Copyright© 2008 by Joe J
Edited by the incredibly talented Dream-Girl

Chapter 1

Night fell early in the triple canopy jungle of South Vietnam’s Central Highlands. During the short early evening nautical twilight, the second platoon of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 503rd Airborne Infantry, formed a perimeter on the military crest of Hill 887. Under the watchful eyes of their noncommissioned officers, twenty-seven exhausted soldiers each quickly scraped out hasty one man fighting positions.

At the center of the circle, Second Lieutenant Thomas Bledsoe plotted his platoon’s location on his map and called the coordinates in to the Company Command Post eight hundred yards down the hill. As his NCOs supervised the redistribution of ammunition and cleaning of weapons, Tom keyed the radio again and spoke softly into the microphone.

“Starfish one-six this is Starfish two-six, meet me on guard two, over.”

Guard two were the code words for a radio frequency that was only known to Tom and his fellow platoon leader and best friend Jerry Chang. The two men could talk on that frequency privately. Jerry was the Platoon Leader of First Platoon. Chang and his men were set up on the next hill to the south. Jerry had been Thomas Bledsoe’s roommate at OCS (Officer Candidate School). Being best friends named Tom and Jerry left them open for considerable razzing from their contemporaries. Jerry responded immediately, “Two-six this is one-six, roger, out.”

Tom clicked the knobs of his AN/PRC-25 radio to his and Jerry’s frequency then keyed the mike, “You there Jerry?”

“I’m here bro, but I wish to fuck I wasn’t. This mission scares the shit out of me,” Chang replied.

“Me too, man. I don’t know what they are smoking back at Brigade, but it must be some good shit,” Tom replied.

The two friends carped on the stupidity of the brass in the time honored tradition of field soldiers everywhere for another five minutes. Then Tom walked the outside of his perimeter checking on the disposition of his men. As he moved from position to position, his concern over the mission increased.

Bravo Company was split on adjacent hills between which meandered a small valley. The rest of the battalion was set up two klicks (kilometers) down the valley to the east. The two hills were only four klicks from the border between Laos and South Vietnam. The battalion was deployed in that manner, in the hopes of ambushing a Viet Cong regiment that the Intel pukes said was planning to infiltrate into South Vietnam from a safe haven in Laos. Bravo Company’s mission was to let the VC unit pass by unmolested, then act as a blocking force to prevent their escape back into Laos after the ambush was sprung. First and second platoons were deployed forward to provide security against an attack from the west.

The plan looked good on paper, but down where the rubber met the road, it was a different story. For one thing, the battalion was woefully under strength; for another, the troops were close to exhaustion from two solid weeks of continuous patrolling. In Thomas Bledsoe’s estimation, they were ill prepared to take on a fresh, well armed and well trained VC regiment, even in an ambush. And all that was if you could believe the source of the intelligence on which the plan was based.

Bledsoe returned to his position in the center of his platoon and dug a C Ration out of his rucksack. He sighed when he saw what he was having for supper: ham and lima beans, the most hated meal ever made. He fished his dog tag chain out of his shirt and used the P-38 hanging on the chain to open the beans and ham.

Adding to Lieutenant Bledsoe’s feelings of doom and gloom was the letter that rested like a lead weight in his top jungle fatigue shirt pocket. He didn’t have to read it again, because he had the short ‘Dear John’ note memorized:

Dearest Thomas,

There is no easy way to break this news to you, so I’ll just come right out and say it. I have fallen in love with someone else. It wasn’t something I set out to do and I am truly sorry that this letter is the only way I can let you know that I am breaking off our engagement.

You are a good man, Tom Bledsoe, and you deserve better than this. I will not insult you with any trite “I hope we can remain friends” spiel. What I will do, though, is wish you good luck in that horrid place and I will continue to pray for your safe return.

Fondly,

Cynthia

He had felt this coming, based on the infrequency and vagueness of her letters the last two months, but that did not make the reality any less painful. Cynthia Taylor made his Basic Training Drill Sergeant’s favorite marching cadence come true: ”Ain’t no use in going home; Jody’s got your girl and gone...” Bledsoe shook those thoughts from his mind and reset his thinking back to the task at hand. There would be time to lament lost love later; right now he needed to focus on keeping thirty-two men and himself alive for another twelve hours.

---

All of Lieutenant Bledsoe’s concerns became horrible reality shortly after midnight, when the top of the hill erupted with small arms fire. The first few rounds were from the M16s of the Observation Post he’d deployed on top of the hill. Their fire was returned immediately by a withering fusillade of AK-47 rounds.

Bledsoe sat up quickly and turned to his radio operator as his platoon sergeant dashed off towards the uphill section of the perimeter. Sergeant First Class Wilson was on his way to assess the threat. Bledsoe would join him as soon as he informed the Company CP that the platoon was in contact.

“Call the weapons platoon, Jimmy, and tell them we are under attack from the West. Tell them I need illum (illumination mortar rounds) ASAP and stand by with H-E (High Explosive) on RP (Reference Point) one,” Tom told his radio operator, his voice calm as he could make it.

The RTO nodded, keyed the mike and relayed the message while Bledsoe was talking urgently to his weapons squad leader.

“Bring the other M-60 up on the left of second squad, Mikey, and have them lay it in for FPF (Final Protective Fire). I think this is going to get ugly quick, so I’m going to run our IAD (immediate action drill) for breaking contact.”

The young sergeant nodded curtly and took off down the hill. Bledsoe started moving in the opposite direction, his RTO one step behind him. They hadn’t moved ten feet, when a couple of flares popped into life over the top of the hill. Both men froze in place as the brightening flares backlit dozens of VC guerrillas boiling over the hill.

Bledsoe grunted and grabbed the radio handset from his RTO. He took a breath to calm himself and keyed the microphone.

“FDC this is Starfish two-six, fire mission, RP one, H-E, troops in the open, over.”

The fire direction center repeated his fire mission and Tom confirmed a good copy. Twenty long seconds later, a single 81 millimeter, high explosive mortar bomb detonated near the top of the hill.

Tom did a quick estimate of the rapidly advancing guerrillas and made a gun sight correction.

“FDC this is two-six, drop two hundred, fire for effect.”

The FDC repeated his correction back and told Tom to stand by. Fifteen seconds later, a different voice was on the radio.

“Two six this is four-six, authenticate danger close fire mission, over.”

Tom’s blood throbbed in his temple as his adrenalin surged.

“Goddammit Stew, I got a battalion of Charlies pouring over the top of this hill, and no time to dig out my authentication key list so quit fucking me around!” he shouted into the headset.

Tom started moving forward again without waiting for a reply. He knew that Rick Stewart, the Weapons Platoon Leader would fire the mission, authenticated or not. That he was calling for a fire mission fifty meters in front of his position was bound to get everyone in the company’s undivided attention. Rounds started dropping thirty seconds later, the explosions close enough to cause a shower of dirt and vegetation to rain down on the beleaguered paratroopers. Tom had a moment of hope as the wave of advancing VC faltered, but a lull in the mortar fire, coupled with the blossoming of illumination rounds on the opposite hill erased it. This was no accidental engagement, because it looked as if Chang’s platoon was in the same predicament as Tom’s. Since the weapons platoon only had three mortars, they were not going to be able to keep up the volume of fire the second platoon needed.

The young lieutenant used the brief respite to make a decision and put it in motion. He waved over the platoon sergeant and the squad leaders for the weapons and second squad. Once assembled, he quickly gave them their marching orders, starting with the second squad leader.

“Vasquez, on my signal, start pulling your men out of the line one at a time and beat feet down hill a couple of hundred yards. Find a place to cover the rest of the platoon so they can disengage.”

He turned to the weapons squad leader. “Mikey, you stay with the M-60 you brought up and control its movement. When I shoot off a green pen-flare, you disengage and move down with Sergeant Vasquez.”

Tom paused before he gave the order to his platoon sergeant. Sergeant First Class Wilson was an old veteran, hell, he’d even fought in Korea. He had probably forgotten more than Tom knew. In their IADs, the platoon sergeant normally controlled the screening element during the movement from contact. However, Wilson was only four weeks from his DROS (Date of Return from OverSeas) and he had a wife and three kids at home waiting on him. As of mail call two days ago, Tom had no one. He looked Wilson in the eye and addressed him, “Sergeant Wilson, you are the only person here that can get the platoon off this hill in one piece, so do it. I’ll stay with the second M-60 and buy you some time.”

Wilson studied the young lieutenant for a few heartbeats then saluted smartly.

“Airborne L-T,” was all he said.

Wilson did his job almost perfectly, suffering only a handful of casualties. Unfortunately, three of those casualties were Bledsoe and the two-man machinegun crew he was controlling. They became casualties when an RPG-7 rocket propelled grenade hit their position. The machine gunner and his assistant were killed instantly. Bledsoe survived, if you want to call it that. See, besides hurling him twenty feet into the trunk of an ironwood tree, a fragment from the rocket, ironically about the same size and shape of the lima beans he hated, penetrated the lieutenant’s skull at his left temple. The white hot, fast moving piece of metal scrambled Thomas Bledsoe’s brain just as effectively as an egg beater.

---

The unpleasantness on hills 887 and 895 was saved from being a debacle by a quick thinking Air Force Forward Air Controller (FAC), attached to the battalion headquarters. The FAC managed to divert an AC-130 Spectre gunship that was loitering over the Ho Chi Minh Trail to their location. The gunship’s infrared sights had a plethora of targets, because the VC regiment knew where the battalion was deployed, and was executing a large scale envelopment. The whole exercise, intelligence included, had been part of an elaborate Viet Cong trap.

Belching death at seventy rounds a second, the Spectre’s four Vulcan cannons broke up the attacking Viet Cong formations and sent them scurrying back to Laos. Bravo Company suffered twenty six paratroopers killed in action, most of them from the first platoon. One of the KIA’s was Jerry Chang.

At first light the next morning, Sergeant First Class Wilson and every ambulatory member of the Second Platoon trudged back up the hill. The platoon was walking point for Alpha Company, instead of standing down with their own company, because they weren’t about to leave three of their brothers up on that God forsaken pile of dirt.

