Steve’s Secret

It was a Tuesday in April. I had been with Myra for the better part of 8 months now. She smiled all the time around me and I smiled around her just as much. Ruben, my dad, had taken a job with his company that let him be home more and everything seemed to finally be coming together.

I was 14, but much older than my years.

I hadn’t seen Steve in a few weeks. He went to the high school and I was still at the middle school so it wasn’t all that strange to go a few days without seeing each other, but usually I would we’d run into each other around town or at the Coyote’s baseball games or something. I figured he was just busy with getting ready to graduate high school and heading off to Texas A&M where he had a swimming scholarship waiting for him. One afternoon, something in me decided to go by his house and see if he was there and maybe catch up on things.

I remember leaving school that day and telling Myra I would see her later. I walked down Gibson Avenue to Texas and down Texas to Washington. I walked past Mac’s house and waved at his windows just in case Granny was watching. I took a left on Stadium and a right onto Lincoln. Steve’s house was the third one down on the right.

There sure were an awful lot of cars on Steve’s street that day.

I knocked on his door three times before his mom answered. She looked down at me with her puffy eyes.

I knew something was wrong.

“Hey Shane… Now might not be the best time to see Steve…”

“Whats wrong? Is he in trouble?”

“No Shane…… Steve is sick…”

Sick? Steve never got sick. He was a picture of perfect health the entire time I knew him. And why the hell would she be crying about Steve being sick? Something else must be wrong.

She hesitated and looked over her shoulder. She looked down at me as if weighing some big decision and finally said “Oh you know what, why don’t you go see him… It might do him good…”

I was seriously confused by the whole bit, but whatever. I walked back to his room and there in Steve’s bed was some skinny pale kid. I squinted for a second before I realized it was him. I couldn’t move. What had happened? What kind of sick was he?!

He called me in and I sat down.

“Hey Shane”

“Hey Steve”

“So… I guess I can’t hide that I’m sick anymore, huh?”

“Um… How long have you hid it for?”

“So far just a year… I gotta say I should get an Oscar or something for this acting job… haha”

Steve always found a way to make me laugh.

“So you gonna tell me what the hell you have?”

I sat there for almost an hour as Steve told me about something called “Leukemia” and talked about red blood cells and white blood cells and a whole other mess of things.

At first I just thought it was something you catch like a cold and you get better in a couple days. But the whole time he spoke, I sat there remembering when he was big and strong. When his skin was tan from the summer sun. When we would sneak into the pool at night and smoke cigarettes while he drank beer. What had happened to him? I was truly scared.

“But you’re gonna be alright, right? You’ll be fine once they give you some medicine, right?”

Steve looked down at his bed for second, then half smiled and looked back up at me… “I’ll be fine soon, Shane. So how’s Myra?”

I went off on a tangent about Myra and Mac and Granny and Ruben and we both almost forgot why he was in that bed.

I left his house when it was dark outside and walked the long trek back to our trailer park. I told Ruben about Steve and his Leukemia. He sat there pretending to listen and wanting to care, but as usual, he just came across as someone who didn’t quite get it.

I went to bed that night and dreamed about the summer before.

Steve didn’t dream that night. Steve died 47 minutes after I walked out his front door on April 23rd.

Shane’s First Girlfriend

A year past and then another. I was finally a teenager. I never really understood why people get all excited about birthdays and numbers. I felt like, even though I was only 13, I coulda handled things most kids 3 or 4 years older couldn’t. Maybe it was my childhood or maybe it was something else. Who knows?

That summer brought more days at the golf course and more hours at the country club’s pool. I had become friends with the lifeguards up there and they didn’t even make me sign in anymore. I think they figured I was Mac’s grandson. That really made me happy.

One of the lifeguard’s was named Steve Best. He was 17 and the coolest guy I had ever met. He taught me how to swim faster, took me shoppin for “cool” clothes, and even helped me figure out how to talk to girls.

There was this one girl in particular named Myra Alvarez. She didn’t talk much, but she had the prettiest smile I’d ever seen and when I was lucky to be in the immediate area when she flashed it, I melted. I told Steve about her one day and he promised he would help me get her attention.

I missed momma.

Armed with Steve’s advice, and a stomach full of Bit O Honey candy (my favorite to this day), I made my way over to where Myra was sitting at the pool one day. She usually read a book while her little brother played in the pool, but today she was just enjoying the afternoon.

