Special Smashwords Edition
A DEADLY CLASS REUNION
By
Bill Flynn
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A Deadly Class Reunion
Special Smashwords Edition
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REUNION
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
By T. S. Eliot
1
He left the vintage blue pick-up truck and entered the Wayland, Massachusetts Post Office, the package tucked under his left arm.
The postal clerk saw a guy about six feet tall whose blue jeans and white T-shirt hung loose on a thin body. His brown, oily hair had receded leaving milky white skin in its place and an unkempt snarl cascaded down over his shoulders as if to compensate for the bald skull in front. His eyes were sunken deep in their sockets with a blank expression. One cheek scarred from deep adolescent pimples started to twitch, as he stammered a question.
He pulled a wad of bills from his pocket and asked if the package would arrive the next morning. The clerk answered his stuttering inquiry with assurance that it would arrive before ten and tossed the package into a collecting cart for Express Mail. This action caused an expression of alarm from his customer and both acne-scared cheeks quivered.
Before the Postal Clerk could ask if the package contents were fragile, the gaunt customer had scurried quickly away from the counter, out the door and down three steps toward his truck parked in the lot.
The Express Mail package was addressed to Michael Beckstrom...one of Ronan Ryan's classmates.
2
The flight from Los Angeles landed at Boston’s Logan Airport 30 minutes late delayed by a climb to avoid turbulence over The Rockies.
He'd upgraded the coach ticket on impulse. Ronan Ryan usually flew in the back of the plane tolerating crying babies with pressure pained ears and three hundred pounders who would press the recline button and slam back into his knees. He could afford the luxury of first class, but frugal habits from a fatherless upbringing would most always present a weird sense of guilt. This trip was on the edge of extravagance because the purpose was to attend his 20th high school reunion and Ronan wanted to return to his hometown feeling a bit of style.
As he left the plane and entered the jet way he turned to thank the flight attendants. His smile opened a deep dimple on each cheek tanned by the year round sun of California They saw rugged good looks with broad shoulders and narrow hips on a body over six feet. His black curly hair had a few flecks of premature gray at the temples, but to them he looked younger than 38.
Ronan made his way toward the baggage area noting the improvements made to Logan Airport since he’d last visited Boston ten years earlier to attend the funeral of his mother. He thought of her now. Mary Margaret Ryan’s rare visits to Los Angeles were short ones before she would hurry home to the change of New England seasons she cherished. She’d never understood the abandonment of his roots...or was it the legendary Irish- American mother's lament when her only son leaves the nest too soon?
At 18, he'd left Eastboro, Massachusetts for Marine Corps boot camp in San Diego. He returned to California after his tour and graduated from UCLA before being recruited and accepted by the FBI. A short stint in D.C. for training and then back to California, assigned to the Los Angeles office. The California climate and lifestyle suited him, so he stayed, married and raised a son and daughter. His FBI career ended with an early disability retirement after a knee was blown apart during a drug raid shoot-out. Ronan started a company specializing in security systems for software firms to protect against espionage by the competition. It had grown to a yearly gross of 40 million and employed 122 people.
His son, Shane was fifteen and his daughter, Maryjane, twelve.. Ronan’s town house in suburban Brentwood had three bedrooms... two were reserved for their weekend visits. Ronan had married his ex-wife, Susan, when she was 19 and pregnant with Shane. She was a scholarship student at the Getty School of Art in Malibu then and the pregnancy and ensuing marriage to Ronan interrupted her study of landscape painting. The embers of her artistic ambition were rekindled when Ronan's full attention went to the start up of a business. It was then an art instructor filled her artistic and emotional needs and invited her to continue study on the scenic Monterey Peninsula. She packed her easel and left for Carmel. Susan requested a divorce and custody of Shane and Maryjane. Both were granted.
The reunion in Eastboro, where he'd started life, would be a place to step back from his mid-life crisis to ponder a renewal of spirit. The divorce had been rough and this visit to his hometown was a time for reflection and some reparation. But it was more than that...There was a girl, now a woman, he wished to see again.
Ronan collected his luggage and was at the rental car counter ready to sign for the economy-sized car that his secretary had ordered. The clerk’s smile came to him with a question.
