The Schoolmate Idealist (a short story)

(Washington High School, St. Paul, Minnesota (1965…)
Schoolmate Idealist




W hen I was young I lived much in the moment, tending to my own business and dreaming of traveling, the Army, writing poetry, marriage, having kids, walking with the Lord up that old dirt road in back of our house, beyond our backyard that led up to Old Rice School, about learning to play the guitar, karate, and so forth and on, and I did all those things, plus. Although I never quite followed the flock, I hung around with them some, liked the bright colors of autumn, the loud and fast music of day, such as: Elvis, Johnny Cash, Connie Francis and Rick Nelson, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, I absorbed, and some of the Beatles stuff also—and of course girls, and some party life, and a few dozen fights in-between. I drowsed among the sunny days of my life also, in a warm kind of slumbering way. And always at twilight, I seemed to find a bar or place to drink, have a smoke, and kind of warm my nose and toes in the winters. And I remember Jerry and Renee from High School now and then, one of the few black boys and girls in our old High School, built in the late twenties; both very athletic, in many of the High School sports, and both very much involved with other events in the High School, and they were going with one another like two peas in a pod, so it appeared to us, she was the prettiest of the three black girls in school, and Jerry the most handsomest of the few black boys in school…
and haw, how she flowered ahead, and Jerry followed her about, carried her books, she was his ideal, she could have sought no better, had she wished to, and he could climb no higher than what he had for her within his heart, his mannerisms were equal to his love for her. Gosh, it looked to be heaven sent. We all figured she’d marry Jerry, and he’d no longer need to climb that ivory tower he put her on, to reach her. And she’d remain at home and bake and make cheese pies and treading out the breakfasts for the children, and never having to get calluses on those sweet black feet of hers, lay in the summer sun in the afternoons and he’d gladly go to work and that would be that.
She was pretty as a light-dark sparrow and thin and how she shined against the others, white or black. Sweet youth with a slim waist and wild small breasts sharp to amend her lose blouses. For none in this High School showed anymore promise than her, it seemed all pre arranged to us, who knew them, observed them.

After school let out, and we all graduated, and went our ways, and the sun had dropped from those youthful days, after all this, and the dreaming of golden valleys and church bells chiming for Jerry and Renee, years passed by quickly—as often the saying goes (too quickly), after all this, Renee did not marry Jerry, it was no longer like that, not like it was in High School, so near—was heaven, and now so far for Jerry. She went her own way, did a different dance, almost unobtrusively, so it would have looked, yet Jerry wooed her, flashing whatever he could to save the day, and never married. Heaven had willed other things. (I am old now, and I forget many things, but in 1990, we had a High school reunion, our twenty-fifth reunion, I was there, Jerry was there, Renee was not, Jerry was still not married, still waiting for Renee.)
He, Jerry, I’m sure had expected her there—if not, hoped at lest she’d show up sometime during the special event (but she didn’t)—perhaps even he saw her there—in some visionary quest, in that old sweet music that was playing—that early Rock and Roll, he must had forgotten the last twenty-five years for that evening—they who watched him, hushed about that, but we all knew, that he was briefly looking into heaven, for she was like the stars in his eyes still, and somehow I got the feeling he felt, she was promised to him, and he was just waiting, waiting, patiently waiting as if there would be a more dramatic part for me to write into this story. That now as twenty-years ago, it will be interesting if I make it to the next reunion, our fiftieth, in 2015.


No: 638 (6-22-2010)