Part 12

Stan’s Scandal

Now with Stan, he had his own way of protesting my existence, as if he wasn’t busy enough with his own tantrums. After I found refuge at moms, he would do what he could to interrupt my efforts there. Like when I built stalls for the horses because they were standing in a seeping sewage swamp secreted silently in their stays.

The “office” addition in the shop end of the double length pole barn, that my mom had built so she could live in it, needed to be finished. Her hopes were that Stan would then move out entirely, as he had threatened to do if that was where she intended to move their domicile, only then to rent out the house that they had been living in, to someone who would actually pay her rent money. She wouldn’t just tell him to get out because of the intimidation he used against her, like some prison tactics at running things, taking over the house and using her for all she was worth. She had hopes of a clean break. The drywall needed to be hung and finished, flooring needed to be laid, and tongue and groove pine was to be installed to finish the ceilings.

While this was going on, Stan began a new hobby of nonchalantly taking the tools one at a time and using me as the scapegoat, partly in his attempt to stop her from proceeding with her plan. He had a semi trailer on our property where he’d place his treasures under lock and key. As I think about it now, his plan must have also been for new tools, to replace what he felt was missing from his own collection. These tools Stan collected and swapped as he felt like it. Viola! The tools would reappear but their replacements would disappear. “Where did that come from?” My mom would ask. “It’s been missing for weeks. Hey, wait a minute, now I can‘t find the saw I just bought!” What a sorry little man.

It was otherwise a beautiful day when I witnessed his abuse of my mother, finally in real time- yelling at my mother, telling her how stupid she was because he sent her to the auto parts store without enough information to get him whatever it was that he was making her buy, which was usually something senseless like nice clean plastic tubing that slips onto wiring because the stuff under the hood of his Semi had dust on it. Stan Johnson, living dead. Where is a real-time smiting when it’s needed?

One morning I awoke, from the area where I slept on the floor of the living room, to find that Stan was sitting in the room with a rifle or shotgun of some kind, while entertaining the idea of killing me. I realize that, to an outside critic, I could be mistaken but there was no cleaning kit odor in the house, and he had never been seen at anytime with, nor did I have any clue that he ever had any guns. All of this, not to mention that it was “out of his area.” It would be like he left it lay in the yard. Couple these deductions with the gift of clairvoyance. He also had a small hydraulic rowing machine that he was using to build up his strength. It was obvious that he was working up to something. What he was working on was an attack on me. I am flattered that it required much more than general balls. Anyways, I am not mistaken, later learning of his intentions from the messenger- my mother.

The final motivating factor in Stan wanting to kill me may have been due to my having taken one of my mother’s cars out the night before- drinking and smoking crack cocaine with Muddy Water’s Niece, Hope. Then, on the way home, smacking the Ford Festiva up a bit. My control of the vehicle was lost when exiting from the west bound highway, I-96, at the Marne exit. The exit has a very short and compact curve where I ended up too wide on the turn, and off of the road, taking out the road sign that indicated a train crossing ahead. The signage must have ripped a hole in the gas tank. I might have misjudged the distance and lost focus on my speed accordingly. Go figure.

I had recently gained employment at 84 Lumber. By taking the train tracks in Marne, I could get to the job fairly easily since it was just off of the tracks near Sand Creek. That was where I set up camp to live for a while- hoping to save some money to get back on track with. This was a great spot because it was very close to my new job, making it easy to walk to work. Camp was right off of the train tracks, and right on the edge of the creek, where I would refrigerate my beer- making a rocky enclosure in the water to hold it from being swept away by the current. There was a felled tree right there that was over two feet wide in diameter, and suspended up off of the ground by it’s root structure about three feet. This made for a pretty good shelter.

One night, in the fall, I had been at the old Silo Gopher bar, now called the Pit Stop Bar, where I probably drank five pitchers of Killian’s Red beer. Rinaldi’s sub shop was across the street, making it a great dinner option for around four and a half bucks for a beef and cheese steak sub. I went over and made the order and then went back to the bar to drink until it was ready. Well, I made it back to the camp with my food, almost.

