"Sandy, pt4"

Now, it’s hard to do things when you don’t have a partner that contributes in a 

comprehensive fashion, which is why I took so much clothing and tools that I really had no 

business taking. Like bringing an antique Italian revolver that looked like it was found after 

lying for eighty years in a river somewhere while fishing. It was all rusted and froze up, 

though intact enough to clearly be a pistol. At first glance it looked like you may be able to 

fire it, although for the last time, before exploding in your hands. This was not at all 

practical, and with a clear mind now, it’s easy for me to see- hindsight. Luckily I never 

made it fire or else the demons that Sandy and I had haunting our lives would have forced 

the bullet to find her fate or mine.

We arrived at Crystal Mountain to find a very prestigious little community nicely tucked 

away in a Pine forest. Ski slopes were revealed through the trees, at few points, which 

could be a comfort to people like Judge Power of the Thirteenth Circuit Court or Mr. 

Jarboe- my joke of a defense, since I am sure that there are people who would love to take 

a rifle shot at them. This place would be a secure area in that respect.

My eyes were wide as the log style look of the homes caught my senses with their grand 

features extending out port style over horseshoe driveways like something you’d come to

 expect to find in Colorado. A golf course wound through the forestry that cradled the 

loosely scattered homes, here and there a flag indicating a putting green. It was great. It 

was magnificent.

After several lazy turns of the road, we found the project, easily identified by the two trucks 

and large enclosed tool trailer. The tool trailer was pretentious, yet petty and anal retentive, 

revealing more about Tom. Inside it were nicer kitchen cabinets than the majority of homes 

being built in the affluent communities I had worked on in the past.  These were for 

keeping tools in. I felt it was an example of how important his time with his wife or his own 

children was to him. He probably used it as a makeshift dwelling when his wife threw him 

out of the house, which I am sure happened a lot. He was just another self indulgent 

egotist to add to the list of piss-poor examples of men I had dealt with, and what a list it 

was until I realized it’s a disease of men and that most are afflicted, although willingly. 

I was no exception.

We spent that day building onto the house until early evening when Tom handed me a 

room key, saying something about my probably wanting to “go to the womb.” I am sure it

 had a lot to do with seeing me show up there with Sandy, and the fact that she was so 

much older than I. It seemed clear to him that I had “mommy issues.” And whether that’s 

true or not, the reality was she had issues of her own that didn’t allow for me to be out of 

her sight, however blurry.

 Tom and Johnny had a room down the hall from ours, if not each having their own. They 

came by later for drinks, and then we went outside for a smoke while Sandy insisted on 

preparing something for us to eat. That’s when I took them out to the car to show them the 

stuff I had in the trunk, mainly, the revolver. Sandy’s eyesight came up in conversation, 

saying that she must not be able to see very well. Maybe it was another crack at her age, I 

don’t know but I just replied with that for being the reason I rarely let her clean the weed- 

because she can’t see well enough to get all of the seeds out of it. The three of us laughed 

pretty good at that comment, knocking back the rest of our beers for another round. And, 

Oh man, how we drank that night.

We went back inside to eat some food but instead of eating I broke out the bottle of Cherry

 Kijafa, putting that on top of the thirty pack of Milwaukee’s Best Ice I had been drinking 

on… and the weed… and the gin. As if five point nine percent beer wasn’t enough. After

they left for the night, we started fighting. We fought for much of the night. Management 

came twice or maybe three times, to quiet us down. The police came at one point but 

couldn’t do anything because I seemed to not be a problem when they arrived. At some

point she attacked me and I bit one of her breasts in the scuffle, leaving a nasty bruise. I 

drank so much that night that I passed out and urinated all over the bed, which was a very

nice bed, causing her to get out the hide-a-bed to sleep on.

