Reunion at the Bluegrass Inn

By Travis McClain

Fifteen years have passed since Daniel Burnside graduated high school. Like everyone else, Daniel has had some good times and some bad. He’s fought to earn the respect of his peers even when he wanted to believe he didn’t even care if he had it. Now, he’s just finished writing his first novel and after all this time, he feels he’s ready to face his former classmates: buddies and rivals alike. It’s a shame he didn’t account for also having to face his former crush…

Nostalgia for the 90s, the thrill of a road trip and the kind of personal introspection that can only come from measuring up to the kids you went to school with… it’s all here in a fast-paced, lighthearted comedy with surprising depth and personal reflection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781304326225

Book preview

Reunion at the Bluegrass Inn

REUNION AT THE BLUEGRASS INN

The First Novel by

Travis McClain

REUNION AT THE BLUEGRASS INN

Copyright

Preface

INVITATION

PREPARATION

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

SUNDAY

EPILOGUE

Acknowledgements

Copyright

FIRST EBOOK EDITION, 2014

Copyright © 2013 by Travis McClain.

First Ebook Edition, 2014. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Also available in paperback.

ISBN: 978-1-304-32622-5

www.travismcclain.blogspot.com

Preface

I grew up in a part of the world where, when they ask you want you want to be when you grow up, you don’t give any kind of answer that has to do with the arts. Those are fine hobbies, but you can’t make a living playing games. Even though I was told often in my youth that I had some aptitude as a writer, I denied any attraction to the craft as an actual vocation.

In October, 2011, after what I call my Year of Hell, I found myself a patient in a mental health facility. I was ready for my life to be over. While there, I discovered I didn’t really want to be dead. I just wanted to stop hurting and to feel alive again, after years of irritating health issues bringing me down.

Just weeks after I was discharged was National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I figured I was out of excuses. I mean, hell; I was ready to end my life before the hospital. I really had nothing at all to lose by discounting the naysayers from my childhood and giving it a whirl.

When I started writing, I only had a few characters (Daniel, Kyle and Veronica) and the basic premise (a 15 year reunion). The plot and other characters came along as I wrote. It became a source of catharsis for me at one of the most tumultuous times in my life. I drew extensively from my own life, redressing my own anecdotes to become those of Daniel, Kyle, Veronica, Ashley, Ethan and Ramona.

For whatever it may be worth, in my mind, this is a comedy. It’s okay to laugh, even at the unpleasant parts. I also think this would make a great movie and am happy to negotiate the sale of those rights.

INVITATION

Why not? Daniel Burnside stared at the bottle of Knob Creek on the shelf before him. It was hard to pay $35 for bourbon, but it was hard not to drink the good stuff. He deserved the good stuff tonight. Daniel wasn’t particularly down on himself, but he knew most nights he didn’t really deserve the good stuff. Tonight, though, he would splurge.

Inspiration struck once he had the bottle of bourbon in hand, and he strode cheerily toward the walk-in humidor. Stogies had become expensive, but again… he deserved the good stuff tonight. He looked at the Arturo Fuentes and the Cohibas, but finally settled on some Montecristo torpedoes. He grabbed three, not even really sure why. He knew he would only smoke one of them tonight and would probably go months before he would even think about cigars again, but it felt right to buy three of them so he did.

Can I see some I.D.? asked the overweight, middle-aged cashier with an expressionless face. Her crooked nametag identified her as Margaret. Daniel surmised she would never have answered to anything as whimsical as Maggie or as casual as Marge. No, she was a Margaret and there was no room in her world for whimsy. Daniel guessed she was probably only about five years older than him but she had the listless aura of a woman in her twilight years. Her eyes were vacant, her posture weary and she clearly had not cared about her hair since the Clinton years. Still, Daniel was in a good mood so he smiled as he opened his wallet to display his driver’s license.

I need you to take that out, she said, holding up her head to indicate that she needed to inspect the license more closely. She tightened her grip around the bottle of Knob Creek and subtly moved it closer to her side of the counter.

Are you fucking kidding me? Daniel wanted to shout, but instead he meekly complied. It was a hassle to pull the license out from behind the clear plastic display window, and the rounded corners still managed to get caught on the leather. Daniel watched while the zombie scrutinized his driver’s license. Twice, she made a show of staring at his photograph and then back to his face three feet from hers. Eventually, she thrust it forward without making eye contact. She was clearly disappointed that he was, in fact, Daniel Burnside born 1 December 1978 and legally entitled to purchase alcoholic beverages and tobacco products.