It was not so moonlit that night, causing me to take the wrong trail to my camp, the one closest to the edge of the creek, where it ran along close to the edge of the muddy bank. I slipped in the mud and darkness and fell in. The water must have been five or six feet deep, and cold as a trout stream should be. The new blue jean pants I was carrying when I fell in were never found when went back the next day on a salvage mission, thinking I threw them up on the bank before I climbed out of the frigid water. Instantly sobered right up, I made the best decision I could at that moment. 

My feet started marching the train tracks towards my friend Jimmy’s parent’s house, eating my sub sandwich along the way. As I ate it, I appreciated how well they wrap them up because it was perfect. It didn’t get wet at all and was still hot as I ate it, contributing to fighting off hypothermia. Jimmy’s parents house was a bit of a safe haven for me, so I knew I could go there in an emergency, which I felt this was. He was one of my only friends I had, beginning in 1980, and going our separate ways because of his wife, Glenda Palmer, and their lifestyle, around 1990- more or less. We continued to associate from time to time until 2003, which is the last time I ever spoke to him. This was secondary to Glenda but primarily because of Jimmy’s cocaine addiction.

When I got there they let me in, where I immediately stripped out of my wet clothes and passed out in a chair wearing a big bath towel. The next day I awoke to being sounded about sleeping naked in a recliner chair. Apparently Jimmy’s sister Carol and her husband lived there with their daughter of about ten years of age. That was when I realized my mind reading ability must have been shorted out when I got submerged in the creek. My clothes were dry so I dressed and left without reminding them I had nothing else to wear.

I started off to go to work, where I would eventually be invited to stay at a co-workers place. He and his girlfriend lived on the west side of Grand Rapids. I cannot recall her by name, oh wait- it’s Laura. Her name was Laura Larson, and she had a son with this guy, which was about five years old. At one point in the relationship, they had broken up. She went away, met another man, who was from Brazil, and ended up pregnant with another child- a girl. It was this little girl that stayed in the bedroom that was in the front of the house, in the first room on the right as you walked up to the front door. The room had a couple windows, one facing the road, the other facing the neighbor’s house to the south. These windows were extremely messed up, to say the least. They covered in, what looked like mud or brown paint. I soon learned about this room where the “man” had been keeping a bulldog puppy of sorts, and a lot of other information that was, to me, pertinent to the welfare of this child. It would be several days to a week before I would digest it all. And I’m not convinced I wasn’t supposed to be there to help the child- sent by angels to save her life, I am sure. Was this a test of my ability to care for others, while still dealing with my own misery? 

The smell that came from that room was terrible and would keep me out of it until I had a better understanding of what that room was, and what it meant. When I learned that the child was sleeping in there, knowing it was also used as the dog’s room, I really started working towards finding a solution.

Matt was unabashed about my witnessing his dog training techniques- holding the dog with one hand by the back feet, while smacking the Dog about the face. He would explain that he was trying to turn the dog into a vicious fighting dog. A visualization of the scenario flashed in my head several times afterwards: the dog and child being placed together in hopes that it would kill her. It would appear as if it was only a room the dog was left in routinely, and the child had accidentally gone in there to play with it. It would not appear as though it was also being used as the child’s room. It would look like she wanted to play in there with the puppy. It’s amazing that she didn’t die from the fecal contamination! There was a small piece of foam rubber that resembled a crib mattress. It was heavily soiled in feces. Poop was smeared and caked on all walls, doors, and window surfaces four feet up everywhere.

In the meantime, the manling was getting his paycheck cashed and getting the word STRIFE tattooed across his upper back with what little money he had left after his steady diet of Coca-Cola and fast food. He was intentionally torturing this little girl, and tormenting the household, mostly because he wasn’t man enough to accept his failures at being able to maintain and contribute to a household or to correct his mistakes and actuate his future, his destiny- or what seemed to be his fate. He was angry at her for who knows how many selfish reasons but the most important issue was over her bringing another child, from another lover she became acquainted with after their break-up, into the scenario when he finally decided he wanted to try again or to use her again or when she decided. Either way… an attempt at salvaging what they once had as a couple for the sake of the children or their son or so it would appear.

