Forever (2 page)

Scott walked back into his building. As assistant squad leader, he had one of the front bunks. As he passed the office door at the front entrance, his absent thoughts were broken by Sgt. Alexander.

“Mitchell!” he barked. “Get your ass in here!”

Scott entered the office, shut the door and snapped to parade rest.

“At ease, bo
y,” Sgt. Alexander said. “You alright?”

“Yes, drill sergeant. I feel kind of stupid, but other than that, I’m fine, thank you,” Scott said.

“Well, the cookies were good,” the DI said with slight wink. “Tell you grandma Bobby Alexander said so.”

“Thank you, Drill Sergeant, I will,” Scott said.

“You’re dismissed, Mitchell. Get some sack. 0430 comes early,” Sgt. Alexander said.

Scott thanked him and turned to leave, but the sergeant stopped him.

“Almost forgot why I called you in here,” he said. “You had one more piece of mail.”

“Drill sergeant, please don’t tell me it’s another package,” Scott pleaded. “I just don’t think I could take that.”

Alexander laughed. “No, boy, it’s not more cookies for you to lose. Actually, unless I miss my guess, it’s from a young lady.”

Scott was surprised by the statement. Amy and his other sister, 14-year old Kimmy, had already written this week. He expected one from Maggie anytime, but outside of the guys on the wrestling team, hardly anyone knew for sure where he was.

He took the white and pink envelope from Sgt. Alexander and looked at the back. On the flap was the hand drawing of a pony, holding up a sign happily saying, “Hi!”

“It can’t be,” Scott thought as he flipped the envelope over and stared at the return address in stunned surprise:

RRMI

University of Northern Colorado

18 Wilson Hall

Greeley, Colorado 80639

It was from Roni.

****

CHAPTER 2

It was one of those bizarre coincidences in life.  From Mrs. McMasters’ class in second grade on through Scott’s dad’s physiology class as seniors, Roni McIntyre had always been there. She had been in every class as Scott from second grade through ninth grade, and in at least two or three classes all three years of high school. Scott had figured out she was the only person of 110 members of the WHHS Class of ’75 who held that distinction.

And, for the majority of that time, Scott was deeply in “crush” with Roni. And for the majority of that same time, she thought he was kind of a dork.

At Christmas time in fifth grade, Scott gave her a very sweet card. She took it, looked at it, let out an annoyed sigh and grabbed a random piece of cardboard off a table and scrawled:

“Merry Christmas Scott. I hate you. Love, Roni”

As he sat in the middle of the barracks on this rainy March night nine years later, that piece of cardboard still sat in a box in his closet back in Wild Horse. Another time, he gave her a little ring with her ruby birthstone for her birthday. He later found the box in the trash. But he also found out she kept the ring.

Roni had beautiful, long, light brown hair, a softly perfect figure, and those eyes. It took until probably seventh grade until Scott really put his finger on just what it was that drew him to her. Roni had the most striking baby blue eyes; they were like nothing he’d ever seen. It seemed she could look right into his soul with those eyes and read him to the core.

Roni’s family members were direct descendants of the McIntyre brothers who helped found Wild Horse back in 1878. Her dad and grandpa owned the biggest Pontiac-Olds-GMC dealership east of Denver and her family lived on 40-acre spread north of town. Their huge classic house had wrap-around porches on both levels. Roni and her sister, Brooke, had horses and the family were all avid skiers.

Roni was one of the most attractive girls in school; she always hung out with the “cool-crowd” in elementary and junior high school. She participated in sports and choir and never missed a class party; but then in ninth-grade she discovered two other interests: sex and older guys.

Ironically, Mark Carson had been her first – of all the guys to lose his virginity first, Mark was the last person anyone thought it would be. But thereafter, it seemed Roni was more drawn to guys with cars and money. And, of course, for this attention, those guys expected sex.

