Class Reunion: Recollections from Another View

By B.W. Keys

A 1963 Chevy Impala SuperSport, cherry red with an automatic shifter on the floor - it was the car of his dreams it was a car that had the power to return him to a world long past, but not easily forgotten. But was it really the Chevy that had the power, or was it something else, perhaps the power of the music he was hearing on the old Delco radio? Whatever held the power was taking Dwayne back, back, back to his worst nightmare. He hoped it was taking him back to a resolution, once and for all, through all the twists and turns to a happy ending.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 20, 2004
• ISBN: 9781462840700

B.W. Keys

The ridges and valleys of Central Pennsylvania, where the author spent much of his life, provide the setting for this novel. B.W. Keys grew up in the lovely Juniata Valley, attending school in Thompsontown and East Juniata High School. He later graduated from Shippensburg State College (now Shippensburg University) with a degree in Education. Following his 22-year career in the U.S. Army, Mr. Keys earned a second Bachelor’s degree from Regent’s College in Albany, NY, and a Master of Science degree from the Texas A&M system. He and his wife, Darlene, and his immediate family, currently reside near San Antonio, TX.

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Copyright © 2004 by B.W. Keys.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Part Two

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Part One

Chapter 1

Early settlers entering Texas found grasslands dominating the

area from the coastal plains westward and northward through the Edwards Plateau. Periodic fires set either by lightning or indigenous people of the area kept the grasslands intact by confining the brush to the canyons. Grasses such as eastern gamma, switch grass, little bluestem, big bluestem, and silver bluestem predominated. Cattle thrived on the rich grasses and the water from the many streams and water holes.

The grasses fed the great buffalo herd that had occupied the plains. Once the buffalo herds trod the soils of West Texas. The Southern Herd numbering perhaps in the millions grazed through the area providing food, shelter, clothing, and implements to the prairie Indian tribes. Then came the white buffalo hunters who annihilated the great herds, and by 1880, only a few thousand of the estimated two hundred million animals remained. Some historians speculate that the hunters were hired to decimate the buffalo with the aim of denying the Indian tribes their source of food, clothing, and shelter.

The white man modified the Texas environment just as he did elsewhere. Once the ecosystem was disturbed, mesquite trees, prickly pear cactus, and other assorted tough weeds and trees took over. The grasses that had fed the buffalo and wild longhorn cattle disappeared forever.

*     *     *

The cows were already standing at the fence looking for the hay to be thrown across to them. There was very little nutritious grass to sustain cows here. The sparse grass that did grow was even less than usual due to the lack of any significant rain over the winter and early spring of the Concho Valley. It was fortunate that the well was able to support the cows with water. No sign of rain this day again.

The sun slashed through the filthy panes of the two-by-two window that faced the east and hit his face like a slap from that rich babe in San Angelo he had insulted once (and only once). He groaned in agony as he rolled away from the light. Unfortunately, there was no going back to sleep now. The temperature was already in the low nineties, and the air in the bunkhouse closed in without mercy. His temples pounded as the dehydration from last night’s binge hit full-force. The abuse of alcohol had begun nearly forty-one years ago in the jungles of Southeast Asia, born of the necessity to compensate for the insanity he faced.

Slowly, reality set in and he remembered where he was. The filthy little shed the Asshole called the bunkhouse. He actually lived here – had for the last three months since his previous attempt to find stability had failed.

The shed had walls built with two-by-fours studs and covered on the outside by some sort of compressed four-by-eight-foot sheets painted a dingy gray trimmed in a medium, nondescript blue. The inside walls had fortunately been insulated at some point in the past, otherwise he could never have tolerated the seasons. Winter had been especially difficult this year. The temperature had dropped to ten degrees every night for nearly a week! He had to cover up and lie in the bunk or else go to San Angelo and hang out in the bars to keep warm. There was no heat in the shed, and worse, no air-conditioning unit for that oppressive summer heat that was already beginning. If he stayed on here, he would doubtless be spending more time in the bars to keep cool.

As it was, there were still more than enough leaks and air holes. Critters scurried across the bare concrete floor at will. He even had to kill a baby rattler one evening when he returned from stringing fence. After that, he was careful to check the damn place on a regular basis. He was especially vigilant about the ceiling. He didn’t want something falling into bed with him at night. Scorpions were ever present and seemed to show up under everything from his shoes to his pants if he forgot to hang them up, inadvertently dropping them to the floor instead.

And snakes! Christ! The jungles of Southeast Asia had nothing on West Texas. There were sidewinders, prairie rattlers, coach whips, and big fucking bull snakes that acted pissed off if you got within twenty-five feet of them. Fortunately, only the rattlers were poisonous. Farther south and east, broad-banded copperheads and even coral snakes were common. At least the rattlers shook their tails at you.

Two hundred dollars a month and get, the Asshole had told him when they met for the first time.

Get my ass! he thought. He assumed it was a term that came from cowboy slang. Asshole liked to use cowboy slang when he spoke. The only thing he got was the slop left over after Mr. and Mrs. Asshole and the little Assholes picked over the food. Sometimes he could hardly swallow the swill. Perhaps he shouldn’t call it swill; after all, Callie (Mrs. Asshole) was a pretty good cook.

Unfortunately, the little bastards touched everything with their filthy hands, and what they didn’t ruin by touching, he swore, they spit on or sneezed on or otherwise despoiled. Asshole insisted Callie not throw anything out, so he suspected he ate some pretty contaminated stuff. Of course, she wouldn’t tell him if it was fingered-over food for fear of punishment, at least he suspected as much. She really was a super person but sometimes seemed to live in fear of something or other.