We call them sore losers where I come from. And as for the mom, Laura, it’s a sad day when a woman is so emotionally crippled, and lacking in confidence, and self-esteem because of the nurturing deficiencies in her up-bringing and relationships, that she fails in her responsibilities by getting knocked up regardless if she has the means to care for an additional child. Man, he was, in Earthly form but this manling was just a piece of filth that hadn’t yet found his calling as a prison inmate.

Strange, just as the feces smeared all over the room, he was smeared all over those children and their mother’s life. Her starvation for attention and affection was what would lead her to briefly throw herself at my feet, and that was when my foothold to motivate her to change the situation took place. With my influence, and mentioning the child protective authorities coming and taking her kids, she would walk into that disaster to face it head on, as far as the “living condition” and the dog being housed in the same room. The situation with the manling would be a whole ’nother battle that she would have to deal with entirely on her own. As I think about it now, I had an opportunity to have him arrested for negligence and abuse, at the least, but I didn’t have the hate or anger or maybe the ability to call the police, of all people, or the comprehension of the dynamics or to understand the big picture. What I did know was that this child’s living situation had to be addressed immediately.

Whether she left or he left, I do not know but I think they did end up splitting up completely. It’s too bad it didn’t happen before the manling allowed his iguana to bite their son’s nose off. This animal had no cage, sometimes also being kept in the little girl’s room. This creature was left free to roam around the house. Their son’s nose had to be sewn back on. It was a nasty scar left on his face, and something he has to look at and relive for the rest of his life.

This Iguana was large, which over four feet, in my limited education, is large for an iguana. I ended up proving that it was never taken care of and was “misplaced.” Later, it was found somewhere in the walls of the house, where it died. It must have been a nice surprise for their landlord the day that he found it.

My west-side adventure at Matt and Laura’s hovel was what led me to find Matt and Sara. One day I decided to try to buy a used guitar from anyone I could find one. For some reason I began lurking around the payphone outside of Edzu’s Liquor Store, where I’d inquire to customers who looked like they might be artists or musicians. Surely, this was an effort I thought would put a wedge in between my drinking and my occasional crack cocaine use but it was more mysterious feeling than that. I likened the experience to Salmon returning to spawn or a Mariposa Monarch on its journey to Mexico, taking three lives to get there, and three more to get back; a true wonder of the world. It was a force that had been trying to guide me to something in my life since I was a child. I have always been, well, stubborn, I guess. I have always done everything the hardest way possible- blazing my own foolish trail in life it seems. Destined to get there but taking the long, scenic route. I don’t recommend that for regular everyday people, the psychiatrist would probably just say, “it’s remarkable,” which doesn’t generally interpret to a good thing, by the way.

It’s a coin toss, supernatural or chance. Either way, this was what led me to Matt and Sara, beginning our relationship as friends, and giving me another shot at learning something in life. This would be about the time, at a Dairy Queen on the corner that I would get to see my kids for the first time since she took them away from me. Luckily these children of mine were not at the John Ball Zoo when the manling Laura was with put a rope out for the monkeys, which found their way out of the pit-style containment, only to attack people and children. One was bitten repeatedly about the face and head. Matt was never caught or turned in but he boasted to me about this “feat”, admitting how he did it- tying a length of rope to the picnic tables along a fence lined area that overlooked the pit, directing the loose end into the area within reach of the monkeys. He also bragged about some other crimes involving a sawed off shot-gun but guys like him speak of so much in their efforts to fit into their ego suits that you really can’t believe one word they say. Strife, ironically enough, will be a large part of this manlings existence, which will, more than likely, prove to reward him for the rest of his life, just as he deserves. Maybe you’d call it Karma, and the reward would be Strife. My hope is for someone wise enough to recognize, in his errors, as well as my own, lessons for themselves. Necessary Evil, as they say. 

The world is small, so I am sure the future will produce Ms. Larson and her children eventually. Maybe I will be able to see some good I have done for someone else, in them. It would be reassuring, and reinforce my faith in humanity, which I sometimes desperately need.