The next morning we tried to clean the place up. She found the hair dryer and tried to 

clean up the bed but it was useless. I was still drunk but that didn’t stop me from opening

a beer that morning, which must have been when Sandy decided she was taking the car 

and leaving me behind.  She packed up the rental car and took all of my money, leaving me

a twenty-dollar bill that I was too drunk to find in my wallet. She took the booze and the 

pot, except for what I had in my pocket that was rolled up from the night before. My glass

marijuana pipe got hidden somewhere during the drunken madness of the evening with

the expectation that the cops were coming, It was left behind to be found by the cleaning

staff or person who owned the room wherever I had hidden it.



She loaded up the food we had brought, and finished by loading up all of the empty beer

cans. I followed her out a moment later, after finishing my beer, my arms full of my 

belongings. She was already in the car as I set them down to open the trunk. Then she 

turned the ignition, put the car into gear and pulled out of sight. She just went to get gas I 

told myself, expected her to be coming back to hurry me along and take one last look 

around for the pipe or something we may be forgetting. I waited there while drinking 

another beer. I said out loud, “maybe it’s just a threat. What happened last night anyway?”

Moments went by before I realized she had no intention of coming back. I had a 

momentary lapse of reason, deciding that I was in no condition to see Tom and Johnny 

after what had happened last night. I panicked over being seen by any of the resort staff or 

being seen sitting out in the parking lot at all, so I started walking with all of my things. 

Fortunately there were only about one or two hundred people that could have witnessed 

my display, reminiscent of Steve Martin in the Jerk, drunkenly, and slovenly, walking down 

the street with my arms loaded with pure junk- my clothes, my tools, a broken pistol, and a 

Zip-lock baggie full of whatever it was she had made the night before. I wasn’t very happy 

about it.



“Maybe she just went to the store,” I thought. I kept telling myself that she was going to 

turn around and come back for me in a minute but the minute kept renewing itself to a new 

minute that I would have to wait through all over again. 

The thought renewed of what she was doing, like she had just gone to clear her head or 

get some cigarettes.

While on the “heel-toe express” I dreaded every fully exposed and hung-over step of the 

way. As my feet were shuffling, I wondered WHEN she would be coming back for me. And 

if I walked the right way for her to be able to find me when she did. I mean, how could I get 

very far with a big bag of crap and all the rest of the junk I had with me? How far could I 

get before I ran into the cops like this. They would surely stop and ask me why I was in the 

area looking like a vagrant. I had weed on me and was inebriated. I had a gun, working or 

not, it’s still a gun. And I am hiking on a highway with a difficult load to carry. Getting 

picked up was a huge risk and it motivated me to push on quickly. I am sure it was a sight 

to see.

Before too long, I located a gas station in my view up ahead. I recognized the place from 

the day before. We had stopped here and bought alcohol and supplies- as opposed to 

supplies and alcohol. I went in and asked for directions, buying some tobacco with some 

change I had in my pocket- still unable to find the money in my wallet. He pointed me

in the right direction and I left the store, stopping outside to roll some cigarettes.

My arms were so tired I knew I couldn’t keep carrying the stuff any longer, so I took in a 

good visual of my surroundings. Up the road I spotted an intersection with a lot of forestry 

along it. I spotted a good spot to enter the woods, heading toward it with my stuff. There 

was no traffic when I entered the forest but I wondered if hunters would stumble across my 

booty, if this were where I left it. I looked for something that I would easily recognize when I 

came back to the area. As it was, all I needed to do was to find the gas station again to 

locate the spot. Now all I needed was a geographical oddity that would be a good 

secondary marker. I found a large felled tree, knocked over by a storm. There was a 

depression in the dirt with lots of limbs and leaves lying around the area. The bag of 

clothes, the gun, the tools and the food, everything except for my tool belt with my hand 

tools in it, was left in that spot. I buried it in leaves and limbs and left for the road.

Now I was liberated or so it seemed. The leaves of that October crunched under my feet 

as I exited the forest with confidence that I would relocate it. One of my last worries was of 

wolves or coyotes tearing up my buried treasure. After a pretty good handful of miles, I 

happened upon a liquor store where I, finally, was able to find that twenty dollar bill in my 

wallet, so I poisoned, I mean, treated myself to a small bottle of whiskey to find the realm 

of familiarity I was lost in while I was in my abandon.

