Another king gone

I've been getting requests for other Neil Young songs that speak to the death of Michael Jackson. Perhaps no one speaks better than this one:

In the end, the only one who could help Michael Jackson was Michael Jackson

"To you, Michael is an icon," ... "To us, Michael is family and he will forever live in all of our hearts...."

These were Janet Jackson's words, spoken this past weekend at the BET awards. Well-timed as they were, they were also about saving face in the wake of tragedy.

But actions speak louder the words. Did anyone ever act to save Michael Jackson?

A family with a boatload of money couldn't rehabilitate a man who was 50 years old, weighed 112 pounds and, according to reports, had nothing but undigested pills in his stomach when he was found dead?

If he did have anorexia, as his symptoms suggested, then Michael Jackson may have lived the same destiny that has doomed millions of others with mental illness. He was helplessly helpless, and he ultimately endured the same kind of existence as that of a homeless person who self medicates away their personal demons.

The only differences between Michael Jackson and the man on the street, frankly, is money, and access.

Like a homeless person, he ultimately confronted a society and a system that does more to enable, and less to assist those who can't come to grips with their own fragility.

Indeed, media reports say that, yes, the family did act. Fox News reported that exactly the same scenario almost played out in 2004 in Jackson's rented mansion. Jackson’s brother Randy found him unconscious in his home and immediately called a paramedic friend who lived very close by and who rushed to the house.

Fox News also reported that Jackson’s family started having premonitions of his premature death in 2001 around the time of his New York "30th Anniversary" concert series and were forced to intervene. A family meeting was held and, basically, Jackson was begged to seek help. His mother started asking a lot of questions about how Elvis Presley died.

But Jackson ultimately went his merry way, because that's what many people with severe mental illness do. He further destroyed his reputation, bankrupted his finances and ruined his credibility. He seemed to further isolate himself, and when he did show his face in public, he created embarrassing tabloid fodder that inspired the "Wacko Jacko" headlines.

He was like many of the lost souls I've seen, and interviewed, on the streets of New York City and Philadelphia, each of them with family members who show up every now and then to show they care. They give them money, they talk to them and they shake their hands. But the family gets ignored, and the money gets spent on booze and heroin.

Jackson didn't need his family's money. He had his own, and he had his drugs. Injecting Demerol into yourself, frankly, is like shooting legalized heroin and having the insurance companies pay for it. If the media reports are true, then Jackson was basically a legal junkie with health coverage.

Now the focus and the blame has shifted to his doctor, Conrad Murray. References to Elvis abound: Did the doctor enable him by prescribing the medications that may very well have killed him? Why wasn't he stopped?

Or maybe Jackson was, in the words of David Crosby, too far gone. Instead of blaming the doctor, maybe we need to look at ourselves, and how society treats mental illness. Maybe we need to look at how society creates Michael Jacksons, Elvis Presleys and Marilyn Monroes, only to watch their fragile statues crumble.

In the end, Jackson was helpless to the point of being hopeless. Not a doctor or a psychiatrist in the world could have transformed a man who had nothing left to give.

Neil Young/Helpless

There is a town in north Ontario,
With dream comfort memory to spare,
And in my mind
I still need a place to go,
All my changes were there.

Blue, blue windows behind the stars,
Yellow moon on the rise,
Big birds flying across the sky,
Throwing shadows on our eyes.
Leave us

Helpless, helpless, helpless
Baby can you hear me now?
The chains are locked
and tied across the door,
Baby, sing with me somehow.

Blue, blue windows behind the stars,
Yellow moon on the rise,
Big birds flying across the sky,
Throwing shadows on our eyes.
Leave us

Helpless, helpless, helpless.

Michael Jackson and his missed dual-diagnosis

It's amazing that everybody in my family - except for my 3-year-old daughter - knows who Michael Jackson was. He didn't have a hit for nearly two decades, but they know his music, his persona and his fame.

But they don't remember him for bringing a sort of Beatlemania that transcended racial and ethnic boundaries in the early 1980s. They remember him for being the man who displayed what many have called "bizarre" behavior, the falling star who inspired the "Wacko Jacko" headlines that the tabloids loved.

They don't remember the "Man in the Mirror." They remember the man with mental illness. And now, as this tidbit from The New York Daily News seems to suggest, we discover this was not necessarily a case of a missed diagnosis:

While Jackson family insiders suggested prescription drug abuse - specifically Demerol - might have caused the 50-year-old superstar's heart to stop, Elias said it will be several weeks before toxicology results are ready.

What we likely have here is a case of a missed "dual-diagnosis." This was a man who lived out his mental pain in public. But, as millions of people do when they deal with either a diagnosed or an undiagnosed mental illness, they self-medicate the pain away.

We'll find out more when the autopsy reports are released. But we can look at his history - particularly his recent history - and see that the notion of this being a missed dual-diagnosis is not far-fetched.

In fact, it's downright logical.

I listened to his attorney talk on CNN last night about how he felt that Michael Jackson was a dying man four years ago.

As he suffered through accusations of pedophilia, Jackson broke down in his attorney's presence. He patted Jackson on his back, and all he felt were bones.

Perhaps this was a case of anorexia - and one of the leading causes of anorexic-related deaths is a heart attack. Jackson did look frail and sickly for many years, but the shrinking waistline - outside of his morphing facial features - was the most unpleasant sight of all.

But the lawyer thought that the mental deterioration was even more pronounced than the physical issue. It's almost as if he, and others who knew him, were not surprised by this, and they wouldn't be surprised, either, if drugs contributed.

When you live a life of pain and obsession, and you're haunted by a history of being abused, a shot of Demerol is - for many - their only friend.

Michael Jackson is dead, and now - just maybe - we'll understand why

“A lot will be said about Michael Jackson as we learn more about this story,” Brian Williams said on the “NBC Nightly News.”

“He was incredibly talented, a child star who was an adult with deep troubles and physical and mental health issues.”

Those were the words that needed to be said a long time ago. Michael Jackson was mentally ill. And now he's dead.

But his personal demons brought him down more than the paparazzi ever did. His obsessions impacted him more than being spoiled, and his quirky behavior brought more shame than fame.

The spoiling, the media - those were merely the triggers. The public? They merely watched this spectacle of a life deteriorate from impossible levels of stardom to disgrace.

The spectacle will play out some more in the days ahead. But maybe we'll learn something from this, too. We'll learn that the seemingly inhuman is very human. We'll learn that the spoiled rich could also be troubled souls.

We'll learn that mental illness isn't a lifestyle choice. It's an illness, and everyone is suceptible.

I've never seen anyone in my lifetime achieve the kind of fame he had. It was like living in Beatlemania, even if it was an abbreviated version.

I was never a big fan of his music, but I do own "Thriller." Listening to it today, it seems outdated. But the genius of the pop craftsmanship will live forever. Pop songs just maybe the hardest songs to write.

Sometimes, it takes someone with an obsessive level of drive to make it happen. Look beyond the plastic surgery disasters, and give Michael Jackson his due.

WikiAnswers - Did Michael Jackson have a mental illness

WikiAnswers - Did Michael Jackson have a mental illness

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Mood music

When it comes to mental health, Amy Sky believes in using metaphors to spread messages of hope.

For more than a decade, the Canadian singer-songwriter has used her craft to convey her struggles with postpartum psychosis and depression.

Sky, who has scored hits such as “Don’t Leave Me Alone” and “If My Heart Had Wings” has earned praise from an audience that yearns for support in a peaceful, kind, and respectful way.

“I was told that depression is the cancer of the soul,” said Sky, 47, who has two children. “I was treated well, however. But a lot of women are told to soldier on.”

Sky, who has placed four singles at the top of the Canadian charts, first experienced postpartum psychosis when her daughter was born 16 years ago. When her son was born, she thought she wouldn’t experience it again.

But she did—only this time, she was more prepared to deal with the worst of the symptoms.

“It can strike anybody at any time,” she said. “You can have horrible afternoons where you’re imagining things and hallucinating things. Then the next day you wake up and say, ‘I don’t feel so bad.’ There are mood swings.”

Since disclosing her personal struggles in 2004, Sky has spoken at charity fundraisers and made other appearances to spread awareness—an experience that initially was not easy. “When I first talked about it, I felt like, ‘Oh my God.’ I felt naked.”

Songwriting has been her most effective tool for reaching out. For her efforts, she receives fan letters and critical praise. “It’s therapeutic,” Sky said. “People are grateful. Now I realize there are things that I have to do.”

(This article was first published in Esperanza magazine in its spring 2009 issue)

The Chicken Zoo, part 4: The lover (a non-fiction novel)

[This story is based on my experiences as a reporter for The Delaware State News from 1990-93. Some names and dates have been changed. This was part of my unpublished novel, "The Chicken Zoo," that I wrote five years ago.]

I returned to work, and kept plugging. Absent any new revelations in the case, the murder leads dried up. The cops weren’t saying anything. I started to suspect that he knew as much as they did. Maybe more. He’d call, and ask for new details. “What about this Jim Jones thing?” he’d ask. The replies? “What murder was that?” “No we don’t have any information. Call Wilmington.” “Who’s Jim Jones?”

With little else to do, I got stuck doing cops. The State News had nothing else for me to do, really. So for weeks, I found myself chasing after a daily menu of car accidents and brush fires. Occasionally, it would get a little more exciting, like a trailer park blaze or a tractor-trailor creaming an Amish buggy and splitting it into pieces. Perhaps the climax was when a guy fell into a vat of uncooked chicken, and nearly suffocated in the jelly-like carcasses. But he lived, and even joked about it when I interviewed him at his house in Delmar.

“So how did it happen?” I asked

“Well, I was checking the controls of one of the machines. I stepped on a piece of chicken and slipped.”

“How did you ever manage to get out of there?”

“Well, it was squishy enough so that could actually swim through it. But it wasn’t easy.”

“Did you see your life flash before your eyes?”

“No. It was a little too cloudy to see anything,” he said.

“What I mean is, did you think, you know, this is it, God’s bringing me upstairs, you know, to Heaven?”

