The Mile High Club

It was a beautiful day in June when Julie showed up at the job. Nearing nine-thirty, I figured she had something to discuss, wanting to do it over my coffee break. This was a bit of a surprise since I hadn’t received a call, letting me know that she was coming. No, she didn’t want to have coffee. She had come to tell me that Danny was found dead that morning when his boss went to pick him up for work at Robert’s house. Oddly enough, it was Danny’s last day of community service. His mother immediately went to him, to try to wake him from his final sleep, finding him on his back with his feet crossed and arms folded across his abdomen. He had gently passed away in his sleep. It was the sixth of June 2006.

This news struck me very hard. Danny and I had been planning to go to the Keys when we stumbled into Julie’s life. The idea was to land a property management gig and take occupancy of a place near the beach or live on a boat, while composing and playing music around town. If we had done that, we may have not had the troubles that we ended up having, and would have possibly struck up something big in the music scene.

Dan had confidence in our act, seeing that as very possible if we got in the right area. He thought the Keys would be the place for that to happen. Then I remembered the list he had made that said, “The final move”, on it. I didn’t want to understand it, I suppose. It didn’t quite register to me what that meant but now I knew why he had spent a lot of time helping me ready the studio room at my house, giving me some lessons and guidance on working in there with the equipment he had given me.

He kept saying, “you’ll figure it out”, whenever I sounded confused about the recording process and with working on his compositions that he entrusted me to publish. He also gave me some art lessons on drawing portraits and scenery so that I could illustrate the children’s stories we had both written. He was making all the preparations necessary for the things he wanted me to do for him, tending to the business that needed to be handled so he could depart from this world. The road was being paved.

                        The strangest thing of all was recalling the dream I had the night before they found him. I was working on my truck but my truck and I were both in the river, in three feet of water. Something swam up along side of me and popped out of the water. This thing was a little over six feet tall, thin, covered in moss and other plant matter, looking very much like a rabbit or something. It startled me very much. Feeling a great sense of danger, I grabbed something and swung at the creature, striking it in the head, which knocked it out. After putting it in the bed of my truck, I took it to someone to explain what had happened. The creature stirred while I was showing it to them, so I grabbed a tool and struck it again, killing it. Then I realized that it was Danny. I had killed him. This really added a great deal to my grief, and was far too much to bear.

                        As if that wasn’t bad enough, Dusty had mysteriously died three days after Danny did. She was found in the yard with a mouthful of grass. The other dog freaked out to the point where the neighbors called the cops. It would have been nice if someone would have looked out there first because when Animal Control came, Jean answered the door and said the dogs were not hers- costing me fifty dollars to get the dogs back, even though one was a corpse.

                        Andy called around the third week of August or so, saying that he’d heard about Danny, asking me to come down to paint for him. Since I was so desperate to avoid going to jail for child support, having not yet received my disability insurance from Social Security, I agreed to do it. It was only to last a few weeks, which was just long enough to gather up the twenty-five hundred dollars I needed to keep from getting put in jail again. He told me to make sure I “bring the old lady along”. In the planning stage, I called my kids and spoke to Cody, whom was receptive when I told him I was going to go to work for a few weeks because of the court thing, and that I would be out of town until then. We would resume our time together then. That particular three weeks was the longest three weeks known to man, a “Key West” three weeks.

                        Memory doesn’t serve up who took care of Jean when we left- maybe it was Aunt Rose. Julie booked a flight and reserved a car, and the bags were packed. Julie and I went to the airport to board our flight. We checked our bags and sat nervously while awaiting the prompt to board. After some time passed, I asked whether she had brought any pot for the drive down the keys to Big Pine, which she assured me she did. This was to be my first time on a commercial airliner, and boy, was I worried.

                        My thoughts of a “friend”, whining about motion sickness and having to take Dramamine to fly, crossed my mind. We opted to wait it out in the bar over a drink. Thoughts turned to crashing, as we boarded. Soon the force of the engines was throwing us down the Tarmac, tipping us back in our seats as the thrust lifted us into new heights. We seemed to just barely hang there, the weight of the plane dragging along behind the engines. Panic struck me for a moment but I stomped it out with other thoughts.

                        Now, I was all about the view of the earth below, and getting into the Mile High club. Curiosity somehow helped me decide it was a fair idea to try it… in the bathroom ALONE. It didn’t sink in, while the full surround of mirrored panels tried to tell me a story of security issues- things like surveillance cameras for anti-terrorism efforts. Aborting the attempt, shaving a few strokes off of my game, I finally realized it wasn’t a fair idea after all- Too Late. It must have been a sight, for who ever monitored the cameras, to see. Hopefully, I wasn’t the only case of that type of thing. It was pretty embarrassing.

