CHAPTER TWO, PART 1

Annie is horribly damaged by life.
She believes she cannot be loved.
Then Bud becomes her pen pal
and love finds them both...
in one way or another.

Every few days I will post a little more.
 Soon you will be able to read it all.
If you absolutely can't wait to find out
what happens between Annie and Bud,
(and I hope you can't!)
you are welcome to click a link and 

buy an e-book or a paperback copy. 

And now, today's post:

CHAPTER TWO
Part 1

Saturday, May 15, 2004

Seeing the letter took me back. It was an early summer evening. We were 16 and had been at our Boy Scout meeting at my church, which was about a mile from my house. We had completed our First Aid merit badges that night and were walking home in the twilight, feeling a bit cocky with our new skills. Directly in front of us a car ran a red light, smashing broadside into the driver’s door of another car in the middle of the intersection. Bennie grabbed my arm and yelled “Go call 911,” as we had been trained to do. This was before either of us had cell phones, so I ran for the corner payphone and Bennie ran to give first aid.

The man who blew through the red light was staggering around his car, and I could smell the booze on him from twenty feet away. He had a nasty head gash, but otherwise acted fine. The young lady in the other car, however, was in bad shape. Without hesitation, Bennie climbed into the passenger side, whipped off his shirt, and used it to apply pressure to whatever bleeding he could find, all the while murmuring encouragement to girl and ordering her to hold on. When the EMT’s finally arrived, he had more blood on him than she had inside her, but she was still breathing. The medics stabilized her as best they could and loaded her into the ambulance.

“Where are you taking her?” Bennie asked.

“Sacred Heart!” one of the medics yelled over his shoulder.

With the name of the hospital ringing in his ears, Bennie found me on the edge of the crowd.

“Come on!” he yelled and took off running.

I fell in step with him, and we ran together with the practiced ease of friends who had trained together for years.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Home,” he said. “I need a ride to the hospital.”

“My house is closer.”

It was, and Bennie changed directions.

My mom was in the kitchen when we burst through the door, yelling for her. Running to the front room, alarmed by the intensity of our shouts, she freaked out when she saw us. Bennie was covered with blood, and we were both sweating and yelling for her to take us to Sacred Heart. After calming us down and determining that the blood was neither Bennie’s nor mine, she called my dad, who was working late, and told him what was going on. Then she called Bennie’s mom and told her, too, reassuring her that Bennie was okay. After hanging up, she marched Bennie into the bathroom, had him wash his hands and arms, and drove us to Bennie’s house where he took a world record short shower and put on fresh clothes. Only then did she drive us to the hospital.

Since we weren’t family, the nurse at the desk wouldn’t talk to us about the girl’s condition, but when we told her that Bennie was the hero who saved the girls life, she broke down and told us the girl was in surgery. We still didn’t know her name, but she was alive.

Thank God.

The three of us took over a corner of the waiting room, alternately talking, praying, napping, and consuming various chips and sodas from the vending machines. A doctor finally appeared and shook Bennie’s hand. He congratulated him for his heroism and said his quick action saved her life. He also told us she was in recovery and could not have visitors of any kind until the next day, and then only immediate family.

Since we could do nothing more, my mom herded us out of the hospital and took us to an all-night diner for burgers and ice cream. After Bennie and I had stuffed ourselves silly, which was our normal way of eating back then, she drove us home.

I figured it for a memorable one-day event. Bennie wasn’t so easily dissuaded. Like I said, he was the nicest guy I knew, and he was truly concerned for the girl. That very morning, at the ungodly hour of seven a.m., after only four hours of sleep, he yanked me out of bed with a phone call. He said his mom was driving us back to the hospital and they would be by to pick me up in ten minutes.

After the appropriate amount of whining, I hung up, staggered out of bed, threw on some clothes, and clomped outside to wait. Fifteen minutes later, Bennie and I had resumed our vigil in the Sacred Heart ICU waiting room.

Chapter Two, Part 2 Coming Soon

CHAPTER ONE, PART 2

Annie is horribly damaged by life.
She believes she cannot be loved.
Then Bud becomes her pen pal
and love finds them both...
in one way or another.

Every few days I will post a little more.
 Soon you will be able to read it all.
If you absolutely can't wait to find out
what happens between Annie and Bud,
(and I hope you can't!)
you are welcome to click a link and 

buy an e-book or a paperback copy. 

