Every single word written here is an extraordinary exaggeration of events that have played out in my head... based on the stories I have heard from people I have met in jail or while I was dealing with my own stupidity and carelessness, resulting from my own addiction to alcohol and drugs. This is in no way a glamorization of drug use, but a tool to lend some humanity to a subculture that has been demonized and written off as a hopeless and worthless part of our human family. I do not condone or promote any of the behavior or activities herein.
I heard the first cop
approaching minutes before I saw the cloud of dust ballooning into the air
around the squad and trailing off behind him like exhaust from the rocket
boosters of the space shuttle. I had
originally been waiting at the bottom of the stairs in back, but had since convinced
myself that I could still smell the stale, sour, yeasty smell of Rhonda’s piss
soaked clothing from there, so I walked out towards the road. The squad was still in the distance, but now
I heard more sirens. A minute later he
slid the sleek, white, county sheriff’s car to a dramatic stop on the gravel
road in front of me.
He reached one hand up
to his shoulder and bent his neck to say something into the radio attached
there. He was wearing sunglasses, but I
could tell he was looking at me while his mouth barely moved as he delivered
what I assumed was the announcement of his arrival on the scene with the
expertise of a veteran ventriloquist. He
dropped his hand from the radio on his shoulder and sat in the car for a
moment, staring at me before raising his chest and releasing a deep, silent
sigh from within the contained comfort of his squad. He opened the door and stepped out of his car
into the afternoon sun. His head was
shaved clean, although I could tell he had a decent hairline. He removed his sunglasses and poked one metal
arm into the front pocket of his uniform.
When he closed the door, finalizing his arrival into the wicked world I
had invited him into, he looked at me curiously before a determined seriousness
invaded his pale blue eyes.
“Did you make the call
to 911?” he asked.
“Yes deputy…” I
responded while raising the tone of my voice on the final syllable
inquisitively.
“Morden. Who are you?”
“Jayson Jameson.”
“Jameson? Fuck… I grew up my whole life two doors down
from your wife. I’m real sorry,” he
offered, letting a bit of the seriousness ease away under the pressure of what
appeared to be genuine sympathy.
I nodded to him, but in
all honesty the memory of my wife’s death was just too much to add to the day’s
events. There was a dead body in the
building behind me, for Christ’s sake.
“Dispatch said you
reported finding a dead body?” He asked while seriousness crept back into his
eyes.
“Yeah… upstairs,” I
replied softly.
“Anybody else around?”
he asked before adding, “Walk with me a minute.”
“Not that I’ve seen,
no,” I replied as we walked. The sirens
were getting closer.
“Well, do you know who
it is? Is it the gal who lives here?” he
asked.
“Yeah, Rhonda… This is
her place,” I replied.
“Where’d you find her?”
“In her chair… In the
living room,” I replied.
“Okay, I’ll go have a
look. Stay put. You know
that there will be some more questions… and I’m pretty sure there’s a missing
person’s report been filed on you.” He said vacantly as he ascended the stairs,
taking two steps at a time. He reached
up to his shoulder and talked into his radio during his ascent, and then
disappeared into the apartment. Less
than a minute later he walked back outside and came down the stairs. I heard gravel beneath tires and the siren
that had been growing louder finally ceased.
I watched an ambulance arrive.
“Well… what do you think happened up there, Jayson?” he
asked while curiosity returned to his eyes.
“Are you really asking
me that question?” I replied.
“Yes indeed,” he
replied.
“Well, if I didn’t know
any better, I’d say she OD’d,” I offered brazenly.
“Kinda looks that way
to me too,” he shook his head and continued, “but you weren’t here for that
though, right?”
“No Deputy, I borrowed
her car to take my friend up to NewLife this morning,” I quickly
responded. “I have his release paperwork
and extradition waiver from Littleton County Jail in Rhonda’s car. You can call NewLife to verify what time I
dropped him off. I drove straight back
here and 20 minutes later… here we are,” I finished.
