I stood at the gate and pressed the buzzer. The speak­er crack­led, and the deep voice of the secu­ri­ty guard respond­ed. “Can I help you?”

“Mike. It’s me, Ken. Bear broke out again. I’ve got him down here with my dog.”

“Oh, Christ,” Mike said. “Be there in a minute.”

Bear was a Box­er. He was crazy about my Amer­i­can Bull­dog, Zoey. Every time I took Zoey for a walk, he made a jail break to play with her, and I had to herd him back to his house.

Mike appeared at the top of the dri­ve­way in his black uni­form, walked down the steps to the gate, and punched in the code. The gate hummed elec­tron­i­cal­ly and slid open. Built like a weightlifter, Mike grabbed Bear’s col­lar. “Don’t know how he got out this time. We fixed up all the holes he dug.”

“He jumped the fence at that low spot when we walked by,” I said, point­ing down the hill.

“I’ll tell main­te­nance. Sor­ry for the trouble.”

“It’s no big deal.”

“Thanks again.” Mike dragged Bear up the hill. Roxy, his sis­ter, wait­ed for him, wag­ging her tail. She was timid and nev­er tried to get out. They dashed through the port au cochere toward the back yard, and Zoey and I con­tin­ued on our walk.

Cindy and I had moved to Hid­den Hills to be clos­er to our grand­chil­dren. Although we didn’t know it when we bought our house, a num­ber of celebri­ties lived in the neigh­bor­hood, includ­ing Jen­nifer Lopez. She lived in a state­ly white brick house two doors down from us, and Bear and Roxy belonged to her.

I’m not into the enter­tain­ment scene. When we moved here, I knew Jen­nifer Lopez was a big deal, but I couldn’t have picked her out of a line-up. One evening at twi­light a year or two before Bear and Roxy showed up in her yard, I was walk­ing Zoey around our block when I came up on a stun­ning­ly attrac­tive woman push­ing a dou­ble-seat­ed stroller car­ry­ing a lit­tle boy and girl. “See the dog­gy,” she said to the tod­dlers. “Hi, Dog­gy,” she said a cou­ple of times, smil­ing at me.

Zoey’s friend­ly, but her rough play with kids can cause prob­lems. “Hi,” I grumped and moved on quickly.

When I told my daugh­ter about the woman, she was flab­ber­gast­ed. “That was J Lo, Dad, you idiot.” The tipoff, along with the stun­ning­ly attrac­tive looks, was that J Lo had twin two-year-olds by some singer I’d nev­er heard of who she’d recent­ly divorced. Being clue­less, I had dissed the mega-star.

I hoped I’d get a sec­ond chance, but no such luck. My encounter with her was an anom­aly. Celebri­ties of her stature don’t nor­mal­ly ven­ture out­side their enclaves with­out an entourage. Sev­er­al times I saw her Rolls Royce motor through her gate, but the back win­dows were tint­ed. All I could see was her chauf­fer in the front wind­shield, glar­ing at me like he hat­ed me. In research­ing this post, I learned he and J Lo lat­er had a falling out and she fired him. He sued her and she coun­ter­sued him for black­mail­ing her, so maybe his dark scowl wasn’t about me.

After Bear and Roxy came along, my many trips to the secu­ri­ty gate didn’t pro­duce any con­tact with J Lo either, but one Sun­day morn­ing I man­aged to snare a con­so­la­tion prize. Mike must have been off duty that day because no one respond­ed to the buzzer at first. Then a young guy wear­ing swim trunks jogged through the port au cochere and shout­ed down to me, “Yeah, man? Whad­daya want?”

“Bear’s out again.”

“Oh, wow!”

High school age, short and mus­cu­lar with a buzz cut, the kid ran down to the gate and pulled Bear inside. Bear wan­dered up the hill and began root­ing around in the bush­es. My gar­den­er had found a huge rat­tlesnake in my front yard the pre­vi­ous day. Most hous­es in Hid­den Hills have rat­tlesnake fences around the back yards, but the front yards are exposed because of the dri­ve­ways. I warned the boy about the risk of a rat­tlesnake bit­ing Bear.

“Oh, man, that sucks! What can we do about it?”

“Put him in the back inside your rat­tlesnake fence.”

“What’s a rat­tlesnake fence?”

It turned out J Lo didn’t have a snake fence, so I gave the boy the name of the con­trac­tor who installed mine.

“Wow, man! I’m gonna call that guy right now. We’ve got lit­tle kids in here. God, I mean, thanks so much, man!”

“That’s okay, man. Stay safe.”

