LOYD BURL AND THE HOOTER’S GIRL

PROLOUGE

June 25, 2024

FOR WHAT IS YOUR LIFE? IT IS EVEN A VAPOR THAT APPEARS FOR A LITTLE TIME AND THEN VANISHES AWAY. (James 4:14)

            Time is deceptive. How can it move so slow and yet so fast? How can you remember so many things throughout your life, and yet ask, where did the time go? I shook my head as I read her tombstone. Thirty-five years ago she had been murdered. Killed by jealousy. Stabbed more than a dozen times in chest and abdomen.

            1988 had started me on an eventful year. I was in love with two women, and I was drafted into the NFL. I was an aspiring artist, born into a family of sports fanatics. My brothers, cousins, father, and uncles were all bigger, faster and stronger than me. Most had played college sports at some level. But it was I, nicknamed Pretty Boy Loyd by one of my brothers, that made it to the top echelon of sports. For I was employed as a punter by the Chicago Bears for more than a decade.

            I suppose you could say I had a type. For both of the women I was in love with in 1988 had auburn hair, and large, lovely green eyes. I put my arm around the thirty-five year old woman standing next to me. She had large, lovely green eyes just like her mother. But I guess because of my blonde hair, my daughter’s hair was a golden-red.

            “It’s so weird,” my daughter said quietly. “The mother that birthed me, and the mother who raised me sometimes look like the same person in pictures. Did you ever date anyone besides my two moms?”

            “I guess sort of, but not really. Your mother was the first woman I ever kissed.”

            “Which one?”

            “You know the story… Your mother.”

            She laughed and bumped her hip into mine. “Tell me about 1988 again.”

            “Well actually, I met your mother in 1985. But I met your other mother in 1987.”

            “Okay, so tell me about the 1980’s.”

            I gazed up into a big tree and watched the wind rustle the leaves. “Once upon a time, long, long ago…”

CHAPTER 1

Wednesday, October 31, 1984, to April Fool’s Day, 1987

            “Wow,” my voice emitted, unable to contain its awe of the beautiful woman to whom I was just introduced. She wore a short purple dress, and her shapely legs were covered by pink tights. A light purple band held in place her silky dark red hair. “You’re Daphne from Scooby Doo.”

            Her eyes twinkled, and she aimed the most beautiful smile at me as she extended her hand to shake mine. “Actually I’m Becky. I’m just dressed like Daphne for Halloween. The rest of the mystery gang is around here somewhere. Gary Middleton even brought his Great Dane with him to be Scooby.”

            I was a freshman a Whitney Junior college, and it was my first day at my part time job as an afternoon parts delivery person for a truck dealership. Becky Dankworth wasn’t exactly my new boss, but she was the person who invoiced my deliveries, causing us to see each other on a daily basis.

            “So you’re a Weasel?” Becky asked me with mirth in her tone.

            “Excuse me?”

            She laughed, and that beautiful smile was aimed at me once again. “I was a Weasel a decade ago. Back then our sports teams were less than stellar. So instead of the Whitney Westar’s, we started calling ourselves the Weasels. We even had shirts made.”

            “Oh, you’re graduate of Whitney college then?”

            “No,” she replied, shaking her head, and showing me the wedding band on her left hand. “I got married after my sophomore year. I was actually a parts runner like you back then. But I went full time after I got hitched.”

            I don’t know why I felt a surge of disappointment when she told me she was married. After all, she was almost thirty, and I was still a teenager. But as we got to know each other, and became friends, there was an undeniable chemistry between us that transcended work buddies. There was an ever so subtle, extra friendliness, if you know what I mean?

            Yet we were both moral people. I had been an altar boy, who was even considering the priesthood. But then a priest who got fresh with me, soured my devotion. Becky, at some point in her girlhood, had considered becoming a nun.

            Anyway, over the next two and a half years, I saw Becky’s lovely smile less and less. Then one day I noticed her wedding band was gone. Not long after that a breakdown on my delivery route got me back two hours later than average. Becky was the only one left at the office. That’s when I noticed her quietly weeping at her desk.

            “Are you okay, Becky?” I gently asked.

            Even though I was quiet, she jumped as if a firecracker had suddenly exploded by her desk. “Oh my goodness, you scared me!”

            “Sorry.”

            “No, that’s alright, but I thought everyone was long gone,” she replied, wiping quickly at her eyes as if to hide the fact she’d been crying.

            “I broke down and Gary had to come out with a different van for me to finish my route.”

            “I see.”

            An awkward silence ensued, then I became bold. “Look, I know it’s none of my business. But I’ve noticed that you’ve been awfully sad lately. Now I just found you crying.”

            She gave me a hard cold stare and Loyd Burl felt his toes curl. In the time I had known Becky there had never been a crossword or an unfriendly look between us. Although we had gotten to know each quite well, we had never gotten, shall we say, personal.

