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.
