“You don’t really believe she’s some kind of ghost or something do you?”
“The photos are real, Peter. Took me thirty years to collect them. I went all over the Midwest collecting them. I’d show a photo to somebody in some little town and then they’d remember her or remember somebody who’d known her. And it was always the same story. Some arrogant young prick — rich or poor, black or white didn’t matter — and he’d have his fling with her. And then she’d move on. And he’d be crushed. But he’d never be his arrogant old self again. Some of them couldn’t handle it and they’d kill themselves. Some of them would just be bitter and drink themselves to death. But the strong ones — us, Peter, you and me — we learned the lessons she wanted us to. Just think of all the things we know now we didn’t know before she met us.”
The phone rang. He got up to get it. Peter noticed that he staggered a little.
He was on the phone for ten minutes. No big deal. Just a conversation with somebody about a sewer project. You didn’t usually get big deals on some town newspapers like this one.
Peter just looked at the pictures. His entire being yearned for a simple touch of her. In her flapper outfit. Or her WW II Rosie-The-Riveter get-up. Or her hippie attire. Nora Nora Nora.
Sheridan came back from the phone. “I didn’t expect you to believe me, Peter. I didn’t believe it for a long time. Now I do.” He looked at him for a time. “And someday you will, too. And you’ll be grateful that she was in your life for that time.” He grinned and you could see the boy in him suddenly. “She had some ass, didn’t she?”
Peter laughed. “She sure did.”
“I got to head over to the library, kiddo.”
Sheridan said goodbye to the pressmen and then they headed out the door. The day was still almost oppressively beautiful.
“This is the world she wanted me to see, Peter. And I never would’ve appreciated it if I hadn’t loved her.”
They crossed the little bridge heading to the merchant blocks. Sheridan started to turn right toward the library.
“The next woman you love, you’ll know how to love. How to be tender with her. How to give yourself to her. I can’t say that my life has been a great success, Peter. It hasn’t been. But I loved my wife and daughter more than I ever could’ve if I hadn’t met Nora. Maybe that’s the most important thing she ever taught us, Peter.” And with that, Sheridan waved goodbye.
Six years later his wife Faith gave birth to a girl. Peter asked if they might name her Nora. And Faith, understanding, smiled yes.
The Way It Used to Be
Private coon hunting. That’s all the note said, the note passed three desks back in last hour study hall, that lazy hour when half the students dozed off.
When Boze Douglas opened the note and read the three words, he smiled. No doubt who’d sent the note. No doubt what it meant. No doubt.
Boze kept right on smiling.
He couldn’t concentrate on his comic book any more. Boze was a master at laying a comic book inside a textbook and then pretending to be studying his ass off. He liked superheroes especially. In his own mind, he was a superhero. The fact that nobody else at Duncan County Consolidated saw him as a superhero only proved what lame bastards they were. Duncan County Consolidated was one of those country high schools where kids from five small towns went to school together. Farm kids, too. Lots and lots of farm kids. Kids who didn’t know, kids who weren’t cool, not the way Boze and his friend Gunner (a.k.a. Eugene) Preston were cool. Boze and Gunner were wearing nose rings and earrings long before anybody else at Duncan County Consolidated was. And they were way into heavy music and street drugs before most of the other kids, too. And they were tough. Even the big loping farm boys were smart enough to walk clear of Boze and Gunner. Most students — and teachers — considered them dangerous and, man, they loved that shit, people seeing them as dangerous. Absolutely loved it.
“He’s gonna be surprised,” Gunner said, lighting up a Camel as soon as they cleared the school door.
There was a big football game tonight and so part of the east parking lot was given over to last minute work on the float where the King and Queen would sit tonight. King and Queen, Boze thought. That was crap for little kids. King and Queen. In the distance, he could hear the marching band practicing in the field to the north of the large red brick school. He had to admit, reluctantly, that marching band music still gave him a little-kid thrill. He’d always liked parades. His father had always taken him to parades... At least when he was sober. But padre was long gone. Living over in Keokuk with wife number three, selling mobile homes. Now, marching band music — as much as it still secretly thrilled Boze — embarrassed him, too.
Then they were in Boze’s five-year-old Firebird and driving fast. This was the best way for Boze to avoid thinking about things — thinking about long-gone Dad, thinking about all the bullshit his sixteen-year-old sister Angie had fallen into — driving fast. Not even drugs were as good as driving fast.
Farm fields in sunny October. Pumpkins and scarecrows and the green John Deere working the hills, preparing for spring planting. And that melancholy smoky smell down from the hills where the trees were on fire with colors so beautiful — reds and yellows and golds and ambers — that they were almost painful to see.
And Angie — little Angie, his own little sister — was going out with a black guy. He still couldn’t believe it, though he knew it was absolutely true.
Boys could handle going to Cedar Rapids. There were a lot of temptations for farm kids in a town that size but boys knew how to stay away from them. Or if they couldn’t handle them, it still wasn’t so bad. They were boys, after all. A white boy and a black girl going out together, much as Boze was against such a thing, that was all right. No harm done. The boy wasn’t likely to get all emotional with the black girl. But a white girl with a black boy... once you go black, you’ll never go back? Wasn’t that what he’d heard his old man say to a friend of his, laughing and winking, one beery night?
Boze drove a good ten miles out into the countryside. He hit 104 mph crossing the old Miller bridge. Even the horses and the cows and the sheep seemed to stand still and watch with awe as the Firebird blazed by. The radio was up all the way. Country music all the way. He used to listen to rock but now it was all fairies or coons. Now he was strictly country. On the way back to town, Gunner said, “You scared?”
“About what?”
“You know. Tonight.”
Boze looked over at him. “No. But you are.”
“Bullshit.”
“Bullshit yourself, man. If you weren’t scared, you wouldn’t have brought it up.”
“I just mean we could get caught there. You know, down there with all those black bastards.”
“Yeah, we could. But we’re not gonna. We’re gonna do it and get the hell out of there.” That was Gunner for you. Everybody thought he was like this really fearless dude. But he wasn’t. He talked big and he had big ideas. But when it came to actually doing them, Boze was the one who always led the way. Gunner wouldn’t have done anything if Boze didn’t drag him along.
Boze dropped Gunner off. Gunner lived in a small housing development. Most of the people here worked in nearby Amana — factory jobs and good paying ones. New or at least newer cars in the drives now that the day shift was over. And new siding on a lot of the houses. Boze had always envied Gunner his industrious and sober old man. Gunner had it made here and didn’t seem to know it. As he was getting out of the car, Gunner said, “I’m really not scared, man. I’m really not.”