"Nope. You ever marry that girl?.. The hippie with hair down to her ass that you met in our senior year?"
"Gail. Yes, we got married. Still married."
"Good for you. Kids?"
"No, too many people in the world. We're doing our part."
"Me, too. Where're you living?"
"Here. Moved back about two years ago as a matter of fact. We stayed at Bowling Green for a few years."
"I heard. Then what?"
"Well, we both got fellowships at Antioch, and we both got tenured and taught there until we retired."
"I think if I'd spent one more year on or around a campus I'd have blown my brains out."
"It's not for everyone," Jeffrey conceded. "Neither is the government."
"Right."
"Hey, have you seen Annie since you've been back?"
"No." Keith opened another beer.
Jeffrey watched his old friend and classmate, and Keith was aware of the eyes on him. Finally, Jeffrey said, "You can't still be messed up about that, can you?"
"No."
"I've run into her a few times. I keep asking if she's heard from you, and she says she never had. Funny how we were all so close... those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end..."
"We knew they would."
Jeffrey nodded. He said, "I've asked her to stop by and have a drink with Gail and me, but she keeps putting me off. I was hurt at first, but then I got to know a little about her husband. He's the fuzz-fuhrer — you know that? Anyway, I saw them at some hospital charity thing at the Elks Lodge once, and Annie was charming, like Annie can be, and this Nazi of a husband was watching her like he was about to make a drug bust — you know what I mean? This Neanderthal was getting himself worked up because she was talking to men — married guys, for Christ sake, doctors, lawyers, and such. She wasn't doing anything really, and he should have been thrilled that his better half was working the room — God knows, he needs all the good public relations he can get. Anyway, he takes her by the arm, and they leave. Just like that. Hey, I may be a socialist and an egalitarian, but I'm also a fucking snob, and when I see a well-bred, college-educated woman putting up with that shit from — where you going?"
"Bathroom."
Keith went into the bathroom and washed his face. He looked in the mirror. Truly, he'd been blessed with the right genes and didn't look much different than his pictures from college. Jeffrey, on the other hand, was barely recognizable. He wondered how Annie looked. Jeffrey would know, but Keith wasn't about to ask him. Anyway, it made no difference what she looked like. He returned to the porch and sat. "How'd you know I was back?"
"Oh... Gail heard it from somebody. Can't remember who." Jeffrey went back to the other subject. "She looks good."
"Gail?"
"Annie." Jeffrey chuckled and said, "I'd encourage you to give it a go, Keith, but that bastard will kill you." He added, "He knows he got lucky, and he's not about to lose her."
"So, Antioch, home of the politically correct crowd. You fit right in there."
"Well... I guess I did. Gail and I had some good years there. We organized protests, strikes, trashed the Army recruiting station in town. Beautiful."
Keith laughed. "Terrific. I'm getting my ass shot off, and you're scaring away my replacement."
Jeffrey laughed, too. "It was a moment in time. I wish you could have been with us. Christ, we smoked enough pot to stone a herd of elephants, we screwed with half the graduate students and faculty, we..."
"You mean you screwed other people?"
"Sure. You missed the whole thing fucking around in the jungle."
"But... hey, I'm just a farm boy... were you guys married?"
"Yeah, sort of. Well, yeah, we had to for a lot of reasons — housing, benefits, that kind of thing. It was a real cop-out — remember that expression? But we believed in free love. Gail still claims she coined the expression 'Make love, not war.' Nineteen sixty-four, she says. It came to her in a dream. Probably drug-induced."
"Get a copyright attorney."
"Yeah. Anyway, we rejected all middle-class bourgeois values and sentiments, we turned our backs on religion, patriotism, parents, and all that." He leaned toward Keith and said, "Basically, we were fucked-up but happy, and we believed. Not all of it, but enough of it. We really hated the war. Really."
"Yeah. I didn't think much of it either."
"Come on, Keith. Don't lie to yourself."
"It wasn't political for me. Just a Huckleberry Finn thing with guns and artillery."
"People died."
"Indeed they did, Jeffrey. I still weep for them. Do you?"
"No, but I never wanted them to die in the first place." He punched Keith in the arm. "Hey, let's forget it. No one gives a shit anymore."
"I guess not."
They each had another beer and rocked. Keith thought that in twenty years they'd have lap blankets, drink apple juice, and talk about their health and their childhood. The years in between the beginning and the end, the years of sex, passion, women, politics, and struggle, would be fuzzy and nearly forgotten. But he hoped not.
Keith said, "How many of us from Spencerville were at Bowling Green? Me, you, Annie, that weird kid who was older than us... Jake, right?"
"Right. He went out to California. Never heard from him again. There was that girl, Barbara Evans, quite a looker. Went to New York and married some guy with money. I saw her at the twentieth class reunion."
"Spencerville High or Bowling Green?"
"Bowling Green. I never went to a high school reunion. Did you?"
"No."
"We just missed one this summer. Hey, I'll go next year if you do."
"You're on."
Jeffrey continued, "There was another guy from our high school at Bowling Green. Jed Powell, two years younger than us. Remember him?"
"Sure. His folks owned that little dime store in town. How's he doing?"
"He got a head wound in Vietnam. Came back here, had a few bad years, and died. My parents and his were close. Gail and I went to the funeral and handed out antiwar literature. Shitty thing to do."
"Maybe."
"You getting mellow or drunk?"
"Both."
"Me, too," said Jeffrey.
They sat awhile and caught up on family, then reminisced a little about Spencerville and Bowling Green. They told stories and recollected old friends, dragged up from the basement of time.
It was getting dark now, and the rain still fell. Keith said, "Nearly everyone I knew sat on this porch at one time or another."
"You know, Keith, we're not even old, and I feel like we're surrounded by ghosts."
"I know what you mean. Maybe we shouldn't have come back here, Jeffrey. Why'd you come back?"
"I don't know. It's cheaper than Antioch. We're not financially comfortable. We forgot about money in our zeal to produce little radicals." He laughed. "I should have bought defense stocks."
"Not a good investment at the moment. You working?"
"Tutoring high school kids. So's Gail. She's also on the city council for a dollar a year."
"No kidding? Who the hell voted for a pinko?"
"Her opponent was caught in a men's room." Keith smiled. "What a choice for Spencerville."
"Yeah. She'll be out of office in November. Baxter's got it in for her."
"I don't wonder."
"Hey, watch that guy, Keith. He's dangerous."
"I obey the law."
"Don't matter, my friend. The guy's sick."
"Then do something about it."
"We're trying."
"Trying? Aren't you the guy who tried to topple the United States government once?"
"That was easier." He laughed. "That was then." Moths beat against the screened windows of the house, and the rockers creaked. Keith popped open the last two beers and handed one to Jeffrey. "I don't understand why you both left cushy teaching jobs."