My Old Hometown

I felt the butterflies as I crested the old familiar hill and saw Elmwood spread out across the prairie.

I was still several miles away from my exit on the interstate, but in this part of the country you can see a long way, especially from a high vantage point.

For the most part, it was just as I had remembered it. There was the chemical plant on the south end of town where my father had worked for 15 years, the old water tower on the east side and the old courthouse that dominated the center of town.

But there had been some changes, especially on the north side, which was the direction I was coming from, and I gave a little snort that was my way of expressing grudging approval.

A fairly large manufacturing plant had opened on the north side, bringing with it some accompanying businesses and some new subdivisions, filling up what had been corn fields when I'd lived there many years ago.

Soon, the exit approached and I slowed as I drove the rental car onto the ramp and turned left onto Main Street.

About the first thing I saw as I proceeded south on Main was the high school, and I smiled, but it was a wistful smile. Elmwood High held so many memories, good and bad, and the bad memories had been the reason I'd stayed away all these years.

But a few years earlier, my mom forwarded me a letter from a company that was putting together a directory of all the graduates from Elmwood High. I had decided to fill out the form to finally let my old hometown in on where I was and what I was doing.

That, in turn, had led to the invitation to attend my 20-year class reunion. I'm not sure why I decided to come back for the reunion. I guess one reason was that Keith Simmons had said he was going, and I never miss a chance to see my oldest and best friend.

And I was curious to see how some people had changed, and how others had stayed the same. I wondered, too, how the people in my class would look at me. Would they even remember me? I wasn't sure. After all, it had been 16 years since I had been to Elmwood.

My motel was on the west side of town, which afforded me the chance to drive through the heart of the town and see what I could see.

For one thing, they had really spruced up downtown, added some art galleries, restaurants and new retail businesses. The town seemed to be thriving, which was a far cry from the way it had been when I left.

When my dad took an offer from a company closer to the town in the Deep South where he'd been raised, we shook off the dust of the High Plains and left Elmwood behind. My folks have been back a couple of times, but I had no desire to return – until now.

I checked in to my room and changed from my traveling clothes into something a little more comfortable.

I had flown from Atlanta to the nearest large city, three hours from Elmwood, and had rented a car. I wanted to see the old familiar countryside, rather than flying to the smaller city that is only an hour from Elmwood.

It was still light out as I headed out to find a good steak and then maybe a club, or some place where I might have a few beers and see what was up.

The reunion wasn't scheduled to start until Friday, but I wanted to come a couple of days early, slip into town and test the waters, so to speak. I did have a few old friends I wanted to look up quietly before the events of the reunion overtook me.

I stopped by the motel's front office and asked the desk clerk, a lady of about 45, about steak houses and drinking establishments, and she gave me a few leads.

The steak house she recommended in the downtown area proved to be rewarding. I had a reasonably priced porterhouse – medium rare, of course – that practically melted in my mouth.

One thing they do better on the Plains than any place on earth is produce the best meat to be found. There's just something about range-fed beef that sets it apart from any other type.

Suitably nourished, I decided to check out the bar the desk clerk had told me about, the High Plains Drifter, which was just down the block from the restaurant.

I half expected a cowboy bar, but as I approached the entrance, I heard the Stones blaring from a stereo inside and I saw a couple of choppers parked by the curb.

I smiled at that, because I figured that the Drifter was my kind of club, a little rowdy, but not too rough.

I was right. The bar was done up in a Western motif, with rough-plank walls and a wood floor. But it was more hippie Western than cowboy Western, with hubcaps, old car tags and old-timey posters nailed to the walls.

And, of course, they had the Stones going on the sound system – and not just any Stones album, either – but Exile On Main Street, the gold standard that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards never matched, before or since.

The place was about half-full, but it was still early on a Wednesday, so I guessed that the place did a pretty good business, good enough, I noticed, to have a stage for live music on weekends. I found a seat at the bar and tried to catch the attention of the woman who was bartending.

When she turned around to acknowledge me and take my order, something clicked in my brain. I knew her, but from where?

