We began our first full day together in Austin at the UT Student Union cafeteria, an enormous and aging public feeding trough where round blobs of scrambled eggs were inelegantly extracted with ice cream scoops from stainless steel vats and plopped onto segmented plastic dining trays. The serving line was manned by humorless and expressionless worker drones, work-study students not yet fully awake and minimum wage workers from Austin’s poor south side.
Among the melee of clanging serving pans, the dissonant sounds of several radio stations competing through the speakers of transistor radios scattered around the hall, and the roaring hum of fourteen hundred students in morning conversation, Mary Ann glanced through the pages of the Daily Texan as we tried to make a meal of scrambled egg blob, dry biscuits and a few bacon strips. The bacon strips resembled, more than bacon, dirty brown paint chips flecked from the walls of our month-to-month rooms. It was 40¢ per tray, and there was a lot of it.
After passing through the serving line we had the good fortune of finding a “papered table,” a term cafeteria patrons gave to those dining tables on which a previous diner had left a newspaper. This table was furnished with both the student-published Daily Texan and the morning edition of the Austin American-Statesman. In Minnesota, Hubert Humphrey had announced his entry into the presidential primary race, and all over the world the daily horoscope for Sagittarians read:
You tend now to wear rose colored glasses. Those who oppose you are more practical. Your lunar cycle is high. You come out on top.
Sagittarius is Mary Ann’s sign, and there was no doubt that the future looked better to her at that moment than it had in many months, better than it had in three years. She was tired, but beginning to fill with a new optimism. Maybe… just maybe, the hardest part was behind us. Privately, I worried that the hardest part was just beginning.
The next several days would be busy, filled with the necessary tasks of coordinating schedules, registering for classes, buying books, and finding some means of generating at least a small income. Our needs would be modest, but no less compelling. I was resolved that there wouldn’t be any more skipped meals… Mary Ann, I thought again as I looked across the table at the delicate features of her pretty face, had skipped too many.
Whether a part-time job or some entrepreneurial venture on The Drag, we would have to be cautious. This was not the time for dropping our guard, or varying from the course we’d mapped out and embarked upon months earlier. As the legendary Texas football coach, Darrell Royal, once remarked, “The main thing is to remember that the main thing is the main thing.”
Well, for me there was the main thing, then there was The Main Thing, and the latter was twenty-nine days away. In that time we’d have to get the necessary medical clearances, a proper license from the county and twenty bucks to pay the preacher at the campus Church of Christ. On Thursday, February 10th we would finally attend a wedding ceremony staged for public consumption, at least a very small segment of the public, and add the imprimature of the Statue of Texas to God’s handiwork. Mary Ann wasn’t yet aware of this plan. I planned to mention it to her on the way to the county clerk’s office tomorrow.
Such a public place as the Church of Christ sanctuary would worry her, I knew. I planned to have the ceremony in the preacher’s office with only a couple of our closest friends in attendance. There would be no public announcement—no notice in the newspapers and, certainly, no invitations mailed around.
Still, it would be a church, and I would see to it that she had a pretty dress. The ring would be simple, but it would be gold… and it would be strong enough to hold against any force this world could summon against it.
Mary Ann was little, and at the moment tired. But, my God she was strong. She had proven that. Strong, and observant. She could read my mind.
“Did you notice that all of the street vendors out in front of The Co-Op had business licenses?” she asked, folding the paper shut and dropping it on the edge of the table. “You know what you have to do to get a business license?”
“No, what?” I asked.
“You have to put your name and address down on the application. Probably have to show some identification, too,” she said in a matter of fact tone.
“I hadn’t thought about that, but I guess that’s right,” I responded. “It’s something to think about.”
“They keep all that information on file, and it’s a public record, you know. Anybody, absolutely anybody, can walk in the city clerk’s office and get that information,” she continued. She obviously had something more on her mind.
“That isn’t all. You know what else is a public record?” she asked, this time rising and reaching to take her coat from the chair back, signaling the end of breakfast. “A marriage license.”
“I guess so. I hadn’t thought about that either,” I said nonchalantly as I too got up from my chair and slipped my arm into my jacket.
“Well… life gets boring if you never take chances,” Mary Ann said with a coy smile as she slung her purse strap over her shoulder and picked up the notebook in which she’d written down the day’s agenda. She stood up on her toes to reach my face and kiss me on the cheek as I came around the table toward her and the door. She wasn’t talking about a business license.
* * *
The university tower stands in the middle of the UT campus. It’s 307 ft. high and the most imposing structure in the Austin skyline. A few year’s earlier a fellow named Charles Whitman climbed out onto the observation deck on the tower’s 28th floor and began a shooting spree that shocked the world. Before being gunned down by police 90 minutes after his reign of terror began, Whitman, an expert sniper, had managed to kill 16 innocent people and wound 31 more.
Standing below that tower had always made me feel a little exposed, a little vulnerable. Mary Ann may not have been as sensitive to the ill vibe of the place, but as we made our way from the main building across the mall toward Waggener Hall she was more attuned to what was happening around us than was I.
She had never seen them before, but she recognized the two figures approaching us from the southern side of the mall from photographs. Maybe she had seen them before, once… but she had never been sure. They were at least one hundred feet away, but they did not escape her notice.
Without uttering a word, giving me a signal or breaking her stride Mary Ann immediately steered me down a long set of concrete stairs and onto the walkway leading to the Journalism building. The look on her face told me that it was not the time to ask questions. Once inside the building she would tell me what she’d seen.
We slipped in the door at the southern end of the building, and Mary Ann quickly spotted an empty classroom on the left side of the hallway. From the windows in the classroom she could see the steps we’d descended moments ago, probably a hundred feet from the door we had entered. If the pair had spotted us and were following, she would see them come down those steps.
To be continued…
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Again, another great read….it’s like reading a book, a small chapter at a time! Keep it coming!
A friend recommended this site and story to me a couple of days ago and now I’m hooked. It’s not just this story though it is the whole site. I am enjoying the time I spend at Perkerson Park.
When is the next installment due? Are these articles published on a schedule?
I cannot stand the suspense – please submit Part V – YESTERDAY!