A Case of Doubt
((The
Fall/Winter of 1967) (Part of: Donkeyland, a Side Street Saga))
…
The Apartment
It is one of those odd or peculiar moments in
life, views you have, like a dream (later
on turning into a heavy weight), a
half-sleep where everything is distorted, so, once you get focused, you must
try to keep focused. The evening was bleak; the cold sky looked very high. It
happened in late fall (the end
of November I believe).
As I tell this story, it seems even at this
early point it appears to be collapsing in on me, that is, threatening to
collapse in on me, as it unfolds around me. Thus I should try to write this out
in one quick afternoon, and rewrite it in the evening before it fades; it took
place forty-four years ago, 1967, and I remember it as if it was yesterday.
I stepped outside of Sharon’s apartment (she
lived in an apartment complex with her two sons; I was dating her: actually we
were kind of living together, me with her, more so than she with me, meaning it
was her apartment). As I
was saying I stepped outside to talk to Sid Moeller, my bosom buddy, and from
our neighborhood called by the Police Howie, Donkeyland. I felt cold, perhaps
by all the icy slush lying about; this complex was a mile or so beyond our
neighborhood; Sid and I both attended Washington High School.
The cold soaked into my bones, and then into my marrow of my bones. As a
few cars come into the parking lot area, their tires spattered the muck all
about. I looked at Sid, saw that he was serious, and had a stern face. I leaned
my shoulder against a pole by the sidewalk.
“Hell of a night,” I said, rubbing my hands together, it was 9:00 p.m.
Sharon had stepped close by the door, it was ajar, she was trying hard to
listen to our conversation. Of course she already knew what Sid wanted, what he
always wanted, my company. Sid seeing Sharon was hesitant to say anything, of
what was on his mind. In the distance I could still hear the slush of the car
tires on the asphalt road, a police or ambulance siren. The area was a beehive
for hooligans, those I really didn’t know, whereas in Donkeyland, or on Cayuga
Street, I did; —I might have been considered a strain bird out of his cage here
had someone took a real interest in me.
I stood shaking from the cold, said to Sid, “Well what’s on your mind,
it is cold out here.”
It appeared he didn’t know how to put it, perhaps because Sharon was
still watching, and she had expressed: she hoped I wasn’t going anyplace this
evening.
The neighbors’ apartments were noisy. Sid usually didn’t have trouble
talking me into whatever he wanted me to do with him, that is to say, he could
be persuasive. He’d even drive up to Washington High School my last year of
school in 1965, and just before I’d open the door to go inside for classes,
he’d show up, honk his horn, show me a six-pack of beer and say, “Come on
Chick, I got some more hidden in the trunk,” and there I’d be sitting in his
front seat. I missed sixty-four days of
school my senior year, and still graduated (although
I had six-weekends to make it up, work incomplete, or else).
Anyhow, here we were—but a few feet apart, the man next door stumbling
about, trying to get his key into the keyhole of his apartment, half drunk on his ass, if indeed it was his
apartment. A taxi had stopped at another apartment, and blew the car’s horn;
they never got out of their automobiles in fear of some potential catastrophe.
“Forget it, buddy,” he commented, and walked over to the curb as if to
appease Sharon, knowing she was listening, moving closer nearby his car,
leaving me standing where I was, knowing I’d join him in a jiffy. In the
distance I could hear her two little boys fighting, she left the doorway to go
investigate, one child was three the other six she was divorced, and my age being
twenty, as was hers, plus she was a nice looking blond and rather slim and
sharply, but vindictive, controlling and bossy.
A wave of near pleading filled Sid’s face. I simply waited for him to
say what he needed to say, whatever was on his mind, and right now he was
looking like a wounded ostrich fighting to get words out; the cold still
sucking from somewhere in his face, sucking it inward, as this meeting proceeded slowly. A soft cold rain, —a
drizzle started up, I stood there shivering, I remained phlegmatic, Sid a bit
circumspect. Sid had had a few drinks before he had come over, and had a few
more with me there in Sharon’s apartment as to warm up, but I hadn’t yet
started my night’s serious drinking, nor had he, it was Friday evening, in St.
Paul, Minnesota, I had turned twenty-years old, a month prior, and Sid, would
be twenty-one in six months. As we had walked into the apartment to warm up,
and then back out again to talk, I started pacing the sidewalk some, “I was
hoping you’d come to Hudson, Wisconsin, with me tonight!” exclaimed Sid in a
pleasant and hopeful manner.
