by Bart Hopkins
He parked along the shoulder of the road and admired the old tree. The trunk was thicker than a barrel, and at about eight feet above the ground, it opened up, branches spreading in every direction. It reminded him of a giant hand, fingers spread wide, leaving the open palm face-up for people to sit in. Which is what he and his father had done on every trip to the house.
Lost in memories, Greg didn’t notice when the older man walked up behind him. The wistful expression on his face continued uninterrupted; the older man gave the younger a spot of time.
Greg jumped when he caught sight of someone in his peripheral vision and turned his head.
“Oh! Hey, um, I’m sorry … do you live here? I guess I got carried away, coming up to look at the tree,” he said, stammering through an explanation.
“Didn’t mean to scare ya, son. The missus was lookin’ through the window. Said she saw some’un standin’ out here. Said you looked…” he paused, eyeballed Greg for a moment, then cracked a friendly smile, “…dangerous.”
“Dangerous? Ha, no. Not me. No.”
The guy looked twenty years older than Greg, hair completely white, skin leathery from years of being in the sun. One wiry arm fell casually at his side; the other was propped up by the hand resting on his hip. He looked completely at ease with himself. Amused.
“Pretty tree, ehn’t she?” Greg thought about how drastically different his own Galveston-and-Austin non-accent differed from the distinct country flare in the old man’s voice.
“It is. I, um, used to climb in it, when I was younger. My grandparents lived here, maybe thirty years ago.”
“S’at right? I reckon that’s when we bought the house, the wife and I. Early eighties.”
“Yeah. They’d passed on, and the kids, my dad and his brothers, they decided to sell instead of working the land. They’d all grown away from farming.”
“My own kids did the same. Still come out now and then, help clear the fields, but mostly they’re done. Shame, really. Family was farmers as far back as I can remember and before that, too. But time moves on, I s’pose.”
“That it does,” Greg agreed.
“Name’s Jim.”
“Greg.”
They shook hands.
“Want some tea? Dangerous lookin’ fella like you might like tea, I suppose.”
Greg smiled.
“No, but thank you. I’ll get out of your hair. Need to get down to Galveston, see some old friends.”
Jim nodded his head a couple of times.
“And I have to tell the missus that I done run you off. Kept her safe.”
They shook hands again and Greg left.
<<>>
As soon as Greg crossed the big bridge leading to ‘the island’ he rolled the windows down and sucked in the salty air. He inhaled that pungent smell—could taste the beach in the bouquet—craved it like a recovering gambling addict might yearn for the roulette wheel or just one more hand of blackjack.
He continued straight off the causeway and followed Broadway Avenue. Galveston was a tourist city, and even though some locals avoided the tourists, there were two places that he thought of as the heart and soul of his hometown.
The first was the downtown district, and specifically the area referred to as The Strand. He thought about turning left around 25th Street and doing a drive by, but reconsidered … he only had a few hours before the reunion started.
And I see Candy, he thought with mixed feelings. They had been texting playfully so far, but he assumed that she might confront him about their break-up all those years before. He’d taken off to college and tried not to look back. Was mostly successful. Eventually moved on.
He sighed and kept on until Broadway ran into the beach. Nothing could keep him down with the G-town beach in sight.
Galveston’s other lifeline, naturally, was the miles of coastline she boasted. He never visited without driving down Seawall Boulevard; it was usually the first thing he did. The ocean, the sand, the birds … the new Pleasure Pier, a swirling mishmash of color and movement … and people of all shapes and sizes, walking, running, riding in surreys, or meandering on bikes. It was a uniquely complex and beautiful mechanism, unlike anything he’d seen since.
He wondered, as he sometimes did when visiting Galveston, whether settling down in Austin had been the right decision. People say you should live in the right now, and he agreed—it didn’t make sense to dwell on what you could have done, or should have done. But this topic always tugged at him because of his affinity for the island. He rolled along at the breakneck speed of thirty-five miles per hour and soaked it up.
Within seconds he was caught up in the sights and sounds again, along with all the other rubberneckers … girls in bikinis … shirtless frat boys hauling coolers … bicycles … sunblock … surfers. It was the ecosystem of the island, exposed bodies and passion and frolic, and it reached inside of visitors and touched them in ways they’d never known, gave them a welcome squeeze.
He absorbed it like a flower waking in the rays of its first sun.
Half an hour later, he was in the lobby of the Moody Gardens Hotel. He’d wanted to get a room on the beach so he could wake up to the sounds of the ocean, but he opted for convenience, instead. He was pushing forty, and a lot of his decisions now favored convenience. The reunion was at the Moody Gardens Convention Center, so by staying there, he could stumble back to his hotel room easily if he had too much to drink.
And he thought he might have too much.
His room was bright, packed with pastel yellows and blues, creating eclectic images in his mind of Easter eggs and beach balls. Seahorses and pretzels. Cloudless skies and marshmallow birds. Sugary sweets and gritty saltwater.
From his window he could see the large, glass pyramid that housed the rain forest or birds or something. He’d have to check with the front desk and get his bearings, find out where the reunion was, and maybe even ask about that pyramid, too.