We landed, retrieved our bags, and found a brand new Mustang waiting for us at the reception area. There was every rental car company to choose from. The car was gorgeous but that goes without saying- everything brand spanking new is gorgeous…. except for someone else’s newborn baby or someone else’s…. well, anything that belongs to someone else.  Julie drove us out, finding a party store where I bought some libations for the drive. Julie used the lavatory to dig the smoke from one of her cavities. After I smoked four cigarettes in my wait, she finally came out of the restroom and got in the car with me. I had already soaked my shirt through, changing into a fresh one, due to the sweltering heat and humidity.

“I thought I was going to have to come in there, what’d you do, fall in?” I asked her.

She said, “No, I had a hard time getting it out”, handing me a pin joint.

 I asked, “Hard time getting it out? You’ve had two kids- the hardest part of the job should have been washing your hands and drying them off, so you didn’t get the rolling papers wet!”

We got on the road, heading for the highway through the keys. Now, I was expecting a vacation style doobie but then again, if you have to throw it out the window, you don’t want it to be a lot, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt, asking, “How many did you roll? And what’s with the pin joint?”

“I could only roll one”, she declared.

“Isn’t it like four hours to Big Pine Key?” I inquired. 

She said, “Yeah but that’s it- that’s all there was”. 

Now, I am confused, really confused. She had spent a half hour in the bathroom, rolling one single pin joint. Obviously upset, I asked, “that’s all there was? What? What do you mean, that’s all there is??? I thought you were going to bring some weed? I saw that man-made phallus you had when I moved in. Judging by the size of it, you could have fit a couple ounces of kind buds in that thing. And that’s it? That’s all you brought? AND it’s SCHWAGG WEED!” I was so upset; I started mimicking a conversation with a fictional passenger:

“Oh, pardon me, what’s that weed you have there, … brick-weed?”

“Oh, no, it’s dick-weed, you fool, my girlfriend, slash genius here, went through the hassle, and risk, of a federal drug charge to bring a cigarette cellophane with a tenth of a gram of the lowest grade weed in Michigan stuffed inside of her cavernous Vagina… vagina… vagina... gina… na… na… na!”

Oh, GOD, how stupid could I be, to let myself be pulled into a void so black? There’s killer pot that they grow up to sixteen feet tall, all over Florida, that we could have gotten hold of when we got off the plane. We would have been better off trying to score at one of the party stores on the way or mail it down ahead of us, as a general delivery, to pick up at the Post office. I was baffled that this woman was in charge of a trust fund, and the life of an eighty-four year-old woman. Thank God, Jean didn’t have a clue what was going on. She would have died from an aneurism or heart attack if she were in a mental capacity to mind. And here I was, guilty by association, and oblivious to what was in store for me next- like a lamb being led to a slaughterhouse by, quite possibly, the world’s finest specimen of a village idiot.

Andy had painted a Fantasy Island kind of picture, where a huge house stood in an image of Paradise. There was a Sports car with a T-top, Sea kayaks, an ocean style fishing boat, among other things, Key Deer being one of them. He volunteered to come pick us up at the airport in his “T-top” but then stated that he had to work too, which was a clever ploy to un-volunteer. He knew that anyone who knows about contracting work would never insist on someone taking a day off of making money while it was there to be made. He was a con but I needed money. So, there I was, once again, ready to fraternize with vermin. The price to pay was, yet, to make itself known.  

Couch Surfing [edited-rockford]

After winning the enforcement order, the kids and I celebrated with a big home-cooked meal complete with a toast, to our new independence. 
It was the last time I would see the kids despite the efforts to coordinate having them again. Mindy began to schedule so many things in their days that they were too occupied to think about having time with their dad. Yet, one day, she had the time to take my call, only to prey upon my love again.

Mindy wanted me to acknowledge that the kids were now old enough to find time to see me on their own terms, asking me not to call because it was pressuring them. I didn’t think that would be a problem but the truth was that she had been pressuring them on her end. Only God knows what she said, did, or implied. And only time would tell what damages the kids have sustained at her subjection.  

As for Julie, she continued to complain of back pain. Rather than live accordingly, she opted for the breast reduction plan- the easiest way out, which came with Vicodin. This was the main reason why she had taken the job with, Hunt Construction.

Of course, she did so little, that I am shocked she was never fired. “Double-clicking the mouse”, and smoking pot between web-surfing sessions, seemed to be all she ever did. She smoked so much pot, and masturbated so much, that her fingers were pickled, and her body odor smelled like Marijuana resin. You could actually smell the Chlorophyll coming out of her armpits.

