Old friends

      Today I went through my CD collection and pulled out several CDs I hadn't listened to in years, some maybe for 10 or 15 years. I had a good time listening to those songs. Some I clearly recalled, others I barely remembered. Made me remember who I was all those years ago when I heard them for the first time.
      I guess I was prompted to listen to those dusty discs by re-reading Murder by Dewey Decimal. I started to recall that kid I was 20 years ago. Awkward and unsure, afraid of so many things, no belief in myself. I wish I could go back and tell that kid, "Hey, we turned out okay. We're not famous yet or rich, and we haven't found our true love, but otherwise, things are okay. We have family and friends who appreciate and love us, a God that loves us, food, shelter, clothing. We're still writing and still enjoying it. And we still have hope for many bright things."
      Of course, honesty would compel me to tell him that we have a few more scars now: the loss of loved ones to the grave, bad relationships that would take all our courage and will to survive, health and money problems. But through that all, we made it and are making it still.
      So I'd tell him, "Chin up, guy. Face it all bravely. Remember that no matter what happened in our past, we're worthy still. We're going to be okay. Believe."
      And then I'd tell him to buy Microsoft stock like crazy while it's cheap. Which is yet another reason I couldn't be trusted with a time machine.
***      Crystal said she enjoyed yesterday's excerpt from Murder by Dewey Decimal. So this excerpt is for her. It's the next part of chapter one. We meet Lisa Trent.

Excerpt 1.2 from Murder by Dewey Decimal

      Lisa Trent closed her eyes and opened them again. And repeated the procedure. It did no good. The naked man in the bed remained Leonard Brewer. She groaned. She had actually been
drunk enough last night to go to bed with Leonard. Or had she? Steeling her courage, she glanced down. Thank God, her jeans were on. And buttoned, too. Too bad her bra was missing.
      Carefully, she eased out of bed, hampered only slightly by the jackhammer which was cutting through her brain. Leonard groaned but didn't wake up. Now, where was her bra? It was lying on a chair, next to a pair of tiger-striped men's briefs. Lisa had actually been drunk enough to go to bed with a man who wore tiger-striped shorts. She felt sick.
      She dressed as quickly and quietly as she could and made her wobbly way to his front door. What were the odds, she wondered, of Leonard being too drunk to remember she had gone home with him? Not very good. He would probably brag about his latest conquest to the rest of the boys in the backshop. And then she remembered he couldn't and why she had went to Roger's Bar and Grill with him and the boys last night; she had wanted to forget her life was
ruined.
      The Ryton Journal and News was closed, finished, done. The publisher told them yesterday that he simply couldn't afford to run the paper any more. The local economy was in a slump and the paper was in debt up to its figurative neck. As news reporter/headline writer/paste-up person, Lisa was out of a job. Out of the best job she had ever had. Other jobs paid her more money, but this one had been special in what it had given her.
      She heard Leonard groan, and she quickly stepped outside. She couldn't face his leering face this morning. She looked around for her car. Leonard had been so late to pick her up that she had driven to his apartment last night to see if he had remembered their date. She was glad now that she had done so. Probably the only smart thing I did last night, she thought.
      Vaguely, she remembered parking her car near the street so she walked around the building, finally spotting her beat-up Pinto hidden by a truck parked next to it. I would have to park all the way over there, she thought, wincing at the sun.
      She got into her car but made no move to start it. She couldn't decide where to go. Home, she guessed. It felt so strange to not go to work. In the four years she had worked for the Journal, she had been absent only one day -- and that was because she had to attend a funeral. She closed her eyes, resting her head on the steering wheel. The sun was too bright, but its warmth was welcome. She felt cold and tired and beaten.
      Beaten by the loss of a job. She shook her head slightly, remembering how she had felt when she joined the Journal. She had believed her chance had finally come, that she could finally overcome her poor past. Not that she was ashamed of her mother or, for that matter, even her father despite what people had said about him. Sometimes late at night, when she was tired, she would indulge in a fantasy where they would pick up a Journal and see her byline and read her stories. Her mother would have been especially proud; she had always bragged about her daughter's grades as she poured coffee and took orders at Al's Truck Stop.
      And Lisa had made good grades in school, hoping for a scholarship to a college. And she got one, but it wasn't much. She would have still attempted to go, but then cancer seized her mother. She stayed in Ryton, working at the truck stop, driving her mother back and forth to the hospital for the year it took Abigail Trent to die. Then her dear, sweet, befuddled father had finished drinking his life away. She buried him barely six months later.
      For a year, she wandered through her life, going to work, coming home, having a few messy flings with truck drivers, drinking too much and crying alone. One rainy day in May, as she hurried down Main Street, a notice in window of the Ryton Journal and News caught her eye. Office Help Wanted, it read. In the hard rain, she stopped. Something broke free inside her, and the hard knot of grief was pushed aside. She went through the door, determined to have that job.
      Two years later, after she had pushed and nagged her way into reporting, John Towers, the editor, said he had only hired her because no one else applied for the job, but it was one of his all-time best decisions. She worked hard to become an excellent reporter, and she enjoyed how the locals responded to her. People who before wouldn't deign to notice her now smiled and said hi.
      "You've won their respect," Towers said. "Now, don't get the big head. You're a small-town reporter on a small-town paper. You're not ready for the New York Times yet."
      Now she never would be. Thinking of her prospects, she was almost tempted to climb back into bed with Leonard. He would be a little better than being alone which had been the only reason she had agreed to go out with him last night.
      Remembering his shorts, she dug her keys out of her jeans and started the car. Perhaps some coffee would help. She decided to go by the truck stop. If worse came to worse, she felt confident that she could get rehired there. And it might come to that. She simply didn't know how to get another reporting job. How could she compete with people who had college degrees in journalism? Towers had always said that experience counted more than college, but what real experience did she have? Writing obituaries and covering agricultural news hardly qualified her for the big city papers. She supposed she could always get a job with some other small-town paper and start all over again. But where would she get the money to move?
      She drove down Main, heading for the truck stop. Sunk as she was in her thoughts, she still noticed the police cars, their lights flashing, heading the other way. First, one and then two others. For a moment she resisted the impulse to follow them, but she decided that it wouldn't hurt to find out what was causing the activity. The cars turned in at the library entrance. She slowly drove past, taking in all the police cars -- at least four, which was half of Ryton's force -- and the County Coroner's van.
      Something's big happened, she thought, her pulse beginning to quicken. Maybe big enough to impress an editor in some big city newspaper. Like that editor at the Oklahoma City Dispatch. What was his name? John Veit. If she called him with a big enough story, who knows?
      She turned around and drove up the library driveway. She wasn't finished yet.

End Excerpt. Copyright 2007. All rights reserved.

      I hope you have a great week. Talk to you later.