Wilson and his men did find their three missing soldiers. The two machine gunners were dead, but to everyone’s surprise and delight, the Lieutenant was still alive. He was unconscious and unresponsive, but he had a strong pulse. The platoon medic and a medic from Alpha Company stabilized Bledsoe, started an IV drip, filled out a casualty card and called for a medevac. SFC Wilson went through the lieutenant’s pockets and removed his personal effects so they wouldn’t disappear when his clothes were disposed of, then he carried one end of Bledsoe’s litter to the landing zone.

Wilson watched as the Huey medevac flight rose into the air, spun 180 degrees and sped towards the 173d Airborne Brigade’s headquarters near the city of Pleiku. When the chopper disappeared over the hill, Wilson formed up his men and once again started down the hill.

Sergeant First Class Troy Wilson was a battle hardened career soldier. He had joined the Army when he was sixteen, partly to escape the coal fields of Eastern Kentucky and partly because he saw it as a duty. Wilson was mentally and physically tough. He was as hard as a woodpecker’s lips, but he was fair and honorable. The men of his platoon respected the hell out of him, and were scared to death of him. The fact that Tom Bledsoe stayed in his place during the withdrawal was not lost on Wilson. He thought about it all the way back to the base camp. The combination of Bledsoe’s unselfish actions and Wilson’s strong sense of honor were probably what motivated him to fire off a reply to the letter he found in the lieutenant’s pocket.

Miss Taylor,

As you are no doubt aware, Second Lieutenant Thomas Bledsoe was seriously wounded in action eight days ago. The latest information I have is that he is in a coma and on his way back to the States. What you probably don’t know is that the lieutenant deliberately put himself in harms way to allow the rest of us to escape from an attack by a numerically superior force. Specifically, he stayed in my place because I have a wife and children back in Kentucky. I will leave it to your conscience to tell you if your actions might have influenced his decision.

All that aside, I am returning to you the enclosed letter I found in Lieutenant Bledsoe’s pocket right before he was medevac’d. I read the letter and all I can say is you must have found a hell of a man to have tossed Tom Bledsoe aside as you did.

Sincerely,

Troy A. Wilson

Sergeant First Class

US Army

---

Comatose Second Lieutenant Thomas Bledsoe was categorized as a critical care patient, and was quickly passed up the medical evacuation channels, all the way to Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, Texas. He was evacuated to Brooke because it was the home of the Military Institute for Surgical Research. Some of the best neurosurgeons in the world practiced their craft at the Institute. The dual nature of the lieutenant’s extensive head injuries would require the services of the very best surgeons, just to keep him alive. Bledsoe not only had the chunk of metal rattling around in his temporal lobe, he also had severe blunt force trauma to the cerebellum, from being hurled into the ironwood tree.

---

A Major from the Casualty Notification Branch telephoned the next of kin listed on Bledsoe’s emergency data card, and broke the news to Lieutenant Bledsoe’s sister, his only living relative. Telephone notification of the next of kin was standard procedure for those wounded in action; only dead soldiers rated a personal visit. Tom’s sister did not take the news well.

Beth Taylor was nine years older than her brother Thomas. She was married and had two children. Her husband was a firefighter and she was a stay at home mom. The home in which she stayed was the home of her and Thomas’s deceased parents. Their mother had died five years earlier from breast cancer. Their father, a Station Captain for the Country Fire Department, had been killed two years later, when the roof of a burning warehouse collapsed on him.

Beth had been having premonitions of something happening to Tom for two weeks, since that silly bitch Cynthia had handed Beth her brother’s engagement ring. Cynthia had tried to smooth over her breaking of the engagement, because Beth was married to her oldest brother, Wayne.

“I hope this doesn’t affect our friendship, Beth. It would only hurt Wayne if you held this against me,” Cynthia said.

Beth gave her a withering look and pointed towards the door.

“He’ll get over it,” Beth said through gritted teeth.

As soon as she was off the phone with the Casualty Assistance Officer, Beth called Wayne. Wayne called one of his fellow firefighters to complete his shift, and sped home to be with his distraught wife. Beth wanted to rush off to Texas to be with her baby brother, but Wayne talked her out of that course of action.

“He’s in a coma, Honey. He won’t know you are there anyway. Why not wait until he regains consciousness, then go see him?”

Beth understood right away that Wayne’s suggestion was the way to handle it. She didn’t like the idea of sitting home doing nothing, yet what could she do anyway? That afternoon, she and Wayne took turns on the telephone, until they tracked down her brother. She even felt a tiny bit better after talking to the compassionate sounding chief nurse on her brother’s ward. Beth religiously called the nurses’ station on the ward twice a week after that.

---

Thomas languished in a coma for almost four months. While he was unconscious, he underwent three brain surgeries to repair some of the damage from the shrapnel in his temporal lobe, and to relieve the pressure from the swelling of his cerebellum. Lieutenant Bledsoe also received what the Army euphemistically called ‘facial reconstructive surgery’ while he was on the operating table for surgeries two and three. It was, in reality, plastic surgery to fix up some of the damage to his face caused by the exploding rocket.

The plastic surgery was at the insistence of the nursing staff on Bledsoe’s ward. Thomas Bledsoe became a cause for the nurses on Ward 4B. For some reason, they all felt compelled to do their absolute best for the forlorn young soldier who seemed so alone in the world. The doctor assigned to do the facial surgery had been in the Army for only a few weeks. He was too new to know that in effect, females ran the military health care system. Doctors came and went, but nurses and administrative staff, ninety-eight percent of whom were women, stayed and kept the system running.

So anyway, Doctor Irving Glickman received a copy of Thomas Bledsoe’s chart and instructions to consult with the patient for facial reconstruction. All that was fine, until Glickman saw that his patient was in a coma that bordered on being a persistent vegetative state. Glickman reported that fact to Colonel Hunter, the Chief of Surgery. Glickman’s argument was that it was a waste of the procedure because the patient might never regain consciousness. Hunter reviewed the chart and frowned when he saw that his counterpart, the Chief of Nursing, had actually requested the surgery.

“I don’t disagree with you Captain, but this operation was proposed by Colonel Phipps and I am not going to countermand her decision. If you really have a problem with this, you need to take it up with her,” Colonel Hunter said.

That is exactly what Glickman did. Ironically, he tracked down the Chief of Nursing as she was walking rounds on the same ward on which Bledsoe was a patient. In the medical world Glickman came from, nurses wielded much less power than they did in the military. With that mindset, he approached the three women standing in front of the nurses’ station.

He determined which one was Phipps by her insignia of rank. Using what he thought was proper protocol, he broke into their conversation.

“Excuse me Colonel Phipps, but I’d like to speak with you about the extraneous surgery your staff seems to feel qualified to recommend for this patient named Bledsoe,” he said.

Sarah Phipps was a small woman, standing five foot one and weighing one hundred and five pounds. She was forty-four years old, and on the fast track to become the Commander of the Army Nurse Corp, one of the two Brigadier General positions open to women in the Army. Sarah’s stature and delicate features made her look years younger than her actual age. The same traits also caused people to assume she was as delicate as she looked. Doctor Irving Glickman was about to find out that nothing was farther from the truth. Colonel Phipps looked up into Glickman’s face and skewered him with her piercing blue eyes.

“Really?” She said and then she turned towards one of the other nurses.

“Margie, you recommended the procedure, didn’t you?”

Margie was Major Margaret Wilcox. Major Wilcox was married to Lieutenant Colonel David Wilcox, the Chief Orthopedic Surgeon at the hospital. Wilcox was about a foot taller than her boss and a few inches taller than Glickman. Glickman’s eyebrows climbed into his hairline at the hostile tone of the nurse’s reply.

“Yes, Ma’am, I did. If the doctor had read the complete chart for Lieutenant Bledsoe, he’d have seen that the prognosis for regaining consciousness is very good. I thought doing the facial surgery while undergoing another procedure would save time, money and most importantly, discomfort for my patient later.”

Colonel Phipps thanked the Major and dismissed her and the other nurse. When her nurses were out of earshot, she fixed Glickman with that steely gaze again.

“You just used up your one free pass with me, Captain. In the future, you had better be more tactful and respectful with my nurses, or I’ll have you shipped off to somewhere cold, lonely and unpleasant ... got it?”

Glickman gulped and nodded contritely.

Four months after he was wounded and sixteen days after his third bout of surgery, Thomas Bledsoe woke up. He woke up in a panic, lying in a strange bed in a large room with three other head injury patients. Bledsoe was paralyzed on his left side and unable to speak. He had no memories past the age of twelve, and a mental age that corresponded to his memory. The paralysis and speech problems were a result of the trauma to his cerebellum; the rest was caused by the metal fragment that had penetrated his temporal lobe.

A year’s worth of physical and speech therapy had him walking and talking almost normally. Unfortunately, there was nothing anyone could do about his other problems.

Beth Taylor did not come out to San Antonio until two months after Thomas woke up. On the advice of the ward nurses, she forced herself to stay home until her brother could at least say hello to her. It was a strained meeting between the siblings, because Thomas was floundering over learning that his parents were both dead. His last memories were of being home with them, right before waking up in the hospital. Beth was shocked and saddened that her brother was so mentally challenged, but pleased that he at least remembered who she was. Thomas’s memories of his older sister were from when he was twelve. Back then, she was just another adult with whom he had to deal. They had not become really close until he was an adult himself. Beth returned to Florida with a heavy heart. It would be a strain for her to take care of him and her own children, yet he was family, so she was determined to make it work.

Seventeen months after he was wounded, First Lieutenant Thomas Bledsoe was discharged from the Army. He was officially classified as permanently medically retired. His departure from the hospital caused many mixed emotions, both for Bledsoe and for the staff of Ward 4B. Thomas was frightened at having to face a world in which he was at such a disadvantage, but determined to make his own way. The nurses, medics and orderlies on the ward were sorry to see him go. When the women discussed it among themselves, they were all amazed at the strong feelings they had for him. To a woman, they felt attracted to him as a man, yet protective of him as if he were a child.

As a long term patient in a military hospital, Lieutenant Bledsoe was assigned to the Medical Holding Company for command, control and administration of his records. The Medical Holding Company did a very thorough job of activating his VA disability benefits, computing his pay and allowances, and documenting his awards and decorations for his military records. The only hiccup in the process was the actual discharge day itself.