When I asked my daugh­ter if J Lo had a son in high school, she gave me the hairy eye­ball. “What did he look like?”

I told her.

“That’s Casper, Dad, you idiot!”

This idiot thing was begin­ning to get on my nerves, but she had me dead to rights again. My age esti­mate was slight­ly off. Twen­ty-sev­en years old, Casper was the lead dancer in J Lo’s troupe and he was her main squeeze. On You-Tube, I watched her pro­claim to some dit­sy inter­view­er her undy­ing love for Casper. She want­ed to have his child, she said. On anoth­er tape, they did a sexy dance rou­tine togeth­er. I was mys­ti­fied. Casper was short­er than she was, fif­teen years younger, and far from stun­ning­ly attrac­tive. Cer­tain­ly she could do bet­ter, I thought.

A few days lat­er when I walked down to the mail­box, Casper jogged up the road at a good clip with Bear and Roxy in tow. With­out break­ing stride, he waved and flashed a big smile. “Hey, man!”

I waved back. “Hey!”

“Called that snake guy! Weird dude, but we bought the fence, man!”

“That’s great, man!”

“Thanks again, man!”

“No prob­lem! Any­time, man!”

I watched him run over the hill. Well, at least he’s nice enough, I thought. And he seems to be in good phys­i­cal condition.

A few days lat­er the lady who lives next door appeared on our doorstep with a ban­dage on her hand the size of a water­mel­on. She said Bear had mauled her on her morn­ing walk. She’d heard I had trou­ble with him and want­ed to know what happened.

“He jumps the fence to play with my dog,” I said, “but he’s always been friendly.”

The next day I got a call from her lawyer. He’d filed a mil­lion dol­lar law­suit against J Lo and want­ed me to tes­ti­fy that Bear was aggres­sive. “He’s not aggres­sive,” I said. “He just likes my dog.” I argued with him for a while and then hung up.

A few hours lat­er, Cindy answered the phone. A woman said she’d heard we’d com­plained about J Lo’s vicious dog.

“Who is this?” Cindy asked.

She said she was from Enter­tain­ment Tonight, the tabloid tele­vi­sion show.

Cindy dropped the phone like it was a live rattlesnake.

The fol­low­ing week, Bear and Roxy dis­ap­peared from J Lo’s yard. My daugh­ter told me she and Casper had bro­ken up. On the inter­net, I learned Casper got cus­tody of the dogs.

A month lat­er, the lady next door told me J Lo paid her a large dam­age award to set­tle her lawsuit.

Short­ly after that, a fleet of mov­ing vans pulled up to the secu­ri­ty gate; an army of movers loaded up enough fur­ni­ture to dec­o­rate the governor’s man­sion; and the trucks con­voyed out of Hid­den Hills.

An osteo­path­ic sur­geon bought J Lo’s house and moved his fam­i­ly in. Nice peo­ple. Kind of bor­ing, though. Like us.

That all went down a cou­ple of years ago. J Lo has moved on with her life since then, hook­ing up with Alex Rodriguez, so it’s clear she’s gone for good.

I’m still bummed out about it. I miss all the excite­ment. J Lo, the twins, Mike, the Rolls Royce, Bear, Roxy, all gone from my life, and it’s real­ly hard to accept that I’ll nev­er see my good bud­dy, Casper, again.

Worst of all, I didn’t even have a chance to say, “Good­bye, man!”

I found the bot­tle nes­tled between two feed bags in the back of the ware­house. Pab­st Blue Rib­bon Beer, the big forty ounce size, emp­ty except for a few lit­tle bub­bles on the bot­tom. I was sev­en­teen, work­ing a sum­mer job at the Crozet Fruit Grower’s Co-op. I fig­ured anoth­er work­er, Wal­ter, drank the Pab­st. It was three o’clock and he’d been M.I.A. since lunch time.

I took the bot­tle to Jack, the senior man. In his for­ties, five feet three, built like a fire hydrant with a bowl­ing ball head and bristly buzz-cut red hair, he didn’t have much use for Wal­ter. “Tongue-dick,” he grumped, an epi­thet Jack reserved for the worst among us. I didn’t know what it meant and I was too timid back then to ask. “Best we tell Miz Pugh,” he said.

Mrs. Pugh was the Co-op’s Man­ag­er. I fol­lowed Jack across the ware­house and up the stairs to her office where he set the emp­ty forty ounc­er on her desk.

She stared bale­ful­ly at it, the lens­es of her horned-rim glass­es glint­ing in the light. “Wal­ter?” she said.

Jack nod­ded. “Sumbitch.”

“Please don’t curse, Jack.”