I stumbled about, nearly fell, my shoes
and socks got soaked with muck. I
concentrated on Sid’s offer, I really wanted to go, he even said he’d borrow me
money if I needed some, “I better stay here, Sharon’s been moody lately, awful
moody, I’m going to move out soon, I don’t like her demands on me, but I better
stay tonight, plus it’s getting late, too late to take a long drive to Hudson,
drink and then drive all the way back, just stay here with us and get drunk,” I
said to Sid, Sharon was showing some hostility, and there was some prefigure
lurking a shadow from the stairway in Sharon’s house, out the open door right
on me, it was her: plus, there was something suppressed about this, accordingly
I hesitated a moment, then added “That’s it, that’s about it, just drive slow
if you got to go. It’s a long drive you know,” his face was disparaging! As for
my knees they were getting cold standing there, and my feet still in the slush
and muck were freezing up.
“I’ll be fine, one of the other guys will be driving,” he said on a
whim.
“The other guys,” I assumed, “I thought you were going alone?” My voice
got gruffly and not encouraging, and then I started to feel the ice rain on my
head, and my forehead, and on my back.
My cheeks getting numb, the drizzle continued.
“Where did you find these guys?” I asked— “Whose car you using?”
“It’s all right,” Sid said, intrepidly, as if there was nothing to worry
about.
To Sid: “You mean you’re going to let
someone else drive, you’re going against your own principles, you’ve told me a
hundred times if not more, you never let anyone drive you anywhere, and you
drive only your own car.” (Wherever
he had gotten that principle, he stuck to it like glue, like white on rice, it
was a decision he made the day his father bought him his first car, 1953 Dodge,
and I was shocked to see he was modifying it.) I gave an effluvium to all
this. I had peered straight into his face when I said, “You got to be kidding!”
For some reason I felt interposed by his friends, an odd if not prodigious
emotion to say the least, saying that, but I had to say what I felt, and now I
felt even more uncomfortable about going. I was nettled having heard these guys
were taking Sid, and I think Sid felt
twisted, by wanting
to stay, yet he had given his word to these new friends to go, whom were not of
the neighborhood. I was hesitant, even felt a little guilty saying no to Sid,
but hearing what I heard, that he was not driving, and it was not his car,
because I knew Sid was a good driver, I venture to say: I became even more
Skeptical, cynical on the matter at hand.
He nodded a ‘Yes’ from me, for a moment his glance was silent and cold.
“You ought to just let them guys go themselves, and stay here!” I per
near begged.
Sharon was talking to her two kids now, she looked anxious, wanting to
get back to the doorway, to insure I’d not take off, all of sudden by jumping
into Sid’s car. I don’t think Sid had expected this, but he wasn’t surprised
after he had told me about the two guys, —these two guys he barely knew, and
whom I didn’t know at all, and me turning him down cold turkey now, and now
that he had mentioned everything there was to mention, he was about to leave.
For the most part, I never felt comfortable drinking with strangers I didn’t
know, they often got drunk and wanted to fight—test you out to see who the
better man was, and I wanted to drink, and more often than not they were full
of laboriousness, where in the neighborhood, everyone knew
everyone quite well, and where they stood, and if you didn’t like something, or
to be a part of something, it was fine with one and all.
“Are you sure you want to go, you always insist on driving yourself.”
“We’ve designated someone not to drink too much.” He said.
“You know how that works, it doesn’t
work. Once you start drinking, the non-drinker wants to drink and then you’re
too far away to say anything, and it isn’t your car, and you are not going to
walk back, you’re putting yourself into their hands,” everything I said seemed
to be caustic humor for him.
“Okay,” he said, “I’m all right.”
“You seem all right,” I remarked, “but you will all be goofy drunk
coming back, and Highway #94 is not all that lit up, from Hudson to St. Paul.”
I was starting to freeze standing in this one spot, thinking thoughts,
perhaps what he was thinking, staying in a warm house, drinking, getting drunk,
but he had told those fellows he’d go, and he felt he had to go, even though
now he had second thoughts on the matter.
It’s funny, when you let someone take control of your life, that is
exactly what they do but it is not for your betterment, it is in every case
I’ve yet to see, under the heading of self-interest.
“No, I told them I’d go; I’d feel funny
at the last minute telling them otherwise, plus they’re waiting on me…” said
Sid, as if his honor was at stake, as if he’d not have a lid to fit the kettle,
figuratively speaking, should they ask for a reasonable motive why he wasn’t
going; that is to say, he couldn’t find one at this late moment. I was even
surprised he had even asked me to come, and want to go so far, at such a late
instant.
“Well, where are they?”
“They’re waiting for me at a bar!”
We both glanced at one another, oddly, as if he had just discovered we
were disconnected; if anything it alleviated my saying no to him.