Anyways, Julie finally got her breast reduction, and another bottle of painkillers. Bruce called me, to come and help with getting a roll of carpet, using my truck, which involved an afternoon of drinking that led into an evening of drinking.

Danimal and the guys were all hanging out on the river too. The guys all wanted to hear us perform, so Danimal and I started belting out some of our pieces. It was all part of the routine, and we loved sharing. Some were drumming along on the various drums that were always around, as the sun stole it’s light from us completely.

It was around nine p.m. when Julie called, asking me to come home to help her bathe. The bags that were hanging from her, draining the blood and fluids, along with an obstinate daughter, made it impossible for her to do by herself.

Jean was also in need of attention throughout the day, and with me not being there to perform the duties, it made her realize my importance once more.

Bruce had offered to get me a ride home but I refused, thinking I could get three miles to the house okay. 

When I got in my truck, the radio wasn’t working because a fuse had blown. 
My big idea was to pull a fuse from somewhere else. The courtesy lights seemed like a good option, and I was tickled with myself to be so smart.

Everything was fine... until I turned off of Northland Drive. The lights went up behind me. I kept driving, thinking that it wasn’t possible for them to want to pull ME over- I was good. Yeah, I was excellent, up until I realized that they Did want to pull me over.

My house was so close I wanted to just keep driving and stop to chat there. The house was only another mile away, as Radar Love, played on the radio. 

After a short distance, I realized I was bordering on a fleeing charge. I just didn’t want to have the truck towed, knowing I was going to go to jail for driving under the influence.

The officer came to the window to go through the routine. Eventually I was placed in the car with my hands cuffed behind me. Somehow I managed to get my cell phone from my pocket, calling Julie in hopes that she could come up and get my truck. The officer called for backup, and when he arrived, he went up the road to get her. The truck ended up home without the added expense of being impounded. For that, I was thankful.

When I went to court on Monday, Judge Servass gave me a suspended sentence. It was a comical dialogue between us, since my answer to why my blood alcohol level was a .024, yet, remained to have command of my faculties, showing little sign of intoxication, was that I was German, and Irish- having a natural inclination to hold my liquor. He chuckled at that.     

Several months later someone decided to take Jean’s 2004 Saturn Ion up to the Circle K convenience store for another jumbo but it was raining, which caused for some slick roads if you were in too big of a hurry to get to the store before it closed, and back before anyone knew you had left. If it hadn’t been for the front wheel drive, they would have never been able to get the car off of West River Drive after careening into a Fire Hydrant (a detail revealed by studying the scene).
 The trunk was half caved in, and the driver’s side rear tire was completely folded up underneath. Nobody would have a clear idea of the damage until the next day.

A ride was called for them get out of the area before any cops showed up, especially since this person didn’t have a license. It’s the only way the auto insurance would have paid for the damage. The next day an officer came by the house to see why there was a disabled vehicle sitting on the road, and to write a report because it was clear that there was an accident.

Mostly, what made it clear was that there was a broken hydrant, and that the township wanted to know why they needed a crew at two in the morning to cap the water flow. And since there was a car sitting across the road with a massive wound, it was only natural for them to begin by tracing the ownership of that vehicle, which belonged to an elderly woman with a bad state of Alzheimer’s. For some reason the bill for the hydrant repair was sent to me.
It was this situation that caused for the decision to be made, that no one was allowed to crash at our house anymore. My friends were saddened, mostly due to the fact that they were homeless, and needed the daily chores in their lives to remain off of the streets where danger lurked everywhere. And it was convenient for me, mostly due to the fact that I needed bodies to perform labors that my doctors did not permit me to do. And a meal and a place to crash once in a while wasn't much to ask for. Then again, not helping yourself to things that aren't yours isn't something that should have to be written in black and white. Some things are already written upon your Heart and Soul...provided you can Read.

The next day, Bruce showed up to go look at the situation, with a cocktail in his hand but he found that a cop was there, to do an accident report. Deciding not to stop, he went up two more houses, to a garage sale, where he milled about until the officer left. After seeing the mess that had been made of the vehicle, we quickly realized that it was going to need to go to a body shop, and that it needed to be hauled away with a flatbed truck. Comstock Body shop got to deal with the task, sending a flatbed to pick it up.

Julie was not excited about what had become of the brand new car. She wasn’t excited about having to claim responsibility for it either but it was the only way it was going to be repaired because no one owned up to it, and even if they had, I'm certain that this person had no way to remedy the problem. With the possibility of becoming the center of attention regarding her affairs, that she’d rather not have questioned, she had no choice. The only thing I could do to help was to not criticize any part of it and resolve not to let anyone else use the car... she left the keys in it, not me. The next day I had to tell everyone to get out. That was hard.