“Hey Myra”

“Hey Shane. How are you?”

“Oh you know… just livin it up… ” (Steve had told me not to give any long winded answers”

“That sounds fun! Where is your grandpa today?”

“Oh Mac? He doesn’t like playing when its so hot. Says he’d much rather sit at home and let Granny cook him up some french toast all day. Her french toast could make you change your religion, its so good” (So much for short answers)

Then she flashed that smile, and I was dang near paralyzed. It was good I was sitting down.

“I love french toast! My mom makes it on Sunday’s sometimes!”

“Really? I figured ya’ll would only eat…” I stopped myself. Steve had told me not to point out anything that coule be potentially offensive. Oh crap… I had stumbled into that sentence like a big dumb idiot!

“Ya’ll? Like Mexican people? Haha! Shane we eat the same stuff you do!”

That smile again! I was so relieved.

We sat and talked for another thirty minutes about everything I could think of. When she finally left, I walked back over to where Steve was sitting. I felt like I had just ran a marathon. Talking to girls was pretty tiring. Steve told me I did a great job. That made me feel better.

Myra and I spent many afternoons talking at the pool. Of course there are only so many things you can talk about at a pool. I managed to turn our poolside friendship into an everywhere friendship. But, being a young man, I wanted more. I wanted a girlfriend.

I got advice from Steve, Mac, and even Granny. Steve’s advice usually was all about what to do physically and how to say things. I almost felt like he was trying to sell me a car sometimes. Mac’s advice always ended with “and don’t forget that she deserves respect no matter what, son.” Granny tended to just offer up advice like “You should ask her on a date and I’ll cook y’all a dinner she won’t forget!” Granny was the sweetest old lady I ever met.

One evening, I convinced Myra to meet me at the movie theater in town. I told her Steve was coming and a couple other friends I had.

She met me around 6:45PM. I was alone. Duh.

She smiled at me seeing that she had been tricked. She made no comment about my trickery, which I thought was a good thing. Maybe it meant she had been hoping I was planning this all along.

The movie was boring and about some guy going to Tibet for 7 years. I didn’t have the nerve to try the “arm around your date” trick Steve had told me about. The only reason I even broke the “touch barrier” he talked about was because I accidentally dropped my wallet and my shoulder hit her knee as I picked it up.

The movie ended and I was totally blowing it. Why couldn’t I talk to her like at the pool? Why couldn’t I even look her in the eye? I could handle an incarcerated, drug addicted mom, and a dad who I saw maybe once a month, but I couldn’t look a little innocent girl in the eye? Come on Shane! Finally I grabbed her hand as we were walkin down the steps of the theater. Of course its hard to walk side by side on stairs and much harder to hold hands doin it, so I ended up coming within a toe of tripping and bustin my ass at least 27 times. Finally we reached the bottom and I breathed a sigh of relief. She looked over at me and busted out laughing. Apparently I was being funny. We walked back up to the front of the theater and out the doors to wait for her ride.

I’ve always felt like people don’t really appreciate hugs and how much they can mean. Some people hug their family everyday before work or school and think nothing of it. To someone like me, back then, a hug was almost foreign. The feeling of someone leaning towards me and wrapping their arms around me as if to say “I care about you and want to share myself with you.” was not something I experienced much growing up. Myra didn’t know this, and there was no way she could have. She had no idea that she was about to be the first person other Momma that I truly felt cared about me.

She walked over by some pay phones and put her arms around my shoulders and pulled me towards her.

I couldn’t remember the last time someone hugged me.

I assumed it was over and let go and leaned back.

Her arms stayed.

I looked into her eyes and noticed she had a half smile on her face. Her eyes shifted to my lips and I finally realized the shit storm I’d stumbled into the middle of.

Steve and I had never even thought about the possibility of going for the holy grail of 13 year old dating! You just don’t do that on the first date! I had seen it done a few TV shows, but thats it! Oh man I was screwed!

She leaned in and so did I. My basic plan was to just do whatever she did. What else could I do?

She giggled. I giggled.

She leaned closer. I leaned closer.

She closed her eyes. How am I supposed to mirror you if I close my eyes?!

I closed my eyes.

