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Show 159 connected-a point he had been making for twenty minutes, each of which I spent envisioning him standing up, going to the keg and never coming back. Steve walking out gave me the chance to feign concern and move for the cool balcony air. I normally would have dropped off my standard bottle of Wild Turkey and been on my way rather than attend an event that reunited the Pleasant Grove kids like this, but this was Steve's birthday, February 15th, eight months and one day before he took Exit 88 in Grantsville and re-used some of the car seat cushions and empty beer bottles that were already out there as targets. He was not a great aim and would miss most of his shots before heading back to his track with plenty of ammunition, leaving bottles of Bud Lite that had expired months before unbroken. It was also the first time I could remember Steve doing anything for his birthday besides dinner at Tamara's urging. He said all he wanted was to hang out with his friends, and to go to church in the morning. The ride correlation efforts from Pleasant Grove had been surprisingly successful-most of the faces from high school were there, including the aforementioned Brad, Travis, Jeff, Charles and several of their new friends that I hadn't met before. The ones I did know looked mostly the same. Brad and Travis were trying out beards-and Travis' actually gave his face an effective slimming. It had the same effect on Brad's face, less fortunate in his case because he was already thin and this stretched his resemblance to the brink of goat territory. |