She handed back his California license and said, “Ronan is an unusual name, Mr. Ryan. Is it Irish like your last one?”
“Right, my mother named me after her grandfather from The Emerald Isle. He was a fiery red head with freckles. You figure it out.”
The clerk smiled again after looking up at Ronan’s dark complexion and black hair. "I can give you a complimentary upgrade to a mid-size, Mr. Ryan."
He thought about a triumphant return to the Eastboro High School reunion in the compact Ford and then raised the upgrade three levels until a BMW-Roadster two seater; convertible, racing red was entered on the rental contract.
He put his one piece of luggage into the Roadster's tiny trunk and settled into a seat designed to form around the driver. There, he familiarized himself with the panel and controls and the first switch he touched after the engine murmured to him in a low throaty voice was one that peeled back the roof to open air Boston. Today the city's weather was all blue sky at 70 degrees... an October day his mom would call... Indian Summer.
It'd been awhile since he'd managed a stick shift and clutch pedal, but before he reached the tunnel leading away from the airport they were both old pals. Like riding a bicycle his muscle memory joined the user-friendly transmission where gears meshed smoothly as the Roadster slithered through a labyrinth of detours around yellow barrels looking like racecourse pylons. The world's largest construction projects, appropriately called The Big Dig was the detour culprit.
The nostalgia of connecting the people and places of his youth had commenced. After clearing the construction site, he ambled through Boston’s Back Bay to Kenmore Square, passing close to Fenway Park. He remembered being there with his dad during too many pennant races and Word Series games that never quite ended in a championship. The left field wall was dubbed the Green Monster and it was said that the team was cursed by the Bambino after Ruth was traded to the New York Yankees. He wondered... Was it Babe Ruth's curse or better play by other teams such as the Yankees that made Red Sox fans suffer through the perennial pursuit of a Series win only to come up empty?
Ronan thought about his dad who died suddenly the same year of a Red Sox Pennant win. Losing his father as a teenager was tough, but he got through it with only surface scars. His mother took charge of the family and managed a small life insurance benefit while supplementing it with part time work and a few boarders. Ronan added to the family finances with a variety of jobs like mowing lawns in the summer and shoveling snow in the winter and sanding icy roads for the State. Thinking about it now, he wondered how they’d managed to keep the home and family together…a younger sister grew up as he did...fatherless, but not in poverty.
On Commonwealth Avenue he passed Boston University and then turned to the west onto the Old Post Road, also known as Route 20. It was a familiar passage for Ronan and it took him through small towns on his way to Eastboro along the same route General Washington had traveled during Revolutionary times where many owners of vintage homes claimed the General had slept during that journey. Ronan chuckled with the thought... if all these over night resting spots were valid, Washington would have slept through the entire war.
He slowed the Roadster when passing through the town of Wayland, remembering that speeding fines helped fill that town’s coffers. Wayland, incorporated before the revolution, had a small center that consisted of a few stores and a Post Office.
Ronan did not notice a beat up blue pickup truck backing out from the Post Office. It belonged to a classmate who'd mailed a package bomb to another.
He crossed over the town line into Eastboro slowing the Roadster to take in the familiar places of his youth. As he approached the center, he saw three men marching single file on the sidewalk. It was the Putneys. The town folks could set their watches by their trek up the hill from River Street to the center every evening. There were five Putneys then. The oldest was first in line with the youngest bringing up the rear, and if you listened closely you could hear train sounds coming from the group as they chugged their way to town. Playing train would not be an unusual pastime for young boys, but the train's simulated engine was twenty-six years old back then and its imaginary human freight cars with caboose were only a few years younger.
Carl Putney was a classmate of Ronan's until 7th grade and his position in line had been before little brother David, the caboose. Carl had quit school in the 7th when the reading, writing and arithmetic had overwhelmed him and the nickname Blookie had replaced Carl. There were no special needs classes then and he was left to sink or swim... Carl sank.
This time it was Blookie in the lead. Ronan looked at his watch and back at them. It was 5:30 PM. Unbelievable, they were on the same schedule as twenty years ago. He pulled the Roadster over and said, “Hi Carl.”
Carl Putney came over to the car and in a deep voice said his words slowly. “Hello, Ronan Ryan, dint see you for a long time."