Then a slow smile creased my face and a tingle ran down to my dick. I sure did know her. Angie Martin, from drama class my sophomore year at Elmwood High.

"What can I get you?" she asked.

"Ah, um, Shiner Bock, if you've got it," I answered.

"Sure do," Angie said.

It was obvious she didn't recognize me, and it made me wonder. Had I changed that much? I didn't think I had, but I guess when you're out of sight for 16 years, you're out of mind also.

And I had put on some weight. I was quite a bit more muscular than I had been when I was a skinny distance runner for the Elmwood Panthers. I had contact lenses now, and my hair was longish and shot through with silver.

Angie brought me my beer, and I took a long pull off the longneck, and as I did, I studied Angie. She hadn't changed a bit, except that she had added just enough weight to fill out what had been a very slender frame.

She had on a tight T-shirt and tight jeans, and they hugged curves that were to die for. She'd never been busty, but I'd always loved her little A-cups.

She'd had long dark hair in high school, and she'd been almost skinny in high school, but that hadn't stopped guys from flocking around her, because the word was she put out. I sometimes heard the word nympho whispered when her name was mentioned.

She still had the same dark hair, although it was cut much, much shorter than it had been, fashionably short. She still had the sparkling eyes, the same sensual mouth, although I did notice that there were some lines right at the corners of her eyes, like she'd had some hard times in her life.

But she was still a breathtaking beauty, and my mind drifted back to high school, where the whispers of memories spoke to me.

Angie had actually been a year ahead of me in school, but she'd taken drama as a junior, the same year I had. The class was actually mostly juniors and seniors, so I felt quite privileged to be brought into the little drama clique that came together that year.

Of the group that was maybe a dozen or so, the only sophomores were me, Ron White and Tommy Sampson.

And as I thought about Tommy, my eyes misted, as they always did. Tommy and I had been like brothers, as close as two guys can be and still be heterosexual. Tommy and I hung out together all the time, and we did everything together – drank beer, smoked dope and chased women.

For some reason, though, I'd never been able to score with the girls. I guess I was just too shy, or maybe I was too interested in getting high to get serious about women.

Besides the three of us sophomores, there was Rawley Nelson, the only black in the class and flagrantly gay; Randy Winters, the hipster who could always be counted on to have the best weed; Tracy Peeler, a slender blonde who could drink anyone under the table; Lisa Redmond, a tall, painfully insecure redhead; Ron Singleton, a senior who was short and dramatic, and who was rumored to be in love with Rawley; Steve Copley, another senior, who was dark and moody, and who was rumored to be bopping the drama teacher (who was young, single and very sexy); Marty Hill, a junior who was quite intense, but possessed of a wickedly black sense of humor; and there was Angie, the girl all the straight guys wanted to fuck, and a lot of them did.

If ever there was a bigger bunch of outcasts and misfits, it was this crowd, but we didn't care. We liked being different, and we all got in the plays, either acting or on the tech crew.

I really believe I came of age with this group. When I got to the high school as a sophomore, I was quite shy and desperate for some place to fit in. I wasn't coordinated enough to play any of the team sports, and running track didn't get you into the jockocracy at Elmwood, unless you were really good, and I wasn't.

But I was very smart, very well read and I had what I believed to be good taste in music. And the juniors and seniors in the drama group accepted me unconditionally. Of course, my parents didn't always think too highly of this group, especially when I would come home drunk, but they were the people with whom I fit in.

Most of the group stayed intact through the next school year, and I still count those two years as two of the best years of my life.

But as my senior year started, the most of the old gang was gone. I was still friendly with Keith, my boyhood buddy, but he wasn't in the drama crowd, and we seemed to be drifting apart.

Otherwise, I didn't have a lot of close friends in my class, and then one awful night, I lost the one truly close friend I did have.

Tommy Sampson went out one Saturday night in early December with a younger guy he knew from his neighborhood, I guess to scare up some women in the town nearest Elmwood, where the girls were rumored to be easy.

I didn't go, because I was working on a paper for English that was due the following Monday, and my folks were going out to dinner and needed me to sit with my younger siblings.