The captain who commanded the Medical Holding Company thought it would be easier on all involved if Bledsoe did not put on a uniform for his discharge. The Captain did not think it appropriate to put an officer’s uniform on a mentally challenged man with the intellect of a twelve year old. The plan was to simply give him his awards, final pay and retirement paperwork, and send him home to his family in Florida.

It was a plan that didn’t stand a snowballs chance in hell when the nurses on Ward 4B got wind of it. Before the flag was lowered on that same day, Colonel Phipps met with the Brigadier General who commanded the hospital. The upshot of the conversation was that First Lieutenant Thomas Bledsoe, wearing a khaki uniform, was retired during a ceremony on the hospital parade field. During the ceremony, he was presented with the Silver Star and Purple Heart he earned on hill 887.

After the ceremony, three of the nurses drove Thomas down to the bus station and waited with him as he purchased a one-way ticket to his sleepy little seaside hometown of Palmdale, Florida. Thomas was taking the bus because it was medically inadvisable for him to fly. The ticket he purchased required he change buses in Dallas, and again in Jacksonville, but the nurses had confidence in his ability to do that. Thomas’s mind was slow, but he was very responsible, and he was excellent at following directions.

That, my friends, should have been the end of the story. You’ve surely heard these sad tales before where only two things seem to happen. In one, Thomas goes back to his hometown and moves in with his sister. He finds a little job and carves out an existence for himself that brings him some limited happiness and satisfaction. In the other, he becomes just another tossed aside mentally deficient veteran living in a cardboard box under an overpass. Either way, it should have been the end, but it wasn’t, and the fault lay squarely with Louis L’Amour.

See, Thomas Bledsoe’s brain had reverted back to the age of twelve, complete with an encyclopedic knowledge of cowboy lore, as espoused by his favorite writer, Louis L’Amour. L’Amour’s tales of the old west fired young Tom’s imagination from the age of ten, until he reached puberty and discovered girls. Now here he was in Texas, the center of the cowboys’ universe. Yes, he planned on eventually going home, he’d promised too after all, but who could blame him if he made a stop or two on the way? That was Thomas’s mindset, when the bus pulled into a small station about half way to Dallas.

“Welcome to Brantley - the Cowboy Capital of Texas,” Thomas read out loud...”Perfect,” he said to himself as he stood on the curb with his duffle bag and watched the Greyhound pull away...

Chapter 2

Tommy effortlessly tossed the fifty pound sack of Purina fortified feedlot grain onto the pallet resting on the forklift’s blades. Then he pulled the order ticket from the bib of his denim apron and compared the number of sacks on the pallet to the number on the ticket. The count matched, so he took his pen out of his shirt pocket and carefully made a check mark next to feedlot grain. The grain was the last item on the ticket, so Tommy climbed onto the forklift and carefully maneuvered it through the warehouse to loading dock two.

Driving the forklift was something Tommy had been doing for only a couple of weeks. He was extremely proud that Mister Fricke, the owner of Brantley Feed and Seed, taught him how and then trusted him enough to let him drive it unsupervised.

A mud splattered Silverado pickup truck was backed up to loading dock two. Tommy raised the blades and inched the pallet forward until it was suspended over the bed of the truck before he turned off the forklift. He climbed out of the driver’s seat and hopped into the back of the truck. From the truck bed, he plucked the bags of grain, oats and cracked corn off the pallet, and stacked them neatly between the wheel wells.

When Tommy finished loading the grain, Horace Fisher, the owner of the truck, stepped out of the cab with his hand extended.

“Good job, Tommy, tell your stingy boss I said he needs to give you a raise,” Fisher said jovially.

Tommy only hesitated a second as he shook Fisher’s hand.

“I’ll tell him that right away, Mister Fisher,” Tommy replied with a grin of his own.

Tommy had hesitated before answering Fisher, because he was trying to figure out if Horace was joshing him or not. Tommy still had problems with figuring out when adults were serious or just kidding around.

Tommy checked the time on his cheap plastic Timex watch as Fisher drove off. It was five minutes before five in the afternoon, and Brantley Feed and Seed closed at five. Tommy pulled down both loading dock overhead doors, parked the forklift and disconnected the propane tank. Then he grabbed a broom and quickly cleaned up around the stacks of feed from which he’d been pulling bags. He swept everything up into a pile, scooped up the pile with a coal shovel, then dumped the sweepings into a twenty gallon trash can. Tomorrow, Mister Fricke would take the can home and scatter the dirt and feed mix around his chicken coop. Mister Fricke did not waste anything.

It was five after by the time Tommy pulled off his apron, hung it in his wall locker and picked a few stray hay straws off his Levis. He walked across the warehouse and passed through a double set of swinging doors into the showroom, then down a short hall to Mister Fricke’s office. It was Friday, and this particular Friday was payday.

Mister Fricke waved Tommy into the office and pointed to the chair beside his desk while he finished taking a telephone order. Before he could sit down, the occupant of the other desk in the room stood up and hugged Tommy’s neck. Fricke shot the breeze with his customer for another minute or two, before hanging up the phone. He picked a couple of envelopes off his desk blotter and handed one of them to Tommy.

“You are the best worker I’ve ever had, Tommy, business has picked up since you’ve been here, and much of that is because of how good you treat folks. The raise is me and Missus Rita’s way of thanking you. Oh, and here is your customer service bonus, I had some good reports on you this week,” Fricke said, handing over the other envelope.

The customer service bonus was only seven dollars, and was really just money people had given Fricke for Tommy, because Tommy absolutely refused to accept tips for doing what he was already getting paid to do.

Rita Fricke beamed him a big smile and ruffled his hair. Harold and Rita Fricke, for all practical purposes, adopted Tommy three months ago, when he showed up with the help wanted sign in his hand that Harold had just put on the outside of the front door. Harold Fricke had been leery about hiring the young man because of the halting way he spoke. Rita Fricke had no such problem, as everything about Tommy and the story he told them tugged at her heart strings. Tommy ended up filling a big void in their lives, since their own children had grown up and moved off to Dallas and Houston.

Tommy proved to be a tireless worker who needed little supervision. Harold or Rita simple gave him a list of things they wanted done, and Tommy made it happen. After he learned how the warehouse worked, Tommy started taking the initiative and the daily list grew shorter. Tommy also learned about the feed store’s products and customers. His cheerful good nature was infectious.

Tommy walked out of the Feed and Seed, crossed the street, doffed his brown straw Stetson hat and entered the Brantley Savings and Loan Bank. He stopped at one of the courtesy tables and carefully filled out his deposit slip, then stood patiently in one of the teller lines. The bank stayed open until six on Friday evenings, and did a brisk business. The line Tommy was in wasn’t the shortest, but the teller at the window was his landlady and mother of his best friend. Her name was Betty Lou Grimes.

“Good afternoon Mister Bledsoe, it slipped my mind that today was your payday,” Betty Lou said with a smile.

“Good afternoon to you too, Missus Grimes,” Tommy said, barely stuttering at all.

Tommy loved the way that his friend Bucky’s mother talked to him. She never talked down to him or treated him like he was a dummy. Bucky didn’t either, for that matter, but some other people sure did, including Bucky’s older step sister. Of course, she never did it around Bucky or his Mom, and Tommy never ratted her out for it. How could he tattle on her when he was totally in love with the beautiful older girl?

Tommy completed his transaction at the bank and headed home. It was only a couple of blocks to the Grimes’s house over on Spring Street. In 1969, in the sleepy little town of Brantley, Texas, pretty much everything was only a few blocks away.

Tom whistled the new Merle Haggard song that he’d been hearing on the radio lately as he walked home. He liked to whistle or sing, because the rhythm of it came effortlessly, unlike his speech. Tommy also reflected on the last three months as he swung down the sidewalk. Even a dummy like him knew how lucky he was when he jumped off that Greyhound bus in front of the Brantley Post Office. It seemed that good things just kept happening to him here.

For instance, on the bulletin board at the post office, he found a three by five index card with a neatly typed message. The card said:

Basement room to let.

400 square feet with private bath & entrance.

$25 weekly-paid in advance.

Apply in person to Mrs. Grimes, 27 Spring Street.

Tommy pulled the card off the bulletin board, and after having to ask for directions twice, finally found the modest two-story home. When he rang the bell, the door was answered by a boy near his own mental age. The boy limped and had a brace attached to his right shoe that disappeared up his trouser leg. The brace was almost exactly like the one Tommy had worn for seven months when he first regained consciousness.

---

Back at Brantley Savings and Loan, Betty Lou was thinking along the same lines as she reconciled her drawer. Her spontaneous decision to take in the shy and soft-spoken young man was so completely out of character for her, that it defied logic. As a fairly young and attractive widow, she had always been very careful she didn’t provide grist for the gossip mill. In fact, the boarder before Tommy had been a sixty-six year old spinster. At first there were some raised eyebrows, but once her neighbors met Tommy, their tune immediately changed. Tommy Bledsoe’s indomitable spirit and gentle good nature in the face of all his adversity, won most folks over in one meeting.

Then there was the positive effect Tommy had on her son, Bucky. Well, his real name was Richard James Grimes, Junior, but Bucky was the nickname his father hung on him while he was still in the womb. Bucky had contracted polio at the age of two. As polio went, it was a mild case, but that was a moot point to a young boy who could only walk with the aid of a heavy duty brace. Bucky couldn’t do most of the things boys his age did, so he became an unhappy loner. Tommy cured him of that attitude in less than a week. It was hard to feel sorry for yourself when you were exposed to a person who was worse off, but didn’t let it get them down.

Betty Lou had been delighted when the Frickes took a chance and hired Tommy down at the feed store. Betty Lou and Rita talked almost every day when Rita came in to do the store’s banking. She was as proud as if it were Bucky that Rita was bragging about. And why not? After all, she and Bucky considered him a member of the family within a week of his arrival. Tommy started eating every meal with them. He insisted on paying an extra fifteen dollars a week to help with the food. Also, at Tommy’s insistence, she gave him chores like Bucky had. To Tommy, anything that gave him responsibility was a victory for him over those who thought he was hopelessly retarded.

