Moving day was…well, moving day. It wasn’t like I hadn’t ever done it before. I suppose it was a good thing in a way. It meant that I could just go through the motions without having to think about it.
Not thinking – that was the ticket.
Zach flitted around us all, “supervising the operation” he called it. At least he had the decency to try to hide his enthusiasm, but he wasn’t doing all that good a job of it.
Ever since he’d heard about the move, Zach had been abuzz with excitement. He’d asked if he could come with us.
“You can do that?” I asked.
“Can’t say for sure, Marcus, but I managed t’do a fair amount of travelin’ with old Henry Clay.”
Of course I said yes.
I didn’t want to lose both of my best friends.
Besides, after a hundred years in the Gierman College Library, he deserved a change of scenery. We were looking over a pile of pamphlets from St. Gregory’s College that Dad had given me. St. Gregory’s, that’s where we were headed.
It was nearly a week after Dad’s announcement before I even bothered to learn the name.
“Lordy!” exclaimed Zach. “St. Gregory’s library system includes four separate buildings that contain over three million volumes!”
“That ought to hold you for awhile,” I muttered.
Zach had a kind of glassy-eyed look. For the next several weeks, he just kept repeating it over and over, “Three million volumes…”
Amy and I kept our enjoy-this-moment act going right to the bitter end. Still, as the last week of June approached, our performances were getting less and less convincing.
Saying goodbye…I suppose I was hoping for something dramatic and romantic, you know, like the end of the movie Casablanca.
I’d be Humphrey Bogart, all noble and stoic, “We both know that the lives of two little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world…” and Amy would be Ingrid Bergman, teary but brave, her head held high…
But Amy was no Ingrid Bergman, and Lord knows I’m no Humphrey Bogart.
When the time came to say our last farewell, we were both awkward and stupid. Neither of us was brave or intelligent enough to put what we were really feeling into words.
Would we ever see each other again? Not likely. But that reality was too harsh. Instead we pretended that somehow, some way, this wasn’t really goodbye.
We went through the motions; promised to write, held each other as long as we could stand it, but not as long as we wanted, and went our separate ways.
I still get a stomach ache when I think about it. I keep rewriting the script in my head, what we should have said and done.
If I was directing the film version of moving day, the weather would have been bleak and grey. A dismal rain shower would have been appropriate for the final shot of me and my family as we rode out of Gierman and into the sunset.
But then, we were going east not west and the sun was shining down on a beautiful summer day.
Whoever’s writing the script of my life just can’t get anything right.
Had you been watching the real version of our exodus from Gierman, you would have seen a battered yellow rental truck lumbering onto the highway.
You would have seen Dad at the wheel excitedly mouthing the words to some stupid country-western song about lonesome long-haul truckers.
Then you would have seen Mom smiling as Ernie’s Shop Rite receded from view behind us.
You may have even noticed me, sitting between them, grimly fighting to keep my stoic face in place.
It’s unlikely though, that you would have seen that small figure in the battered Civil War uniform perched cross-legged atop the cab of our truck, peering excitedly at the road that lay ahead.