 

Many cars passed me by on that road, and feeling rejected and helpless, it was easy to 

temporarily abandon my abandonment to take a breather under a bridge where a creek ran 

through. This was a great place to smoke some weed. It was out of the wind, and out of 

view. The sound of the flowing water was much needed, as was the time off of my feet, 

giving me time to think about things and recharge a bit.

The distance I had hiked after that is uncertain, though I am sure it was quite a ways 

because the sun got to a point where it was no longer morning but nearing sunset before I 

finally got a ride from a young couple who happened to be in Traverse City at a family 

gathering. They had a tray of Hors d’oeuvres that they offered me to eat from- finger foods 

like onion wraps and veggies with dip etc… They drove a light blue Blazer, saying that they 

had just left one of their parent’s homes and were headed to the Alpine area off of U.S. 131 

in Grand Rapids. Perfect, exactly where I was going. I thanked them profusely as I climbed 

in, offering to compensate them if they could get me to my trailer, just twenty miles from 

where they were going.

They drove me right to the Conestoga campground, where I found the trailer to be locked. 

It wasn’t hard to get in by climbing in through the utility hatch that was on the side near the 

access to the holding tanks. The hatch went in under the bed and the bed lifted up to 

expose storage space underneath. I still can’t believe I did it. Had it not been for my being 

so thin from drinking so much, I probably would not have been able to do it but I was so 

angry that Sandy had left me behind that anything was possible. Opening the door to let 

them in, a car pulled up just then. It was Sandy.

Sandy was all smiles and cheer when she saw me there, nonchalantly stating how she had 

stopped and got a room at a Motel Six to catch up on some sleep, just as drunk from the 

night before as I was. It was as if we had met back at the trailer after a much-needed 

vacation, like nothing dramatic had happened at all. It was a sticky sweet interlude but had 

I not shown up when I did, the trailer and her would have vanished completely, I am 

certain. 



I had a strange feeling that she was on a trip to somehow get revenge for things that 

happened to her in the past, like losing a mobile home in a bad break-up, something she 

felt she was entitled to. All she needed was the right situation, which I pretty much 

gave her in the events from the night before.

My memory of all of these things may not be as fluid, as far as any time-line or 

chronological order goes but it’s pretty damn good. Actually, I am amazed that it is as 

good as all of these stories make it seem. It should be only a blur from all of the polluting I 

did to myself, drinking some of the worst drink and my using the finest poisons. Oh well, 

call it a gift and be thankful.

So, I’m not sure how things were that next day but I know things were quiet that night. And 

I know that I never worked for Tom Bruin again. It was several weeks before I got paid for 

the work I had done but when I finally did get paid, he had his wife meet me off of Alpine 

Avenue at a Dentist where she was already taking her son for an appointment., in order to 

meet up to get the check. She handed me a check that was nine hundred dollars short, 

telling me that they were forced to deduct it by their insurance company because I had no 

liability insurance policy to cover me being on the project. What good was it to even try to 

argue with her about it? It’s not like I was going to be able to get her to write me a check 

for the difference. Tom had made no mention about this huge detail. Clearly, he sent her as 

a buffer, and I, working paycheck to paycheck, needed the money days ago. It was a 

typical scenario for a sub-contractor in the construction business. But it’s possible that the 

nine hundred was for the repairs to the hotel room and replacement of the bed. We still 

haven’t spoke and I have yet to return for my treasure.



All Sandy cared about was getting some pot, and going back to the camper to pass the 

time by getting high and sucking down some booze, pretending we were all by ourselves 

on the planet. I was fit to be tied. My grief was compounded from all sides and there was 

no place to go to find a single person to confide in over anything. All that my mother would 

say anytime I tried to talk to her about things was, “You people sure have a lot of 

problems.” This from a woman who had a complaint about everything and everyone, 

having worked at the post office for a number of years- the exact kind of person you hear 

about on the news going “postal.” If anyone were ever suspected of “going postal”, it 

would be her though it never happened as far as I know. Yes, that’s what she would say if 

she took time to acknowledge me in my distress. Eventually I ran out of money and 

resorted to my ol’ standby… picking up cans for their ten-cent deposit.

