He Said Goodbye to Her.
By Cordell R. Rich This story has two ending. The second was written after a few complaints that the first ending was to tragic, but then so is life sometimes. This story draws on and old and a new love. This story never occured of course but it does capture some of what I went and am going through.
He hadn’t seen her since they were kids really. They had been in love, or so he though all the way up until she walked away. The shock of it had been so abrupt, he didn’t even get to say goodbye. He though of her as the years slid by, when he was alone or when it was quiet. They were seniors at a High School in Wyoming and he had asked her to go with him to their Senior prom. She said yes. Through the clarity of twenty years he understood that it had not been love at all. But the memories had both warmed and haunted him over the years. He remembered the intense emotion and passion he felt as well as the pain and the rejection. Sometimes, when he let the thought intrude to long, he would smile to himself and say “Goodbye” to dismiss the memory and move on.
He had been driving up the coast from San Francisco and stopped to see the famous brass pig at Pikes Peak in Seattle when he though he saw her through the crowd. Just for a moment, but long enough that his mouth went dry and he started moving weaving through the crowd to catch another glimpse and she was there near the Magic shop watching a young man selling secrets and card tricks to the tourists.
As he approached her see saw him and smiled. When he said hello she moved closer and put her arms around him, they embraced and the years melted away. Could it have been love? Had he misunderstood and avoided both her and his hometown now for two decades because of a misunderstanding? They hadn’t even really dated.
He asked her to dance after a basketball game and they ended up dancing and laughing and toying with each other until the lights came on. For the next few weeks each time they saw each other held a little magic, passing each other in the hall or meeting after school. He asked her to the dance and she seemed excited to go up until the day before the dance when she called and said she though it would be better if they didn’t to the dance together. He was stunned and said nothing as she said goodbye and the line went dead. He looked for her the next day at school and she avoided him but the gravity of it all eventually pulled them together. He asked why, and she said wouldn’t say. Again he implored her for an answer and she answered him nothing until the silence became too hard to listen to. She stood abruptly, said goodbye, and walked away. He had been a straight A student and with just two weeks left to graduation, he decided not to go back. Not for class, not for graduation and not for the reunions. He NEVER went back.
She agreed to meet him at one of the parks where the river was wide and shallow and ran red with the salmon in the fall. A beautiful and quite place where they could talk with few distractions and fewer people now that the cold had set in. He arrived about and hour early and brought his guitar, a Gibson J-200 with his name inlayed in the fretboard. In the absence of a wife that guitar had been his mistress and he spent hours and hours with her, and today if things went well he would sing a song for someone else and he sat on one of the picnic tables playing as he waited.
She arrived late. When he saw her pull up he wondered why she didn’t get out of the car and he walked to her holding the Gibson by the neck as she rolled down her window. He smiled and asked if she was OK. She smiled weakly and said yes and stepped out of the car.
First Ending
They had really just started the small talk where there was an awkward moment, the kind common in these situations, and she suddenly said “Ive really got to go” and she stepped towards the door of her car. She was going to leave again, after all of these years they were going to say goodbye after only a few moments and he felt as if he would live that day in high school over and over again forever. He said “I’ve got to know why you wouldn’t go to the dance with me” and she said “I can’t, I’ve got to go.” But this time the look in his eyes held her in place for just long enough. It was the look of man who was completely broken. As he said “ok” he walked to the rear of his car and opened the trunk. She could see the top of his head as he raised the guitar into the air taking the strap from around his neck and putting the guitar carefully in its case. He turned around and sat on the edge of the trunk. She couldn’t see him because the trunk was open but she could tell he had sat down. She saw it as a chance to get back in her car and she slid into the front seat. With almost no forethought he took a small revolver from its case in the trunk and pressed the cold muzzle against his chest, between the buttons of his shirt. He lowered his head and gently said “Goodbye.” He pulled the trigger and his body convulsed hard as he slumped to the ground.
As she settled into her seat and put on her seatbelt she heard the gunshot. She paused to check her rearview mirror then reached for the keys on the steering column and started the car. Twenty minutes later as he felt the rough pavement burning with the cold on his cheek, he died, as she turned from Marine Drive onto the 532 heading eastbound.
Second Ending
He felt as if the whole world had gone silent and he didn’t dare speak as if some spell might be broken. He could hear nothing, but he could feel the beating of his heart in his chest. He looked down at the ground and realized that and he could feel his pulse in his coursing unseen through the veins in his neck and then, he could actually hear the whooshing sounds those veins made in his head and he wondered if swallowing might help. He had played this moment out in his mind again and again through the years, sitting at stoplights or waiting his turn in line at the grocery store. This very scene had played out like a black and white movie and it always ended the same. “I’ve got to know why you wouldn’t go to the dance with me?” He hadn’t meant to say it but the words spilled out as they always had but somehow the words seemed naked. But once they were said they could not be called back.
He felt her moving closer to him before he actually saw her. As she moved closer she put the palm of her hand on his beating chest and pressed her cheek into his neck and held him with her other arm and began to sob with a quiet dignity that could not be denied. He felt her body shake hard with each breath as she rested on him and so he waited. After a time she said “I was scared.” And then she paused as she tried to gain her composure and then began again. “I didn’t mean to drive you away. I wanted to talk to you but then you were gone.” And now he could feel her tears on his neck as she spoke. “I don’t know why I couldn’t go to the dance with you. I was just confused. But I was in love with you. I wanted to say I’m sorry and then you were just gone. You were just gone and I couldn’t find you.” And he realized he had lost her then because he was just a boy back then. But now he knew he would never let her go again.
Cordell Rich
