"Sandy, pt 2" from Escaping The Despondent Sea" unedited

 

Sandy returned, two days later, to her job at Vitale’s. It was Monday. We drove into Grand Rapids together, where I would return to work with Salih. 

After work I would carouse around to visit with friends until she got done at eleven p.m. It went on like that for another two weeks until one day when Sandy had the day off and joined me in Grandville where Salih and I were putting an addition on a home. 

Salihs wife showed up at that project around noon and berated him for about twenty minutes. She even made mention of their sex life and his manhood, to which he replied something about the Grand Canyon. It was very soon after that Salih and I had a falling out due to the impact that his wife had on our work environment. And with Sandy’s observance came even more difficulty in dealing with the Drama. I just couldn’t take it anymore. 

With Sandy on the sideline, influencing the situation with her sentiments on the relationship, the decision was made for me to quit. He really needed me at that time since the workers he had were mostly unskilled, and Salih was more of the coordinator. I was the lead man, making all of the field calls and construction decisions needed to complete the projects. He really depended on me. 

When I just didn’t show up, and let the calls go to voice mail after telling him on the phone that I had to quit, Salih headed out to the park to try to talk to me about it. He couldn’t accept it and had no real understanding of what the reason was, and I was unable to tell him anything further than the first phone call I was allowed to take from him. When he got to our camper Sandy had barricaded us inside, forbidding me to open the door or respond to him in any way. I felt extremely bad for what I had done to him by quitting, and even worse for not being able to talk to him. I knew in my heart that he deserved an explanation or an apology but I couldn’t do it without making mention of his wife and her hatred towards me, or without Sandy being involved, all of which would have only made things worse for both, Salih and I.  The chief problem was something I was not willing to focus on at the time, Sandy’s possessiveness and jealousy. She had taken full control of everything I did, and everything I was going to do.

And it seemed that I had invested my time into the wrong person. To have a stable home- a place where my children could find me, and visit. To have a place and extend invitations to gatherings... To have my daughter Sarah- rebuilding a relationship that was long ago destroyed over nonsense.. It was all just an impossible dream. Little did I know the truth in the lives of Sarah, Cody, and Scarlett. And little would I learn until too much had passed. The suffering was only just beginning, as if I were cursed. 

It was nearing Christmas, on the twenty-first of December, when I took Sandy to work. Someone had given me a Smelt basket that I had accepted and reheated in a gas station microwave oven when I got gasoline. When I was arriving back at the Vitale’s parking lot, my stomach began to wretch, rejecting what I had eaten. As I was pulling into the parking lot I opened the door of my van and puked as I drove, hoping that Sam Vitale was not watching on one of his many surveillance cameras as I did so. It was a hope but highly unlikely. I went to the sports bar next door to have a drink and use the bathroom, twenty minutes afterwards going to the van to take a nap. Sam’s cameras were in the sports bar as well.

When I awoke, I turned the radio on in the van just in time to listen to an emergency weather report that stated everyone in the area was to remain indoors and not to drive anywhere, unless it was an absolute emergency, because of “Black Ice”. The temperatures dropped dramatically and freezing rain were certain to create hazardous road conditions. At about eleven p.m. closing time, I went inside to warm up and wait. Sandy was drinking her fill from the serving station, having the perfect excuse to taste the drinks as she made them, for quality control purposes. When I told Sandy that we should stay at a friend’s house that night, she refused the idea saying that she intended us to return to our camper. The warning about the “Black Ice” was not important to her. She suggested we just drive slowly and carefully, taking the highway because there would be no stopping and starting and less traffic.

Well, with no one else on the road, we left as she insisted. We made our ritual stop at the liquor store for tobacco and alcohol on Plainfield Avenue, just a mile from the on ramp. Whether it was vodka, rum or gin, I cannot recall but I can recall that we made drinks in the parking lot for the ride home. We entered the empty westbound highway of I-96 tiptoe slow and headed for Coopersville. We made it all the way to the Marne exit without any slipping or another vehicle on the road. Four miles later we passed the forty-eighth avenue exit, still without any signs of another car on the highway going either way. Everything was nice and smooth and I was relieved to be only five miles from our home in the park. In a few minutes we would be sitting at out dining table with the heat blowing on our toes, while Zoey the cat was soaking up her love from us for the day. As the thoughts of being home waltzed through my head I felt the van sliding for the first time.

