“Mr. Cochran, I don’t get it. Why’s my sign a problem?”
Buddy crunched his forehead up and took a sip of his coffee, a bit strong today, from the new Krispy Kreme down the road.
“Never mind. I’m just being an ass.” Buddy walked around to the other side of the table where Jasper began to place out some of his wooden creations. A few brightly colored birdhouses. A carved and shellacked foot stool. Some sculpted wooden salad bowls with accompanying utensils. Real craftsmanship. The level of care that Jasper displayed in everything he did spoke volumes about the kind of man he was. It even reflected in the way he delivered the mail on his route.
Buddy scanned the cafeteria. There were about twenty other vendors setting up displays. Some tables were full of baked goods in neatly wrapped plastic bags with colored ribbons. Buddy was eyeballing a pile of brownies on the table next to Jasper’s Wood Works. Woodworks. He noticed Gaynelle Flowers, whose son Clayton was a former pot smoking teenaged client of his, setting up her crocheted trivets and pot holders. He figured that if Clayton was standing there, he could be the pot holder. And that he would need to steer clear of the brownies. The idle thoughts that went through his mind during the first cup of coffee should qualify him for a writing job on “Saturday Night Live” Buddy reckoned.
And then, as if the heavens opened to reveal all its secrets not provided in the Bible…he saw her. The daily jogger. His daily jogger.
She stood off to the side, near the empty stage which hung back at the end of the cafeteria for school assemblies and plays and concerts. Buddy had never been in this school before today, but every primary school in America had one. And the blond jogger was standing next to this particular one. He felt his knees soften and his stomach clench. The coffee turned acid in his mouth and he wondered if this was that feeling – about a woman – the one feeling that has eluded him his entire life. He certainly never felt like this about Jennifer or any of the earlier young women he attempted to date. But the jogger. The blond-haired blue-eyed jogger. Standing over there in a pair of jean shorts and a red tee-shirt. A bow in her hair, like she was a reluctant cheerleader.
“Mr. Cochran, what you gawkin’ at there?” Jasper’s voice interrupted his moment of both panic and infatuation.
Buddy came out of his beautiful-female-in-view coma and turned to his mailman friend. “Uh, nothing. No one. Goddamn, Jasper, look. It’s her!” he spat out like a middle school boy peeping at a high school girl changing her top in a locker room.
Jasper peeked around him. “Who?”
He didn’t want to point, so he nodded. “Over by the stage. It’s the lady who jogs by my house.”
Jasper squinted. His eyes, crinkled and dusty from so many years outside, simply couldn’t see that far anymore. “I can’t see that far, but if you say so.”
Buddy looked over again and saw her talking to a young man who appeared to be a soldier in an Army tee-shirt. A skinny little girl with brown hair stood in between them and looked up at the soldier. Is that her little girl? Is that her husband? Buddy really hoped she wasn’t married. It’s not like he had any balls whatsoever to say anything to her or ask her out if she was single, but he just didn’t want her to be married. He didn’t want any other guy to lay claim to his little daily burst of sunshine. It would ruin the fantasy he created inside of his head, considerably.
The little girl started jumping up and down in place. Her hair was cut in a bob, straight and thin, and went up and down with each hop. She wore a pair of purple shorts and a purple and white top with a monkey on it. She had on a pair of white tennis shoes and appeared to be around six or seven years old. The soldier walked away, and the jogger and little girl sat on the edge of the stage, looking around the room.
Buddy, without thinking and almost on instinct, grabbed three cellophane wrappers full of brownies, put a five-dollar bill on the table, and told the elderly lady standing there to keep the change. Then he walked over to the jogger and little girl. As he got closer, he could see that the jogger’s tee-shirt had “staff” written on the front and “Frederick Morrison Elementary School” written over a picture of a blue dragon.
The little girl’s legs were swinging out, one after the other, with each tennis shoe bouncing off the side of the stage. She noticed Buddy walking toward them, and they made eye contact almost immediately. Buddy, not usually good with eye contact, looked right at the little girl watching him. He could handle a kid. When he got up to them, she said, “Hey,” as if they already knew each other.