“No, but I did see a gizzard swim around like one of them stingrays at the aquarium.”



He actually topped that story. A week later, at the Kent County Wastewater Treatment facility, a guy in his 30s fell into a 400-gallon tank of human waste. I covered that one, too, and later he wondered if these kinds of stories would ever stop coming. But I did well on this one, and ultimately exposed some obvious weaknesses in the plant’s management. The plant’s biggest problem was that the county didn’t establish a safety protocol that could prevent workers from falling into these swimming pools of feces. Over the years, there were a number of near misses, where workers nearly slid from their seemingly safe concrete platforms and nearly landed in the stuff. It was a good story, and certainly, no one – except for the county, of course – was upset about it – people in the neighborhood said the shit smell was everywhere. “Any time my kids come out to play, they say, ‘Daddy, somebody pooped out here.’ ”

I threw myself into this kind of work. I really knew no other way. And I got little reward for it, too. Jenny was the kind of boss who was quick to criticize, but slow to compliment. I just got satisfaction in saving the stories and bringing them home for my father to read. And when my father read the chicken-and-shit stories, he laughed hard.

In those first couple months, he went home twice, both times to do laundry. My towels were so dirty that they were stiff like boards. I used them anyway. I also called home several times a week. But I rarely went beyond the four walls of my office, or my living room. My life revolved around the telephone, the computer and my reporter’s notebook.







Weeks after the Jim incident, I was called into Jenny’s office. Jenny hadn’t really addressed that whole thing. And I could tell that she really didn’t want to. I tried telling her about it as she was walking to the bathroom. But all he got was a shrug, and a “Don’t quit on this story.”

Jenny often buried herself inside her office – she rarely left it, and even more rare was an invitation to enter it. When they could come in, I learned, it was usually on her orders. Reporters joked that those who walked in smiling almost always walked out sad. And whatever happened in there was never good. Actually, I would learn, the only good thing that could happen is if you walked out of her office and still had your job.

So when I saw Jenny waving him toward her door, I wondered: Will she make me try again? Will I have to call him? Will he have to go back down there? Did I so totally fuck things up with this Jim guy that I should start packing? I knew there was no sense speculating. No one ever knew what would happen until they actually walked into that tiny office, and Jenny shut the door behind them.

And it was so small, I thought. I felt tight – even claustrophobic – as I looked around, and saw only a tiny window. There were no decorations, not even any family pictures. Just a stale blue look. And in the center of it all was Jenny, sitting at her desk, smoking a cigarette. To me, the clouds of smoke from it making the room feel smaller.

“Okay, well, I’ve got another source for you,” Jenny said. “And luckily, this one is close by.”

“How close?”

“As close as the copy desk,” she said.

“Who’s that?”

“Her name is Nikki – Nikki Eldridge. She comes in late, usually. But she’s not scheduled to work today, I believe. Here’s her number.”

Jenny handed I a slip of paper with the number on it.

“I should go ahead and call her?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” she said. “Everybody here shares everything. So give her a call.”

“So, why her?”

“She could probably tell you. In fact, I probably should defer to her,” Jenny said. “But her connection to the Jones thing is strong.”

I got up and walked out, and over to ,my desk. I picked up the telephone and called. Nikki promptly answered after one half of a ring.

“Oh, you’re the new guy,” she said.

“Yup,” I said. “Now, I’m almost embarrassed to ask this…”
“You can’t embarrass me. Don’t worry about it.”

“Well, I was told you may be of some help on this murder story – like, you have some connections or something….”

“Yeah, sure, come on over.”

“Can’t we do this over the telephone.”

“Yeah, but I’ve got some stuff you should look at.”




I got in the car and drove to her apartment, which was at the north end of Dover and right off Route 13. The complex was one of those ugly, homogenized things with no character. There was a big drainage ditch that was filled to the top. And it was hot and buggy – mosquitoes buzzed around my eyes. I swatted at them, but they only got more annoying. They shook around my eyes and landed on my arms, and I swatted at them some more, but they just wouldn’t quit.

I knocked softly, and Nikki answered immediately, smiling broadly and blinking her soft brown eyes.

“Hey, I guess you’re Nikki,” I said.

“And you’re I…” she said. “Yeah, I heard about you. Where ya from?”

“The Jersey Shore.”

“The Jersey Shore? Why would you ever come here?”

“That’s a good question,” I said. “Isn’t there a beach here?”

“Absolutely!” Nikki said. “C’mon, let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“To Rehoboth Beach.”

“Right now?”

“Sure,” she said. “It’s a great beach…can you drive?”

“I don’t know…I had a bad experience there recently…”

“Bad experience? How could you have a bad experience in Rehoboth?”

“Well, I’d rather not get into it.”

“Was it a gay thing?”

“How did you know?”

“I know a lot,” Nikki said. “Don’t worry. I won’t be looking for trouble. Let’s just get out of here.”



We did, heading south again.

“So, why are we doing this?” I asked.

“This is where I go, when I need to escape,” Nikki said.

“You escape to some place that’s an hour away?”

“There’s no place in Dover…where did you want to go to, Uncle Tom’s? You might as well carry a bullhorn and tell everybody on the street what you’re doing – it’s the same difference.”

“Uncle Tom’s? What’s that?”
“That’s a place in Leipsic…everybody goes there. Even people from work. I’m pretty tired of it really. There are no secrets at that place…everybody knows everybody. And anybody who’s stupid enough goes there, get drunk and then shoots their mouth off about who they killed and why…”

“People actually sit there and confess to murders?”

“Well, I don’t know about murders…but other things, you know, drug offenses, that sort of thing.”

“Why would anybody do anything as stupid as that?”

“Well, first of all, you know what happens when you’re drunk,” she said.

“Plus, I think people get lulled into some false sense of security when they go to that place. But I know cops go there, undercover, waiting for some idiot to just spill his guts like that…especially if they’re tracking these guys.”

“I see,” I said. “Say, how did you know so much about it? Do you go there much?”

“I went there once and I hated it,” she said. “But I know a lot about everybody.”

“How old are you?” I asked.

“I’m 22 and I’m from Newark.”

“That’s far away from here, right?”

“Not far enough,” she said. “So what happened between you and Jim?”

“My God, what does everybody know everybody around here?”

“I’ve known Jim for a while...we have common interests.”

“So you talked to him directly? It’s not like this is a wild rumor that everybody in the State News newsroom is laughing about…”

“Oh, no. In fact, he called me the next day. He’s such a sweetheart…he said, ‘You know, I think I did a bad thing….’ ”

“Yeah, he should just be happy I don’t have his ass locked up in jail…”

“No, no. You don’t want to do that to Jim,” Nikki said. “He’s such a pussy cat. He’s had it tough. You know people like him have it tough around here. He was a little drunk, right? Jim has a hard time controlling himself when he’s lit.”

“Well, that shouldn’t be any excuse.”

“Oh, come on…you never got a little out-of-control when you’ve been drunk?”

“I never tried to rape another guy…”




Nearly an hour later, we were on the Boardwalk. Nikki suggested Arenas, but I balked at that idea.

“Oh, c’mon. You’ve got to be over that by now?”

“Well, I’m not…”

So we went to the north end of town, to Sidney’s Sidestreets. It was another small bar and club with loud bands and little space. Only the music was mostly jazz and rhythm and blues.

Inside, it was crowded, only not as bad as Arenas. Here, everybody was drinking Corona, and talking very loudly. The music was jazz and R&B, and it was loud. Here, the sound of the tunes drowned out the talking.

We ordered drinks and then found a table by the wall. It was about as far away from people as we could get.

"It takes a while to get down here, huh?" I said. "I mean, coming here was a cool idea. But I don't want to put up with that drive."

“I’m from Newark, but I used to come down here all the time,” she said. “I don’t see it as a long drive.”

“Newark, huh?” I said. “That’s up by Wilmington, right? Isn’t that where the University of Delaware is?”

“That’s my alma mater,” she said, sipping on her drink. “I started as a ballet impresario. I ended up as a journalist. I’m glad I got the fuck out of there.”

“What got you into ballet?”

“My father wanted me to do it,” she said. “He works at Dupont – you know, everybody works there, but he’s a big-wig. He goes to all these fancy black-tie events where they do ballet, so he got me into it. I mean, I enjoy it, but I do it out of guilt, because my dad envisioned me joining some big ballet company in D.C. or New York or something.”

Nikki sipped on her drink, and mixed it with a straw.

“He always tried to shelter me. He didn’t like the clothes I wore. He didn’t like my boyfriends. He was a religious man, you see. He once caught me smoking, and tried to keep me in my room for a week. That was his favorite punishment zone, and he’d drag me in there, lay me on the bed and then lock the door behind him, and think he’d keep me in there for hours. But I’d wait for the lock to click, and then I’d open the window and jump out, and then return two hours later, sometimes three.”

“And now you’re a newspaper copy editor,” I observed.

“I know. Go figure,” she said, laughing “Sometimes, I feel like I’m just wasting away, sitting in front of a broken-down computer all day in that stuffy office, editing stories that read like they were written by a second-grader. This is not what I envisioned for myself.”

Nikki laughed at herself. And then she laughed harder, a laugh that came from the gut. She leaned back in her seat, and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

“It’s really unbelievable,” she said, smiling, and then laughing some more, before she took more sips of her drink.

“Okay, so I guess you know why I’m here,” I said.

“They have you covering the Cramner murder?” she asked.

“Yeah. Right off the bat, they got me covering a murder.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Well, yeah, I guess I should be a little more excited. You know, not everyone gets to write about a murder. A murder is like every reporter’s dream, right?”

“Let me guess,” Nikki said. “Jenny once again thinks she’s a cop, not a reporter. It’s like she wants you to solve it, right?”

“Yeah, I guess you know the drill.”

“Honey, let me tell you. I had a previous life,” she said, sipping on her drink some more. “Long before I was a copy editor, I earned my stripes as a reporter. You’re right – I do know the drill.”

“What made you change?”