It really wasn’t as if Roni drifted away from the rest of the crowd (which was also Rick and Maggie and Mark and Scott’s crowd), but she stopped playing sports as a sophomore, and dumped most of her clubs by her senior year. Other than her horses, her main interest was her art. Roni was the best artist in school.

She painted, drew and sketched. When they were juniors, riding in the back of Chris
Ohrt’s station wagon on the way to Denver to see James Taylor in concert, she sat silently scribbling on a notebook page for about 60 miles. Just as they hit the city, she looked up at Scott and said, “Yeah, you are kind of cute sometimes.”

She turned the notebook around and showed Scott a profile picture of himself, with the car window in the background and soft smile on his face. “Is that for me?” he asked.

“Mmm, no,” Roni said. “I think I’ll keep it.”

But Scott never thought he was in Roni’s league, insofar as dating.
As friends, no problem. But dating, again his damn shyness just kept biting him in the ass.

They had talked about lots of things over the years. She told him how she always wanted to work for a design or architecture firm, using her artistic talent to remake Colorado. She was accepted at Colorado University and was going to major in architectural design. She and Betsy Collins were going to room together.

But right after graduation, she told Scott she’d changed plans. Instead of CU, she had decided to go to Greeley and maybe major in art education. Scott and most of the rest of the people who knew her couldn’t understand the sudden change, and no one could pry the reason out of her. She was, as always, an enigma.

Although UNC isn’t a large school, hardly anyone ever saw her on campus. While most of the Wild Horse gang lived out on West Campus, Roni lived on Central Campus. She spent a lot of time in the art building. Maggie had a couple of classes with her the first year-and-a-half, and she and Scott had coffee in the Union a few times. She did come to Doug Martens’ New Year’s Eve party in ’75 and Scott shared the first kiss of the
new year with her. But she met new friends and was moving in another direction.

But there was that one night.

****

CHAPTER 3

The second week after Thanksgiving ’76, as Scott’s life was in free-fall, there was a party on his floor on a Thursday night. This was traditionally the last party weekend before finals, and this was a particularly good party. But for Scott, it was a shit day. He went to all of his classes, but also found out that even if he aced finals in two classes, he was going to flunk both of them. He was dropped from another because he quit coming (because he forgot about it). He knew he’d have three Fs, but an A in Football Theory. His roommate, and kick holder, Danny Joe, was pretty much living at his girlfriend’s now, so he had the room to himself. The day of the party, Scott came back from class, smoked some hash Rick gave him, and slept almost all the way through supper.

He managed to wake up in time to grab something to eat before food service closed, but by the time he went back upstairs, the girls were already arriving for the party. He slipped across the hall to the bathroom to shower quickly. A few people hooted and whistled as he came back out trying to balance his shampoo, soap and room key while holding his towel around him. He managed to hang onto the towel but dropped everything else. As he reached down to try and fish out his key, he heard a familiar voice.

“Nice outfit. Is that what you’re wearing to the party?”

He turned to see Roni standing above him. She was wearing jeans and a burgundy sweater with the collar of a white shirt sticking out the top.

“No,” he said, his face turning red.

“Good,” she said. “Get your ass dressed and come find me. I want to hear about things.”

“Things?” Scott thought. What did she know?

By the time Scott dressed and headed down the hall, the party was in full swing. Roni and couple of girls he didn’t know were talking to Craig Bowen, the floor art geek. The two girls he didn’t know were arguing with Craig about expressionism or
abstractism or some kind of –ism, while Roni stood there listening and drinking her wine.

They made small talk for awhile, and had a couple of more drinks. All of a sudden, one of Roni’s friends came for her. “Emily is puking her head off in the bathroom,” the other girl said, almost hysterically.

Roni looked at Scott and her shoulders drooped. “I’m den mother sometimes,” she said. “I’ll find you somewhere.”