I remembered the night I caught the Allendale grocery store using illegal labor as my elbow 

ached while combing the roadside for beer cans: I had been drinking all day and I was 

fighting the end of it, so I jumped in the van and limped to the store for another thirty pack. 

When I got to the store it looked open but the doors were locked. A young man saw that I 

was trying to get in. He came to the door and opened it with a big smile. As I hurried for 

the beer cooler, I noticed that the store was being cleaned and that everyone was Latino, 

and that they were actually closed. This issue was in the news a lot in the prior weeks- 

illegal labor from over the border. My only concern was with getting a box of beer before 

the store manager realized I was there, planning on swiping my card at a self check out 

and blasting out in a flash. My feet marched me right to the cooler. I grabbed the beer and 

raced back down the aisle to the register but my feet magically slipped out from under me. 

On the way to the floor, I put my hand out to break my fall but had my arm locked, which 

jammed my elbow, slamming me into the floor and aggravating my back injury. The floors 

were wet with fresh wax. The machines that were being operated on the floors shut off and 

several people who spoke no English came to help me up. That’s when the manager came 

around to see why the machines had stopped running. She chided me for being in the 

store since it was closed, asking me how I got in. When I explained that the help had 

opened the door, she ordered me out. She was pretty startled at my being there in a 

precarious position to observe what was going on there with the illegal help functioning as 

employees. It’s too bad I was drunk because I could have blackmailed or outright exposed 

the store for it. Too bad I messed that up. Live and learn, I suppose. 

These things we had of her fathers in storage proved to be valuable, calming our needs 

and wants. After a while went by of pawning things, starting with the two salamander 

kerosene heaters belonging to Tom Bruin, we had a big sale at a friend’s house down the 

road from us. On the third day of the sale a person came by telling us not to sell anything 

until they brought their brother to see about buying some of the stuff, giving us a fifty-

dollar bill to hold it. He came that night, looked around, offered us fifteen hundred dollars 

and bought every scrap. Sandy was relieved to have it gone because she felt it was all bad 

to have versus the money that actually just gave us back what we had spent in storage 

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

"Sandy pt 3" from Escaping the Despondent Sea"

Sandy kept on about the coo-coo clock and various antiques and possessions that Richard and Angie kept tucked away, including many guns. She kept on about it until we decided to call her son to ask for them. A threat had to be imposed in order to get him to comply with her request. These items were all stored in his basement, along with the pot he was growing. The very thing that he had suggested I broke in to get at. He refused to give up the items, saying that they were his, which fueled a battle that lasted for days until I got on the phone, threatening to turn him in for the pot if he didn’t give his mother what she was after. He hung up at that statement, only calling back about an hour later to say that he had checked his perimeters and was willing to concede to Sandy’s argument. The next day we met him at his house, retrieving a van full of stuff. It was packed to the gills with just enough space to get back in and ride home, stopping off at our storage unit to unload the items. The van had over heated from the haul and wouldn’t start when we went to leave. It finally started after about two hours.

 .

Jerry moved the Jayco to a site we picked out at Conestoga but it didn’t have a full hook-up, meaning the sewer line. That would require me to drain it manually, hauling a thirty-gallon honey pot back and forth from the tank to the dump station. Jerry’s son said to just run the grey water out a hose and down the hill into the Grand River. He said that was what a lot of them did with the grey water, which is a separate holding tank apart from the actual sewage tank. It was the first of April when we moved into the Jayco. The lot we picked was on the very end of the row along the ridge facing south. It overlooked the forestry below where it met the bank of the Grand River as it flowed westward to meet Lake Michigan in Grand Haven. Our lot was also next to the graveyard- a very old graveyard. I remember worrying about the very large oak tree that was standing on our North side- a mere six feet away. It had a huge limb that was more like another trunk, hanging a big threat that stretched precariously out over our trailer. All I could think about was a story that my close friend, Arek Clark, had told me about when he lived here years ago.

