Who needs a drink?

The Memorial Day show came and went. When fall arrived, it was time for another Barn Party at a friend of ours that Bruce had introduced us to. The farm was in Rockford and was very popular with a local community radio crowd that we all were a part of- we called them the WYCE crowd.

We were invited to come and play, so Danimal and I loaded up the vehicles with our band equipment. Julie and Casey followed in the Saturn, while Danimal drove my truck, and I drove Julie’s Sidekick.

My luck with incidents involving Deer was unfavorable. As we drove north, on Northland Drive, we all watched as a Deer came lumbering from the hillside, on our right, to cross the road, impeding with my pathway. It hit the front passenger side of the Sidekick and just kept going. It astonished me because there were other drivers on the road with me, and Julie was right behind me watching the whole thing. There was nothing I could do to avoid it. I looked back at her in disbelief, and questioning what to do with hand signals. She just waved me on to continue and not stop.

When we got to the destination, the damage was a small dent in the corner where the headlight assembly met with the quarter panel on the passenger side. There was hair wedged in the cracks of the assembly that would make it obvious it was a Deer, so she could later report it. When she did, the cop didn’t believe her one bit.

Dusty accompanied us to the party, making quite a spectacle as she walked around on stage with us while we played, like she was part of the band. I guess she was part of the band. It was pretty sweet having her there. People were worried that she was going to get after the Chickens, and that she looked pretty serious, sporting all of the classic features of a Grey Wolf.

Time told a different story, and people were all trying to get a small piece of Dusty’s affection throughout the evening.

Danimal had brought an artist from the loft building that was a glass blower. It made sense to me because I knew Danny would drink his share for the night, and that The Glassman, as we called him, would not drink much at all. I wanted him to drive the truck home.

When it came time to leave, the Glassman would realize it was a manual transmission. His foot slipped off of the clutch pedal and the truck stalled out. After a moment or two of struggle, Danny took the reigns, backing the truck into a car that was parked too closely. It only bumped the car but the kid called the cops because he must have had his dad’s car and didn’t want to get reamed out for it.

When the announcement was made that the cops were coming, the Glassman took off from the scene. Danny was arrested for drunk driving and the truck was impounded, costing me two hundred dollars to get out. The exhaust had been damaged where the tailpipe hit the kids bumper and needed to be strapped up since it was folded badly and dragging.

Danny ended up serving a six-month sentence in the Kent county jail but managed to get placed in an Honor Camp Program near Greenville. He did about five months with good time. Danny had already purged all of his excess belongings in his anticipation of moving from the building, storing everything else at Julie Wickman’s house on the Westside of Grand Rapids. Since he had been staying around town with various people, it wasn’t too big of deal for him to serve jail time, giving him time to sober up from years of alcoholism.

Shortly after Danny went to jail, I went to jail too. This was the last time I was imposed on by Friend of the Court. I served a ninety-day sentence. The cops were coming to the house with a warrant when we were leaving the house one morning, passing us as we came out of Alcove Drive. Instinctively, I knew they were coming for me but didn’t say anything about it for the sake of freaking Julie out. The bubbles went up and we were pulled over.

After an exchange of words, I got out for them to take me on their warrant, slipping off my insulated flannel shirt that had a half ounce of bud and a glass bowl in the pocket- in order to help them with less paperwork involving registering my property at the station. The officer appreciated my consideration.

When I was finally released, some 72 odd days or more later, I came home to a disaster. Beer bottles were littering the lower level of the home, along with pot stems and seed everywhere. Food packaging was littered in piles around the sitting areas. Laundry was accumulated in corners of the rooms, along with trash in heaps next to, and around, the area of the overflowed trash cans.

This was definitely not the look of a two hundred fifty thousand-dollar home that you’d find in a sub-division on a cal du sac. When I got to the bathroom, the toilet was a disaster all its own, having not been cleaned since before I left, and had not been flushed for days. There were clothes heaped behind the door near the shower where they had been thrown. It wasn’t hard to figure out that NO housework had been done. Just for fun, I counted the underwear in the pile. There was nine pair in the pile behind the door.

They released Danimal from jail in 2006 at the end of April, I believe. The first day he was out I met up with him at Bruce’s. He set the beer down in the flowerbed as I pulled up with Julie, in an attempt to hide the fact that he was already drinking again. It was sad to see since we talked so much about sobriety, and Danny wanted it so badly but Bruce kept a large cooler full of beer on the back deck next to the hot tub, making it available for anyone to help himself or herself to, which we all did. Sometimes I would grab a six-pack when I needed it after the stores were closed, replacing it later or intending to.

By this time in the caretaking game, I was tending to Jean all day long, everything except for changing her diapers and bathing her, which had now become necessary.

Danny would call from Bruce’s in an effort to get me out of the house but I stayed to do what needed to be done. He would get frustrated because I wasn’t there spending time with him, exclaiming, “You’re missing out on life!”  He was swimming in Versluice Lake and doing hot tubs, kayaking the river and playing music, all while spending time with our friends but here I was, his other half in all of that- his muse and his soul mate.

What he really meant was that he was out of time in life, and wanted to spend every day he could with his friend- his “brother of another mother”, Zach. Danny’s health was deteriorating, and he had already spent enough time discussing it.

Danny was now crashing at Robert’s house on Coit Avenue, next to Lookout Hill, while he served his community service to cover the court fees. They came and picked him up every morning except Sundays. Robert was glad to help Danny out, as Danny had helped him out in the past. Since Robert was a Paranoid Schizophrenic, he didn’t have much to do with his days, making it convenient to have Danny around to do things with.

Danny didn’t have any money at all, begging his boss to pay him just a dollar an hour, which he refused. Danny lowered his request to a quarter per hour but was still humiliated with refusal.

Bob had me working on some projects, keeping me busy through the week. His plans to keep me around were out of necessity, involving a renovation on a six hundred some odd thousand-dollar home in East Grand Rapids. Julie sometimes took me to the site since I had no driver’s license at the time from my recent drunk driving incident.

Bob enlisted another guy to be there with me, a show of force but only for appearances and to keep the man-hour clock racking up time. This particular guy, Rob, was not skilled. Everything he did took an enormous amount of time. While he was running baseboard, which was about all he could do, everything else was my job, especially the, so-called, impossible.

Those were the things I enjoyed doing, the things that were challenging and rewarding, to me, as a tradesman. My job was always doing anything that couldn’t be done with satisfactory results or couldn’t be done because no one wanted to be seen as the hacks and imposters to the trades that they truly were. Things like marrying crown molding into rounded and angular walls and ceilings were unheard of.

When lunchtime came we went to East-town and had Gyro’s, at a deli that won awards year after year for their food, making it all seem worthwhile. I loved my trade for all of these things. Feeling a sense of self-worth was probably the most valuable thing I got from it.
Julie Called me while on this job, asking if she could come see me and get coffee. What she would tell me would rip my dreams from my grasp, and rob me of my closest friend. Danny went to sleep... and he never awoke. He was only 47 years old.

Thanks for reading- zach