That was around 9:30. By 11, Scott started to wonder what was going on. He saw Kevin Towers in the hall; he’d been in a couple of classes with Roni and he was the one who invited her house to the party. “Did you see Roni and those guys?” Scott asked him.

“That Emily girl was sicker than shit,” Kevin said. “Sloe gin, I think. Anyway, I think Roni helped take her home.”

Well, Scott thought, the perfect end to the perfect day. Some chick named Emily boots all over the bathroom and the best conversation he’d had with someone in months was shot to hell.

As he walked back toward his room, he heard his phone ringing. He ran to the door opened it and grabbed the receiver on the fourth ring. “Roni?” he said.

“Roni?” a female voice answered. “It’s me.”

It was Maggie. He loved talking to her, but she wasn’t his first choice tonight. “Hi Mags,” he said.

“You guys have a party tonight?” Maggie asked.

“Yeah,” Scott said. “Kind of breaking up now.”

“Is Rick there?” she asked. Shit, Scott thought, that dumb ass is out banging that freshman swimmer from Grand Junction he’d been talking about.

“I haven’t seen him, Mags,” Scott said, not lying. “Did he tell you he was coming over?”

“No, but I called over there earlier,” she said, “and
Rathbun (Rick’s roommate) said he thought Rick was with you.”

Scott hated the way Rick treated her, but there’s the guy code. “When I talked to him earlier (he hadn’t), he said Forrester (one of the other track guys) was meeting him at The Bear Claw. That’s probably where they are,” Scott said. “He’ll probably drunk-call you later.”

“Wonderful,” she said.

Then she paused.

“You OK, Footer?” Maggie asked softly. “Rick said you were having a rough time.”

“Oh, you know,
Mags,” Scott said, “it’s nothing I can’t handle. We’ll talk about it later.”

“Well, OK,” she said. “Good night, Scott.”

“Night, Mags. If he drunk-calls, don’t tell him to call me, OK?” Scott said.

“I promise,” she said as she hung up.

Scott grabbed a beer out his fridge and slumped into his chair. Outside, it had started to snow. He was trying to decide whether to get out his guitar or turn on the stereo when his fog was cleared by a knock on the door. “It’s open,” he said.

“Good,” he heard a familiar female voice say. “We weren’t done talking.”

He whirled in his chair. Roni was standing there in the same sweater and jeans as earlier  with her red ski jacket, a UNC stocking cap and black mittens. She walked in and shut the door, pulling off her mittens. “So, I take Emily back to her room, get her cleaned up, get her to bed, go back to my room, right?”

“Walk in and my roommate is riding the hell out of that Craig guy,” Roni said, those baby blue eyes flashing through a somewhat maniacal smile as she pulled off her jacket. “She actually had her glasses on. Looked back at me and just said ‘bye,” so I figured you and I weren’t done talking, so here I am. Got a cigarette?”

Scott grabbed a pack off the spool table in the middle of the room and tossed it to Roni, as she flopped into the love seat across from him. “So you’re flunking out, huh?” she asked. “Scotty, what’s going on?

“How did you know?” he asked. “Did Rick tell you?”

“Maggie did,” she said. “She called me. She’s worried about you. And Rick didn’t tell her, she just kind of put two-and-two together.”

And then the flood gates opened. Scott told her everything: the partying, the women, forgetting about a class. And she sat and listened. He didn’t realize it until later, but she never took her eyes off of him. She grabbed a beer, another cigarette, even loaded a bowl with hash for them. But the baby blue eyes never left him.

At one point, Scott stood up and clicked on the stereo. “Put some James Taylor on,” Roni said. He stuck the Greatest Hits 8-track tape in the player, and as the first notes of “Something In The Way She Moves” began, he just started to cry. “Come here and sit down,” Roni said softly.

Scott dropped into the seat next to her and she wrapped her arms around him. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, Roni. I really don’t. My parents are pissed at me, my friends are all pissed at me, and in a week I’m out of here, and I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen. And I’m scared.”