“Well, because of the drill,” Nikki said. “I couldn’t take it any more. You know, well, uh…”

Nikki sighed.

“See, if the story, any story involves the base, they get very excited,” she said. “I should have known that going in. But I made the mistake of dating an Air Force guy – he actually worked in the mortuary.”

“The mortuary? Say, that’s where Cramner worked.”

“Yeah,” she said. “It’s a pretty fucked up place. I guess you’ve heard of the Jones Boys?”

“Sure. Cramner was one of them,” I said. “Is that why Jenny wants me to talk to you?”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Nikki said. “Jenny remembers what happened with my boyfriend…”

“What happened?”

Nikki sipped on her drink, and sighed again. She looked away for a second, and again wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

“He was about 10 years older than me. Sometimes, it was like sleeping with a war veteran,” Nikki said. “He used to have nightmares, and scream things like ‘baby!’ He never told me what he was yelling about. I eventually found out after talking to people – you know, other guys who were Jones Boys, other guys who worked in the military. The Jim Jones thing was fucked up. Nine-hundred people drank Kool-Aid and died, and the base was left to handle the mess.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard.”

Nikki sucked down the rest of her drink, and ordered more. She got a beer for I, and a rum and Coke for herself. She stirred it, studied it, and plunked down a few more bucks on the bar.

“Some guys got out of there, started families and were okay,” she said.

“Other guys bought trailers and escaped into the woods, getting all paranoid and everything. My guy? I wish he was so lucky.”

“What did he do?”

“Well,” she said, pausing slightly, and looking off to the side.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing,” she said, pausing again.

“It it’s too much for you, let’s not go there,” I said.

“No, really, it’s OK,” she said. “This is what happened: He woke up one morning, pulled a .44 Magnum out of a shoebox, and blew a three-inch hole into his head.”

“My God.”

Nikki took a bigger sip of her drink. “He punched a hole in his head so big, his brains were coming out of his ears. I guess that’s what they call Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome…”

Her voice tailed off, and she turned away for a second, and sucked in a deep breath. She patted her eyes with her knuckles.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s been a couple years now, so it’s okay.”

“Right.”

“I think I’ve come to peace with it,” she said. “What I haven’t come to peace with is what this poor excuse of a newspaper did to me.”

“What was that?”

“They wanted me to write about it!” she shouted, slamming her drink on the bar. “Or at the very least, they wanted me to talk about it, like they were getting some sort of exclusive, you know, on the grieving girlfriend.”

“Holy shit,” I said.

“Seems that they thought I would have some inside scoop about the guy, and that I would be derelict in my duty to hide it. They basically gave me a choice – talk about it, or get demoted. Well, guess what? Now I’m a copy editor, and I get paid $5,000 less a year.”

She wiped another tear with her knuckle, and then leaned behind her, where some guy was smoking a cigarette.

“Can I have a hit of that?” she said.

“Sure,” he said. She reached over, puffed and gave it back immediately.

Then she tilted her head back and blew the smoke into the air.

“Thanks,” she said.

Nikki took another big sip of her drink, while I waited.

“You know, I come from the Wilmington area – that’s like a different world,” she said. “You wouldn’t think a state so small would be so divided. It is. Up there, they make fun of down here – they even call it Lower Slower Delaware.”

“Lower Slower Delaware?” I asked. “That’s pretty funny.”

“Tell me about it,” she said. “And I never thought I’d end up in the middle of it. I mean, it’s like there’s this culture of doom and despair down here. Everyone’s so fucked up, and it’s largely because of the fucking Air Force.”

I saw her hand sitting there, and patted it. Her eyes had drifted for a split second, but when I touched her hand, she smiled. So did I. Then I rubbed away the last of her tears with my fingertips.

“Do you believe in God?” she blurted out.

“Uh, yeah, I guess so,” I said. “Hmmm…that’s pretty deep. Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know,” Nikki said. “Sometimes I wonder, though. If there were a God, then why doesn’t he answer my dreams?”

“How so?”

“Well, I dreamed that I’d be working for The New York Times,” she said.

“And I’m working for The Delaware State News.”

Nikki looked around the room, and drank more. “My parents would drag me to church,” she said, her head facing away from I, and toward the crowded barroom. “I used to really hate it. I made my confirmation, but once I was old enough to stay home on my own, I didn’t go.”

“Hell, I used to cut Sunday School,” I said, chuckling a bit. “My parents would drop me off and I’d walk around the block for a few hours. Sometimes, I’d walk all the way down to the beach.”

“Why would you do that?

“I don’t know – maybe it was the fact that I was shy. But I think I just needed to chill out.”

“Where would you go?” she asked.

“The beach,” I said. “It was only a few blocks away. I’d stay there, for an hour, maybe longer, just watching the waves crash into the sand, one after another.”

“That’s nice,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “It was such a beautiful sound, and there’d be nobody around, except for the occasional old guy who was feeding the seagulls. But mostly it was just me and the waves. And the sunrays would gleam on the water, and the sand would look especially bright, and I would just lean my head back and close my eyes.”

“I guess I do believe in Heaven,” Nikki said, “because there’s got to be a better world than this. I mean, there’s got to be some explanation for why things are the way they are. I guess bad things happen as a way to teach us the difference between right and wrong. It’s like we’re going through some big learning experience.”

I smiled, and moved my hand away from hers. “Yeah, I guess you could see it that way.

“I’m sorry,” Nikki said. “I don’t mean to dump all this stuff on you. You must be bored.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “It’s all very interesting. You know, I just find myself saying things to you that I wouldn’t say to other people – even my own family. I hope you don’t find that I’m getting too personal.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “I like to get personal.”

“Yeah, well, I’m getting way off the beaten track, too,” I said. “I mean, you know why I need to talk to you, right?”

“Right,” Nikki said. “Let’s go for a ride.”

“What?”

“I know. I know. You want to talk,” she said. “We’ll get to that.”

“Yeah, well, I hate being a pest,” I said. “I just wanted to know if you know anybody who can talk to me about Cramner.”

“We’ll get there,” she said. “In fact, let’s go to Driftwood Beach.”

“Oh, Christ, another house of horrors,” I said.

“Let’s go hang out there. You know, a lot of people go night-swimming in the bar there. Maybe we’ll bump into somebody who knows something. We’re bound to run into somebody who worked at the mortuary…I mean, they seem to breed like flies up there.”

“Uh, well, I guess. I don’t know Nikki,” I said. “You seem to be pretty torched.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Nikki ordered a whole bottle of wine, and some more beer, and asked for some cups from the bartender. Then she dashed for the parking lot and the car, giggling like a little girl.

We sat in the car, with Nikki shoving the wine bottle between her legs and placing the cups on the dash. I drove, she poured; and she took long and large gulps before I finally rolled my car out of the parking lot, and onto Route 1.



About a half-hour into the trip, we drove up to a Lucky 7. Behind it was a cluster of trailers, and a gaggle of tied-up dogs barked when they pulled up. Nikki poured herself her eighth cup of wine and, in seconds, downed it.

“Wine is like candy,” she said. “Only, you can drink a lot of it and feel no pain.”

Then she burst out of the car and ran inside. Almost immediately, she reappeared, carrying a pack of cigarettes, a six-pack of bottled beer and a lighter.

“I didn’t have you pegged as a smoker,” I said.

“I do now,” Nikki said. “You like my lighter?”

It was a little flip Bic with some sort of psychedelic design, with red, yellow, green and red lines interlocked, like some cheap imitation of a Picasso.

“Pretty cool, huh?” she said.

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Whatever you say.”

Nikki quickly downed her ninth cup of wine, while I sipped, slowly, on an Amstel light. Nikki then popped open a beer chaser, and chugged half of it; then she lit up a smoke, and with the smoldering cigarette dangling from her fingers, she pointed I toward the roads that ran behind the Lucky 7.

“Head that way,” she said, puffing smoke out of her lips. “That’s a short-cut.”

“Where do these roads go to?”

“Just trust me.”

We went. It was alternately flat and bumpy; either way, it seemed to stretch. There were no lights, cars or houses along the side – just acres and acres of old farms and wet meadows, marshlands and little else. It was so dark that I could barely see five feet in front of me. My forehead was soaking with sweat, and I grew anxious.

“Are you sure this is right?” I asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “Go!”

“But, what if there’s deer or something?”

“Sweetheart, just go!”

“Okay, okay, I’m going.”

The longer it took, the more the road seemed like a blur. I sped up, only to get where we were going faster. But I also fueled Nikki’s excitement and zest for danger. One after another, she downed her beers and threw the empties out the window, giggling as she heard the aluminum make a “clank” against the road. Then she found a few empty wine bottles and tossed them out, too, laughing as the glass smashed on the asphalt.

“Yeeeee—haw!” she yelled.

“Holy Christ!” I yelled back. “What the hell are you doing?”

Then Nikki rolled her window all the way down, titled her head back and just seemed to enjoy the wind moving across her face.

“Drive faster,” Nikki said to I. “Go! Go! Go!”

“Faster? How?” I pleaded. “What if I run over a turtle or something?”

“C’mon, I know these roads. I used go driving through here all the time,” she said.

“Where are we going?”

“Don’t worry about it. Just follow me.”

Nikki turned toward I and smiled.

“What’s up?” I asked, trying to keep my eyes on her and the road at the same time.

Nikki kept smiling. Then she reached over with her leg and stepped on my foot – the one that was on the accelerator – and pushed on it. She wouldn’t take it off. “Holy shit!” I said, watching the needle eclipse 80 mph.

“It’s okay, baby,” Nikki said, running her one hand through my hair, and chain-smoking her pack of cigarettes with the other.

Nikki laughed hard. She laughed harder as she grabbed the steering wheel, and jerked on it, up and down, like she was jerking off the car. I resisted, but my nerves were too frayed for me to be strong. The car swerved on both sides of the rural street and, at times, rode against the ridge of the grassy marshlands.

“Holy shit!” I said. “Get me the fuck out of here!”

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Nikki said. “I’ve got it under control!”