Daniel almost elected to pay with cash, just to make her work a little bit more but out of habit when the time came he pulled out his worn debit card and swiped it without further comment. Why does this shit have to happen on my one good night? he wondered as he exited the Barkeep’s Buddy liquor store. It seemed that having a good day attracted the Margarets of the world.

The hell with ‘em. Today was a good day. Daniel had just mailed a completed manuscript to a publisher. Until today, he had only managed to sell a handful of short stories and a few contributory column pieces to various magazines. Granted, no one at Paige Turner Press had indicated to him they were actually going to buy his manuscript. Still, an editor named Rachel Horn had responded to his query by inviting him to submit his work for consideration and that was the closest to an invitation he was ever going to get. Maybe Rachel Horn was just trying to fill a quota or something. Maybe she was quitting her job and had no intention of even still working at Paige Turner by the time his manuscript arrived. Whatever. The important thing was, she was an editor who had e-mailed him five weeks ago to tell him that the publisher would be interested to look at his manuscript.

Daniel had, of course, already completed the manuscript when he initially contacted Paige Turner. He suspected Rachel Horn already knew this, but was polite enough to play along with his charade in their limited correspondence. It had taken him almost two years to write The Overturned Hammock, a lighthearted sex comedy set in Barbados. Daniel got the idea during Spring Break during his junior year of college, when he and several classmates got together for a group rate and spent seven days knocking back rum and Cokes and ogling bikini-clad girls. Daniel really wanted to write a movie, but not knowing the first thing about writing screenplays, he decided he would write the book and hope someone else would want to make it a movie.

He almost stopped for drive-thru on the way back to his apartment, but the idea of pairing value menu burgers with Knob Creek disinterested him. There was still some leftover lasagna from Tuesday night. That would be good enough. Damn! Why didn’t I buy wine?

Daniel almost poured some bourbon as soon as he was inside his apartment, but since this was a proud, grown-up achievement he would be a mature adult and delay his gratification until after he ate. There wasn’t much lasagna left in the old Tupperware container, but it was enough. It had become bland over the last three days, but at least it hadn’t come from a paper sack. He was eating food from a real plate with real silverware. He was a grown-up.

He hurried through his lasagna, like when he was a kid who rushed through dinner so he could open his birthday presents. He dropped a few ice cubes into a highball glass and then smiled as they cracked under three fingers of the bourbon. The rest of the glass he filled with Coca-Cola. He gave it a quick swirl; not so much that it blended the drink, but just enough that the two drinks overcame their shyness and approached one another.

There’s something about a bourbon and Coke that’s particularly soothing. There’s an initial sweetness, quickly followed by a burning from the pit of the belly all the way up into the cheeks. Once upon a time, he had dabbled in the jargon of the connoisseur, bandying about such remarks as, I can taste the vanilla and That’s a nice looking amber but he had outgrown that phase when he looked around one night at a party and no one else there gave a damn. They just wanted to get drunk. At first, Daniel had been disappointed to be surrounded by such heathens but in truth, he too just wanted to get drunk. Now when he spoke of alcohol, he restricted his conversation to whether or not he liked a particular drink or how quickly it got him drunk. That was all anyone ever really wanted to know when they asked about a drink anyway.

After his cheeks were sufficiently warmed by the bourbon, Daniel decided to light up a cigar. Naturally, his one cigar cutter was not to be found in the kitchen drawer with his corkscrew, bottle spouts and other sundry bartending accessories. Eventually, Daniel gave up and just used a knife to sever the pointed tip of the Montecristo. It wasn’t perfect, and he got several stray pieces of tobacco on his tongue but at least he was now smoking. No; not merely smoking. He was celebrating!

After five minutes, Daniel became bothered by the silence of his celebration. There ought to be noise of some kind. He set his iPod to shuffle and affixed it to its dock on his home audio system. Melody Gardot began singing something sultry. It was a gorgeous song, but not right for his mood. He skipped to the next track and Vince Gill began singing a ballad. Eventually, Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears got the party started and Daniel turned up the volume an extra couple of clicks. Now this was celebrating!

Bruce Springsteen took over from Black Joe, but then Norah Jones came along and ruined the vibe. Why hadn’t he ever created a celebration playlist? Being at the mercy of the shuffle feature was clearly not working as he had hoped. Just as he was about to dismiss Norah Jones, though, Daniel resolved that he was going to celebrate regardless of what song played. He would drink his bourbon and puff on his stogie and no one - not Margaret or Norah Jones - was going to stop him.

