A Tribute
Isn’t There Anything for a 21-Year Old to Do?
I sat alone in the soft, warm comfort of my basement office. Just beside the hot water tank, in a comfortable chair, I stared at the green screen of the word processor. The hard concrete walls were echoing the statement that I held in my heart. I was the only twenty-one year old man doing anything even slightly important on a Friday night.
The bars were filled with girl-chasing, beer-drinking men, but I was more important than them because I was poised to become the world’s next great writer. I fashioned myself as a combination of Steinbeck and Twain. I had precious little to show for a comparison of this sort, but my work would flow smoothly if I allowed myself such a fantasy.
This night was different, however because in the middle of my daydreaming I was finding it difficult to ignore the nagging discomfort of my heart. I wanted a beer. I wanted to taste the smoothness and to quiet the voice in my head. Most of all, I wanted to let go of my fears and ask out the sweet, young cashier who worked around the corner, and dominated my thoughts lately.
Writers, I am told, are allowed to bless their character’s face with a past and a future. I had already done this for the girl behind the cash register. I considered her for a long moment; a pretty, happy girl with the face of an angel. Yet I didn’t even know her name. Steinbeck or Twain wouldn’t have been quite so shy.
There was just one thing for me to do tonight. I needed to start acting like a ‘normal’ 21-year old man. I needed to march into the store, get her name, her number and possibly a date for the night. If I was intent on spoiling a night of writing by thinking of her it made sense that she was with me.
I pulled myself away from the computer that held the pages of my latest masterpiece. I didn’t really have a plan; I’d make it up when I was standing in front of her. The short trip to the store was filled with a sort of excited worry of actually speaking with this beauty who had no idea nor seemed to care that I was the world’s next great writer. The muscles in my stomach tightened, and I seriously doubted that I’d have the nerve to see my plan through. The cloud of worry lifted as I walked through the automatic doors. She was standing right before me, and she was smiling as brightly as day. The store was about to close and the last of the beer-toting men were making their way through her checkout line. I was definitely out of place, but the smile had fortified my will.
I scrambled to find something to buy, turning to look back over my shoulder at the still-smiling girl that I’d left in my wake. I wasn’t really sure, but it seemed as if she had actually winked at me. I floated down the soft drink aisle telling myself that this was the moment and that tonight could surely be the night. I would take her to a movie, or just sit and talk with her for hours.
Anything could happen if she were beside me.
I grabbed a Pepsi because it was the least objectionable of all offerings and because it made me look casual. ‘Just got thirsty as I wrote,’ I imagined myself saying as I glided smoothly back to her checkout line. She was studying what she was doing, running through the purchases of the heavyset woman in front of me. I couldn’t take my eyes off her cute little fingers as she turned the packages over and let them slide down the belt. Even Twain or Steinbeck would have been taken with how she moved.
It was hard to get on top of the nervousness building deep inside. She didn’t have the resounding beauty of a character in a book, and not ever single head turned in her direction, but she had that smile. It was a deep, piercing smile that seemed to wink at me every time I looked up.
“May I help you?” she asked with the smile still intact.
I turned the Pepsi over in my sweaty palm. I extended it towards her without saying a single word. I was standing before her, and I was flat-out blowing it! I felt like a 12-year-old afraid to ask his best girl to roller skate.
“Just the Pepsi?” she asked.
“I could be talked into asking you to go to a movie with me,” I said.
I wasn’t sure Steinbeck would’ve approved of such a line, but saying it surprised me.
“I don’t know,” she said. Her smile was no longer there.
I felt as if I were standing on a small stool with the noose tight around my neck.
“I’m kind of tired from working all day,” she said. Her skin had changed colors, and it occurred to me that she was as nervous as I was. Her cute face had turned bright pink.
“I did that wrong,” I said. “I’m Cliff. I usually don’t ask out cashiers at the grocery store, but to be honest, I’ve been bored, and real attracted to you for awhile now.”
I was standing out on the limb, waiting for what seemed like an eternity, but truthfully she answered almost instantly.
“I’ve noticed you too,” she said.
Twain couldn’t have written it any better. Right there, in the nearly empty store, Davine and I struck up our very first meaningful conversation, and all I kept thinking was that we both had been waiting for that very moment. She talked of college and getting out of the supermarket business. I told her of my dream to write something that someone might want to read some day.
“I work about 50 hours a week,” she said. “School is expensive.”
“I’ll pay for the movie,” I said.