Our van was an older model but it was in nice shape. The tires were great and the rims were aluminum mags. It had running boards and was furnished with a seat that folded down into a bed and a table with swivel bucket seats, four Captain’s chairs. There were some tools that I kept inside because I had nowhere else to store them, along with a bag of concrete and a slide compound Hitachi saw I used primarily for finish carpentry work.

When I noticed that the van was sliding, I looked around for the lights of any other vehicles but there were none in the blackness. The rear slid slowly around to the right turn around one hundred and eighty degrees. We kept sliding sideways off of the road and into the median of the east and west lanes. When the wheels stopped sliding the van continued to move, rolling over onto its passenger side. My tools flew from where they were stowed and my saw bounced around along with the bag of concrete, which had broken open. Our drinks were spilled and the bottle of booze was tossed and rattled in the cab. Sandy complained of neck pain as I tried to open the door but the weight of it was extremely difficult to move from the position I was in. Repositioning myself, I managed to get my door open and climbed out.

The first thing I noticed was a dark Jeep Cherokee parked on the side of the highway. There were no lights on of any kind except for the glow of a cell phone in the cab. Approaching the vehicle, I noticed that it was a man behind the wheel, and that he was wearing a Kent County Sherriff’s patch on his coat. He seemed to be making a call on his phone. He answered my question regarding what happened with a statement that a little blue car had hit me and took off but I knew there was no little blue car but he and I knew that there was no such vehicle. I had been keeping my eyes on the mirrors and entrance ramps for other vehicles, especially cops that like to sit there when shooting radar or looking for people. As an accomplished drinker and someone who smokes pot, I am always aware of my surroundings. I kept an eye out for these things. If there is something there, I know it before they think I can see- the epitome’ of perfect vision.

As I went back to the van, foolishly hoping to flip it back over, I thought about the whole situation. We had been alone the entire time since passing Alpine Avenue. We were snuck up on from behind. He had been waiting for us at the entrance where 48^th Avenue crosses over the I-96 highway. There are entrance ramps for both, East and West bound traffic. We or should I say I, had been monitored along the way via radio by officers posted up at every entrance ramp. When I got into the area, the cops pitted me, arresting me for child support. I do not remember how long I was in jail that time but I do remember that I was never told what the warrant was for. They said that the reason for my arrest wasn’t one but “fifteen thousand of them”, which ended up being the bond amount that I was unable to post. I gave my wallet to Sandy immediately, knowing that they would take what little money we had. I was denied the opportunity to use my phone to call a tow truck or my own insurance company, which ended up costing me a lot of money for the flatbed they arranged. They denied me to call anyone at all regarding this matter, taking my phone from me when I tried to call my mother, who lived near by. Memory doesn’t serve the details but I am sure that the documentation is available to back this all up. There are files in my possession that support this story. Sometimes I imagine that I keep these things in case I ever go on a rampage that ends up with me gaining some kind of notoriety, the kind of thing where they decide to do a bio. Funny thing is, I always likened myself to the great men of our past and to be in the history books since I was old enough to think of tomorrow, which I am told was pretty early. Only, it was probably more like: “tomorrow I will kill them”.

The move on the states part was illegal, but I haven’t the capital to pursue it, especially them denying me to call my insurance company. To me, that would be a witness to the situation. I should have sued but how can anyone fight without money? If they were smart, they would have written the accident up as a routine weather condition incident and issued a drunk driving charge but they never gave me a Breathalyzer or mentioned my alcohol use to me or in the police report.

Sandy used every bit of the hundred and fifty dollars to pay for the tow truck that brought our van back to our camper. I think it was this incident that ended up costing her the job she had at Vitale’s but since we had our bills caught up and I had family in the area, she was able to get by until I returned home. 

 We used to walk back to the north end of the RV Park, to the river bayou, to fish. Along the way were a few campers that people had stored in the back of the property, out of the way of the park. Some of them were for sale. We entertained the idea of getting a new one or one new to us. And it’s funny because someone else was thinking the same thing.

