Good Buddy

by Dori Ann Dupré

  For more than seven years, he wondered what happened to her and her boy and where they went to. And for seven years, he felt like Kenny needed at least one person in his corner. Maybe he’d never get justice, and then again, maybe he got what he deserved, but he was a good man once who served his country and worked hard to support a family. Now he lay like a hunk of broccoli under florescent lights on a slab – and no one in Texas or in the entire United States cared.

  There was some kind of movement afoot about a person in Kenny’s condition having a “right to die.” Some young lady up north was living in the same kind of situation – alive in a bed for years but not really living at all – and her parents had been fighting the doctors to let her die. The doctors believe they are supposed to do everything they can to prolong her life, even it’s a life hooked up to machines and lying on a mattress under some blankets. Her parents were fighting for her to be free from her suffering.

  No one was around to fight for Kenny. There were no lawsuits in his name, no parents or family members visiting or holding his hand, no newspaper articles about his plight, and no one to lead his cause. Hollis felt like maybe he should be the one to do it. He should be the one to speak for Kenny Bellinger in some small way.

  While he had no legal standing to file any lawsuits for his right to die or had any kind of Power of Attorney, he could pester the police about finding Kenny’s wife, make some phone calls, and write his Congressman. He could come and see him sometimes, maybe talk to him awhile. Who knows? Maybe Kenny would wake up one day.

  The Trouble with Girls

  Buddy combed through his thin dirty blond hair and then smoothed it over with his hands. He looked at his watch. Time to go pick up Ginny Tart for their date.

  A few weeks ago, he got up the nerve to ask Ginny to the Homecoming Dance. Ginny was a cute girl from a well-to-do family nearby. Her father owned three gas stations, which also had small markets and fast food grills inside of them. The burgers were tasty and very popular. People would drive all the way from Raleigh and Greensboro just to have one. Her father asked him to come work for one of the markets closest to Welby, and Buddy was still thinking about it. He liked his job at Joe’s feed store but figured maybe it was better to impress Ginny’s father, just in case things went well in their new courtship.

  Ginny was studious, well behaved, traditional, and not loud and wild like some of the girls in school. While Buddy liked some of those wild girls, and wouldn’t mind making out with some of them, they scared the bejesus out of him. Ginny wanted to go to Duke to study biology and had hopes of becoming a cancer researcher. Not many girls at Welby High School were that ambitious beyond getting their MRS degree and then having lots of babies, so Buddy found Ginny to be intriguing, certainly more intriguing than anyone else in his class.

  She had strawberry blond hair, green eyes and long legs that were usually covered with appropriate length skirts or Bermuda shorts. She attended Pastor White’s Baptist church, sang in the choir, and tutored kids enrolled in the After School Program at the elementary school. She was well bred and polite and had recently broken up with Rhett Butler Bailey, after about a year of going steady, over the past summer. The rumor in school was that Rhett Butler met a girl from Australia at Wrightsville Beach and messed around with her quite a bit behind Ginny’s back. It all sounded a little too much like the movie Grease to Buddy, but he figured something like that could happen in real life, too. Only without all the singing and dancing.

  Buddy liked Ginny because she was not just cute but also very smart. She could carry on in a real conversation about things that matter – things like politics, economics, books, the law, history. She thought Buddy was cute, too, and liked how he talked about his own ambitions that didn’t include playing outfield for the Braves or becoming manager of Joe’s feed store someday. He had bigger goals than the small town of Welby.

  While Buddy wasn’t from the same economic class, was maybe even a blond haired Mexican or something…with a name like Cordova…a bit of an outsider, and did not seem to be like all the flirty boys at school, Ginny saw in him a nice, polite boy with great earning potential.