I felt her lips touch mine, and suddenly all the tension in my shoulders and elsewhere was gone. I relaxed and kissed her back.

She kissed me at least 7 or 8 more times and told me she’d been wanting to do it for a long time. I had a lot to learn about reading women.

Eventually, and too soon, her ride showed up. It was the start of my first real relationship.

Shane was in love.

Worse Things Have Happened To Better People

Carl ‘Mac’ Houston Burnham may have been one of the smartest men I ever met. He had grown up in Texas, fought in World War II, put himself through school at UT in Austin, and raised a family in Alice without hardly relying on anyone for help. Our afternoons on the golf course became mornings at the coffee house with him and his buddies. He would take me with him to Wal Mart from time to time and I even had dinner with him and his wife a few times a week. She told me to just call her ‘Granny’.

One day I made my way out to the course after making a “C” on a math test. I was in a bad mood because the teacher had messed up on grading it and refused to give it a second look. I found Mac on the 4th hole and plopped down on the grass next to the green where he was putting.

“Hello, Shane.”
Mac’s voice was always loud and firm. It shook me sometimes.
“Hey, Mac.”
“You look like someone stole your bicycle. Whats eating at you?”
“I made a C on my test and its my dumb teacher’s fault. She messed up grading it and won’t even take a 2nd look at it.”
“Well Shane, thats too bad”

He made his putt and slowly walked my direction, writing down his score between steps.

“Ya know one time when I was working, we were out in a field just south of here. My best friend drove up in his brand new black truck and parked it off to the side. He hopped out, all smiles, and was making his way towards me when the pump jack we were running hit an air pocket. The ground shook a little and suddenly his truck disappeared into the Earth. When we were sure it was safe, we made our way up to the edge of the hole and peered down into it. There was his new shiny black truck, tail pipe up, about 40 feet down. We never got it out”

This story seemed like just another rambling story from the old man. I usually loved such recollections, but right now I was in a bad mood.

“Thats great, Mac.”

For the first time ever, Mac turned to me without any sort of smile.

“No, son. It wasn’t great. That truck had cost my friend nearly 4 months of wages just to put a down payment. He paid it off over the next 10 years and only drove it 17 miles.”

I must have made a confused and frightened face because Mac softened a little.

“The reason I told you that story is because I am trying to make a point. No matter where you go, no matter what happens to you, no matter how raw a deal you think you’ve got, worse things have always happened to better people.”

A Man Named ‘Mac’

Alice, Texas in August is a lot like how I picture Africa: Flat, hot, and lots of bushes that’ll poke you if you get too close.

Ruben had to get back to work so I was left at the trailer park, by myself, most days. School was still a month off and I figured I had better find something to do or I might lose my mind. I went for a walk one day and discovered a golf course called The Alice Country Club. I wasn’t a member, but I found that I could just walk right in and no one really cared. I did this twice and both times I merely turned around and walked right back out. The third time, I decided I was going to go swimming at the pool. I walked through the gate and was stopped by a lifeguard.

“You here to swim?”
“Um… yeah…”
“Well who is your daddy?”
“My daddy? His name is Ruben.”
“Okay. Write your name here.”

I had unintentionally just conned the A.C.C.

I did this for right around a week. I would walk down the long dirt drive, circle around the clubhouse, open the gate, write my name down, and spend the afternoon swimming. One day, as I was leaving, I saw an older man playing golf on the course. He was spending an awful lot of time eying his shot. I watched him as he looked off in the distance, then back down at his ball… off in the distance, back at the ball… Finally in one majestic and powerful stroke, he smacked that little white ball and sent it flying. I watched as it landed on the green and rolled towards the flag. Suddenly, the ball disappeared. The man shouted, and, if he had been 20 years younger, would have left his feet with joy. I realized that he had hit a hole in one and started to smile myself. He turned and looked around, I thought, to see if anyone had caught him celebrating. I had always thought it was a rule in golf that you couldn’t show any kind of satisfaction as far as your performance. When he spotted me looking at the green off in the distance, his half smile turned whole again.

“You see that, boy?”
“Yes sir. Is that a big deal?”
“Absolutely! Some men go their entire lives without an ace!”

He started walking towards me which made me nervous.

“Looks like you are my only witness. That means your name goes in the paper too!”

