Chapter 10: New Neighbors and Old Friends

Thursday, August 16, 1984

Jas and Paige called home and invited their parents to take advantage of our hospitality. Angie and I conferred and decided she should be the one to invite Mom. She did, and got the same answer the others received: ‘We’ll think about it and let you know tomorrow.’

I suspected they all had hotel rooms booked. I was also pretty sure they could still cancel.

If I were them, I’d feel a bit unsure about it, too. Sure, we were offering our hospitality, but without seeing more than a few pictures of the house — and those of it not fully done — how much ‘hospitality’ did they think we could offer?

We could assure them as much as we wanted to that it would be nice, but there was something to be said for a hotel, too. Predictability is nice, and they wouldn’t be in twin beds.

Whatever happened would be fine. We’d offered. That was the important thing.

Cammie, of course, had already moved and didn’t need the help, plus her parents were obviously not going to be invited. Instead, she invited her Aunt Penelope and Uncle David to come up and visit.

They declined, but politely, and not for good. They simply felt like this weekend belonged to the immediate families, and for moving purposes.

Instead, they proposed coming up a few weeks later, once we’d settled in. Apparently, David was a bit of a football fan and might want to see an A&M game. He’d never attended a game at Kyle Field, and this would be a very good chance.

Cammie — with our blessing, of course — had promised them the basement guest room. She’d also promised them that it was very nice.

I was looking forward to seeing them again. They’d been a bright spot in a bad time, and Cammie’s wanting to stay close to them was, in my opinion, a very good thing.

We mostly spent the day doing housework. Yes, the house had just been redone, but there was cleaning to do, things to be washed, furniture to be shifted, and so on and so forth. The backyard really needed some attention.

It needed more than a bit of attention, really. It needed pruning, edging, tree trimming, and plenty more. What it didn’t need was mowing, thankfully. It’d been a dry summer and the grass hadn’t grown much. That was probably a good thing, as the only mower we had was an ancient push mower in the back of the backyard shed. The shed itself would need to be replaced, and we’d likely want to add a garage. Perhaps next summer?

The fundamentals of the backyard were nice enough: a nice patio, a brick barbecue (which could really use a new grill — and some cleaning!), plenty of trees, and a privacy fence that was in surprisingly good shape.

Much of what needed to be done back here could be done by us, with no need for contractors, but we would want a professional to cut the trees. The trees were too nice to risk their health on amateur tree surgery.

All six of us worked on the backyard at one point or another. Jas whipped up a big pitcher of lemonade — even with the shade, it was hot outside. It definitely made us appreciate the work the air conditioner was doing in keeping the house comfortable!

When we’d finished off that pitcher, Paige made the next one.

We finished that one off, too, and I made one more.

By the time we were done, the house and yard were about as nice as we were going to make them.

About five, as we were wrapping up, we heard a male voice call “Howdy, neighbor!” from the direction of the driveway.

“Howdy, yourself!” I called back. “We’re all out back!”

A twenty-something guy in an A&M t-shirt and shorts came around the corner. Fairly fit, but he’d picked up the freshman fifteen and kept it, likely for a few years.

“Peter Bradshaw,” he said, extending a hand.

I wiped my own off, then shook.

“Steve Marshall, and these are...”

“Jasmine Nguyen!”

“Angie Marshall!”

“Paige Seiler!”

“Cammie Clarke!”

“Mel Riley!”

All of the girls had come up, and each of them shook hands with him.

He smiled.

“All of my housemates are still out of town. My girlfriend gets in tomorrow night, but the rest won’t be here until Monday.”

“We’re leaving tomorrow, but back Saturday, with the rest of our stuff, and our parents.”

He looked us over. “You’re not grad students.”

I chuckled. “Nah. We’re all freshmen.”

He blinked, then said, “Most of this block is upper class or grad students. Mostly grad students, really.”

Angie smiled. “We’re quiet, I promise. No wild parties.”

He laughed for a few seconds.

“Actually ... well, fine! You saw right through me! I’ve been living here three years, and last year’s tenants were mostly okay, but ... Good Lord, the people that were here two years ago! Look up there,” he said, pointing at the tree over the barbecue.

When pointed out, it was obvious that it’d lost part of a limb.

“That was fire damage. I’m still not sure what they were burning on the barbecue, but it shot flames up twenty feet. Darn near set the whole tree canopy on fire!”

Paige made a face.

“Okay, that’s just crazy!” she said.

He shook his head.

“It looks like they put a lot of work into this place. I’m glad. It’s a nice house, just ... well, if you’d seen it before...”

“We did,” Cammie said, chuckling.

I said, “We took it knowing there’d be a lot of work done on it.”

“Pricier, I imagine,” he said.

Angie shrugged. “Scholarship housing allowance covers it. That’s good enough for us.”

“Particularly to get out of the dorms and have a little space,” Paige said.

“And privacy!” Mel added.