The only friction that Tommy caused in the Grimes household was with Betty Lou’s step-daughter, Regina. Regina was her deceased husband’s daughter by his first wife. When Richard divorced his ex for running around on him, the ex was awarded custody of their infant daughter. When Regina was ten, the ex suddenly decided a child was too much trouble, so she gave Richard custody and disappeared. Regina was sixteen now, and a beautiful young lady. Unfortunately, she was also a stuck up snob. She oscillated between being embarrassed by Tommy, to lording it over him as if he were a servant. Betty Lou kept a close eye on Regina, so she didn’t try to take advantage of Tommy. She knew that Tommy secretly mooned over Regina; he was too guileless to hide it.

For all his difficulties - being a twelve year old boy in a twenty-four year old body - Tommy was as adaptable as a chameleon. He was talking and acting as if he’d been born and raised in Brantley by the end of his second month in town. If you didn’t know him and you saw him walking down the street, you’d swear he was a cowboy fresh off the ranch.

---

Yes, Tommy was doing even better than he had expected in his most optimistic twelve-year-old moments. But there had been a few bumps along the way. One of those bumps was his sister. Beth was very concerned when Tommy called her and said he was staying in Texas for a while. After that call, Beth had tried to find a way to force him to return to his childhood home in Palmdale, Florida. She called the McCulloch County Sheriff, the Department of Veteran Affairs, and even Major Wilcox from Ward 4B at Brooke Army Medical Center. The VA determined that he was competent enough to make his own decisions. The sheriff knew Tommy was in excellent hands with Betty Lou Grimes and the Frickes.

It was a shock to Margie Wilcox to find that Tommy had jumped ship. The very next Saturday, she gathered up a young nurse new to the ward and drove up to Brantley to personally check on Tommy. She had a year and a half invested on ex-Lieutenant Bledsoe, and he was a most special case to her.

Tommy only worked half a day on Saturday, so he was at home when the two nurses rang Betty Lou Grimes’s doorbell that Saturday afternoon. Regina answered the door and left the women standing on the porch while she called for Tommy.

“Some one’s at the door for you, Tommy. I think they are here to take you away,” she yelled before flouncing into the living room.

Tommy came up the stairs from the basement with Bucky right behind him. At the same time, Betty Lou came dashing in from the kitchen. Regina’s teasing hadn’t really affected Tommy, but it had Betty Lou’s undivided attention. She was just about to say something when Tommy gave a ‘whoop’ and dashed out onto the porch.

The young nurse with Major Wilcox, Second Lieutenant Barbara Owens, went moon-eyed when a big handsome cowboy burst out the door. Her eyes grew even bigger when he snatched the Major off the ground in a big bear hug and spun her around. Introductions were sorted out and the two nurses ended up having a very pleasant visit with Betty Lou as she filled them in on how Tommy was doing. By the time the nurses bid Tommy, Betty Lou and her family goodbye, Margie Wilcox was convinced that Tommy was in the right place. She told her young protégé just that as they drove off.

“I think Tommy will do even better here than with his sister. I think his sister is too worried about something happening to him to let him blossom as he seems to be doing here,” Wilcox mused.

Lieutenant Owens nodded her agreement.

“You are probably right about that. One thing I know for sure, though, is that’s a terrible waste of a fine looking man.”

Margie snorted in laughter.

“Take it from someone who has probably given him fifty sponge baths. It is a waste of a whole lot of good man.”

---

The second bump in the road was actually caused by someone taking advantage of Tommy’s immaturity and trusting nature. That someone was a no account cowhand named Walter ‘Shifty’ Luznar. Luznar was at the bank one payday Friday, and saw Tommy take a hundred dollars cash when he deposited his check. Since he just spent his last thirty dollars on a money order to pay a traffic fine he had hanging over his head, Shifty decided on the spot that he was just the person to help the dimwit spend all that cash.

Luznar hustled after Tommy as he left the bank and stopped him out on the sidewalk.

“Hey, Tommy Boy, rein it in for a minute,” Luznar twanged.

Tommy turned around and smiled when he saw it was a cowboy he recognized from the Trevino Ranch.

“Howdy Mister Luzzer,” Tommy chirped happily.

Shifty kept the smile plastered on his face, even though it sounded as if the simpleton called him a loser.

“That’s Luz-nar, boy; but hell, we’re friends, right? So call me ‘Walt.’”

It only took a few minutes for fast talking Shifty to convince Tommy that it was a great idea for the two friends to head over to Duke’s Place and shoot some pool. Tommy called home as soon as he arrived at Duke’s. In the normal order of things, that should have ended Tommy’s evening, because Betty Lou would have chivvied him home pronto. However, at that moment in time, Betty Lou was headed up Highway 271 with two fellow tellers from the bank. The three women were going to Brownwood to see the new Charlton Heston movie, Planet of the Apes. Regina was left in charge of the house, Betty Lou didn’t dare say she was baby-sitting, or the boys would have had a fit.

Whatever Betty Lou called it, the results for Regina were the same. She was stuck home with her brother and his creepy idiot friend. Not only that, but she had to break a date with the dreamboat quarterback of the Brantley High School Panthers to do it. Regina was feeling sorry for herself and mad at the world when Tommy called.

“Gina, I’m goofing off with some friends,” Tommy said.

“It’s Regina to you, stupid. And no one cares where you are, anyway,” Regina replied as she slammed down the phone.

So you can pretty much imagine how the evening went. Luznar poured the beer into Tommy while hustling the young man shooting pool. Tommy was having a grand old time, happily stupefied after only three beers.

About nine o’clock that night, Dooley Parker slipped into Duke’s Place to pick up a pouch of Red Man. Dooley was checking out the crowd while he waited for old man Duke to notice him, when he saw his good friend Harold Fricke’s hired man. Tommy was drunker than a hootie owl, sitting at a table with some cowboy and two rough looking women. Dooley knew all about Tommy and liked the boy, so he dropped a dime in the payphone and called Fricke’s house. Rita Fricke answered the phone, because Harold was down at the VFW hall, calling bingo.

To say the news Dooley conveyed angered Rita Fricke was an understatement of Titanic proportions. Rita pressed the buttons on the handset cradle atop the phone to break her connection with Dooley, then she spun Betty Lou’s number on the rotary dial. Regina told Rita that her mother was at the movies in Brownwood, and wouldn’t be in until after ten. She also said that Tommy was off with his friends somewhere. Rita mentally tsk tsked the girls rudeness before dialing the VFW hall. Rita told the VFW Post’s Sergeant at Arms what was happening, and told him to tell Harold that she was on her way to Duke’s.

Duke’s Place was a rough and tumble cowboy bar. Bob Duke let his patrons do pretty much as they pleased, as long as it wasn’t something that would attract the law. Duke didn’t see anything wrong with the conduct of Shifty and his boisterous friends, so he kept selling them beer and changing their dollar bills to quarters for the pool table and jukebox. As a matter of fact, that was just what Duke was doing when a very concerned Rita Fricke pushed through the door.

Rita’s eyes swept around the room, then narrowed to tiny slits when she saw sweet innocent Tommy sitting at a table with a Lone Star long neck in his hand and a skinny, forty-year-old, teased up, bottle blonde hussy perched daintily on his knee. Rita’s mandibles crunched together and her jaw muscles knotted up when she saw Walter Luznar sitting at the table with an almost identical floozy. Rita spun on her heels and hot footed it back out to the feed and seed’s pickup truck. She yanked open the drivers door, folded the seat back forward and extracted a mail order Sears and Roebuck, single shot, four-ten shotgun from a rifle rack mounted in the rear window. Rita broke open the barrel and plucked three loose rounds from the floor board. She stuffed a shell in the chamber, then expertly flipped the gun closed as she walked back across the dirt parking lot towards Duke’s front door.

Rita Fricke was a medium sized woman in her middle forties. That night she was wearing a blue gingham dress with a white cardigan buttoned over it. Her brown hair had a few strands of grey, but her face was surprisingly youthful. To go with her good looks, Rita was normally a quiet and cheerful person. She’d been born and raised in Brantley, so most everyone knew her. However, most folks knew that sweet and proper Rita was ruthless, fearless and mean as a snake when it came to the well being of her family. Her second entrance drew much more attention than the first as she kicked the door open and marched in, toting the shotgun at port arms.

Who knows what might have happened if Harold Fricke and two of his fellow VFW members hadn’t tumbled through the door a few seconds behind Rita. Harold managed to talk Rita out of the shotgun, but there was no way of stopping her from confronting Luznar and dragging Tommy out of the bar. Harold sighed and handed the shotgun to Mister Duke’s.

“Hang on to this for me, Bob. I’ll pick it up tomorrow,” Harold told Duke.

Rita, Howard and the two VFW men all walked back to the pool table. Tommy gave them a lop-sided grin of recognition when they walked up.

“Hello, Miz Rita and Mister Harold! Did you come in to shoot pool with me?” Tommy slurred drunkenly.

Rita gave him a gentle smile and shook her head.

“No, Tommy, we came to take you home. Tomorrow is a work day, remember?”

Tommy muttered unintelligibly and started to stand up. The woman sitting on his lap stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“I have my car here, Tommy, so I can take you home a little later,” she said.

Rita gave the woman a dirty look.

“Oh no, Honey, he is leaving with us. I suggest you get off his lap and make yourself scarce, before I lose what little grip I have on my temper and snatch you bald-headed,” Rita said.

The woman’s face blanched, and she hopped off Tommy’s knee as if someone jabbed her with a cattle prod. She motioned to the other woman and they both hurried to the ladies room. Rita helped Tommy to his feet and walked the unsteady young man out of the bar. She left Walter Luznar for Harold and his buddies to sort out.

Walter Luznar also had the sudden urge to visit the little boys’ room, when he saw the looks on the faces of Fricke and his pals. Shifty knew Harold Fricke from down at the feed store. Fricke was about six feet tall and stoutly built from years of tossing around feed sacks. The second man, a wiry, not very tall fellow with a ruddy complexion, Luznar did not know. He knew the third man, though, and that’s why the urge to pee came on him. See, the third fellow was Benjamin Amos Crawford, the toughest hombre in at least four counties. Crawford was about six foot six and weighed almost three hundred pounds. He was barrel chested, had muscular arms bigger than Luznar’s thighs, and hands the size of a twenty pound Virginia ham. At the moment, one of those big paws was resting heavily on Shifty’s shoulder as Harold spoke.