During his third drink, while Dean Martin crooned about needing somebody, Daniel became wistful as he was wont to do once enough alcohol got into his system. You sad wretch. You’ve finally done something and there’s not a single person in the world to share it with.

It was true. Daniel worked a day job at an independently owned record shop, Public Records. It was dying a slow death in the digital age but there were enough dedicated regulars to keep paying the bills each month so the store kept limping along. He got along well enough with his coworkers, but they weren’t the kind of people who seemed to understand the significance of having completed and submitted a manuscript. Throughout the last two years, Daniel intermittently worked into conversation that he had completed this chapter or was stuck on that plot thread. No one ever really seemed to care.

Nor did he have any real friends outside of work. His apartment neighbors were mostly middle-aged burnouts and single mothers too harried for idle conversation. It was hard to forge long term friendships in a place where you didn’t have any real roots. Daniel had grown up in a suburb of Louisville, Kentucky but took his first chance to get the hell away from Derby City and after a string of jobs and girlfriends, he found himself now living in Des Peres, Missouri just outside of St. Louis. In fact, the only contact he really had with anyone he knew before he arrived in Des Peres was through the Internet.

Puffing away on his Montecristo, Daniel checked his email inbox, but only found a few newsletters and spam offering to teach him how to please any woman. Disappointed, he went to Facebook. Maybe someone was online. He saw a few green dots next to some of the names in his chat list indicating their availability to chat, but he didn’t really want to talk with any of them.

That’s when he noticed the red flag with the number 1 in it next to the Events link. It was probably just another TV premiere or something stupid, but the red flag would stay there until he looked at it, whatever it was.

Daniel was surprised.

Class of ’97 15th Anniversary Reunion!

Time Saturday, June 16 at 5:00pm – Sunday, June 17 at 1:00am

Location Bluegrass Inn

Created By Kyle Murphy

More Info Who wants to wait another five years? Let’s reunite now! Special rates available for rooms, just call! Very excited to see everyone again!!

Was there such a thing as a fifteenth anniversary reunion? Who the hell had invited him? When was it? He had passed on attending his class’s tenth anniversary reunion because he lived too far away from Louisville and couldn’t get the time off work and… who was he kidding? He didn’t attend that reunion because he didn’t want to face his former classmates without having accomplished something. How serendipitous, then, that on the night he finally had something under his belt, he should be invited to this reunion.

Why the hell not? He RSVP’d Attending and finished off his third highball of Knob Creek and Coke.

Have we had any calls about the reunion? Kyle Murphy asked as he walked behind the front desk counter at the Bluegrass Inn. Kyle exuded an enthusiasm that his wife, Veronica, had not seen in quite some time. She noticed that he had dressed in a white shirt today, which he generally only wore on Sundays. He had taken the time to get the knot just right in his muted brown tie today, too. Veronica caught the subtle detail and it made her smile. Kyle didn’t just wear his heart on his sleeve; his sleeves were his heart.

Not yet. You just sent the invitation out last night, she answered. Her tone told Kyle she thought he was already behaving absurdly over this. And what’s with all this? she waved her left hand up and down to indicate his appearance.

Just felt like wearing this today. That alright? Kyle answered, somewhat defensively. He was polite, but there was a firmness to his voice that told Veronica an argument awaited if she pressed the matter. She elected not to do so.

Sure. Whatever, she shrugged. To change the subject, she handed him a clipboard and said, We had to move the guests in 304 to 306 because their plumbing was screwed up. We need to get that fixed. It was a tiresome task, these daily maintenance reports. Still, they were part of the job whether anyone liked it or not.

Kyle rolled his eyes in irritation. Again? What are people flushing in that damn room?

I know, Veronica swiftly reassured him she was on his side in the matter. I’m just telling you what’s up. I don’t like it any more than you do.

I’ll call Johnny, he said, deflating by the moment. He had hoped today would be a white shirt day, where everyone smiled and played nice and things went like they were supposed to go. Apparently, that was too much to ask.

After a quick call to Johnny that went directly to his voicemail, Kyle sat down and turned on the computer. He immediately went to Facebook and checked the event invitation. So far, there were 54 Attending, 22 Maybes and 197 Awaiting Reply.

Fifty four already confirmed! Kyle announced triumphantly.

There were still about thirty classmates Kyle didn’t know how to invite because he couldn’t find them online and of course, there had been a few deaths. Todd Jameson, for instance, hit a deer on the Interstate a few Thanksgivings ago. Someone said that Cyndi Anderson had overdosed on crystal meth, but he hadn’t heard any more about it so