And now, today's post:

CHAPTER ONE
Part 2

Saturday, May 15, 2004

My reflections were cut short when I executed a full-body slam into the back of the driver’s seat, my face smashing into the headrest. I was sitting behind my dad in his beloved Cadillac, or had been up until a few moments ago, and he, my mom, and I were heading home from Bennie’s interment service. A dog had run into the street, forcing my dad to hit the brakes.

“Lawrence!” my mother yelled from the front seat. “Are you all right?”

On the day I was born, my dad insisted the world could do without an Avery Horace the fourth, so my mom named me Lawrence Harvey, in honor of her father and her grandfather. My dad thought Larry was a lousy name for a baby, so he just called me his little buddy, and, at some point it got shortened to Bud, and that’s what everybody calls me. Except my mom, obviously.

“I’m fine,” I said, climbing off the floor. “I guess I forgot to fasten my seatbelt.”

“Well for gosh sakes, put it on now.”

I did as she instructed. When my dad heard the click, he looked at me in the rearview mirror.

“That was a hard one, wasn’t it, Bud?”

I assumed he meant the funeral and not the headrest. I grunted in response.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come home?” he asked. “Have a little lunch?”

“No. I’m going to take a nap.”

It was his turn to grunt. He wasn’t much for naps. Neither was I, really, but I couldn’t imagine being awake for the next few hours. Grieving is hard work.

A few minutes later, my dad pulled up to the curb in front of my apartment complex.

“Thanks, Dad.”

I opened my car door. My mom opened hers, too, and we climbed out together. Wrapping her arms around me, she rocked me like when I was a child, and I lay my head on her shoulder, breathing in her love. When enough was enough, she broke the embrace, pushing me back so she could search my eyes.

“Are you all right?” she asked for the second time.

“I will be,” I told her. “I just need to be alone for a while.”

“I understand.” She patted my arm. “Come for dinner.”

My mom is like that. She feeds people. ‘Come for dinner’ was an invitation heard by hundreds over the years. Are you new in town? Come for dinner. New in church? Come for dinner. Been gone for a while? Grieving? Sad? Lonely? Come for dinner.

I thought it was corny when I was a kid, but standing there on the sidewalk, the memory of Bennie draping over my heart like an altar cloth, I understood it.

“Okay. What time?”

“When you get there.”

“Okay. Love you, mom.”

“I love you, too.”

One more hug, more mine than hers, and she got back in the car. My dad put the Cadillac in gear, and they pulled away.

Alone – and I mean really alone – for the first time in eight years, I stood on the sidewalk, building up the courage to go inside. At some point, my need for the men’s room overcame my dread of the empty apartment and I started moving, picking up the mail as I went.

Picking up the mail had not been a priority in the last week, for obvious reasons, and the pile was huge, with bills and condolence cards leading the number. At the bottom of the pile, smaller than the other items, was a letter in a plain, white envelope. It was postmarked from Boston and addressed to Bennie in a barely discernable chicken scratch. I recognized it immediately.

It was from Annie Parker, Bennie’s pen pal of the last seven years.

Chapter Two, Part 1 Coming Soon

CHAPTER ONE, PART 1

Annie is horribly damaged by life.
She believes she cannot be loved.
Then Bud becomes her pen pal
and love finds them both...
in one way or another.

Every few days I will post a little more.
 Soon you will be able to read it all.
If you absolutely can't wait to find out
what happens between Annie and Bud,
(and I hope you can't!)
you are welcome to click a link and 

buy an e-book or a paperback copy. 

And now, today's post:

CHAPTER ONE
Part 1

Saturday, May 15, 2004

Bennie would have liked the ceremony. He would have said it was nice. He also would have said they aren't supposed to be nice. He would have said they are supposed to be sad and weepy, or maudlin and depressing, or any other duet of downer words, but not nice.

Nice could be used to describe a graduation ceremony, or an anniversary party, or a social soiree, or almost any positive life event, but not this. And yet, Bennie was the nicest guy I knew, so it was appropriate his funeral reflected his life.

Riding home from the cemetery, wrapped in a cocoon of memory, I replayed my life with my best friend.

Bennie and I met in middle school, and though we didn’t hit it off immediately, we eventually developed enough of a friendship to warrant chin lifts. You know what I’m talking about. You’re passing a buddy in the hall, you make eye contact, and you each lift your chin about half an inch. It’s a male bonding thing, like grunting, only quieter.

