I felt the butterflies as I crested the old familiar hill and saw Elmwood spread out across the prairie.
I was still several miles away from my exit on the interstate, but in this part of the country you can see a long way, especially from a high vantage point.
For the most part, it was just as I had remembered it. There was the chemical plant on the south end of town where my father had worked for 15 years, the old water tower on the east side and the old courthouse that dominated the center of town.
But there had been some changes, especially on the north side, which was the direction I was coming from, and I gave a little snort that was my way of expressing grudging approval.
A fairly large manufacturing plant had opened on the north side, bringing with it some accompanying businesses and some new subdivisions, filling up what had been corn fields when I'd lived there many years ago.
Soon, the exit approached and I slowed as I drove the rental car onto the ramp and turned left onto Main Street.
About the first thing I saw as I proceeded south on Main was the high school, and I smiled, but it was a wistful smile. Elmwood High held so many memories, good and bad, and the bad memories had been the reason I'd stayed away all these years.
But a few years earlier, my mom forwarded me a letter from a company that was putting together a directory of all the graduates from Elmwood High. I had decided to fill out the form to finally let my old hometown in on where I was and what I was doing.
That, in turn, had led to the invitation to attend my 20-year class reunion. I'm not sure why I decided to come back for the reunion. I guess one reason was that Keith Simmons had said he was going, and I never miss a chance to see my oldest and best friend.
And I was curious to see how some people had changed, and how others had stayed the same. I wondered, too, how the people in my class would look at me. Would they even remember me? I wasn't sure. After all, it had been 16 years since I had been to Elmwood.
My motel was on the west side of town, which afforded me the chance to drive through the heart of the town and see what I could see.
For one thing, they had really spruced up downtown, added some art galleries, restaurants and new retail businesses. The town seemed to be thriving, which was a far cry from the way it had been when I left.
When my dad took an offer from a company closer to the town in the Deep South where he'd been raised, we shook off the dust of the High Plains and left Elmwood behind. My folks have been back a couple of times, but I had no desire to return – until now.
I checked in to my room and changed from my traveling clothes into something a little more comfortable.
I had flown from Atlanta to the nearest large city, three hours from Elmwood, and had rented a car. I wanted to see the old familiar countryside, rather than flying to the smaller city that is only an hour from Elmwood.
It was still light out as I headed out to find a good steak and then maybe a club, or some place where I might have a few beers and see what was up.
The reunion wasn't scheduled to start until Friday, but I wanted to come a couple of days early, slip into town and test the waters, so to speak. I did have a few old friends I wanted to look up quietly before the events of the reunion overtook me.
I stopped by the motel's front office and asked the desk clerk, a lady of about 45, about steak houses and drinking establishments, and she gave me a few leads.
The steak house she recommended in the downtown area proved to be rewarding. I had a reasonably priced porterhouse – medium rare, of course – that practically melted in my mouth.
One thing they do better on the Plains than any place on earth is produce the best meat to be found. There's just something about range-fed beef that sets it apart from any other type.
Suitably nourished, I decided to check out the bar the desk clerk had told me about, the High Plains Drifter, which was just down the block from the restaurant.
I half expected a cowboy bar, but as I approached the entrance, I heard the Stones blaring from a stereo inside and I saw a couple of choppers parked by the curb.
I smiled at that, because I figured that the Drifter was my kind of club, a little rowdy, but not too rough.
I was right. The bar was done up in a Western motif, with rough-plank walls and a wood floor. But it was more hippie Western than cowboy Western, with hubcaps, old car tags and old-timey posters nailed to the walls.
And, of course, they had the Stones going on the sound system – and not just any Stones album, either – but Exile On Main Street, the gold standard that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards never matched, before or since.
The place was about half-full, but it was still early on a Wednesday, so I guessed that the place did a pretty good business, good enough, I noticed, to have a stage for live music on weekends. I found a seat at the bar and tried to catch the attention of the woman who was bartending.
When she turned around to acknowledge me and take my order, something clicked in my brain. I knew her, but from where?
Then a slow smile creased my face and a tingle ran down to my dick. I sure did know her. Angie Martin, from drama class my sophomore year at Elmwood High.
"What can I get you?" she asked.
"Ah, um, Shiner Bock, if you've got it," I answered.
