Homecoming Weekend

by Curtis Bunn

  “Jack,” he said to the fourth member of his group, “whatever happened to Alana Steele?”

  Alana and Jack had comprised one of those always-together couples in college. Some students wondered if they ever went to class. They always seemed to be walking the vast campus, hand-in-hand.

  “It’s funny you ask about her because I haven’t seen her in about twelve, thirteen years,” Jack said. Jack was a notorious womanizer, a super-confident former baseball player of significant charisma and humor. “She called me out of the blue about a week or two ago. I told her straight up: Let’s get a room at homecoming and do it like it was old times.”

  “She was like, ‘Some things never change.’ And I told her, ‘You know the deal. Why did you call me if that’s not what you wanted?’ Man, I have to say what I believe. She goes into this whole ‘we could be friends’ thing. Then she starts talking about I cheated on her in college.

  “I said, ‘Alana, I’m sorry. But I was a nineteen-year-old kid on a campus full of good-looking women. You can’t hold me accountable for that.’ She said, ‘Yeah, but it still hurt at the time.’ You know me. I said, ‘That’s long over. But we can go back in time if we spend a night together.’

  “She said she wasn’t going for it, but I don’t believe her. She’s here. I will get that before I leave this weekend. You can believe that.”

  They went on to the No. 3 hole—Earl rebounded from the opening hole to make par on the second—and Jack kept going. “Ah, man, let me tell you this crazy story about Alana,” he said. “So, back in the day, she tells me she’s pregnant. I’m a sophomore without a pot to piss in or a window . . . you know the saying. So I told her to get the money for an abortion because I didn’t have any money.

  “She wants to get a second opinion. So we set up an appointment with a doctor. The nurse tells her to bring a urine sample. So, we go and Alana is carrying this big-ass black purse. At the front counter, she pulls out this huge pickle jar full of piss. I stepped back. The nurse was like, “What’s that?’ Alana says, ‘I was told to bring a urine sample.’ The nurse says, ‘Honey, a sample is a little. You had to pee three or four times to bring this much.’

  “I was totally embarrassed. There were people in the waiting area snickering. But the reality is that she didn’t know. She was a country girl and to her, a sample meant a whole jar. It was crazy.”

  Earl and their playing partners fell out laughing. They all had myriad stories and used the five hours on the golf course to share them.

  “What about this?” Bob said. “I saw this girl on campus at the bookstore yesterday. I couldn’t place her but I knew she went to school with us. Then it hit me. I remembered her very clearly.

  “One night my senior year, after a Norfolk State-North Carolina Central game, we were hanging out at my boy, Rick’s house over there off of Brambleton. Rick’s girl was over there. I think her name was Tasha. We were playing backgammon and drinking and talking shit. Suddenly, Tasha and Rick get in an argument over something silly.

  “But Rick was drunk so he smushed her in the face and told her to get out. He went in the kitchen to get another beer and she went in behind him. So, we’re just playing the game—I think Mo Mo was playing against me; you remember Mo Mo, Morris Montey, the fool who got arrested for robbing a professor that time? Anyway, Mo Mo and I hear all this commotion in the kitchen. Finally, Rick comes out with his hand over his stomach.

  “He says, ‘She stabbed me’ and moved his hand. There was blood gushing out of this dude’s stomach. We’re like, ‘Damn. What the fuck?’ We rush him to Norfolk General Hospital.”

  ‘What?” Jack said. “Get the fuck outta here. I remember when he was out of school for a while. But he played football. I thought it was a football injury.”

  “Nah, dude, Tasha, sliced him,” Bob went on. “It took more than a hundred staples to close the wound.”

  “Damn,” Earl said. “She didn’t go to jail?”

  “No, because Rick wouldn’t tell them who did it,” Bob answered. “He kept saying he fell. They knew he was lying. But they couldn’t prove it . . . Man, I was scared as shit. I knew he was gonna die. Blood was everywhere.”

  Earl said, “The sad part was that—what?—six years later Rick died of a heart attack.”