 A man was lying in bed but then got up to make a bowl of cereal. The tree that was next to his camper suddenly broke and fell onto it, landing right where he had been sleeping. It destroyed his camper and would have killed him if he had not gotten up to eat. This was an especially haunting tale, being that we were located right next to the graveyard, and reminded us of death almost every moment of the day.

The storage facility, in Allendale, where we kept many things, was right next door to a gas station where I liked to acquire Drum rolling tobacco. I would always get two pouches from the rack and then go to the drink cooler, where I slipped one down my coat sleeve. Then I’d approach the counter, go through my act of pulling out my wallet to see that I didn’t have enough money, then to return the pouch to the rack. This was almost always too easy to pull off, unless the person behind the counter was someone I had done it with recently but since the store had a big employee turn over, and was always pretty busy, it was fairly easily done. Sometimes I could do it two to three times a day but at least a couple times a week, which was enough to get by. This was a technique I used at the places that sold beer as well, grabbing two jumbos but slipping one down the sleeve of my heavy coat.

We didn’t go a day without drinking. Sandy wouldn’t really discuss not drinking. Her emphasis was just on me not drinking. And I agreed but not drinking wasn’t something easily done on the one-way street of a relationship. Strength is in number, yet we remained divided in many ways. One morning she opened the cupboard doors and beer cans spilled out everywhere. It’s funny, for a person who claimed to be a hippie, and always talking about Jehovah and the Kingdom Hall, she was a nonstop consumer. She’d always say things like, “there’s nothing to have”, but we’d spend money that we had to sell things to get, to buy gas, and risk driving all the way to the city, drinking both ways, to buy a small amount of pot. We ended up spending thirty bucks for a ten-dollar bag of grass- smokes, drinks, gas and pot. What a waste. We could have just grown our own pot. None of it was that serious but it was to her. We would scrape the pipe at least three times a week and I hated it every time she asked me to do it. This evil would remain veiled by her home-making skills, her deceptiveness, charisma and her charm. I was so loved starved that I was blinded completely. I was so blinded by her wiles and my own drinking and psychological issues that I couldn’t even see myself to find my own errors for correction. It’s funny how things can compound so thick and fast, stealing you away from the future with the moments.

For the most part, while with Sandy, I had forgotten what I was doing and what I wanted in life. I had become brainwashed with the promises of love, giving up my hopes and dreams to follow someone else’s. She was a siren but I didn’t know it yet. She would always mock me about my dreams and aspirations of becoming an entertainer, telling me, “There’s no time in this system. Jehovah is creating a new system for you to do it there”.  My dreams of musicianship were rekindled when I had met Danny but they were lost when we became separated by a situation caused by lack of money, coupled with his despair from his afflictions- all of which were caused by alcohol.

After a week in the trailer, I had a fit of paranoia fueled by Sandy’s own. I began to tear out the radio and speakers that came installed in the trailer. Since Jerry was an ex-federal agent with the F.B.I., I was concerned of eavesdropping. One of the things that motivated my concerns was a very large and powerful looking two-way radio antennae. Sandy was always an instigating factor for suspicion and evil doing, which got me pumped up pretty badly.

When we got down on our luck we would drive around looking for returnable beverage containers on the roadsides. It was while on one of these excursions that we stumbled upon one of Bob Smithe’s Home Builder signs. He would put me to work doing whatever he had going on at the time until his alcoholism and demeanor contaminated our work relationship again. The main problem was that it seemed he couldn’t be man enough to deal with his personal frustrations on his own time. He took advantage of using me as his punching bag until he couldn’t stand it any longer. Mostly he was ticked off because I wouldn’t lose my cool on him.

After a while, I would end up calling Tom Bruin to ask him for work. He had me come out to a project in Jenison, where he was building a house for the Parade of Homes, offered me twenty-five dollars an hour. At that moment all was well. That is, until Sandy got wind of the Cleaning Lady.