"Sure do," Angie said.
It was obvious she didn't recognize me, and it made me wonder. Had I changed that much? I didn't think I had, but I guess when you're out of sight for 16 years, you're out of mind also.
And I had put on some weight. I was quite a bit more muscular than I had been when I was a skinny distance runner for the Elmwood Panthers. I had contact lenses now, and my hair was longish and shot through with silver.
Angie brought me my beer, and I took a long pull off the longneck, and as I did, I studied Angie. She hadn't changed a bit, except that she had added just enough weight to fill out what had been a very slender frame.
She had on a tight T-shirt and tight jeans, and they hugged curves that were to die for. She'd never been busty, but I'd always loved her little A-cups.
She'd had long dark hair in high school, and she'd been almost skinny in high school, but that hadn't stopped guys from flocking around her, because the word was she put out. I sometimes heard the word nympho whispered when her name was mentioned.
She still had the same dark hair, although it was cut much, much shorter than it had been, fashionably short. She still had the sparkling eyes, the same sensual mouth, although I did notice that there were some lines right at the corners of her eyes, like she'd had some hard times in her life.
But she was still a breathtaking beauty, and my mind drifted back to high school, where the whispers of memories spoke to me.
Angie had actually been a year ahead of me in school, but she'd taken drama as a junior, the same year I had. The class was actually mostly juniors and seniors, so I felt quite privileged to be brought into the little drama clique that came together that year.
Of the group that was maybe a dozen or so, the only sophomores were me, Ron White and Tommy Sampson.
And as I thought about Tommy, my eyes misted, as they always did. Tommy and I had been like brothers, as close as two guys can be and still be heterosexual. Tommy and I hung out together all the time, and we did everything together – drank beer, smoked dope and chased women.
For some reason, though, I'd never been able to score with the girls. I guess I was just too shy, or maybe I was too interested in getting high to get serious about women.
Besides the three of us sophomores, there was Rawley Nelson, the only black in the class and flagrantly gay; Randy Winters, the hipster who could always be counted on to have the best weed; Tracy Peeler, a slender blonde who could drink anyone under the table; Lisa Redmond, a tall, painfully insecure redhead; Ron Singleton, a senior who was short and dramatic, and who was rumored to be in love with Rawley; Steve Copley, another senior, who was dark and moody, and who was rumored to be bopping the drama teacher (who was young, single and very sexy); Marty Hill, a junior who was quite intense, but possessed of a wickedly black sense of humor; and there was Angie, the girl all the straight guys wanted to fuck, and a lot of them did.
If ever there was a bigger bunch of outcasts and misfits, it was this crowd, but we didn't care. We liked being different, and we all got in the plays, either acting or on the tech crew.
I really believe I came of age with this group. When I got to the high school as a sophomore, I was quite shy and desperate for some place to fit in. I wasn't coordinated enough to play any of the team sports, and running track didn't get you into the jockocracy at Elmwood, unless you were really good, and I wasn't.
But I was very smart, very well read and I had what I believed to be good taste in music. And the juniors and seniors in the drama group accepted me unconditionally. Of course, my parents didn't always think too highly of this group, especially when I would come home drunk, but they were the people with whom I fit in.
Most of the group stayed intact through the next school year, and I still count those two years as two of the best years of my life.
But as my senior year started, the most of the old gang was gone. I was still friendly with Keith, my boyhood buddy, but he wasn't in the drama crowd, and we seemed to be drifting apart.
Otherwise, I didn't have a lot of close friends in my class, and then one awful night, I lost the one truly close friend I did have.
Tommy Sampson went out one Saturday night in early December with a younger guy he knew from his neighborhood, I guess to scare up some women in the town nearest Elmwood, where the girls were rumored to be easy.
I didn't go, because I was working on a paper for English that was due the following Monday, and my folks were going out to dinner and needed me to sit with my younger siblings.
No one really knows what exactly happened, whether Tommy was drunk (maybe), high (most definitely) or what, but all I know was that I was awakened at 4 o'clock in the morning by my mother, who said I had a phone call from a female.
It was Lisa Redmond, and she was practically in hysterics. Through her sobs I managed to get the news that Tommy had been killed in a car crash.
So much for my senior year of high school.