“Sor­ry, Miz Pugh.”

A wid­ow in her fifties with polio, Mrs. Pugh walked on leg braces while lean­ing on hand crutch­es. Know­ing Wal­ter had a his­to­ry of binge drink­ing, she had hired him any­way out of com­pas­sion. He had a wife and three kids and no one else would give him a job. She had every right to be angry at him for let­ting her down, but she betrayed no hint of frus­tra­tion that after­noon. Despite her chal­lenges, or maybe because of them, she was the most patient boss I ever worked for.

“Thank you for telling me,” she said. “Y’all go on back to work now.”

Mrs. Pugh let Wal­ter go, and Jack and I had to cov­er his work­load. Jack made it easy for me. He was the strongest small man I ever met. He tossed around hun­dred pound feed bags all day long with an unfil­tered Camel Gold con­stant­ly dan­gling from his lips, smoke curl­ing into his squint­ing green eyes, yet I nev­er saw him break a sweat or even breathe hard.

Work­ing shoul­der to shoul­der with Jack wasn’t exact­ly a bar­rel of laughs. Tac­i­turn and qui­et, he didn’t seem to have much of a life. He lived alone, could bare­ly read or write, didn’t have any inter­ests out­side his job at the Co-op, and didn’t have any friends oth­er than Mrs. Pugh, whose kind, fair treat­ment had earned his devo­tion. My attempts to cheer him up only rarely broke through his stiff-jawed frown to pro­duce his ver­sion of a smile, a short-lived uptick at the cor­ners of his mouth and a sin­gle quiver of the ubiq­ui­tous Camel.

Then one morn­ing near the end of the sum­mer, he walked into the ware­house, grin­ning all over him­self. “My girl­friend said we get mar­ried if I give her a ring,” he crowed.

He’d nev­er men­tioned a girl­friend before, but from there on, Becky was all he could talk about. She was beau­ti­ful with silky brown hair and a just-right curvy fig­ure, and she was kind, sweet, and fun to be with. Jack had been crazy about her for months, but he didn’t think the feel­ing was mutu­al until she said she’d mar­ry him if he gave her a ring.

I was hap­py for him. Then I met Becky.

Jack and I walked down Three Notch’d Road to a store to buy lunch. When we stepped inside, Jack sucked in his breath and rushed over to a woman stand­ing with a man by the drink machine. “Hi, Becky,” he said, his voice trembling.

She was in her thir­ties, Jack’s height, and a good hun­dred eighty pounds. Pim­ples and black­heads cov­ered her chub­by face, and greasy brown hair fell limply to her ample shoul­ders. She rolled her eyes at the mid­dle-aged bean-pole with yel­low teeth stand­ing beside her, and mut­tered, “Shit, Bob­by, here he is again.”

Jack danced around in front of Becky like a pup­py dog des­per­ate for a pat on the head while she ignored him and flirt­ed with Bob­by. There was noth­ing sub­tle about the sig­nals she sent them. She had no inter­est in Jack, and she want­ed to get it on with Bobby.

She was lean­ing against Bob­by and he had just slipped his hand inside her blouse when Jack blurt­ed out that he planned to give her a ring next week. Becky and Bob­by exchanged sly looks. She went up on tip­toes and whis­pered some­thing in his ear. They laughed. She winked at Jack, took Bobby’s arm, and pulled him toward the door. “Bet­ter be a nice ring, Jack,” she said over her shoul­der as they left the store. Jack waved to her with a lit­tle-boy grin on his flushed face.

On the way back to the Co-op, Jack was elat­ed. “I seen a ring in the drug store. It’s real nice.”

The fol­low­ing week was my last at the Co-op. Thursday

morn­ing, Jack showed me a ring he’d bought at the Crozet Drug Store. “Give it to Becky tonight,” he said, his eyes shin­ing. “Then we get married.”

I want­ed to warn him, but Jack was more than twice my age and I didn’t think it was my place to give him advice. I told him the ring was nice and kept my mouth shut about Becky.

Jack didn’t show up for work the next day, Fri­day. At quit­ting time, Mrs. Pugh called me into her office and hand­ed me my last check. After we said our good­byes, she men­tioned Jack. “I’m wor­ried about him. He didn’t call in. It’s not like him.”

I told her about Becky and the ring. I real­ized only then that Mrs. Pugh was the one per­son in the world who might have been able to get through to Jack about Becky. “I wish I’d told you ear­li­er,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“You shouldn’t be. Jack’s a grown man, respon­si­ble for his own actions.”

True, I thought, but I still wished I’d told her.

