CHAPTER 5

Despite having a gorgeous girlfriend for two years, I’m actually rather shy and tongue tied when meeting attractive females. Although I saw Mary Gold numerous times over the first couple of months living with my grandparents, I couldn’t bring myself to confront her with the charm and wit I thought I had lurking inside me. As neighbors though, we occasionally waved at each other from a distance.

It was a lovely morning in late August when I actually talked with Mary Gold for the first time.  On August 27^th to be exact, and 8:40 a.m. to be precise. My hours at UPS were from 4:30am until around 8:00am, give or take. So on the morning of August 27^th, I was at my grandparents’ house in my room, freshly showered, when I saw Mary Gold walk past my window. Ten seconds later I heard the doorbell. I cracked open my bedroom door to eavesdrop.

“Why, hello, Mary,” I heard my grandmother say.

“Good morning, Maria. Is Fred home?” I heard a sweet, melodic voice ask.

“No, honey, he’s off having coffee with his buddies.  Is something wrong?”

“Oh, I was about to leave for work and discovered that I have a flat tire. I was hoping Fred would show me how to change it, but I guess I’ll have to figure something else out.”

“Wait!” my grandmother replied emphatically. “My grandson’s here.  Let me get him.”

“Oh no, Maria! That’s okay,” Mary Gold said with almost panic in her voice. The sweet melody gone.

My grandmother ignored her plea.

“Jake!” she hollered.

“Maria, please, I’ll manage,” Mary Gold pleaded.

My heart was pounding and I couldn’t move at first as I wondered why she seemed desperate that I not help her. I tried to muster self-confidence by thinking, you were once the boyfriend of the drop dead gorgeous Heather Louise Baumgartner. Then panic returned when I realized Heather probably now considered me a disgusting pervert. But why feel this way? Mary Gold didn’t know my history. Besides, cute as she was, with a nice figure to boot, she seemed to be kind of a clumsy nerd.

“Jacob.”

“Yes, Ma’am?” I replied.

“Could you come here, please?”

I took a deep breath and made my way down the hall.

“Really, Maria, I’ll be fine,” Mary Gold said in a low tone.

I came around the corner, and Mary Gold and I locked eyes close up for the first time. Her large, pretty, naturally long lashed eyes were an amazing green with gold flecks. Actually they still are. But lovely as her windows to the soul were, they looked troubled.

“Jake, you’ve met Mary, haven’t you?” Grandma asked.

I shook my head dumbly.

“Jake, this is Mary Horner and she lives next door. Mary, this is my grandson Jake.  He’s been staying with us this summer.”

I gave Mary Gold my most charming, friendly smile and extended my hand.

“Nice to meet you, Mary,” I told her.

Her face relaxed some and she showed me her perfectly white, slightly crooked teeth that were framed with luscious lips that were neither thick nor thin. Her hand was so soft and delicate that I couldn’t imagine a tire iron in it.

Grandma placed a hand on my shoulder. “Dear, Mary has a flat tire on her car.  Do you think you could help her?”

“Sure, I’d be glad to,” I replied.

Mary’s pained expression returned and she nervously rolled her ankles, which to me looked precarious with the two inch heels she wore.  She was also wearing a light blue and purple dress, that looked like it would be a dirt magnet for someone about to remove a tire.

“Sorry,” she told me with such deep regret you might have thought she ran over my dog.  However, I was confident that my dog Rowdy was safe on my parent’s farm.

I placed a reassuring hand on her upper arm. “No worries.  I’m glad to help.  Let’s go have a look.”

She lead me to her driveway and pointed to the rear driver side tire which was completely flat.

“Where do you work?” I asked.

“Peterson’s at Westdale Mall.”

“What time do you have to be there?”

“Well, nine,” she replied, shrugging. “But, a person can’t help it if they have a flat.”

I looked at my watch and saw it was a quarter till nine. My grandparents lived about five, at the most, ten minutes from the mall.

“I tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t I give you a ride to work? Then I can take your tire off and take it up to get it fixed. It probably has a nail in it or something. My grandpa has a friend with an auto repair shop just a few blocks away.”

My gaze turned from the tire to her. She was looking at me like I had just told her that I killed her dog. I later found out that she didn’t have a dog.

“Oh no,” she said touching my forearm. “I really don’t want to bother you.”

“It’s no bother.”

“No, really, I mean.”

“I insist. Look, I’ll be bothered if you don’t let me help you.”

Now she looked about to cry. Hopefully with gratitude.

“Okay,” she said, meekly, forcing a smile, and running a hand through her silky, auburn hair.

In my junky old truck, she looked a bit out of place. She was dressed so nice and she was just so feminine. I kept my truck clean, though, even if it had seen better days. On the drive to the mall, our conversation mostly consisted of her either apologizing or thanking me. Once there, I asked her what time I should pick her up.

“Oh, you won’t need to,” she insisted. “A girl that I work with gets done at the same time that I do so it’ll be no problem getting a ride with her.”

Two women walked in front of my truck, staring at us almost rudely. Mary smiled brightly and wiggled her fingers at them. As if a switch was flipped, big smiles appeared on their made up faces and they waved back. Mary thanked me for the millionth time and exited my truck.

Back home, I grabbed Grandpa’s floor jack, a T-bar, and a crowbar. I had the wheel off in no time. As I put the tire in the back of my truck, my grandma approached.

“I called up to Ned’s Repair and told him you’d be bringing Mary’s tire in,” she said.

“Thanks, Grandma.”