Strangely enough, offering envelopes were showing up more frequently from, the local Catholic Church, that Jean belonged to. Since I retrieved the mail, they found the trash very quickly. Surely they were aware of Jeans memory issues, taking full advantage of it.

Often she would say, “I could eat something”, even though she had just eaten. Once, a pile of Pistachio shells were in front of her, and Pistachios were still in her teeth- she had eaten a whole bowl of them. When I told her she had eaten them she scoffed with, “I beg your pardon”. It always made me chuckle.

Jean had a piano, that she would play once in a while but whenever she went past it, she would ask, 
“Who’s Piano is this?” 

I would tell her that it was hers but she would deny ever knowing how to play. The piano would make a noise as if a key was struck, her dead husband communicating from the spirit world. It had to be because we had it looked at, thinking it was a mouse. No mice or sign of a mouse was found.

zachery s. polk

"Sunk" a story of Mutinies

Chapter; Sunk

As part of my plan to take back my time from Julie’s increasing demands, I returned to working for Bob. Being that Bob was a Gossipmonger; he could never resist a chance to capitalize on my trade skills. The fun part for him was that he got something new to talk about, AND my carpentry efforts that he called, “Amish Craftsmanship”. My ulterior motives were to put it in his face that I was in a two hundred fifty thousand dollar home, and that I was on my way to getting hands on the situation with my children, since he always deflected me as a bum and a piss-poor father.

Julie had made another impulse purchase, trying to keep me in her snare with another boat. This time it was a fourteen-foot Glastron with an eighty-five horsepower Yamaha outboard. It was a beautiful craft, metallic green and very fast. One morning, Bob volunteered to pick me up, jumping out of his red Savannah, rushing to the north side of my garage to urinate in the bushes, where most of the neighbors could have seen him if they were looking out their windows. I sensed something was wrong since he could have used the utility bathroom that was through the garage door to the house- a mere twelve steps away. Truth was Bob’s bladder and his conscience were both full. He had been up early, coming by before sun-up, and had been in the area drinking coffee while killing the extra time and concealing his deviance, which entailed using his Panasonic cordless drill and an eighth inch bit to put a hole in the bottom of my boat, just to the rear of the Captain’s seat. He immediately picked the drill up from the floor near his seat to show me his new purchase, bragging about the technology, while trying to compensate for his guilt with nervous chatter. The green material from the plastic and fiberglass was clinging to the fuselage with static electricity. It hadn’t dawned on me what it was that he had done.

 A day or two earlier I had mentioned that we were going to launch the boat in the Grand River. Our plans were to take it out, maybe to Grand Haven, and open her up, launching it off of Leonard, near Coopersville. We launched around noon on Saturday when the sun was high, and planning on drinking. The cooler was full of provisions, and we had fishing poles as well. If I was thinking about it, I would have known that it wasn’t good to be out drinking on the water when the sun’s high. Before long the heat adds up with the alcohol, taking a toll but I wasn’t able to get out of the trance I was in with the boat- just as Julie had hoped. We spent the day drinking in the sun and fishing, and everything seemed fine- except for the fact that we had Sandy with us.

As always with Sandy, screaming and fighting ensued, which really carries a long distance on the water. She worked subtly, at first, pushing my buttons in efforts to break up what I was working on. Things escalated when we got hung up in the mud, unable to get the motor up, so that we could free ourselves. Then she took the keys out of the boat, making me enraged. That’s when I blacked out.

Julie loved to spend her mother’s trust fund, and having me doing all of the work was a good opportunity to make it look like I was being rewarded. She took me to a couple concerts, one was Bob Dylan, and another was Leon Russell. Leon Russell was held at the new Intersection nightclub, located on the Westside of town, near the new Grand Rapids Area Transit Authority. On the main viewer/dance floor, to the right side, I glimpsed Sandy. She was wearing her bibbed overalls and had her hair braided- her signature style.

After warning Julie, her suggestion was to get the situation under control by meeting and greeting with her, so we didn’t have to spend the evening trying not to be noticed. My tiny and diversely distracted mind wasn’t capable of seeing that her motive may have been to get Sandy and I back together, so she could have a reason to kick me out in a way that would make me actually leave, eliminating the perspective of my observations. Maybe I understood what she was doing, and why she was doing it but she had no clue what I was truly interested in, which was building what looked like a family in order to re-stake my claim in my children’s lives. There was no way in hell I was going to walk back into a reality with Sandy, and as long as I had my leverage- taking care of Jean, in addition to holding the beans on Julie, like her so-called family, and drug use, there was no way she could get rid of me. She would have to come up with a better plan, which she eventually did.