He was wearing worn and patched Payday brand overalls with shoulder straps draped loosely over a dingy T-shirt that'd never been part of a dedicated all white wash load. It was the uniform of the Putney's passed down through the years from engine to caboose. One of Carl's large round eyes scanned the roadster while the other was fixed in its usual skyward position. He said, "Nice car.”
They chatted for awhile and Ronan found out that the two older Putneys had passed on to that roundhouse in the sky. Carl was now the "engine" in their nightly march to town. Ronan asked him if he was going to the reunion.
“I dint graduate, I quit.”
“You didn't have to graduate to go to the reunion, Carl.”
“Na, I’d be teased there and called Blookie by youse guys if I go.”
Ronan didn’t know what else to say, so he said, “I’m sorry.”
He shook Carl's hand and drove away thinking, How could we’ve been so cruel to a mentally deficient kid? We designated the family our village idiots Did the Putney's make us feel better about our own
3
The town center of Eastboro was a barren wasteland since the Dutch Elm disease in the 50's destroyed the tall stately elm trees. The Town Square still had the large marble and granite statue of a lion, but its mouth no longer spewed a continuous stream of water after that head on encounter with Billy Maxwell's Olds 98. After drinking too many beers, Ronan's classmate Billy and Karl Brennan, had entered the center from South Street at a speed that came close to bringing them back to the future, like the movie of that name. They didn’t reach escape velocity and ran smack into the solid stone beast. The lion did not budge, the Olds was totaled and Billy with Karl survived to be out of the hospital in time for graduation.
Further on it was the baseball field, expanded now to include bleachers and a scoreboard. Basketball was Ronan’s game of choice and high school fame. He looked out on right field where he’d roamed in a position relegated to the lesser talented baseball player. A few missed fly balls there could be attributed to boredom or day dreaming about next basketball season’s fast breaks and driving lay-ups.
On Main Street, he slowed as he passed the house where he'd lived from birth until enlisting in the Marine Corps. It was a three-story and white rambling Victorian built in the 1880’s that his dad had purchased for short money in the 1960’s. His mother made the house a happy place where Ronan’s friends could come and go freely.
He drove by a large one-story brick factory ranging along the river named for the Algonquin Indians who had inhabited its banks before the 1600's. It was built during the early 1900’s when a textile industry flourished near the waterpower source. By 1960 the textile factories of New England started to close down when companies moved south driven away by the expense of union labor. Some of the buildings were taken over by another technology. Electronics manufacturing became the new game in town, and Ronan’s dad had leased the factory for that purpose. He designed a unique integrated circuit for an automobile computer and started to manufacture it before he died. The business initiative and knowledge died with him…Ronan thought about what could have been ...should have been for a moment and then continued along his nostalgic drive.
He turned onto Summer Street and slowed the roadster as he passed by a Cape Cod style house... the house where his best friend had lived during their teenage years. He felt the pressure of held back tears as Flub Sander’s face flashed before him. Known as Raymond by his mother, Flub was a bright, fun loving friend and teammate. They'd joined the Marine Corps together, but were assigned to different duties. Flub as a demolition expert and he as a door gunner. Flub had been in a helicopter that crashed in Mediterranean. His body was never recovered.
Continuing on down Summer Street he remembered John Bickford, who’d lived in a house no better than a shack. Sometime around fourth grade John came to school in wet socks and shoes that gave off a sour odor. The teacher’s remark, asking if he’d stepped in pickle juice, produced a nickname he couldn’t shake. He was Pickle Feet Bickford until the eighth grade when he quit public school and enrolled at St Johns, a Catholic prep school in Worcester. Fortunately, the nickname didn't follow him there.
Ronan reminisced about nicknames back then…some cruel… some complimentary. Unlike Pickle Feet Bickford’s ridicule, Flub's had come about in a junior high school football game when he had reached for a high pass in the end zone. After an initial deflection of the ball, he made a heroic dive to recover it for a miraculous touchdown. At the team meeting following the game the coach’s sarcastic remark renamed Raymond when he said, “Good Flub, Sanders.”
There were many other nicknames given to his classmates. Ace Ballard …he'd made a hole in one on the local golf course. Uggy... invented by a baby sister who couldn't say Arthur...Missa Bussa...teased for her habit of missing the school bus. Some of the unshakable labels were detrimental to self-esteem with lingering effects.