The newspaper?! For sneaking on to a golf course and stealing dips in a pool?! There had to be a catch.

“Whats your name, son?”
“Shane Temple, sir.”
“Temple? I didn’t know we had any Temples out this way. My grand dad’s first name was Temple. Would you believe that?”
“Well I took Temple from a famous man from Oklahoma, so its really only mine because I decided I wanted it”

The man smiled the kind of smile you see from people who have a secret.

“Well my name is Mr. Burnham, but you can call me ‘Mac’”
“Why ‘Mac’, sir?”
“Its what my grand son calls me. You remind me an awful lot of him.”

Mac invited me to sit in his cart with him as he finished off his round. I rode around and watched him play what I considered one of the stranger games in the world. When he finished, we drove up to the clubhouse and he turned in a card with his ’1′ on it. The man behind the counter took a look at the card.

“Your name Shane, boy?”

It was the first time I was proud of that fact.

From then on, whenever I would walk up to clubhouse, I would look for Mac’s Jeep. If I saw it, I would take off onto the course to find him. I will never forget the times I spent with him.

Daddy and South Texas

It was the middle of June before they got in touch with my dad down in the Valley. He was driving a truck for some company down that way and was barely ever home. It was the 4th of July before he could get a day off to come pick me up.

I hadn’t felt anything but sorry since the whole debacle with Momma, but when they said my Daddy was coming to get me, I was actually kind of relieved. I didn’t want to go live in some foster home and I sure didn’t want to stay in Winnie with everyone knowing my business now. And since the furthest south I’d ever been was Interstate 10, maybe Alice, Texas was the place for me.

Daddy showed up around noon on July 4th. He was about six feet tall and stocky. Momma hadn’t talked about him much, but when she did, she had told me he was from Mexico. I had always pictured a guy with a mustache who could dance the Jarabe Tapatio, but when he got out of his brown and beige Silverado, he looked just like most white men I’d seen. His complexion could have been mistaken for the tan of a field worker and his eyes were just plain old brown. By my math, he was only 29 years old, but he could have passed for much older.

“You Shane?”
This question was becoming all too familiar.
“Yes sir.”
“Well I’m Ruben. I’m your dad. You, uh, ready to go?”
“Yeah, but you gotta go sign some papers first.”

The first conversation between my dad and I went about how I thought it would. He didn’t know what to say and I didn’t have much to add to that.

We were on the road within an hour and he was asking me questions, hoping I would have long answers to fill up the silence. I always assumed the cops told him how they found Sean and Momma because Ruben never brought it up to me. We stopped off in Houston at a Dairy Queen and he let me order whatever I wanted. To your average 11 year old, that isn’t a big deal. To me, it was a first. I was starting to like Ruben.

We drove on south and I started to notice a change in the scenery. I was expecting cactus and coyotes and roadrunners, but apparently those guys all hang out further west. We drove through small town after small town. We stopped off at some smokehouse in Hillje and got what I thought was the best beef jerky I’d ever tasted. It was getting dark around the time we hit Corpus Christi. Ruben said there was a shorter way, but he wanted to take me to eat some seafood in the big city. I didn’t tell him that Momma had worked at a cajun seafood restaraunt and that seafood was probably one of my least favorite kinds of food.

He again let me order whatever I wanted off the menu and even let me get a Coke. I figured Ruben must have been loaded or something. I knew what he was trying to do, too. But I figured if the guy wants to buy my friendship, I got almost 12 years worth of reasons to let him. When we finished eating, we walked a block or two to what he called the “Sea Wall”, where a bunch of people were sitting around. He bought a beer from a vendor and got me a red, white, and blue popsicle. We sat down on a step in silence, both of us taking in our new situations and trying to figure out what it all meant for the both of us.

As a series of rockets starting goin off in the sky out over the water, I caught Ruben stealing glances over at me from time to time. For a second, it almost looked like he had a half smile on his face. I guess having me there in his life again was some kind of righting of a wrong for him. Honestly, I don’t really know.

I just watched the fireworks.

