Julie walked into Flora’s and found a two-person booth. Buddy walked inside with his hands deep in his pockets and his head bowing down slightly, soon after her. He grinned a wily smile when he saw her and shyly walked over to her table and sat down. He looked around and scanned the room, noticing the bright orange, purple and yellow walls.
“I haven’t been in here in a long time,” he declared looking at the flower pot collection sitting near the window on a shelf.
“It’s cute, isn’t it?” she asked.
“I suppose,” Buddy responded, shifting in his seat.
They ordered sandwiches off the menu from a young waitress who babysat Molly a few times during the rare occasion Julie had an appointment or meeting that she didn’t want to drag Molly into. Buddy asked the waitress if they had any grape Kool Aid. She looked perplexed and suggested he try their freshly squeezed Lemonade instead.
“So, what’s your story, Mr. Cochran?” Julie asked, trying to break the ice. She was floored as to how reserved this man was. Most men who interact with her are trying to figure out how they can ask her out on a date without offending her. It seemed that when a woman is an Army widow, there’s a certain unspoken rule among single men in how to deal with it. They don’t want to come on too strong. They don’t want to be disrespectful of the dead. But they don’t want to miss out on being the one to snag the young, attractive, single blond, either. In this case, she had to ask the guy out on a date, and she also had to initiate even simple conversation with him.
“My story?”
“Yeah, your story. I’m going to assume that you’re not married. You have a dog. You’re a lawyer. What else?”
Buddy took a bite of his BLT. After swallowing, he answered, “Correct. I’m not married. I do have a dog. I’m a criminal defense attorney and live on Triton Hills. Have for about three years now, ever since I got out of law school.”
“Are you with a firm?”
“No, I’m on my own. Other lawyers call it ‘hanging a shingle.’ I work out of my house.” He paused. “I do hope to be able to open a more professional office someday, but for now, this works for me.”
“Were you in the Army? Are you from here?”
“No,” Buddy started. He would have to stop himself from time to time and remember – then forget – that he is originally from Killeen, Texas. There was always a piece of him that held onto that. There was always something inside of him that wanted to find out the rest of that unfinished story…the story that he and his mother left behind and never spoke about again. “I’m from Welby,” he shared instead. “It’s near Chapel Hill.”
“I’ve been there before. Little rural country town. A few cute quaint stores,” Julie said in between bites.
“Yeah, I grew up there on a large property owned by a man named Joe Horton. My mother and I were on our own when we first moved there. I was young, and so we rented a small place on his land.”
“So, you’re a country boy?”
Buddy nodded. “I suppose I am a country boy,” he chuckled to himself. He hated country music and all the country stuff the guys he grew up around were into. Things like muddin’ and dirt bikes and racing. He liked to read. He liked baseball. He liked movies. He liked politics.
“How about you? You’re a teacher, and you have Molly. And Molly is always hopping around. Where is Molly, anyway?”
“She’s at a slumber party,” Julie answered, gazing up at Buddy. “Her first one. I have to pick her up at three.”
Buddy looked at a couple filling up their sodas at the soda fountain. Then he peered down.
“And you’re widowed,” he started. “I’m really sorry that happened to you. And Molly, too.” Buddy knew what it felt like to be raised by a widowed woman, and he knew what it felt like to not know his own father. He wanted to tell Julie this, tell her about his mother’s pain and strength after his father dying in Vietnam. He wanted to tell her how he had nothing of his father…not even his name anymore. He wanted to tell her that his mother once told him that while he can’t have his father’s name, he could take pride and comfort in knowing that he had his father’s blue eyes and long eyelashes.
“Yes, it was really hard. It’s been a year and a half now, and Molly and I have adjusted. It’s an odd adjustment for sure. No rulebooks or manuals. But we miss him every day. He was a good man, a good husband and father, a damn good soldier.”
“So, he was in the Army then?”
Julie looked down at her plate and took a sip of her water. “He was in the Eighty-Second and, during a training exercise, his unit was participating in a jump. His parachute didn’t deploy correctly. So, he pulled his reserve and it collapsed them both. He didn’t pass right away. Lingered for another day in a coma. He never had a chance.” Julie looked sad and thoughtful. “Or at least, that’s what the Army said happened.”
“Do you think they’d lie about something like that?” Buddy asked, concerned.
“Who knows? It doesn’t matter anyway. Gabe is gone. And we never really got to say ‘goodbye’ to him. I stayed at the hospital, kept vigil by his bed. I held his hand and talked to him, like they said to do, but he never responded to me or my voice. Not even once.”
Julie started to feel depressed again, and that’s not what this little lunch date was supposed to be. Her chest felt heavy, and her stomach began to clench, like the monster named Grief decided to intrude on her first date and remind her that it still owned her…all of her. This deep pain came from nowhere and everywhere, whenever it wanted to be felt. And it sucked. There was no timetable or warning.