No one really knows what exactly happened, whether Tommy was drunk (maybe), high (most definitely) or what, but all I know was that I was awakened at 4 o'clock in the morning by my mother, who said I had a phone call from a female.

It was Lisa Redmond, and she was practically in hysterics. Through her sobs I managed to get the news that Tommy had been killed in a car crash.

So much for my senior year of high school.

There hasn't been a day go by that I don't think about Tommy and what happened. It took years, but I finally I quit beating myself up emotionally over the fact that I wasn't there.

Would I have been in the car with him and severely injured the way the other guy was? Or would we have done something else and not been in the place where he wrecked?

It was a pointless exercise in what-ifs, but for a long time I carried that guilt around, and it fueled some pretty reckless behavior on my part.

I just didn't care about anything. I just went through the motions the rest of the school year, content to get through my classes with Bs and Cs, instead of As and Bs.

I fell for Elise Tucker, a neurotic girl in the class, whom I thought I was in love with. She actually did get me through that period, and taught me about sex.

But when I wasn't out with her, I was out drinking and smoking pot with either Keith Simmons or Ron White, the only two people I was close to in the class besides Elise. Keith and I had rekindled our friendship, and we've been close ever since.

Elise wanted me to marry her and set up house there in Elmwood, and that was the last thing I wanted to do. I went off to the state university, and by the end of the semester, she'd found some new redneck boyfriend. I thought I was heartbroken, but that was probably the best thing that she could have done for me, although for awhile it didn't seem like it.

I spent four years at State changing majors, cutting classes, doing just enough to keep a halfway decent grade-point average, and smoking a lot of pot, drinking a lot of beer and doing a lot of drugs.

It wasn't until my folks moved from Elmwood, and I suddenly had to pay for my own college, that I got serious about higher education. I transferred to a school closer to my folks' new home, got a part-time job, buckled down in class, cut way back on the drugs and drinking, got a degree in English education and found a job as a high school English teacher.

I had never married, although I'd had several relationships that had been promising, and I was beginning to wonder if I was destined to live life as a bachelor.

Suddenly, my reverie was shattered by a voice who used a name I hadn't heard in years.

"Doolin-Dalton, that's who you are," Angie Martin said.

I turned and gave Angie my best come-on smile.

"I didn't think you remembered me, Angie Baby," I said.

"Well, it took me a second when you first came in," Angie said. "But I never forget a good-looking guy like you, and I for sure wouldn't forget you, Doolin-Dalton. How have you been?"

We all had our own little nicknames, usually, but not always, based on our names. I'm Dalton, Dalton Collins, so naturally, I became Doolin-Dalton, after the song from the Eagles' Desperado album. And Angie was Angie Baby, for some reason I can't recall.

We hugged over the bar, and started getting caught up on old times. She introduced me to the manager, who was also working the bar, and also to a few of the regulars.

When I got a chance, I asked about some of the old gang, and the news was decidedly mixed.

Rawley Nelson had died of AIDS, Randy Winters had been killed in a motorcycle accident, and, saddest of all, Lisa Redmond had committed suicide. Angie told me Sad Lisa weighed 350 pounds when she took an overdose of sleeping pills a few years earlier.

But the news wasn't all bleak. Ron Singleton was doing well in California, getting steady work in commercials and in a few TV gigs. Marty Hill was an architect in Pennsylvania, and Steve Copley was – of all things – a lawyer, although his practice was with the state as a public defender.

As I suspected, life hadn't treated Angie all that well. She'd been married and divorced twice, and had gone through a number of other failed relationships. She also had a 14-year-old son living in Colorado with her first husband.

Angie herself had tried countless times to leave Elmwood, but she always kept coming back. It was home to her, plus she now had to tend to her father, who was in a local nursing home with Alzheimer's.

"You know, sometimes I wonder, 'Is this all there is to life?'" she said a trifle wearily. "Just a constant battle to get by?"

"Look, Angie," I said, trying to be philosophical. "You can do nothing about the past. It's gone. You just have to live each day like it's your last, because it could be. You know, I've never forgotten what happened to Tommy."

"I know," she said softly. "I still miss him, too. You know, we..."