At the end of Summer Street was the red brick Meyer Middle School expanding over a couple of acres. It was where Ronan had started school and stayed through 8th grade until he and his 37 classmates moved on to high school graduation when their numbers increased to 80.
He turned the Roadster onto Maple Street, named for the trees that lined it. The street glorified its name in the fall of the year. Today the leaves were at peak color with their bright red and yellow mix matching the splendor found there in springtime when purple lilacs bordered the road and filled the air with their sweetness.
The thought of those lilacs brought him back to a day in May, twenty years ago, when he’d walked Jennifer Allen home from school. A vision of her as she was then came to him. That rare shade of blond hair with strands of silver showing best when touched by sunlight. Jen’s expression was shy in an attractive way... a look that he'd now describe as beguiling.
Ronan slowed to search for a particular place along Maple Street and soon found it...an opening in a fieldstone wall. He pulled the car off the road and parked on the shoulder. They'd walked through this opening and passed under tall pines then to find a small field of fallow hay secluded by the trees. The pines were gone and the field was now part of a golf course.
He got out of the Roadster and leaned against its door with arms folded and eyes fixed on a spot under a landmark maple tree. His thoughts went back to that day in May so long ago when the tree's leaves had the new green of spring. Today, its yellow and red foliage spread much wider supported by a trunk having 20 more growth rings circling its girth. It was where they’d made love for the first time.
A vivid memory of blue sky, soft grass, startled butterflies and that smell of lilacs came to him. When his tension peaked during FBI raids; and when in the heated battle of divorce, his mind would retreat to this tranquil meadow where human turmoil had been so absent. It was a special place from a special time.
Ronan’s thoughts were interrupted by a golf cart crossing between the Maple and his fixed gaze at the grass below it. Would Jen even recall that day in May? He chuckled out loud at the chance that she might not remember... Then came a serious thought. Would she come to the reunion?
4
It was a short drive from his motel to the restaurant where the reunion was to be held. He drove up the long driveway under a maple tree tunnel that'd been torched by a setting sun into bright reds and yellows. The Five Chimneys loomed up at the end with its namesake tall red brick smokestacks there to vent the same number of fireplaces inside the once stately manor. A textile baron was the owner until the crash of 1929 when it was abandoned. Before becoming a restaurant it was unoccupied for years, only to be hyped by local youth as a haunted house and trespassed for the thrill of it. Ronan had taken part in excursions there with Flub and others, when they’d entered the mansion by removing a few large stones from what was once the foundation of a wine cellar.
He wasn’t the first of the Eastboro alumni to arrive. The parking lot was almost full. Alumni from graduating classes going back beyond fifty years would be represented tonight. Out of Ronan's class of eighty graduates, about half would attend their twentieth reunion. This information came by way of a mailing that encouraged attendance and it gave the phone numbers, postal and e-mail addresses of the alumni. Included in that mailing was the result of a survey conducted by a questionnaire mailed to all. Statistics for the class of 1980 were interesting to Ronan…Thirty-five of the women and twenty-four of the men were divorced from first marriages. There was a little redemption knowing that he was not alone n that category.
Ronan parked the Roadster, leaving the top down. The Indian Summer evening sky didn't show signs of rain and the car would be safe in his hometown. He was enjoying the carefree feeling of doing something he wouldn’t dare do in Los Angeles. Also, his classmates might notice it. When at a high school reunion there was special license to flaunt a little prosperity.
An odd feeling struck him as he pushed the thick oak door to enter the Five Chimneys lobby. It started a thought passage back to a time when things had been less complicated. Predictable satisfaction made him look forward to each day then before the stress that comes with adulthood. It was all basketball, friends, fun jobs and Jennifer Allen. How about some classmates who weren’t in the cocoon of high school popularity? They were the outsiders who couldn’t penetrate that walled community dominated by jocks and other cliques. He'd not realized how cruel that division could be until involved in a FBI investigation of a shooting at a Los Angeles high school by two of those who'd been left out.