“Who’d you take to
NewLife?” he asked.
“Bull Gunville.”
“Bull Gunville?!?” he exclaimed.
“So, you’re friends with Gunville… and this was what? A friend of yours upstairs?” He was knocking on mockery’s door now.
“Gunville’s cousin,” I
replied quietly.
“You and her weren’t friends?”
“Sure, we were friends…
kinda… but I needed her car to take Gunville to rehab, and that’s the only
reason you and I are talking at the moment,” I answered.
“So none of your DNA is
gonna show up in any of those needles on the floor up there?” He peered at me through squinted eyes.
I held out my arms
while responding, “No Deputy, I’m telling you the truth.”
A pair of EMT’s walked
up to where we were. Deputy Morden
turned his focus to them and held up his pointer finger to display the
universal symbol for just one minute.
“Jameson, go wait by my
car, and when the state boys get here I’ve got other business with you,” he
instructed me. “Get that paperwork out
of her car.”
He took the EMT’s
upstairs while I did as he asked. I
waited by his car as the scene in front of Rhonda’s apartment turned into a
circus. City and county cops were on hand,
as well as the county coroner, and then finally the state police showed up with
what looked like a CSI dweeb.
Finally the deputy
reappeared walking towards me.
“C’mon, you just gave
me a pass on all this,” he said while he approached. “I don’t have to pat you down, do I?”
“No,” I replied.
“Good, then you can
ride shotgun,” he smiled as he put his sunglasses back on his face. “Get in.”
I opened the squad car
door and sat down. He sat down next to
me, put the car in drive, and navigated a path leading us away from
Rhonda’s. He fumbled for a pack of
smokes and offered me one, which I took, before lighting his own and tossing
the lighter into my lap. We were both
smoking when he started talking.
“Okay Jameson, where the fuck
have you been and why doesn’t your wife’s family know where that is?” he
inquired bluntly.
“You mean her sister?”
I corrected him.
“No… I mostly mean that
little girl of yours who hasn’t said a word except to ask where you’ve been,” he
replied, pausing only to continue, “seems she's the only family besides you’re
wife’s sister who’s worth a damn… in my humble opinion anyways.”
“Lil’ Step?”
“Sure, I guess... If that's what you call her,” he answered
and kept talking. “Listen Jayson, she just lost her fucking mother and now she probably
believes she’s lost the only man she ever had the opportunity to watch her
mother love,” he dragged on his cigarette and dropped it into an ashtray in the
cup holder. “Whatever you think you’re
going through, and regardless of how much it fucking hurts, right now you need
to be the man her mother loved. You need
to grieve like a man, and allow her to share it with you. Daughters inevitably learn how to have
relationships with men by watching how their mothers love the men in their life
while being loved back. Does that make
sense?” He stopped at a stop sign, but
didn’t give me time to answer him. The
asphalt highway stretched out to our left and right. “Do you want that child to go through the
rest of her life without a solid idea of why her mom loved you so much?”
“No,” I whispered as I
struggled with my emotions.
“Good. Because girls without a good idea of what to
expect from a real man can spend a lot of years dancing around a pole.”
“Where is she?” I
asked. A tear rolled down my cheek.
“With your
sister-in-law,” he replied. “Is that
where we’re going?”
“Please,” I answered.
“Cop cars are cool,” he
said.
“Sure… from in here
they are… and only if you’re in the front,” I managed a laugh. “Have you ever buried the needle?”
“I’m gonna be a fucking hero when that kid sees you, Jameson... to her anyways,” he said proudly while ignoring my
question.
“S-curves coming up,
Deputy Hero,” I nodded out through the windshield.
“Ain’t a curve in this
county that I haven’t taken at this speed, relax… nobody’s gonna pull us over,”
he grinned.
We took the first curve
without a hitch. We were heading into
the second when I saw the green monstrosity of a tractor with wheels that must
have been twelve feet tall pulling onto the highway from the field on my side
of the road.