  Pulling up to Ginny’s house in Joe’s truck, Buddy eyed Mrs. Tart standing out in front of the porch with her Polaroid camera. Mr. Tart was, thankfully, nowhere to be found. When Ginny came outside, she was dressed in a beautiful, long royal blue dress, which did not show any cleavage and did not reveal much of anything else, either. While Buddy hoped to see something a bit more substantial, just like any red blooded American male, he was basically satisfied that she agreed to go to the dance with him at all. Ginny was pretty, but she wasn’t too pretty. The ones who were too pretty were the girls who made his hands sweat and thought he didn’t speak.

  Mrs. Tart took some photos of them together, and they went off to the dance, where Pauline Hanes was later crowned Homecoming Queen and James’ older brother John was crowned Homecoming King. Ginny mostly hung around her girlfriends throughout the night, dancing with Buddy just a handful of times during the slow songs, and Buddy stood around with James and his date. He thought they had a good time. Rhett Butler was there with a Freshman, and Buddy watched Ginny glancing over at them from time to time and then whispering something to her friends.

  After the dance, he and Ginny had permission to go to a party held in a barn at a popular football player’s family farm. The barn was known to have parties from time to time, but Buddy had never been to one before. There was a keg and some old beaten up couches sitting among bales of hay. A huge boom box with even bigger speakers sat propped up on a shelf near where there should be horses. “Celebration” by Kool and the Gang was blasting into the straw speckled nighttime air, and soon the place was filled up with teenagers still in their Sunday finest – all too nice for a barn.

  Ginny started drinking beer from the keg, which surprised Buddy. He held a cup of beer himself, but after tasting it, realized he didn’t like the taste, so he just kept it in his hand in order to look the part. After about an hour of watching Ginny drink paper cups of beer and dance with her girlfriends, Buddy checked his watch. It was almost her curfew, and the last thing he wanted do was bring her home late.

  Ginny, obviously intoxicated, did not want to go home, but she reluctantly agreed. She knew that Buddy was right. She couldn’t break curfew or else her parents would never let her come to another party…until she was thirty! When they arrived at Ginny’s house, the porch light was on, as was the living room light. Her parents were upstairs. Mrs. Tart left a note on the couch that read: “Hope you 2 had a nice time. There are cookies in the kitchen.”

  Buddy was relieved that he would not be confronted with the reality that he brought Ginny home – on time – drunk. She went into the kitchen and got them each a cookie and then sat on the couch with her bare feet on the edges and her knees up to her chest. Buddy sat down next to her. She stuck the cookie in her mouth and motioned for him to come closer. Buddy was confused but realized that she wanted him to take a bite of the cookie while it was sticking out of her mouth. That’s a little gross, he thought to himself. They hadn’t even kissed yet, and Buddy wasn’t the most experienced at kissing, let alone eating cookies straight out of girls’ mouths.

  He went in closer to her face and brushed her straight hair, which fell over her cheek, out of the way. He put his teeth on the half of the cookie sticking out toward him and bit down on it. She pulled the rest of the cookie into her mouth, then moved forward and started kissing Buddy. Buddy was a bit disgusted by the cookie crumb exchange going on between them, but he wanted to kiss her, and he could feel quite a boner developing underneath his dress slacks.

  He adjusted his position next to her, and they started kissing heavy. Ginny put his arms around her waist. After several minutes of making out, Buddy’s hands remained firmly on Ginny’s waist. Sensing that he was afraid to move his hands, Ginny moved them to the front of her breasts. He felt himself becom
e terribly overwhelmed with everything that was going on.

  Buddy wished so badly that they were somewhere else, anywhere else – a private bedroom someplace far away or even inside the bed of Joe’s truck would be better than this. They were kissing each other like new young lovers, but Buddy did not want to be disrespectful of Ginny or her parents in any way by going for second base – or third – or God, forbid a Home Run – on her family’s couch! And while her parents and little sisters were right upstairs!

  With his hands paralyzed on top of her B-cup sized breasts and resting on the fabric of her Homecoming Dance dress, Buddy decided that he should just keep them there until she moved them again. And then as if on cue, she moved his hands up underneath of her dress, and that was when Buddy decided to put a stop to everything.