She liked this Buddy guy for some reason. Something sweet about him. He didn’t try with her; he didn’t pursue her or make her feel like she was single and ready to mingle. She wasn’t. She was an Army widow with a little girl to raise. She loved her husband and expected to grow old with him. She never saw herself as a single woman, certainly didn’t feel like a single woman, and honestly had no idea what the hell single women her age did with their time. Her life and their lives were like night and day. And for the first time, she looked down at her empty ring finger and wondered why she ever felt like she had any right to take it off. The law said she wasn’t married…but she sure felt like she was.
She looked up at Buddy and noticed that he was staring back and into her eyes for the first time. He wasn’t doing that weird thing he seemed to do where he looked just past her face, as if he had a lazy eye or something.
“I’m sorry. I’d really rather not talk about all that.”
“It’s okay, Julie. We can talk about whatever you’d like. We don’t have to tell our sad stories today,” Buddy said deliberately.
Julie liked how he added that “today,” like he meant that there would be another time they could talk about their sad stories. She felt comfortable with him, almost like they had been friends a long time ago in childhood and had now reconnected by coincidence later in life.
The waitress came and left the bill. Buddy swiped it first. “I got this,” he said, obviously raised right and not buying into the whole “Dutch Treat” concept of first dates between men and women in the Nineties. If that was what this really was.
Julie watched him fill out the credit card slip, trying to determine a tip amount.
“Fifteen percent isn’t too hard to figure out, counselor,” she stated flatly, trying to sound like she was kidding him.
Buddy was quiet, writing an odd amount as the tip.
“What kind of a tip is $4.71?” she asked, confused.
Buddy completed his math and looked up into Julie’s big blue eyes. “I like the total to be an exact dollar amount,” he explained, holding up the slip to show an even $22.00 bill total.
Later that afternoon, after Julie and Molly were back at home preparing for an evening of popcorn and a video, the phone rang. Molly answered the phone and yelled for Julie.
“Hello?” Julie said into the receiver.
“Hey, uh…this is Buddy.”
After an awkward pause, with Julie thinking that he was going to continue – and then didn’t – she added, “Hey, what’s up?”
“Well, I was wondering what you and Molly were doing,” Buddy said nervously.
“We were just going to watch a video.”
“Oh, okay, then. Well, I won’t bother y’all.”
“No, what? What is it?”
“Well, I uh…I have some chicken here that I was going to grill. And I needed some help eating it.”
Julie decided that was probably one of the more adorable things she had ever heard come out of the mouth of a grown man.
“Molly! Put on your sneakers,” Julie commanded of her daughter after hanging up the phone. “We’re going to have grilled chicken with Buddy and Bo.”
Christmas Eve
Buddy was looking forward to this Christmas unlike any other Christmas in his entire life. Christmas growing up in Texas was exciting like it is for any kid. That is, until Kenny started to drink and beat his mother and just generally be an asshole to everyone…ruining their family. Then Christmas wasn’t so much fun anymore. It was just a short break from the loud, sad, horror show that seemed to hijack his interrupted childhood.
Christmas, after arriving in North Carolina, seemed to be okay, but it took a while for Buddy and his mother to make their own new traditions for the holiday. They were living someone else’s life at that point, and so they were doing someone else’s traditions.
They had no family to speak of, no one to go visit, no one to come visit them, no one to send Christmas cards to…not even to the nice ladies they met in New Mexico. There was no receiving a gift in the mail, such as a dress shirt that didn’t fit quite right, from Daniel Junior’s Uncle Frank and Aunt Nikki. It was a strange holiday now. Just – nothing, empty, voided – but with reds and greens festively adorning the nothing, empty and voided. That took some getting used to.
When Buddy first arrived in North Carolina, he still believed in Santa Claus. Some of the kids at his new school talked about how Santa wasn’t real, it was just their parents pretending, it was just another lie about the world that adults told their children. But Buddy kept it secret, like he kept a lot of secrets. He still believed.
He asked his mother, “How will Santa know where to find us if we ain’t who we used to be?”
“Santa knows all, son,” she replied, rubbing his hand with her finger.
“Does he know that I’m still me? Just that I have a different name and a new home?”
“I promise, Buddy, he will not forget you.”
Buddy believed her and Santa did not disappoint. Years later, he learned that Joe did his mother a favor, dressed up as Santa and put the presents under the tree for her, just in case Buddy woke up in the night. Joe bought Buddy a brand new Kelly-green Schwinn from the big toy store in Durham and put a huge red bow on top of it. He decided during that very first Christmas that Joe Horton was good people and he could trust Joe being around his mother.
But this Christmas, more than twenty Christmases later, Buddy was bringing Julie and Molly to meet his mother and Joe at Christmas dinner. This Christmas, he would have a little girl in his life to buy presents for. This Christmas, he got to play up Santa Claus and accompany Julie to the mall where she proceeded to have a photo taken of Molly on Santa’s lap – but only after Molly stopped hopping long enough to sit down and explain to him that she wanted Polly Pockets and a new art set for her room and a cure for cancer.
Watching the pure joy in the face of a kind and genuinely open child, like Molly, tear into a cheerily wrapped Christmas gift would be a first for Buddy. Since he had no siblings and no nieces and nephews or cousins, it would probably be the most exciting part of his entire holiday – being a witness to such a magical moment.
