Return to Oakpin(8)

            Marci was surprised to hear of the prodigal’s return. “He’s a writer, I thought,” she said. “What’s he coming back to Oakpine for?” Marci had dated Jimmy in high school, had been his last girlfriend. “Stewart has shown me clippings at the museum from the book review. It’ll be good to see him.”

            “He’s sick,” Craig told her. “His mother told me he’s sick.”

            Marci came out of the bedroom carrying her short maroon coat and her shoes and her purse. She sat at the kitchen table by her half cup of coffee and pulled on her shiny pumps with a finger. She looked smart. When Larry started high school three years before, she’d gone back to work, having acquired a job she loved as administrative assistant at the museum. Stewart Posner had done everything he could to change it from frontier culture, as he called it, into a real museum. What he liked to do, everyone knew, was shock the town at least once a year. He was the only guy in Oakpine besides all the Popes, who ran the mortuary, who wore a tie everywhere he went. Even the rodeo.

            Marci looked good. She shopped through the catalogs and had a quiet taste. Her dark brown hair was parted to one side and fell to her shoulders. She looked just like she had in high school, to Craig. She’d been class historian and wore the Executive Board sweater and a kilt once a week and looked absolutely put together. They had married the year after graduation, and then Craig had gone to Vietnam while she stayed in Oakpine and interned and taught social studies and geography at the junior high. When he returned, he found Oakpine “all changed,” that is, all his buddies were gone, and so he and Marci went to Clearwater, Florida, where a guy he’d met in the army ran a huge orange orchard, and Craig worked there “doing everything,” which meant all the building and vehicle maintenance, while Marci tried to “do Florida” and grew homesick. When people go to Florida, the summer is hot and wet, but the fall is hard on them because their bodies wait to feel the change that never quite comes. Marci missed the changing leaves and walking in them, but she also missed the mornings with the furnace on and wearing sweaters even to the store, and the roadside stands of squash and pumpkins, and the rainy afternoons, and the twelve shades of gray a sky could go against Oakpine Mountain. Plus Marci didn’t really care for the beach, and both times she went out in a boat more than a quarter mile, she became seasick. They gave Florida almost four years.

            Craig wanted to get a job with the railroad or Chevron, where he could work, fix things, and not sell parts and tools to people, but there were slim pickings, and he went into the store with his dad and that was that. He put on some weight and became used to it all, especially after he started to make a little money. Marci wanted a house in Oakpine Heights, and so the job made sense. By the time they’d moved in, Craig was a hardware salesman. They waited to have a child even longer while she finished her degree, commuting to Laramie, which took two extra years.

            It had been a life. Hunting and football in the fall. The store. Christmas with Marci’s parents there in town, now that his were gone. Spring cleanup and sales at the store. Fishing. The years. He hadn’t felt old, ever, except for twice. When they came back from Clearwater and he started at the store, but he got over that. And now he felt it again upon hearing Jimmy Brand’s name, that he was coming back to Oakpine.

            “We’ve all changed too much,” Marci said. “All the stuff we knew, those times are long dead twice . . .”

            “Thirty years,” Craig said, not believing it. There was no way to believe it. “It will be amazing to see him,” he said, drinking his coffee. His white nylon jacket had his name on a patch, and his white shirt underneath also said CRAIG. He’d work in the store until noon today and then go prep to paint the inside of the Brands’ little garage guest room.

            “We’ll have to have a dinner for this bona fide reunion  .” She stood and saw the look on her husband’s face. “Listen, don’t brood over your remodeling project for Mrs. Brand. It’s going to be okay. I can’t fathom what the Brands are doing making him stay in that garage. I’m going to run. I’ll see you later.”