyed knitting, and did it nearly mindlessly. Eric had on a Cardigan she’d knitted, and it wasn’t the only thing she’d knitted for him over the years by a long ways. “I know you’ll do your best,” she told him. “I can’t help but think of those first few days when we were just getting to know each other. They were exciting, especially since having a boyfriend was something I’d never had before. A lot of what happened wasn’t anything like I expected, like the Triumph.”

“Especially the Triumph,” Eric grinned as he sat down on the sofa. “That sure played a role in our lives for a while, didn’t it?”

Sunday, March 16, 1958

Since the dorm rooms at Meriwether College didn’t have phones in them, getting together with Eunice and setting up plans to go back down to Amherst was moderately complicated, but toward midmorning the three of them were in the Nash, heading south. Donna had been invited but had chosen not to go for whatever reason, so the three of them crammed themselves into the front seat. Eunice was in the middle and snuggled up just a little against Jeff.

It took them a little under two hours for Jeff to drive them down to Amherst. They stopped off at Eunice’s house to make contact with her father, who normally tried to not work on Sunday, and went over to look at the Triumph. Jeff and Eunice mostly stood back and tried to stay out of the way as Eric looked the car over carefully, checked under the hood, and asked questions. Sometimes Bill could answer them, and sometimes he couldn’t. After a bit of that, Eric got in the car and took it for a drive. It seemed all right around town, but that wasn’t what he wanted to find out, so he got it out onto a country road and opened it up. It moved along pretty well, and seemed to handle well in the corners he found. This would do, he thought; he’d wanted a car like this, and having it would open some doors to things he wanted to do.

Eventually Eric drove back to the Sinclair station. “All right,” he said after he got out of the little sports car. “Jeff said seven hundred. Is that right?”

“Seven hundred is what I told him,” Eunice’s father replied. “I’m thinking now I should have asked for a bit more, but I said seven hundred and I’ll stick with it.”

“Sounds fair to me,” Eric agreed. “I’ll take it. The only thing is that I’m going to have to shuffle some money around, so there’s no way I can pick it up before next weekend.”

“That’s fine,” Bill said. “I have to process the mechanic’s lien and it’ll take me that long. In fact, I’d be more comfortable with two weeks.”

“So would I,” Eric smiled. “I can give you two hundred to hold it for now, though.”

“Then I’d say we’ve got a deal,” Bill agreed.

It would have been nice to be able to stick around for a while, but the three students needed to get back to college, so soon they were on their way back. “That really is a pretty good deal,” Eric commented as they got out to the edge of town, “but I don’t think I want to take it back up to Meriwether and have to park it at the car wash. I mean, it’s only for three weeks, but it could get messed up.”

“The way Dad was talking, I don’t think he’d want you to leave it there much longer,” Eunice pointed out.

“Yeah, that could be a problem,” Eric agreed. “And it’s too much messing around to take it back up to Swartz Creek. Besides, I wouldn’t want it sitting around outside my brother’s place, either. Jeff, do you think you could talk your father into letting me leave it at your place until school is out?”

“I don’t see any problem with that. I’d have to call, but he’d probably say it’s fine. It wouldn’t have to be at home. Maybe there’d be some room in one of the buildings out at the plant. I’ll find out.”

“That’d work fine. Maybe we could come down and work on it some weekend if studying for finals doesn’t get in the way too badly. Get some of the dirt off it, get it waxed so it looks pretty good when school gets out.”

“Yeah, it looks a little ratty the way it is,” Jeff smiled. “You want to have it looking pretty good when you head back to Swartz Creek with it, right?”

“Something like that. I really don’t want to have to go back to Swartz Creek at all, but I suppose I ought to put in an appearance so I can get some summer clothes and a few things.”

“It sounds like you don’t plan on spending the summer there,” Eunice said from between them.

“Not if I can help it,” Eric told her. “Eunice, I don’t know if Jeff has told you about it, but I figure this next summer is my last chance to get out and have some fun. I don’t want to spend it hanging around my brother’s house, listening to him fight with my sister-in-law and bitch at me. He seems to think that my going to college is a waste of time, and there are times I think he might be right. But he seems to think that I just ought to dump college and get a job working the line at General Motors Truck and Coach so I can be just as miserable as he is.”

“It can’t be that bad, can it?”

“Actually, I’m being kind, especially when he has a few beers in him, which is about an hour after he gets off shift. I really shouldn’t be that snotty toward him, because he took up a lot of the slack when my mother . . . ” he paused and went on “ . . . when my mother couldn’t take care of me any longer. He never had any desire to go to college, it would have had to have been right after the war, and he decided he could do better working the line. I think he realizes his mistake now, but there’s no way he can go back and correct it.”