“I know you will,” she said, and then almost as if she were afraid to insult me she added, “Not that I’d expect you to.”
“I understand,” I said, fully believing that she needed a way out of the question.
“When would you like to go?” She asked. “It’ll be fun to go out. I have to work early tomorrow, but you could call me tonight if you’d like and we’ll talk about it.”
“I’ll definitely call,” I said.
The smile was back on her face. At least I’d have the memory of that smile tonight as I wrote. I turned and headed for the door. It didn’t even feel as if I were walking.
“Ah, Cliff,” she called out.
“Yes?”
“You never paid for the Pepsi,” she said.
***
A half an hour later I was back in front of the computer, but I hadn’t been inspired to write. Instead, I thought of Davine. I stared at the telephone number she’d scribbled on the back of the cashier tape. Time didn’t pass quickly. In fact it flowed as slowly as the words to my masterpiece manuscript. I considered her smiling face, glancing, every once in awhile at the black telephone. Despite the fact that only sixty lousy minutes had passed, I grabbed the receiver off the hook and plunged into the call like a swimmer into the bright blue pool. I didn’t even try to calm my nerves or consider that perhaps she was just being polite back at the store. The phone was answered on the very first ring.
“Is Davine there?”
“Hang on a minute,” the male voice answered.
What could I say? I considered hanging up. I actually should have known better. Davine’s smile came through in her voice. Each word glittered with a brilliant freshness of life that I had only imagined up to that point in time. Davine was like one of the characters that Steinbeck or Twain developed in their imaginations. She was the character that had eluded me for years. I held tightly to each word, allowing them to resonate in my ear. The very definition of eternal optimism was becoming clear to me… a guy who was turning into a perpetual downer.
I wished that the conversation could have lasted as long as one of her smiles seemed to last, but the pressures of her work day finally took over and Davine asked if we could continue the conversation about our dreams when we went out to catch that movie, next Saturday evening.
The rest of that night I didn’t write much, but I worked on a love story in my mind.
***
Often we miss the very passing of time. Unfortunately that wasn’t what happened during the week of August 12th. As I anticipated the date set for the next weekend, time crawled. Perhaps Twain or Steinbeck could tie up the rest of the story for you in a neat little package, but I doubt they’d do my feelings true justice.
***
The wind offered a calming night breeze to a day that had been painfully hot. Thinking back on it it’s difficult to distinguish my mood from the start of the day to how I felt at 11 p.m. on Friday night. We were less than 24 hours away from our date, but I hadn’t spoken with Davine in a couple of days. My quiet night was shattered by the ringing telephone and while I considered it might be Davine calling to say ‘hello’, I was instead greeted by the voice of my younger sister, Carrie Lynn.
“Hey, Mark Twain, I need a ride home,” she said.
“Steinbeck,” I said. “John Steinbeck.”
“More like Mark Steinbeck,” Carrie said with a laugh. “A writer no one ever heard of.”
On the way up Shirley Road I considered the fact that my brothers had all gone out on the town. Jim had rode me hard about being a dud, saying that sitting home pining for Davine was a little stupid considering that she was probably out on the town herself.
“You’re young,” Jim said. “You’re too young to be acting like an old man on a Friday night.”
I shifted through a police road block at the crossing for Jennings Road. I never even glanced in the direction of the vehicles off the side of the road. My mind was elsewhere. It wasn’t my concern.
“What happened on Jennings Road?” my sister asked as she settled into the car.
“How the hell do I know?” I asked.
I took a different route home. Who needed the hassle of the road block?
I enjoyed having someone home with me. We ordered a pizza and I opened up my first beer of the day. I grabbed the telephone, extracted the crumbled paper from my wallet and dialed Davine’s number.
The telephone went unanswered.
No sooner had I hung up the phone when my brother Jim returned from his night on the town. I was prepared for him to tease me about my boring life.
“Pizza and beer,” I said. “You want one?”
Jim looked a little sick. He sat in a chair at the kitchen table. He took the beer from me without uttering a sound.
“I saw a car in the ditch off Jennings Road,” I said. “I’m surprised it wasn’t you.”
Jim pulled the beer in front of him. He made a grand gesture of turning the cap.
“You know who was in the accident?” he asked.
“I just said I thought it was you,” I answered.
“It was Davine,” Jim said. “She didn’t make it. I don’t know why it happened.”
“That’s NOT FUNNY!” I yelled. “JIM! IT ISN’T FUNNY!”
