When I was a boy, I heard the story of the fox who chewed his own leg off when it was caught in a trap. I have no idea if this ever actually happens, but the story was applied to many things, particularly stories about girls you didn't mean to get with and guys who played football for Mississippi State and kept chewing off the wrong leg.
In my second year in college, I became entangled with a girl from the Mississippi Delta. She was descended from Washington County royalty and knew it. She could, and often did, out-shoot and out-drink me. Our time together nearly got both of us kicked out of college. After that, she left Millsaps for Mississippi State to get sober and marry a boy who wanted to be a dentist, but never made it out of dental school.
After that, I figured keeping one special girl was asking for trouble, so I avoided it and adopted them all, mostly Chi-Omegas, but I married a Kappa Delta.
There was, of course, one special girl, but apart from a few wanton glances and moments of electric passion when we touched in ways we weren't planning to, we never discussed it. Not discussing it didn't keep me from getting written up several times for staying too late in her dorm. There were more than a few nights when Ken Ranager and I would together seek an escape route without getting caught. He was really very good about it and about as willing to go out a window into the limbs of an adjacent live oak tree as I was. Trees and climbing things were intricate parts of my college experience.
After college, I tried again to make one girl more special than the others. A lot of my friends were doing it. She turned out to be a pretty neutral experience. Lots of fun and not much drama. I wasn't the only boy on her dance card, but she wasn't the only one on mine either. After about a year, it was pretty clear this wasn't going anywhere, even though she talked me to sleep on the telephone nearly every night.
After that, there was this girl who was going to be a sophomore at Millsaps. She wasn't really my type at all, but she kept talking to me and asking about my day, what I did with my life, and what happened to that girl who called all the time. She was very pretty, and she was absolutely determined to be a part of my day if not part of my life, even though we had absolutely nothing in common.
Her hair was a mass of blonde curls, enormous and rigid, like a light helmet, but attractive if you didn't try to touch it. Bid day was coming up, and she labored mightily all Summer for Phi Mu to make sure they had a great year. There supposedly was a boyfriend somewhere in her life, but he was in-again and out-again, and on bid day, he was out-again, so I told her I'd take her to dinner, and then we could go to the KA house and CS's to see her pledges running around.
Taking her to dinner at the Mayflower, she began to cry as we passed the courthouse. I pulled over and held her hand while she got her cry out. Asking her what was wrong was fruitless. "A bad day" was all she said. I assumed it had something to do with Mr. out-again, who was at Mississippi State. Even though she lived here, she'd never been to the Mayflower before. After dinner, we went to the KA house to watch the madness, where I pointed out to her and the active members where we planned to put the addition with the concrete room and the fancy patio behind. I would spend the next two years raising money for that and getting it built, even though the architect seems to have screwed us over on some aspects of it.
At about two in the morning, I took her to where she parked her car by the library under the Academic Complex. For a little over an hour, I leaned against my car and held her as tight as I could. Lightly kissing and lightly talking, it seemed really important to her that I hold her and keep holding her as the night hours slipped by. "It really must have been a bad day," I thought. This was a wounded creature hiding in my arms in the night air. I'd experienced that before.
About a week later, a mutual friend asked if I was going to see this girl again. "I dunno. Maybe." I said.
"I just feel so bad about what's happening with her daddy." My friend said. This was the first I heard anything about this. Maybe this is what was behind her "bad day." Her father, it seemed, was in a federal prison in Texas, having been sentenced at the courthouse we passed on the way to the Mayflower.
In high school, my steady girlfriend's father shot himself, and I found the body. I spent two years unsuccessfully trying to fill the hole he left in her life. Now God sent me another broken bird with a missing father. I didn't mean for this to be something I did with my life. It wasn't fair, though, for me to have more than I needed when some people didn't have enough.
I called for another date. This time to Scrooges. In the parking lot, before we got out of the car, I held her hand and said, "I know what you've been going through, and I just wanted you to know that I'm your friend."
