WIP: DYNAMIC DUO OF THE OZARKS

The heavy, walnut door swung open and Mykel Daring walked into his office at the university. He threw his keys on his desk, in front of the framed photo of his grandchildren, and then place his mail next to it, so he could prop the door open with the rubber stopper. He then flipped on the overhead light and sat down at his desk. The red light on his answering machine flashed, indicating he had a message. He pushed the button to hear the soothing voice of his wife, Julie.

“Mykel, it’s me. Just want to let you know that they called an emergency faculty meeting after school today. It is either a shooter threat or stomach flu outbreak.” Mykel moved the mouse to wake up his computer, so he could check his e-mails, to see what excuses his students would use for not coming to his two o’clock Modern Communications class. “I have a meatloaf in the fridge, all you need to do is put it in the oven at 400 degrees. The potatoes and green beans are in the crock pot. Oh, could you make some ice tea? I’ll should be home about the time it is ready. Love you, Honey. Bye!”

There were only two student e-mails. One person was going to an uncle’s funeral and one person had a sinus infection, which meant he would have a good turn out for today’s lecture.

Mykel noticed one of the envelopes, in his mail, was from Springville, Missouri. For once, it was not from the Show Me State University Alumni Foundation, which was always asking for a donation, but from a person he didn’t know. Curiosity forced Mykel to rip open the envelope to find out who in Springville, Missouri, sent him an old fashioned, hand addressed, snail mail, letter.

“Dear Professor Daring: I am the nephew of Clinton Grogan, your roommate at Show Me State. I work as a technician at the Ralph A. Dix Medical Center in Springville. Once a week, I put on a Batman costume that I had wore to a Halloween party, before I was deployed during Desert Storm, and visit the children in the pediatrics ward. They enjoy and it brightens there day. My mother said it was a coincidence, because Uncle Clinton and you dressed as Batman and Robin, when the TV show was popular. She showed me a newspaper article about what you did and some snapshots of you guys in your costumes. It sounds like you had an interesting experience. I would love to hear more about it. My uncle died before I was born, so I never had a chance to meet him. If you can, send me an e-mail telling me about what happened. My e-mail is springvalleybatman@gmail.com. Sincerely, Justin Kelly.”

Clinton Grogan. Mykel thinks about his former roommate every Veteran’s Day, when the Communications Department reads the names from the Vietnam Memorial Wall. Mykel was 4-F, so he stayed in college to obtain a degree in Broadcast Media with a minor in Communications. Playing Robin the Boy Wonder was a short lived experience. Clint traded being the first Batman of Springville, for being Private First Class Clinton Grogan of the 25th Infantry Division in Vietnam. He would then become a ground casualty in Hua Nghia. He would be nineteen year old Private First Class Clinton Grogan of the 25th Infantry Division in Vietnam forever. Never to marry, raise kids, enjoy grandkids or have a retirement party. Just another name, among others, who met a similar fate, on the Memorial Wall. Nobody, who read his name on the Memorial Wall, knew that he spent the spring of 1966, dressed in a homemade Batman costume, attempting to do good deeds, emceeing hootenannies and frat parties, and like the real Batman, coming close to being killed by a bunch of thugs, while rescuing friends.

Mykel thought about it some more. It was over fifty-five years ago. What do you tell a young man, who has his own war experience, about the goofy thing his uncle did before he went to die in a war? He really didn’t have time to think about it now, because he had a COM 120 class to teach, then head back to the college radio station to give the newscast during All Things Considered. He would wait and get Julie’s opinion on what he should tell the young man.

*****

Mykel had dinner on the table and had made iced tea, when Julie arrived home from the world of suburban high school. As they ate, she related tales of unruly students, missed assignments and the screwy non-issue that panicked the principal, so bad that he had to call a faculty meeting.

“Anything interesting happen to you today?” Julie asked.

“I received a letter from the nephew of my college roommate, Clint Grogan,” Mykel explained, as he stabbed a small, gold potato with his fork. “He wanted to know about us dressing up as Batman and Robin.”

“I don’t remember hearing about that,” Julie laughed, then asked, “Why does he want to hear about it?”

“He works at a hospital and visits the children in the pediatric ward dressed as Batman and his mother told him about me and Clint doing that for a psychology class experiment and how it got out of hand. His mother showed him a photo of us in our costumes. I assume it is Clint’s little sister…I can’t remember her name.”

“I would LOVE to see a photo of you dressed as Robin,” Julie laughed. “I assume you were Robin, since you are shorter than most people.”

“I must not be too short, you married me!” Mykel chuckled. “I think there was a photo of us, dressed as Batman and Robin, in the yearbook. I may also have that article they wrote up in the newspaper about us. We were in trouble for doing it. The Springville Police Department threatened to lock us up for being a public nuisance.”

“Why? That’s silly!”

“You would have to know what that community was like. They didn’t have a sense of humor. I figured that out when I worked at the Top 40 station in that town. You should have heard some of the stupid things people would call and complain about. The adults in that town hated that radio station and the college kids too.”

“Wait…I just thought of something,” Julie said. “Is Clint the roommate who was on the basketball team with your friend, Clarence, that is the basketball coach in Oklahoma? Maybe you should call him. He might help you think of something to tell this guy.”

“Yeah, I’ll call Slick, because he knew Clint before I did,” Mykel paused, then added. “At least for a semester before I met him. I will call him, after we put the dishes in the dishwasher.