  “Hold up,” Jack said.

  “Yep,” Earl continued. “He collapsed playing basketball in New York one day. Apparently he had an undetected heart condition.”

  “Damn, that is sad,” Jack said.

  Jack said something else, but Earl did not hear him. His cell phone chimed, meaning he had received a text message. Earlier, he had texted Catherine to tell her how much he had enjoyed their time together and how relieved he was to finally tell her how much he loved her. He was awaiting her reply, and that was it.

  “Baby, I love you, too. I really do. Last night—and this morning—were amazing. I’m here at work but I’m not getting much accomplished. All I can think about is you. I look forward to dinner tonight. I hope you are kicking butt on the golf course.”

  Earl smiled as he read it. For more than four months, they sent each other an average of a dozen or so text messages a day. It was their primary source of communication. Their phone conversations were in-depth and critical. But they used text messaging to re-affirm their interest, attraction and to get to know each other.

  “What you smiling about?” Jack asked Earl.

  “Oh, man, just a text message from my girl,” he said. “She’s the text messaging queen.”

  “And that makes you the king then,” Bob said. “I don’t get the texting thing. Just pick up the phone and call me.”

  “I was like that too, at first,” Earl said. “But if you use it the right way, it can be effective.”

  “What’s the right way?” Warren asked.

  “Well, I’m talking about using it to communicate or express your feelings to a woman,” he said.

  “Express your feelings?” Jack said. “That sounds like some gay stuff to me.”

  The men laughed.

  “You’d better get with the times,” Earl said. “If you think you’re supposed to go about your business and not express yourself to a woman, then you’re a loser. Women need to hear complimentary stuff, too. Or hear that you are thinking about them. I’m telling you, a properly timed text can make a big difference.”

  “What is ‘properly timed’?” Warren wanted to know.

  “When it is least expected,” Earl said. He was on the tee box at No. 4, about to hit, but decided to deliver a lesson first. He put the tee in the ground and his ball on it, and then turned to his friends.

  “I ain’t trying to come off as some expert,” he said. “I’m just telling you that we were able to grow our relationship over the last several months through expressing ourselves all during the course of the day when we were working and couldn’t really pick up the phone and talk.

  “So we would text. And so if I text her at two-thirty in the afternoon saying, ‘I smiled just now because I thought about you and how I thought I knew you but didn’t really at all. What I am learning, though, is better than I expected.’ That’s a properly timed text. But it’s properly timed only because she wasn’t expecting it. It’s not contrived. I don’t sit around and look at the clock to decide the best time to hit her up.

  “And I don’t make up stuff to make her feel good. The best part about it is the opposite of that. I texted her because I was thinking about her. We’ve got to, as men, stop with the fake macho stuff. You say in public that you don’t have to express yourself to your woman, but behind closed doors, you’re probably kissing her ass.”

  “Looks like you’re the one whipped,” Jack said. “You can’t even get through a round of golf without texting your girl. Golf is an escape from women.”

  They all laughed again. “Yeah, that’s true for you, I guess,” Earl said. “See, I’m in love. I’m not in like or playing around. I’m not trying to get away from my girl. I’m trying to get c
loser to her. So, to spend a few seconds texting her to let her know she’s on my mind, well, that’s the least I can do. You bamas better get on board.”

  “I gotta give it to him,” Bob said. “I texted my wife one day last week, out of the blue, just to say I enjoyed the dinner she cooked the night before. She texted me back this long message about how much it meant to her. I was eating leftovers for lunch and wanted her to know how good it was. She ended up getting all mushy on me. It made a big difference. It made her day.”

  “Yeah, women need that affirmation,” Jack said.

  “And you don’t?” Earl asked.

  “Hell, no,” Jack said. “I’m comfortable in my drawers.”

  When Bob finished laughing, he said, “You’re a fool. But check this out. About a week after I sent that text, one afternoon my wife texted me saying how much she enjoyed the night before in bed. I didn’t think I needed—what did you call it?—‘affirmation.’ But that text sure made me feel good. So I’m more like Earl on this one. If you use it the right way, it has its benefits.”