“I know it’s not,” Jim said, bowing his head.
I fell into the chair across from my brother. He didn’t raise his eyes to me. He never even looked at the beer.
“I saw Johnny up there,” Jim said, speaking of my good friend. “He told me she died instantly.”
I never heard Jim leave the room. Carrie Lynn was talking about how she knew Davine’s sister, but I hardly heard her either. There was no way that my siblings had any idea what was happening inside me. No matter which way I turned I didn’t see anything. I just kept hearing Jim’s words over and over and over and over:
“I don’t know why it happened.”
***
For what it’s worth, as I read the story some 26 years later, I still don’t have an answer for Jim. No matter how many words I’ve written since that night, and Davine’s death was certainly an inspiration for my book, Eye in the Sky, I never truly found an answer to the questions in my mind.
That night I remember dismissing the thought of prayer. What sort of God could rip such a live, vibrant girl from the chance to live out her days? Davine spoke of the future with unbridled enthusiasm. Neither of us realized as we spoke on the phone that she only had six days left. Dismissing God at that moment was natural, but probably not very wise.
I remember chugging down more than one beer that night. Davine’s wonderful, smiling face entered my mind and took up residence for a long while. I recall visiting her gravesite in the early morning hours after a night out a few years later. Wondering why. Wondering how. The beer certainly never helped answer such heady questions.
There was no way of explaining it then.
There’s no way of explaining it now.
I promised myself that I would always hold that wink in her eyes close in my heart. I wanted it always to be there for me on the Friday nights when there’s nothing much to do. How would I ever develop a character that was as alive as Davine? Could either Steinbeck or Twain do it for me?
The good news being that I’ve been able to keep her alive in my heart.
I also remember how cold and dark the bed in my parent’s home felt that night. I didn’t sleep at all.
Instead, I wrote nearly every single word to Eye in the Sky for Davine.
It’s been a long time since Davine left this earth.
These days, every once in awhile I run into someone from Davine’s family, or I see a photo of a child who would’ve been one of her nieces or nephews. I always study the photo closely looking for an answer to Jim’s burning question.
And sometimes I see the answer:
Right there in the shining eyes of a family member who was left behind to think of Davine.
To remember.
To wink.
To smile.
I sat alone in the soft, warm comfort of my basement office. Just beside the hot water tank, in a comfortable chair, I stared at the green screen of the word processor. The hard concrete walls were echoing the statement that I held in my heart. I was the only twenty-one year old man doing anything even slightly important on a Friday night.
The bars were filled with girl-chasing, beer-drinking men, but I was more important than them because I was poised to become the world’s next great writer. I fashioned myself as a combination of Steinbeck and Twain. I had precious little to show for a comparison of this sort, but my work would flow smoothly if I allowed myself such a fantasy.
This night was different, however because in the middle of my daydreaming I was finding it difficult to ignore the nagging discomfort of my heart. I wanted a beer. I wanted to taste the smoothness and to quiet the voice in my head. Most of all, I wanted to let go of my fears and ask out the sweet, young cashier who worked around the corner, and dominated my thoughts lately.
Writers, I am told, are allowed to bless their character’s face with a past and a future. I had already done this for the girl behind the cash register. I considered her for a long moment; a pretty, happy girl with the face of an angel. Yet I didn’t even know her name. Steinbeck or Twain wouldn’t have been quite so shy.
There was just one thing for me to do tonight. I needed to start acting like a ‘normal’ 21-year old man. I needed to march into the store, get her name, her number and possibly a date for the night. If I was intent on spoiling a night of writing by thinking of her it made sense that she was with me.
I pulled myself away from the computer that held the pages of my latest masterpiece. I didn’t really have a plan; I’d make it up when I was standing in front of her. The short trip to the store was filled with a sort of excited worry of actually speaking with this beauty who had no idea nor seemed to care that I was the world’s next great writer. The muscles in my stomach tightened, and I seriously doubted that I’d have the nerve to see my plan through. The cloud of worry lifted as I walked through the automatic doors. She was standing right before me, and she was smiling as brightly as day. The store was about to close and the last of the beer-toting men were making their way through her checkout line. I was definitely out of place, but the smile had fortified my will.
I scrambled to find something to buy, turning to look back over my shoulder at the still-smiling girl that I’d left in my wake. I wasn’t really sure, but it seemed as if she had actually winked at me. I floated down the soft drink aisle telling myself that this was the moment and that tonight could surely be the night. I would take her to a movie, or just sit and talk with her for hours.