Momma and the Meth Head

It was May 7, 1996, a Tuesday. I got out of school and walked the 4 miles down Higway 124 to Al-T’s restaurant where Momma was working the bar and waiting tables. The school year was winding down so I didn’t have any homework, and since all the sports were over with, I spent most of my afternoons listening to some old records Momma’s boss had given me. Big names like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, and Conway Twitty. But also old timey stuff like Hank Williams Sr., The Foggy Mountain Boys, and Marty Robbins. Those were some good records. I throw such random information into this story because that was much how my life was back then. I did all the normal things from day to day, but school and sports and running around with my friends didn’t quite fill up the river of thoughts running through my brain. I would find myself doing homework, and doing it well, while my mind was off thinking about something that had nothing to do with Math or English, such as what it’d be like to be living in some big city like Houston or wondering what it’d be like to be famous and have a bunch of people hanging on your every word and acting on what you said even if you didn’t mean for them to. To this day, I still find myself feeling like a lot of the things I do and say are just because people expect me to. I think I always knew that a simple life wasn’t gonna cut it for me.

Anyways, I walked the 4 miles to meet up with Momma only to find out she hadn’t even come to work that day. Her boss, Mr. Peterson offered to give me a ride to the house, but I told him I’d walk. For one, I had nothing better to do, and for two, I had become more aware of our status in the world and I wasn’t all that anxious to bring it to anyone’s attention, if I didn’t have to. So I walked the 4 miles back to school, then I walked the 2 miles from the school to our house in Stowell. As I got closer, I saw Sean Harris’s car in the driveway. Over time, I had come to not really care for the guy. However, Momma liked him and I know for a fact he gave her money every now and then to help us with food and rent. He was the first guy I had known Momma to take an interest in since my dad. I walked in the door and found them both sitting on the couch watching TV. They both looked up at me and immediately began to pick up what appeared to be trash on the coffee table. Why they were so anxious to clean up a few coke cans and empty an ashtray was beyond me. Sean was scratchin his arm all nervous like, but he was always kinda twitchin and scratching so it didn’t strike me as odd. What DID catch my eye was that Momma was doing the same thing.

“Why you so late gettin home?”
“Cuz I walked all the way to Al-T’s only to find out you didn’t work today. You sick?”
“Um… yeah… I was just fixin to go lay down…”

It wasn’t what she said that bothered me. It was how she said it. She was speaking as if every word she spoke were just as surprising to her as it was to me. I must have had a look on my face because Sean stepped up and told me I should go outside and enjoy the day. I looked up at him and noticed that he too seemed to be looking right through me as he spoke. I made my way to my room and dropped my backpack before I headed out the back to my friend, Derrick’s, house.

Derrick Thibodeaux was probably the closest thing I had to a best friend when I lived in Winnie. We lived four houses from each other, neither one of us had ever met our fathers, and we both felt like we were destined for more than what we getting. The only real difference between the two of us was that Derrick was black. To some people around the town, that was an issue worth worrying about. To Derrick, and me, we never really could understand why it mattered. In my mind, I’d rather judge a guy on who he is and not where his great, great, granddaddy came from.

Derrick and I headed down our street and across a field until we hit Big Hill Road. Big Hill led out to the petroleum plant and along the way was nothing but wide open fields with plenty of trees just begging to be climbed. We were halfway up one particular tree when I told Derrick about Momma and Sean acting weird. Derrick got a serious tone, as he usually did when we were talking about things we knew were bad, but didn’t understand why.

“Shane, you need to get Sean away from your momma.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Shane, they doin drugs. They doin that meth, prolly.”
“How the heck could you know that?”
“My brother, Ryan got messed up in it and we ain’t seen him in 3 years. He was always twitchin and playin with Coke cans. You gotta get Sean away from your momma.”

At first I got mad at Derrick and told him he was wrong. But the more I thought about it, I knew he wasn’t. We had learned a little about drugs in school, and seein as how the stretch between Winnie and Beaumont produced more Crystal Meth than any other area in the state, the pieces all fit. Momma was on drugs. I had to come up with a plan to get rid of Sean Harris.

I got home just after dark and Momma was asleep in her room with Sean. I had decided the best way to get rid of Sean was to get him busted. I grabbed the phone and pulled it as far as the cord would let me walk, which was just outside our front door. My hand was shaking as I dialed up 911.