A woman from the class of 1985 manned the registration desk. Her auburn hair was piled neatly on her head with the help of a few strategically placed combs. She smiled and looked up at Ronan over a pair of drug store reading glasses. Her nametag read, Carolyn Leland.
Ronan signed the register; paid for the evening and pinned identification with the class year 1980 embossed on it. He made his way to the bar, greeting a few barely recognizable Eastboro grads from other classes. The nametags helped. Twenty years changes a face and body. Weight gain and hair loss disguised most of the men while wigs and makeup retained some youth and made the women easier to place. Ronan’s own mid-section had started to expand a couple of years before, but 100 sit ups a day and a beer ration cut in half had gotten it back to more muscle than fat.
It took 15 minutes to pass through the crowd in the lounge and make it to the bar... time to say a few words of greeting to groups milling around with drinks in their hands. Most of the Eastboro graduates, a few years in front and behind 1980 knew of him. Being a star on a basketball team that had won two state championships may've accounted for that.
The bar at the Five Chimneys was the original, designed to the wool baron’s liking and taste. Its large mirror was framed in teak where carved cherubs with curly heads and bare bottoms clung. The barstools had been cleared away to give the meandering alumni access for stand up ordering. Those who had staked out their own section of shiny oak and brass rail to lean an elbow and rest a foot blocked that purpose. It was a good spot to watch new arrivals approach the table to register... a bar with the right atmosphere for sipping twenty-year-old single malt scotch. Ronan claimed his share of oak and brass ordering one neat with water back up.
Well into his third sip of golden whiskey he heard a loud, "HEY RO, WECOME HOME." It came from Corky Newcome, his friend and basketball teammate. He had been the sixth man on their basketball team and one the coach used off the bench to fire up a defensive slump. His nickname, Corky, was a shortcut to Cornelius. A town cop at nineteen and now the chief of the eighteen-man police force that watched over Eastboro’s 11,000 citizens.
Ronan watched as Corky ambled through the crowd toward him with a non-alcoholic bottle of beer in one hand, the other free to wave at people in the crowded room. His friend was loosing the battle of belly bulge and his mop of high school era hair had receded some in twenty years. Corky's height of six feet four, friendly smile and freckled-face carried those middle age alterations quite well.
Ronan extended his hand. “Hey, is the Eastboro crime rate down so low that its chief takes a night off to drink diluted beer?”
Corky smiled an answer. “The beer has to be non-alcoholic in public or who would believe my lecture to the DWI’s on the evils of drinking and driving. He toasted Ronan with his bottle of O’Doul’s, and then said, "And I've got to stay alert when expensive BMW Roadsters are parked outside with the top down.”
Ronan laughed “Thanks for noticing my German machine. It’s worth the cost of the rental."
“It was noticed. As far as the crime rate goes, it’s so low, that I’m looking forward to Halloween so we can chase a few pranksters.”
"Remember when we were the ones being chased?" Ronan asked. "After a Halloween soap sudsing of the lion fountain and some ringing of the Congregational Church bell."
"The kids nowadays don’t have the imagination to pull off the stunts we did." Corky waved to someone in the crowd and continued. "Violent television, video games, rap music and worst of all cyberspace have consumed their minds. No original thinking. They learn to swim with water wings, ride bikes with training wheels, get rides to soccer fields in their Mom’s van and have computers to think for them.”
“Ronan thought about Corky's mild rant and countered, ” Those were the good old days when we were thrown into the deep water to sink or swim, put on a bicycle without training wheels to ride or fall and walk two miles to the ball field for practice. Getting information via the computer might be a good thing. It beats hours in a library.”
“Yeah, unless they're learning how to build a bomb. Hey, what's the final read on that shooting you worked at the high school in L.A.?”
“Polarization accelerated between the two groups. The school outcasts, known as the black coats and an in-crowd of athletes were the factions. Two black coats retaliated for cruel treatment by athletes. Like Columbine, they sprayed the school with rounds from automatic weapons and then committed suicide."
“How could their rage get there undetected?”
“Good question, but hard to answer. Even their parents weren’t aware of the anger they held inside. My take is they were driven by deep-seated hostility and were able to get the weapons to express it."
“I’m no expert in this, but since that school shooting and some others, I’m more sensitive to the same thing happening at our schools," Corky added.