After I went back to school, I heard that Mrs. Pugh con­vinced Jack to return to work, and I thought he’d be okay.

Time passed. I con­cen­trat­ed on my senior year in high school and didn’t think much about the Co-op.

Then one cold Decem­ber morn­ing I was stand­ing by the wood­stove in the Pied­mont Store in White Hall when Wal­ter walked in. He got in my face, told me it was my fault he got fired by the Co-op, and threat­ened to kick my ass.

My tem­per flared, but as he rant­ed at me, the look in his rheumy eyes gave me pause. He was drunk again. By then he had to know drink­ing was killing him, but he couldn’t stop. He was help­less and hope­less. My anger drained off. I backed down and walked away. I nev­er saw Wal­ter again and don’t know what became of him.

I know what became of Jack. He stopped com­ing to work. They found him at home, dead by his own hand, a gun­shot wound to the head. I don’t recall who told me or when it hap­pened. All I remem­ber is the heart-wrench­ing shock. Fifty years lat­er I can still feel it.

As I wrote this, I thought about Becky. I won­der how she felt when she heard about Jack. Did she know he loved her? Did she care?

Ten years ago, I wrote a nov­el, The Killing Tree, inspired by Jack and Wal­ter. I haven’t tried to pub­lish it. I don’t like it. It fes­ters like a thorn in my hand. I tin­ker with it from time to time, but noth­ing makes it bet­ter. I can’t find a way to rewrite their lives to deliv­er a hope­ful out­come. But I keep trying.

In the spring of 1967, near the end of my sopho­more year in UVA’s Col­lege of Arts and Sci­ences I was required to declare a major. My pas­sion was Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture, but the class­es were dif­fi­cult and I was strug­gling to main­tain a C aver­age. I decid­ed to declare Edu­ca­tion, which was eas­i­er. To major in teach­ing I applied to UVA’s Cur­ry School of Edu­ca­tion. Although Cur­ry usu­al­ly admit­ted stu­dents in good stand­ing from the Col­lege, I was prompt­ly rejected. 

I sched­uled a meet­ing with Curry’s Dean of Admis­sions to ask him why they turned me down. A tall, pot­bel­lied man with a big nose and a mel­on-sized bald head, dressed in a frumpy black suit and a wide red tie, the dean remind­ed me of Wimpy from the Pop­eye car­toons, but Wimpy was always in a good mood and the dean seemed aggra­vat­ed when I sat down in a chair across his desk from him.

“The rea­son we reject­ed your appli­ca­tion should be no mys­tery to you,” he said. “Your record is atro­cious. Aca­d­e­m­ic pro­ba­tion. Cut pro­ba­tion. Drink­ing probation.”

I stared at him in shock. “I’m not on probation.”

He smirked. “Lying will do you no good, Mr. Oder.” 

“I’m not lying,” I said, still stunned. “I’m not on pro­ba­tion for anything.”

He nar­rowed his eyes, opened a file, and read from it. “Ken­neth J. Oder. Aca­d­e­m­ic pro-”

“Wait!” I said. “That’s wrong. I’m Ken­neth W. Oder.”

Still smirk­ing, he paused and read aloud a birth date. It was the right year but the wrong day and month. Frown­ing, he rat­tled off a stu­dent I.D. num­ber. It didn’t match my number. 

The dean fum­bled with the file. “There may be some sort of mis­take,” he said. “I’ll con­tact the Col­lege and get back to you.” 

Not trust­ing Wimpy to get it right, I made a bee line from his office to Cabell Hall where the College’s files were archived.

The Cabell Hall clerk con­firmed there was anoth­er sopho­more in the Col­lege named Ken Oder. I was amazed. Oder isn’t exact­ly a com­mon sur­name. The odds against anoth­er Ken Oder in UVA’s class of 1969 seemed astro­nom­i­cal. I want­ed to meet this guy.

I went to the dor­mi­to­ry where the Cabell Hall clerk said the oth­er Ken Oder lived. A stu­dent I didn’t know sat on a sofa in the lounge. When I crossed the room, he greet­ed me. “Hey, Ken.” 

I stopped. “Excuse me. Do I know you?”

He squint­ed at me. “I’m sor­ry. I thought you were some­one else.”

“Are you Ken Oder?” I asked.

“No. Fact is I thought you were Ken Oder. You’re almost a dead ringer for him.”

“Yeah, well, I am Ken Oder, but not the one who lives here.”

He looked at me like I was crazy. I explained. He said Ken Oder wasn’t there and he didn’t know where he was or when he’d be back. I left my con­tact information. 