Anything could happen if she were beside me.
I grabbed a Pepsi because it was the least objectionable of all offerings and because it made me look casual. ‘Just got thirsty as I wrote,’ I imagined myself saying as I glided smoothly back to her checkout line. She was studying what she was doing, running through the purchases of the heavyset woman in front of me. I couldn’t take my eyes off her cute little fingers as she turned the packages over and let them slide down the belt. Even Twain or Steinbeck would have been taken with how she moved.
It was hard to get on top of the nervousness building deep inside. She didn’t have the resounding beauty of a character in a book, and not ever single head turned in her direction, but she had that smile. It was a deep, piercing smile that seemed to wink at me every time I looked up.
“May I help you?” she asked with the smile still intact.
I turned the Pepsi over in my sweaty palm. I extended it towards her without saying a single word. I was standing before her, and I was flat-out blowing it! I felt like a 12-year-old afraid to ask his best girl to roller skate.
“Just the Pepsi?” she asked.
“I could be talked into asking you to go to a movie with me,” I said.
I wasn’t sure Steinbeck would’ve approved of such a line, but saying it surprised me.
“I don’t know,” she said. Her smile was no longer there.
I felt as if I were standing on a small stool with the noose tight around my neck.
“I’m kind of tired from working all day,” she said. Her skin had changed colors, and it occurred to me that she was as nervous as I was. Her cute face had turned bright pink.
“I did that wrong,” I said. “I’m Cliff. I usually don’t ask out cashiers at the grocery store, but to be honest, I’ve been bored, and real attracted to you for awhile now.”
I was standing out on the limb, waiting for what seemed like an eternity, but truthfully she answered almost instantly.
“I’ve noticed you too,” she said.
Twain couldn’t have written it any better. Right there, in the nearly empty store, Davine and I struck up our very first meaningful conversation, and all I kept thinking was that we both had been waiting for that very moment. She talked of college and getting out of the supermarket business. I told her of my dream to write something that someone might want to read some day.
“I work about 50 hours a week,” she said. “School is expensive.”
“I’ll pay for the movie,” I said.
“I know you will,” she said, and then almost as if she were afraid to insult me she added, “Not that I’d expect you to.”
“I understand,” I said, fully believing that she needed a way out of the question.
“When would you like to go?” She asked. “It’ll be fun to go out. I have to work early tomorrow, but you could call me tonight if you’d like and we’ll talk about it.”
“I’ll definitely call,” I said.
The smile was back on her face. At least I’d have the memory of that smile tonight as I wrote. I turned and headed for the door. It didn’t even feel as if I were walking.
“Ah, Cliff,” she called out.
“Yes?”
“You never paid for the Pepsi,” she said.
***
A half an hour later I was back in front of the computer, but I hadn’t been inspired to write. Instead, I thought of Davine. I stared at the telephone number she’d scribbled on the back of the cashier tape. Time didn’t pass quickly. In fact it flowed as slowly as the words to my masterpiece manuscript. I considered her smiling face, glancing, every once in awhile at the black telephone. Despite the fact that only sixty lousy minutes had passed, I grabbed the receiver off the hook and plunged into the call like a swimmer into the bright blue pool. I didn’t even try to calm my nerves or consider that perhaps she was just being polite back at the store. The phone was answered on the very first ring.
“Is Davine there?”
“Hang on a minute,” the male voice answered.
What could I say? I considered hanging up. I actually should have known better. Davine’s smile came through in her voice. Each word glittered with a brilliant freshness of life that I had only imagined up to that point in time. Davine was like one of the characters that Steinbeck or Twain developed in their imaginations. She was the character that had eluded me for years. I held tightly to each word, allowing them to resonate in my ear. The very definition of eternal optimism was becoming clear to me… a guy who was turning into a perpetual downer.
I wished that the conversation could have lasted as long as one of her smiles seemed to last, but the pressures of her work day finally took over and Davine asked if we could continue the conversation about our dreams when we went out to catch that movie, next Saturday evening.
The rest of that night I didn’t write much, but I worked on a love story in my mind.
***
Often we miss the very passing of time. Unfortunately that wasn’t what happened during the week of August 12th. As I anticipated the date set for the next weekend, time crawled. Perhaps Twain or Steinbeck could tie up the rest of the story for you in a neat little package, but I doubt they’d do my feelings true justice.