“I can see how that could cause problems,” she nodded.

“The heck of it is that he’s making pretty good money, but it’s a job he hates and I don’t blame him. I do blame him for taking it out on me. I’ve been making plans and saving my money to do something else this summer just for the sake of having some fun. I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do for sure, but having that car opens some doors.”

“I’ve been hearing about this for a while,” Jeff broke in. “He’s got a lot of big ideas about what he wants to do. There’s no way he could cram them all into one summer.”

“Actually, no,” Eric said. “But I can do some of them, and maybe I’ll be able to do some of the others later. Seeing that roll bar in the Triumph makes me think I could race it somewhere. I know they have sports car races down south of Flint someplace. I guess I’ll have to look into it and see what I can find out.”

“I hadn’t heard that one before,” Jeff said.

“It’s one of those things I’ve thought about trying now and then,” Eric admitted. “But I didn’t have a car to do it with, so it was pointless to speculate. Now, well, right at the moment I’m thinking I may have to find some schedule of sports car races this summer and maybe travel around a bit to go to them, and maybe do some other stuff. If I was to take a tent and a sleeping bag and camp when I could, I might be able to stay gone most of the summer and not have to lean on Jeff’s folks too much.”

“We’ve talked about this in general for a while,” Jeff expanded. “We think the folks might not be happy with the idea of him spending all summer with us, but they’re not going to kick if he drops in for a few days every now and then and stores some of his stuff there.”

“Right, and this car makes the whole thing drop into focus. I was going to need some kind of car anyway, but this is going to be better than some old clunker. I don’t have a lot of specific plans, but I do want to have a good summer. Like I said, it may be the last time I get to do some of these things in a big way, so I want to take advantage of it while I can.”

“What makes you think this could be your last chance?” Eunice asked.

“I’ll probably be working at something,” Eric sighed. “And I could be in the Army or something, because there’s a good chance the draft board will be sniffing around me just about as soon as I graduate. Besides, Eunice, has Jeff told you about my father?”

“Not very much,” she replied. “I seem to recall you said he died in the war.”

“Yeah,” Eric replied, deflated a little. “I really don’t remember much about him. He was in the 32nd division, Michigan National Guard. It brought in a few bucks for mom and him during the Depression. They were among the first to be called up when the war broke out, the first to get sent overseas, and the first to get sent into combat. I don’t know a lot about it, but he died at a place called Buna in New Guinea. I was only around six at the time, so there is a good reason I don’t remember him well. But I’ll tell you what, I learned something from him and from my brother, and that is to have your good times while you can, because the good times won’t last forever, and may not last long at all.”

On Saturday two weeks after the trip to Amherst when Eric had agreed to buy the Triumph, the four of them got into the Nash and drove down to pick it up. They found the car where Eunice’s father had left it sitting out in back of the Sinclair station. It still looked pretty dirty, and the dirt extended inside to the point where Donna didn’t want to mess up her clothes riding in it, so she rode over to Wychbold in the Nash with Jeff and Eunice.

Eric had been to Wychbold with Jeff before; they had occasionally broken away from college for the weekend and gone home just to take a breather from the place. However, he hadn’t been over the road between Amherst and Wychbold before, so he let Jeff lead the way, at least mostly – twice he passed the Nash and blasted up the road past them just to feel the car out a bit. He got a mile or so ahead of them, turned around, and raced back the other way until he met them, then turned around and did it again. “It sure looks like he’s having fun with that thing,” Donna observed.

“It’s supposed to be fun,” Jeff replied as he drove along phlegmatically in the Nash. “I mean, why else would anyone want a car like that?”

Eric did let Jeff lead him across Wychbold and out to the Harrington Oil property on the far side of town. The place looked as industrial as it was, with several large oil tanks sitting around, and two garages where the delivery trucks were stored. Out back there was a small garage that wasn’t being used for much of anything at the moment, and they left the Triumph there, as Jeff had worked out with his father ahead of time.

Of course, they had to swing by Jeff’s house to meet his parents. With the four of them there, the impact of Jeff showing up with Eunice was a little diluted compared to what it had been with her parents, but both Jeff’s father and mother seemed to like her. They seemed interested in the fact that Jeff and Eunice had been dating a bit, mostly as a foursome. As expected, they were invited to lunch, which was a welcome break from the Meriwether College dining hall.

