Chapter 2

The Tylers and the Heislers had to leave not long afterward; they'd left their four preschoolers with their respective Bradford parents, and they had to be getting back to the Lansing area. There was nothing wrong with sitting and talking to Emily and Kevin; while they weren't dinner-party-type friends, Jason knew both of them pretty well. The Spee-D-Mart Emily managed was like the Chicago in that everyone in town stopped in there sooner or later, and Jason was no exception. Jason ate breakfast out here most work mornings, although usually at the big community table at the far end of the room; about one morning in three Kevin was there.

Vicky had probably told him years before that Emily had been a top-ten student in high school, but at graduation she'd had no desire to go to college and all the desire in the world to get married. Kevin had been an old family friend, four years older, and he'd spent the four years of her high school career in the Air Force, waiting for her to graduate. They were married within a month of her graduation, and she was pregnant within another month. She'd had a part-time job at the Spee-D-Mart in high school and had just never moved on. She managed the store now, while Kevin ran a machine out at Macy Controls, out past General Hardware on Taney Road.

"I sure wish I knew them better," Emily sighed. "I really don't know Amber well, just from her coming into the store, and I've only talked with Sonja a few times, but she looks like an interesting woman, and I know she's even more interesting than she looks."

"Pretty lady, very exotic looking," Jason smiled. "You don't see someone who looks like her around this town very often."

"No, you don't," Emily agreed. "I remember when she first started going with Scott, up at State when they were freshmen. Shelly was going there too, and she spread it all over town that Sonja was black. That really got the rumor mill running. They'd been going together a couple years before we finally met her. Remember that, Vicky?"

"She's dark, yes, but the skin tone isn't right for black." Vicky nodded. "I guess it was at that weenie roast at your place when we first met her. She and Scott said they were just friends, but you could take one look at them and tell it was a hell of a lot more than that."

"And then, to top it off, she told us she was technically a draft dodger," Emily smiled.

"A draft dodger?" Jason bristled. He'd volunteered for the Army, and Vietnam, at a time when most kids were trying their damndest to stay out of the military, and it was a touchy subject. As it worked out, the military had been good for him and there had been times he'd wished he'd stayed in. The superior attitude of some of the draft dodgers back in those days had pissed him off severely. "How the hell could she be a draft dodger?" he asked. "Even if she'd had a sex change she'd have been too young, and they never drafted women, anyway."

"They do if you're an Israeli," Vicky grinned. "Back in those days, she had dual citizenship from her real mother. Maybe she still does, I don't know. The story she told at the weenie roast was she got really pissed about a draft notice from the Israeli Army. She'd never lived there, except visiting for a couple months, but her mother is an army officer, and she took it personally when Sonja told the Israeli Army to go to hell."

"That's different," Jason nodded.

"Oh, yeah," Emily smiled. "I met her mother once, and she sure seemed like someone you didn't want pissed off with you."

"I didn't know that," Vicky said.

"It was right after the weenie roast," Emily explained. "You remember? Sonja told us her mother had shown up out of nowhere to try and browbeat her into doing her duty, so she was hiding out with Scott's family. Well, this dark, foreign-looking woman with a strange accent came into the store, wondering how to find Scott's house. I put two and two together before she made it back to her car, and was on the phone really quick. The two of them beat it out of town on about two minutes notice, and I think they stayed gone the rest of the summer. Scott's folks wouldn't tell her anything, and she hung around town for days looking for them."

"Did they ever patch it up with her mother?"

"Not till after they were married and she was pregnant with their daughter Sabra," Emily explained. "It must be that she's still at least partly an Israeli, because her mother thinks Sabra and Scotty have dual citizenships, too. The story I heard was she hopes the kids will do their duty even though their mother wouldn't."

"She isn't over it," Jason shook his head. "Shit, I wouldn't want to be in Israel, where you can get a Palestinian dumb bomb going off at any time."