Somewhere in the middle of eighth grade we ended up sitting next to each other during lunch break. It was our first real sit-and-chat time, and we clicked. Before we knew it, our clicking had made us late for class. After that, we ate at the same table every day. We soon became best friends and did just about everything together. Football, wrestling, drama club, church, Boy Scouts, girls, you name it. We even went on each other’s family vacations.

Our lockstep friendship drove our parents a little nuts, but they really didn’t mind. Bennie was an only child, as was I, and we became closer than brothers, complimenting each other in ways that offset any trouble we might have caused. Wherever one of us was weak, the other was strong.

Bennie was low key, a supportive background player. I was high energy all the way, taking the lead and tackling life head on.

Bennie was a brainy ‘A’ student. I was happy to skate by on ‘B’s.

Bennie sought peaceful resolutions in every conflict, even if it meant taking a personal hit. I refused to back up. If someone challenged me I stood my ground, and if they persisted I stepped in closer, forcing my opponent to back down.

Bennie was born with a kind heart, seeing the best in people and always ready with an encouraging word. I… well, let’s just say I wasn’t, but like I said, we complimented each other, and we were better for it.

After graduating from high school, we both enrolled at Eastern Washington University in Cheney. Go Eagles! Though we lived just fifteen miles away in Spokane, we wanted the whole college experience, so we talked our folks into letting us live in a dorm on campus. As roommates, of course.

After graduating from EWU with bachelor’s degrees in business administration, we rented an apartment in Spokane Valley only a few blocks from my dad’s business and we both went to work for him.

My dad is Avery Horace Wallace. The third, no less. Why anyone would name a kid Avery Horace just once is beyond me, but to do it three times is criminal. He never let his name get in the way, though, and he dug into life with an impressive degree of energy and can-do spirit. When he was straight out of high school, he started a company in his dad’s basement making custom clothing hangers for specific garments and shortly thereafter had wrangled contracts with most every clothing manufacturer in the region.

Personally, I have no problem keeping my clothes on a normal hanger, but I’m happy to say that a lot of people around the world did. Their need kept my family nicely housed, well fed, and richly vacationed throughout the year. Those hangers even paid the full bill for my college education, and for Bennie’s too.

Bennie and I worked part-time at my dad’s hanger factory, on the loading dock and on the floor, for the last two years of high school and all four years of college. When we graduated with our BBAs and hired on full-time, we became my dad’s first official junior executives; me in sales and Bennie in accounting. We even had our own offices. For the next year and a half, we lived the dream - making cold-calls, serving clients, crunching numbers, going on the occasional business trip, and taking the Pacific Northwest garment hanger industry by storm.

And then the dream ended.

Two weeks ago, Bennie stayed late to complete inventory. That was his thing – he loved to count stuff. Me? Not so much. Selling was a lot more fun. Besides, I had a date with Jolene, a gorgeous brunette from the payroll department, so I headed straight home to get ready as soon as I finished my last call, leaving Bennie to walk home, as he usually did.

Twenty minutes later, Jolene and I were sitting in the bleachers at the local baseball field. The Spokane Indians, a minor league team, were playing the Everett Aqua Socks. It was a good game, I guess, but in all honesty, I paid little attention. My focus was squarely on my date. More than just a looker with great legs, she had a zest about her that made me giddy in all the right places. I must have impressed her, too, because she agreed to see me again.

After the game, and after sharing a banana split at the Dairy Queen on Pines, I dropped her off at her apartment and drove my giddy self home, daydreaming about her the whole way. My euphoria came to a crashing standstill as I turned the corner and encountered several emergency vehicles, lights ablaze, surrounding a power pole with what used to be a car wrapped around it, and what appeared to be a body under a tarp on the sidewalk behind it. Next to the tarp lay a leather satchel, the same one-of-a-kind satchel Bennie carried every day, and next to that, Bennie’s favorite ball cap.

That’s when my world bottomed out.

At some point, Bennie must have glanced up from his computer and noticed it was getting dark, so he shut everything down and headed home. A block later, some idiot teen tore down the road at a ridiculous speed, lost control, jumped a curb, flew over the sidewalk where Bennie was walking, and plowed into the pole, killing himself and my best friend.

Had Bennie been ten feet either direction, or had he left the factory ten seconds earlier or later, or had the idiot kid behind the wheel been going just a little faster or slower, Bennie would have been okay. But that wasn’t the case. They were each in exactly the wrong place going exactly the wrong speed, and they intersected.

