ANOTHER SUNNY DAY (30 page)

Don nodded and was horrified to hear his voice crack as if he was back in college. “No worries.  I just got here, myself.  It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Turning to Josh, Jennifer extended her hand.  Her gaze swept his shoes, pants and broad shoulders before stopping at his eyes.  “And you are?”

Josh, cleared his throat, suddenly looking less cool than earlier when he had been dealing with Don.  “Josh Miller.  I am actually the President of the fraternity or what was the fraternity.” Josh glanced at the ground and shook his head. “I heard we’re losing our house.”

“That sucks,” Don added.  “Brendan did a lot for hundreds of guys.  He was a pain in the ass twice a quarter, but overall, he was very generous.”

Jennifer asked, “Josh, is there a place where we can get some privacy?  I’m expecting a few more people, and I have some things to go over with them.”

Josh motioned toward the coach house.  “Sure, upstairs in the coach house on the right is a large meeting room.  No one should bother you there.  Most of the guys are on campus right now.”

“Thanks Josh.”  Jennifer smiled and walked toward the coach house door that opened to the staircase to the second floor.  About fifteen feet across the uneven, partly graveled parking lot she glanced back and called back to Josh, “If anyone is looking for Jennifer Kist or maybe asking for Brendan
Harrigan’s attorney, send them upstairs, would you please?”  Don followed her, leaving Josh standing alone and confused in the parking lot.

From the outside, the coach house appeared to have undergone more renovations than the exterior of the fraternity house itself.  Don pulled open the door and allowed Jennifer to enter the building and climb the single set of narrow wooden stairs.  A wave of aroma from years of beer-soaked boards flowed down the stairs and hit them as they entered the building.  As Don walked up the fifteen steps, he automatically counted them.  The exact number had been a pledge test on
oddities and trivia about the fraternity property.  He also recalled the number of windows in the house, the steps leading to the front porch and how many trees were in the backyard.  All critical knowledge needed to be recalled at times of duress like hell week and was, even after all this time, still stuck in his memory.

The stairs entered the second level through the center of the floor.  The old basketball half court remained on the left side and the right side had been carpeted since he had been here forty years earlier.  There were folding tables arranged in a giant rectangle shape for meetings.  The far wall was covered floor to ceiling with the signatures of all the seniors who had ever graduated Kent State as a Phi Psi brother.  Jennifer and Don gravitated toward it, drawn by all the voices from the past.

Together, they stared at the signatures written with scores of ball point pens, felt tip markers, colored pencil and even quill pens that had been the weapon of choice by those who had graduated from the very demanding architecture school.

“What’s this all about?” she asked as she walked along the wall.

“It was a tradition that all seniors had to come up here on graduation day and sign the wall.  As you could guess, there are hundreds more now than when I left.”

Don slowly shuffled his way along the wall, carefully touching the inked signatures with his fingertips.

“You’re looking at those names like you’re at the Vietnam memorial in DC.”

Don turned to Jennifer and blinked against the tears that welled up in his eyes. “You really get to know someone when you go through college, growing up with them.  Being with them as they met and lost girlfriends, pass and fail classes and especially the hell we all went through our senior year.  They were always there for me.  But we’ve lost touch.”

“Did Mr. Harrigan sign it?” she asked.

“Sure.  He’s way over to the left and toward the top,” Don said as he pointed her in that direction.  “He was in one of the first classes to live in this house.  I guess he bought it after he graduated and got rich.”

“Whose is this?”  Jennifer pointed to a mostly illegible autograph that included a rough drawing of the iconic
Playboy
bunny logo.  “What’s with the rabbit?”

“That was Cliff Baker.  His nickname was
Hef.”

“
Ahh, I see.  After Hugh Hefner, right?”

“Yeah.  Cliff used to be a photographer.”

One perfectly waxed eyebrow arched with the unasked question that would naturally follow such a confession.

“They were art shots,” he defended his brother without apology.  “Remember, it was the Sixties.  It was all about freedom and beauty and love.”

“Where’s yours?”

Don pointed to a spot about five feet off the floor and left of the window overlooking the parking lot.  “Right there.”

“The one with the little rocket?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”  He smiled at the memory that invoked.  He hadn’t thought about that in years.

“You’re living in Texas now, aren’t you?”

“Yes, for the last few years.  My wife grew up in Austin.  She had to stay behind with our daughter who’s expecting our first grandchild any minute.”

“That must be nice.”  Jennifer glanced at her watch, clearly moving her focus back to the meeting.  “Do you know who is planning on making it?”

Don shook his head and shrugged.“I have no idea.  I never even heard who was invited.”

Jennifer walked over to the meeting tables, and laid her briefcase on one of them.  “I didn’t send you the list?  My assistant must have forgotten to put that into your package,” she told him as she shuffled through her briefcase.

“I guess we’ll both know soon enough,” Don commented.

“I left my phone in the car.  I’m going to run down and call the office and make sure the food I arranged for is on the way,” she told him.  “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Don turned back to the wall.  He moved slowly, looking for familiar names and stopping to touch the inked signatures with his fingertips.  With each one he recognized, he’d stop, smile and sometimes nod as he recalled his experiences with every brother whose name he found.

Larry Reed with a small baseball drawn over his name.  Stanley Freeman.  Jeff Tallmadge accented by the faces of comedy and tragedy.  Frank Pucci.  Ted McCoy.  Barry Smith next to a drawing of two sticks that no one but the class of 1970 would understand.  Ira Schwartz.  Rick Rogers.  Alfonso Garcia and a paw print of a monkey with the name Carlos, inked above it.  Someone, probably Jeff, must have added the tiny paw print after Alfonso signed because Alfonso and the monkey’s hatred for each other had been legendary.  There was Kevin Nash and Mike Anderson with an airplane drawn near his name.

