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to keep the old grade average in the plus column . The teachers at State
just weren't as easy on a guy as they were back in high school, and the
fact is there were a lot of them that had never even h eard of me. I mean
surprise, surprise. Like Sinatra says in the song, "That's Life! " You
could say it's the course God's teaching us all, and it's no gut. That's
what I try to tell Buster. "This world is bigger than you are and you're
not going to set it spinning." Christ Almighty couldn't get people to
act the way Buster seems to think he's going to be able to-changing
the world into Paradise-if he ever makes up his mind to open the door
of his room.
Finally Linda got suspended. A bunch of us had gone down to the
beach , climbed in through the window of a summer house there with a
cooler full of Black Label. Linda and I lay on the porch in the middle
of the night, and she let me rub it against her naked. I bet there were a
million stars. On the way back, the White Knight got pulled for
speeding, so Linda was out way after hours , plus she'd had a little too
much beer in the car, and she couldn't keep it down . She threw up all
over the sign-in book. She called m e long-dis tance, just in tears . So I
said, "Honey-pie, you just forget that old suspension. Hell with all
that junk anyhow. We' ll go on and get marri ed , how about that?"
Her folks hit the ceiling because they wanted her to finish school,
but we went ahead and announced our engagement. Then she let me
go all the way. The first time was in my grandfather's barn , pulling the
ladder up into the loft after us. I guess it sounds pretty romantic, Linda
lying there white as heaven in the sweet crunchy hay, but that's how it
happened. I'm not telling anything special, just my life. We did it till
we couldn't. When my folks went through the ceiling too , we post–
poned the wedding until after I graduated. Linda cried her head off,
because now we weren't getting married right away, and she'd lost a
whole semes ter, and dropped out of Women 's College. Somehow we
broke up. I went wild for a while. After they admitted her at Duke, we
got back together.
It
was on Christmas Eve. She gave me a great–
looking wallet and a giant stuffed Panda; that bear's probably still
down in Belinda's playroom right this minute.
I graduated in 1962, and the next Sunday 250 peop le came to our
wedding and drank ten cases of champagne and five kegs of beer.
Everybody said they had the time of their lives. I remember Dickey
Moore grabbing the trumpet away from the band and playing Taps on
it and our old school C.H.A.R.G .E. when the White Knight peeled off
with a string of empti es that clattered on asphalt half-way to Fort
Lauderdale. Linda total ed the car later on that summer, but by an
honest to God miracle she only broke h er arm, and kep t the baby.
Every now and then Linda claims she wishes she'd gotten to go