“Give me my boy’s money, Luznar. I ain’t asking but once.”

Luznar gulped and nodded emphatically.

“Sure Mister Fricke, I was just holding it for him anyway,” Luznar said as he pulled a wad of crumpled up bills from his pocket.

Harold took the money and counted it. There were thirty seven dollars in the pile. Harold nodded to the smaller man.

“Make sure that’s all he has, Ramon.”

Ramon snapped open a leather case on his belt and pulled out a brass bound, rosewood handled Buck folding knife. He flicked open the knife one handed, and with a lightning fast motion, cut off the button that held the flap closed on Luznar’s shirt pocket. Luznar sat there dumbfounded as Ramon reached into the pocket and pulled out a ten dollar bill. Harold took the money and hustled after Rita and Tommy, while Ben Crawford and Ramon Salazar escorted a babbling Shifty Luznar out of the bar.

Harold drove the feed store’s pickup truck over to Betty Lou’s house. Rita rode in the passenger seat as Tommy slept, sprawled out in the cargo box. The Frickes parked in the driveway and waited until Betty Lou returned home. Harold teased Rita about busting into the bar with a shotgun. Now that she was over being angry, Rita was embarrassed about it.

“I’ll bet everyone in church will know about it by Sunday morning,” she moaned.

---

The third incident was much more serious than the first two, although according to Tommy, it was worth all that happened. The incident occurred two weeks after the episode with Shifty Luznar. It happened at noon on a Wednesday while Harold and Rita were having lunch at the Bluebonnet Diner. On the second Wednesday of the month, liver and onions was the lunch special at the Bluebonnet.

Tommy and Juan Luna were holding down the fort while the Frickes were at the diner. Juan was the store’s delivery driver. Tommy was helping Juan load a big order which was scheduled for delivery that afternoon. Tommy was checking off the loading ticket while Juan was out in his car eating, when a truck from the Y Knot Ranch backed into loading dock one. In the back of the truck was a young, nondescript, medium sized, mustard yellow dog. The dog wore a choke chain attached to a short piece of rope that was tied to the side of the truck bed. A cowboy climbed out of the cab and called out to Tommy.

“Hey, you got something for the Y Knot?”

Before Tommy could answer, one of the cats that scavenged around the store walked by the truck, and the dog jumped out of the truck after it. The problem was that the rope was too short for the dog to reach the ground. It hung there, its paws scrabbling for purchase against the side of the truck. Tommy was horrified when the cowboy started cursing and kicking the dangling dog instead of helping it. Finally, Tommy jumped off the dock and knocked the cowboy off his feet. With the cowboy out of the way, Tommy heaved the gasping dog back into the truck.

The ill-natured cowboy came off the asphalt swinging. Tommy was bigger and stronger than the cowboy, but only had the experiences of a twelve-year-old. Although he was game and got in a couple of solid licks, the cowboy was whipping him pretty good. When Tommy was too dizzy to get back up, the cowboy untied the dog and threw it out of the truck.

“You like him that much, you can have the piece of shit,” the cowboy snarled as he climbed back into the cab.

Tommy was trying to get to his feet, the yellow dog licking his face, when Harold and Rita came screeching up in Rita’s 64 Falcon convertible. Rita had already raised two rambunctious boys, so she was no stranger to scrapes and bruises. She had more trouble keeping Harold from running off to do something stupid to the cowboy, than she had treating Tommy. Rita wanted Tommy to stay in the office so she could keep an eye on him. He balked about it until she allowed him to bring the dog with him.

Tommy was crazy about that dog and the yellow dog returned the sentiment. Tommy named him Rex, because that was the name of the magnificent German Shepherd whose picture adorned the bags of Purina Dog Chow. There was nothing faintly regal about the young dog, but you sure couldn’t prove that to Tommy. Tommy bought Rex a regular black leather collar and tossed the choke chain into the trash. He also bought a leash, but never had to use it. Rex turned out to be much smarter than he looked. It was uncanny the way he seemed to understand everything Tommy said to him. From that first day on, Rex and Tommy were inseparable.

So you can see that even with the rough spots, Tommy was living as good a life as was possible, given his circumstances. Even Tommy’s sister Beth grudgingly agreed to that. Everyone was proud of Tommy and pleased at the way he had adapted. Tommy probably would have lived a perfectly adequate life, had he not met Ruth Silverman, the most disliked woman in McCulloch County.

Ruth Silverman discovered what all the experts at Brooke Medical Center had over looked. Yes, the shrapnel that ripped through Thomas Bledsoe’s brain housing had erased anything that had happened to him after the age of twelve. The shrapnel and surgeries to remove it had also laid waste to Bledsoe’s ability to learn, at least in the conventional manner. Yet the affected area was only about fifteen percent of his brain. The other eighty-five percent was just limping along and getting by. To Ruth Silverman, that was unacceptable.

Chapter 3

Ruth Silverman was the head librarian at the Brantley Public Library. She was everything that self-respecting Texans in the nineteen-sixties loathed: she was a know-it-all, snobby, New York, liberal, Jew feminist. She was head librarian because she’d been foisted on the long suffering citizens of Brantley as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society initiative. The federal government offered to expand and update the Brantley library and even pay for a head librarian, provided the person was who the Department of Education recommended. The cash-strapped county government jumped at the chance and, viola ... Ruth Silverman shows up on their doorstep, three-year contract firmly in place.

Ruth was no better disposed towards the citizens of McCulloch County than they were to her. When she eschewed the Peace Corp for its domestic equivalent, the VISTA program (Volunteers in Service to America), she thought she would be helping disadvantaged Appalachian children learn to read. Instead, she ended up checking out books to a bunch of hardheaded, strong willed ranchers and farmers.

In the fifteen months Ruth had been in charge of the library, she had done little to improve people’s opinion of her. She constantly battled the county council and school board about their restricted books list. She was aloof while performing her duties, and unfriendly when she was not working. For her part, Ruth did not much care what kind of impression she made. Her complete focus was on making her library the best in the state. To that end, she worked tirelessly, sometimes as many as seventy hours a week to cover for not having enough staff.

That particular Saturday afternoon was one of those times she had to work extra hours. Mrs Purdy, the middle-aged woman who normally worked Saturdays from nine to three, was at her daughters wedding. So Ruth was sitting at the circulation desk when a gaggle of young teens came bustling through the door. As the youths were swarming the teen book section, a man she figured to be in his mid to late twenties, the same age as she, walked in. Ruth frowned when she saw the man walk directly towards the youngsters. She frowned because she had just finished reading a cautionary article in The American Library Journal. The article was all about a new type of sexual deviants who used the library as a fishing ground for young boys.

Ruth’s suspicions were further heightened when the man seemed to focus on a particular boy. The boy was small in stature and walked with a pronounced limp. Ruth stood up and quickly followed when the man and boy disappeared into the stacks. Ruth did not find the pair right off, because they turned the opposite way she figured they would. Instead of finding them in teen and children’s (young adult fiction, alphabetical by author) books, she found them in arts and artists (Dewey decimal classification 700). Ruth knew her instincts were correct when the man appeared to be pointing to a picture in a coffee table art book titled The Sensuous Nudes of Peter Paul Rubens.

Tommy really liked the library, even without the nudie picture book. He couldn’t believe it took him so long to agree to go there with Bucky. He would find out where the western story books were located, and maybe check one out as soon as Bucky finished showing him the pictures of naked ladies. The pictures were great; they were making his tallywhacker hard. Bucky was showing him a picture where the woman’s naked breasts were really big, when someone suddenly cleared their throat. Both boys looked up quickly, and blanched at the stern looking woman standing in front of them. Bucky dropped the book as if it were radio active. The woman pointed at Bucky.

“Pick that up, put it back on the shelf and go home,” she ordered.

Bucky gulped, nodded and with trembling hands, put the book away. As soon as the tome slid into its slot, Bucky hustled out the door.

When the young boy was safely out of the library, Ruth turned her baleful glare on Tommy.

“Okay, you, what are you doing here?” Ruth asked in her rudest New York voice.

The mean acting woman had Tommy quaking in his boots. The fear caused Tommy to lose the ability to speak. He opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out. He licked his lips and tried again.

Ruth took the man’s discomfort and silence as an admission of guilt.

“Cat got your tongue? Doesn’t matter, because I think I had better let the sheriff handle this,” she hissed.

Her statement put Tommy in even more of a panic. She was calling the sheriff on him because he was looking at naked pictures. He just knew he was going to prison. He gave a strangled moan and started sobbing. Ruth was nonplussed by the wailing sobs from the grown man, and flinched back a step. The other two kids that came into the library with Bucky were edging towards the entry door, trying to leave unnoticed.

That was the tableau that greeted Betty Lou Grimes when she stormed through the door, Bucky holding tightly to her hand. Betty Lou had been across the street at the Piggly Wiggly. She had been loading her groceries into her car when her distraught son ran up and told her about the librarian. When Betty Lou came in, the other kids hightailed it out the door.

Ruth recognized the woman as one of the tellers at the Brantley bank. She felt a flush of pride that she had probably saved the woman’s child from molestation. However, Betty Lou’s reaction was anything but grateful.

“What did you do to him?” Betty Lou yelled as she stomped towards Tommy and the librarian.

The angry look the woman was directing at her caused Ruth a few seconds confusion.

“I stopped him from luring your son into who knows what deviant behavior,” Ruth primly replied.

Betty Lou stopped dead in her tracts, and if possible, she became even angrier. She gritted her teeth and willed herself to calm down for the boys’ sake. She managed to put on a soothing smile and addressed Tommy.

“Everything is alright, Tommy. You are not in any trouble. Why don’t you and Bucky go outside and play with Rex while I have a little talk with the librarian.”

Tommy’s face took on a look of relief so heartfelt, it was almost comical. He still could not control his speech, so he jerked his head up and down and bolted for the door.

As soon as the door swung closed behind Tommy and Bucky, the smile dropped off Betty Lou’s face, and she rounded on Ruth. She was still madder than hell, but she had control of herself now.

