The Lonesome Death of Tommie Carroll

It was a high school reunion, of sorts.

A few members of the class of '68 get together from time to time.

Informally.

Everybody is pretty mellow.

It's fun to see your old buddies and girl friends.

Old flames never really die, you see, they just smolder.

Sometimes a secret crush is finally revealed.

“I wonder why I never asked her out?” a friend said, nodding toward a silver haired yet still very attractive woman who had just confessed her attraction to him in high school.

“Perhaps it was the fact that she had been seeing Tommie Carroll?”

“Oh yeah, that.”

Tommie was a Bad Boy.

You didn’t mess with him, not because he was tough, although he was tough enough.

Tommie was involved with bad people, not some punks in a high school gang, but real criminals.

He never finished school and by the time we graduated he had dropped out of sight.

Years later, his name came up in the papers.

Police had found his body in a shallow grave.

He had been shot in the head and his body covered with lime.

Tom had been playing a dangerous game with some guys who were even badder and Tom had lost.

Looking around at my former classmates, now showing their age,

I thought that our lot in life had turned out OK.

Compared to Tom's.