There isn't much in River Plains, Georgia. It used to be a minor trading post, or so the history professors told us. The name itself was descriptive without adding any real color: River Plains is a town built on plains above a river. Specifically, the Chattahoochee River, more famous because of the song than anything that ever happened on or near it.
Our part of Georgia was never the land of opportunity. Never would be, either. This fact did not deter the folks in the state capital. They'd been trying to put lipstick on the Georgia pig for decades, with limited success and no apparent loss of enthusiasm. It peaked, people in River Plains said, twenty-some odd years ago when the Olympic Games appeared in Atlanta. Even now, downtown Atlanta still featured a Centennial Olympic Park. I'd been there, but I'd never been quite sure what the "centennial" was of. Anyway, I had no memory of the Olympics, largely because I wasn't born at the time.
Back to River Plains. In the 1970's, the State of Georgia decided the time was right to build a network of two-year, community colleges scattered like confetti across the state. These were supposed to complement the big state universities at Athens, Savannah, and Valdosta. JuCo's were cheaper, locally accessible, and theoretically intended to make education available to everyone in Georgia. So, around 1975 - I'd seen pictures - the governor showed up in River Plains, set up his podium in front of some old tobacco warehouses south of town, and announced that he was standing on the site of River Plains Community College, coming in the 1978 academic year.
And so it came to be that River Plains Community College was built, beginning with a low, brutishly ugly brick building, and periodically expanded to its current half-dozen buildings scattered around a green quad. At that first groundbreaking, and at every one of them since, state and local officials revisited their familiar narrative. "River Plains is creating local opportunity and good-paying jobs," they would say. "It lets people get a world-class education right here in south Georgia."
The reality was different, obviously. Everything stratified itself into two groups. Sure, the education was good enough. Good enough so that the smart kids, many of whom commuted an hour to school over parched, bumpy roads, usually got scholarships to the big universities in Georgia or elsewhere, transferred off, and never came back except at Christmas and maybe for the Peanut Festival. The rest of them, at least the ones that lasted through all four semesters, left with technical certificates and fed into the ever-growing, vaguely-educated, lower-middle class that populated River Plains. They made good mechanics and welders, but they didn't exactly form an educated elite for River Plains, either.
The faculty stratified, too. It broke cleanly into two groups, just like the students. On one side were the old professors, several of whom joined in 1978 and never left. All were eligible for retirement, but few realized they needed to. On the other side were the young, underpaid, hungry graduates who settled on River Plains for their first teaching job. At the first sign of greener pastures, they'd usually leave. But, in the meantime, they got their thirty grand for performing four times the workload of university professors who made four times the money.
At the head of this unusual confederation was my father, Chris Lyle III. He was one of those originals who'd never left. However, the Board of Trustees apparently thought him better than the rest, because they kept promoting him for thirty-two years until finally he was President of River Plains, drawing a healthy $160,000 and driving a state-issued Ford. Obviously, I'm Chris Lyle IV. Once I knock up some girl and a son arrives on the scene, he'll have to be Chris Lyle V. It's not that I'm in love with the name. It's just that I don't want to buck the trend. We're a traditional Georgia family, and it's easier to put up with a son named after me than it is to name him something like Bob or Joe and never hear the end of it from the two upstream generations.
A little about me, and we'll get into the meat - literally - of the story. Not to brag, but I'm one of those "smart kids" I talked about earlier. I was Valedictorian of my class at River Plains High, not a terribly tough achievement with the watered-down standards of today. The state came through with a full scholarship to River Plains College, and I'm figuring on transferring over to UGA in Athens in another year. Maybe I'll become a lawyer. It's the closest thing to a family business we've got. Dad skipped it, but his father - Lyle Two, we call him - retired as a judge, Dad's brother is a lawyer, his uncle was a lawyer and Congressman, and so on. The money is decent, and in rural Georgia you get political power too. Part of me wanted to go be a big-city lawyer in Atlanta. The problem is that big-city lawyers look glamorous but have a much harder time making money than a competent, good-old-boy in the small towns. So smart money was on getting a catchy telephone number and hanging my shingle on Main Street to cash in on the local divorce rate.
I'm a pretty average-looking guy. Six-one, brown hair, cut short, blue eyes. I played basketball in high school but got my knee busted up in a tournament in Albany. It still hurt from time to time, but nothing too serious so long as I didn't run. For exercise, I sufficed with a bicycle and some free weights. Like I said, opportunities are limited in River Plains, and that includes the women. The single ones are all heavy, and the pretty ones are either taken or single with two children. I'd had a few flings late in my high school career, including a nice romp in the back of my truck after senior prom, a month after my eighteenth. I'd always thought prom dresses would be hard for a girl to get out of. I was right, but I hadn't factored in my being there to help. The girl, Rebecca, had been a blonde who ended up in South Carolina on a cheerleading scholarship. We'd drifted apart, and looking back, it's probably a near thing she didn't end up pregnant. Ever since, I'd desired to be more sexually adventurous, but the opportunity never really arose. Most of the available women had their issues, and for some of the easiest, "feel the burn" would mean something other than a Yankee Socialist's campaign slogan.