“Explain yourself, Miss Silverman,” she snapped.

Ruth cited the magazine article and regurgitated her suspicions about the grown man’s conduct. She even threw in her perception that the man had as much as admitted it by the way he reacted when confronted.

Betty Lou looked at Ruth as if the librarian was insane.

“That man is a highly decorated former Army Officer. He suffered a serious brain injury in Vietnam, and is mentally the same age as my son. Yet, even with that against him, he still has a job and is one of the nicest people you will ever meet. He is also my ward, and my son’s very best friend. You have done a cruel and hurtful thing here, today.”

Betty Lou spun on her heels and stalked out of the library before Ruth could say another word. Ruth could actually feel the color drain from her face as she watched Betty Lou’s retreating back. Good Lord, what had she done?

Tommy was over the incident at the library by late Saturday afternoon. He was in the backyard, giving Rex a bath and thinking about supper. It being Saturday meant that Betty Lou was cooking Bucky and Tommy’s favorite meal, chicken fried steak, lumpy mashed potatoes, biscuits and gravy. Tommy had just finished rinsing the flea shampoo off the incredible Rex, when Regina came out the back door.

“Someone is here to see you, Creep,” she said.

Tommy looked perplexed.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“The woman from the library, she and mom are in the parlor talking. Why are you wasting your time on that mutt? He’ll never be anything except ugly and stupid, just like you.”

Regina recoiled at the look Tommy shot her and she cringed when he spoke.

“I don’t know why I ever thought you were attractive, because you are nothing but a vindictive bitch,” he snapped angrily.

Regina turned and fled into the house while Tommy finished toweling Rex. Regina was stunned at Tommy’s steely voice and hateful choice of words. Actually, Tommy was stunned too. The words just popped out of his head and into his mouth. As he sat and thought about it, he wasn’t even sure what ‘vindictive’ meant. He knew it was mean to call her the b-word, but she was even meaner for calling Rex ugly and stupid. Tommy sighed and walked into the back door with Rex. He did not know what the library lady wanted, but with Betty Lou in the house, he knew he was safe.

Ruth Silverman was seated on an overstuffed Chesterfield in Betty Lou’s parlor, the one room in the house reserved for company. Betty Lou was sitting on the matching sofa. Ruth had come to the house on Spring Street to apologize to Tommy. She had found Betty Lou Grimes’s phone number and address in the master card file at the library. Ruth had called Betty Lou an hour ago to apologize, and to ascertain Tommy’s last name. Betty Lou accepted the heartfelt apology and agreed completely with what the librarian wanted to do.

Tommy walked into the parlor as the two women were chatting. The room was off limits to Rex, so the yellow dog stopped and sat down in the doorway. Tommy hesitated for a second, and then walked over to where the librarian was sitting. Tommy held out his hand, palm turned slightly to the side like his mama taught him.

“Good evening, Ma’am, my name is Tommy Bledsoe,” he said.

Tommy’s parents had been sticklers on the subject of manners. As a result, politeness was ingrained with Tommy. Ruth Silverman’s eyebrows rose in surprise at the gesture, but she lightly pressed her hand into his. Betty Lou beamed in pride from her perch on the sofa.

“Ruth Silverman, and I am pleased to meet you,” Ruth formally replied.

Tommy dropped her hand and waved towards Rex.

“This is my dog Rex, he’s not allowed in here even when he is clean. Say hello to Miss Silverman, Rex.”

Rex gave a woof and thumped his tail on the floor.

Ruth smiled at the dog, her smile an event as rare as snow in July, then turned her attention back to Tommy.

“Mister Bledsoe, I am so sorry about how I acted today, it was rude and it was wrong. Please know that it will never happen again, and that you are welcome at the library anytime. Because you left before you could get your library card, I made one for you,” she said as she handed him the card with his name typed on it.

It was Tommy’s turn to smile as he took the card and read it.

“You mean I can check out books all by myself?” he asked in disbelief.

When Ruth replied yes, Tommy thanked her profusely and proudly put the card in his wallet with his military retired ID and his social security card. The card meant more to Tommy than the privileges it granted him at the library. To Tommy, the card was another accomplishment that proved he wasn’t as stupid as people thought.

As a result of that fateful Saturday, Betty Lou and Ruth became friends; Tommy started to use the library regularly, and Regina started treating Tommy worse than ever. However, the most important result of all was that Tommy came into contact with Ruth Silverman at least two or three times a week.

Tommy loved the library, because it was always peaceful, with no Regina and her mean friends tormenting him, or even worse, making fun of Rex. The library had a great reading room with comfortable chairs, but most important, they had a slew of Louis L’Amour abridged novels for young adults.

---

The second rebirth of Thomas Bledsoe began unremarkably on a Wednesday evening in September, almost exactly two years after he was wounded. Tommy was at the library, sitting at a table reading, while his best friend Bucky was researching a term paper for his seventh grade Texas History class. Tommy finished his book and stood up to return it to the shelves, when Ruth Silverman came strolling by.

“Didn’t enjoy the book Thomas?” she inquired.

Tommy shook his head.

“I enjoyed it just fine, I just finished with it, so I’m going to get another one. Lately, these books aren’t as hard to read as they were before,” Tommy replied.

Ruth took a look at the book and nodded.

“These books have been heavily edited to make them easy for young people to read. Why don’t you grab one from the regular fiction section?”

Tommy looked at her and shook his head again.

“I don’t think I can read one of those big books. I’m not smart enough on account of my injury and all,” he said softly and sadly.

Ruth nodded that she understood, but something made her not want to give up on the idea so easily.

“That might be, but how will you know for sure if you don’t try? Why don’t you go pick out a book and bring it to my desk, and we’ll see how you do?”

Tommy was nervous about it, but he couldn’t figure out a way to avoid the librarian’s suggestion. He walked into the fiction section, and found a book by Zane Grey, titled: Lone Star Ranger. He walked up to the circulation desk and sat in the chair next to the desk. Ruth gave him an encouraging smile.

“Read the book for your enjoyment, Tommy. This is not some sort of test and you don’t have to read aloud. If you have difficulty with a word or concept, stop and we’ll talk about it. Okay?”

Tommy sat down and to his amazement, the book was terrific. It was about Texas Rangers, one of his all time favorite subjects. He quickly read ten pages and had found only one word he was unfamiliar with or couldn’t figure out.

“Miss Ruth, what does laconic mean?” he asked.

Ruth smiled and pushed a dictionary towards him. Tommy shot her an embarrassed grin and flipped open the Webster’s. Ruth went about her normal duties as Tommy sat beside her, lost in his book. Every once in a while, she’d sneak a peek at him as he read. She hid a small smile as she watched his expression change with the action in the book. He’d smile or frown or look excited, based on the action he was reading. When he finished the first chapter, he asked Ruth if he could check the book out and read it at home.

Ruth took the three by five card out of its sleeve on the inside back cover of the book. She stamped the sleeve with the date the book was due back, and then she filled out and filed the card itself. When she finished the checkout procedure, she asked Tommy about something she was very curious about.

“Tommy, when the doctors tested you to see how much you knew, did they say anything about your ability to learn?”

Tommy squeezed his eyes shut and tried to remember what the doctor had said. When he remembered, he quickly nodded his head.

“Yes, Ma’am. Doctor Giles, the brain doctor, said the metal thing that went into my head destroyed a bunch of my brains, and that was why I was slow. He said the metal erased everything that I’d learned after the age of twelve, and he said the damage was bad enough that I was probably always going to be stuck there.”

Ruth tried to mask her growing excitement. She chose her next words carefully.

“Yet, you have learned many new things since you’ve lived in Brantley, haven’t you?” she prodded.

Tommy thought about the last seven months and had to agree. At work in the feed store, he’d learned all sorts of things.

“Yes, Ma’am,” he said. “I even learned how to drive a forklift.”

Ruth nodded happily and patted Tommy’s arm.

“Exactly. So if you can learn things, you aren’t really retarded, you are just mentally and socially under developed. I think a tutor could help you with the first, and your friends and family can help with the latter.”

Tommy thought about what Miss Ruth had said for the rest of that night and all of the next day. As soon as he finished work for the day, he raced over to the library to speak with her again. He had an idea of what he wanted to do and he was excited about it.

The first part, finding a tutor, was very easy, because the best candidate worked right there in the Library three evenings a week. Her name was Becky Deirdorf. Becky had graduated with honors from McCulloch County High School, and was working for a year to earn enough money to enter nursing school the next Fall. Becky also worked four days a week at the Bluebonnet Diner. Becky was almost painfully shy, but jumped at the chance to earn a few extra dollars tutoring Tommy. She quoted him the same rate she made at the library, four-twenty-five an hour. To her surprise, Tommy insisted she take six.

“Mister Fricke told me that you get what you pay for, and I expect a lot,” he said.

Tommy and Becky settled on two hours on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Ruth Silverman provided them a reading room for their classes. Ruth also made a visit to the junior high school library and borrowed a couple of copies of some outdated eighth grade text books. On the next Tuesday night, Tommy started school again. Tommy insisted that Ruth and Becky keep secret what he was doing, in case he really was unable to learn anything.

In 1969, not much was known about how the brain operated, and there were no MRIs or CAT scans to highlight brain activity. Tommy’s case could have shed some light on the subject, had anyone known what was happening to him. They would have learned something about memory for sure.

Tommy was missing the core of his memory that had resided in his frontal lobe, but bits and pieces of information were scattered around in uninjured locations also. It was as if Tommy was a damaged reference book with the index missing. There was still information available, he just couldn’t find it.

Sometimes, though, the information just popped out at him. That had been the case when he lost his temper at Regina for calling Rex stupid and ugly. Out of nowhere, his brain dredged up the term ‘vindictive bitch.’

While working with Becky, those bits of information came to him more often, especially in the area of mathematics. In his former life, Thomas Bledsoe had been somewhat of a math whiz. He had been a mechanical engineering student in his third year of college when his father died. Thomas had to leave school for a semester to take care of his father’s affairs. Dropping out cost him his student deferment from the draft and naturally, his birth date was the third number selected in the next draft lottery.