Nikki moved her left foot again, to the break. She slammed hard. Both of us bounced up in our seats, and I bumped my head into the roof of the car.

“Ouch,” I said. “That hurt.”

“You’ll get over it,” she said.

Nikki’s head wobbled as she grabbed another cigarette. I rubbed my head.

“We’re here,” she said. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll be fine.”

We got out, and saw the water. The bay was only 10 feet away, and the small waves were splashing on the rocky beach. Down a ways, to my right, there was a campfire with three people sitting around it, smoking. The smell was Mary Jane, and it was heavy.

I spotted them, and got interested. “Uh, excuse me,” I called out.

One blonde-haired guy quit toking, and looked up.

“Yeah, what’s up shithead?”

“Yeah, right….I’m Tom Davis, from The Delaware State News. You guys hear about this murder not too far from here?”

“What, are you from Wilmington?”

“Sorry?”

“You’re not from here, are you?”

“Does that matter?”

“Depends on what yer askin’.”

“Well, I already asked it.”

The guy took his last toke, and stubbed his joint in the sand.

“Nobody here works at the base…,” the guy said.

“Why did you ask that?” I asked.

“You’re here about the murder, right?” he said. “Don’t fucking look here, dude. Go to the fucking base…”

“How would that help?”

The guy lit up another joint and inhaled, deeply.

“Just go check it out, dude…it’s a fucked up place. I mean, when you go there, it won’t hit you right away. But when you leave there, you’ll see. It’s just this Nazi place, where everybody walks around like they’ve got machine guns up their ass…it’s just like this oppressive Siberia.”

“Did you work there?” I asked.

“Nah, man, but I had friends and we used to sneak in there all the time,” the guy said. “We used to do that all the fucking time…we used to climb on the tops of those big fucking planes and piss onto the tarmac…security is pretty loose there. I mean, it was a few years ago.”

I started scribbling notes in my pad. “What about this mortuary?”

The guy took another toke and blew the smoke up. “Yeah, man. That’s where they bring all the bodies in from the wars, you know. Only they haven’t done that in a while. But this one guy, man, he worked there a long time – I don’t know his name or anything. But he was there back in ’78, you know, when they brought those bodies in from the Jim Jones thing, you know.”

“You mean the Guyana thing?”

“Yeah, man. He got all fucked up when he had to deal with little kids, you know. They drank the punch and all that shit, and they were blue in the face, like they were suffocated. Broke his heart, man. Ever since then, he got worse and worse. He bought a trailer and lived in that, then he went into hiding and dug himself a pit, and put a wooden lid on top of it. Nobody knows where this guy is, you know.”

I nodded, and flopped my pad up and down while I waited for the guy to continue.

“This guy, he’s wacko, you know what I’m saying?,” the guy said.

“Apparently, he didn’t even know Mr. Cramner. He just wacked out one day, and went wilding.”

I then heard a big splash behind me. It was Nikki jumping into the bay water. All her clothes were laying on the shoreline.

“Looks like your girlfriend’s ready to go there, dude,” the guy said.

I looked back and forth between the dude and Nikki. “She’s not my girlfriend!”

Nikki spotted I and yelled. “C’mon!” she said.

“Wait one second, OK?” I replied.

She ran out of the water, her bare breasts flopping. She reached the waterline – where I was – and yanked my arm. The guys watched and laughed, then packed up their shit and left, still chuckling as I got dragged.

“C’mon Nikki,” I said. “I wasn’t done.”

“C’mon!” she said.

“I mean, I don’t think you should go in there, and I certainly don’t want to,” I pleaded. “Can’t you get cancer for swimming in that thing? It looks like a big oily bath…”

“Oh, c’mon,” Nikki said. “I lost my virginity out here.”

“Who are you, anyway?”

“C’mon!” she said.

I looked out at Nikki, who was swimming and naked.

“But it’s cold,” I said.

“It’s not cold!” she said.

I looked around, still sheepish and nervous about the unknown. “Aren’t there a lot of wackos around here?”

“Yeah, but we’re all a little wacko around here.”

Then Nikki jogged up to I again. She looked at me, smiled, reached down with right hand and unzipped my pants. With her left hand, she slipped my shirt over his head and off my body. Within seconds, she was running back toward the water, kicking up piles of sand behind her.

Embarrassed, I stared at my bare legs.

“C’mon,” Nikki yelled. “Don’t be a prude.”

I almost grabbed my belt and pulled my pants back up. But then I gave Nikki a second look. I could feel my blood pressure rising as I watched her splashing, dunking her head in the dirty water.

“Oh, what the hell,” I thought. Quickly, I slipped everything back off, and jumped into the big black pond.

The bay was calm. Occasionally seagulls would pass by and pounce on the surface. But the only thing out there was a smell – a scent of oil or dirt that I easily sensed.

“Holy shit!” I pointed out. “I can’t believe how warm this is! Why is this so warm?”

Nikki laid on her back and kicked up the water behind her. Then she sat up and floated, pointing to the east.

“See that?”

Behind I were two very large, hour-glass-shaped smokestacks, surrounded by much smaller, box-shaped buildings. It looked like that nuclear plant from the Simpsons, I thought.

“What the hell is that?” I said.

“That’s the nuclear plant,” Nikki said.

“I could tell,” I said. “But, what is it? Is that thing going to blow up or what?”

“They discharge their cooling water in here. They use water to cool down the reactor, and discharge it into the bay.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “We’re standing in the middle of radioactive water?”

“No, silly,” she said. “That’s just what cools the reactor down. When it’s discharged, it’s warm. Lots of people go fishing here because the fish like the warm water.”
“So, you’re still saying, I’m not going to die of cancer?” I said. “That’s all I want to know.”

“That’s right.”

I looked around, and saw nothing but black.

“Nikki, why did you bring me here?” I asked.

“Why not?”

“This is crazy,” I said.

“Okay, well, why don’t you just ease up, and relax a little,” she said. “And enjoy it a little.”

I took a deep breath, and nodded. “I guess you’re right,” I said.

My eyes then caught Nikki. Her bare breasts were floating in the water. I stared. She smiled.

We idled in the water for nearly 30 minutes. My eyes that wouldn’t leave Nikki’s chest. It was so pure, I thought. It was like it glowed, even though they were soaked in dirty water.

“C’mhere!” I said.

Nikki floated over, paddling with her hands. Our lips met. We kissed.

“Oooooh,” she moaned, over and over. It got louder as my fingers moved down between her legs, and caressed her baby-smooth skin.
“Ooooh! Please! No!”

I stopped. “No?”

Nikki looked at me, horrified. “What?”

“You said, ‘No,’” I said.

“I didn’t mean no,” she said. “C’mon, don’t be shy….”

“I don’t know,” I said, feeling shy. “Let’s go back to the apartment, huh?”

“Why?”

“I don’t think I can do it here.”

“C’mon,” she said. Nikki reached over and pinched my cheeks “I want this moment to be special.”

“Isn’t it special already?” I said.

“I feel so close to you right now,” Nikki said. “I’ve never felt this close to anybody before.”

“Close?”

Nikki reached over and grabbed my right arm. I resisted, but she pulled, and smacked my hand right on top of her chest. She held it, tight.

“Ooookay,” I said.

“Do you believe in fate, or destiny?”

“You have my hand on your chest,” I said.


Nikki didn’t seem to listen. She tilted her head upward, and fixed her eyes on the dark night sky.

“Do you ever look at the stars,” she said, “and wonder if they can somehow tell your future?”

“Uh, Nikki…”

“Yes?” she said. “Just go with the program, huh?”

“Look up there,” she said. “What do you think they’re telling us?”

“You mean, like astrology?”

“Well, not quite. Look up there.”

“You mean the lights.”

“I mean, look at the stars. Did you notice how bright they are? I believe they’re trying to tell us something.”

“They’re trying to tell us that something magic is happening here,” she said.

“I think it’s just a clear night, and it’s easier to see them.”

“No, no, there’s something about them,” she said. “They’re whiter, with a glow like I’ve never seen before. It’s like they’re tiny little suns. It’s like daybreak, when the rain stops. You get this sudden warm feeling, like it’s okay to go outside again. That’s the great thing about the night, the fact that there’s always lights, no matter how bad the weather is.”

I looked up at the sky, squinting, trying hard to capture the same feeling. “I suppose,” I said.

“Oh, c’mon silly. Didn’t you notice it?” she said. “When we got out of the car, they were dull, like a faint glimmer. But since then, they’ve grown so bright. I felt like I was standing under a Christmas tree…I wish I could lie in this position forever.”

“Nikki?” I asked.

“Yes?”

“Are you going to help me with my story?”

“I’m doing that already,” she said, “Aren’t I?”

Nikki sighed. “I’m trying to get you to relax,” she said. “You’ll need it working here.”

I then pointed toward the sky. “See that dimly lit one,” I said.
“That’s my life there. That just says it all.”


“Which one?”

“That one – right there,” I said. “It looks like it’s ready to fall from the sky…”

“Oh come now,” Nikki said, watching her legs kick under water. “You’ll do fine.”

“I’ve never felt so much pressure in my fucking life,” I said.

“This is more pressure than final exams at college?” she said.

“Hell yeah!” I said. “It’s the expectations – everybody’s always expected big things from me. I don’t know why.”

“You’re a smart guy,” she said. “You don’t have anything to prove.”

“I think it goes back to when I was in kindergarten, and I was reading before everybody else was, and they used to sit me in the corner with a pile of ‘Clifford’ books, and tell me to have fun,” I said. “I’d sit there, bored, while the other kids were sounding out letters.”

“But that’s a good thing, right?”

“Sure it was,” I said. “But by the time I was in fifth grade, everybody was reading faster than I was. They’d breeze through ‘Hardy Boys’ books while I’d struggle with Archie comics. I’d get Cs on my book report and my dad would trash me, call me a ‘born loser’ and shit like that.”