“I doubt we’ll be able to get down to work on the car before finals,” Jeff told his parents. “And we really can’t stay long today.”

“It’ll be good to have you back,” Jeff’s father told them. “There are a few things that ought to keep you busy out at the company this summer, but it shouldn’t be a full-time thing. I’d guess that’ll make you just as happy, since I’ll bet you’re going to want to spend some time over in Amherst.”

“I probably will,” Jeff smiled, knowing that his father was making a sly comment about his dating Eunice. “After all, why would I want to spend all my time around here?”

As they were getting set to go, Jeff’s mother got him off to the side. “She seems to be a nice girl,” his mother said of Eunice. “Is this something serious?”

“No, Mom,” he told her, “not yet, anyway. It could get that way but we’re not there yet. And yes, she is a nice girl.”

“Good for you. I know it’s just a first impression, but I think you could do worse.”

“I’m thinking that too, Mom. We’ll just have to see how the summer goes.”

That trip was pretty close to the last getting out for fun for the four of them for the rest of the semester; after that finals were on them and they all felt they had to study. Jeff had been struggling in a couple of his classes and really needed to pass them, so he burned a lot of midnight oil with the books, and got some tutoring assistance from Eric, and even a little from Eunice over in the dining hall, too. They did manage one more Friday night movie date, mostly because they all felt they needed the break from the books.

It turned out to be worth all the work; Jeff managed to pass his finals, although as usual without stunning grades – but at least he passed. By then, everyone was packed up to go home. The day after finals, both Eunice’s and Donna’s parents showed up to pick them up, but really wasn’t much of a goodbye for the four – it was clear that Jeff and Eunice were going to be spending some time together over the summer. Donna and Eric expected to get together a little too, since Meridian was not all that far from Wychbold, where Eric planned to spend part of his time.

Only minutes after the girls were on their way, Jeff and Eric were back over at their dorm room and carrying things down to the Nash. “It feels good to move out of here,” Jeff said as they worked at it, “especially knowing we won’t be back.”

“I agree. I’m tired of the housemaster snooping around all the time,” Eric said. “Now that we’ve definitely got the apartment nailed down for next fall, with any kind of luck I won’t have to come into a dorm here again. Since we can take possession after August first, I might even move back up here a little early to keep from having to mooch off your folks too much. Are you going to take your Rexall Bay Rum bottle with you?

“I don’t know what I would have done without it,” Jeff sighed. “It did the job, all right. I guess maybe I’ll keep it to remind me of how much I hated living here.”

“Might not be a bad idea at that. After all, even though we’ll both be twenty-one, there’s no point in leaving bottles out in the open.”

“I suppose you’re right. At least if I want to have a drink I won’t have to hide the stuff like I do here.”

By the time they finished, the old Nash was packed nearly full, mostly with Jeff’s things; Eric was not a person who tended to collect a lot and threw things away when he expected he’d have little further use for them. They’d already planned to take a trip over to Swartz Creek later in the week to gather up the things he needed from there when Eric’s brother would be at work; Eric didn’t think there would be enough fill the Nash again.

Finally, almost mercifully, they got on the road. “So,” Eric said. “I suppose you’re planning on spending some time with Eunice this summer.”

“Probably as much as I can,” Jeff admitted. “I’ll have to be working, but at least it won’t be full time.”

“You like her, huh?”

“Yeah, I do. She’s all right. I mean, she’s not a sharp-looking, sexy woman like Donna, but I know I’m not the kind of guy like you who can attract those kinds of women anyway.”

“Hey,” Eric said, “I’m not exactly beating girls off with a stick, you know.”

“True, but you don’t work at it that hard, either, and you never seem to have a problem getting a date. I’d never stand a chance with a woman like Donna. Eunice just isn’t in Donna’s class, when you get right down to it, but I don’t think it matters, since I’d never get to first base with her even if I could beat out the competition. But Eunice and I have been going together for a couple months and we’re still on speaking terms, so that’s a lot better than I’ve ever had before. Don’t get me wrong, I like Eunice and I think we’re good for each other. I’ve actually been looking forward to getting all the college crap out of the way so we can be together and really get to know each other.”

“You sound like you’re planning on getting serious this summer.”

“I don’t want to say planning on it happening, but I wouldn’t complain if it happened. I think she’s a girl I could make a life with, and I think she pretty much thinks the same thing about me.”

“Those were good days we had back in college,” she smiled. “It may not have seemed like it at the time, but they were. I know the college sat on our necks pretty hard. It’s nothing like it is today, at least from what I’ve heard some of the grandkids say.”

