Out Of The Slammer And Into The Fire- Part 8

(Parts 1-7 are below, no fair cutting in...)

As heavy as life had felt to me for the past six months, this day was a happy day, and it was a beautiful day, and the sun was shining and there were more than three hundred people dressed in their nicer clothes, sipping on beer and champagne and getting to know one another. I felt uplifted and for the first time in half a year, felt OK inside my body. That oppressive weight had curled back just a little, and let me breath.

There was kind of an unspoken rule afloat that basically said “We don’t talk about how we once knew Mitch the drug dealer. We are just happy that he is happy and isn’t this a grand day to be alive?” I recognized this rule as I met people who had come up to me to thank me “for what I had done”. I was a bit confused by this, realizing with a choking throat that Mitch had told people about me, in terms that made me feel appreciated and worthwhile.

I met Mitch’s brother who had led his legal defense back in Chicago. I met Mitch’s other brother, as well. I met some of Marissa’s family and they all seemed like such nice and pleasant folk. I had come alone to this event for various reasons. Ahead of me, I knew, there would be a woman I would have to talk to. Yes, I had my reasons for coming to the wedding alone. No, it was not because I was ashamed of you. In the back of my mind, I wondered when I would simply tell her - “Hey, I had no intention of this happening between us.”

I wrote a story about my friend Timmy once, on this blog, about a climbing trip atop Mt. Shasta. Timmy was an electrician and a plumber who had held a lifelong fascination with the band Vee was now playing for. Timmy was also an EMT and a volunteer firemen at a small station not too far from where the wedding was. During my six week remodel from hell, I had brought Timmy in to do the wiring that needed redoing, which meant he had been coming into this little valley for many weeks, and looked quite at home here with a beer in his hand. I went over and ran my knuckles across Timmy’s balding head. He hated it when I did that. Timmy looked a lot like a keystone cop on holiday in civilian clothes. He had the big goofy mustache. He could wiggle it when we asked him to.

When I was working up at Vee’s and Lulu’s, Mitch, Lulu and I would watch Timmy come up the long and snaky driveway. He’d be driving slow, his left elbow on the door in the open window to his left, and you could look down from the deck and see his head in his truck, a bald head like a turtle’s, with that big mustache twitching all to hell.

I’d start doing that “Flight Of The Bubblebee” tune- “nanah nanah nanah nanah nanah nanah naa…” and the three of us crazy as a looners would be laughing hysterically by the time poor Timmy rolled up and twitched his mustache and asked us what he missed…

I remember talking to Timmy about the upcoming shows Vee’s band were going to perform locally, in Oakland, at the Coliseum, in San Jose, in Sacramento. Timmy was talking about having Vee’s laminate pass, about being backstage, about being “with the band”…

I teased Timmy about being a groupy, and he didn’t seem to mind.

Marissa came up on me suddenly and reached up and grabbed my face. She planted a big happy kiss on my lips and thanked me for “what I did”, with Mitch. The band started dropping the R’s off of the ends of their words and really started to rock out. People started dancing around the yard. I remember seeing grandmother’s dancing with kids to the tune of “Burning Down The House.”

I was getting high on happiness and beer and had been laughing and socializing for over two hours. I had danced with some pretty cute young girls who dragged me, protesting, out into the middle of the lawn. At some point, maybe two and a half to three hours after Mitch said “I do,” I needed a break and started to head down the driveway out onto the lane that serviced the two houses, just to get away from the festivities and take in the whole amazing event from a short distance away. I can’t say what made me walk away from the party all of a sudden, just the urge to step back and take a breath and see the joy from a different vantage point.

The road that serviced Mitch and Marissa’s and Vee and Lulu’s houses was a two lane road, but it was a very narrow one. There were maybe twenty houses beyond their two houses further down the road. For several hundred yards in the direction of the main road that fed people up into the valley, there were horse pastures full of horses, and the sides of the road was lined with blackberry bushes that were tall but were pruned back yearly off the road by somebody. The road had speed bumps and respectful neighbors, and on this particular Sunday, had gangs of kids from a wedding party lined along its sides, picking ripe fruit, waiting for their turn to ride the ponies.

I walked over and hopped my skinny butt up onto a horse pasture top rail.

The party was going full blast to my right. People were getting drunk and loud and silly. The band was playing “Paint It Black.” One of Marissa’s children, the 12 year old daughter, was leading a smaller girl on a pony down the quiet country lane. An old man in a van came out from some of the further-back houses, driving about 4 miles an hour, slowly easing his way past the kids and the party and the girl leading the girl on her pony.

I watched as he passed me slowly. There was deep sadness on his face. I wondered about that. The wedding was such a happy affair and here was this man, obviously sad. He had two hands on his steering wheel and was sitting up and leaning forward, watchful of the kids on the sides of the road.

His right front corner of his van raised and lowered suddenly. Not much, just a little. Then his right rear corner did the same. He didn’t brake. He didn’t stop. He didn’t know what he had done.

In his slowly departing wake there was the crumpled body of a small, five year old girl. Her pink dress was up and over the top of her, and her tiny little socks were white and so were her panties. There were several screams from several witnesses, loud enough to silence the band.

(to be continued.)