He threw himself on the king-sized bed, pulled out his phone, and went to Facebook. He had actually surprised himself during the drive by not checking his phone. Not once. The last time he’d gone without checking his cell phone for four hours, while awake, was probably, what, 2007? Probably the first touch screen phone he had, or maybe the first without a serious Internet connection. A dozen messages and notifications awaited him.
Claire told him to have fun, that she loved him. There was a previous client who had an inside line on a house deal. He was tagged in several pictures…
And there was a message from Candy.
Can’t wait to see you tonight, Greg!
He had a sudden moment of doubt about being there, alone, without Claire. She really was the love of his life and his best friend. He was simply investigating his past, a forgotten act in his personal history, he told himself, and closed his eyes for a moment. Thought about his wife … could see her in his mind. Claire getting dressed, pulling near-sheer pantyhose up those tight, tanned legs. He could even smell her, right there…
“Huh?” His eyes snapped open and he sat up. Looked around the room. Claire’s scent was strong, obvious, hanging in the air. For a moment, it seemed as if she must have truly been in the room with him instead of just tiptoeing through his mind. He finally regained his senses—realized he’d only dozed off.
He glanced at the clock and grunted with surprise. He’d been out for over an hour, and it was time to get ready for the big show.
<<>>
“Hey, Greg!”
“Hi,” he replied with a mixture of both genuine and forced enthusiasm. “How are … you?” The girl’s name eluded him, which was funny since she was handing out name tags. She was curvy, in a good way, with deep reddish-brown hair, nearly the same color he saw on some horses. She was in a little black dress, wore it well.
“It’s Betsy Sullivan … we had Biology together. We were even lab partners once, remember?”
“Betsy Sullivan! Holy cow, how are you? It’s been so long…”
<
br /> “Well, I think it’s been twenty years, eh, Greg? Twenty-year reunion!”
“Yeah, duh, twenty years. Wow, you look the same. And different too. Better. You had glasses?”
“Yep. Had Lasik surgery a few years ago, and contacts before that. So the glasses have been gone a long time.”
“Well, you look great,” he told her. He remembered the nerdy Betsy Sullivan in high school, with turtleneck sweaters, and thick glasses. A shapeless amoeba, friendly but asexual. Now she was sort of a knockout. Time shapes people. “Married? Kids?”
“Yes and yes. I’ll introduce you to the hubby later, when he gets back. It’s actually Betsy Sullivan Norris, now. You married? I’ve seen your blog … heard about it from a friend when we were thinking about moving to Austin. It’s really good, as good as a magazine or something.”
“Really? That’s great,” he said. It caught him off guard sometimes, the reach and power of the World Wide Web. “I’m married and have a fifteen-year-old daughter. They couldn’t make it, though.”
“That’s too bad,” Betsy replied. “Jerry and I—Jerry is my husband by the way—we came without the kids. Jerry’s mom has them for the weekend.”
“Huh, well good for you, a little vacation action. Man, Betsy Sullivan, you sure are different. I do, by the way, remember that we were lab partners … you corrected me when we were dissecting pigs one time. I was a little grossed out by it, honestly, but you took over and finished. I think I passed that section because of you!”
“That’s right! Good thing we got group grades on it, or you might not have passed,” she laughed, greeting other people, handing out name tags to people that he didn’t recognize, holding multiple conversations at once. She was like an air traffic controller except the aircraft were Ball High School students from twenty years earlier.
They continued their chitchat, and Greg scanned the room. It was big. No, that didn’t do it justice. It was cavernous, with a stage and dance floor at one end. He noted with pleasure that the disc jockey was playing music from the 1980s and 1990s. REM’s Losing My Religion finished, and Ditty from Paperboy started. He chuckled, nostalgia for the music overpowering him for a moment before he took in the rest of the room.
“Talk to you more later, Betsy?”
“Absolutely!”
He took his leave from her and walked to a nearby table.
The main lights were dimmed, but there were strands of white lights around the room, and small beams of light from a projection system danced around the walls. The decor was Christmas meets Saturday Night Fever. Something bright glimmered in his field of vision, from the center of his table, and he looked down. There was a framed mirror centerpiece with CLASS OF 1994 emblazoned across the top and bottom. He noticed they were all over the place, on all the tables.
He didn’t know how many of the nearly one thousand kids in their graduating class would show up. It was impossible to know. There were some military guys serving overseas. A handful of others worked in other countries for various corporations. He knew this from reading the “about” section on Facebook profiles of people he knew. There were already a couple hundred people, and he figured that number would at least double.
Familiar faces dotted the room. There was Chuck Hill, who ran the local Chevrolet dealership. His father owned it, and Greg figured Chuck would own it one day, too. He saw Mandy Magliolo—couldn’t miss her—a girl he’d always fawned over, but she was much too hot to date guys in her own grade back then. Stuck with older guys.