“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”
“Um… Hello… My name is Shane Temple… I think there’s a man in my house with drugs…”
“Excuse me? How old are you, son?”
“I’m… uh… 12 years old… There’s a man with drugs in my house and he’s making my momma do them too…”
“Ok, son. Does he have the drugs with him right now?”
“I dunno…. I just want him to go to jail and get away from my momma…”
“Ok, son. Where is your house?”

I told her my address and hung up the phone. I noticed I was sweating and shaking more than I could ever remember. I also felt a rush I hadn’t ever experienced before. I felt like I had done something few others my age could do. I had saved my momma.

A loud deliberate knock on the door awoke me from the sleep I’d somehow managed to find. I heard some shuffling in my Momma’s room and some muffled talking. The knocking started up again. Without really giving my legs permission, I ran to the door and opened it up. A big burly state trooper stood there with his flashlight pointed right into my eyes. He took a look at me and almost began to speak when I raised my hand and pointed to the back of the house where Sean was. I realized I had come to the climax of my young life. My heart could have run a Ford Mustang it was working so hard. I heard some yelling. I heard some screaming. I heard some scuffling and I heard a loud thud as that officer took Sean to the ground. I heard a set of handcuffs click around a set of wrists. I remember hoping Sean had hit his head on something sharp. Another officer came into the house. I figured Sean must have been too heavy for one man to drag out, but that thought didn’t hold water because Sean Harris was barely 160 pound by my guess. I heard more screaming. I heard more yelling. I heard more scuffling. I heard another set of handcuffs click around another set of wrists. Why would they need two sets for one man? As the first state trooper came past me draggin Sean by himself, I realized what had happened.

My entire body went numb.

It felt like someone had unscrewed a stopper on my feet and all the blood had run out of my body.

I felt a tear start to form in my eye.

The other officer came past me with Momma.

She looked at me and I saw her lips moving, but for some reason, everything was in slow motion and I couldn’t hear a word she was saying to me. I musta floated to the front door cuz I surely don’t remember walking. I saw Sean already in one squad car. I saw Momma being thrown into another. I looked around and saw that nearly all of our neighbors were outside on their porch just watching.

The tear had dried up and all I could feel was the piercing pain in my chest caused by forgetting to breathe.

I had ratted out my own mother. I didn’t deserve to be alive.

A third state trooper walked up to me and asked me if I was Shane. I flashed back to the day Momma had been shot at the Luby’s. There would be no running off this time. The man put his hand on my shoulder and told me to pack up some clothes and stuff because he had to take me somewhere. I honestly don’t remember packing anything. I don’t remember getting in that man’s car. I don’t ever remember him explaining what was happening to me. The next memory I have is sitting in the front seat of his car on our way to Beaumont when I realized I wouldn’t be going back to Winnie.

I began to bawl and I could not stop.

The next few days were a blur. They couldn’t find any records for Shane Temple (I didn’t bother telling them that Temple wasn’t my real last name), but they did find a record for Momma and that led them to a Fort Worth hospital and to my dad.

Shane’s First Heartache

“Things do not change, we change.”
-Henry David Thoreau-

Momma got out of the hospital after a couple weeks, but things were far from back to normal. She had to see a doctor all the time, but I didn’t see why. She got shot in the leg and it didn’t even break any bones. Momma couldn’t stand to live in Killeen anymore so we picked up and moved. We left the trailer park, Ms. Diebold, and the only home I’d ever known and headed south. It was the first time I felt sad about leaving somewhere. In general, most of the time when folks leave something they like, they aren’t so much sad about what they’re leaving behind as they are scared of what lay ahead. That was probably true in my case. Now that I think about it, I imagine Momma was scared quite a bit back then.

We moved to a small town called Winnie, right smack between Houston and Beaumont. Momma knew a guy who lived down that way and he got her a job working at some restaurant. I went to East Chambers Elementary School just up the road from our house. I would get done with class at 3pm and run over to the fair grounds to play around the stage they had set up for the annual Rice Festival. I used to climb up on the same stage where names like John Conlee, Merle Haggard, and Jerry Jeff Walker once cut their teeth. I would close my eyes and pretend there was a crowd of folks all there to see me. I liked Winnie.

