If I were a romantic man, I’d tell you we fell in love at first sight.
That would be a lie.
The truth was we grew up together. We had some of the same classes, hung out with the same people, and when we were old enough for such things, went to the same parties in high school. I could say the same thing about almost everyone my age in Millerton. Small town. Small school. We were simply friends with a small f. We said hi to each other.
I liked fishing, hunting, and camping, like most of the guys, but I was never going to be a sports star. I was small for my age. Heck, I’m still a small guy. I don’t know if it was because of that or just how I was, but I preferred reading anyway. I read Tolkien, Bradbury, Asimov, Salinger, and everything else I could get my hands on.
Shelby, however, was into the sporty type. Horace Pearson, to be exact. Played football, basketball, and baseball and was good at all of them. Always said “sir” and “ma’am” to adults but then was snarky behind their backs. He ended up being student body president our senior year and was now on the County Commission. Still slick. I had never voted for him, not even back in high school. But Shelby thought he was the bee’s knees.
She and I did go out once. It wasn’t a disaster, but it wasn’t magical either. She spent most of the time telling me about how bad Horace was since she had broken up with him a week earlier. This wasn’t shocking news because they broke up and got back together more times than I could count. A week after our date, they were a couple again. As I said, ours was not a magical date that changed our destiny.
I wasn’t broken up by their reunion. I was focused on my life goal then—getting out of Millerton. I didn’t want to be a farmer, didn’t want to work in a factory, didn’t want to stay a day longer than I had to in Podunkville. Without money for college, I found my solution at Career Day.
All the military branches were there. I chatted with each of them to find the perfect fit. I ruled out the marines before they could reject me. The guys signing up with them were a little too gung ho. The navy was out. I wasn’t a big fan of the water except for fishing. I’d only seen the ocean a few times in visits to Myrtle Beach. The army seemed okay, and I almost did that, but then the air force recruiter promised me the moon.
Promised might be a strong word. In fact, thinking about it, I might have mentioned the outer space stuff first, mesmerized by Arthur C. Clarke’s writings. I thought all astronauts were from the air force. The recruiter didn’t try to dissuade me. I signed up with literal stars in my eyes. Goodbye, small town. Hello, world.
Hello, Lackland Air Force Base was more like it. My assigned specialty was far removed from the glories of the heavens. I was assigned to materials management. Nowhere close to being in the CIA either, despite what I let the guys think back in Millerton. I did, however, rise to the exalted rank of airman first class, E-3, pencil-pushing specialist. Might have made E-4 if I had stuck around longer. And if I hadn’t been involved in some unofficial forklift racing.
Mostly, though, I was homesick. I missed football Friday nights, hanging out with my friends at the Point, going to the drive-in. Every time I sat down in the mess hall for a meal, I missed my mother’s cooking. I wanted the fresh air rolling off the mountains in the morning, the rain drizzling down my back on a hot summer day, and the icy water of a trout river. Put a mountain boy in Texas, and all he wants is to go home.
In my free time, I wrote letters, a funny thing for a guy who was more interested in reading a book than finishing a book report. I wrote everybody in Millerton I could think of. Some people responded. Some didn’t. This was long before email and social media, so it took a while for the replies to come. When they did, I snuck off and read them, devoured every word.
They described the mundane parts of mountain life. Crops coming in. Layoffs at the factories. Who died. Who was dating whom. Who wrecked a car or flipped a tractor. Who got into a fight or got arrested. Who got married and was having kids. And even more scandalous, who was having kids without getting married, not a common thing back in the day.
As soon as I consumed someone’s letter, I hurriedly scribbled out another missive. With each round, though, fewer people replied, and they took longer to do so. They weren’t being mean, just busy with their own lives.
Shelby responded every time.
The guys in my barracks thought she was my girlfriend. I didn’t tell them otherwise. I let them think the letters were steamy and romantic. They weren’t at all. They were routine descriptions of errands and chores and friends.