“They wouldn’t believe what it was like for us,” he smiled. “Looking back on it, I suppose a lot of what happened with Donna and me came from my revolting against that kind of strict supervision. But I can’t help but think that things have gone too far the other way these days, too. God, I think about Jeff and his Rexall Bay Rum bottle. I’ll never know why the housemaster never picked up on it. I can’t believe he was that stupid. The only thing I can think is that he must have known that Jeff kept his drinking low-key so let it go so as to just not make waves.”

“You’d know more about that than I would,” she agreed. “The dorm housemother never gave Donna and me that much slack. We always had to be very careful about what we were doing when we were near the edge of the rules.”

“There were times it made it awful inconvenient for Donna and me,” he agreed. “That may have had something to do with the way things worked out between us. She and I danced around each other an awful lot.”

“I know it,” she smiled, taking a sip of her drink. “It frustrated her a lot, too. I remember her talking about it. She could never quite pin you down to be the kind of boyfriend she wanted, and I know she was envious of the way Jeff and I were together.”

“That may have been later, I think,” he pointed out. “The first couple months were pretty casual all the way around. I know I didn’t think I was carrying a big torch for her at the time. In fact, I don’t think I ever really did. She sure had it for me, though, and I’ve never been quite certain why.”

“I never quite understood it either,” she sighed. “At least back in those days. In my old age I’ve come to realize that some women seem to appreciate wildness in a man. I suspect it has something to do with hormones. They seem to want to get a rope on a wild man and break him to saddle.”

“That probably makes as much sense as anything,” Eric smiled. “In fact, it makes more sense than some of the theories I’ve had about her. Don’t get me wrong. Donna was very appealing in those days. She was one of the most beautiful women on campus, if not the most beautiful, at least in my eyes, and well, I had a challenge with her, too. “

“You didn’t want to break her and saddle her,” Eunice grinned. “You just wanted to get in the saddle and ride her.”

“I can’t deny that it was at least part of my thinking,” Eric laughed. “I suppose most young men are like that at that age. Some things never change, after all. And you may be right about the female side of the equation, about her wanting to break me to saddle.”

“She bit off more than she could chew with you,” Eunice replied flatly. “It’s just that it took her years to realize it. She had to have her way, and it frustrated her when she couldn’t get it.”

“I was just trying to not make waves,” Eric shrugged. “I mean, I could see that you and Jeff were getting closer together, and I didn’t want Donna sniping at Jeff just because he was my roommate. Besides, Donna was fun to date in those first few months you and Jeff were going together, but to be honest I couldn’t see the two of us going anywhere. It’s obvious now that Donna saw it differently.”

“What do you call it when you want something you can’t have? That may have been part of what motivated her back in those days. You didn’t exactly make it easy for her.”

“Well, no, I didn’t,” he said. “I mean, right from the beginning I kept getting those domestic bliss things from her, and that wasn’t something I wanted at that point in my life.”

“Or at any other point.”

“Touché,” he shook his head. “But to be honest, back in those days I could see it happening in a few years, but I wanted those few years first. Donna wanted what you and Jeff had, both that first summer, and afterward. Me, I had other goals and didn’t see her as a life partner.”

“You’re saying you were looking to get her in bed. Love ’em and leave ’em.”

“True, but don’t ever think that she wasn’t trying to get me in bed, either. It’s just that she had a different goal in mind, and if it took a bed to accomplish it, then it would have been just fine with her. We weren’t playing by the same rules, and in adding up all the time we were together, off and then on again, I don’t think we ever had the same rules or goals in mind. We burned each other a lot over that. You and Jeff were playing by the same rules right from the start, so it made things a lot different for you.”

“When you put it that way, you’re probably right. You know, for all these years I’ve often wondered what would have happened if somehow you and I had been the ones to get together back in those days, and I think I realized from the first that it would never have happened.”

“It wouldn’t have,” Eric agreed. “We’d have been playing by different rules, just like Donna and I. The only difference was that she’d been around the block enough to realize how her game was played, while you were brand new at it. You and I would never have made it past that fact.”

“You know, I remember clearly that time you warned me off Jeff,” Eunice said. “I thought it was a pretty brave thing for you to do, and I figured you did it because you liked me at least a little, too.”

“I don’t think I was warning you off him, it was just that there were some things that I thought you ought to know before you got in too deeply with him. I could see you were getting some stars in your eyes, and I thought you needed them opened a little before things got too far.”

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