My first big standing cabinet was a four-person locker bank with a boot-box seat. It stood eighty-four inches tall by sixty inches wide, was built from birch plywood, made with bead-board inlaid doors- all painted white. I have pictures of it somewhere. Tom also had me build the staircase, especially since he had witnessed some of the work I had done in the past; how solid the newel posts and banisters were, the accuracy in the miters, and the meticulous attention to detail.

The house was to be in the Grand Rapids Parade of Homes, which meant that it was doomed to heavy bombardment and buffoonery of morons yanking on the staircase to see how well it was built, being the defeat of many who claimed to be a carpenter. Now, this staircase has to be the neatest one I have ever done. And I was proud to be the one to build it. The main newel posts were site built out of Maple. The balusters and spindles were wrought iron with a painted finish, and had decorative piece that slid onto them to be fixed in a position with a hidden set screw to make up a collective pattern that the artist assembling it felt would be most aesthetic and pleasing to the eye. I had to use a clear silicone adhesive since it was “finish complete” except for the maple. The newel posts were monumental, rigid and solid. And when struck they reverberated throughout the home. I received more compliments on that staircase than almost anything I had assembled in my life.

So, feeling very proud of myself, I took Sandy to the jobsite to show her my accomplishments. She had been continually complaining about not being able to go along with me to work. She wanted to do the cleaning after the work was all done. I explained that Tom had someone he always used on his projects. So, she asked if she could help them with the task. I said I would ask Tom about it, which I did but Tom couldn’t make it happen. For a while she kept on about the teachings of the bible, trying to manipulate me into taking her to babysit me for fear I was doing something wrong or that she felt she should be included in. It was her intention that I understand God gave man woman for a helper, and that I acknowledge that, and always have her as my accompaniment, according to the Scriptures.

We arrived at the project and everything was fine. Having never seen a lot of my trade, she was amazed at what I had been working on, taking a few pictures of the staircase and the cabinetry. Around noon a van pulled up and someone got out. It was the cleaning lady. When she walked into the house, she greeted us with a smile and cleavage, along with a radio, plugging it in right away. Sandy’s body language said it all: “What’s with this precocious little skank?” I mean, the cleaning lady was blonde, cute, maybe thirty years old and trying to appear sexy with her mannerisms and style of fashion, and she was flirtatious. She was everything she needed to be in order to work feeble men over for money and opportunities- it was clearly her M.O.

That afternoon the guys showed up to do some punch list work, last minute details. The cleaning lady was washing windows inside the house, chatting away with Tom and whom ever she could engage in conversation.

The decorators showed up with furniture and ornamentals to dress the place up for the showing in the Parade, pushing items they happened to have for sale in their store. The speakers in the boom box were blaring, “It’s getting hot in here, let’s take off all our clothes,” and the cleaning lady was singing along. An emotional volcano built up pressure inside of Sandy. As the song ended, the cleaning lady turned and said, “I need to wash the windows outside but I have to climb the ladder. Zach, will you hold the ladder for me?” The top of Mount Sandy found a crack and she finally exploded. She turned crimson, screamed a series of cuss words and stomping out of the house, knocking things over and slamming doors as she returned to our van.

Tom came running out of one of the back bedrooms asking, “What happened? What was that noise?” I explained Sandy’s jealousy, and that she lost it when the cleaning lady asked me to help her with the ladder while she washed the upper windows on the backside of the house. Tom muttered something about Trust being important in a relationship, which was funny to me because he was selling cookie dough for the cleaning lady, and telling me not to tell anyone about it. I suspected he was having an affair with her.

Anyway, on this day lots of things came together about this group of people. For instance, Tom wore a baseball cap because he was bald but for a small wreath of hair that stuck out from around his hat. He took it off that day to scratch his head in confusion over why I even brought Sandy to the job. The male pattern baldness didn’t go well with his Napoleon-like stature, making him look even smaller than before.

