Settling An Old Score

The meeting to plan our 50th high school class reunion took place on a shivering November evening. As I pulled into the parking lot, I glanced around to see if Jimmy Woods or Crunch Brown had shown up. They had not, and I was not sure how I felt about that, though resentment was definitely there.

The previous meet had been held in Terrance Thompson’s suburban basement, but our old quarterback thought it was too small and asked if I knew of a better venue. I spoke to my wife about the committee using the historic antebellum house where she volunteered. She checked and said her nonprofit group would be happy to let us meet there free of charge.

I was struck by the irony of having set this up myself, since I had never gone to any of my previous high school reunions. I had not intended on going to this one, either. Yet here I was, hosting the planning session.

Terrance was waiting for me in his Ford pickup truck and waved as he climbed down out of it. He was wrinkled and gray-haired now, but the sixty-eight-year-old former All-Stater looked great. He told me he had been working out daily with a boxing trainer to get in shape. Over the past twelve months, he claimed to have lost a pound for each year of his life.

I snorted and patted my stomach, thinking I had done nothing of the sort myself, though I certainly wanted to look my best. But something inside had stubbornly resisted every attempt and, if anything, I had gained weight while exercising less.

We shook hands and said, “Hey.”

Then Terrance opened the hatch of his truck, revealing a huge and hefty green and white cooler, which I helped to wrestle up the front steps and into the foyer. I switched on the crystal chandeliers and began arranging the tables and chairs in the parlor for the other twenty-five classmates we were expecting.

Once the room was set up, I went back out on the veranda and sat in a rocker. As I cooled down, I recalled Terence’s phone call seven months ago when he had invited me to the reunion. I had always refused before. But realizing that this would probably be my last chance to ever see my old classmates again, I listened. I was cynical, though, when he claimed to remember me after fifty years.

“You were the most popular senior,” I said, “the quarterback, so you’re hard to forget. Me? Not so much.”

“Believe me,” Terrance had insisted, “I remember you. We did not cross paths much, but your name has come up from more than a few classmates who remember you and said to get in touch with you. And that's straight up.”

Since I had not kept in contact with any of them, I found this hard to believe. I had not looked at my old yearbook—the one I was editor of—in a very long time, but I dug it out flipped through the pages, reliving memories, not all of them bad. And I remembered everyone. Well, almost.

Why did some of us recall high school fondly, while others looked back with nothing but bitterness and rage in their hearts? I knew why I did. Painful remembrances—like being unpopular and bullied—for which I still held a grudge.

At our first reunion committee meeting a month ago, I had to re-introduce myself to all my classmates as they trooped in. Everyone proved surprisingly friendly and grown up in attitude. Imagine that, I thought. And against all odds, Terrance Thompson and I had become friends.

Those painful memories I harbored were petty on one level, I realized. Everyone gets their fair share of hurt and abuse in high school. If I had learned anything from my long teaching career, it was that. I did not understand why I still cared so much. The more I thought about it, the more foolish I felt for wanting to settle a fifty-year-old grievance. I was not doing myself any favors by keeping the negativity simmering. As my wife said, the only person who suffers from hard feelings is the one holding onto them.

I did not know how to let it go. But I knew my rage and humiliation had to be addressed or they would never go away. The plan was to confront Crunch and Jimmy, the two bullies who had come to symbolize everything that I hated about high school, physically if necessary. Having made the decision, I could not wait to get it over with.

And then Crunch showed up.

In a wheelchair.

I recognized him instantly as the mini-bus door accordioned open, and he was lowered to the ground. Despite half a century gone by, Crunch was wearing what looked like the same clothes, albeit in a different size: sweatpants, warm-up jacket, and a baseball cap with a green “S.” But now his mountainous flesh strained against the cloth, and the wheelchair could barely contain him.

Predictably, Crunch did not know me. Even when we introduced ourselves, my name meant nothing to him. Well, why should it? To him, I was always nobody.

“I’m a helluva mess,” he said, “ain’t I?”

Shocked by his gargantuan appearance, I said, “What happened to you, man?”

“Well, I weigh about four-hundred pounds and my knees give out on me, among other things,” he said.

With the driver’s help, Crunch wheeled his way up a handicapped ramp, proclaiming how he was a changed man. That after a lifetime of being a night club bouncer, he had stopped “drinking and drugging” and was trying to live a clean life.            

As we shoe-horned him through the front door, I wondered what I could possibly do to this man that would be any worse than what life had done already. His entrance caused a commotion. He had been the starting center on back-to-back state championship teams, and that was enough to still make him a celebrity here. His pitiful condition won him sympathy, too. He blabbed away about the glory days until Terrance finally called the meeting to order.

It went smoothly. At the end, the old QB handed out key chains, school logo ballpoint pens, and a silly green party hat as door prizes. Our classmates helped to clean up the place. The meeting had adjourned and most had left when Crunch announced that his ride would not return for another hour and a half.

“Can you call them back and reschedule?” I asked, knowing we would never get him into a car.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll just wait outside.”

Where the temperature was twenty-eight degrees.

“I don’t think so. I’ll wait here with you,” I said.

“I’ll stay, too,” Terrance said.

When the three of us were alone, I asked Crunch about his pal Jimmy.

“Last I heard, he was down in Florida.”

“What’s he doing down there?”

“He’s in the penitentiary.”

“What the hell for?” Terrance demanded.

“Got caught changing numbers on some thoroughbreds he was training,” Crunch said. “Jimmy always was a con man. You know, even at the big high school All-Star football game, he marked a deck of cards and cheated the country boys from out in the state at poker.”

“Did you cheat, too?” Terrance asked.

“I didn’t play.” Crunch shook his head. “I was too ashamed.”

We brooded on this.

“I really appreciate y’all staying here with me,” Crunch said finally, breaking the silence. “I feel real bad about this.”

I checked my watch. The bus was due any minute. It was now or never.

“If you really want to feel bad,” I said, “I have a story for you.”

“Aw, you’re not going to tell him about that, are you?” Terrance said.

“Hell, yeah. I can’t let him skate on this.”

“What are y’all talking about?” Crunch said.

“About the time at baseball practice that you and Jimmy Woods stuffed me in my locker. Remember doing that?”

Of course, he did not. He was always bullying somebody.

Crunch looked me over. “What I don’t understand is how we thought we could do it.”

“I’m bigger now,” I said.

Headlights lit up the front of the house. We manhandled Crunch’s wheelchair toward the bus. Then it was just me pushing him the rest of the way.

 “You and Jimmy humiliated me in front of everyone on the team,” I said. “That hurt, Crunch. It stayed with me all these years. I gave up high school sports because of you two. That still stings to this day.”

As the driver fastened the wheelchair onto the lift, my old teammate said, “I’m sorry. I guess you really didn’t want to stay here with me tonight, did you?”

I watched as the driver hoisted him aboard, feeling such a welter of conflicting emotions that I could not speak.

“Maybe we could get a cup of coffee sometime and talk,” Crunch said, shifted his bulk in the chair.

I don’t know where the words came from, but I said, “I’d like that, Crunch. I’d like that a lot.” And to my surprise, found that I meant it.

© 2025 Rick Neumayer

First published in 2012 in The Tulane Review, “Settling An Old Score” will appear in the forthcoming THREE FOGGY MORNINGS: Stories by Rick Neumayer. If you like the story, I’d love to hear from you.