Inches and seconds. That’s what life comes down to – inches and seconds. A few less or a few more of either makes all the difference. If-only, what-if, and why are just silly mental games, played by the grieving to ignore reality. The truth, as harsh as it may seem at times, is that reality is what it is, and all the ifs, whats, and whys in the world will never change that.

Still…

My reflections were cut short when I executed a full-body slam into the back of the driver’s seat, my face smashing into the headrest.

Chapter One, Part 2 Coming Soon

INTRODUCTION

Annie is horribly damaged by life.
She believes she cannot be loved.
Then Bud becomes her pen pal
and love finds them both...
in one way or another.

Every few days I will post a little more.
 Soon you will be able to read it all.
If you absolutely can't wait to find out
what happens between Annie and Bud,
(and I hope you can't!)
you are welcome to click a link and 

buy an e-book or a paperback copy. 

And now, today's post:

PROLOGUE
Thursday, October 27, 2016

“Mail call!”

My wife Cynthia, nine months pregnant and looking like it, met me at the front door waving an envelope. I wasn’t all that interested. My workday had been exhausting and all I wanted to do was sit down.

Thank God for overstuffed recliners. Giving Cynthia a weary peck on the lips, I brushed past her and went straight to mine, sinking into with a groan. A quick tug on the side lever tilted me backwards and brought my feet up, cradling me in comfort. Closing my eyes, I raised my hand in Cynthia's general direction, ready to receive whatever it was she held. It was probably a bill, or maybe a note from the children’s doctor, reminding us it was time for the twins’ check-up.

Closing in on four years old, Larry and Lily were the cutest little holy terrors you’d ever want to meet, and doctor appointments were extremely low on their list of desirable activities. I was so glad my wife dealt with that end of things. If it were up to me, I’d throw a children’s vitamin at them now and then and call it good. That’s probably why Cynthia was their primary caregiver, and I was the main breadwinner.

Noticing the loneliness of my elevated hand, I cracked one eye open. Cynthia dangled the envelope an inch above my palm, looking down at me over the top of it with her brows knit together in mock disapproval.

“What is it?” I asked. “An eviction notice?”

“You wish, lover boy. Who lives in Boston?”

My eyes snapped open in surprise. Boston? Really? That was so long ago. It couldn’t be.

“Let me see that.”

No longer exhausted, I sat up and she handed it to me face down, then took a step back, folded her arms, and focused on me.

I knew that look. She was gearing up to throw me some grief if the mystery letter proved to be bad news for her life plans, all of which included me at my fidelitous best. I doubted she hand anything to worry about. If the sender of this letter was who I suspected it was, it would be me receiving bad news and her throwing nothing meaner than sympathy.

Turning the envelope over, I glanced at the front, and for a moment my whole world rocked sideways. It wasn’t who I thought it was at all. The sender was from the same family but had definitely not sent me a death notification. Not unless they had an angelic pen pal program in Heaven. And if that was the case, they would for sure have better handwriting there.

Scrawled across the front of the envelope, as distinctive as a mug shot, was my name, my pen pal name, written in an all-too familiar chicken-scratch I hadn’t seen in ages. I hadn’t even thought about in almost as long, and I had assumed I would never see it again.

I looked up at Cynthia, and my stunned look forced her to exchange her prepared annoyance for concern.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Where are the kids

“In their room, getting their jammies on. They’ll be charging in here any moment for a pre-bed tickle fight. Why? What’s wrong?”

“Probably nothing, but could you hold them off for a few minutes?”

She raised a curious eyebrow.

“I suppose I can tell them a story. Are you going to tell me what that…” she pointed at the envelope, “…is all about?”

“Of course. After I read it.”

“Of course.” She laced her words with an eyeroll and a touch of sarcasm, but I knew she was teasing. “Can you be the tickle monster first so I can throw those two wiggle worms in bed?”

“Ten minutes, babe. That’s all I need.”

She raised one eyebrow. “Ten minutes?”

“That’s all I need.”

“And that’s all you’re going to get, and then I’m unleashing them on you.”

“Deal.”

More mollified than satisfied, she left the room, giving me space to deal with the unexpected envelope. I knew who had sent it. No name was written in the upper left corner, only an address, but I knew. The handwriting, unique in its messiness, was unforgettable.

Annie Parker.

Holding the unopened envelope in one hand and touching the chicken scratch with the other, I smiled, remembering.

Chapter 1, Part 1 Coming Soon