“Hey yourself,” Buddy said with a wily smile.
The jogger – who Buddy now figured was either a teacher or something – looked over at him. “Can I help you?” she asked.
“Well, I was hungry and thought it might be nice to bring some brownies over to this nice young lady sitting here.” It sounded awful and completely rehearsed – which it wasn’t – because Buddy was now working on what-the-hell-am-I-doing fumes.
“She’s just had breakfast, but maybe she can have one later for a snack. Do you think you’ll sell out fast?”
“Mom, just let me have it now, and I promise I won’t eat it ‘til later,” the girl said, both legs now swinging and bouncing in unison. She had a round pale face full of freckles.
“Where did you get all those angel kisses?” Buddy asked her.
“Angel kisses?”
“Yeah, the angel kisses all over your face.”
He could see the jogger grinning out of the corner of his eye. It was so hard not to start hyperventilating while talking to this little girl.
The girl smiled a huge smile, missing a front tooth. “My daddy used to call them that!”
“What? He calls your freckles angel kisses too?”
She nodded her head while beaming at him. “Yeah. He used to tell me that every night I went to bed. That an angel came and kissed my face and added more and more each night when I was sleeping.”
“Well, my mother called them angel kisses too. How about that?”
Buddy sensed the jogger shifting in place.
“Hi,” she said suddenly. Buddy turned toward her and felt his gaze go just past her ear – his usual coping mechanism – locked in like an instinctual response to beauty. “I think I know you.”
Buddy felt his whole body tighten even more than it already was. “You do?”
Nodding, she explained, “Yeah. You’re the guy always walking a big dog on Triton Hills. I run past you almost every day.”
Buddy’s heart, almost ready to heave through his chest, pumped fiercely.
“Um,” he started.
“I’m Julie,” she interrupted him, before he could pass out. “You have a beautiful dog, some kind of lab mix maybe? We cross paths almost every day. Not sure what time exactly, but it makes me think of the movie Groundhog Day.”
Buddy’s head was so jumbled with words and thoughts and feelings, he felt his throat closing. He became dizzy.
“Are you okay, Mister?” the freckled-faced girl asked, head cocked sideways in concern.
Buddy breathed as deeply as he could without appearing to be breathing as deeply as he could. How has he mastered that, exactly? He rarely found himself in such an overwhelming situation. He was the kind of man who stood off to the side and watched other men talk to the women he wished he could talk to.
The jogger – Julie – hopped off the stage and onto the floor. She stood in front of Buddy, her height at just about five feet five inches. She came up to his shoulders, and Buddy always felt like this was the perfect height for a woman: short enough to be protected and carried around – like a bouquet of flowers, not a cave woman – and tall enough to fill out the length of her legs. Her blond hair was straight and pulled tightly, her forehead showing no signs of age. Her skin was pale but not sickly at all, just like the little girl’s skin, only she hadn’t any freckles that were as prominent.
&
nbsp; “Well, like I said, I’m Julie. This is my daughter Molly. So now when I run by you and your dog, you’ll say ‘hey’ to me, right?” Julie spoke and Buddy watched her mouth move, not quite hearing her clearly.
“Uh, yeah,” he stammered.
Julie put out her hand. Buddy looked down at it and put his hand in hers. Her eyes squinted. “I thought you wanted to share your brownies.”
Embarrassed, Buddy handed her a brownie. It had a green and yellow ribbon around the top, serving as a tie.
“What about me?” Molly asked, hopping off the stage and standing next to her mother.
Buddy smirked at her and handed her a brownie.