Tommy breezed through eighth grade pre-algebra in only three sessions. Other subjects were slower moving, but overall he was making excellent progress.

A month of steady progress convinced Tommy that he was indeed capable of learning, and was not the dummy most folks thought him to be. That fact was also apparent to Ruth and Becky. They were simply amazed at his progress. People close to him, people like Harold and Rita Fricke and Bucky and Betty Lou Grimes, saw the difference also, although they didn’t know the reason behind it.

Unfortunately, one thing that did not improve was his speech impediment. Even when he spoke slowly and carefully, Tommy stammered and stuttered. If he was excited, he could hardly speak at all. The speech apraxia was not a result of the shrapnel; instead, it was caused by the blunt force trauma from when he hit the ironwood tree. The apraxia was especially galling to Tommy, because he knew exactly what he wanted to say, he just couldn’t eject the words from his mouth. His speech still caused most folks to think he was addled.

The other thing that prejudiced some folks was his lack of maturity. That was because no matter how much math and history he learned, or how many books he read, he still had the emotional development of a bright, precocious twelve year old. And nothing except experience and time was going to change that.

So that was the way things stood until Betty Lou Grimes asked Rita Fricke and Ruth Silverman to lunch to discuss their boy. The three women met for a late lunch at the Bluebonnet diner on a brisk late October day. The little crisis that precipitated the meeting was the upcoming Halloween holiday and trick or treating. Betty Lou had to explain to Tommy why he couldn’t go trick or treating with Bucky. Tommy understood easily enough, but he had broken her heart with his reply.

“I’m too big for some stuff and too young for everything else. Why can’t I be one thing or the other?” he wretchedly moaned.

The talk with Tommy made Betty Lou face what she had been avoiding, the subject of sex. With no man in her life, she needed advice from her friends about how to handle the delicate matter with Tommy. As the women sat there and talked, Rita Fricke had the idea that saved the day. Who better to tell Tommy about the facts of life than her Harold? After all, Tommy considered him a father figure anyway.

Rita passed the word on to Harold, who was overjoyed with the prospect of sharing what he considered his world class knowledge of all things relating to women.

“That will be no sweat, Honey-Bunny. I’ll take Tommy down to the VFW Hall with me Thursday night; it’s time he joined up anyway. Then we’ll have a few beers while me and Ben and Ramon tell the boy the facts of life. Afterwards, we’ll take him over to Conchita Delgado’s place and have her demonstrate what we discussed. It’ll be perfect.”

Rita’s eyebrows had climbed up into her hairline by the time her husband stopped gushing about his plans. There was no way on Earth that sweet Tommy was going to be exposed to any of that. Just when she was working herself into a good lather, Harold held up his hands and gave her a grin.

“Just kidding, Rita Maude. I’ll take him aside at lunch tomorrow, and we’ll have a little heart to heart.”

Rita whacked Harold on the arm for riling her up, then gave him a smile.

“If I even suspected you of doing something like that, my loving husband, I’d sew you up in the bed sheet while you slept and beat you half to death with my biggest cast iron skillet,” she said sweetly.

Harold gulped and nodded contritely. Sweet voice and gentle smile aside, he knew his wife of twenty-five years meant exactly what she said. His buddy Big Ben Crawford was only the toughest person in four counties because Rita Maude Fricke did not want the title.

Chapter 4

On Saturday afternoon, Rita Maude Fricke met with her friends Betty Lou and Ruth again. They met in Ruth’s office at the library, because Ruth was once again filling in for an absent employee. Both Betty Lou and Rita were favorably impressed by Ruth’s dedication to her library and her patrons.

Newly divorced Margie Wilcox was also at the meeting. Betty Lou had called her the previous evening, and asked her to join them at Rita’s request. As soon as they all had a cup of tea in their hands, Rita went straight to the heart of the matter. She provided background information for Margie’s benefit as she went.

“My husband Harold had a man to man talk with Tommy Thursday during lunch. We felt that it was time that someone had that talk with Tommy, because of how rapidly he is progressing. According to his tutor, Tommy is well on his way booklearningwise.”

Everyone nodded in understanding, so Rita took a breath and continued.

“Harold said Tommy understood the mechanics of sex, although he has no experience, except for masturbation.”

Rita and the other women couldn’t help but smile at Betty Lou’s gasp. Rita patted Betty Lou’s hand reassuringly, and looked at each woman, letting her point sink in. She had every one of the women’s complete attention, including the furiously blushing Betty Lou, so she resumed her narrative.

“So anyway, our boy knows the mechanics, now. What he doesn’t understand, but wants to know, is how relationships between men and women work. Thankfully, Harold did not try to explain that. I mean, I love my husband to death, but like all men, he doesn’t have a clue about relationships.”

Rita paused again while her friends all nodded emphatically in agreement.

“So Tommy is making amazing progress. The Good Lord has seen fit to make things right by Tommy, I think. According to Becky, Tommy will be academically ready for college in less than a year. I think we need to make sure he is socially ready also.

“So that’s where we are right now,” she said as she ticked off her points with her fingers. “One, our wonderful Tommy is a blank canvass. Two, he professed his love for each of us to my husband, so I know he will listen to us. Three, we all love him in return. Four, Tommy is mature enough now to learn about women. And five, who is better equipped to teach him how to treat a woman than the four of us?”

The other women quickly signed onto Rita Fricke’s innocent plan. They would take turns exposing Tommy to various social settings and teach him the proper way to respond in each situation. They would train him in how a woman should be treated when he took one out. Rita even had the first evening planned for that very night. She, Harold, Margie Wilcox and Tommy were going to the monthly first Saturday spaghetti dinner and dance down at the VFW hall. Tommy would be Margie’s escort. Rita and Harold would be there for moral support.

---

When Tommy told Ruth Silverman about Doctor Giles’s assessment of his ability to learn, he had told the absolute truth as it existed while he was in the hospital. The brain damage Tommy suffered was permanent and irrevocable. For a few months after his discharge, Giles’s prognosis held true, as Tommy often had memory lapses. That was one reason the Frickes wrote his duties out for him each morning.

Tommy’s brain however, did not sit idly by while all this was going on. Instead, it created new memory pathways and established easily accessible nexuses to store incoming data. His brain could not repair itself, but it could adapt to make up for what had been destroyed. Because it was playing catch up for areas of the brain that had taken over twenty years to develop, Tommy’s brain housing group went overboard when it created the new memory network.

Madeline (Maddie) Dixon, the pianist and choir director for the First Baptist Church of Brantley, was the first person to notice the manifestation of Tommy’s strange new talent. It happened the same day that Harold told Tommy the facts of life.

What Maddie noticed was that Tommy sang along with the choir during practice, even though he was not a member and didn’t even have a hymnal. Tommy attended Thursday choir practice, because Betty Lou and Regina were in the choir, so he and Bucky had to tag along.

Madeline was always on the lookout for new choir members, especially males, so she called a ten minute break and talked to Tommy.

“How do you know all the words to the songs we were singing,” she asked.

Tommy shrugged.

“I remember them from p-p-practice last week,” Tommy stammered.

Madeline nodded and pressed on.

“You don’t stutter when you sing, just like that singer Mel Tillis.”

“I know,” Tommy said brightly, “That’s why I like to sing.”

That was good news to Maddie Dixon.

“So sing with us, we could use a strong male voice.”

Tommy was pleased as punch.

“Sure, who do you want me to sound like, Conway Twitty or Johnny Cash?”

Maddie grinned at his response; he had picked out a couple of tough acts to follow. Maddie decided to humor him.

“My husband Leo is the choir’s basso, so why don’t you try to be a tenor like Conway.”

Tommy’s new memory processing apparatus not only allowed him to easily remember songs, it also internalized musical styles. As a result, Tommy became an amazingly accurate mimic. It was amazing, because using his real voice, Tommy could not sing a lick. His natural singing voice was horrible, it was raspy and nasal, and when he used it, folks cringed.

It was fortunate for Maddie Dixon that Conway Twitty had released a couple of gospel albums that Tommy could draw on as a reference. In fact, two of the songs the choir rehearsed were on the Twitty records. When Tommy did Conway’s version of Precious Memories, the rest of the choir fell silent in awe. Even Regina was impressed. Madeline moved Tommy to the front of the choir so he could sing the song solo, with the choir backing him. Of course, as soon as Tommy was by himself, he had stage fright so bad he couldn’t make a sound. Finally, Maddie put Tommy back in the choir right next to Betty Lou. With his eyes closed and Betty Lou holding his hand, Tommy made it sound as if Conway was actually a member of the First Baptist Church of Brantley’s choir.

---

It was exactly noon on Saturday, when Tommy locked up the feed and seed warehouse and trudged home. His step was slow, because his mind was working on a problem that came to his attention right before he left the store. It had started with a casual remark Rita made.

“I expect to dance the first slow song with you tonight,” she’d said.

That simple little statement threw Tommy into a near panic, because he could not dance a step. He desperately dredged his mind for even a hint about dancing and could not find the slightest clue. He was still furiously thinking about that when he pulled open the front door and almost ran over Regina.

Tommy backed up a step and started to stammer an apology when Regina smiled at him.

“My fault, Tommy,” she said sweetly.

Regina treated Tommy much better now for a few reasons. One reason was because Tommy no longer felt inclined to take any crap from her. Another was because Tommy no longer seemed such a moron to her. As a matter of fact, the guy she had called a drooling idiot was now helping her with her eleventh grade Algebra II homework. Finally, Tommy’s singing in the choir Thursday night had impressed the hell out of her. Tommy had slowly changed from her little brother’s retarded pal to a slightly goofy, handsome young man.

“Uh, thanks, Reggie,” Tommy said as he slipped past her.

Regina shot him a smile at the use of her nickname and headed out. He was a couple of steps into the room and Regina was just out the door, when he had an idea. Tommy spun around and jerked open the door.

“Regina,” he called to her retreating back.

Regina turned around and looked at him inquisitively. Tommy blushed crimson, but gathered up enough nerve to spit out what he needed to say.

“Ah, do you know anyone I can hire this afternoon to teach me to dance? I’ll pay them twenty dollars.”