"Have you got a plan?"
"Yeah, I meet with the school principle to go over stuff that could lead to that kind of thing."
“Good move.”
“Corky took another drink from his bottle and paused before he said. "I didn't know the hate between high school groups until I got involved. Unkind name classifications are thrown around like; DORKS, GEEKS, and FAGS. Anyone in a special reading class is a RETARD...All cruel names for the outcasts."
“That’s how it starts," Ronan said, "Some of the shrinks called in on that LA shooting found that the shooters, rejected by the main stream, were driven to get even with those that made them feel left out.”
“Did we have that stuff going on at Eastboro High, Ro?”
"Yeah, we had cliques. You and I were jocks and kings of the hill then. We mostly ignored those not in our group. Looking back, resentment toward us had to be there, but it never boiled enough to spill over into violence."
"Why not?”
“Times were different. The tormented outsiders didn’t have as many television programs or movies to stimulate their outrage. Guns were not as easy to get.” Ronan took a finishing drink of his scotch and said, “ That high school shooting in LA was one of the last case I worked before retiring after I took a bullet in the knee.”
"How's that coming along," Corky asked.
"It's OK. Slight limp and hurts when it rains."
“Won't be able to call on you any more when my little town problems need help.”
“I still have a few connections." Ronan beckoned to the bar tender and ordered an O'Doul for Corky and another scotch for himself and said, "Ok, now let’s get off the police talk and enjoy the reunion.”
A half-hour went by and they were still at the bar well into their second drink, when four other team members from the Eastboro High 1980 Division Three Basketball Champions joined them.
One was Moon Mullins. His nickname was taken from a comic strip character with the same last name. Another, known as Hoppy Lane then because of his habit of moving up and down, heel to toe, when talking. Then came Cat Kuchar. Cat; because his moves on a basketball court were feline sleek. Moose Bailey rounded out those 1980 grads gathered at the bar. His six and a half-foot frame ranged large like the animal he was named for.
The Eastboro cheerleader's words came to Ronan as clear as they had been on the basketball court twenty years ago...Jennifer had told him the school principle didn't allow the use of nicknames in their cheers. Hillard Lane, he's our man... If he can't do it Richard can... Richard Mullins, he's our man...If he can't do it, Marvin can...Marvin Bailey, he's our man...If he can't do it, Arthur can...Arthur Kuchar he's our man...If he can't do it...
All had shared in the cycle of success that had come to their generation. Hoppy Lane owned a golf resort in Florida; Moose Bailey a construction company in Connecticut; Moon Mullins was an orthodontist and Cat Kuchar was the head basketball coach at The University of Vermont. They probably hadn't been addressed by those nicknames since leaving Eastboro, but on this reunion night the names of their youth brought them happily back to a time when they were high school jocks and kings of the hill. They were all eager to add their exaggerated tales of youthful escapades to the reminiscences of Corky and Ronan.
One story that Moon Mullins told about their senior prom caused loud laughter. When the band took their break, Moon had coaxed his date, to the parking lot. They found an unlocked car to accommodate some heavy petting. Moon noticed an older man staring at them through the car window and to impress Mary Lou, he went into a macho overreaction. He jumped out of the car and pinned the guy down on the hood. With a fist raised high, he'd said, "What are you some kinda pervert or peeping tom?"
The man's answer was short. "No, I'm the sax player in the band and this is my car."
A toast to Flub Sanders, their lost teammate, by Hoppy quieted the group for a moment until it was back to chiding and riding. It continued until they were interrupted by a loud remark coming from someone in a group standing apart from the bar.
"Nothing's changed, the jocks have found each other.”
It prompted laughter from those in the circle it came from and it was a few seconds before Ronan recognized Henry Barnes as the source. The others knew him as Birdman Barnes after Ronan jogged their memory. Henry was into serious bird watching during high school, besides being an "A" student. That hobby and his academic priority made him bait for teasing.
Ronan left the bar and walked over to Henry. “Hi, Henry, its been a long time.” He reached for a handshake and enclosed a limp hand.
Moose Bailey, who'd followed behind him said, “How’s it going, Birdman?”
“That’s a name I haven’t heard since I left for college," Henry said. "It was you, Marvin, who gave it to me in 9th grade."