“No,” I reconfirmed, but I wanted to keep him company. He looked
confused, and I suppose so did I to him.
I had left and he had left, and I went into the kitchen to join Sharon,
and she took a cold beer out of the refrigerator for me, it tasted marvelous.
“Better go easy on that, Chick,” she said, we only have a six-pack left.
“Six,” I said, “isn’t bad if you don’t drink any.” I had three already,
she had one and Sid had two. She liked her beer almost as much as I did. I was
upset with myself for not going along with Sid, blaming it on Sharon who had
insisted I stay home for once, even to the point of threatening to kick me out
if I went. “If you go,” she said, “don’t
come back.”
In the back of my head I had plans anyhow to go onto San Francisco in
the approaching weeks, so I felt it was best not to cause waves, frolicking
along with her.
The
News Report!
“Wake up,” said Sharon; it was on the 7:00 a.m., news. “Wake up, Sid is
on the news!” She shouted from the stairway by the living room; up the stairs
came the reverberation of her voice. She
said it a number of times.
My head and stomach was the worse, a hangover, it acted as if I had
drunk way too much, or too little, or woken up too early too quickly. I rolled
onto my side. After a while, I yelled down, “You said, Sid? What about him?” as
I clangored my way out of bed.
“He’s on the news, come and see!”
“What happened?”
“Come on down and see for yourself, you won’t believe it if I tell you.”
“Tell me?” I yelped in my stoical way.
“He had an accident.” Then there was a long hesitation, and I knew I’d
have to wake up completely and go on downstairs to find out what all the
commotion was about. And so having rolled halfway already out of bed I put my
feet onto the floor firmly. Then I heard her say something like “You were
lucky.”
“Yeah,” I said, not knowing why I said, what I said, because I knew
nothing of what was going on.
By the time I had gotten down to the living room the news was still on,
wrapping up, the commentator was going over the local news once more, I felt
like a dead fish, hammered on, but getting better, still feeling a little
sleepy, nauseated is perhaps the better description.
“Come over here,” said Sharon, “listen it’ll be on next, I saw it three
times already.”
I just sat there and watched, she couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me for some
reason what exactly was going on, and then she said, “You see!” She said. It
was a car wreck. I didn’t say a word, I didn’t recognize the car, and it wasn’t
Sid’s.
“Wait a minute,” Sharon told me, he’ll say more about it in a moment.”
It was as if she needed my confirmation, to assess if what had happened really
happened.
I sat up arched my back, my stomach was sore.
“I’m afraid you’re going to get really upset,” she inferred.
“Why?”
“Wait and see.” I waited to see I didn’t want to quibble over spilt milk
as they say, let the mystery flow naturally out.
Then the News Commentator came on, and said, “Three boys coming back from Hudson,
Wisconsin, on Highway #94, smashed into a guard railing, smashed right thought
it, breaking out their front window, and having the railing come out through
the back window, they must have been going ninety-miles an hour, all tested for
having high alcohol content in their blood. All were killed instantly. Sid
Moeller, twenty-years old and…”
There was a long pause, my mouth went dry, I almost lost my breath, and
I had to gulp for air.
“Do you want me to go get some beer?” asked Sharon calmly.
“No, I should call Paula, see if she knows,” it was his wife, they were
separated, and she was filing for a divorce.
“Okay,” she said, “but don’t leave please.”
I did leave, I frowned and moved out of the place, and moved over on the
Westside of town, where the Mexicans lived, found a basement apartment, and
stayed there until summer (although
I did have an incident with a girl named ‘the Shadow’ somewhere in-between all
this), and went to San
Francisco, thereafter. I had felt
terrible for those months after Sid’s death; I was silent for a long
while.
I was never invited to his funeral by his parents—being at the time his
best friend (so I felt), matter of fact, I heard, overheard, one of
them saying, “Why was it not him, but rather our boy…” Meaning me! And they skipped over the name
and finished the sentence by saying, “The good die young…” But they had seen
me, and whispered it, not sure if they wanted me to overhear what they felt and
were saying, or not, but I did, and their eyes expressed the rest of their
absorbed feelings. I held no grudges for that allusion, and smiled at them, it
was on the corner of Sycamore and Jackson streets that I had overheard the
conversation, by the old church. In any cases, the implication of me was there,
but I guess I don’t blame them, I was to them the wild card in Sid’s life, but
then so was Sid in mine, they just couldn’t believe he was as wild as me, not
unusual for blind parents, who can see everything but what’s in front of their
noses. (Now they all are
dead but me, so I can write this.)
No: 716/ 1-25-2011/ Reedited 6-2015