Tom was married to an accountant who had shown up at the job with his son- a blonde haired child of about eleven.  His wife wore the look of years of suspicion and a bad marriage, where a husband is rarely ever home. I could tell by her aura that she was extremely unhappy.

John, Tom’s right hand man, was an alcoholic who had a lot of familiar problems as well but he managed to stay working for Tom for a long time, though off and on as the drama caused by the constant drinking would always do. It didn’t stop Tom from drinking with him routinely after work, which had some purpose but I did not know what. I think Tom may have appreciated this relationship with John due to distracting himself from his own problems in life.

The cleaning lady was married, also working for Tom for a number of years. She had brought her son to the job as well, which looked almost exactly like Tom’s own son but about four years younger. It came out that the cookie dough was hers that Tom was selling when she asked me if I would buy some, saying that it was for her son’s class at school. It was to help raise money for an upcoming class excursion. She spent a lot of time with Tom during throughout the day, chatting about everything and flirting with anyone who would reciprocate. Every time I walked into a room, they were there acting as if they were busy with their duties. Her with her expensive undergarments riding high above the waistline of her jeans, and her blouse unbuttoned down to the bottom of her sternum, exposing much of her breasts.

Now whether the cookie dough was really for the school or if it was to offset child-rearing expenses, I never concerned myself much with determining. However, I did determine that Tom and her had something pretty big going on. I could not get the image of Tom’s wife out of my head. I felt so sorry for her, and I could only imagine all of the broken and empty promises, the shattered hopes and dreams, and the feelings of betrayal- all of this drama because of the concerns of a man and his penis. I couldn’t help but think of how he told me that his wife couldn’t find out about the cookie dough, and how the look on her face said there were too many lies, and enough poorly kept secrets already. And there I was in the mix. I felt her pain, her frustration, her broken heart and her anger. A poisonous situation that was poisoning my own life even more than I poisoned it myself. Throughout the coming months Sandy would administer a dose of abuse whenever she had a problem with me by mockingly mimicking the words of the song the cleaning lady sang that day.

The day we completed the job, I accidentally busted in on them “working” in the lower bathroom together. Her g-string stuck out in plain view from the back of her pants, as if her pants were hanging lower than they should have been. It became very clear why they were always working in the same room, away from the rest of us. On this day we all went into Jenison to Brann’s Steakhouse after work, where he threw hotel room keys at Johnny after buying him an excessive amount of drinks that would require him to sleep it off, knowing full well that Johnny is an alcoholic but needing a scapegoat for the room. Some routine small talk verified that Tom’s wife was an Accountant, and that she was extremely suspicious about his expenses. I must admit that Tom was clever but not clever enough to get what he wanted without any hassles. Oh God, what a pain in the neck I had from all involved. All I wanted to do was practice my trade and receive compensation for it.  

A week or so after the job was over, the Sandy wind stopped blowing so hard. Within another three weeks of the job, I was called to another project- this time up at Crystal Mountain Resort. Naturally, I agreed to do it. Having some money to work with, Sandy and I rented a car and we were off, eager for the road trip.

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

"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 

Scars and Permanence (early part)

Josh came running into the house, red curls bouncing- crying. 

He was very frightened- eyes wide in terror, while trying to tell me, through the gasps for breath, about a great ball of fire that had come out of the thin air- hitting him.

It isn't clear how, "dad" got involved- whether he was called and came rushing home or, if he had coincidentally arrived back to the cell-block after the incident- from his job at "Alloy-Tech" in Grandville Michigan. Either way, "dad" labeled me as the culprit for his "number one son" becoming hit and burned by this mysterious ball of fire.

The funny part was that he had several kids- thirteen maybe, and multiple sons- of which, I was the oldest in this "home" of ours- strip-son more appropriately, but son just the same. Years later, but not many, I would learn, finally, that he was not my father at all. I should have guessed.

Anyway, dad conducted the investigation- finding a container in the yard, with matches inside and around the container- a  container that he had brought home from work and had used to illegally cart gasoline home because he was too cheap to buy a can when he needed money for Green-fees at the various golf-courses he frequented.