I'm sure she intended to tell me sometime, but she wasn't ready for me to know without her telling me. There's some embarrassment in people knowing your daddy is in prison, on top of all the devastating emotional losses that come from him losing his liberty; all of these feelings were crashing over her like a flooded creek in a rainstorm while she gripped my hands for her very life and did her best to push out the pain by grinding her back teeth together, lest she scream.
Fortunately, she didn't wear much makeup, despite the elaborate engineering that went into her hair, so it didn't take much effort to repair her face in my rearview mirror when the tears stopped and we went inside. This was during the era when Scrooges had a different quiche every day, despite the popularity of the book "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche." I had that, and she had a chicken sandwich, and we talked. We talked in the sort of way that people who no longer have secrets talk. Even though it hadn't happened yet, we talked in the way that people who had seen each other naked in the stark reality of daylight talked.
"If Daddy doesn't come home, I don't know if I'm gonna make it. If my life doesn't get better, I don't know what I'll do." She said. "I'm doing the best I can, but some days, I just can't." She said. Was that a threat? Was she saying she might do something if her father didn't come home? Would something happen if he didn't? Would she break? Why was this happening in the path of my life? Was I supposed to do something?
I let her talk. I wanted to hear all of what she was thinking and what her plans were. Forever after that, I became something of an expert at gauging her emotional health by the words she used and the way she moved her face and hands.
After dinner, taking her back to her car, which was outside my apartment at Pebble Creek, I again leaned against my car with her deep in my arms for an unnaturally long time. "Look," I said. "I'm only twenty-three, and I've never done this before, and I really don't know what I'm doing--but I'm going to do my best to get your daddy home. You're not going to make it the end of his sentence."
She pushed her face deep into my chest. Soon my shirt was wet with her tears and then my skin underneath as her nearly silent sobs floated out into the night air. I wasn't really that interested in this girl, but she was in a great deal of pain, so I committed myself. No one should feel that much pain.
Over the next year, I talked with lawyers and judges. Sometimes as a personal favor, sometimes for a fee. I educated myself on the consequences of federal drug charges and the parole system. I knew something about parole from my brother's experience, so I wasn't starting from scratch. It didn't look good. He had prior convictions, which was part of why his sentence was the way it was. From what I could tell, it looked to me like he was covering for somebody else. I knew about some of his associates, and they were pretty unpleasant guys.
That next Spring, she told me she might not be able to go back to Millsaps the next Fall. Something had gone wrong with her student loans, and she didn't know what she was going to do. I called Jack Woodward and asked if I could buy him lunch. He said he was gonna eat at home but to come by his office. In his office, we discussed the situation, and he was able to find some more money. What shortfall was left, I'd give him a check for, and he'd put it in one of his many spent-out scholarship funds and award it to her without her ever knowing I was involved. We'd made that deal before.
With her junior year at Millsaps assured, I moved on to work on her father's upcoming parole hearing. It didn't look good, even though he'd been a model prisoner. What happened next, I can't really talk about. There were other people working on his parole hearing for very different reasons from mine. We were able to come to an understanding. There were no guarantees, but the outcome looked much better than it did before.
The next time I saw the friend who had originally told me this girl's father was in prison, I told her that I thought there might be a chance he'd be home before Christmas. Then I said, "If this happens, then I'm going to separate myself from this girl as much as I possibly can. I've gotten in way over my head, and it's not going to end well no matter what I do, but if I end it now, then it won't be that bad." I'd developed feelings I never intended to have. I developed them by spending a year trying to pull this girl's oxcart out of the ditch she found herself in, and now I was stuck.
Going into exams for the Fall semester, I met with her to say that in a few days, she would hear the outcome of her father's parole hearing, and I was praying for them both. I gave her an envelope with two one-hundred dollar bills in it, with instructions to use it to visit her dad in Texas before Christmas to help restore her mental health. Within a few days, she received word that he was paroled. She and her mother and little brother used the money I gave her to go pick up her father so the family could be home together for Christmas.