“You’re dad was pretty hard on you, huh?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “It was the same with sports, too. I ran track, and one year I was supposed to be the best long-distance guy, but I blew out my knee. The whole thing fucked me up, probably for life. My grades suffered, but even worse, I had to deal with my dad’s wrath. I remember sitting with him in the family room, listening to him drone on and on about how disappointed he was, in me. It just seems that everywhere I go, I fail to live up to expectations.”

Nikki listened. “How about love?”

“Love?”

“Yeah, love,” she said.

“What about it?”

“Have you ever loved anybody before?

“Well, yeah….”

“Did anybody ever break your heart before?”

“Hell, yeah.”

“You’re still upset about that,” Nikki asked, “aren’t you? I could tell by your tension…”

“Yeah, well I wear everything on my sleeve…”

“When did it happen?” she asked.

“Oh, about two years ago,” I said “I was in college, I thought I met my future wife. You know how you think – that everything’s going to last forever.”

“Whatever happened to her?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “She disappeared. It’s really weird. We were once stuck together like glue.”

“Yeah…”

“Then, one day, she up and left – left the country, in fact,” I said. “She went on one of those junior-year-abroad things, to France or some place like that. She blew me off, which was probably a good idea on her part.”

Nikki stared at me. “What happened?”

“What happened?” I said “I got fucking anorexic or bulimic – I could never figure out which.”

“That doesn’t happen to men.”

“It happened to me,” I said. “I was praising the porcelain god on an almost nightly basis. That’s something I never thought would happen, but in just a month, I lost something like 50 pounds. I think if I kept going, I probably would have died.”

“What turned it around?”

“I didn’t want to die!” I said, hugging her tighter as I drew a big belly laugh. “I just started eating again, forcing things down my throat. Eventually I got used to the routine again, you know, the routine of eating, and I was fine, or as fine as I could be.”

I let out a sigh, and shook my head. “I really hate talking about it,” I said.

Nikki swam over, and wrapped my arms around her stomach. She rested the back of her head against my shoulder, tilted her head up and looked at the stars, again.

“What about you?” I asked.

“What about me?”

“You’ve loved, right?” I asked. “Didn’t you love your boyfriend?”

Nikki looked down at the water, and kicked her feet. She sighed.

“Well,” she said, now looking to the side and toward the pitch-black sky, “I still do.”

“Right.”

Nikki took a deep breath, and blew out. “God,” she said. “I could use a cigarette right now.”

I paused, and then talked. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You can ask.”

“It’s personal.”

“Like I said,” Nikki declared. “You can ask.”

“How did they find him?”

“You mean how did I find him?”

“My God,” I said.

Nikki breathed deeply, again. I could feel the tension in her chest.

“We lived in this housing complex right next to the base,” she said. “We had a trailer, because we couldn’t afford much else. I think I was making more than he was…”

“Is that possible?”

“The only people with lower wages than reporters,” she said, “are the United States military.”

“That’s pathetic,” I said.

“And I think that was part of the problem,” she said. “There was a lot of tension. He brought his work home with him, no doubt. You could tell when he walked through the door every night. It was like he was aging rapidly. Every day there was a new line on his face.”

“Christ.”

“I knew,” she said. “It was only a matter of time. And then, when I came home one night, there he was – sprawled out on the floor. He was down so long that the blood in his hair dried up. It was crusty, like he couldn’t comb it out too easily.”

“My God,” I said.

“I hugged him,” she said. “You know, in a way, it was the closest I ever felt to him. He kept things so close to himself, I felt like I could never penetrate that wall.”

Nikki tread water with her hand as she talked. I found myself holding her tighter.

“Again, you know, I…”

“I know,” Nikki said. “Don’t bother saying it again.”

“Well, okay,” I said.

Nikki wiped her eyes, again with the back of her knuckle. I paused, and waited.

“There is one thing I find troubling,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“Why didn’t anybody from the base help you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, don’t they have family assistance programs that reach out to grieving family members or whatever?”

“Well, I’m not a family member,” she said. “But I did have friends…”

“Friends?”

“Yeah, well, they were his friends,” she said. “The thing is, they were all very creepy.”

“There was this guy, Robert Borden. He went blind after he shot himself in the head,” she said.

“Oh, was that the guy?” I said. “I heard about him…”

“Yeah. He was nuts. A real recluse,” she said. “He lived in the same trailer park as us. He was into all sorts of Nazi shit. He used to take a pistol and blow holes into the side of his trailer.”

“That’s pretty fucked up.”

“Then there was this guy Rick Northstream,” Nikki said. “He was even nuttier – only he was popular. He used to go to Uncle Tom’s and hang out with the murderers.”

“Christ,” I said, “was he a killer?”

“No, he was harmless,” she said. “But he was known for bragging about the size of his thing.”

“You’re telling me these people helped you?”

“Well, they didn’t,” she said. “I mean, they tried. But I think they were just trying to get down my pants.”

“Christ, Nikki.”

“I know, she said. “I hate myself.”

“What?” I said.

“I hate myself.”

“Now, why do you say that?”

“Why do I do this to myself?” she said, her eyes tearing up again. She was slurring her speech more and more, and her face grew weary. “Why do I let myself remember all that? I just want to move on!”

“Look, I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s OK…Did I tell you I was diabetic?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“My doctor told me I shouldn’t drink,” she said. “But I’m plowed.”

“You’re not acting like it.”

“But I feel it.”

“Let’s go back,” I said.

“Yeah.”




About a half-hour later, we pulled up to Cedar Chase. I jogged to the passenger’s side, opened the door and shook Nikki, who had fallen asleep. She slowly woke up, but I could tell that she was too weak to rise on her own power. I rolled her off the seat, wrapped her left arm around my collar and rescue-carried her to her door.

We got inside, but Nikki was shivering. I wrapped my jacket around her, helped her to her bedroom. I lay her on her bed and walked toward the door.

At that moment, Nikki perked up. “Where do you think you’re going?” she said.

I was amazed. One minute, she was half-dead. Now she was very alive.

“Wow,” I said. “You’re awake.”

“Right. And where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m leaving.”

“Oh no you’re not,” she said. “I think we have some unfinished business.”

“Why don’t you go to sleep?” I said. “You’re tired.”

“Come over here.”

I approached her, cautiously. I sat at the edge of the bed, and Nikki squirmed over. She lifted up my shirt, and began to rub my back with her hands.

First, I was resistant, and the feel of her hands gave me a nervous chill.

“Nikki, please…”

“It’s OK, baby…”

“But I---”

But I found it soothing, I had to admit. I closed my eyes, and let her do it.

"Mmmmmm," Nikki groaned, and soon, we were kissing again, rolling around the bed and wrapping themselves up in her blanket. We kissed, licked and slapped, locking each other in a tight, though smooth embrace. Then we dangled on the edge of the bed, until Nikki nudged I to the floor.

She tumbled on top of me, and humped my stomach. I reached over and yanked her shirt over her head, and her curly blonde hair flopped in the air, and then over her shoulder. My hands moved to her bra, and my fingers fumbled at the clip.

He fumbled, and fumbled. And fumbled. Nothing.

“Dammit!" I yelled. "I can’t get it open."

"Don’t worry about it," Nikki said. “Worry about this.”

She then grabbed my arm, and shoved it in her pants, while my other hand worked on the bra. Nikki’s belt was a bit tight, however, so I could barely move my hand below her waistline. Nikki could sense I was struggling, so she pushed my hand even lower.

"Oooooh, ooooooh!" Nikki moaned. I could feel her warmth and softness. But I was tired, and as I grew weary as the night wore on. After 15 minutes, I started to sweat.

Nikki felt crotch. "What's wrong?" she said.

“Look,” I said. “Maybe we'd better stop.”

"Stop?"

"Yeah…look, I'm not very good at this,” I said. “It doesn’t do much for me."

Nikki was silent. She was so quiet that I got scared.

“OK, wait,” I said. “Hear me out.”

Nikki rose and marched toward the bedroom doorway, clenching her fists. She stopped, and then pointed toward the hallway and the outside door.

“Please leave,” she declared.

I left, and Nikki slammed the door so hard, I could feel it almost hit me in the ass. Then came a sharp, crisp click on the lock of her door. I shrugged, and then left.

In the spotlight

Postpartum depression nearly killed Mary Jo Codey. Nearly two decades later, however, she doesn’t feel like someone who’s out of the woods.

Rather, the former first lady of New Jersey considers herself “lucky.” She’s lucky to have two grown, healthy sons. She’s lucky to have a house with a loving family.

She’s lucky to be alive. And she’s lucky to have a husband, Richard J. Codey, now the New Jersey Senate president, who’s one of the country’s most celebrated political advocates for mental health causes.

“I could have been in one of those hospitals,” said Codey. “He had empathy for it. I lucked out. He could have dumped me. He happened to love me.”

Codey, 53, has followed her husband’s lead and inserted herself into the role of advocate. She appears before groups to speak about how she managed to survive a lifetime of depression and a double mastectomy after breast cancer was discovered in 2002.

Codey also helped inspire her husband, when he served as acting governor from 2004 to 2006, to recommend spending $200 million for affordable housing for those with mental illness, among other pledges.

“It was a pact I made with God,” Codey said. “I didn’t want it to happen to other women.”

Codey’s struggles made national headlines three years ago, after two New Jersey disc jockeys mocked her history of battling postpartum depression, taking medication, and undergoing shock therapy. Rather than shy away from the publicity, she used it as a springboard to inspire others. She remembers suffering from postpartum depression and not being able find a book that could help her.

“I found myself in such a hole,” Codey said. “I just promised that I would never allow others to go through the same thing.”

(This article was first published in Esperanza magazine in its spring 2009 issue)

The Chicken Zoo, part 3: The guy (a non-fiction novel)

[This story is based on my experiences as a reporter for The Delaware State News from 1990-93. Some names and dates have been changed. This was part of my unpublished novel, "The Chicken Zoo," that I wrote five years ago.]

Now what?