"We all had to live with nicknames, Henry,” Moose said.
"Yeah, but the ones you jocks were given were ego inflating, not the kind that prompted constant teasing.”
Ronan thought it was a good time to change the subject and said, “Bring me up to date on what you’ve been doing since high school, Henry.”
“I’m an attorney for a firearms manufacturer." He stared defiantly at Moose and said, “I live and work in Springfield and my hobby is still bird watching.”
Ronan wondered about the dichotomy of having a fondness for birds and the profession of protecting those who make guns that shoot some of them. While Ronan wondered, Moon Mullins spoke to it.
“Jeez Birdman, I thought you’d be representing an organization like the Audubon Society.”
"Look, Mullins, colleagues and friends know me as Henry.”
“Good seeing you again, Henry,” Ronan said and headed back to the bar with the others close behind.
“Wow, you’d think that after 20 years he could’ve shaken off those feelings about a nickname," Hoppy said. " I like Hoppy much more than Hillard, anyway.” While saying that his body rose up on his toes and then fell back several times.
Moose said, “Seems like the name still fits you.”
Laughter over Moose’s crack dwindled when their attention was pulled to the registration desk by the entrance of a strikingly attractive woman. She was tall and tan. Her ash blond hair was pulled back and captured in a neat bun .A smile for Carolyn Leland was a flash of white. Leaning low to sign the register opened a side slit in the long form fitting dress by Oleg Cassini to reveal a glimpse of a tanned right leg.
Corky said it first; “It’s Jennifer Allen.”
Ronan watched as she moved through the crowd. Her posture was as erect as it was when she was 18. Head held high, she seemed to glide along effortlessly and her movement through the milling groups was athletic yet graceful. He guessed that she'd continued her golf and tennis play after high school. Her hair hadn't changed and the ash blond brilliance was pulled back allowing the high cheek bone features of her face to show well. His eyes followed her long after the others had turned their attention elsewhere. She had been in his thoughts so many times and seeing her again in the flesh brought a mix of emotions. Did the other guys harbor such strong feelings for their first love?
He'd made no attempt to contact with Jennifer after joining the Marines until that time in San Francisco, when he tried to phone her. He'd stepped off a train then with two days leave before reporting to Travis Air Force Base for the flight to Japan. On that rainy night, in the cold wet he remembered dodged puddles on the train platform until a pay phone was found. He dialed Jen’s apartment in Washington DC and after depositing a handful of quarters he got two rings and an answer. The voice with a Princeton accent said, “Brad Parker here, Jennifer is out at the moment. May I help you? I’m her fiancé.”
It was a quick no thanks, before he hung up and walked into a night made more dank, dark and lonely by that call. Too late then, but thoughts of her had lingered for years and seeing her now made even stronger ones surface.
Corky’s voice brought him back.
“Your old flame looks even better than she used to.” He watched Ronan face for a reaction and then said, “She lives in Paris and has a home in La Jolla, California."
"Married?"
"She was, but widowed by that bombing of Pan Am over Lockerbie, Scotland. Her husband, Bradford Parker, headed up a big software company headquartered in Paris."
"OK financially?"
"Yeah, his life insurance and stock left her in fine shape, but she works anyway. She’s a fashion reporter for The New York Times. Works out of Paris and vacations in La Jolla.”
"How do you know so much about her?”
“From her brother, a cop in Springfield.”
Ronan sipped on his scotch and thought more about this first love, while pretending to be involved with the others and their reminiscences. He'd detected a quick glance toward the bar after she’d registered, but there wasn’t a sign of recognition coming his way. He thought, why am I so nervous about seeing her? That thought was preempted by a loud announcement from the public address system that served as last call for all alumni to proceed to their designated tables.
5
It took ten minutes for Ronan and his entourage to progress through the group of tables occupied by the Class Of 1980. He paused at each table to shake hands, hug and say a few words of greeting. Ronan encouraged Corky and the others to take a seat when available and then moved toward the empty one next to Jennifer Allen Parker. His heart rate climbed to fight or flee beats per minute as he approached it.
He thought, What the hell is going on with me? My anxiety was never this bad even in FBI stings.
Jen was chatting with woman seated next to her. He spoke the first words to her in 20 years. “Excuse me, is this seat taken?”