In my mind, my part in this story was over. I'd stuck with it long enough to see happen what I said I wanted to happen. My own well-being was in jeopardy, so I formulated an escape plan. I went to Albrittons and got a drop with an opal surrounded by diamonds and amethyst. These parting gifts were a pretty silly ritual I'd adopted to end relationships. After New Year's, I arranged to meet her at The University Club for dinner.
One of the reasons The University Club didn't make it was because they were never very full. By the end of dinner, we were the only people in the restaurant, but the bar was pretty lively. I ordered a cigar from the girl with the cart, lit it, and pushed the gift box in white paper toward my friend.
I explained that we'd accomplished what we had set out for. I fulfilled my promise, and it was time for me to go. She began to cry. She didn't understand. "Look, I can't have feelings for you when you don't have feelings for me. That's a disaster that can only get worse. You have to let me go. Your life is pretty good now. That guy from Mississippi State wants to talk again. Your daddy's home. It's time for me to go."
"No." She said. "There has to be another way."
"Look," I said, "I'm not going to hang around like some sort of mascot. There's probably somebody out there who wants to be as devoted to me as I was to you. If you don't let me go, I won't ever find them." That part wasn't true. The future didn't hold anyone who had that kind of devotion for me. At twenty-four, I thought, surely that's how the world works. I'd put myself in harm's way enough times that surely there would be somebody who just wanted me to be comfortable and was devoted to that. I believed that if you gave life enough time, accounts would balance out, and life would be fair. That wasn't the case.
For months this woman tried to talk to me, to hug me, to ask about what was happening in my life. Eventually, it started to really bother me that she wouldn't just let me go. I felt like I'd been really fair with her and really done my best for her. I deserved to have enough space to get over all this and move on to whatever was next in my life. She didn't understand that. Slowly, I started to really resent it. I started saying really hateful things when she tried to talk to me.
One day, she said, "Sometimes, when you look at me, it looks like you hate me!"
"I don't hate anyone," I said.
She threw her arms around me and wept. She wept with the same passion and resignation she had that night we went to the Mayflower. She was back with the boy from Mississippi State again full-time. She knew that I knew that. Soon she'd be showing everyone the ring he got her.
Through her tears, she said, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Still crying, she pulled away and said, "But I understand." And I didn't speak to her again for five years.
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When my father died, a great mass of people came to the reception at the funeral home. I stood in line for most of the day, shaking hands and receiving well wishes. Most of it wasn't really very emotional to me, mainly because of the sheer volume of people coming through. Although my friends came too, there would be what seemed like hundreds of my dad's friends between them. I was holding up pretty well.
Toward the back of the line, near the staircase, I caught a glimpse of blonde curls. "I really hope that's not her." I thought. I didn't look back again. Soon, I could feel her presence. I focused on the people in front of me so as not to betray my emotions. Suddenly, she was the face before me. I froze. The muscles in my back began to twitch. I could smell her.
She reached up and threw her arms around my neck. We both began to weep. The line stopped, and then, realizing we were in a moment, they began to move around us.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean any of those things I said. I said some really hateful things to make you go away. I didn't mean them." I said.
She held my face with a trembling hand and kissed me one last time. "I believe you." She said. "I understand. Please be happy." She said, and pulled me tight, and held me for what seemed like hours. Then she turned and walked away, and I never saw her again.
From other people, I would learn that her father returned to prison and would die there. Her marriage turned out pretty well. Her sometimes boyfriend decided to be full-time. Some people thought my story was really sweet. Some people thought I was a fool. To me, she told me she didn't think she would make it if her life didn't get better. Her life did get better, and she did make it. Whatever part I had to play in that didn't really matter because I wanted to make sure she made it. It was her life, not mine. What I got out of it was the story. I can't say that a story is as good as somebody who loves you and takes care of you forever, but it's not bad. She was never my type anyway.
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