  “What’s wrong?” Ginny cooed, her eyes barely opened and her face leaning into his.

  Buddy was borderline speechless and trying to stop himself from breathing too heavily. He felt like he had just run a five-minute mile. The pop-up underneath of his fly was not going down at all, and he was afraid of what he might do next…either too much or nothing at all.

  “Ginny, I’m sorry. Nothin’s wrong, I just don’t feel right doing this on your couch with your parents upstairs.”

  Ginny’s face was in a dream-like state. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “I really want you to. I like you, and you’re so cute.” She started to move his hand up her thigh and then put her hand on his covered, but evident, erection.

  Buddy pulled back and put his hands over his face. He was beet-red and felt scared, excited, and humiliated all at once. His head started sweating. “Ginny, I respect you and your family too much to do this here. Your parents are trusting me to act like an honorable man.”

  She scoffed. “You’re kiddin’ me, right? You don’t want what’s being offered?”

  “I do, I really do. Can we maybe…I don’t know…maybe go on another date, only somewhere by ourselves? Then I won’t feel so strange.”

  Ginny sat back into the couch and pulled her dress down around her legs. “Are you a virgin or something?” she snapped at him, taking a deep breath and then standing up. She ran her hands through her hair and blurted, “It’s okay, Buddy. I understand. You must be a virgin. I’m sorry about all this. It must be the beer that done it to me. I don’t normally act so damn forward.”

  Embarrassed, Buddy stood up and kissed her cheek. “I better go, Ginny. Can I call you tomorrow?”

  Ginny laughed. “It is tomorrow, dummy.”

  As Buddy slid into the driver’s seat of Joe’s truck out front of Ginny’s house, he felt mortified. He had basically frozen up in his first and only actual moment of a sexual opportunity with a cute girl. He blew it. He wanted her but was so conflicted about not quite knowing what to do with her…and then also not wanting to take advantage of a girl who had too much alcohol in her. Not to mention in her family’s living room, where they all no doubt watched The Love Boat together on Saturday nights.

  Buddy drove back home to the small apartment he and his mother shared on Joe’s land and prayed his boner would be long gone by the time he walked in.

  When Monday rolled around, Ginny Tart wasn’t speaking to him anymore and had told anyone who would listen that Buddy Cordova was too scared to try do anything with a girl. He was a virgin.

  That reputation stayed with him until he left for Carolina two years later and got to start all over.

  Unrequited Love

  Joe’s hands were hurting. Old man sore. He spent the day messing around in his deceased wife’s beloved flower beds, which sat in front of his home, because he wanted to catch a glimpse of his sweet tenant Loretta Cordova now and again. He cleaned out a bunch of the dead summer flowers that he had neglected for too long, cleared several rows of new dark soil purchased from Hedrick’s Hardware, and started to plant some bulbs he bought from the Garden Club’s charity sale last week. It was time to put them into their winter niches, so it’s not like he was just lingering around outside for no good reason. But he could have waited another couple of weeks before all this digging, and now he was afraid that he’d be stuck in bed for two weeks instead for overdoing it.

  Loretta was off from work. She never went in on Mondays. The new ladies’ hair salon she worked for over in Graham seemed to think that no one wanted to get their hair done on a Monday, so it was closed. Joe thought maybe he would knock on her door a little later and ask her if she’d give him a trim. He probably didn’t need one quite yet, but it was one of the few good excuses he’d have in his back pocket to bother her on her day off.

  He ran his hands into the loose ground and cursed himself for not wearing gloves. He knew he was not a young man anymore and that his body didn’t work as well as it used to. He found himself with an aching back and pains in his legs that weren’t there a year ago. Joe missed having a wife. He missed having a woman next to him in the mornings. He missed feeling loved. He missed making love. But he knew, more than anything, that he was deeply in love with this mysterious raven haired beauty who showed up in his driveway long ago with nothing but a paper bag and a little boy.