The three of them awkwardly stood in place, looking at each other, Buddy feeling the most out of place he has ever felt in his life. He wanted to tell Julie that he purposely walked his dog at two o’clock every day just in case she runs by. But that would’ve made him sound like a stalker. He wanted to tell her that he thinks about her all the time, even during the short time he attempted a relationship with Jennifer the law student. But that would’ve made him sound like a jerk. He wanted to tell her that he thought she was beautiful, that he hoped she was single, that he’d like to cook her supper, that he wanted to take her to the movies some time. He saw no wedding ring on her finger, the telltale sign of a committed woman. Having a little girl wasn’t something he thought of in his imaginary life with the jogger, but he had always wanted a family.
Buddy was paralyzed in his thoughts. Here was this woman he has done nothing but wonder about for months – talking to him right here and now – trying to have a conversation with him…and he was on the left side of speechless. Isn’t this what teenaged girls do? Plan their future lives with someone they just met?
As if on cue, Jasper walked up to the threesome. “Mr. Cochran, I was wonderin’ if you could help me for a minute.”
Buddy came out of his confused state. He looked at Jasper, standing in a pair of old work jeans and a long-sleeved shirt.
“Uh, yeah. Of course.”
“Mr. Cochran?” Julie asked.
Buddy looked over at her.
“You gonna introduce me to your friends?” Jasper asked.
“Uh, yeah, sure. This is Julie. And Molly.”
Molly put out her hand. “I’m Molly. This is my school.”
Jasper smiled at her and asked, “You own a school?”
Molly laughed. “No silly, I just go here.”
“My name is Mr. Ray.” He pointed at his table just along the wall of the cafeteria. “You see all those wooden trinkets?”
Molly nodded her head.
“That’s my table. So, I hope y’all will stop by and visit sometime today.”
Molly looked up at Julie.
“Hi, Mr. Ray. My name is Julie Saint. I’m one of the teachers here. Thank you so much for participating in our Fall Festival.”
Jasper shook her hand.
“And Mr. Cochran? What’s your first name?” she asked, turning to Buddy, her blue eyes gleaming at him. “You haven’t told us your name.”
Buddy looked briefly down at his feet. “My name’s Jonathan Cordova. But people call me ‘Buddy.’”
“Ah,” she said. “Who’s Mr. Cochran?”
Jasper interjected. “OJ Simpson’s lawyer. You know? The one that said, ‘If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.’”
Julie looked confused.
Buddy grinned and explained. “I’m an attorney. Here in town. Jasper is my extremely talented mailman. Really, he is a wood-smith who delivers mail during the day to pay his other bills. I ah… I promised him that I’d stop by the school to see his projects and help him out if he needed it. Also, so I could buy my mother something for Christmas.”
Smiling, Julie replied, “I see. Well, thank you both for coming to support our fundraiser. This is our biggest one every year, and we raise a lot of money for the PTA.”
Molly, hopping in place, demanded, “You have to come dunk the Principal in a little while!”
Buddy watched her bounce. “Dunk the Principal?”
“Yeah!” Bounce, bounce, bounce. “We’re in charge of the dunk tank. Come throw some balls and dunk him.” Molly continued to hop.
“Okay, Molly, we will.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah, I promise.” Buddy wondered why this child hopped so much and found it both charming and exhausting at the same time.
“It was nice to meet you ladies,” Jasper said. “I need to set up a couple of things here and Mr. Cochran’s gonna help me get the chairs out of my truck.”
“It was so nice to meet you,” said Julie, putting her hand on top Molly’s head to get the hops quieted down.
Buddy looked at her, really looked at her, for the first time. When she runs by him, she is just a flash of beauty, a mesmerizing blur of female athleticism. She gazed at him softly with her big blue eyes and a warmth took over his entire body. He was happy – really happy – in this moment.
He felt her go almost shy with him, unlike the confident and polite, but authoritative, teacher she had just been. She looked away, knowing that he sensed it. Jasper walked off and Molly hopped over toward Dallas the Dalmatian mascot from the fire department who had just waltzed in.
He watched Julie, wondering who would say something next. It was almost a tranquil stillness hanging between them. “It was really nice to meet you, Julie.” Buddy spoke with more confidence than he had ever known in his life.