***
The wind offered a calming night breeze to a day that had been painfully hot. Thinking back on it it’s difficult to distinguish my mood from the start of the day to how I felt at 11 p.m. on Friday night. We were less than 24 hours away from our date, but I hadn’t spoken with Davine in a couple of days. My quiet night was shattered by the ringing telephone and while I considered it might be Davine calling to say ‘hello’, I was instead greeted by the voice of my younger sister, Carrie Lynn.
“Hey, Mark Twain, I need a ride home,” she said.
“Steinbeck,” I said. “John Steinbeck.”
“More like Mark Steinbeck,” Carrie said with a laugh. “A writer no one ever heard of.”
On the way up Shirley Road I considered the fact that my brothers had all gone out on the town. Jim had rode me hard about being a dud, saying that sitting home pining for Davine was a little stupid considering that she was probably out on the town herself.
“You’re young,” Jim said. “You’re too young to be acting like an old man on a Friday night.”
I shifted through a police road block at the crossing for Jennings Road. I never even glanced in the direction of the vehicles off the side of the road. My mind was elsewhere. It wasn’t my concern.
“What happened on Jennings Road?” my sister asked as she settled into the car.
“How the hell do I know?” I asked.
I took a different route home. Who needed the hassle of the road block?
I enjoyed having someone home with me. We ordered a pizza and I opened up my first beer of the day. I grabbed the telephone, extracted the crumbled paper from my wallet and dialed Davine’s number.
The telephone went unanswered.
No sooner had I hung up the phone when my brother Jim returned from his night on the town. I was prepared for him to tease me about my boring life.
“Pizza and beer,” I said. “You want one?”
Jim looked a little sick. He sat in a chair at the kitchen table. He took the beer from me without uttering a sound.
“I saw a car in the ditch off Jennings Road,” I said. “I’m surprised it wasn’t you.”
Jim pulled the beer in front of him. He made a grand gesture of turning the cap.
“You know who was in the accident?” he asked.
“I just said I thought it was you,” I answered.
“It was Davine,” Jim said. “She didn’t make it. I don’t know why it happened.”
“That’s NOT FUNNY!” I yelled. “JIM! IT ISN’T FUNNY!”
“I know it’s not,” Jim said, bowing his head.
I fell into the chair across from my brother. He didn’t raise his eyes to me. He never even looked at the beer.
“I saw Johnny up there,” Jim said, speaking of my good friend. “He told me she died instantly.”
I never heard Jim leave the room. Carrie Lynn was talking about how she knew Davine’s sister, but I hardly heard her either. There was no way that my siblings had any idea what was happening inside me. No matter which way I turned I didn’t see anything. I just kept hearing Jim’s words over and over and over and over:
“I don’t know why it happened.”
***
For what it’s worth, as I read the story some 26 years later, I still don’t have an answer for Jim. No matter how many words I’ve written since that night, and Davine’s death was certainly an inspiration for my book, Eye in the Sky, I never truly found an answer to the questions in my mind.
That night I remember dismissing the thought of prayer. What sort of God could rip such a live, vibrant girl from the chance to live out her days? Davine spoke of the future with unbridled enthusiasm. Neither of us realized as we spoke on the phone that she only had six days left. Dismissing God at that moment was natural, but probably not very wise.
I remember chugging down more than one beer that night. Davine’s wonderful, smiling face entered my mind and took up residence for a long while. I recall visiting her gravesite in the early morning hours after a night out a few years later. Wondering why. Wondering how. The beer certainly never helped answer such heady questions.
There was no way of explaining it then.
There’s no way of explaining it now.
I promised myself that I would always hold that wink in her eyes close in my heart. I wanted it always to be there for me on the Friday nights when there’s nothing much to do. How would I ever develop a character that was as alive as Davine? Could either Steinbeck or Twain do it for me?
The good news being that I’ve been able to keep her alive in my heart.
I also remember how cold and dark the bed in my parent’s home felt that night. I didn’t sleep at all.
Instead, I wrote nearly every single word to Eye in the Sky for Davine.
It’s been a long time since Davine left this earth.
These days, every once in awhile I run into someone from Davine’s family, or I see a photo of a child who would’ve been one of her nieces or nephews. I always study the photo closely looking for an answer to Jim’s burning question.
And sometimes I see the answer:
Right there in the shining eyes of a family member who was left behind to think of Davine.
To remember.
To wink.
To smile.
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