            But the panic I felt led to me to do just that. I went on one knee in front of her and took her left hand in my right. “Look, Becky, I care deeply for you. It hurts my soul to see you in such pain. But I also understand if you don’t want to talk about what’s going on. On the other hand, if you do, I’m always available for you. Okay?”

            The glare left her face as her eyebrows arched. Her chin got that cottage cheese look as her lips tightened, and then her lower lip trembled. A sob she had been holding back suddenly burst from her mouth. Her arms wrapped around my neck, and we stood, embracing each other as she cried into my shoulder.

            I turned my head and most of my face became buried in her silky dark red hair. I breathed in the scent as I gently rubbed her back. I wanted to hug her pain away. Yet it was because of her pain that I found myself connected to this woman I was so infatuated with.

            I could smell the faint rose fragrance of her shampoo, mingled with the scent the Salem light 100’s she began smoking a few months ago. When I mentioned what seemed like a new habit of smoking, she had shrugged it off, telling me she had stopped and started smoking several times over the years. But I now knew her relapse was due to some inner turmoil.

            Back then I was myself an occasional smoker. But what I smoked was usually wacky tobacky, rather cigarette tobacco. On more than one occasion when Becky and I chatted in the break room, she would snuff out her cigarette and go back to her desk. I would pick up the butt, eye the pink or red of her lipstick and place it between my lips, relishing the moistness her own lips had left on the filter.

            “Sorry,” she choked as she finally pushed away from me. She sat back and crossed one shapely leg over the other. The split on her denim skirt rode high up on her thigh, but she did nothing to correct it. Always when she sat, she would tug her skirt down. Always! This was a habit of hers whether it needed to be or not. Believe me, I studied her pretty thoroughly.

            She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. Forgive me, but I took this opportunity to examine her legs. Her chair was now turned the opposite way from her desk, and her shoes were underneath it. I was gazing at the red of her painted toenails that you could see through her sheer black nylons when she abruptly lifted her head, saying, “How embarrassing!”

            “Yeah!” I blurted. “I mean no, don’t feel that way. You know… Whatever you’re going through… You know, it’s…”

            “My husband and I are getting a divorce,” she said quickly.

            I refrained from saying ‘that’s wonderful,’ and replied, “I’m sorry,” instead.

            She nodded, and then opened up a verbal flood gate. She told me how three or four years into their marriage they decided to have kids. That she had always wanted kids, lots them, four or five. But after a year of being off of birth control pills, no children were forth coming. It turned out the problem was with him.

            He took it hard, and his pride seemed to change his personality. He became verbally abusive. Then to add insult to injury, she recently discovered that he was having an affair with one of her close friends. A divorced mother of two.

            She was willing to forgive, and suggested counseling. But he wanted a divorce, and the two adulterers intended to marry. Instant family she supposed. I wondered if my own infatuation with Becky was a type of adultery. You know, like when Jesus said if you look upon a woman to lust after her, you’ve committed adultery in your heart.

            I had certainly done quite a bit of lusting over a married woman. Although I never figured it would go anywhere. Right then I still didn’t despite her divorce, what with our age difference. She had recently turned thirty last spring, and I turned nineteen during the summer.

            “Can I ask you something?” she said.

            “Of course.”

            “How come you don’t have a girlfriend? I mean, you look like you could be Robert Redford’s son, and I bet you get a lot of female attention.”

            I shrugged. “I’m just picky I guess. And I haven’t met, you know, that special someone.” Other than you, I thought. But you’re married, for now anyway, and too old. “So, I figure why waste the time dating someone if it’s not gonna go anywhere?”

            “Most guys your age would say they just want, how should I put this? Some action.”

            “I’m not most guys. I don’t want to just use some girl for sex.”

            “Are you saving yourself for marriage then?”

            I shrugged. “At least for the woman I’m going to marry.”

            “You’re a special young man,” she told me with a look of fondness. “I’ve always known you were. I believe that special someone is out there for you. Maybe you shouldn’t be so picky and give a girl a chance.”

            How about you, I thought. Instead I smiled and nodded.

            “I’d love to see some girl sweep you off your feet. You deserve it!”

            It was almost as if Becky had uttered a prophecy. My roommate had recently started dating a waitress from Hooter’s restaurant. I had never been to the establishment, for I didn’t want to appear to be there to lust after the waitresses who were known for their chestiness and short shorts.

            But low and behold, Kyle somehow talked me into it. I was so glad he did! Becky had said I looked like I could be Robert Redford’s son. Well, Catalina Clutterbuck could have been Becky’s younger sister!

            The only problem, and it was a big one, Catalina put up a big time snobbish front. It was hard enough for me to talk to beautiful females. So when I approached her about a date, I was mortified when she looked at me like I had just vomited on her shoes. Which I actually kind of felt like doing.