Rob Hanson, aka Rob Handsome, their class’s Joe-All-American, was a few tables away. He was their local football star, a straight-A student, and ridiculously good looking. His clothes back then had always been like a J. Crew advertisement. He couldn’t hear what Rob was saying, but eight or nine people were gathered around him and hanging on his every word. Of course, Rob was still ridiculously good looking.
There were more, so many more, old peers and friends, gathered together for another hoorah. We are Ball High Tornadoes, he hummed to himself with a smile, remembering their school song. They’d sung it, drunk as villains, at many a football game.
He started feeling a little looser and thought he might really enjoy himself once he had a drink or two. More people were coming in, and he thought to himself that it looked as if all of the old crowd was going to be there.
But there was still someone missing.
Just then two soft hands slid around the side of Greg’s face and covered his eyes. A familiar perfume tickled his nostrils, and a flood of old memories started pouring into the forefront of his mind. He felt her breath on his ear…
“Guess who, Greg.”
He turned around, but he’d known who it was before she spoke.
“Hey, Candy.”
Chapter 21
Martin and Zoe
“By George, I think that does it.”
Zoe leaned across the table and looked over the document on the computer screen. She’d read several iterations already as Martin made changes. She drank in the words, swished them around in her mouth like good wine, feeling the texture and becoming one with the aroma before swallowing it down.
“It’s perfect,” she told him.
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
He smiled, hit save, and emailed the document to his attorney. It was the charter for their non-profit organization, plush with purpose, guidelines, and requirements, all for people they helped. In the end, he had wanted to focus primarily on clients that had medical problems, but he left it open to anything. He considered himself a good citizen, and thought of this venture as his duty. And it was forward thinking. If they were successful, he suspected they would be sought out by the full spectrum of people in need. He wanted to help anyone he could, even if it was outside of his expertise, which was surviving cancer.
Greg’s fingerprint was all over it; he had coordinated almost everything. Martin knew he couldn’t have done it without the help of his old student and friend.
“Zoe, do you think we’re going to be able to get that office downtown?” he asked.
“Probably.” Noncommittal. No change in expression.
Martin had his eye on some office space near the State Capitol building. If they met their initial goals, he planned to lease it, so they could get some volunteers and get things rolling.
“I guess it all hinges on whether or not we’re providing a service that people actually need. I think so … am nearly certain of it. But the execution might not be as simple as I have in mind. The unforeseen is always waiting around the corner in the dark.”
“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before,” Zoe said, adding a tinge of the dramatic, and ending with a slight flourish and smile.
“Edgar Allen Poe. Delightful, my dear. Reminds me yet again how right you are for me. From the very first time I saw you in that library, I knew it.”
He stood up and wrapped his arms around her.
“Me too,” she told him, returning his hug. “And the people will come, Martin. People everywhere need help. They’ll be beating down the door.”
“Hmm.” He wasn’t as sure.
“Have you checked on the websites? Or the fundraiser thing?”
“No.”
“What about the email account he created for it?”
“Not yet. I will in a moment.”
He didn’t say it—didn’t want Zoe to know—but he was nervous. More than just an idea, or a hobby, the idea of helping people had become a … well, a crusade of sorts, for Martin. Not a compulsion. No. In Latin, the word was fatum, root of the word fate. He felt it was his destiny.
Two days earlier, on Thursday morning, Greg had launched their website, Kickstarter campaign, and Facebook page. For forty-eight hours they’d been left alone in the world of electrons, unmonitored and unchecked. Why? Martin was afraid of what he might find waiting for him. It wasn’t the idea of a
challenge that bothered him; he was scared there would be nothing, that he wouldn’t be able to do what he felt he was meant to do.
He’d spoken to his dean already, and dropped the news that he would like to gradually reduce his class load in order to pursue what he felt was a noble cause. The administration and university president loved him; they would give him the room he needed. Or that’s what they said. But real life didn’t work that way. Tenure could be one tough son-of-a-gun to acquire, never to be taken lightly.
With a silent, but extended sigh, he logged into Facebook, and switched from his personal page to the HELP 101 page. At the top he saw that there were fifty-eight messages.
Fifty-eight messages!
And the site had gone from the three Likes—he and his wife and Greg—to nearly four thousand Likes! He clicked on the notifications icon and the dropdown came open revealing the most recent messages…
Mr. Lange, you are such a remarkable man…
Sir, I was wondering if you could help my mother…
What you are doing for people is just amazing…
I just donated to your Kickstarter campaign…
My brother has cancer. Can you help us?...
“Dear God,” he mumbled.
“Martin?”
“Zoe … look at this.”
Zoe sat down next to him and they began opening messages. They went through message after message.
“Have you checked email from the website?” she asked.
“No,” he replied, switching screens. A moment later they were staring down the barrel at dozens of emails, maybe a hundred, just like the Facebook messages.
“I guess we’re in business,” he murmured.
“Let’s create three folders,” Zoe said. She took the mouse from him and started clicking and typing. “We’ll name them Volunteers, Need Help, and Good Luck.”
“That’s good,” he told her. “Hmm. What about another folder, named Clients? So we can differentiate between the people we are helping already with those who are asking for help?”