He beat my ass for it pretty well. Pretty well, that is, if only he had been punishing himself for being so careless. That could have been the second death of a son that he would have experienced in his life at that point. The first one died of an antibiotic poisoning after an incident on Halloween, where the boy, "Ricky," had to be rushed to a hospital- possibly a Naval Hospital in Virginia, coincidentally, where I was born- Norfolk. 

Forgive me if I am wrong (literature professors). There's a paper trail I do not have time to trace, and it's unimportant for the moment.

I'll get back on track. I was twelve years old- a gangly, "scrawny," nutrient starved boy- stripped, like the bark of a dead Elm tree, of all confidence and self-esteem. I can't work hard enough for anyone, for any reason, to this day- and it sucks- and, makes me incurably thirsty.

So, he gave me another one of his man-sized whooping's as if it were me that had hurt Joshua by playing with matches, and, an almost completely empty "gas can" that he, himself, had put gasoline in, leaving it out in the yard. 

Why was Josh dropping the matches in the can? 

Funny we should all wonder. I still have no idea, and, have yet to ask him about it. That was almost forty years ago...

After sleeping on it, while here, in the Charlevoix jail, one more time due to my delinquent now ex-girl/care-giver, I recall our dad doing somethings with gasoline, matches, and his ego-suit, that he was extremely careful to have pressed and not to wrinkle. I think it was Izod-

He took an empty coffee can, and a small drizzle of fuel, rolled the can around, in order to wick the fuel up the sides of the can, which created a lot of fumes, flipped it upside-down, placing it on a board, so that the edge of the can hung off the side a slight amount- much like lighting an old lantern. Placing a match under the lip that hung over the edge of the board-  "POP!" The can shoots up into the air- due to a force called COMBUSTION, exactly like a piston in a gasoline motor/engine.

He would take matches and wrap them tightly in tin-foil (I'll say Reynold's wrap aluminum foil if they sponsor me), rub the edge of the match on a hard surface, laying it on the stove top burner grate, and applying the flame from the burner to the head, so that it would combust- flying, from the pressure created in the wrapping of the head. The force would cause it to smack into the ceiling or other.

I guess Josh was just imitating his dad's stunts or, "physics lessons". That wasn't the only thing he applied matches too- Remember, this is a story about me. Who the heck am I? Right. I will tell you in a while.

I remember him doing this- well... for our entertainment I suppose, but now that I think about it, that's not a very good thing to share with prepubescent children, especially BOYS. I was ten, and Josh was going to be 5, later that year. I wouldn't have dared try to do it because everything was a trap around our house. The liquor bottle had a mark on it. The matches were numbered. The cupboards were booby-trapped, with things that would indicate that they were opened. Nothing was left to chance. Anything he could jump on my back for. The salt was numbered- and the pepper needed the fly shit sorted out of it, which was my job. I had to taste each piece! Yeah- you think I am kidding, but just enough to take the edge off; Only about the pepper.

Consequently, that was about the only thing I dared touch to my lips, aside from what he shoved past them. I didn't dare reach for anything at the table, and, to this day, I hate eating because it's always been a bad thing. Kids didn't ask to be here- and what we need to remember, when we are punishing those around us, is that we are all someone's kids.

All was normal and routine at home. And, that was why I went to school- to get away from home. I thought that was what school was for, and, why all of us kids went- to get away to a safe place for a while each day. Boy, was I wrong. Maybe, if I would have had a clue, that we weren't all growing up like that, I would have realized that there was something wrong with going to school smelling like the piss I woke up in every morning until he had finally left with my mother's brother's wife- Uncle Gary; He was my favorite until he blamed me for that one. And, up until Rick finally left, I pretty much kept going to school until I left home altogether. Class of 88 cum 91 when I went back- clean, and got my Diploma, after dropping out in 86. I am still educating myself to this breath. And you should be too.
Escaping The Despondent Sea is available on Amazon Kindle Unlimited, and is receiving 5 star reviews on Goodreads.com