Buddy and Julie, with Molly in tow most of the time, started spending lots of their free time together ever since that Saturday in late October at Flora’s Bistro. They would eat supper together almost every day, either at Julie’s or at Buddy’s and sometimes at the Bojangle’s close to the highway. Julie enjoyed leaving her sweatshirts and jackets behind at Buddy’s and poking fun at his assorted Kool Aid flavors resting inside several plastic jugs, which he kept lined up like soldiers in his fridge. Buddy enjoyed keeping a box of some chewy Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies in Julie’s pantry and a container of grape Kool Aid in the back of her fridge. He hoped someday, he would be able to leave his toothbrush.
Julie let Buddy go trick-or-treating with them on Halloween. She invited him to have apple pie and vanilla ice cream with them on Thanksgiving, after they got back from feeding the homeless Thanksgiving dinner at church. They took walks with Bo, played at the park, enjoyed movies either in the theatre or videos at Julie’s house. Molly read to Buddy a few times, Junie B. Jones books mostly, but she started reading the Box Car Children per Buddy’s recommendation, and Buddy found himself being the new kid with a new name in a new school in a new state all over again as he listened to her read.
Buddy taught Molly how to ride her two-wheeler, something she couldn’t get the hang of until he spent an entire Saturday morning, in late November, working with her. She wore a pink jacket with a tear in the elbow and a pair of jeans over her skinny legs. Her new white Nikes were bright as they sat neatly positioned on the pedals.
“Now listen,” he told her in his best pep talking voice. “Moll, you got to use all that energy you have hopping around all the time and put it into balancing yourself. Once you feel it, it will be so easy to keep on going. You’ll wonder why it was so hard to figure out.”
He pushed her, as she sat on the bike, onto the grass. Molly sat still.
“I just don’t see how the grass is gonna help,” she said.
“The grass keeps the bike from moving too fast. So, it will give you confidence. Then when you have your confidence, we will move the bike onto the sidewalk, and you’ll be off.”
It took him a couple of hours to get Molly to the point where she was comfortable trying to ride the bike on the sidewalk. But as soon as he moved the bike onto the pavement, she hopped on and rode away to the end of the neighborhood. There was no stopping her.
When she finally came back to her house several minutes later, she parked the bike and walked up to Buddy, hugging him with the mighty strength of a small girl who just accomplished something big. It was the first time in his life that he felt like he would make a good father someday.
For the past two months, Buddy and Julie grew closer, but there had been no romance attached to anything. They were friends – but with powerful and ever-growing feelings toward each other. They didn’t really talk about it except once time. And Buddy did not want to ruin the special bond they had forged so far by suggesting they kiss. Although he wanted to. He wanted it all.
He knew that if any of those things were ever going to happen, they would happen on Julie’s time table. She was still grieving her loss and a single mother, which is a sacred kind of woman in this world, Buddy knew all too well. Women like that are deeply wounded but also exceptionally brave. Wounded, because they can never quite heal from losing their husbands. Brave, because they have a child to care for, so there’s no feeling sorry for themselves for too long. And since he was too shy to make any kind of move on her anyway, Julie couldn’t have been in a safer situation with any other man on the planet.
But he knew that her heart was opening to him. He could tell. She was the only woman he had ever met in his life who genuinely seemed to like him – like him as a man, just as he is. Sure, there were always girls who thought he was cute, and they always had something to say about his eyelashes, but after they figured out he wasn’t interested in romancing them or writing songs for them or playing irrational “read my mind” head games or bouncing around and buying them expensiv
e gifts and expensive dinners or telling them things they just wanted to hear – even if they weren’t true – they quietly disappeared. No matter how much Buddy had wanted to meet a nice girl to marry, he did not want some plastic existence meandering along the roads of North Carolina inside a Chevy Venture minivan.
Julie seemed to like that he never pressured her for anything and he’d listen to her talk about her husband. She didn’t expect anything from him at all but would always invite him or accept his invitations – no strings attached. And Buddy never realized that he could simply enjoy being in the company of a woman and it have nothing to do with the possibility of – or hope for – sex.
On Christmas Eve, Julie invited him over to decorate cookies with them. Buddy and Bo showed up at the door, and Buddy brought a bottle of red wine from Duplin Winery with him. When Molly answered the door, Bo bounded inside, almost as if his youth returned like that one day he ran with Julie. Molly hugged Buddy tight and asked him if he got her a present.
“What do you think?” Buddy asked her, hugging her back.
“Well, I don’t know. I think maybe you did because we’re friends.”
“We are.”
“We’re buddies.”
“The best.”
“Isn’t that funny?” Molly asked with her hand on top of her head.
“What’s funny?” Buddy asked, setting the wine bottle down on the coffee table near the front door.
“You are my buddy. And your name is Buddy.”
“Well that’s why my mother named me Buddy, a long, long time ago.”
“Why?”
“Because of you.”
“Because of me?” Molly looked confused. She started hopping in place.
“My mother must’ve known that someday, I would meet a girl named Molly who hops around a lot and whose daddy went to Heaven. And so, she would need a buddy,” he explained.
“But I wasn’t born way back then,” she said, still hopping.
Good Buddy Page 11