Those guys had been his best friends, and yet he hadn’t heard from any of them for years, not since the day they closed the campus.  He was overcome with all the memories that flooded back.  It was as fresh as if it was.

Suddenly he heard the sound of a basketball bouncing, then something hit him in the back of his knees so hard his legs almost buckled.

“Hey,” Don yelled as he whirled around to see who else was there.  “Watch what you’re doing.”  He hadn’t heard anyone come up the stairs.

From the dimly lit basketball court about fifty feet away he heard someone yell “Come on, Don!  A little help here.  We want to finish our game before registration.”

Chapter One

“It’s Your Thing” – The Isley Brothers

Kent State University – September, 1969

“Ball, Don! You’re holding us up.”

Don picked up the ball and dribbled forward and made a shot.  The ball swooshed through the bare hoop and his team cheered.  The ball hit a warped board on the old wooden floor and rolled toward the tables on the other end of the room.

“Hey, Hef, throw it back.”

Cliff Baker looked down at the basketball and reluctantly picked it up.  Not being coordinated enough to dribble and walk at the same time, he tossed the ball toward the group of young men waiting on the basketball court.  It took an errant bounce, then shot out the open window.

All the guys who had been playing basketball rushed to the window and peered out.  “Shit!” Frank Pucci grumbled.  “Bet you couldn’t do that again.”

Cliff didn’t doubt that.  He had enough trouble getting it through the hoop.  Bouncing it out the window was a feat he could never replicate.

Frank, at five foot eight inches tall, shouldn’t have been much competition on a basketball court either.  But growing up in a large, male-dominated Italian family had made him a force to be reckoned with.  He tried harder, played longer and yelled louder than anyone else.  “Hey Stan,” he shouted out the window. “Can you toss the ball back up here?”

Stanley Freeman, an English major and self-acclaimed book nerd looked up at Frank and then across the potholes that were several feet wide to where the basketball was lying in the middle of the deepest one.  He knew he didn’t have the strength or accuracy to throw the ball back through the window.  Nor was he inclined to walk through the puddle to retrieve it.

“I’m on my way to the Hill,” Stan called back.  Everyone called the campus the Hill because the first dozen or so buildings built since the early part of the twentieth century were on a higher piece of ground compared to the rest of the town of Kent.

“Just throw me the ball,” Frank persisted.

Stan sighed and carefully inched his way between the small lakes to get the ball.  He turned and yelled up, “I’ll toss it up the stairs.”

Frank waited at the top of the stairs, and it wasn’t until the third throw that the muddy ball made it all the way to the second floor. “Thanks Stan.”

“We need another load of gravel dumped back here.  It’s a mess.”  Stan waved to Frank and then got into his car and left.

“Come on Frank, Let’s go.  It’s your out,” Fred called.

Nothing defined lake effect like the weather at Kent State, located about 30 miles south of the city of Cleveland which was on the south shore of Lake Erie.  A typical fall northeastern Ohio day could be hot, cold, sunny, rainy, snowy or even pelted with hail. Today rain poured down from the heavy, dark gray sky where clouds bumped against other clouds, rolling around in different directions.  After a few minutes the rains always created a large muddy mess in the parking lot between the Phi Psi Kappa coach house and the main fraternity house.  There was never enough gravel to avoid walking through mud.

The basketball game continued and the noise could be heard well out into the yard.  Men’s voices combined with an occasional female scream and a variety of profanity rolled through the open windows.  The north end windows had been broken out by any number of games or other events over the years.  The south end windows remained intact as that was the party room and where weekly chapter meetings were held.  The volume of the meetings often exceeded that of any basketball game.  On more than one occasion the Kent city police had walked up the stairs on a Monday night to quiet the lively discourse. That was also the area used by the brothers who needed table space for large projects ranging from architecture to aerospace to photography.

Cliff was taking advantage of the space now as he worked on his final junior class project of a photo layout, trying to ignore the noise and the girlfriends, pin mates and fiancées of his brothers who wandered over after dropping out of the game.  The girls rarely lasted long in the games because the guys played for blood, and it took only a broken fingernail or a knock to the floor to discourage all but the most determined young woman.  Besides, the girls found Cliff’s photos more interesting.

The basketball again bounced his way and rolled under the table on which he had carefully placed his photos.

“Throw it back!”  The plea came across the floor from one of the players.  “And keep it in the building.”

Cliff yelled back, “This is my last time guys. I have to get this done today.  Its 40% of last spring’s course grade that I got an incomplete on.”  Cliff picked up the ball and quickly carried it over to the other side and tossed it back yelling “I’m not officially a senior until I get it turned in. And they’re going to draft my ass if I don’t get a passing grade this week.”  He knew journalism wasn’t exactly one of the anointed protected degrees and career choices like teaching and engineering, so keeping his class credits above minimum was critical.

Soon the yelling, dribbling and clapping died down and the players ran down the steps.  First out the door to run through the rain and mud to the rear porch was Ted McCoy, a tall muscular blond-haired man with a very bloody nose. “I think you broke my fucking nose, Pucci,” he yelled.  “My dad’s law firm is taking pictures next weekend.  He’s going to kill me.”

“Pictures?”  Frank couldn’t imagine such a stupid reason to be concerned.  He still had the remnants of a black eye he had gotten when his brother had cold cocked him last week.  He kept pace with Ted as they walked briskly across the parking lot in the cold rain.

“Senior year all the partner’s sons who are graduating get their picture taken for the wall of shame,” Ted answered somewhat unenthusiastically.

Frank had to ask, “What happens if you don’t get your law degree?  Hell, Kent doesn’t even offer a law school.”