Writing Journal Assignment 9

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She had only seen her new home town by daylight, and then for a quick tour. Now it was dark, so dark it was like a world composed only of shadows. She thought humorlessly that this tiny dot of a town in the Rockies of northern New Mexico did not need to worry about light pollution.

She’d rented a tiny cabin by mail based on a few photographs and a hand-written contract, for God’s sake. Stupidly, she never end considered that the road to the cabin wouldn’t be paved and that at night the only light would be from headlights. Even that light was stopped by massive pine trees that messily blurred the lines between sky and ground. Still, she followed the moving truck and the guys knew where they were going, so there was that.

She was startled by a movement to the left, but dismissed it as something with wings. The truck slowed, forcing her to slow as well. Something moved again, but she couldn’t quite see it. The truck struggled against some unseen force, and she stopped her car, unsure.

A telephone pole, caught in her headlights, swung gracefully by. Her first thought was that it made no sense. It had to be exhaustion. Or the 8,000 elevation. The pole swung back again, a bit shakier now. A thunderous noise filled the cloudless night, and the telephone pole began to shake and dance like a marionette. Mesmerized by that-which-could-not-be, it took a clear vision of the splintered and fractured bottom of the pole before she realized her danger. She slammed her hand on the horn, and didn’t let up.

The truck driver and passenger threw open their doors and ran for her car, throwing themselves in on top of suitcases and plants. “Go, go, go!” the driver yelled before even closing the door. “Back up to the tree line!” She threw the car into reverse and drove as fast as she dared, unseeing. “Stop!”

They sat, unspeaking, as telephone poles flipped and turned, cutting gouges into the earth and ripping out bushes. The closest one seemed to hesitate before ungracefully collapsing to the ground, its wires rippling as they settled.

It would be a full day before they learned that the unmaintained poles had rotted bases and wires stretched so much by snow loads that they had caught on the top of the truck. The crash they’d heard was a pole going through a neighbor’s living room that the owner had just vacated in favor of a late night snack. Welcome to the land of enchantment!

TIME

On that bitter December afternoon, Sarah was one of four teenagers that sat in the back booth of the A&W restaurant across the street from the Sheriff’s station. They had been there so long that the ice cream on their root beer floats had melted into dirty, foam-drenched piles, and the ketchup for the French fries began to separate with clear fluid around the edges. “That looks like blood,” Roger commented. Marie made a distressed sound. Sarah grimaced at Roger and covered the offending red mess with a paper napkin. It immediately began to absorb the liquid and the result was more sinister-looking than the ketchup had been.

“We have to go back,” Roger said, staring at the napkin.

“The homicide detectives told us to go home,” Phillip countered.

Sarah took this one. “No, they just told us to leave.”

“I don’t want go back there. Ever. I don’t want to be questioned again and I don’t want to sit in that tiny room with only one desk lamp for light,” Marie stated. “I’m not going back.”

Sarah sighed and thought, not that first time, that Marie was always most concerned about Marie. “Dale’s mother has been dead for two years, his father has just been murdered and he was stabbed. What do you want?”

The question was rhetorical, but Marie didn’t interpret it that way. “What do I want? I want you to drive me home. And I want you to stop at the pharmacy first so I can get new nail polish. I have a debate team competition tomorrow. That’s what I want!” She stood up, grabbed her purse and looked at Sarah expectantly.

“Call a cab,” Phillip offered.

“You asshole!” she responded. “I am done with you.”

Sarah stood as well. “Let’s just take her.”

“Fine,” Roger agreed. “Then we need to figure out where Dale can stay when he is released.”

Phillip made a show of scraping the trays into the trash can as slow as possible. “Look, Marie! Blood.” Marie turned her back to him.

Roger moved closer to Sarah. “Did the detective tell you that his dad was stabbed 19 times?”

She nodded. They’d all been together just the night before at the high school’s winter ball. Bored there, they had gone to Denny’s to spend the next several hours talking about petty dramas and grand plans. Those hours were crucial to the detectives, but all their stories matched, and not one of them had a clue what had happened when Dale had arrived home.

Sarah’s concern was more in the present. “Where are we going to get him clothes? His house is a crime scene, and the clerk said that Dale couldn’t wear the jail clothes out of the station.”

“I’ll grab some of mine.”

“He’s got 8 inches on you, at least!”

“Then we’ll cut them until they cover him.”

She nodded. The group of years had splintered in a day, but at least there were two of them who would stay to help Dale.

HISTORY

Before the murder, there was the Jonestown Massacre

 

“I don’t understand!” Roger’s little brother said in a tone that demanded both explanation and comfort.

“You are too little to understand,” Roger responded, grabbing the five-year-old up and tickling him. He sat him back on the floor. “Go play.”

Stephen nodded and ran off to the room he shared with his mother, for once obedient.

“Roger, he shouldn’t be watching that news! He’ll have more nightmares about the President coming to kill him!” his mother called from the kitchen. Roger rolled his eyes and laid back down. The five teenagers were laying on the open, fold-out couch which served as Roger’s bed in the tiny apartment. As the couch squeaked in protest, Sarah wondered what would happen on the day when someone tried to re-fold the bed.

“I think that Carter is going to bomb someone,” Dale contributed.

“Who? It isn’t any country’s fault that Jim Jones killed the First Lady and all of his followers before escaping,” Marie responded.

“Are you sure about that? CBS reported that Jones was a communist and controlled by the Russians.” Phillip was sure that everything led back to the Russians. For that matter, they’d all been raised to think just that. It was always the Russians.

“Mrs. Carter seemed nice enough,” Sarah offered. “I read somewhere that she wasn’t even supposed to go. It was going to be some congressman from here, and that he’d tripped on brick and broke his ankle.”

“So why did she have to go?” Phillip asked, rolling over on the bed and staring at the ceiling, away from the TV.

“Yep, that could be one for the books: World War III could have been avoided if there just hadn’t been a brick in the sidewalk of San Bruno.” Roger quipped. He always knew the details.

“God, did you see the way that President Carter sobbed at her funeral? And they had been married forever!” Marie said it like he shouldn’t have been sad, at their great age.

None of them wanted to answer that. It had been rather embarrassing to see the President of the United States so distraught, and then it got worse when he turned around to yell straight at the cameras: “Vengeance will be mine!” They had all seen it so many times that it had become a personal threat for every guilt they had. It was no wonder Stephen had nightmares.

“Moby Dick,” Dale offered. They all looked him. “AP English? We’re all in the class. Didn’t anyone read it? Moby Dick is all about crazed vengeance. It didn’t end well for Captain Ahab’s crew.”

No one said anything until Roger’s mom offered them pizza.

“It’s Bisquick pizza,” Roger offered apologetically.

“It’s still food,” Dale said with a shrug, following him into the kitchen to pick up plastic plates and return to their spot on the bed.

“Yes, we must ‘eat, drink and merry for tomorrow...’ “ Phillip was interrupted when Marie elbowed him in the gut.

 “Shut up, Phillip.”

 “… we die,” he finished before taking a huge bite.