"I know they've visited," Emily reported. "I guess it's not all that bad if you stay out of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, from what Barb Tyler told me, anyway." She let out a sigh. "Oh, well, at least some of us lead exotic lives, but I guess I'm just as happy where I am."

"I've heard that out of you before," Vicky smiled.

"Well, OK, I am a little jealous," Emily said. "Hell, you are, too. I guess it's like when you were back in college. You'd come home and tell me the stories of all the fun you'd had, and all the parties, and all I could talk about was how much fun it was to have two kids in diapers. Vicky, you know me well enough to understand that even though I married Kevin and stayed in Bradford because I wanted to, it would have been fun to have some of those adventures. And I know if it had worked out, that you'd have been the one to have the kids in diapers, and it would have been fine with you."

"It wasn't all that damn great in college," Vicky snorted. "I've told you that. I told you those stories to at least make myself think I was having fun. But you're right; I'd have just as soon have had the kids in diapers."

"There were times I would have traded with you if I could have," Emily shrugged. "But what's done is done, I guess. I'll admit, I like hearing the stories of what other kids have done that I'll never do. Most of the time it doesn't bother me, but last night it bothered me a lot. I mean, take Dayna. She and Sandy go all over the place, play in places you and I wouldn't dream of. They've put a quarter of a million miles on that motor home, in forty-nine states and nine provinces. I spent that couple weeks with Dayna four years ago and got a taste of that life, even though it was pretty subdued, with Sandy not there and Dayna eating her gut over it."

"That was fun," Vicky nodded. "I did a week, too."

Jason knew the story. Dayna and Sandy had come down sick with a severe food poisoning, and nearly died from it. While they were recovering, Sandy's mother put a lot of pressure on her and goaded her into marrying the son of her best friend, which effectively split up the act. Dayna wasn't healthy enough to get on the road by herself and had some dates that absolutely had to be played if she planned on keeping her career. She could do it with offstage help, so Emily had organized a series of Bradford '88s to be volunteer roadies for her. Vicky had been one, and reported that Dayna led a hell of a fun life and it had to have been even better with Sandy around. Months later, when Sandy's husband beat her up, she'd called Vicky, who lived nearby at the time. Vicky had picked her up, cleaned her up, and put her on the plane to Las Vegas and a divorce.

"Darn right it was fun," Emily nodded. "I mean, if it weren't for Kevin and the kids I could live like that, at least if I had any musical talent, but I don't. And, you'd have to leave out the lesbian part, whether it's true or not. But I kept listening to everybody last night. Scott and Sonja say they lead dull lives, but who's going to Europe and Israel on vacation? Or Shae, a sports reporter, model, and actress, in New York, yet! Or John Engler! Granted he's been through three wives, and that's an adventure of its own. He bought a failing business in Florida and, according to his dad, he's getting into the million-dollar bracket now. I don't think I could handle the prostitute part of it, but there's Jennlynn, a millionaire who flies her own Learjet, for God's sakes!"

She shook her head and picked up her tone as her rant continued. "And as for how that goes, then there's Eve. Lord knows I wouldn't have wanted to be in her shoes, but she's done things the rest of us will never dream about, and the closest we're ever going to get to them is to hear her talk about it. And Vicky, even though some stuff has gone sour for you, at least you went to college and have some stories to tell. So, there I am last night, and all I could say was I still work at the Spee-D-Mart, I knit, and ride around on the back of Kevin's Harley."

"I know, hon," Kevin said sympathetically, "I felt some of it, too."

"And you've at least been to Europe, to Japan, you were stationed in Nevada for a while," she said, fairly bristling now. "Cripe, it's a couple years since I've even been to Chicago, that's less than two hundred miles, and then it was for a Cubs game. Jeez, just once, I'd like to do something a little different." She let out a sigh. "Jason, could you teach me how to make a knife? That's not exactly a feminine hobby like knitting."