  Mary Stuart Caldwell from his church had called on him one Sunday after service and asked him if he would mind hosting a homeless young mother and her child for a few months. He had an empty apartment on his land for a few years, and there were times when missionaries visiting the church or guests of neighbors would use it. He never minded. He was glad to help and open his home to his church, his neighbors, and his friends.

  “I know that it’s an awful lot to ask, but I would feel good knowing that they are safe on your property and that you’d be close by if there were a problem,” Mary Stuart explained, when she approached him in 1975.

  “Who are they?” Joe asked her, a bit confused about the odd request.

  “They are just two of God’s children who have hit hard times and they got nobody to help them, no kin to speak of. If I must, I will have them stay at my house until they’re on their feet. But then I thought about how nice it would be for them to have some privacy, really a small place of their own, but with caring church folks nearby who can help them if they ever need it.”

  “Well, I guess it would be alright, Mary Stuart. But just for a few months. I don’t mind helping someone in need, but I’m not sure about puttin’ up strangers for an indefinite time-period,” he decided.

  A few months had now grown into seven years, and Joe was just as smitten with that magical woman since the day she arrived. Loretta was a lot younger than he was, but she seemed, in a lot of ways, more like a peer. He heard the ladies refer to that quality in a person as “an old soul.” That was Loretta.

  At times, they would have wonderful, thoughtful and revealing conversations on his front porch during cool evenings, and he felt like they were much closer in age. She looked young, but there seemed to have been an awful lot of hard living that aged her on the edges a bit faster than many of the women in Welby. She seemed to be way beyond her mid-thirties in years.

  Loretta walked down the steps of the apartment on the chilly Fall afternoon. She wore a pair of blue jeans and a gray crew neck sweatshirt that he gave to her once during a rare snowstorm. She had never returned it. He recalled his heart flipping like a school boy when she accepted it and then kept it for herself. A piece of him, in the form of an old beat up sweatshirt, was now resting upon her; and every time he saw her in it, he hoped she could feel the love he had for her wrapped around her torso, like a secret, intimate hug.

  She walked over to him in her normal rapid pace. “Hey,” she said, approaching him.

  Startled, Joe turned toward her and stood. He felt dizzy, only it was not the kind of dizzy that a man feels around a woman who melts him. He felt dizzy like something was wrong. As his body fell over onto its side, and he landed hard on top of all his handiwork, the last thing he remembered before everything went
black was Loretta’s hands on his forehead and then his face, her mouth near his chin, her breath near his ear and the comforting and beautiful dreams he quickly fell into.

  He woke up in an ambulance, Loretta sitting at his feet. He could make out her curly dark hair resting on her shoulder and the nervous, strained look she carried on her face.

  “Mr. Horton, we’re taking you to the hospital in Chapel Hill, okay?” a young man in a crisp navy blue uniform spoke at him in slow, deliberate language.

  Loretta looked over at Joe and then moved to be closer to his face. She peered into his crusty eyes and kissed his forehead and then his lips. “Damn it Joe Horton, don’t you ever do that to me again. If you do, I will kill you myself!”

  Joe tried to smile at her. He had no idea what had happened and why he passed out, but he knew that if Loretta Cordova had been the last thing he saw and the last thing he felt touching him in his small and quaint life, it would’ve been a great way to die.

  Chapter 10

  February - May 2001

  The Rainbow Bridge

  Molly’s heart was racing and she was trying to get a hold on the tears falling, unfettered onto her freckled cheeks. She picked up the phone on the kitchen wall and called her mom, who was down at the church helping set up for the Keenagers’ Valentine’s Dinner-Dance. A local band, The Experience, specializing in Big Band and Swing music, was practicing its era-based melodies for the dancing portion of that night. Molly could hear the loud swaggy sounds in the background of her panicked phone call.

  “Molly, I can’t quite hear what you’re saying. What’s the matter? Tell me slow and loud,” she shouted over the music, cupping her ear to the church’s kitchen phone.

  “It’s Bo,” Molly sobbed through the receiver. “He’s not moving. He’s just sitting there like a football on the floor.”