Turns out Regina knew just the person he was looking for. She walked back into the house, called the friend she had been about to visit, and cancelled the trip. Then she ran up to her room and gathered up her Philco Hi-Fi portable record player and a stack of forty-five rpm singles. Regina was about the best dancer at Brantley High, and twenty bucks would buy her a very nice outfit. She moved the dining room table into the corner, pushed the chairs out of the way and set up her record player with six forty-fives on the spindle.

Tommy had his doubts about the lessons at first, because the music Regina listened to was rock and roll, while the VFW crowd was into traditional country. Tommy told her that, but she dismissed his concerns.

“Slow dancing is slow dancing, Tommy. Doesn’t matter if it’s Merle Haggard or the Beatles. Here, give me your hand and I’ll show you.”

As in most things, Tommy was a quick study when it came to learning to dance. He was well coordinated and surprisingly light on his feet. Regina taught Tommy how to dance the way she knew old people liked, her left hand in his right, her right hand on his shoulder and his left hand slightly around her waist.

Midway through the second stack, Tommy was moving smoothly enough that he actually took to leading her. It was about then that it stopped being a lesson and started being fun for Regina. When the next song started, Regina showed Tommy how to dance really close, putting her arms around his neck, placing both his arms around her waist, and snuggling up against him.

“You need to learn to dance like this too, Tommy. If a woman likes you enough, this is how she’ll want you to hold her,” she said softly, her head resting on his muscular upper chest.

Tommy felt the benefits of dancing like that immediately, as Regina’s nice medium sized breasts pressed into his chest, and her coconut scented hair was right under his nose. Unfortunately, he also experienced the pitfall of such intimate contact, as his dick sprang to its full hardness in about five beats of his heart. He gasped in embarrassment and tried to step back from his partner. Regina, however, was into the dance and stepped forward, reestablishing contact. That’s when she discovered what was going on. Tommy was mortified by his unwanted boner, but Regina took it in stride. It was a point of pride for her that she could make a boy pop one of those things any time she felt like it. And Tommy had the biggest she’d ever had rubbed against her. The only problem was that it tented out his jeans a good three or four inches down his left leg.

This time Regina stepped back at the same time Tommy did. She glanced down and confirmed it was the largest bulge she’d ever seem.

“I think you’re ready, Tommy, but you better wear a jock tonight,” Regina said straight-faced.

Tommy gulped and nodded, his face the same color as the McCulloch County Volunteer Fire Department’s new pumper, his hands fluttering uselessly down by his crotch. Regina smiled and patted his cheek.

“Relax about that, Tommy,” she said. “It happens to every guy I’ve ever danced with, and it will probably happen during your date tonight. Just don’t grind it against her, and let her decide how to handle the situation. Okay?”

Tommy bobbed his head up and down and dug a twenty out of his wallet. Regina declined the money with a wave of her hand.

“No charge, Tommy, but tomorrow after church, you have to sing a song for Melody Graham and me.”

Tommy grunted and sped down to the basement, his face redder than ever. Regina smiled at his antics as he hustled away.

“When,” she asked herself, “did I start thinking of his shyness as cute?”

She was still grinning as she collected up her records and her phonograph and headed upstairs. Melody was going to pee her pants when she heard Tommy sing tomorrow after church. Melody was Catholic, so she attended Mass at Sacred Hearts. Regina and Melody had been best friends since the first day of kindergarten. Because their last names, Grimes and Graham, were alphabetically close together, the girls ended up partners in everything.

Regina kicked her bedroom door shut and put her record player on her dresser in its usual spot. She plugged it in and stacked the feed mechanism with the same songs to which she and Tommy had danced. While the record player was dropping the first disc, she locked her door and flopped down on her bed. She could not believe the tingles she was getting “down there,” nor could she believe she was actually going to do something about it in broad daylight.

---

Tommy was as nervous as a gun shy dog at a turkey shoot by the time six o’clock rolled around. Betty Lou tried to calm him down, but he just couldn’t sit still, and he had about a thousand questions. To make matters worse, Bucky was spending a couple of days at his grandparents’ ranch, and Regina had already departed for her own date. At her wits end, she finally ordered Tommy to dust and vacuum the parlor in case someone came to visit.

The clock had just crawled past six-fifty when Harold knocked on the door and dragged a suddenly very shy Tommy out to Rita’s car. The Falcon was all shined up and the top was down. Rita was sitting in the passenger seat and Margie was seated directly behind her. Harold held the driver’s seat forward and Tommy climbed in the back. Tommy said hello to Rita and Margie and slid onto the slick vinyl upholstery. Once he was seated, Tommy took a good look at Margie. As soon as he did, he was thankful that he’d worn his jock strap and a pair of Jockeys, because she looked really, really pretty.

Margie Wilcox had invested some time in her appearance and outfit for their ‘date’. Not only was it Tommy’s first date since his return from Vietnam, it was also the first time she’d spent any time off-duty time with a man since she’d caught her two bit cheating husband using his dick to clear the airway of a young male medic. So Margie had a couple of items on her agenda tonight. Her primary mission was helping Tommy in his socialization skills, and the secondary was to validate that she could still capture men’s attention. To make the second one a reality, she had traded her glasses for contact lenses and had worn her long, thick, chestnut hair hanging loose down her back. She wore a modest knee-length black skirt with a royal blue blouse and three inch heels. Her plan seemed to be working, because Tommy was looking at her in awe.

“Gosh, you look beautiful tonight, Margie,” Tommy said sincerely.

Margie shot him a smile, took his hand and squeezed it.

“Thank you, Tommy, you look very handsome too,” she replied.

Margie wasn’t even aware that she never let go of Tommy’s hand for the rest of the ride. Nor did it cause her any pause when Tommy took her hand as they walked to the door, letting go of her only to open the door for Rita and her.

There was a good sized crowd already at the hall, but Harold led them to a nice table for eight near the dance floor, which had a reserved sign on it. Harold pocketed the card and he and Tommy seated the ladies. So far, Tommy’s good manners were standing him in good stead. The other chairs at the table were for Ben Crawford, Ramon Salazar and their wives, all of whom showed up about ten minutes later. Ben Crawford’s wife’s name was Shirley, but everyone called her Cricket. She was all of five feet tall if she stretched, and perhaps weighed a hundred pounds. By contrast, Ramon Salazar was married to a good sized woman named Teresa.

Margie thought that Rita had done very well in picking out the venue and table mates for Tommy’s first date. The spaghetti dinner was only so-so, but the band was excellent, and the other couples at the table were a hoot. Tommy fit in, even though he didn’t say much. With Cricket and Teresa at the table, the conversation never lagged. One thing that Tommy did to make the evening better was to honor Rita’s request for the first slow dance. The band was still playing the song’s intro, when Tommy stood up and extended his hand down to Rita. When Rita took his hand and looked up, Tommy regurgitated a line from a movie that was tucked in some cranial crevasse.

“Missus Rita, may I have the please of this dance with you?”

Rita’s smile was Texas sized as she stood up.

“You most certainly may, Mister Bledsoe,” Rita answered.

From that first song on, Tommy’s dance card stayed filled. Rita went back to the table, bragging on Tommy’s dancing skills, so Tommy had to demonstrate them to both Cricket and Teresa. Then it was Margie’s turn, and she kept him on the dance floor for the rest of the set. Margie was from San Antonio, so she knew her way around a dance hall. Tommy’s brain could mimic the rhythm of a dance as well as it could a song, so to Margie’s delight, Tommy was soon doing the Texas Two-Step with her.

Tommy had a great time that evening. Although he was slightly intimidated by the conversation that swirled around him, he remained polite and cordial. Rita was so proud she was about to burst. Margie felt the same way until the last set of the evening. Towards the end of that last set, the lights dimmed and the band strung together about five slow romantic songs. By the second of those five songs, Margie had unconsciously put both arms around Tommy’s neck and draped her body on his. Since Margie was about five nine and only a few pounds short of being voluptuous, she fit against him perfectly.

For some unknown reason, Tommy did not put both of his hands on Margie’s waist as they swayed together. Instead, he reached across her back and played with her hair while her head was tucked into his shoulder. Margie actually purred when he did that. Tommy became erect just as quickly with Margie as he had with Regina, only this time, he did not call any attention to it. Margie held out for an entire song before she pushed her center against him so she could stay in contact with the large lump. She situated herself, sighed and kissed Tommy on the corner of his mouth.

“This is perfect Thomas. It has been the best date I’ve been on in years and years.”

Tommy gave her a squeeze. Tommy had discovered earlier that he had no speech problems when he was dancing.

“That’s nothing,” he quipped, “because it’s the best date I remember ever having.”

Margie actually giggled at that statement.

“It’s the only date you’ve ever had that you remember, so it is by definition also the worst you’ve ever been on.”

It took Tommy a few seconds to figure out what she’d said. When he did, he laughed and squeezed her again, so that her surprisingly heavy bosom flattened against his chest.

At eleven thirty, the last song faded away and the house lights grew brighter. The waitresses and bartender were sing-songing “last call for alcohol” when Margie reluctantly pulled away from Tommy. Between the dancing and the four or five cocktails she’d quaffed, Margie was flushed and breathing hard. She led Tommy back to the table, scooped up her purse and made a bee line for the bathroom with Rita in tow.

After visiting the stalls, the women shared a mirror to fix their make up. Rita asked Margie how the evening was going from her perspective. Margie had to think for a minute to formulate her reply.

“If how that man makes me feel is any indication, we can stop his training right this minute. Any woman would have a hard time saying no to anything he wanted tonight.”

Rita smiled and patted Margie’s hand.

“That’s why we are doing this, Honey. Our Tommy deserves better than just any woman.”

The VFW hall shut and locked its doors at midnight, in accordance with the Texas Blue Law. So at five after midnight, Tommy and Margie were snuggled up in the back seat of Rita’s 64 Falcon convertible, headed towards Spring Street to drop Tommy off. Margie glanced up front to make sure Rita and Harold were looking forward, then she turned Tommy’s face towards hers and kissed him softly on the lips. Margie’s plan was a short sweet kiss to show Tommy her appreciation for the wonderful date, but as soon as their lips met, that idea went out the window.

That was a preview of Honkeytonk Hero. To read the rest purchase the book.

Add «Honkeytonk Hero» to Cart