  “Only time I text is when I don’t feel like talking to that person,” Jack said. “I’m over today’s world where no one talks to each other anymore. Everyone is sending e-mails and texts. It’s impersonal.”

  “I hear you,” Earl said. “If that’s the only way you communicate, then, yes, it is impersonal. I’m just saying that sometimes, when you are feeling something and want to express it, dropping a text is not a bad thing. It’s a good thing. Plus, most of you numb-skulls can’t even communicate what you want to get across. So, it might be better to put it into words.”

  Just then, his phone chimed, indicating a text message.

  “You’re not even supposed to have your phone on the golf course,” Jack said. “No one else is messing with a phone now—only you.”

  “Maybe because I’m the only one in love,” Earl said, pulling his phone out of the cup holder in the golf cart.

  “Yeah, let’s see how long that lasts,” Warren said.

  Earl did not respond. He read Catherine’s text: “You make me smile all the time,” she wrote. “I truly am in love with you. I know I just left you this morning, but I miss you. Tonight’s going to be another great night.”

  He placed his phone back in the cart. “You all can say what you want, but I’m telling you some good stuff,” Earl said.

  “Okay, Love Doctor,” Warren joked. “Will you hit the ball, please?”

  That was how their round of golf went—Earl espousing the virtues of love and communication while reminiscing about their college days.

  After nine holes, Earl and his group waited at the clubhouse for the second group of friends who was playing behind them. They compared scorecards and talked trash about each other. Earl’s pre-round warmup was the worst of the eight friends playing. But he held the lead halfway through the round.

  “I figured something out,” he said. “I want to play well, but I’m not getting down after a bad shot. I’m just moving on. I’m not focusing on the negative.”

  “You’re playing with that phone so much I don’t know how you can focus on anything,” Warren said.

  Catherine could not focus on anything, either. She had spent much of the morning in a daze. Earl made love to her in a way that freed up her emotions and inhibitions. She had been married before, but, in the end, it became unfulfilling. It, indeed, grew to be exactly opposite of what she always desired.

  And after her divorce, the two men she dealt with were less than what she needed. Earl was a revelation. He captured the essence of what she always wanted but never received: a man who was committed to her and who coveted her and made her feel protected and loved and appreciated. She never expected to find it in someone she knew for more than thirty years, but “then again, I always had a good feeling about Earl,” she told her closest friend, Starr, the morning after. Because she could not focus on work, she texted Earl while he played golf and called Starr.

  “Girlfriend, I’m so happy,” she said. “I have never felt like this before. He is wonderful. I feel like a new person. I didn’t expect this. But I feel great.”

  “I’m jealous,” said Starr, who was married. “You know I’m kidding. I’m really happy for you. You deserve any happiness he can bring you.”

  Catherine and Starr were super tight. They were like sisters, only without the sibling rivalry. Each of them had many other friends, but none measured up to their closeness, which started when they pledged Delta Sigma Theta together at Norfolk State. Through the decades, their friendship had grown closer and closer to where they would trust each other with their life. More than that, they would trust their man with each other.

  “You have to have one person you can trust enough to know where the bodies are buried,” Catherine said. “That’s who Starr is for me.”

  Her excitement about her relationship with Earl prevented Starr from getting much work done, too. It was like sharing their experiences was therapy for Catherine. And Starr was the therapist, eager to hear every detail Catherine wanted to share. Not the intimate details of their passion, but any information that would paint a clear picture of her girl’s experience.

  “I love that about my girlfriend,” Catherine told Earl. “She’s genuinely happy for me. And I could talk about you all day and she’d just listen and ask questions. Some people, they would consider it too much. A real friend takes it all in. That’s Starr.”