Well, the first thing I did was go back to work, and look up some old stories. I did that for about an hour – I took about three sentences of notes and got bored. Reading the Newsweek story was enough. I just wanted to go home, so I did. Yeah, I know. It was 4 p.m. – I should have stayed at work in case something happened. But I was fried. I needed some respite. I had this apartment the week before. It had this real secluded feel to it, a converted attic in Dover with a low ceiling (almost every time I got up to change the channel on the television, I bumped my head). All I had was a couch with a big hole in the center, and a mattress I rescued from a nearby curb. I had a television set I bought from the Salvation Army for $25, and a telephone. Not much. But it was a place to hide.

I needed to call somebody. I guess I should have called this guy “Chad.” But I needed Dad. So I called him. Give me a break – I hadn’t called him in a week. Every son needs his dad. Sure, Dad was a cranky middle-aged man who worked as a principal for an elementary school. Dad thought the most important thing in the world was work. If you told him that you got an A on your report card, he’d say, “Great. But why did you get an A in math? There’s no money in that!” Dad slaved for years working long hours in the insurance office.

Mom worked, too. She was a sweet lady, when she was around. In fact, I saw more of Dad than I did Mom. Mom worked as an Avon lady. So it was Dad who cooked. It was Dad who cleaned. It was Dad who would lay out the clothes on the ironing board, and burn a hole in my shirts. In those days, my world always felt very topsy-turvey. It’s probably why I was an only child.

But Dad was still Dad, and fathers have wisdom. So I called, knowing he’d be home to answer

“Hey Dad,” I said.

“So how’s the job,” was his immediate reply.

“All right,” I said. “They’ve got me covering a murder.”

“Just tell me one thing,” Dad said.

“What’s that?”

“Why the hell couldn’t they come up with a better name for that place?”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Listen to the words, I,” he said. “Your paper is named after a ‘chicken fart!’ ”

“No it’s not.”

“Well then, what the hell is a ‘State News?’ ”

God. Can’t he ever be serious. Or at least non-cynical.

“Dad,” I said. “Calm down.”

“I’m just looking out for you, that’s all,” he said. “A newspaper’s about words, right? You mean to tell me they couldn’t come up with a better name?”

“I’ll see you dad.”

“How’re you going to be the next Dan Rather when you’ve got a ‘chicken fart’ on your resume?”

“I don’t want to be Dan Rather,” I said. “Dad, can we get off that? I gotta ask you some questions…”

“Ask your mother…I’m not good at this.”

“Mom’s not around,” I said.

“Yeah, I know...Hey, I, I know it’s hard,” he said. Dad always acted apologetic about the situation.

“C’mon, Tom, stop it.”

“Dad, I used to spend recess leaning up against a wall, scared to death of people,” I said. “I never wanted to know anybody, and they didn’t want to know me…”

“Yeah, well, I believe in self-reliance…”

“Self reliance? At age 10?” I said. “Don’t go Ralph Waldo Emerson on me, Dad… That’s not independence. That’s negligence.”

“Just calm yourself down,” Dad said.

“No I’m 23 and I gotta make a living talking to people with no teeth…”

“Just keep your mind on your work and you’ll be fine,” his dad said. “And whatever you do, don’t quit.”

Don’t quit. He always says that. I hate it when he says that. Call me paranoid, but I think I know what he’s talking about. He’s talking about Rutgers again. He’s talking about bulimia. He’s talking about nearly failing out, and having to bail myself out at the last minute. Does he have to do that? You know, the best thing he could have done was send me to therapy. Instead, he’s going to shame me to death.

“Dad, what are you talking about?” I said. “Are we bringing up the Rutgers thing again.”

“I just don’t want any more calls from the local health center, with some quack telling me about ‘induced vomiting’…”

“C’mon dad…Let’s not bring this up again.”

“Seriously, though, what were you thinking?” he said. “You shrunk into some Ethiopian mess….your cheeks looked like they were about to sucked into your throat…”

“All right, dad, that’s enough.”

“It’s a good thing you did have friends…if they hadn’t pulled you out of the bathroom, what would you be?”

“OK,” I said. I really, really had enough. He always found some weird way to end a conversation. “Look, I gotta go.”

“Maybe that’s why you’re a good reporter,” he said, continuing. Did I say he wasn’t a good listener?

“Reporting is a loner’s life,” Dad said. “You don’t have to do much more than talk on a telephone, and make an occasional trip outside the office. It just seems to fit.”

“Thanks Dad,” I said. “Goodbye.”

I had work to do, for crying out loud. I didn’t need to be tortured by parents.

So then I had to call this guy Chad. Chad. Who the hell is Chad? Jenny gives me this number to call, I should call it, right? I mean, I should be able to trust this lady, right? She is my boss. Yeah, she was pretty flaky. She hired me a month before, without even giving me an interview. She called me from some other bar, told me she got my resume and hired me. Of course, I should have known something was up when she hiccupped throughout the telephone call. Then she gives me this weird memo that talks about “public trust” and all that shit and orders me to memorize it. I don’t know. Give me an order to do something and I’ll do it. I don’t need to question it. I don’t have time to question it. Give me the candy, and I’ll eat. Why bother checking for razor blades? That’s why we put people in positions of authority. So they do all the thinking for us.


So I pulled out the slip of paper from my pocket, read it and dialed the number.

“Hello?” said the voice.

“Chad?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Hey, is this Tom?”

“Yeah, from the State News.”

“Hey, all right, I was waiting for your call,” he said, rather enthusiastically.
“Where are you?”

“Why, I’m in Dover.”

“Why don’t you come down here?” Chad said. “I live in Dewey, but we can meet in Rehoboth.”

Come down there? Christ. OK, I know I try to trust people. But that may be crossing a line. Then again, it’s not like I’m meeting with the Iranians to negotiate a secrete arms deal.

“I don’t know,” I said. “How do I get there?”

“How do you get to Rehoboth?”

“Yeah.”

He laughed. OK, very funny. That’s me. I asked stupid questions. Some people think it’s cute virtuous. Other people think it is what it is. Stupid. Of course, I was also being a bit sly. I was buying time while sorted this out.

“It’s about an hour south of you,” he said. He gave me directions to a bar called Arenas, on the boardwalk. “You’d better hurry up, because closing time is early here.”

“I don’t know…”

“C’mon,” he said. “We’ll be in a public place. Everything will be all right.”

“That’s true,” I said. “Why not?”

“See you about nine-ish or so?”

“All right,” I said. “See you then.”



I headed out, almost immediately. Oh, well, I did grab a few Cheerios and ate them as I ran down the steps. That was dinner. I’ll wash them down with beer, I thought.

I headed south on Route 13, again, straight down that fast-food alley. Ugh. Luckily, it didn’t last forever. In fact, it changed rather suddenly, when 13 changed to 113, and the landscape was filled with a series of lights and fences that were more than six feet high. South of Dover, there were no shopping centers. Just some very large planes, each bigger than a Kmart, with tails that seemed to stretch back about a quarter mile. Some were parked, wing-to-wing, while others maneuvered along the long runways and toward the blimp-sized hangars. All this was happening, before my eyes and in a matter of seconds. It was Dover Air Force Base, and I was in awe.

Overhead, planes roared through the sky in a straight line, landing one after another on Dover's flat, green desert. Man. These were some of the biggest war machines I’ll ever see. All this stuff was right off Route 113 – going on for about a quarter-mile stretch – and it was rather fleeting. As I headed south, I had to stop and give it one more long look, so I turned into a sandy pull-off area, turned around and gazed. Did that for a few seconds, and then I pulled away. But even as I drove, I watched in my review mirror, and marveled as those planes disappeared in the evening fog.

Then it was back to the boring. And the vast nothingness that just seemed to go on and on. The landscape was so flat, and so low that the swamp waters covered parts of the roadways. For an hour it was like this, all in the dark. I stopped twice to buy bottles of Coke, just to pep me up and keep me awake. I could feel my eyes closing at times – not too badly, but bad enough. I State Newsed the radio a few times, even though the only stations I could find played that tired dinosaur rock shit that was getting on my nerves. I couldn’t tell you how happy I was when the scenery finally changed from flatlands to an assortment of water slides, bungi jumps and other beach-tourism attractions. That had to be Rehoboth.



From there, it was easy. Just find the boardwalk, and I did. Then I had get out of the car, turn left and look. I did. I didn’t even need to see the sign of this place; the noise gave it away.

Once there, I opened the door, squeezed into the wall-to-wall crowd, and ordered a beer. The band was loud and bad, and the guitar feedback was screeching. People find this enjoyable. When I’m by myself, I avoid it. When I’m on the job or with thrill-seeking friends, I tolerate it.

I got that beer and drank it, fast. I really needed to numb myself. I had to stop listening to all that bullshit going on around me. Plus, I was nervous. Sure, there were all these people around. But I always get nervous when I meet new people. I mean, why not? Girlfriends make me puke in the toilet.

My “guest” somehow found me, amazingly. He said he knew his way around, so I guess I should have believed me. He wasn’t what I envisioned though. He sounded like the “everyman” on the telephone. But in person, he was tall and skinny, maybe even a little lifeless – except for that wide grin on his face.

“Tom?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Chad. Right?”

“In the flesh,” he said. He saw my bottle was empty. “Another beer?”

“Sure.”

Chad squeezed his skinny body through the crowd, and ordered one. Amazing, I thought. I’m skinny, but to get to where he went, your body had to be paper-thin. He looked like a malnourished college professor, only one who tried to act cooler. He combed too much mousse into his short hair, which made it stick up in parts. It gave him a New Wave-meets-Einstein look.

“So, you’re on this murder thing, huh?” Chad asked, handing me my beer.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“The Cramner murder.”

“Right,” I said. “Did you know him?”

“Oh yeah.”

I paused for a second, and sipped on my beer. I didn’t want to appear like I was ambushing him.

“What can you tell me about him?” I asked.

“I could tell you some things,” he said. “I’ve got some old photos at my house, if you’d like to see them.”

“Photos?”

“Yeah, you know, pictures of him and me together, you know, fishing and shit like that.”

“You both worked at the base?”

“Oh yeah, he did. I did. I guess you heard of the famous Jones Boys.”

“I’ve had a quick education.”