He laughed.

“Yeah. I hear you on the scholarships. Been there, done that. Now it’s graduate assistantships. Pretty much the same thing.”

“What’re you studying?” Paige said.

“Petroleum Engineering. My girlfriend is in Chemistry, and my housemates run the gamut. Two MBA students — they’re a couple. One architect — he’s really quiet and stressed most of the time. One mathematician.”

“Four of us are business in one way or another,” I said.

“And I’m dual majoring in mathematics,” Angie said.

“I’m Mech E,” Mel said.

“And I’m in Journalism,” Jas said.

He nodded.

“You sound like a good group.”

Then he made a face and chuckled, saying, “Don’t prove me wrong about that!”

“We won’t. Please, if we do anything that bothers you, let us know,” I said. “We really are very well behaved, historically, but you know ... first time away from home longer than a summer, all of that.”

“I was a hellion my freshman year,” he said. “Can’t blame you if you are, really, but some of us need our sleep!”

“We’re some of them,” Jas said.

“You’ll have to bring your roommates over sometime,” I said. “Seriously! It’ll be nice to get to know the others on the street. We’re aware that this place has a history, and we’d rather reassure people that we’re part of the solution, not part of the problem.”

“Gotcha!” he said. “Definitely! Looking forward to it!”

He looked at the house again, then blinked.

“Wait. Is that a door? Like ... a basement door?”

I chuckled.

“Yeah. It’s new.”

“Holy cow! I knew this place had a basement, which is weird, but it was always dark.”

“It’s finished now. No one’s in the apartment down there yet, but it’s really nice,” I said.

“And it doesn’t stink anymore!” Jas said.

Paige wrinkled her nose, and said, “It was bad. Like... bad!”

“How many cars do you have?” he said. “It’s not a problem, but this street gets parked up.”

“Three,” I said. “One’s going to be parked out in the West Campus lots...”

“BFE,” he said. “That’s what everyone calls them.”

“BFE?” Angie said.

“Bum- ... um...”

He blushed, then finished with “Egypt.”

Angie giggled, and the rest of the girls followed suit a second later.

“I get it!” she said, grinning.

“That’s ... amusing,” Mel said.

“I don’t know where it comes from,” he said. “Just that they’re way off in the middle of nowhere. Except they’re really not, but I think it dates from when West Campus was just the vet school. And that’s even further out.”

“Like all of the things with ‘A.M.C.’ in them,” Angie said.

“Yeah. That. If you get used to some phrases only making sense if you look back a couple of decades, you’ll do well,” he said, chuckling. “They still call people who aren’t in the Corps ‘non-regs,’ and that’s been the majority of students since I was maybe five years old.”

“We heard that in Fish Camp,” Angie said.

“I’ve heard a lot about that. I’m actually from Indiana, myself,” he said. “I went to Penn State for my undergrad school.”

“Never been up that way,” I said, with the girls nodding along.

“Pretty country. Cooler,” he said, chuckling. “This is one of the best Pet E programs in the world, though, so here I am. The place grows on you.”

“Cool,” Angie said.

“You guys all knew each other before?” he said.

I nodded. “We’re all from Memorial High School in Houston.”

“Memorial,” he said, nodding slowly. “I heard something about them ... not sure what it was.”

I wondered if he’d run across the Chronicle article.

“We get the Houston paper. Something in there ... I might still have it,” he said.

“There was an article about Memorial in the spring,” I said, nodding.

“A few of us were in it,” Angie said. He wouldn’t pick up on it, but I could tell she was fighting to avoid a pretty serious round of the giggles.

“Cool! I’ll have to see if we still have it,” he said. “I should leave you be right now. You all look tired.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We need some dinner. Gotta run down to Houston tomorrow, then back Saturday.”

“Good luck with the move!” he said.

We all shook hands, and then he headed off.

“Well ... cat’s trying to get out of the bag,” Angie said, giggling.

“Probably a good thing,” Cammie said. “Rip the band-aid off.”

Mel hugged her, and said, “I’m nervous, but ... well, if you feel comfortable.”

“As Angie says, ‘Or don’t!’” Cammie said. “Seriously, fuck ‘em. I don’t care anymore. I’ve got my bear spray, and the pager’s got the panic button feature. If they’re jerks, it’ll be better to know they’re jerks than think they’re nice and find out they’re not.”

Angie nodded. “Ditto. We’re just going to be ourselves. Not too ‘in your face’ about it, but still. I’m me. Sooner or later, if Gay Student Services has t-shirts, I’ll be wearing one.”

“And if they don’t,” Paige said, “We’ll try to get them to make them!”

Cammie giggled. “That’ll be fun to watch!”

We got some dinner, then put on some music and played cards for a bit. Inevitably, we would wind up getting a TV, but we didn’t actually have one yet. Even when we got one, I didn’t want to turn into the sort of people who always have the TV on.