“Please sit, Ronan, I’ve been saving it for you.” She turned toward him, but didn’t speak. Jen seemed to be studying his face and her eyes soon were fixed on his own with an expression that calmed some of his apprehension.
Jen had retained much of the same look he'd remembered. Her face was without wrinkles and that once slightly protruding tooth, the one that always caught a touch of red lipstick, had been brought back in line. Perhaps, she’d benefited from cosmetic surgery… and why not, he thought?
After some seconds that seemed to him like minutes, she spoke.
“I was just thinking about being with you in our high school French class. You had the accent, but wouldn't conjugate."
"Oui, oui Madame."
Jennifer laughed before she said, "You’re looking good. Her eyes scanned his face. "It’s how I envisioned your twenty year maturity progression.”
“Well, the maturity progression, as you put it, looks better on you than anyone else in the Class of 1980."
“Thanks, I know that term sounds rather stilted, but it comes from a charity I’m working with. I’m using my art training and a computer program to draw how a younger missing person would look after some aging.”
“We used that kind of art at the bureau to catch bad guys. Do you work with the police?”
“No, my drawings go out on flyers and milk cartons," They are mostly about kidnapped children and deadbeat dads.”
“Did you project the maturity progression of our class using the graduation pictures?”
Jen laughed. “No, only one of them. I shouldn’t tell you this, but I made several sketches simulating the way you’d look now. They turned out to be quite accurate.”
“Did your artist's conception of my maturity simulate a little graying at my temples?”
She laughed again while grasping his arm and said, “ I did splash a little white in that direction.”
Jen’s hand sent an electric charge through his body until she withdrew it after a departing squeeze.
The program for the evening commenced. After the invocation and a few speeches the Eastboro High graduating years were announced. Each class rose from their seats to acknowledge the applause. When Ronan’s class stood up, the house lights pulsed on and off for a few seconds before returning to steady luminescence.
Next came the award giving part of the program. A Hall of Fame had been newly established for those graduates who by vote of the committee had been outstanding in Eastboro sports. One of those honored was his teammate, Cat Kutchar. Ronan was not surprised at Cat's selection. The smooth, high scoring forward was an outstanding basketball player, but he was puzzled as to why the house lights had blinked off and on again when Cat was announced. Nine other athletes were inducted and Cat's was the only one coincident with a flicker of lights.
Jen’s hometown was listed on the alumni committee’s records as Paris, France. It won her the traditional prize of a bouquet of roses for the one travelling the greatest distance to the reunion and when she was called up to receive her flowers, the lights blinked again.
Ronan thought it a strange that the lights blinked only when members of the class of 1980 were announced, and his FBI trained antennae raised slightly. When he saw Corky jump up from his table after Jen’s award it extended further.
Jen returned to her seat, she grasped his hand and asked, “What’s going on with the lights, Ro?”
“Don’t know, it could be a prank of some kind.” Ronan looked over at the table where Corky had been sitting. He said, “ Our Chief of Police has just left his table to investigate.”
Ronan watched for Corky to return, but he didn’t. When the program ended the Eastboro High graduates either left for the exit or gathered in clusters to say their good-byes.
Jen asked, "Are we leaving?"
“Not right away, come with me, while I find Corky.”
They said good bye to the others seated at their table. Then Jennifer took Ronan 's arm while their classmates smiled with glances of approval.
They found the chief in the lobby talking with two of his uniformed Police.
Ronan approached them and after Jen gave Corky a classmate hug of greeting, he said, “What’s with the lights?”
“Don’t know yet. We checked with the electric company and there wasn't a power surge in their lines, so it's some kinda problem in the building here."
“Maybe Halloween has started early this year,"
“Yeah, I would’ve dismissed it at first as a prank or power surge, but Moon Mullins, who was sitting next to me, noticed something about the consistent way the lights blinked on and off."
"What's Moon's take?" Ronan asked.
"Moon's Coast Guard radio experience makes him familiar with code.” Corky's eyes locked on to Ronan’s with a quizzical expression that was asking the former FBI agent for help and said, “When our class was introduced and Cat and Jen received their awards the interval between the lights going on and off spelled out a word in Morse Code.”