Dark Day Dreams, page 7
One night he dreamt he was forced to attend a ceremony out in the woods. There were middle-aged white men in business suits dancing around an enormous gun-shaped statue. One of them grabbed Jack by the collar and hissed, “The gun is hungry. The gun needs to be fed!”
He finally decided to reach out to an old friend of his, an employee named Ben Strauss. They hadn’t talked for a while but he remembered the engineer used to hold some pretty strong opinions when it came to the gun issue.
Six months after the first debate, the GOP candidates were scheduled to take each other on at the Ronald Reagan presidential library. They jogged on to the stage one by one, big smiles on their faces. Each was anxious to share their very special version of what a great nation this could be with what they considered the right leadership.
Jack was there. It hadn’t been hard to get a ticket considering his wealth and contacts. Some people in the audience were surprised to see him and murmured under their breaths that they hoped he hadn’t come to stir up trouble. Just because he was rich didn’t mean he had the right to be rude.
For a while, the debate went on pretty much like everybody expected. Proposals to cut taxes (a lot for the rich and a little for the rest), proposals to roll back environmental regulations, arguments about who survived the most economically depressed childhood, arguments about who would more completely blow the jihadists back to the Stone Age.
Jack stood up and started walking down toward the stage when one of the candidates began talking about his efforts to protect the rights of the country’s gun owners. Security guards began moving toward the billionaire but he pulled his phone out of his pocket and yelled, “Stop where you are. This is a remote and if anybody touches me a bomb big enough to take out this whole building will go off.”
He looked at the people on the stage and really, really enjoyed what he saw. The blood was draining out of their faces and he could tell their minds were reeling, trying to decide if this was real or some kind of fucked up political prank. A couple of them had their hands up like they unconsciously thought that would somehow protect them from
what was about to happen.
They all knew who he was. As a matter of fact, when he still had hope change was possible he had appeared on a few news shows to advocate for what he considered more reasonable firearm laws. A couple of the candidates later made condescending remarks about how they were sure he was a smart guy in his own way but it was wiser to leave the law making up to the professionals.
He didn’t feel the need to make a long speech. After all, no matter how well the words were crafted they didn’t seem to make any difference.
He just looked at the line of candidates and said, “I just want you to know I hate you so much I can’t even express it with words. Only actions will suffice. I can’t stand the thought of evil people like you being in charge of this country I love and respect so much.”
Jack stopped for a second and looked back up at the audience. A tear rolled down his cheek and he said, “I want you to know that if I get the chance I’ll be making a statement to the press, telling them how I want to send thoughts and prayers out to anyone who cares about these candidates.”
“I also ask that you take a minute and think about what an empty, meaningless gesture that is. It doesn’t change anything, doesn’t prevent any loss of life…it’s just a sequence of words someone expresses when they want to fool the public into thinking they actually give a damn about the results of gun violence.”
He turned back around and aimed the phone at the stage. It wasn’t a remote detonator… it was a phone sized particle beam weapon Strauss had created for him. He held out his right arm and swept it from left to right, cutting the candidates in half one by one.
Lonely Side of the Sky
July, Nineteen Seventy-Six
I was sitting in a Catholic church, enduring one of the saddest funerals I would ever attend. One middle aged woman was so overwhelmed by her emotions and the stuffy air in the place she fainted. Fortunately, her friend caught her before she could fall forward and slam her forehead on the top of the pew in front of them. God knows we didn’tneed another tragedy.
The crying was loud and widespread. This wasn’t one of those passive, respectful “they’re in a better place now” funerals you hold for your 86-year-old grandparent who hurts all the time and has a hard time remembering what year it is. This was a service for a vibrant young man who was just getting started, hungry to build the infrastructure of his life. It just felt like such an awful, senseless waste.
Jerry Richmond had died three days earlier on Saturday, sometime between eleven thirty and midnight.
I was with him earlier in the evening. We were just cruising around town in his automotive pride and joy, a red sixty-nine Camaro. I was riding shotgun and three other high school buddies were crammed together in the back seat. One of the guys had brought a case of beer and we were discreetly sipping on them as the light of the warm summer evening slowly faded away.
Adam and Tony were helping their fathers farm and the rest of us (Jerry, Greg and myself) had just completed our first year of college. I hate to sound elitist but I was pretty sure the past nine months had definitely been more exciting for the three of us who’d gone off to further our educations.
High school was a very frustrating time for me socially. I just never seemed to really understand the secret language you needed to speak if you wanted to make headway with girls. But it all seemed to change when I got to college…everybody was far more honest and direct about what they wanted. And in many, many cases I discovered young women wanted to make love as much (or even more than) I did.
We were all in a good mood and it felt like old times being packed into this car together, laughing and giving each other shit. I knew our connections were fraying but we still had plenty to talk about. The Thin Lizzy song “The Boys Are Back in Town” came on the radio and we all sang along to it. It just fit so perfectly.