One day in the fall we asked Jerry Cannon, the park manager who was an ex-FBI agent, about the other “units” because we had become interested in upgrading. He made a comment about being glad we asked because he was just about to come and tell us that our camper was too old to be in the park for another season. Whether that was true or not had nothing to do with why he was going to tell us this. He tried to sell us a modular cabin but the price was beyond ridiculous, and it was meant to be. He really didn’t want us in the park. It was apparent that the other park residents had been discussing us too. Probably out of boredom. Jerry then tried to rent us one at a price that he felt we could afford, making it too easy, which scared us a bit, and rightly so. We were sensing being set up for something but we couldn’t tell what it was. What we ended up deciding was that we wanted to buy a camper, so he reluctantly showed us the ones that were for sale, starting with the most expensive one. The prices on all of them ended up being more than we wanted to spend or could afford. 

During this time we were targeted for our campers antiquity as well as being “undesirable”.  We had gotten to know young woman named, Katirna, who worked at the store in the park on the other side of the river- Conestoga Camp ground. She filled us in on a lot of the dirt about the park and it’s people. The rumors were, in fact, flying in the park. It came out that Jerry didn’t care much for us but there was nothing he could do about our being there since we complied with the park rules and paid our bills on time. One of the stories was that Sandy was my mother and we were an incestuous couple. That story made me laugh out loud. Sandy was appalled.

The typical people that reside in these RV parks, come to find out, are mostly on fixed incomes. They live in the RV’s because it’s inexpensive compared to traditional housing options like senior citizens with no family members who are caring or stable or willing to give back to them. There are many people who have child support demands that prevent them from living any other way, basically living in whatever is big enough to hold whatever it is that they have left in life. There are many people who are so much into chemical dependency that they have adjusted their lifestyle to accommodate their use. We were really no exceptions to the rule. 

Yeah, it’s a sad reality in the RV Park we lived in, and there we were doing much the same thing. Don’t get me wrong. You can’t discount the people passing through, the tourists, the hunters and the nature lovers. And then there are some who are shackled with the leg irons of a modern society and can’t afford themselves the leisure and luxury of traveling and exploring the wonders of our country. There are those who keep an RV or camper year-round or seasonally to have as a get-away, that don’t want to buy property or can’t find what they want. Then there is the management. The managers always seem to be some tyrannical control freaks who are the Dictatorial Hitler type of person, as far as I have ever seen in my limited experiences. 

One day as the snow was beginning to melt at the end of Winter, Jerry came and told us about a camper at the other camping and RV Park- Conestoga Campground, on the north side of the river. A last stitch effort to get us to move out of the park, which would provide a great comfort to those who are there and afraid of outsiders coming on the scene to learn their secrets.

Conestoga was being prepared to open for the season since it was not a year-round park. It was owned by the same man who owned The River Pines but it was ran by Jerry’s son who had a camper parked there that they had rented out from time to time. It was on a lot right next door to the managers unit. This was a decent looking camper and appeared to be in good shape. It was a thirty-two foot 1984 Jayco Bunkhouse that slept six people. There was a nice little bathroom with a shower, a queen sized bed, a new fridge and furnace, as well as a newer water heater. It was a beautiful camper. 

To us, having been living in the Little Gem for the winter, it was a palace. Jerry claimed to own this camper, offering it to us for two thousand dollars, which he would finance, of course. He drew up a payment plan that was a land contract type. The camper would remain at Conestoga Campground until it was fully paid for, while payments were to be one hundred and thirty seven dollars and change per month but if we missed one payment we would lose our entitlement and all of our interest. We happily agreed knowing that we would easily be able to make the payments, making arrangements to have Jerry put our Little Gem in the back with the others that were for sale. We placed a sign in the window of it and hoped for it to sell quickly. 

Now Sandy was ready to call Richard to claim her stuff back that she had inherited from her father- the stuff that vanished when she got to Michigan.

Escaping The Despondent Sea is available on Amazon Kindle Unlimited, and is receiving 5 star reviews on Goodreads.com