I drove the four blocks to Ned’s shop. Grandpa was there, drinking coffee with two of his friends, Fred Bryant and Ted Price. How weird, two Freds and Ted at Ned’s. Ned was under the hood of a 1973 Ford Galaxy 500 that was a gaudy yellow green in color. He took a break from what he was doing to fix the flat that I had brought in.

I glanced at Grandpa and did a double take. He was wearing a knowing smirk. Oh no, Grandpa. I mentally pleaded, don’t start saying “pretty gal isn’t she” in front of your friends. To be honest, up to that point, he hadn’t said anything to me about Mary since that first day when he snuck up on me and whispered in my ear.

“Mary had a flat, huh?” Grandpa said.

“Yeah.”

“Nice of you to help her,” he said.

I shrugged. “No big deal.”

“You put her spare on for her?”

“No.”

“How’d she get to work?”

I cleared my throat. “I took her.”

“You took her?” he said emphasizing you.

“Yes, I took her.” I emphasized I. “In my truck.”

 “Is it clean?”

“Yes, it’s clean.”

“So you took her to work,” he said leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers and placing his hands behind his head.

I didn’t reply.

“Picking her up?”

“No, she’s getting a ride with a lady that she works with.”

Thankfully, it didn’t take Ned very long to fix the tire.

“What do I owe you Ned?” I asked.

“For a man helping a damsel in distress, it’s on the house,” he said with a grin and a wink.

I looked at Grandpa and he winked. So did Fred and Ted. I rolled my eyes.

“Thanks, Ned,” I said as I grabbed the wheel and loaded it onto my truck. As I began to leave, my eye caught a bumper sticker on the Galaxy 500 Ned had been working on. It said, ‘Don’t Mess With Texas.’ I didn’t think much of it at the time. But a few weeks later, I came across, not only the car again, but this time the owner. At, of all places, Lake Produce Inc.

A fellow named Don had started the day after I did at Lake, only he was working through a temp service. He proudly declared to be from, you guessed it, Texas. Don was a couple of inches over five feet tall and suffered from short man’s disease. By this description, I mean he was about as macho acting as a guy can be. He had a major swagger when he walked, and the problem for him was that it was more comical than tough.

He was about forty give or take, mostly bald on top, and had a big comb over going with his greasing brown hair. He was actually on the skinny side, except for a belly that had him looking about six months pregnant. One more thing, Don was the most chronic, exaggerating, and ridiculous liar that I had ever met. That is until a guy named Harold started working at Lake about a year later.

Richard Parker was a gay man who also came to Lake via the same temp service as Don. He was also one of the nicest guys I had ever met, and we remained friends until his death from complications from AIDS in the mid-nineties. Back in the mid-eighties, it was rare to encounter an openly gay man in a smaller midwestern city. At least for this farm boy.

Richard was a good-looking man in his early thirties. He had thick brown hair that he kept styled in a way that reminded me of movie stars from the fifties. Richard was several inches over six feet, so you can probably imagine that he and Don were a pretty odd couple working together. Especially because it was a bit obvious that Richard was gay. Don, in full macho swagger, came right out and asked Richard if he was gay.

“Well, I am happy,” Richard replied.

This reply puzzled Don. It probably goes without saying that Don wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. He tried again. “Are you a homosexual?”

With a sultry voice, Richard asked with jest. “How’d you know? Did your gaydar kick in?”

“What’s gaydar?” Don asked with a frown, a dark line of chewing tobacco splitting his chin.

“It’s how you perceived that Richard is gay,” Lon suggested with a smirk. “You know, like radar. It takes one to know one, and you picked up on it.”

Richard and I both chuckled.

“Are you saying I’m queer?” Don squealed with outrage. “Well I’m not. I’ve been with dozens of women. Make that hundreds. Maybe over a thousand. Surely you both picked up that ole Dick here is light in the loafers.”

“Sure,” Lon shrugged. “As soon as he told us.”

This reply had Don squinting at us and scratching his head. Lon put an end to it by sending Don over to work with Mervin.

Working with Richard was uneventful. We had good, interesting conversation throughout the morning. We talked about everything from sports to movies to the many years he lived in New York City. Not surprisingly, Mervin and Don clashed, so we switched again and I was paired up with Don. Oh, happy day.

Don and I got along okay, though. I just had to listen to one ridiculous story and one exaggerated lie after another. Here are a few highlights. He was telling stories about being in the Special Forces in Vietnam. If you could see Don, you would easily know that if he was in the military, it was by the skin of his teeth, let alone being in special anything.

He told me that he once drove from Houston, Texas to Denver, Colorado in two hours. I pointed out that he would have had to have been travelling at over three hundred miles per hour. These logistics seemed to baffle him, so I let it go. So he kept blabbing.

He told me that he was once an assistant coach with the Dallas Cowboys, he was a photographer for Playboy magazine, and he was a bodyguard in Hollywood. Some of the notables he supposedly protected were Loni Anderson, Suzanne Summers, and Sally Fields.

He also survived a one hundred mile an hour, helmetless motorcycle crash with minor cuts and bruises. He was run over by a truck that was going fifty miles an hour. He was once installing a fluorescent light on a wet floor when his wife plugged it in, electrocuting him. He simply untied his melted tennis shoes and stepped out of them.

At the end of the day, when Don might have actually been tired of talking, there was a moment of silence. Out of orneriness, coupled with frustration, I winked at Lon and then stated. “Man, hand gliding would sure take a lot of guts.”

Don looked me square in the eyes and declared, “I’ve done it.”