"I could take you through it by the hand, like I did with Vicky that time," he said. "Getting good at it, well, you have to have the knack. I tried to teach Duane when he was younger. He can make a workable knife but not an art object."

"I doubt I would," she shook her head. "I don't have arms like you do, that's for sure. But jeez, something. Like I said, I don't fault Kevin for anything, but I wish I'd had some off-the-wall adventure or talent or something."

"There's lots you can do," Jason counseled. "It just takes the thinking of it and the doing it. Hell, look at Duane. When he graduated from high school, he and Cory Luma backpacked from near Grand Rapids to Ironwood on the North Country Trail; it was 800 miles and it took them almost two months. Now he's talking about the Appalachian Trail when he gets out of college, that's 2100 miles."

"I don't think there's any way either of us could get away for that long," she shook her head. "And I don't think backpacking is exactly my thing, either."

"That was a for-instance," Jason shrugged. "Do a long canoe trip. Take up sailing. Hell, buy yourself a motorcycle to go with Kevin's and ride it out to the rally in Sturgis. I know you don't have tons of money but you're not pinching every dime until Roosevelt farts, either. What it takes is the thinking of it, and then the doing of it. There's nothing keeping you from that."

"I know," she said, deflating now. "But I never seem to think of that kind of thing, and tomorrow morning I'll be at the Spee-D-Mart again. Really, most of the time, I don't mind; it's not that bad a job, considering." She shook her head. "But I'll be damned if when I hear a roar go overhead, I won't be imagining it's Jennlynn and her Learjet."

"I can understand how she feels," Vicky commented as they walked out across the parking lot to the Firebird. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Kevin and Emily head for their minivan. "Mostly because I've got a pretty good dose of it myself. Not quite the same thing, but pretty close."

"The wanting to be something different from everyone else, do something different?"

"Yes and no," she nodded, flicking her half-smoked cigarette out onto the parking lot; no smoking was a hard-and-fast rule in the Firebird. She'd known it for years; it wasn't because of the smoke smell, but because Jason didn't want to risk burn holes in the upholstery of the valuable classic. "Christ, I didn't have that good a time in college and you know it," she continued. "Except for a few incidents it was a pain in the ass most of the time, and what did I get out of it? Not much, except for a huge student-loan debt. She may have envied me for being in college, but I envied her for having a husband and two kids she dearly loves. Hell, ten years ago, that's about all I wanted and I really haven't changed that much. But she's got it, and the closest I ever got to it was the jerk I married. As much as I wanted to be a mother, thank God I never got pregnant from that dickless wonder."

She knew it was a rant he'd heard before. "At least that much worked for you," he shrugged as he held the door of the passenger side for her.

"Yeah, I suppose," she said as she got in. "Thanks, Jason."

"My pleasure," he smiled as he closed the door and began to walk around to the driver's side. "You just want to head back, or would you be up for a little drive, just to clear the cobwebs?"

"There's not going to be many more days like this," she told him. "And I really don't have much to do today anyway."

"Fine, let's take the back roads over to Amherst and back."

"Works for me," she said as he got behind the wheel. She shook her head and continued, "Shit, Emily just doesn't realize how good she's got it."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, maybe things are a little dull for her, but that's something that can be solved if she wants to. It's a little hard to do some of that stuff when you've got little kids, but Kayla and J.J. aren't all that little anymore and are going to be teenagers before long, so that'll free them up some. But she's got a solid job, even if she's not going to get rich at it. She's pretty well respected in the community and has lots of friends. She's got a husband who she thinks walks on water, and she's got a couple real nice kids. What's more, if something needs to be done she'll grab the bull by the horns and do it. Yeah, maybe she needs to take up skydiving or something so she'll feel a little special, but what the hell? After all, it really is like you said: it takes the thinking of it and the doing it. I envy her for all of it and would trade places with her in a minute if it wouldn't take anything away from her."

"So you feel shorted by comparison?" he asked as he started the Firebird.