I’m a big movie fan and love those moments in real life when you just happen to end up with the perfect confluence of scene and soundtrack.
We stopped at a kegger around nine thirty. By that time, Jerry had downed a couple of cans of beer in the car. I could tell he was feeling good but figured he’d probably put the brakes on a bit since he was driving. I’d known him a long time and had never seen him lose control when it came to booze.
The five of us grabbed drinks and melted into the party. I ran into a cousin I hadn’t seen for over a year and then later sat down and flirted with a younger girl I’d known back in high school. She was going to be starting her senior year in a couple months. I was knocked out by how good she looked.
Around eleven, the five of us got back in Jerry’s car and headed to a diner we used to hang out at a lot. Four of us got out of the car but Jerry stayed in and kept the engine running. I said, “Aren’t you coming in?”
He had sort of a crazy look in his eyes. I suddenly wondered how much he’d had to drink at the party. He replied, “Naw, I think I’m going to cruise around a while longer. I’m feeling kind of hyper.”
I suddenly had a bad feeling. “Are you sure you’re okay to drive?”
He just gave me that big Jerry smile and said, “Fuck, yeah.” Then he popped the car into Drive and sped off down the street.
The next morning, I got a phone call telling me Jerry had been in a fatal crash. And then I heard through the grapevine later that day that the cops figured he’d been doing approximately a hundred miles an hour on the twisting highway located ten miles west of town. The poor guy had been severely mangled…there would definitely not be an open casket at this funeral.
I felt terrible. I knew I should have done more to keep him at the diner, maybe even risked his wrath and grabbed his keys. A bloody nose or a busted lip would have been such a small price to pay in order to avoid the reality I found myself confronting on this grim day.
My parents did their best to console me, knowing how close Jerry and I had become the past few years.
It was suddenly so weird seeing my friends or anybody else who’d known Jerry. Nothing else really seemed worth talking about. For a few days, it seemed like we were all moving in slow motion, swimming through an invisible ocean of grief.
I’d known Jerry since the first grade but it was only during the past three years that we’d truly bonded. During our junior and senior years of high school, we went to some concerts together and double dated a few times. Our first year in college we carpooled and took a few of the same classes. Two boys becoming young men, sharing laughs and worries, insecurities and boastful bullshit.
He was gone and I knew I would never see him again. It was funny, I’d always thought being physically intimate with another person was what people meant when they used the term “loss of innocence”. But I was discovering it could also mean you’ve experienced a tough life lesson…the one that truly makes you understand death is everywhere, waiting for everyone. An invisible hooded figure was sitting in the passenger seat that night when Jerry drove off, confident that simple physics and my friend’s drunken stupidity would end up creating a fiery crash.
At the graveside service, I looked down into
that dark hole and remembered all the good times we’d shared. And then I began thinking about what might have been if Jerry had chosen to go into the diner with us instead of racing off into the night. The rest of college, a career, real adult dating, marriage, kids…who knew what he could have enjoyed or accomplished had his life not been terminated so prematurely?
************
December, Nineteen Seventy-Eight
I’d just finished the finals for the fall term. It was cold and dark outside and there was talk around campus we might be seeing this season’s first snowstorm soon. I was sick of school and happy that the end of my time in college was definitely in sight.
I was lying on the couch in the rented house I shared with three other friends, smoking a joint. Finals had completely wiped me out but at least now I could relax for a while. I planned on hanging around town for a week or so and then going home to see my family.
The Hall and Oates album “Along the Red Ledge” was playing on the stereo. My roommates had already left. We all got along fine but it still felt so good to have the place to myself.
I dozed off and had a dream about a young woman I’d recently met at a party, someone I planned on asking out once everybody returned in January. We were walking on a beach and there was a big yellow Lab running back and forth between us and the incoming tide, barking joyfully.
It was such a nice dream. I woke up with a big smile on my face, my heart full of lovesick optimism. Of course, I barely knew her but when you’re twenty it’s easy to get carried away…life hasn’t kicked sand in your face too many times yet.
The last song on side two (August Day) ended and then I heard something very strange…a voice that sounded like Jerry’s said, “Hello, Ted.”
I was so shocked I couldn’t breathe for a couple seconds. How was this possible? I was actually surprised how quickly my mind went into action trying to figure out a reasonable explanation for what had just happened to me.
Sure, we all pulled practical jokes on each other occasionally but nobody in the house hadthis kind of skill. And even if they could figure out how to scratch the message on to the LP, where would they have gotten a recording of Jerry’s voice?
And most importantly, none of them were assholes. Only a true dick would come up with a prank that involved my buddy who tragically died just two and a half years earlier.
“Ted, are you there?”
My inner voice said NO WAY, THIS IS NOT HAPPENING.
