Chapter 5

The week after Tommy’s dating and singing debut, was just as full of wonder. The routine down at the feed store and his Monday and Wednesday tutoring sessions kept him grounded. Still, a lot happened that week.

Tommy was on his way out of the library after his Monday night tutoring session, when Ruth Silverman stopped him and turned him into the reference stacks. Ruth led him halfway down the aisle then stopped and looked around to make sure they were alone.

“Thomas, I have a problem I hope you can help me with,” she said.

Tommy’s eyebrows went up that an adult would actually need his help.

“I’ll do anything for you Ruthie, you know that. Only you know I’m not very good at most things.”

Ruth smiled because Tommy loved to use nicknames. If a person didn’t have a nickname, he’d worry with it until he came up with one for them. Ruthie was the moniker he’d hung on her. Had it been any other man calling her that, she’d have gone ballistic.

“I think you’ll be perfect for what I have in mind. See, I have a couple of tickets to the dinner theater in Brownwood for next Saturday night. I don’t have an escort for the event, so I thought you might accompany me. You’ll have to wear a suit, but I think you will enjoy the play and the meal.”

Tommy thought about it for a minute, then beamed a boyish grin.

“I don’t have a suit,” he said, “but I’ll bet Missus Rita will help me with that.”

Tommy’s grin and enthusiasm shot an unexpected jolt of pleasure through Ruth’s body. Without conscious thought, she stepped forward and gave him a lingering kiss on the lips. When she stepped back, her face was flushed with embarrassment and something else she found hard to identify. She recovered quickly and gave him a return smile.

“That’s great. Tell Rita I’m wearing a black cocktail dress. You’ll have fun, Thomas. Wait and see.”

The next day, Rita was more than willing to help Tommy shop for a suit. She knew exactly what Ruth was wearing, because Ruth had called her the night before to give her a heads up. Rita was ecstatic that Tommy had thought of her helping him all on his own. When Rita told Harold about the shopping expedition Tuesday morning, he bitched and whined that it should be his job to take Tommy to buy a suit. That cracked Rita up.

“You know you have terrible taste, Harold Fricke. You can’t even be trusted to pick out your own underwear.”

Rita took Tommy to the big J C Penney store in the Brownwood Mall that very afternoon. They came away with a very nice traditional cut, dark gray suit, along with a white shirt and burgundy paisley tie. Of course, Tommy then needed something to go on his feet that matched the suit. He was happy as hell when Rita agreed with his choice of a pair of black ‘Dan Post’ cowboy boots. Tommy did not even flinch at writing out the check for two-hundred and fifty dollars. Rita thought Tommy was the most handsome young man in Texas when he modeled the suit for her. They took the suit with them, as Rita said she would hem the pants and coat cuffs herself.

Tommy received more than a little good natured ribbing from Harold, Ben Crawford and Ramon Salazar when they all had lunch at the Bluebonnet Diner the next day. Big Ben was especially wound up.

“You need a license, Tommy boy, so you can take your date sparking after the show. When you let the women drive, they head straight home,” he teased.

This was one of those occasions where Tommy couldn’t differentiate between serious and teasing, so he nodded glumly.

“I know,” he lamented, “only who would give me a license?”

Harold saw Tommy’s dejected look and immediately had a thought.

“Why the Great State of Texas, that’s who,” Harold declared.

To match action to words, the three friends dragged Tommy down to the McCulloch County DMV, snagged him a study guide for the written test and secured him a learner’s permit. Tommy started memorizing the traffic regulations and safe driving instructions before Ben could maneuver his big Lincoln out of the DMV parking lot.

Harold had Juan Luna, the delivery driver, give Tommy driving lessons. The feed store’s pickup was a two year old GMC with a straight six and three speed on the column. Tommy learned quickly as his muscle memory fell into the old patterns of lightly releasing the clutch while feeding the engine a little gas. Within an hour, he was driving around the block.

Tommy learning to drive was another step in his regaining his adulthood. The only real downside to him maturing so rapidly was his friendship with Bucky Grimes. Oh, he and Bucky were still friends, no question about that, but the number of things they had in common were rapidly dwindling. Bucky was much more stoic about it than Tommy was.

One hugely important result of the friendship between Tommy and Bucky was the improvement in the strength in Bucky’s polio atrophied left leg. Bucky was out of his brace by then, and into a high-topped walking shoe with a thickened sole and heel. Tommy and Bucky still walked up and down the stairs to the basement twenty-five times every morning and evening. They climbed the stairs backwards, forwards and both sideways. Then they sat on the bottom step and did leg lifts with progressively heavier weights. Bucky was psyched that he would start high school without a brace and just maybe, without a limp.