  Starry-eyed Catherine had no idea how starry-eyed Earl was. While she shared all her emotions with Starr, Earl floated about the golf course, feeling as if he were a refreshed man. That euphoria translated into him playing a solid round of golf in chilly and windy conditions. He had the best score among his seven friends, a fact he was more than willing to share in the clubhouse afterward.

  “Seems I recall a lot of laughing and boasting before the round started,” Earl said. The guys pushed two tables together and ordered drinks. “Now I look at the scorecards and I’m the one on top.”

  The conversation would flip to other subjects, and Earl’s humility would not allow him to boast on winning at golf.

  “Bob,” Warren said, “you live in Chicago. Did you hear about the guy from Norfolk State that got shot?”

  Warren spoke of Calvin Sutton, a friend of Earl’s and Warren’s who was killed in the streets of the South Side of Chicago.

  “By his wife’s boyfriend,” Earl said. “I’ll never get over that. Calvin was a fun guy. The guy laughed at anything. Even when he was in school, his girlfriend would catch him with another girl and he’d laugh about it when telling you the story. Just a fun-loving guy.”

  “What happened?” Jack said.

  “Well,” Earl began, “he was my boy, but Calvin liked women. He was no different from any of us, except he always got caught. So he ends up marrying this woman from Chicago and moving out there. Good woman. Before long, they have all kinds of trouble, but they hang in there, have a son and whatever. But eventually it gets too bad. I spent a weekend with them and saw the drama firsthand.

  “So, Calvin moves out and does his own thing. And I guess his wife moves on and gets a boyfriend. One day, Calvin comes over to pick up his mail and to see his son. Mind you, they are doing this but they haven’t filed for divorce yet. Anyway, his wife’s boy-friend answers the door and they sort of get into it. Apparently, Calvin ends up punching the guy in the face.

  “He goes through the house and comes out of the kitchen door, which is on the side of the house and leads to the driveway. When he gets to the front of the house, the wife’s boyfriend is kicking his car door. Calvin confronts the dude and he pulls out a gun and shoots him in the chest, right there on the street—in front of his wife and son.

  “My man died right there. There was no call for that . . . Hurt me to my heart.”

  “Whatever happened to the dude?” Bob asked.

  “I got all this information from his wife,” Earl said. “And when I asked her that, she says, ‘Well, I can�
�t really say because somebody is going to trial for murder.’ I’m like, ‘I know you’re not supporting the guy who killed your son’s father.’ And she goes, ‘I think Calvin had a death wish. I do. Just the way he was acting that day. That’s what I think. I swear.’

  “It took everything in me to not go off. I said, ‘Come on, now. No one enjoyed life more than Calvin. No way he was looking to die. That doesn’t make sense.’ She disagreed and basically told me that she was supporting her boyfriend.”

  “Damn,” Jack said. “The fact that he killed somebody would be enough for me to say, ‘Hey, you gotta go.’ I can’t believe her.”

  “No, wait,” Earl said. “You won’t believe this. I was watching one of those cop shows the other night, the ones when they spend an hour breaking down the murder. Well, I forgot what city in California, but there was a wife, grandmother and three kids shot and killed by the husband.

  “Guess who the killer was?”

  “Who?” everyone chimed in at once.

  “Remember the Que, Vincent Brothers? They called him ‘Veech.’ It was him,” Earl said.

  “Dude who went to Norfolk State killed his whole family? Why? Was he crazy?” Warren said.

  “Well, considering murdered his entire family, including his kids, I would say the nigga was at least a little crazy,” Earl said, laughing. “But can you believe we know someone who killed his whole family?”

  “I read the story when it happened,” Bob said. “They believe it was about money, that he didn’t want to pay child support anymore. But they said he drove all the way from Ohio to California, shot and killed them and drove back to Ohio and then to North Carolina. That’s a lot of driving, but after you kill five people, I would think you’d have a hard time sleeping.”

  “This dude was crazy; he’s on Death Row,” Earl said. “And I ain’t talking about the record label, either.”

  The recollection of old classmates and old times went on for another hour. The drinks and the stories flowed, with almost each punctuated with uproarious laughter.