It is one of the tragedies that accompany time on its coattails, like dust on a wedding gown. No matter. This is as good a place as any to continue my tale. The busy minds of others make it difficult to concentrate, but I have had practice at blocking them out.
Where was I…ah yes, I was speaking of the trees. It may appear out of the ordinary, but when I was young I found that I could not only connect with the minds of others, but I could feel the seasons as they awoke, thrived with activity, before finally subsiding and slumbering into winter. As I grew older, my abilities grew in strength. By sixteen my thoughts were no longer my own as they were not only drowned out by the overpowering thoughts of other individuals, but also by the constant presence of roots and the thickening of bark as they rumbled in the back of my head, like the excitement of a hive of honey bees. My moments of greatest peace were in the…
4th
My best friend died on July 4th 2008. Actually it was the 15th of June 2006 when he passed, but it was two years before I cared he was gone.
I still don’t know what exactly happened on that day, since no one has told me the full story, and I’ve never asked, but from what I can tell he was speeding when the police tried to pull him over. Some say he was trying to out run the police, others say he was late for work and couldn’t hear the sirens through his helmet. The only thing we know for certain is that the pursuit lasted less than five minutes. Apparently, in that short amount of time Virginia state police thought their best plan of action was to back a police cruiser in front of his path seconds before passing, launching his body through the air at over 80mph to come skidding to a stop across unrelenting pavement. The Kawasaki and his body resembled one another in gnarled flesh and steel. Unfortunately, he didn’t die on impact.
The last time I saw him alive was July 4th 2004. Back then, if someone would have told me that in two years I would be enrolled back in school, working my way towards some future I still don’t have planned, while Danny’s face and body made such a forceful impact with the pavement it would shatter most of the bones in his body, I wouldn’t believe them. I was in Maryland staying with my sister over summer vacation when we got the phone call. My sister cried. I showered.
Danny was not my best friend then. To be honest he was just another relative who I would to see at family reunions and forget the moment I was in the car driving home. He was five years my senior and it is for that reason he was more like an older brother than a best friend. An older brother who never told me what to do, or how to dress, but he is someone I did look up to. Not because of his good moral character, but because he could get any woman he wanted by simply looking at them.
Danny had this ability to charm every individual around him with nothing more than a smile that was deemed perfect by everyone I knew while I spent most of my time reading unknown authors by flickering fluorescent light. He had the looks of an Adonis while I soared easily under the radar of any and all women. And he had the self confidence I could only imagined myself to have. To most of my family he was damn near perfect. He was everything I thought I wanted to be, and now, he’s dead.
On that 4th of July 2004 we sat on the tailgate of his truck talking about our lives. Rather he talked and I listened. The Kawasaki that would one day lay in a wreck on the side of a highway not far from his dying body was strapped down behind us to the bed of the truck.
Ten minutes before our conversation we both had been chewed out by aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, and grandparents, for our poor life choices. They yelled at Danny for buying a motorcycle and joining the military, and me for dropping out of college after receiving a full ride to Bowling Green. Danny argued back, giving his side of his own story as I stood silent, taking the abuse and wondering why I decided to come home for the holiday when I could have been in Maryland working.
Sitting there that afternoon , stuffed full of pasta salad and questions about the future, I asked for direction on what I should do from Danny. He didn’t offer any. He didn’t believe I needed it. I remember him telling me there was nothing he could tell me I wouldn’t figure out on my own. I thought it was nonsense at the time, and in a way I still do, but I’m starting to understand what he meant.
Rather than lecture me on what he believed I should do, he commended me on taking some much needed time to myself to figure it out. He understood what it meant to suffer through the ceaseless late night arguments of parents who were meant for divorce and figured I could use some time to myself. Back then I thought he was the coolest cousin because he had a motorcycle he refused to give up, no matter how much he was bullied by family members. Now, I look up to him because he let me make up my own mind. Unfortunately, I would be the one who would live to understand that sometimes family does know best when it comes to certain situations.