She stopped then, because she saw the tears welling in my eyes.

"I'm sorry," she said. "You didn't come here to wallow in old hurts."

"No, it's OK," I said as I quickly composed myself, then smiled bravely. "It's a part of my life, and I can't change it."

We talked then about happier times, about some of the antics we'd all gotten up to in high school, and had some laughs. As we talked, and I nursed a couple of beers, I noticed that Angie was giving me a very intense look, and several times seemed to touch my hands for no particular reason.

I thought back to a conversation I'd had toward the tail end of a party I'd been to at Ron White's house not long before I moved away from Elmwood for good. By then, he was living with Tracy Peeler; they would get married a couple of years later.

It was actually the last time I'd seen Angie, and she'd been there with the guy who would eventually be her first husband, a rather obnoxious fellow who styled himself as a biker, but who seemed to be more of a wannabe than the real thing. After they left, Ron looked over at me and shook his head.

"Doolin, I'll never understand why you never asked her out," Ron said.

"What are you talking about?" I said, a little drunkenly. "Angie? Like I ever had a chance at that."

"Shit, man, Angie's always had the hots for you," Ron said. "You didn't know?"

"You're high, man," I said. "You're just pulling my leg."

"No, really," Tracy said. "She always said you were the cutest guy in school. She thought it was so precious how shy you were."

"Jee-zus," I mumbled. "I wish I'd known."

I thought about that, and suddenly I decided that I'd had enough beer for the night. After my third Shiner, Angie came around and asked if I wanted another one.

"Actually, coffee sounds like a good idea," I said, and I fixed her with an even gaze. She met my stare, and we were just locked together for several seconds, communicating wordlessly.

I had noticed the coffee pot going behind the bar, for the designated drivers, I guess, and figured I could use a little sobering up if I wanted things to go the way I hoped they would. It had been five months since I'd broken up with my most recent girlfriend, I was horny as hell, and the prospect of reliving old times in Angie Martin's bed had a lot of appeal.

When she brought me my cup and the sugar canister so I could doctor up my brew properly, she leaned over close to me, sort of conspiratorially.

"So, do you still partake of the kind bud?" she asked.

I laughed, then, because I had had no idea Angie was a Deadhead like me, but her use of the term kind bud as a codeword for weed gave that fact away.

"Well..." I said slowly. "Not during the school year. Too risky. But during the summer? Yeah, I've still been known to pass a pipe around."

"I don't do it very often, either, but I've got some killer sinse back at my house that I keep for special occasions," she said. "I'd say Doolin-Dalton's return to Elmwood after all this time rates as a special occasion."

And this time she laid her hand on top of mine and left it there for several seconds, then squeezed it softly before she moved off to serve another patron. I sipped my coffee and tried to quell the excitement in my groin.

"I get off at 1 o'clock," she said right before she moved on.

I watched her as she moved up and down the bar, serving her customers. She still had the same graceful movements she'd had back in high school, still had the same charm. She'd been through some tough times, and it showed in some ways. But she'd rolled with the punches and was still one of the sexiest women I'd ever known.

After awhile, Angie invited me to pick out the music and I selected some old Jefferson Airplane, but later pulled out Pearl Jam's first album, just for variety. We talked some more, although it was tough because the late crowd was pretty thick.

Eventually, the crowd began to thin out as the 1 a.m. closing time approached. I busied myself by helping out in gathering the empty and partially empty beer bottles, beer cans and stuffed ashtrays.

Finally, witching hour approached, the hour when the bars emptied and the cops were on high alert for the drunk drivers. Angie gathered up her purse and the manager locked the door behind us.

As luck would have it, she was parked in the lot behind the buildings that fronted on Main Street, same as I was. I followed her as she drove to her small house in an older part of town, about a five-minute drive. I parked in the driveway behind her and got out.

"Here it is," she laughed. "My humble abode."

I stared at Angie's succulent butt as she walked up the steps to the front porch, and made a conscious effort to quell my enthusiasm. I wasn't going to push her into anything, but if I got any sort of opening, I was going to go for it with gusto.