“Yeah, there’s a lot of guys from that time, walking around, running their fingers up and down their lips,” he said. “It’s sad.”

“Right.”

Now he paused, and stared out at the crowd. I let him control the conversation. It looked like I was going to be there for a while. If he wasn’t ready, so what?

“How about another beer?” Chad said.

“Sure,” I said. “Let me drink this one up.”

Chad signaled for the bartender, and ordered a tall, 32-ounce glass of Bud. He handed it to me, and I smiled.

“You like football?” Chad asked.

“Sure,” I said. “Doesn’t everybody? Who do you root for?”

“The Redskins,” he said. “You’re in Redskins country!”

“That’s pretty scary,” I said. “I’m a Giants fan.”

“That’s even scarier,” Chad said.

"One of my favorite moments was when Lawrence Taylor broke Joe Theisman's leg, back in '85," I said. "I loved how Monday Night Football kept running that replay over and over again.

"THAT is sooo wrong," Chad said. He smiled and reached into his pocket for a cigarette.

Like thunder, the music started again. And it was loud. Why the fuck does it always have to be loud. Our voices were quickly drowned out by this explosion. The band, Crash Tokyo was playing one of its last sets.

“Christ, who the hell are they?” I asked.

“Crash Tokyo,” Chad said. “They’re one of Delaware’s most popular bands.”

Chad looked over the crowd and right at the band. He managed to squeal his voice loud enough over the feedback to be heard. I was amazed, again, but he and the band seemed to have some connection. The second they saw his face, it seemed, they knew what he wanted.

"Butt Steak!" Chad yelled.

"Butt Steak?” I asked. “What's that?"

"Butt Steak is a song Crash Tokyo plays all the time,” he said. “Some guys from your newspaper helped write it. Wherever they go, they play it."

The band obliged, and jammed.

Get yourself a butt steak
Fried up in a pan
Eating lots of butt steak
Will make a boy a man

Butt steak makes yo hair grow
Makes yo teeth turn green
Butt steak gives you hands of stone
And makes you plenty mean

Talkin' bout de butt steak
Makes drool flow from yo lips
Eating lots of butt steak
Make you talk like dis


The overstuffed crowd cheered, and some raised their tall glasses of beer in tribute. Chad was one of of them. I wasn’t. I shrank inside the crowd and sucked down the rest of my 32-ounce glass.

In the song break, the bartender bellowed, “Last call!” Chad looked at his watch, and offered more.

“How ’bout you come to my place for a nightcap?” he said. “I live in Dewey. I can show you those photos.”

“Dewey?” I said. “Where’s that?”

“It’s just south of here,” he said. “I’ll give you directions.”

Chad reached for a napkin on the bar, and wrote them down. He also wrote his telephone number. He then gave me quick review of what to look for, and I did what I could to memorize it.

So now the debate raged in my head again. Should I go? Actually, this was an easier decision. Everybody knew Chad. How bad could he be? In fact, he’s got something that I wanted – information. Besides, I had a pretty cool buzz. Unlike Jenny, I can’t drive when I’m impaired. Maybe this guy had a place to crash. I should feel lucky, I thought.

“Well,” I said, “see you very soon.”

“Cool.”
I tried to stuff the napkin in his pocket, and headed for door. But a lot of other people were heading out, too, even though Crash Tokyo wasn’t finished. I was surprised by that, so I banged into a few people and fumbled the napkin. I turned around and looked for it, but when I couldn’t find it immediately, I gave up. Fuck it. I found my way down here. I could find my way to Dewey Beach.



I got back to my car, and searched for a map that was buried within the assorted wrappers, bags and napkins. The stench was so bad. I was too fired for this. I got in and drove. If I got lost, I just do what I did in Dover. I’ll stop and ask.
Almost immediately, I got lost. Just my luck. I drove around a lake, and looked for anything that Chad talked about. But in the pitch-black darkness, I could barely see the street. Unlike Dover, it was night, and there were no old men pushing shopping carts who knew their way around. In what seemed like an instant, Delaware's nightlife disappeared. No one was anywhere but the night and me.
I did see a sign that said, "Welcome to Dewey Beach." But it should have said, “Dewey Beach Closed,” because it was. There was a payphone hanging from the side of a TV repair shop. I did remember the number he gave me. So I stopped the car, put in a bunch of quarters and called.
"You're lost?” Chad said, answering immediately. At the bar, he seemed so laid-back and cool. Now he seemed more anxious. “How could you be lost?"
“ I lost your directions,” I said. “Sorry. You sound upset.”
“I’m not upset,” Chad said, sighing. He went over them again, and promised he’d wait in the road to flag me down.
I obliged. Only it was getting real dark. He gave me a bunch of landmarks, and for the life of me, I couldn’t see them. I began to doubt whether any of this even existed.
I slowed my car to about 10 or 15 mph, and stayed on the lookout while I cruised that lake road. Suddenly, to my right side a blurred image appeared. Then I heard I heard a "thud" and slammed on the brakes. Oh my God, I thought. I killed somebody!
“What the hell was that?” the guy called out. Relax, I thought. It was Chad, pounding on the side. I unlocked the door, and Chad jumped in.
“You OK?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said. “Um, I’m just worried about you because I know you had some to drink. So you’d better get hopping – there’s cops crawling all through this neighborhood.”

And so I did. He pointed toward some alley, and we slipped in there, driving past some houses that looked like mansions. They had backyards that were big enough to park cruise ships. But Chad kept pointing ahead, away from these places. He obviously didn’t live in them, and he didn’t appear to have any interest in them.

We eventually came to a cottage, and Chad signaled for me to stop. It was hard to see; trees completely enveloped the place, shading the entire yard from the moonlight. But this was it, Chad said. He stepped out of the car, reached for his keys, and ran up to a light. He tripped a motion light and lit up the dark yard, just so he could see the door lock.

“C’mon in,” Chad said, opening the door. “Let’s talk.”

I followed, right through the doorway. But then I stopped and looked. Holy shit, I thought. Look at all these fucking candles! There were as many as five or six on each tabletop. Each was white, and each was lit. The little flames moved slightly as they felt the slow breeze from the outside.

“Have a seat,” Chad said. “I’ll get you a beer.”

OK. I did. But please help me here: In my young life, I’ve never known a guy to like so many fucking candles. Now, I like to think I’m a liberal, open-minded kind of guy here. I’ve know guys who were into matching shades of paint with the bathtub curtains and all that. But candles? Houston, we have a problem.

I just got over that. I mean, I just got over that. Then I heard a “slam.” Well, I guess a slam would be loud, so it was kind of a mild “slam” – the noise of wood hitting metal. Chad locked the door behind me with a large, wooden rail that slipped into a notch, landing in the slot with a sudden “thunk.” Now we were sealed like Tupperware in the candle house.

Help me, here, OK. Now, I know something ain’t right at this. Something inside me was screaming, “Get the fuck out of here.” But, you know, we all have that split personality thing going on, where one side of us says, “Yes” and the other side says “No.” And you know, I was tired of being the country bumpkin from Arkansas who was always afraid to jump in the water because it was too cold. When I was in high school, I went with my friend Bill to a bridge where everybody jumped into the Manasquan River. There were six of us there. Five of us jumped. Guess who didn’t? Yeah, that’s right. Six years later, I was still living that down. I’m tired of that. I want to live real experiences. I want to live real life. So I ain’t leaving, dammit. That’s what I told myself.

Chad walked back in, carrying two beers and giving one to me. Chad and I then sat. I stared at the wall full of stain-glass windows on the side. Chad stared at me.

“Everything OK?” I asked.

“Sure,” Chad said. "I'm just thinking that maybe I should get a bigger place, probably closer to his bar near downtown. I like being near the action.”

“Yeah.”

"You'll have to pardon that the house is a mess,” Chad said. “I'm thinking about putting up some shelves to handle the surplus."

He seemed nervous, even a little insecure and defensive. But, wait, OK, here’s the big thing: What happened to his voice? At the bar he sounded like Mr. Hard Guy with a football helmet. Now’s got a lisp and sounded a little too much like Paul Lynde. These thoughts were just bouncing back-and-forth in my head. I had to get to business.

“So, do you have those photos?” I said. I wondered to myself why I even had to remind him. “You did say you had some, right?”

“Oh yeah,” Chad said. “I checked, and I couldn’t find any. I must have gotten rid of them.”

“Oh.”

“You know, I should come clean with you on something.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

Chad chucked back a gulp of his beer. “I’m a Jones Boy.”

“You worked on that case?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Somehow, they let me slip through the cracks.”

“So you worked with Cramner?”

“Yes I did.”

My eyes started to shift, nervously. It was too quiet in there, and Chad was speaking too softly. I had to cut the tension. I was just buzzed enough to do it.

“So did you kill him?” I said, half-jokingly.

“Of course not!” he said.

“All right. All right,” I said. “It was only a joke.”

Chad looked like he was on the verge of a smile. But it was only a grimace.

“So why are you here?” he said.

“Well,” I said. “I heard that you can help me.”

“Who told you that?”

“My editor,” I said. “Jenny Bridge.”

“Oh, jeez. Jenny,” Chad said. Now he was smiling. “Yeah, well we go way back. She used to cover the base.”

“Yeah? She said something about that,” I said.

“So now you’re her water boy?”

“I hope not,” I said. Not funny.

“Relax,” he said. “I can joke, too.”

OK, this was really going nowhere. I really didn’t want to be locked up in the hermetically sealed fruit container for too much longer.

“So if you’re a Jones boy,” I said, “why aren’t you living in a trailer in a woods?”

Chad snickered a bit, and sucked down the rest of his beer. It was the closest he got to a laugh. “It’s not easy, let me tell you,” he said.

“I know a little bit about it,” I said. “But I was only 10 or 11 when it happened, so I don’t know much. I know a congressman got killed, and some wacky guy forced people to drink contaminated Kool-Aid or something.”

Chad smiled. “That’s not even half the story,” he said. “You want another beer?”

“Okay,” I said.