"Chris," Lyle Two used to tell me, "I learned one thang in life." Lyle II had been in World War II, stationed in England on a bomber crew. "When they's an ah'pa'tunity wit'a woman, you take it." And he'd wink, take a pull on his cigar, and blow smoke rings up at the ceiling. Dad always thought it was funny. Mom thought it was lewd. Considering the fact that their first "date" had been in the bushes behind their church, I thought Dad lived up to the advice and Mom forgot her history. Anyway, I took the advice to heart, figuring it would pay off eventually. I was right.
It was cold, as cold as it ever gets in South Georgia in February. It was a Tuesday night, and I was leaving a long and very dull political science night class in the Humanities building. The building is built in the shape of a capital "H." The center is a lobby where the entrances are, and the parallel hallways contain the classrooms.
I was halfway to my car, shivering in the damp breeze, when I stopped short and swore to myself. "Shit." I'd forgotten my notebook. Left it right there on the table. I would've left it, figuring someone would turn it in, but I had an American Lit exam the following morning, and those notes were in the book too. So, I turned around and stalked back across the quad and into Humanities again. The entrance is midway across the bottom of the H's horizontal bar. My classroom was on the left hallway, one short of the end on the right. The complex was quiet, deserted. It was almost 8:00 in the evening, fully dark outside. Campus police usually came around and locked everything up around 9:00. In the interim hour, no one was ever around. I rounded the corner into the hallway and strode towards the door, hungry and still annoyed with myself.
I was just about to grab the knob when I heard a noise. I stopped short, listened hard. It wasn't coming from my room, but rather the next one down, all the way at the end of the hall. Standing dead still, I heard it again. A low moan, a soft, feminine sound, almost like the coo of a dove.
Pocket Rocket perked up, and I crept forward, glancing behind me to be sure no one was there. I reached the door, and crouched on my knees. It was cracked open with a doorstop. Its solid wood facade held a small window, tall and narrow, like a jail window. I gathered me nerve, raised up, and chanced a glance through the window, just as the noise came again. Female passion, there was no mistaking it.
My goodness. I found myself looking at Chelsea Richard, the newest member of the River Plains English Department. She was only twenty-four, freshly graduated from UGA with her Master's in English Literature, in her first year of teaching. I'd met her a time or two at official functions with Dad. She was tall, very pale, with raven-black hair pulled into a long ponytail that stretched halfway down her back. Her breasts were small but pert, but Chelsea Richard's greatest feature was her bubble butt. I remembered casting sideways glances at it, shrouded as it was in a snug blue dress at the college Christmas party. Her legs were long and shapely, snow white like the rest of her. Chelsea seemed to worry over her complexion, as I'd never seen her without heavy makeup that made her even more pale. I think maybe she had acne scars, but who cared?
Chelsea was seated on one of the classroom tables, wearing gray slacks and a black turtleneck sweater that matched her hair. And she wasn't alone. Instead, she was locked in a passionate embrace with none other than Tamika Washington, #32, the star point guard on the River Plains basketball team. Washington, six-six, had her curly hair cut short in a boyish style and dyed the color of a fire engine. She was wearing her white uniform: baggy shorts and jersey, that showed off her muscular arms and their barely-visible tattoos. Everyone knew she, and most of the players on the team, were lesbians. No one knew Chelsea Richard was. Including, I knew, her colleagues. And her husband.
"When they's an ah'pa'tunity wit'a woman, you take it."
"Well, well, Lyle Two," I thought. "Here's that opportunity you talked about."
I took out my phone. Neither Chelsea or Tamika were going to see me, locked as they were in their passionate kiss. Jesus, Chelsea had grabbed Tamika's head in both hands and appeared to be eating her face. Tamika was holding on to Chelsea's tits, through the sweater, for dear life.
I slipped the lens of the phone over the window and fired off three photos in quick succession. Quickly, I checked them on screen to be sure they came out clearly. Indeed they did. A blind man could identify Chelsea Richard in them, and the "WASHINGTON #32" jersey gave her partner away.
Jumbo in my pocket was throbbing against my jeans. I was tempted to just walk in on them, then and there. But no, I would play this one smart. I had evidence. I had leverage. And I had opportunity.
Moving as quietly as I could, I crept back to my classroom, walked in, grabbed my notes off the table, and made a beeline for my car without anyone ever knowing I'd been in the building. My heart was racing, and I couldn't get the thought of Tamika and Chelsea out of my mind. As I drove off campus, I wondered what they were doing. Just kissing, perhaps? Or was Chelsea up on her desk, naked, being eaten out by her black lesbian lover? I hoped it was the latter. Because I fully intended to be in Tamika's place very soon.