“Will I see you soon?” she asked, peering over at Molly talking with the big dog.
Continuing to observe her, Buddy, not thinking, blurted out, “You’re not married, are you?”
Julie, suddenly shaken out of her shyness, eyeballed Buddy harshly. “Um, no. I’m not. Not anymore.” She wiped her hands on her shorts and looked around the room.
“Good,” Buddy said, his heart soaring. He winked at her.
Julie appeared taken aback. “Well, I. He. I’m widowed. My husband passed away.”
And just like that, Buddy felt like the biggest ass who has ever walked the face of the earth. Wow. He couldn’t believe it. How selfish of him. This whole time he was dreaming about this mysterious jogger and wishing he had the courage to say something to her, kind of lurking around her like a dorky prepubescent boy every day with his well-timed walks, and she was just a woman in pain. A single mother in grief.
“I’m so sorry,” Buddy responded. “I’m, um, really, I’m sorry. I feel awful.”
“No, it’s okay. Really. You didn’t know. How could you have known, right?” she asked.
Molly started hopping again, this time out of the cafeteria and over to the water fountain. Julie and Buddy watched her. Buddy was amused but treading lightly.
“She sure likes to hop,” he said, breaking the tension of Julie’s apparent sadness and Buddy’s mortification.
“She does. She really does,” Julie laughed. “Well, I need to get going. We need to help out in the art room before we take care of the dunk tank outside. I hope I’ll see you again some time, Mr. Cochran.”
With that, she walked off toward the water fountain, collected her daughter, and they headed down a hallway.
Chapter 5
February 1971 – May 1973
Second Chances
Retta Kaspar and Kenny Bellinger stood in the chambers of the Honorable Montgomery Ewing, Justice of the Peace. Retta beamed in a long, form fitting yellow dress and a full crown of baby’s breath peppered inside of her raven hair swelling with bouncy curls, sewn together by her talented fellow hair dresser best friend, May Ellen Jones. May Ellen stood next to the soon-to-be Mr. and Mrs. Bellinger, bursting with joy and hope for her young widowed friend.
Lots of women were becoming husbandless by the war in Vietnam. Retta was just one of them, but out of how many, May Ellen didn’t know. S
he was lucky. Her husband was a plumber who did his two years early on and came out of the whole thing unscathed. However cruel the war in Vietnam was to so many women left behind, it was also particularly ugly to a legion of small children. That war left little Daniel Junior fatherless.
A war widow was a sad thing, but a fatherless boy was even sadder, as far as May Ellen was concerned. A woman, especially a young and pretty one like Retta, could always find herself another husband. But a little boy’s father was his father. And there was no one else who could replace that relationship in a little boy’s life.
Kenny Bellinger came back from Vietnam with a shrapnel wound in his leg. The wound was bad enough to send him home for good and get him medically discharged. But not so bad that he couldn’t find a job quickly, settle himself in Killeen and fall head over heels in love with the delicate Italian beauty from New Jersey, who sometimes cut the hair of the stray Army man wandering into the hair salon on Fairmont Avenue.
It always made May Ellen laugh when the soldiers came in to Delta’s Hair Salon. They all thought they were so smart, doing something nobody had thought of before. The salon was not a barber shop, but instead, it was a bona-fide beauty shop for women – hair and nails and facials and whatnot. May Ellen figured that these lonely boys of war knew exactly where to find women. And where better than in a beauty salon nestled inside of a military town?
Kenny was big and cute and friendly and smitten with Retta right off the bat. He sat down in her chair, smiled that jillion-watt grin of his, and said, “Miss Retta, darlin’, I need a high and tight.” But Kenny wasn’t in the Army anymore. He had a job at a warehouse, or at least that’s what he said, and soon enough, he charmed Retta right out onto her first date…the first date she agreed to since that dreaded visit from the Casualty Notification Officer on a Tuesday afternoon about her beloved Danny and his remains heading back on a plane.
Good Buddy Page 7