He rose slowly from the bunk, head pounding like a two-pound hammer striking an anvil. He thought of the Dragnet ending with the hammer pounding the Mark VII. Last night’s Jim Beam no doubt. At least it was good whiskey! He knew his whiskey from years of experience. He considered himself a connoisseur of world whiskeys. He reached for the bottle on the table and took a belt, then winced as it bit back. His head cleared some.

He wondered how he got home last night, rather this morning. He knew it was at least 3:00 a. m. when he got out of the bar. Maybe the Mexican girl he was working at the bar dumped him? She had been very friendly, patting his arm and leg. She was very pretty with her dark black hair and deep, dark eyes, and her soft olive skin was tempting – a real contrast to his dirty blond hair and blue eyes and his lighter skin. She laughed easily, almost too easily. He would have to check his cash when he got back to the shed from his morning piss. She may well have cleaned him out for the ride home. Oh well, just another day in fucking West Texas.

As he started for the door, he noticed the letter lying on the rickety table that constituted one-third of his sparse furnishings; the other two-thirds were the sway-back bunk, barely long enough for his 5’11 frame, and an old wooden-slat chair sitting next to the table, somewhat level. None of the furniture had any paint or finish remaining, unless you considered water-spotted wood to have a finish. There was no clothes closet, nor was there a dresser. All his clothes hung on nails driven into the wall except for the underwear he sometimes wore. That was stacked on the table – dirty and clean alike. Asshole’s get" didn’t include laundry service.

He glanced at the envelope as he went out the door to urinate. He certainly wasn’t expecting any mail – never got any since Uncle Sam made him quit taking his retirement check by mail in favor of the direct deposit account he had been required to open.

He leaned against the scrawny mesquite tree, barely eight feet tall, for support as he pissed. The tree provided a little shade as long as he didn’t move too far. The crown couldn’t be more than five feet across, and the leaves were narrow, maybe one-third inch wide, so the sun shone through anyway. He once read that the mesquite trees had enormous tap roots, sometimes extending down as deep as 250 feet below the surface, reaching far down to find water.

Goddamned tree needs some water, he thought as he went. Texas sure is dry. Dry, but also exhibiting a fragile beauty. Wild flowers were abundant, thanks mostly to the Texas Department of Transportation. In the spring, assuming it rained, the redbud trees exploded with vibrant deep red flowers covering every stem and limb. The redbuds were followed closely within a few weeks by the state flower, the bluebonnet, blooming in abundant profusion along the highways where the seed had been spread. Texans were proud, and rightly so, of the proliferation of the deep sky blue flowers shaped like, well hell, like blue bonnets! Hybridization had created a multitude of colors including Aggie maroon bluebonnets, as well as lavender, pink, and pure white variations. The Indian paintbrushes, Indian blankets, Mexican hats, and dozens of other wildflowers blossomed everywhere in spring and early summer. He had to admit it was breathtaking at times, unlike any other part of the world he had seen, made more magnificent by the tolerance of the flowers to the relentless Texas sun. Even the damned prickly pear cactus bloomed and was pretty to look at.

Of course he was right about water. West Texas normally receives about 18 inches of rainfall a year on the average. Unfortunately, for the past three years, drought conditions existed throughout the Edwards Plateau and the Staked Plain. Last year, the total moisture had only amounted to 13.6 inches, and that was a whole lot more than the previous year’s 11.3 inches. Asshole’s stock tank as he called the mud puddle in the pasture was just barely wet. He was pumping from the well to make sure the cows had something to drink.

He had to admit there was definitely an allure about West Texas and the Concho Valley, lying just on the edge of the Llano Estacado or Staked Plain and the Edwards Plateau. He swore sometimes, when the weather was clear, he could look out on the horizon and see next week approaching. There certainly were no forests here to impinge on a man’s view. Even the unwanted growths of mesquite never reached any great height. Of course, the ranchers hated the mesquite. They claimed the trees sucked up the water and used up good grasslands, so they burned off thousands of acres of mesquite groves every year, along with prickly pear. However, in nature’s own way, the trees and the cacti grew back without fail.

But the beauty was extremely harsh at times, especially when the droughts came, usually followed by torrential downpours and tornados. The farmers were happy as a kid playing in shit when it did rain and they made a good crop of cotton or milo. Most of them kept cows to supplement the meager earnings from most years’ crops. The region was also famous for raising Angora goats and claimed the title, Mohair Capital of the World.

The city of San Angelo is the heartbeat of the region. It is situated on the Concho River and has been historically significant for more than 150 years. The first fort, Fort Concho, was built there in the late 1860s as an Indian outpost across the river from the village of Santa Angela. It served as headquarters to the famed Buffalo Soldiers who provided most of the firepower for the Indian wars of the 1870s.

Buffalo Soldiers were blacks, many of whom had served in the U.S. Army during the Civil War. In July 1866, Congress passed legislation establishing two cavalry regiments, the Ninth and Tenth cavalries, whose enlisted component was to be made up of the black soldiers. The Tenth Cavalry was formed at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, under command of Colonel Benjamin Grierson. The Tenth was eventually headquartered at Fort Concho in 1875.

Their enemy dubbed them Buffalo Soldiers because of the way the soldiers rode. The Indians thought they looked like the humps on buffalo. It was a term of respect since the Indians feared the tenacious Buffalo Soldier units. Chief Victorio, Geronimo, and Mangus were among those who were