I didn’t know what to do so I walked over to the stereo and lifted up the clear plastic cover on the turntable. I picked up the record and looked closely at the track closest to the center. It looked normal.
“Ted, buddy, are you going to talk to me or did something happen to your voice while I was away?”
I finally decided to converse with the voice coming out of the stereo speakers. I figured as soon as I did, my roommates would come running through the front door and give me a mountain of shit. I answered, “I’m here, Jerry. You’re right, I am
surprised to hear your voice.”
Nothing happened. Nobody ran into the room, ready to call this the greatest prank of all time or me the most gullible victim in the recorded history of humanity.
“Ted, I want to thank you for at least asking me if I was okay to drive that night. I was so pumped up I doubt anybody could have stopped me. I really hope you haven’t been carrying any guilt around.”
Nobody knew about that conversation besides the two of us. The other three guys were already heading into the diner by the time I leaned into the driver’s side window and asked the question.
A chill went down my spine and I allowed myself to be pulled further into this weirdness. I replied, “Jerry, I’m so sorry about your accident. We were all devastated.”
“Yeah, I figured. People seem to take it really hard when young people they know kick the bucket.”
I got a lump in my throat. This conversation was bringing up a big rush of sadness.
“Jerry, where are you exactly? I feel silly asking this…but are you in Heaven?”
“Not exactly, Ted. It appears to be some kind of region located between regular life in the physical world and the next stage of existence. At least that’s what James Dean told me.”
This comment caught me off guard. But then I thought, if you can talk to your dead friend why would it be any odder that he’s spending time with a deceased celebrity? What were the rules in this situation anyway?
Things were getting too bizarre. I came up with a new theory…what if somebody had laced my food or my joint with some kind of hallucinogenic drug? I suddenly got very worried. I didn’t want to end up being some kind of permanent acid casualty. I loved talking to my old friend but that would be too high of a price to pay.
“Jerry, how did James Dean know that?”
“Ted, I know this will sound ridiculous…but I think Albert Einstein told him. Which kind of makes sense when you stop and think about it. He was brilliant in the old world and just as quick here in the next.”
I started to question the logic of his premise and then stopped myself. I figured it was just better just to go with the flow here.
“How long have you been there, Jerry?”
“I don’t think for very long. I crawled out of the wreckage a few minutes after I crashed and then there was a very bright light. Next thing I knew, I was here.”
I asked him what it looked like where he was. He replied, “It’s just this big lawn that seems to go on and on forever in all directions. I keep thinking I’ll run into a fence or a building or a forest or something but so far, no luck. Glad I like grass. Oh, and the sky is blue but I don’t see the sun anywhere up there.”
“Anybody there besides you and James Dean?”
“Sure, there are lots of folks speaking all kinds of languages and wearing all kinds of clothes from any era you can think of. It’s sort of like spending time at a combination of the United Nations and the Smithsonian Institute. And everybody seems to get along okay…it’s like we left all our territorial instincts behind when we left our physical bodies.”
“Have you communicated with anybody besides me?”
“You mean from the non-dead part of my existence?”
“Right.”
“I tried a lot of people but you’re the only one I had any luck reaching.”
“So, I rank pretty far down on your list of the living?”
Jerry made a chuckling noise. “No, Mister Sensitive. I did try you once before but it didn’t work for some reason.”
Suddenly, I heard some kind of static coming out of the speakers. I sat there for half an hour or so, hoping Jerry would return. But it didn’t happen.
I looked down at my shaking hands and wondered if I might be losing my mind.
************
March, Nineteen Eighty-Seven
I never told anybody about my conversation with Jerry…mostly because I was never truly convinced that it happened.
I thought about it a lot and after several years finally decided to write it off as some kind of pot induced mind trick. The rational part of my brain dismissed the whole thing as just one of those weird, unexplainable moments you just end up filing away in your mental scrapbook.
I graduated from college in nineteen eighty and got a job in advertising. Kelly (the girl I met at the party back in college) and I got married in nineteen eighty-three. She’s a nurse and I can honestly say that meeting her was the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m not sure why but I always sort of wished she and Jerry could have met.
We received a wedding invitation from my cousin Lee. He’s a couple years younger than me and lives down in northern California. Kelly couldn’t go because of work but I decided to drive down. It would have been a lot easier to fly but I’ve always loved road trips and it had been a while since I’ve had an excuse to take one. I packed up our Pontiac Grand Am and headed down I-5. I had a big box of cassette tapes sitting in the passenger seat, loaded with all kinds of music to help me pass the time.
I had just gotten past Eugene when a song from the third Led Zeppelin album abruptly stopped and Jerry began talking.
“Hey buddy, sorry we got cut off earlier.”
For a second, I thought I might swerve into another lane. It was hard to think of what to say…I just ended up angrily shouting that he’d scared the crap out of me.
“Oops, sorry about that too. I’m just happy I was able to reconnect with you so soon.”