I turned 10 right around the time I started the 4th grade, and for the first time, I noticed a girl. Her name was Amy. I didn’t know much about girls at the time, but I knew that every time I saw her, something turned over inside me, and it got pretty hard to think about much else. The Fall Social was coming up and I just had to get Amy to be my date. Now keep in mind that going as a couple to the Fall Social was a HUGE deal even thought it basically meant we would ride there together, walk through the door at the same time, go opposite directions to find our friends, meet up at the end of the night, and ride home together. Nevertheless, she just had to go with me. I needed a plan.

I walked down to where momma was working, as I always did Monday nights, and told her my problem. Momma hadn’t ever really been swept off her feet so she wasn’t much help, but her friend, Sean Harris, gave me some pointers. He said the way to get a woman’s attention was to smell good, brush your teeth, and tell her she looks pretty. He glanced at Momma when he said this and she half way smiled back at him.

That night, I took two showers and brushed my teeth for 13 straight minutes. I know because I timed it. I could barely sleep that night and when the morning finally came, I took another shower just to be safe. My mouth throbbing from the overzealous brush job I’d put em, I walked out to the bust stop, more nervous than I could ever remember being. When we finally got to school, it was already 7:57AM and there wasn’t enough time to have a simple conversation, much less ask the most important question I had ever asked a girl. I would just have to wait until lunch.

What followed might have been the longest three and a half hours of my life.

I tried my hardest not to stare, but every time I would glance over at Amy, she would look up as if she could feel my eyes on her. Finally, it was lunchtime. I had no appetite whatsoever. All I could think about was Amy. I looked all around the cafeteria trying to find her with no success. When I eventually did spot her, she was already sitting down amongst what seemed like 200 of her friends. No way in hell I was going into that lion’s den. So I had to wait again. The minutes seemed like hours as I anxiously anticipated the bell sending us back to class and my chance at Amy Lott. After twenty-five pain staking minutes, it was show time. I eased my way through the crowd over to the door Amy would be walking through in a matter of moments. My mouth suddenly went dry and I noticed my left hand had started to tremble a little bit.
“Hey Amy!”
I had said it a little louder than I had wanted to. A couple of her friends had caught up and were now practically in the conversation.
“Hey, Shane. How’s it goin?”
“Oh fine I guess… You look real nice today…”
I felt like a total idiot. Why couldn’t I just spill it?
“Say, Amy… Did you know the Fall Social is coming up this Friday?”
Of course she knew, dummy. Everyone knew.
“Um… yeah, Shane… I did…”
“Well.. uh… who are you going with?”
At this point, I realized my brain had neglected to send my legs a message tellin em to walk next to Amy as I made an ass out of myself with my mouth. This, in turn, had created a small crowd in front of the door we were blocking with our excruciatingly awkward conversation.
“Well yeah, Shane… I’m goin with Mitch Ness… he asked me this morning”
“Oh really? Thats pretty cool. I like Mitch. Well I’ll talk to you later.”

I hated Mitch.

I ended up going home around 1PM after I convinced the nurse I was sick. I actually was sick, but it wasn’t something you can cure with medicine. Hell, now that I think about it, I still haven’t found a cure for it. Amy was my first heart ache.

Momma Gets Shot

It was a Tuesday in October and I was 7 years old. I was waiting for momma to come home for dinner before she left again to work at the bar. Instead of her old yellow beater pulling into the lot, a black car with a flashin red light pulled up. A man in a black suit with a black tie stepped out of the car. I could see he had a gun strapped to his waist.
“Your name Shane, boy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You need to come with us, son.”
He had on sunglasses, but I could still see his eyes.

They were cold and squinting. I didn’t feel like I could trust em.

I glanced around the trailer park and saw people startin to come outside to take a look at the car and the man. I stood up and made like I was gonna walk to the passenger side, and, when he got around the back to open up the door, I took off the opposite direction. I didn’t know much, being 7, but I knew that I wasn’t getting in no damned car with some man I didn’t know. I ran back through the woods behind the trailer park and across the old bridge that ran across Wayben’s Creek. I ran across an open field and across a street I didn’t know the name of. I ran up behind a Whataburger and stopped to catch my breath next to the trash dumpster.

When I finally could stand up without getting lightheaded, I peeked around the corner to see if that man had followed me. Confident I wouldn’t be seen, I slipped into the Whataburger, ran to the bathroom and locked the door behind me. They had a full-length mirror and I noticed that I had a scratch across my right cheek and blood was oozing out. I grabbed some toilet paper and dabbed my face. What was I gonna do now? Who was that man? Did something happen to momma?