In the meantime, on the river, we were trying to enjoy the weekend. The boat tilted to one side for a small stretch, which should have been an understanding that the boat was telling me we were in shallow water or sliding over a log. I had no idea we were taking on water at this point, making us sit lower in the water. We were dragging in the muddy bottom, even though the boat had a short-shafted motor. We had decided to get out of the sun, and that we were in a bit of trouble due to our drinking and inexperience but as we made way for the shore we found that we were stuck in the mud with the motor. The power had cut out because the battery became immersed in water. We had no idea that our inability to deal with the problems with the boat were from the water- or the alcohol. We had been trying to paddle to shore but weren’t getting nearer. Everyone became angry. We could not get the motor to pull up from the weight of the mud. Not one of us thought to get out of the boat to push the motor up. The women were not helping in any way, inebriated and bickering with me, while I struggled with the boat motor. Something snapped. In between all of the useless paddling, yelling, sun, heat, and drinking, I became very angry about the situation. Julie got smart and bailed out of the boat. The water was only less than three feet deep. She took the keys with her for fear that I would leave them there- a sort of mutiny for mutiny, I guess. Sandy had seized control of the alcohol, since it was of greater interest to her than trying to help with the boat. The whole thing was a fiasco, out on the water for everyone to hear, which at the moment was a group of young people around a campfire it the yard where we were trying to get out. All of my anger and frustration from several years of wasted effort with all the wrong people just blew right out of me like a volcano. There was a storm of negative energy between the three of us. How foolish of me to think I could drink with them. It only set the whole thing up for inevitable failure and misery. That’s the point when I blacked out.

By the time I regained consciousness it was dark. The evening sky gave me the idea it was around ten. A fire pit was blazing with a few kids sitting around it who were drinking. They were mimicking my tirade from earlier. Ignoring their comments, I began to search for the women, being told that Julie was sleeping on their porch, and that Sandy had wandered off to the store down the street. For some reason, I cared about her getting left behind, so I went to try to catch up to her. She had a habit of just stomping off, and my sense of guilt, feeling bad about the whole experience, I couldn’t leave her stranded, having to walk all the way back to Grand Rapids. All I thought about was how my decision to drink that day could have changed the whole outcome. Out of all the mistakes and bad situations that I had to deal with, the drinking was the only one that I couldn’t handle coping with. Up until then I had some control in the events and their outcome. Looking back now, I can’t believe I allowed myself to be so easily mislead in life.

 Memory of Danimal asking Julie why she hadn’t chosen to put a move on him just came to mind. She told him he was too smart. That’s what I get for letting money knock me off of my square. Julie had mentioned how guys were just after her for her money, and I jumped right on the bait. Well, with all of the drama and difficulty, and whatever else I can’t think of that starts with D, my torture was far from over. And as long as there was booze around, I could take it. It’s like the antigens a parasite uses, so that you don’t know it’s there, sucking the life out of you- like weed killer, only it’s used on society. How disgusting.  

When I arrived at the store, the clerk said she had just been there minutes ago. I walked the only way I could go there, and never saw her. She had ducked behind a tree when I was walking down the road to find her. When I got back to the fire pit, there she sat smiling with a triumphant innocence about her.

Early that morning, after I pulled the motor out of the mud, we piled back in and made way for the launch site. The boat had taken on a large amount of water. It wasn’t until I got it on the trailer that I saw it coming out of a small hole in the bottom. Had it not been for getting hung up in the mud, it may have sunk completely, especially since we were too busy fighting amongst ourselves to notice that we were taking on water or that we were a spectacle for seemingly innocent bystanders. How embarrassing. Thank God my name wasn’t on the side of the boat!

I just knew Bob was responsible for the hole in the boat; it fit’s his M.O.  He had told me about some of the dastardly things he does with his idle time, while his wife is at work as an x-ray technician in Grand Haven, harassing paroled CSC people by vandalizing their property. He scratches up their vehicles, slices tire, steals their mail, and who knows what else. It’s one of his favorite past-times to look up the sex-offenders list daily to see who is nearby to mess with. His exploits were impossible for him not to share with me, and provided him with something to talk about while we were driving to job sites. It was just a matter of time before I was again subjected to his little games he played. If it were not for the money I would never have kept re-opening the door I closed on him so many times before.

The incident with the boat was convenient, only in a single way. It got rid of Sandy. Had it not been for Julie having pot, she would have never been at the house with us, or so I think. Then again, if it hadn’t been for my drinking, I would never have been involved with Julie’s affairs or been so successful in failing to recognize my own self-worth.