We weren’t in love. We were friends who became good friends. Maybe that was enough. I had certainly grown to love her over the years since. It was why I went to have dinner with her every night, even if she wasn’t always inhabiting her own mind sometimes.
I had often wondered what would’ve happened if either of us had met someone else. If Horace hadn’t broken up with her again and again. If she had simply stopped writing like all the others. If I hadn’t gotten caught racing a forklift and written up by some NCO. If I had reenlisted. If I hadn’t gone back to Millerton, would we have each found someone else to love?
The question was moot because I did go back.
After all my bragging in high school about leaving and never coming home, I worried what people might say. Rather than returning with my tail tucked between my legs, admitting the world had beaten me, I needed to strut. For a young man, that meant I needed a car. I bought a Chevy Nova. Slightly used. Yes, the same one.
That was a huge purchase on an airman’s pay, but I wanted all my old friends, the ones who had written a few times before they stopped, to see me driving it. The best place to be seen, at least as a young adult in Miller County, was the old drive-in theater out on Hilltop Road.
It was sad to see that old field overgrown now, the screen little more than a frame of wood standing like a skeleton. Back then, teenagers crowded into their cars on Friday and Saturday nights, watched movies, and made out. When the wind shifted, the smell of cows from the neighboring Hickman farm cloaked the area. Sort of a scratch-and-sniff effect for the bad flicks on the screen.
Of course, I couldn’t go to the drive-in without a date riding in my new car. I decided to ask Shelby. And, for some crazy reason I can’t explain, I decided to do it face-to-face on my very first day back from the military. Unannounced.
I drove up in front of her house, my hands all sweaty and my body shaking, far more nervous than I expected to be. I didn’t realize how much of a terrible idea this was until I shut off the engine. I went up and knocked on her door. Her dad answered and looked at me as if I was crazy. He called her downstairs despite how insane I must’ve appeared. Or maybe because of it.
I had everything rehearsed but stammered along until I finally just blurted it out and asked her on a date to the drive-in. She stood frozen like a statue. Her mouth opened, hesitated, and closed again. I was sure she was going to turn me down, but after several painful seconds that seemed like hours, she asked me what movie was showing. I didn’t have a clue. I hadn’t bothered to check. I hadn’t even been home yet, though my parents were waiting for me. When I told her I just wanted to go with her, she smiled and said yes.
For the record, I still couldn’t tell you what movie played. We didn’t make out or anything like that, but we sat in that car, talking about our hopes and dreams, about what we liked and didn’t. We discovered more in common than not. We both wanted to live in Millerton forever, even though it took me longer to figure that out. We wanted big families with a house filled with noise and chaos. We wanted someone to grow old with, to rely on, to trust. We wanted to be the grandparents that spoiled the grandkids rotten.
When we returned to her house, we parked at the curb out front. We talked some more. We laughed. We kissed. We sat out there so long, her father finally turned on the porch lights to make sure we knew he was sitting inside waiting on her. I walked her to the door, knowing I was going to marry her. And the next summer, I did.
With a steady paycheck from my office job in one of the factories—that air force materials management training turned out to be more valuable than I thought—we bought that big house. It had enough rooms for all the kids we wanted. We picked the one closest to our bedroom to be the nursery. Once a kid grew out of the nursery, or was forced out by another baby coming in, they would move upstairs to one of the other rooms. The children would spread in the house—the oldest farthest from our room and the youngest near. They would double up as needed.
With everything ready, we finally got busy with the fun part. Making babies. Lots of babies. Big family. And some day, we dreamed, we would rock in the chairs on that front porch as grandchildren played in the tree.
Only that never happened.
The only baby who lived in that nursery was Jessica. When she became a teen, she moved to the most distant room, the empty rooms between mocking us and our quiet house. It had stayed that way until that fateful day when it had grown even quieter.
What does this have to do with finding my car?
Nothing.
Everything.