Chapter Eleven (11)

Judd Causey put out the cigarette at his feet as he exhaled through his nose. His friends were sitting in a car—bored, perhaps—some forty feet away. It was Judd’s "watch" to loiter outside the convenience store 12 miles away from their neighborhood. He’d been at it for 20 minutes. His hope was that his luck would change. And it did, soon enough.

"Hey Buddy," Judd said as he approached a 30-ish looking man, who drove up without any passengers in his sleek sports car. "Can you do me a favor?".

"What’d you have in mind, sport?"

"Would you buy me a case of beer? I’ve got the money right here, plus some extra for your trouble." He kept his hands in his pockets, without moving too quickly or too close.

"A case? That’s a pretty tall order, ain’t it Cowboy? You by yourself?"

"No sir. My friends are over there. We just want to have a little party but we’ve got nothing for the head." Judd looked deep into the man’s eyes,confident he was considering it. Now his job was to convince this man he was not being set up for a sting.

"Okay. I’ll do it. But we do this my way. I’ll buy it, with my money. I’ll drive to that church parking lot, right down the road. You come with your friends, you bring the money and we’ll talk there. That okay?" The man turned to walk towards the store, without thinking there’d be any resistance.

"Great," was all Judd could think to say.

He returned to the car, where Chris and Casey were waiting. They’d observed him chat the guy up, but were confused when he returned to the car, before his "shift" was over sans alcohol.

He explained the deal. They had the engine running for heat and for quick getaways, so it was merely a matter of driving one and a half blocks to the church parking lot.

The exchange was made five minutes later without much conversation. He refused both a "tip" and a spare beer. The sports car drove off without goodbye. Judd’s boys were in business. They had eight beers apiece, and it was three hours before anyone was supposed to be home. They had nothing but time to party. It was teen heaven.

Missy was already at the party that Judd and friends would soon be visiting. She’d been inside for awhile, but all the drinking games didn’t interest her. She hadn’t "been" with her boyfriend, Mark, in well over a week. They needed some intimacy, she surmised. Intimacy.

If that’s what you call romping around in the freezing back seat of his Nissan. Despite all of the huffing and puffing and clothes tugging, "it" was over in less than eighteen minutes. And they say romance is dead.

She emerged from the car, looking a bit disheveled. She expected that Mark would pay little attention to her following their union, and she was correct. He mentioned she needed to brush her teeth, and how he liked her hair better they way she kept it the previous week. Then he walked away from their party, to the more populated one, telling her he’d meet up with her in a few minutes.

Photo by Jacob Bentzinger on Unsplash

She re-entered the party at about the same time that Judd and friends pulled into the neighborhood. Missy and Judd barely said hello when they saw each other inside, which was not unusual. He, disgusted with her reputation for bedding football and wrestling studs, knew well her dislike for his partying habits. Their only real source of agreement was their confirmed opinion of their parent’s lack of nurturing skill.

Missy had no more dislike for her brother anymore than she had for any other guy who couldn’t do anything for her or give her anything. But that was bad enough.

The party continued on until well after midnight. The hosts, the Stantons, were marginally prepared for the damage that would be wrought about their den, Florida room, back deck and back yard when a group of fifty or more inebriated teens traded night for day and enjoyed the chemical hypnosis of their partying ways. The two burn holes in their carpet could be repaired. The broken toilet seat would be fixed, which occurred when a drunken 15-year old girl lost her balance while throwing up the malt liquor she had consumed while playing one of two popular drinking games that evening. The broken door and a broken window in the guest room could have been done by any of three couples who locked themselves in that room at various times in the evening.

Beer cans were strewn across the lawns of several neighbors whose fronts were used for parking. Noise was another matter, but for some reason, no neighbor called the police that evening. Mr and Mrs. Stanton, fifty-one year old parents of three, decided that “their place” was secluded in their bedroom for the evening, as they did not want to interfere with their children's social plans.

Miles away, Bev Causey wondered little where her children were. She was about to become emersed into her online persona. She had not eaten with them or even fed them, and knew only that they were to be home by their midnight curfew. She had no idea where Bud was this evening, but was to learn later that he was at a basketball rules committee meeting.

As she walked into the currently-empty, always-lonely house, she played back the voicemails which had accumulated:

(1) “Bud . . . this is Lollie Stevens . . . Bud I don’t know what to tell you about these rule revisions, but they just aren’t right. They don’t cover the topics we talked about in the basketball meetings, and they don’t seem to make sense. I can’t tell if we got your preliminary notes or if this is what you meant to turn in. Seriously, Bud, we need to review these quickly before the season starts. Call me . . .”

(2) “Bud . . . “This is Brooks Garrison. The fields were not lined last night for the make-up game for the junior football league. I don’t know if that is your mistake or someone else’s, but there were parents a-plenty who were angry and wanting someone’s head. We were damn lucky there weren’t any calls that depended on the lines to be there or we’d have had a riot. This has got to be done better, whoever is supposed to do this. Bye”

(3) Missy: Mary Kay here. We’ve got to get together soon or I’m going to die. I’ve tried to get in touch with you every way I know how. Call me, this is a matter of life or death.

(4) Bud: “This is Pat Veltman at work. I’m planning to do my presentation tomorrow and I don’t have any of the work that you were supposed to provide me. I went to check out your office and you had gone home early. I certainly hope that you went home to work on these slides and that you’re going to mail them to me tonight? I cannot go on tomorrow without that data and I don’t have time to take it down and also make slides by myself. I’m counting on you Bud; don’t let me down. I’ll be up til eleven. Call me and let me know.”

Bev left no notes and no reminders. She had long ago stopped trying to keep people informed of their incoming calls. They knew how to play back the messages. If they forgot, they forgot. That wasn’t Bev’s fault.

She didn’t see anyone that night to tell them, either. After an hour of online connecting with other folks, Bev went to bed early and worried not about what tomorrow would bring.