One night the fol­low­ing week when I was sit­ting in the back of a greasy-spoon din­er, a friend walked by my table and did a dou­ble-take. “What the hell?” he said. “I just spoke to you on your way out the door.” He said he’d greet­ed me by name and I had looked at him with a puz­zled expres­sion, mum­bled hi back to him, and kept going. 

I thought I knew who he’d seen. I ran out­side, look­ing for Ken Oder, but he was gone.

Col­lege sopho­mores were required to meet with a Col­lege fac­ul­ty mem­ber about declar­ing their major. My meet­ing was sched­uled a few days after I nar­row­ly missed the elu­sive Ken Oder at the din­er. I was assigned to John Gra­ham, Assis­tant Dean of the Col­lege. When I arrived at Cabell Hall for my appoint­ment, stu­dents stand­ing in line out­side his office said he was run­ning an hour behind.

In his for­ties, tall and thin with a pleas­ant smile, Dean Gra­ham final­ly ush­ered me into his office two hours late. It was a mess. Files, man­u­scripts, and books were strewn all over the place, and strange­ly, an old machine gun was mount­ed on a cre­den­za by the win­dow. I eyed it uneasi­ly as I took a seat at his desk.

He reviewed my file (the right one this time). “I see you intend to declare Edu­ca­tion,” he said. “Why not Eng­lish Lit?”

“It’s a dif­fi­cult major, and I’m not a good student.”

He stud­ied my tran­script. “Your weak­ness­es are math and sci­ence. A major in Eng­lish would play to your strengths.”

“Edu­ca­tion is an eas­i­er cur­ricu­lum. Besides, I want to be a teacher.”

“An Edu­ca­tion degree will restrict you to teach­ing. An Eng­lish major with a minor in Edu­ca­tion would qual­i­fy you to teach and give you oppor­tu­ni­ties in oth­er fields if you change your mind and want to do some­thing else.”

“I’d rather just go with Education.”

The Dean stared at me weari­ly, then went to his door, told the stu­dents wait­ing out­side to come back in an hour, took off his suit jack­et, propped his feet on his desk, and lit a cig­a­rette. “Let’s talk about this, Mr. Oder.”

We talked. Long and hard. This very busy, over­worked admin­is­tra­tor, who dou­bled as a pro­fes­sor of eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture, argued with me about my future like his life depend­ed on it, instead of mine. Short of turn­ing that machine gun on me, he did every­thing he could to con­vince me I could excel in Eng­lish Lit cours­es. At the end of the hour, I with­drew my appli­ca­tion from the School of Edu­ca­tion and declared Eng­lish as my major.

I made the mis­take of not track­ing down the oth­er Ken Oder before the school year end­ed, and he didn’t return to UVA the

fol­low­ing year. I for­got about him until ten years ago when I dis­cov­ered records on geneal­o­gy sites of a Ken Oder born in Vir­ginia in 1947, who was a descen­dant of my great grandfather’s broth­er, but his trail went cold after he left Vir­ginia fifty years ago. In prepar­ing this post, I searched for him again. I could find only two Ken Oders and nei­ther is my age or looks like me.

I had nev­er met Dean Gra­ham before my dec­la­ra­tion of my major, and I encoun­tered him only once after­wards. I passed him on a walk­way near the law school when I was a first year law stu­dent. I stopped and stared after him, think­ing about how much his good coun­sel had meant to me. As he’d pre­dict­ed, I’d changed my mind about teach­ing, and my Eng­lish major had giv­en me the option of going to law school. 

I ran after him and stopped him. He didn’t remem­ber me, but he seemed pleased and slight­ly amused by my enthu­si­as­tic appre­ci­a­tion for his pre­cious time and sage advice. We spoke for only a few min­utes. He walked on, and I nev­er saw him again.

Dean Gra­ham died in 2007 at the age of 81. In his obit­u­ary, UVA Pres­i­dent Cas­teen char­ac­ter­ized him as a favorite of stu­dents, “sym­pa­thet­ic, clever and often fun­ny, respect­ful and opti­mistic about stu­dents’ futures.” I would add car­ing, ded­i­cat­ed, and spec­tac­u­lar­ly persuasive.

In the spring of 1967, I made a deci­sion to take the easy path. Two men blocked my way. Anoth­er Ken Oder unin­ten­tion­al­ly caused a delay. In the inter­im, Dean Gra­ham, who believed in me even though he didn’t know me, con­vinced me to believe in myself and changed the course of my life. 

Post Script: Accord­ing to a news arti­cle pub­lished after Dean Graham’s death, the machine gun was a present from his broth­er, who cap­tured it from Japan­ese sol­diers in World War II.