A New Leash on Life

Chapter 1-2

Barry Barlowe rocked back in his chair and stared unseeing at the distant blue line of mountains. Was it better to be a midsize frog in a puddle, or hardly a tadpole in the big lake? Bad analogy for the desert, but nothing about a lizard came to mind. High hopes had a way of scaling down. Maybe it was better to be the honcho of Miners and Merchants Bank of Linda Vista than just another loan officer or glorified clerk in a big branch bank in Albuquerque.

Still, he should have done more, been better, climbed higher. His mother told him that damn near every day. She usually added how disappointed his late father would be. Well, screw the whole mess. He had a job and took care of her well enough, didn’t he? Of course, there was no wife anymore and no hope of grandchildren, another of her pet peeves. Sometimes, life really sucked.

At that point, Christina Espinoza, his administrative assistant, came bouncing in with his morning coffee and a sheaf of papers. “Good morning, boss. You’ll never guess who I just saw at Connie’s Cocina!”

Barry shrugged. Tina’s penchant for gossip sometimes irritated him. Otherwise, she was a good assistant and there were not many as capable in town, so he kept her. “Can’t imagine,” he replied, trying not to sound too bored.

“Justin Dunne is back! Mattie said he’s staying at his mom’s place and came in to City Hall early this morning to get the water turned on and stuff. It sounds like he’s back to stay, at least awhile.”

Darts of ice and fire slashed through Barry’s gut. Justin. Oh, my God. Of course, he’d forgotten, hadn’t he? Right. He’d only thought of that long-ago connection at least once a day for the past ten plus years. Oh, fuckin’ s**t. Why now? Why here and why now?

He took a moment to gain control. “Well, bad pennies do that, Tina. I came back, didn’t I? Thought he had a position in some big outfit in Arizona, though. No reason to leave that to come back to this dump.”

She gave a classic Latina shrug. “Who knows? Mattie said he was walking, and it’s several blocks from Mrs. Dunne’s old house…that seemed odd to her, and it does to me too.”

Barry drove to the bank every day from the big old house he shared with his unhappy mother although it was just a long two blocks away. He justified it by saying having a car handy could help with business needs such as taking a client to lunch or a golfing date. His Mercedes was the best car in town, anyway, and at times, he felt it was good to be seen in it. It was an extravagance. Oh hell, a bank president, even of the smallest Podunk bank in the damn state, had standards to uphold. Mom reminded him of that every day.

As Tina skipped out, he fell back into a mixture of melancholy and anticipatory thoughts. Justin was back. Would Barry see him? Should he? What could he possibly say?

Justin had been a sophomore when Barry was a senior at Linda Vista High. Barry had been a big athlete, while Justin was almost a classic nerd. Barry knew the younger boy had a crush on him. It had only seemed funny at the time. Everyone said Barry would be a big star at college, and he fully expected that prophecy to come to pass. It didn’t. A star in the double A bracket in New Mexico—the smallest schools to field an eleven-man football team—was almost nothing in a name university. Depressed, he’d let his grades go and came home his second year with his tail tucked. Justin was a senior then, not a star although a winner in various academic competitions and even a member of the new soccer team where he didn’t shame anyone.

For several months, Barry delayed enrolling in the nearby state college to give academia another try, forgoing the athlete part. The whole time he kept running into Justin. Barry couldn’t hang out with the blue-collar guys who’d been in his class and now worked in construction, the mines, or for the railroad, so he’d drifted back to the places the high school kids congregated. Justin worked part time, and he had a beat-up old car. Most weekends he made it to the drive-ins—both the fast-food joint and the theater.

Barry had been allowed the use of the older family car, a Buick, but it was too well known. There were places he didn’t feel he should take it. Now, though he as not sure why, he found most of the high school girls silly and boring, anyway. They seemed so young, and those in his age bracket were either married or wrapped up in college or a career. He didn’t have a lot of dates. Justin didn’t, either. They wound up hanging out together, drinking beer down by the river, sometimes just talking, especially after graduation and summer vacation began. Barry thought Justin had a scholarship for the fall, though the subject never came up.

Then came the fatal evening. It must have been near midnight, and both of them were seriously blotto. Two six-packs of empty cans lay scattered along the riverbank and the bottle of Jack was almost empty. It started as a scuffle over some stupid remark Barry made to Justin. It ended with them all tangled up and ready to unzip their cut-offs, the only thing they were wearing. That was when the deputy’s spotlight flashed across them. They hadn’t even heard his car approach, creeping along the sandy willow-choked bank.

Although there wasn’t an official curfew, local law enforcement did try to limit the hours of parking by teen couples and the drinking, all too frequent among the area’s underage citizens. They should have expected a deputy would come by. They were just not paying attention, not even thinking about such a possibility. The deputy must have been as startled and shocked as the two young men were. He cut off the light at once and drove off, no lecture, citation, or anything. Still, the mood was shattered, and two hard-ons went flat in an instant. Justin seemed to be almost shattered.

“Oh, my God, oh, my God. What will he tell everyone? We gotta get out of here.” They were using Justin’s car, so Barry got in to slump against the passenger door. Neither was in much shape to drive. Justin managed, going straight to Barry’s house. He’d stopped barely long enough for Barry to half fall out onto the sidewalk. The next day, Justin left town. A few weeks later, Barry enrolled at New Mexico Western in Silver City and came back to Linda Vista as rarely as he could. But he never quite forgot.