Betty Lou Grimes thought Bucky’s progress was nothing short of miraculous, and she credited it all on Tommy. Betty Lou was shocked at times by the strength of the emotions she felt for her handsome young boarder. Sure, she was grateful to him for what he’d done for Bucky, and his steady financial help had solved her money woes, but her feelings were well past gratitude. She actually had to avoid him at times to keep from appearing flustered.

Regina’s feelings were not nearly as complex as her step mother’s. Regina and her best friend Melody were simply hot for Tommy’s body. Melody and Regina started hanging out at the Grimes’s house most of the time. The two were constantly conniving situations that put one or both of them alone with Tommy. Getting Tommy alone was much harder to do than the girls had planned for it to be. Bucky and Betty Lou seemed to always be around or else Tommy was at the library or work. Regina was the one to figure out the library angle.

In the evening of the Wednesday that Tommy was issued his learners permit, Regina schemed up a need to visit the library while Tommy was there with his tutor. She actually did need to do some research for a history paper anyway. So what if she had study hall in the high school’s library five days a week? When Tommy walked to the door to head for home, Regina was waiting for him.

“Can you walk me home, Tommy? I promised mom I wouldn’t walk by myself.” She asked sweetly.

Tommy nodded, and even better, he took her books from her and carried them as they walked. Halfway home, Regina cut through a small park dedicated to the man for whom the town was named. That man was Confederate Colonel Rufus Reed Brantley, better known as ‘Old Rough and Ready’. Colonel Brantley was the commander of the 46^th Texas Irregular Cavalry during the Civil War. The men of the 46^th called themselves the Rough and Ready Raiders. Colonel Brantley never had more than a hundred men in his command, yet he had been a colossal thorn in the side of the Union Army in the far west.

It wasn’t ancient Texas history on Regina’s mind that night, however, as she led Tommy to a park bench under a drooping willow tree.

“Let’s sit here and talk for a minute Tommy, the evening is too beautiful to rush home.” Regina said.

Guileless Tommy agreed. It was in fact, a gorgeous early November night. The weather was unseasonably warm, and a huge Hunter’s Moon seemed as if it were close enough to touch. Regina had plotted the exact place for them to sit, because the large statue of Brantley on a rearing horse and the low hanging willow branches hid the bench from passersby.

As soon as they were seated, Regina snuggled up to Tommy and sighed contentedly. The thing that was so great about Tommy was that she felt safe with him. She knew that anything that happened would be at her speed and her instigation. She smiled to herself and instigated a scorching kiss. Tommy was so shy, he needed a little push to get him started, but his kisses made the blood sing in her veins. She liked the kisses enough that she grabbed his hand and put it on her breast ... outside her clothes, of course.

Tommy’s breath caught in his throat when she did that, but his hand seemed to know just how to knead her pliant orb. Regina moaned into his mouth when he gently squeezed her bullet-hard nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Melody was the only other person who had ever made her feel that good. As a matter of fact, all the evening was missing to be perfect was Melody sharing it. Regina had a solution to that for tomorrow night after choir practice though.

Regina broke up the make out session after another five minutes, after she had a small but satisfying climax. It was the first she’d ever experienced with a boy and it was just from a little second base petting and kissing. She couldn’t wait to tell Melody.

On Thursday, Tommy spent his lunch hour with Juan Luna driving the feed and seed truck out on Highway 931. Tommy was nervous, but focused on driving and remembering the rules of the road he’d memorized the evening before. Juan thought it was a hoot that Tommy gave hand and arm signals as well as utilizing the trucks regular turn signals.

Choir practice that Thursday night was much easier on Tommy than the first one had been. Part of the reason for that was Bucky’s decision to also join the choir. Tommy talked him into it by mentioning that Bucky would have more in common with petite and pretty thirteen-year-old Shelia Franklin if he did. Bucky and Tommy had spent an hour down in Tommy’s basement room, talking about girls and sex earlier that day. Tommy shared Harold’s explanation of the mechanics of sex with Bucky. Bucky filled Tommy in on all he’d heard about girls and getting some. Stuff like hickeys: were okay if they weren’t on the neck, and girls with big boobies liked sex more. Tommy took it all in with wide-eyed wonderment.

Madeline Dixon, the director of the choir, played a record of George Jones singing a gospel song call Uncloudy Day. Tommy loved the song and mimed Jones’s soulful voiced perfectly. Maddie mixed and matched voices around him until she had a version of the song that sounded better than the recording.

Melody Graham was at the choir practice because she was spending the night with Regina. They were out of school for some teachers’ conference the next day. When the practice was over, everyone piled into Betty Lou’s Chevy station wagon and headed home. As soon as they arrived at the house, Melody remembered she had (conveniently) forgotten her retainer. Regina volunteered Tommy to escort them the block and a half to fetch the errant dental device.