There was nothing that
could be done.
Uttering a faint
expletive, he turned hard to avoid the tractor and we veered across the double
yellow line. We barely avoided a catastrophic
collision with the hapless tractor. Unfortunately, neither of us had time to
feel relief. My mouth opened into a
silent scream. In a nano-second it was big... BIGGER... HUGE... twisted
screaming metal, tinkling glass, the lift-up of impact, the fall back of
momentum stopped for force... grease... gasoline… shards… smoke as the squad
car collided head-on with a late model pick-up truck.
When I opened my eyes… which seemed
an odd struggle, there was nothing but road stretching out to the horizon
behind me as well as in front of me. I quickly checked myself for injuries
-- as out of some fleshly habit -- but suddenly I couldn’t remember why in
creation I even I felt the need to do a thing like that. I felt fine… just
fine.
Even so I quickly moved from the
center of the road and began walking aimlessly on the gravelly shoulder with
the sun at my back. Behind me I heard the quiet sound of a car’s engine
and the steady hum of tires making contact with the finely-maintained asphalt
of the road. The sound was flawless, crisp, and inexplicably inviting.
I smiled and thought about the
ethereal symphony.
Before I had the chance to turn around, the horn
began honking for my attention. As my body pivoted, my ears heard the
sound of tires slowing accompanied by the sweetest sound I would ever know.
“I… don’t… I don’t remember,”
I said through a grin. I was considering her question; it seemed so
serendipitous. Regardless, as I approached the vehicle like we'd have once only
dreamed about in our wildest imaginings, I could barely contain my joy. I began
weeping and laughing simultaneously.
“Oh Baby, just get in the
car,” my wife demanded playfully. Her hair was braided like it was at our
wedding.
“Okay… but where are we
going to go?” I asked still trying to align myself with what felt
overwhelmingly like a miraculous and most unexpected reunion.
“Well… we should probably go
visit your Lil’ Step, don’t you think?” she offered coyly.
“Oh man…” I stopped
laughing and wiped tears off of my face. I vaguely remembered, “I was just on
my way to do that, I think… yeah. I was going to get Lil’ Step and bring
her home...” I trailed off.
“Hurry up and get
in. We’ll go together,” she reached across the passenger seat and opened
the door for me. She gave another playfully coy glance. "Don’t think
so hard. You'll adjust, baby. This spirit living is something that doesn't take
much getting used to. You'll like your new capabilities as well… I promise,”
she said and patted her hand on the passenger seat beckoning me to sit. “And
time? Time is very different here too," she explained. "But
Lil' Step will know it's us… being there for her. Always...."
“Okay, but then what?” I asked
as I sat down next to her. I recognized the music coming from the
speakers in the car. I felt joy as Ani Difranco sang ‘As Is’. It was our
wedding song.
“Who cares? We’ve got
forever to figure it all out,” she replied. I shut the car door as she
accelerated smoothly. I looked out at the scenery passing by and suddenly
recognized it as my wife’s father’s property. A field of corn stood between the
road and his pond. “Look!” my wife pointed through the corn and we both saw Lil’
Step standing on an old tree stump near the pond. She had her hand over her
eyebrows to block the sun as she stared in our direction. “Close your eyes and
imagine you’re standing over there!” she exclaimed. “Go!” she cried gleefully and
laughed as I closed my eyes and thought about that old tree stump.
When I
opened my eyes again, there I was, standing next to Lil’ Step. I reached into
her jacket and tickled her ribs lightly. Then I closed my eyes again and
thought about sitting in the car next to my wife. I opened them and found
myself in the passenger seat of the car. She was laughing. “I did it…” I told
her.
“I know!”
she cried. We both laughed.
“I
missed you,” I told her.
“I
missed you...” she responded. “And I
know how much you’ve missed me too. But now we’re together again. And time?”
she asked and giggled. “I think it’s time to give me… a kiss.”
THE END
This work is the intellectual property of Jerome J. Panozzo
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