That night we saw the fireworks down by the river, just the two of us. Reds, greens, whites, and purples shook the glass windows of corporate buildings as their lights exploded and extinguished in the partly cloudy sky, raining down sulfur and ash over its reflective surface. It was a normal show. The only problem was I didn’t want to be there. I remember my friends Collin, Keith, Brandon, and others calling my cell phone wanting me to see the show with them in a spot by the Peoria Yacht Club, but I couldn’t pull myself away from Danny, or, rather, he wouldn’t pull himself away from me.
I want to tell you that I wanted to spend the night hanging out with my cousin now that he is gone, but I can’t. The fact that I had driven twelve hours cross country by myself made me more impatient to see the people I had grown accustomed to over the majority of my teenage years. The bar-b-que and family function was over. It was time for me to get in my car and forget he existed until we saw each other on some other holiday. But no matter how many hints I dropped he would not take me to my car to join my drunken friends.
“Forget about them for one night. They’ll be there tomorrow.”
That night, there was something in his voice I could not say no to. It wasn’t his normal tone of confidence, and control over himself and the situation. It was something much different. It was loneliness. An emotion I didn’t think Danny had. If it had been anyone else I could have had the strength to say no, but hearing those words come from him guaranteed my compliance. The guys and drunken girls would just have to wait until later.
Rather than just seeing the fireworks and heading home to talk, as I expected us to do, we drove around the city both of us had grown up in, but neither of us had seen in over a year. We made our way from the, stand still traffic of downtown cars making their way home, to Bradley Park. We drove down University Street, past the mall and out of the overpopulated city of flashing lights and billboards to the outskirts of the farm filled suburbs. We passed Willow Knolls Shopping Center, the newly built Prairie Hills Mall and headed toward the perfectly uniform suburban homes surrounded by soy bean, and corn. We drove through neighborhoods I had never seen as if we were going to visit an old friend, but we never stopped, and we never said a word. The houses were as silent and dark as the inside of Danny’s truck.
Soon, we found ourselves back in the city limits. We kept driving through town until we reached the south side, were Danny spent most of his life, and I knew very little about. We drove past small houses of weather exterior paneling and steel bared windows filled with laughter and bottle rocket explosions from fenced in front yards. We passed corners of excitement, sidewalks of laughter, and conversations by people who were celebrating a day of independence from the daily grind of a nine in the morning to seven at night and the company of friends.
As we passed the houses and sidewalks, full of excitement and miniature explosions of red, white, and blue I looked over at Danny. Looking at his profile I saw a smile on the side of his face as he looked through the window at the families he knew and understood first hand, and loved.
Still we drove on.
We passed the grave of my sister’s first child who died during birth, the Baptist church of my Uncle T.C., the grave of our Uncle Eli who died of cancer a few years prior, and countless houses of friends and family who had either moved away or passed on. I could tell all of these places meant something to Danny, but I didn’t know what. He drove as if he were looking for something or someone, while to me the streets, and buildings all looked the same from when I got in my car and drove six hours away to attend a college I would drop out of after attending for only a week. Nothing had changed in my teenage eyes and nothing would for years to come. But time has a way of altering one’s vision.
When I first got back into town a few days prior, and saw the city lights far below as I drove down I-75 I expected to see the city completely transformed, but as I entered, and the distant lights grew closer, I felt no magic in the town I once called home. I remembered when I was a kid, half asleep in the backseat, and seeing those lights as we drove into the city after being gone for a week or so on a family vacation. Back then I remember feeling something special as we made our way to our own driveway and half made beds. It felt like home. But as I got older the city began to feel less and less like home and more than a vacation spot filled with old friends who loved to drink and have sex with no consequence. But for Danny, at least on that night, I think he still saw the city as home. As we both used to.
Something made him not want to put the car in park that night, and made me want to pull out my hair from boredom. While Danny was looking to the past for answers on how to grow old and stay sane, I was looking through my text messages asking when I was going to get to the party that had migrated from the riverfront to Collin’s house. But times change and thoughts mature. My only regret is that it took me so long to catch up to Danny’s.
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