By Mike Blackwell

We sat listening to Tracy Chapman on the stereo, reading the words as she sang. It was spring, and my efficiency apartment was small, so we didn't have much choice but to be close.

We talked a little and laughed a lot, and soon it was time for her to go. We promised to make one another tapes from our separate music collections, and soon she was on the highway headed back home to Oklahoma. Calls came at the rate of one every week or two. We split the phone calls to keep the long-distance bills as low as possible.

Every few weeks, she managed to make the five-hour trip to Brownwood, and we would eat out and listen to music and walk in the park. We shared our dreams and disappointments, and discovered that we saw much of the world through the same eyes. We both liked kids, Mexican food, ice cream and the blues.

Soon it was late October, and Angie traveled back to Brownwood for another visit. Our friends Katherine and Darren were going to play and sing in a band in downtown Dublin, Texas, and we made plans to see them and enjoy a night out on the small town.

Angie is a senior at the University of Oklahoma, I'm a University of Texas-ex, and ironically her visit coincided with the annual Red River battle in Dallas. The Longhorns lost a heartbreaker, and Angie made sure I was well aware of the final score. I didn't mind much.

The night in Dublin was clear and brisk, with sounds of children and old folks and laughter. People danced on the dirt and grass in front of the band that played inside the gazebo. Angie and I walked up and down the main street in Dublin, and sat on a bench for awhile. Later we joined the crowd and kicked a little dirt on one another's shoes as we danced.

She was wearing a brown dress with small white flowers, and we joked and laughed during most of the songs, poking fun at ourselves and others as we moved around the oil lamps. We were all alone, surrounded by people.

We sat on the grass, huddling close against the chill. Our minds were free and clear, and we laughed hard at stuff that wasn't funny. The night ended as quickly as it began, and she was gone again the next day back to Oklahoma. Oklahoma seemed further away than before.

The phone calls were daily now. I went to Oklahoma for the first time in late November, and when I arrived I pulled into a store just outside Owen Field. I called Angie and awaited further directions to her house, and when I arrived she stood in black sweats, waiting for me outside in the cold.

Almost two years have past since I first met Angie. Last January Katherine and Darren were married in Arizona, and we tagged along for the wedding and enjoyed a quick, costly trip to Las Vegas. We've seen the whales at Sea World, and kicked water on each other in the Blanco River. We've watched a million bad movies, and we've had warm beer thrown on us at RockFest. I've watched her sleep in my car with her white-socked feet resting against my windshield.

We've driven thousands of miles north and south on I-35, east and west on I-20, trying to break down time and distance. We've spent a great deal of our relationship leaving, and promising one another that someday we'll be saying good night instead of good-bye.

People have asked me what made me crazy for Angie, and I've asked myself the same question. She's complex and simple. She has soft hair and an eyebrow that raises high when she smiles. Her eyes change color sometimes - brown one day, green the next. She loves baseball, and she works in a maximum security prison.

She likes to wear her socks high over her calves when she wears shorts, and she cooks a mean fried egg. She likes to take walks in cold weather, and she has a way of pushing her hair from her face behind her ear that defies description. When she watches football, she yells "Interference!" at precisely the right time.

Last spring she and I were enjoying a Howard Payne baseball game with Bud Jones and his son Matt. A balk was called, and young Matt said, "What's a balk?"

Before Bud or I could speak, Angie began to softly explain to Matt the intricacies of the balk rule. This was sweet Angie, strong and kind and loving and funny and good, in the sunshine at a ballpark explaining to a young boy the balk rule.

Surely you must wish you were me. We'll be married May 16.