Chad walked over to the refrigerator, grabbed two, popped them open and walked back. He passed me one. Was I going to make it home? I’d better. But first I needed what I came for, whatever that was.

“Everybody talks about California, Guyana, or whatever,” Chad said, sitting in his chair. The more he drank, the more he seemed to sink in it. “But they never talk about here. Dover was where the real fun was.”

"It’s just bizarre to me,” I said. “When I took the job here, I never knew about this. I would just never equate it with what happened down there….”

“Well, Jimmy Carter had to send them somewhere,” Chad said, drinking his beer. “The mortuary here is probably the most active one in the world. Vietnam, Lebanon, Jim Jones – they all came through here.”

“Well, I’ve only been here a short time,” I said. I was so naïve. “But it just doesn’t seem like the kind of place that can handle that kind of thing. Am I wrong.”

Chad smiled again. Only this smile wasn’t of humor or sarcasm. I seemed to strike a nerve.

“Tell me about it,” Chad said. “There were 914 of them that day, men, women and children. All of them blue, with tags hanging off their toes. You know some of these Air Force guys who handled it – they had been through Vietnam and everything. But that wasn’t this. I mean, these weren’t G.I.s in uniform. These were mothers, fathers, children. You know what I mean?”

“I can understand that.”

“There were so many, they had to take in volunteers – local mortuaries, people off the street,” he said. “A lot of people had to take breaks, like every five minutes. They’d take a break, cry, maybe even vomit. And then they’d keep going.”

I nodded.

“Our job was to make a positive identification,” Chad said. “We had to collect personal effects – you know, watches, wallets, family photographs. All that stuff was inventoried.”

“Christ,” I said. “One second…”

I pulled out my pad that I had stuffed in my back pocket hours earlier. The pages were all folded and the cardboard was wrinkled, so I had to take a second to find a flat, blank page. I tried to be coy and secretive, but the whole process took too long. I held up the pad and pen toward his face. Code word: Can I take notes?

“Sure go ahead,” Chad said. The pause gave him an opportunity to drink more.

“So, you were saying about the I.D. process,” I asked. “I guess that takes a little more that matching fingerprints.”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Then the remains were weighed, photographed and X-rayed. It’s a long process – very tedious.”

“How did you identify them?”

“They were identified scientifically, using digital X-rays, dental records, fingerprints, all that stuff,” Chad said. “Now they use DNA analysis, from what I understand.”

“You must have done autopsies, too. Right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “But each guy had his own job. It was too much to ask each guy to do a complete autopsy on his own … Some did simple stuff, like tag toes. Others do the actual cutting open of the body, and then the embalming. You’ve got to kill bacteria and make sure the body’s safe enough to be exposed to the public. It preserves the body for the return home, you know, for burial."

“You had to prep them, too,” I said. “I mean, for the funeral and the burial.”

“Yeah, there’s a cosmetology area. That’s what I did,” he said. “If they’re in the military, the remains are dressed up, you know, in full uniform, with every medal, ribbon and other decoration they’ve earned. But with the Jones thing, we didn’t have that.”

I paused again, to catch up on my notes. Chad didn’t seem to have a problem with it. He just kept drinking his beer, and staring. Staring right into my eyes. Neither his face, nor his voice, displayed the slightest crack.

Now he may have seemed fine. But the stare was making me uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Chad laughed. OK, so he did actually laugh. But this wasn’t a funny laugh.
It seemed more sinister, more foreboding. He could tell that I was getting a little squeamish. Not because of the subject matter. It was him. He was the problem.

“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it anymore, OK?” Chad said.

But that wasn’t the point, dammit. Yeah, the talk about the kids dying freaked me out, a little. But, goddamit, that stare! I felt so trapped in it. It’s like he was some kind of a dog waiting for his treat. I looked around the room, gazing at those stain glass windows and candles with the lit flames, hoping to divert attention. No dice. His eyes moved with my eyes.

“So, what is it you do now?” I asked.

Chad chuckled.

“No, really,” I said.

“I own the Hi-Lo Bar in Rehoboth,” Chad said, reverting back to seriousness. “I had it with the military.

“Yeah?” I said. “You miss it?”

“Nah,” he said. “I got out before I went completely bonkers. Other guys stuck around a little too long.”

“Like who?”

“Well,” he said. “I think that was the problem with Cramner. He was just wasting away over there. Some guys were so hung up over the Jones thing, they really couldn’t work anywhere else. Cramner just got his pension and up and left.”

I paused again. Something wasn’t quite right. Or maybe I just hadn’t asked the right questions yet. That stare was forcing me to rush.

“Did people like him?” I asked. “Did anybody hate him? Who would have done this?”

“I don’t know, really. It could have been anybody,” Chad said. “There was one guy who shot himself in the head, and went blind. He was so fucked up over the whole thing. He disappeared, though – I heard he was up in Ohio or some place like that.”

OK, that’s all I wanted to hear. Time to go. I had it. I could have looked up the encyclopedia and gotten this shit. Resist, resist, resist. I’m asking these wide-open questions, hoping to wide-open answers. This was your opportunity, bucko. Now get on your knees and cry! Tell me how rotten this was! Tell me how this ruined your life! I want to feel your pain. All I get is a stare.

So I wanted to say goodbye. It was at the tip of my tongue, ready to be spoken. I have to admit, I was a little unsure of myself, so it didn’t come out quickly. But it was there. It needed to be said. Instead, I just paused. Chad? He saw it as a break. He wiped his beer from his lip, got up and went to the kitchen. And then he promptly returned, carrying a bong pipe in one hand and a plastic Ziploc bag full of pot in the other. He gestured toward me, offering a hit.

"No thanks," I said. I did that shit once or twice in my life. Didn’t like. And I wasn’t ready to share my germs with Mr. Oogle Eyes.

Chad didn’t like that answer. He gestured again.

"No, I mean it,” I insisted. “No thanks.”

Chad moved on. I don’t think he heard me. He reached inside the plastic bag, and with his thin fingertips, grabbed some of the thin green-and-brown leaves that settled on the bottom. He sprinkled some in the bowl of his pipe, and rubbed his fingers together to make sure every last drop fell in. He took a toke, and returned to his stare.

"I think I should leave," I said.

Chad pulled the pipe from his mouth, choked a little on the smoke, and laughed. Again, a cynical, sinister laugh. Not a happy laugh.

“Stay," he said.

"No, I really have to be back. I've got a lot of errands I have to run tomorrow,” I said. I was just full of lame excuses, wasn’t I. “I need to buy some things for the apartment."

"Don't worry about it,” he said. “I have another bed you can sleep in.”

"Well, Christ, I'm glad you've got another bed," I said.

Chad laughed that ugly laugh again, and got up from his chair. He was holding the bong pipe in his mouth, and walking toward me. Holy shit. Now what? I was only 10 feet away, sitting directly across from him. But it was a walk. I had time to think. Maybe. Well, actually, I didn’t. He got within an inch of my face, he pulled the pipe out of his mouth and tried shove it in mine.

I shut my mouth, as tight as that lock on that door. Maybe tighter. But this Chad guy, man, he was relentless. He tried hard. He tried so hard, he was trying to fit the pipe between my lips, and pushing. One minute longer, he might have tried using pliers.

And then, oh my God, he starts peading. In that lispy voice. "C'mon, just take a little toke,” he said. C'mon! C’mon! It won't hurt you. C'mon!”

"I said no!” I shouted. I wanted to scream. But, god, I was man. I was human. Not like this guy. “No!”

Chad wouldn't quit. I got up. I forced myself to do it, and flung my elbow to bang him out of the way. I didn’t care where it landed. I didn’t care if it hurt him. Well, I did care because I was a newspaper reporter. Yeah, here comes the lawsuit. Let’s sue the guy who’s well known and make a couple bucks. But, yeah, I flung my elbow because I was, at the very least, blazing a trail for that door.

The elbow, it turned out, didn’t hit Chad. But it did hit the pipe. Some ash spilled, and flew in Chad’s direction. It flew like pepper spray, and it scared him. He stumbled to the floor.

I saw him fall but I kept walking. I could hear him get up – that’s why. What was he going to do next? I didn’t give a shit. I had to get out. I had to get through that lock. I didn’t want to find out.

"Wait, wait!" Chad pleaded. "Stay! C'mon, stay!"

I turned around to look at him. Bad move. Satchel Paige once said: “Don’t ever turned around. Someone may be gaining on you.” I did, and he caught up to me. That slightest bit of slowing down allowed him do that. What I saw was someone so out of control, laughing and waving his arms wildly. He was not sane. He was not rational. Time to grab that lock, and get it open.

"No! I said no!" I said. "I've got to go."

Say anything you want about Chad. He was persistent. And he caught up. He jumped on my back, wrapped his arms around my chest and squeezed. He bounced and humped, thrusting his thin frame into my upper spine. Now I know what happens when a pig gets raped at the zoo.

“Woo hoo hoo! Yeee hey!" he screamed.

OK, now I really didn’t care about the lawsuits or the embarrassments. He was going down, big time. I freed one arm, slipped out of his grip lock. Then I twisted my torso like a corkscrew and tried to push him off. He resisted, so I bent my elbow and banged it, hard, right into his ribs. I hit him hard. And, oh yeah, he fell off. He fell right on his back, and his mouth was wide open. It was like a silent scream, and wiggled a little and just laid there. I went and got the lock open, and left.

I swung the door open, ran toward the car, hopped in and turned the key. Chad? He wasn’t that hurt. He managed to get up, and ran after me, running right up to my car window. He cocked his fists and started pounding on the glass.

"You're a fucking asshole! You're a fucking asshole!" he shouted. He jumped up and down, his arms flailing wildly in the air.

OK, now here was the sympathetic side of me again (lame). I rolled down the window to the bottom. I had to signal for calm.

"Ease up, okay,” he said. “It's no big deal.”

But Chad’s yelling was just too loud. I just rolled the window right back up. I backed up and left, and found my way to that road that ran around the lake. But get this: After driving through all those trees, and pulling some 200 feet away from him, I could still hear Chad yelling and screaming.