First Girlfriend
I never met my first girlfriend. I saw her with her parents on the steps of the Franklin Hotel in Deadwood, South Dakota, and they were checking out of the hotel and putting their luggage into a trunk of a car that had Ohio license plates. She was very pretty, and I think she was thirteen years old. I sat in the big rocking chairs that are on the porch of the Franklin and watched every move she made. Her parents bought her one of those hand-tooled leather purses that are in all the shops, and they bought her a Black Hills gold necklace. It took them at least ten minutes to fill the car and get ready to leave, and I watched her very closely, and I don't think she noticed me. Seeing her leave and knowing that I'd never see her again made me very somber. How many other girls are there in this world that I love and will never have the chance to meet?
When I went to bed that night I thought of that girl and I pretended that she wrote me a letter and invited me to visit her in Ohio. We would be together and I would impress her and she would think that I'm the greatest guy in the world. It’s nice to think that you are nice and have people like you. I've thought about that girl many times, and I try to guess what happened to her--if her life has been pleasant or a living hell. Maybe she got married and had a baby, and maybe her husband left her alone and miserable. Maybe she died in a horrible car accident on her prom night. I hope she has had a pleasant life. I’ll never know and that is kind of sad.
I sometimes wonder if some girl was watching me once and is thinking about me and wondering if I got killed at the prom.