It was weird to me then, and it almost makes sense now. That was the first time I was conscious of the fact that I didn’t feel all that strongly about my mother. I mean, I barely knew the lady. I saw her for maybe an hour each day, if that. She brought food home and made up things for me to eat, but I couldn’t hardly remember ever sitting down with her and having a meal. She bought me a new shirt each month and new shoes once a year, but I can’t ever recall going shopping with her, or even her asking me what color I liked. It was as if we both were just going through the motions.

I left the Whataburger and made my way down the alley that ran parallel to the street leading up to my trailer park. When I got even to the entrance, I crawled through some bushes that bordered an old red brick building which sat caddy-cornered from Ms. Diebold’s office. I saw that black car sitting in the main parking lot. The man in the suit walked out of the office, looked back up towards my trailer, then finally got into his car and drove off. I watched his car roll down the road until I couldn’t see it no more. I sprinted across the street and into the office, knowing that Ms. Diebold would be able to protect me. When I walked in, she looked up and immediately burst into tears.
“Sit down, Shane. I have to tell you something.”
She proceeded to tell me about how momma had been working when some bad and crazy man drove his truck right up into Luby’s and just started shootin people. Momma was one of those people. She was in the hospital sleeping, Ms. Diebold said, and would okay, but I couldn’t go see her until next Wednesday. I think that might have been the first time I realized how alone I really was. Ms. Diebold was a nice old lady, but she would be gone if we ever moved. I didn’t have any real friends. I had trouble picturing my own mother’s face in my head if I hadn’t seen her for more than a few minutes in the last couple days. How many 7 year old kids would have trouble doing that?

The day Momma got shot changed me. It changed us. It changed everything.

Where I Started

“You can’t really understand where someone is going, if you don’t know where they’ve been. Some people keep their past guarded. Some people put it out there for everyone to know. And then there are some people, who live their lives in such an extraordinary fashion, they don’t get that choice.”
-Col. R. B. Shafer USMC-

I was born on September 11, 1984, in Fort Worth, Texas. My momma was a little bitty red headed Baptist girl, and only 15 years old. My dad was half Mexican and half Indian. I like to think I’m made up of the good halves of both my parents, but who really knows?

My dad tried to do the right thing and stick around, but being only 17 at the time, his fathering efforts fell far short of adequate and he and Momma split up before my 2nd birthday. He still pops in and out of my life from time to time. I’m not real sure how I feel about him. Chris Knight sings a song where he says “I don’t think about him much, but I worry ’bout him some…”. I guess that’s probably pretty accurate.

My momma, named me after her favorite country and western movie. She hoped that, like the main character in “Shane”, I’d grow up to be a strong and determined adult, whose focus was doing the right thing no matter the consequences. My given last name was never really made clear to me so I picked out my own and no one ever really seemed to mind. I read a picture book one time, when I was little, all about one of Sam Houston’s sons named Temple. He was a hell of a lawyer up in Oklahoma back in the late 1890s and even had a TV show made about him called “Cimarron”. I liked his attitude towards things so I borrowed his name, hopin it would rub off on me.

Momma was originally from Weslaco, deep down in the valley, but moved to Fort Worth when she found out she was pregnant with me. She never told me, but I found out her daddy was a preacher and she skipped town to spare her family the embarrassment, and to spare us the impending ridicule. Life is hard enough for an average 15 year old, but when you have a child, no family, and no education it’s even harder. She stayed on with some friends when we first got there, but I guess that didn’t last too long. Once she turned 18, she started working at the Luby’s in Killeen during the day, and at night she helped out at a local dive bar. The two jobs barely helped her make ends meet. My first memories consist of spending all day in the main office of our trailer park. The owner, an old lady named Lorraine Diebold, would let me watch TV in the mornings, and in the afternoons I would play outside while she would sit on the porch listening to oldies music. She lost two sons in Vietnam and her husband to a truck stop queen in the 70s. I didn’t know what that meant when I first heard it, but I knew it meant he wasn’t coming back.

In the earliest days, I don’t remember ever feelin like times were hard or that I wasn’t taken care of. I think it coulda been because I had never known anything else. Either way, looking back I guess there isn’t much I could have done about it anyhow.