FRONT-PORCH GOSPEL: This life story begins in 1973 (kind of) part 83

We know Corrina didn’t always scoot over close, but she did that night as we drove home – our load lightened for a night, Corrina’s arm snugly around mine and showing no sign of letting go. We found the porch light on at her front door as always, but Mrs. McClain had already watered the flowers well. You could still see water dripping from the hanging plants and running off the edge of the porch from the two big pots of Silver Falls plants on either side of the steps.

“This Silver Falls plant,” Mrs. Mac told me one night, running her hand over the streaming silver vines reaching down to the porch, “can stand the heat and conditions about as well as any. And isn’t she pretty,” she added, as if the plant was a real-life person.

They sure looked especially pretty and alive that night as we came to the front porch.

Despite being late already, Corrina didn’t hurry once we stopped in front of the Silver Falls. She leaned up in to me, gave me hug, and I could feel her heart beating against me as she held on for a minute.

It was always a mystery in that spot with the dark-haired girl, and I had learned on those occasions to “let the game come to me, as we say on the basketball court. I held onto her, though, not too tightly but enough, and I watched the dripping plant as I waited for her. Those were the moments that could have last a year and it wouldn’t have mattered.

I felt her sigh. I could tell she didn’t want to let go. But, not to put off the inevitable too long, she reached up and gave me a quick kiss. “See ya tomorrow, Billy Ray,” she said, “You be careful driving home.”

She ducked inside but stood halfway in the door, reached and grabbed the tips of my fingers, and said, “I mean, really be careful, Pup; I need you to take care of yourself until I see you and take care of you myself.”

The Statlers’ song must’ve still been playing in her mind.

I could tell that she was worried how I would handle all the emotions and the memories, once the night slowed down. Her apprehension didn’t slip away as her hand slipped reluctantly from mine and she slipped inside, leaving the door cracked for a moment so she could blow her trademark kiss and give one last wave. Her smile disappeared inside the door, although not really, and I walked on a cloud down the brick walkway to the Nova.

When I drove away to head home, the porch light blinked twice, then it retired for the night.

As great as that Friday was, things became more complicated a few days afterward, really for the first time. We had an interesting talk that next week, interesting in that, for the first time, I had to read between the lines when we talked. I had never had to do that before. Her words and emotions always matched perfectly, and she could take those pieces of a puzzle and put them all together until it all made sense when before it didn’t.

Now, she became a puzzle herself.

I’ve tried to see if I could figure out what caused that ambiguity. I guess that there were probably too many things to nail down just one. I know that the burden from Daddy’s story had to wear on her, and, even more than that, her seeing Mama fading a little more each time we visited took its toll. Then, added to it all: a whirlwind romance had blown in like a blue northerner.

That is where it starts.

You have to feel for the sweet young lady. A month prior, life for her seemed as simple as arithmetic, although my teachers over at Southwest Elementary might raise their eyebrows at that considering all the “C’s” in arithmetic that appeared on my report card.

For her and the McClains, the summer up ahead was promising. Life was lining up just as they had planned. They saw the ground-breaking for their new home and knew that by summer’s end they would have a mansion just over the hilltop waiting for them.

The summer started, and they enjoyed seeing their dream home built board by board, brick by brick. Not a day passed that they were not out there soaking in life’s blessings at the same time I was soaking in the steamy, hot summer sun along with a healthy degree of hoopla from a gentleman with four or five different names to go along with an attitude problem thrown in free gratis.

The young, dark-haired girl had no idea what awaited her when she first arrived on the scene, school having just let out the same Friday mine did, on June 1. Summer would be easy, relaxing, and eventful, not a tornado blowing through her life the way it did from the first moment she stepped out of the black ’51 Studebaker onto that red dirt in front of that illustrious mansion.

She was about to enter into a world, unlike anything she had ever known or even dreamed of. If she had to do it over, she might’ve never looked toward the young pup out by the sandpile, not even risking a dangerous passing glance.

If the boy in the blue truck was part of her old world – and that’s an if – he and that old world was about to tumble and burn, like the old house had done on the east side of the road before you turn at Standing Rock. It had burned all the way to the ground, perhaps long before, with just shambles of boards and pieces of metal lying around it, the tall brick chimney, alone, standing.

I wondered if I was the brick chimney in her life – or if I was the shambles.

Coach Steven Ray Bowen served as a teacher and basketball coach at Red Oak High from 1998-2012 and recently spent two years teaching and coaching at Ferris. He and his wife Marilyn (the “amazin’ blonde”) served many years with the Church of Christ of Red Oak at Uhl/Ovilla Roads, but now spend time evangelizing in several states in addition to Coach’s work as a writer and author, including the writing of the ongoing novel/memoir here in the Press. Call or text (972) 824-5197, or email coachbowen1984@gmail.com, or see frontporchgospel.com.