******

Julie went to work grading student essays and, occasionally, shouting an expletive at something stupid one of the kids had wrote. Mykel went to his den and took the Ozarky 67, Show Me State College yearbook, off his bookshelf, and began thumbing through it, while he dial Slick’s cell phone.

“You have reached Coach Clarence Jefferson. Please leave your name and number. I will return your call as soon as I can.”

“This is Professor Mykel Daring at Crossroads State University. Just wanted to ask you about…”

The signal for an incoming call made its “bloop-bloop” noise in Mykel’s ear. He looked at the phone and saw it was Slick returning his call, so he answered it.

“Hello?”

“MMMYYY-KEL! You trying to call me?” the jovial, bass voice on the other end of the line asked.

“Slick, glad I caught you!”

“I saw your number and thought, ‘I can’t blow off a call from Mykel.’ What’s up?”

“I got a letter from Clint Grogan’s nephew, he was wanting to know about our little adventure as Batman and Robin, but I thought I’d ask you, since you guys played basketball together, what should I tell him about Clint? What is one of your favorite memories?”

“How about telling him about the time me and Clint walked in on you and that blonde girl ‘heavy petting’? She was wearing rubber gloves and had a huge bottle of hand lotion!” Slick began to laugh. “I wish you could have seen the look on you and her faces.”

“I think I’ll leave that story out,” Mykel replied with a giggle. “I haven’t told Julie about that.”

“Seriously, Clint had great potential as a player,” Slick explained. “Too bad his grades and old man got in the way.”

“I think he was only allowed to play twice when we were roommates,” Mykel reminisce. “But what I saw in those games was good.”

“Oh man! Clint was a machine. When you threw him the ball, his hands were like magnets and he caught that ball everytime. He would then pass it to someone else, so fast that the other teams ears probably popped, as it went by their face. I’ve coach many kids, but never had a player as good as Clint,” Slick’s voice trembled a bit as he grew maudlin remembering his teammate. “He was a great player and an even greater person. We bonded, because we loved basketball. That was unusual for that time, because Clint was, what they called back then, a hayseed farmboy, and I was a cocky black kid from K.C.”

“Remember, the name of his hometown was pronounced ‘HER-MISS’, but spelled like the Greek god, Hermes,” Mykel chuckled. “Because Missouri can’t pronounce the names of their towns right. Like Ver-sales is spelled like the place in Versailles, France.”

Slick chuckled, “You never did like Missouri, did you?”

“Nope, I was a dyed-in-the-wool New Englander,” Mykel said. “But the happiest I was, when I lived in Missouri, was when I attended Show Me State and worked at K-I-L-L. My mother moved me to Lemming, where her family was, when my father was killed. I never fit in there because the people were either snobs or rednecks…some were both. It died when they decommissioned Route 66 and built I-44. There is very little there now. At S.M.S, I made several friends, like you and Clint. Then again, I don’t think Clint had any enemies. I made enemies every five minutes.”

“Hey man, you made and impression on my wife, the first time you met,” Slick admonished Mykel. “And her aunt talked about you holding the elevator door open for them, until the day she passed away. Always called you that tiny, white boy, with hair like the Beatles and talked like President Kennedy.”

“My mother taught me to hold the door open for ladies,” Mykel explained.

“Yeah, but that was 1966 and they were black.”

“True,” Mykel agreed, as he turned another page in the yearbook to find what he was searching for. “Oh wow! I just found a photo of me and Clint dressed as Batman and Robin in the yearbook! I’ve got to show Julie this! Say, why don’t you e-mail me some of your memories of Clint and I’ll send it to his nephew with my memories.”

“I’ll do that,” Slick said. “Your e-mail still daring-npr@crossroadsumail.com?”

“Absolutely.”

“I send it as soon as I can! Great talking to you again, Mykee!”

“It’s always good to talk to you. Tell Silvy hello.”

“I will. Good bye!”

Mykel arose from his desk chair and went into the living room, where Julie was grading essays with the Food Network on as background

“Can you believe a student turned in an essay with only THREE sentences in it?”

Mykel held the yearbook, up to Julie’s face, to show her the photo of he and Clint as Batman and Robin. She burst in to laughter.

“That is so funny!” Julie picked up the remote and turned off the television. “Why don’t you tell me about little escapade and I’ll decide what you should tell your roommate’s nephew?”

“Okay, but you promise you won’t get mad if I talk about what I did with a girl I liked back then?” Mykel nervously broached the delicate subject to his wife of thirty-seven years.

“I won’t,” Julie smirked. “I’ll just remember that I’m eleven years younger than you and she is probably an old woman now.” She smiled and giggled. “I’m, technically, still in my fifties.”

Mykel rolled his eyes, which made her laugh. “I’ll just stick to our adventures as the Dynamic Duo of Springville, Missouri. Looking back, we were young and stupid. We probably could have gotten ourselves killed, trying to actually do something Batman and Robin would do, but we saved two peoples lives, which made it worth it.”

“Wait! I’m really interested in this now! But back up a bit. You should start by telling me about your first meeting with Clint or the first time you heard his name,” the high school English teacher in Julie instructed her husband.

“I remember the first time I heard of Clint Grogan was the same day I found out I was getting my first job in radio,” Mykel told Julie. He then began to tell her the whole crazy thing.