Angels And Bad Men

By: David H
(© 2011 by the author)
Editor: Ken King

The author retains all rights. No reproductions are allowed without the author's consent. Comments are appreciated at...

Chapter 6
“Memorial Day”

I’d be lying if I said that the end of the month of May was anything other than good.  From the time I left the house for the first time, I found myself getting my social legs under me again.  I went to work and came home most days, but there were also times when I would venture out of that sphere I’d found myself in.  One Saturday after work I went to the art museum in Birmingham with my friend Austin, a guy I’d met in undergrad.  We joined our friends Tiffany and Mary afterwards for dinner at Surin, on Birmingham’s Southside.

On Memorial Day we had standing plans to go to my paternal grandparents’ house for a barbecue.  The night before, Mom had worked diligently on getting all the sides ready.  She also worked on a sour lime mojo (a sauce) that would be used to roast the whole pig.  Sure, that was a tradition brought into the Collins clan by her, but it was one that had survived for almost three and a half decades.

We all woke up that morning around the same time.  Justin dragged from his bed, having been out with Carter until the early hours.  Dad and Mom enjoyed their morning coffee as I went out, quite obviously, to the tree house for the day’s pick-me-up.  Despite how well things had been going, I still found that there were some things I couldn’t do without having at least a little buzz.

By that time, both Mom and Dad knew what I was going out to do.  Neither of them liked it, but they never said anything to me after the conversation I’d had with my mother.  At about 10:30, Parker and Laura arrived at our house with their girls, my precious nieces.  It was cute how the girls playfully tackled Justin as everyone else got the last things ready for the day’s festivities.

Within the hour, we left home en route to my grandmother’s house a few miles away.  When we arrived, my father’s two sisters, Aunt Lilly and Aunt Deb, were outside talking.  Several children ran around in the yard, and as soon as she could, Heidi joined them.  Heidi and Victoria, my cousin Val’s little girl, were the oldest and seemed to gang up on the others in a playful manner.  The ‘adults’ among us made our way inside as Grandmama was getting things ready and Granddaddy was out back with the men, roasting the pig that we’d later be consuming. 

Val and I sat around and talked for a while as we watched all that was going on.  I knew that she knew about what had happened, but she didn’t say anything for my benefit.  Her husband, Steve, walked around with the rest of the men, drinking his beer as they argued about the perfect temperature to roast the pig.

Val’s sister, Amanda, was the next to arrive.  She was closer to my age than Val, but Val and I had always gotten along famously.

Our cousin Catherine arrived with her boyfriend Nick at around 12:30, making her the next-to-last family member to arrive.

At one, a white SUV pulled into the yard.  Its system was thumping with bass that made the walls of my grandparents’ house rattle.  I excused myself from the cousins and walked to the front porch just in time to see Efran and Noelle climbing from his truck.

Efran took the dish that Noelle had prepared for the dinner as Noelle herself ran down the slightly sloped yard to where I was standing.  It was nothing to grab her up and wrap my arms around her tiny frame as she wrapped her arms around my neck.

Efran walked up as I set her back onto the ground.  He handed the foil-covered dish back to his girlfriend and wrapped his big muscular arms around my neck as well.

“It’s so good to see you’re doing okay, man,” Efran said before we let go.

“Thank you for everything,” I said as I heard the door opening behind me.

“Hey Titi!” Noelle exclaimed as Mom walked out and hugged my cousin.

I’m sure that everyone there was wondering what the big show outside was, but no one said anything to me or to either of them.

The afternoon went along well enough.  For the most part, I just sat in the living room and watched as the people walked around me.  For the moment, I was taken aback by the exhibition of unconditional love that existed among my family.  From my grandparents to my nieces, there was nothing but love and compassion, despite the differences that we all shared with each other, despite the generations, despite the orientations, despite our political alliances.

At around six, we began to eat the pig.  We had all been munching on the goodies all day long, but it was that damned pig that we were really looking forward to.  It was so succulent and tasty that we all engorged ourselves.

By the time we got home at nine (-ish), we were all totally stuffed.  My nieces ended up, after much begging, staying at our house that evening.  I checked the messages on my cell phone as Justin put the girls to bed.  Mom and Dad had already retired to their room.  It had been a long day for them.

“Ryan...  This is Detective Barr with the Tuscaloosa police department.  Please call me as soon as you get this message,” he said before also including what I assumed was his cell phone number.

After listening to and deleting the messages, I grabbed my cell phone and dialed the number he’d left on the machine.  It rang a couple of times before a man answered, a man that sounded as though he were falling asleep.

“Ryan!  Hi.  I’m sorry.  I was sitting in my office, and I must have dozed off,” he said as I heard him shuffling through papers.

“So, what’s going on, Detective?” I asked as I stepped onto the back deck.

“Well...  I’ve got some good news and some not so good news for you.”

“Okay,” I responded, anxiously.

“Well.  The good news is: I know what happened to you.”

“Really?” I asked as I grabbed hold the railing on the back porch, holding on for dear life, as it were.

“Yeah.  I spoke with a man named Kyle Rodgers yesterday.”

“And?”

“He told me that he did follow you back to your place,” the detective started.  “He said that he thought he was following someone to a party and got pissed when he realized that there was no party there.”

“That doesn’t make much sense.  There are never parties at my complex.”

“Well, he said that he saw you walking across the parking lot, and that he climbed out of the car.  He said that he felt like you were lunging toward him.”  I sat down as he continued, “And so that’s why he hit you.”

“Oh, shit.  So it’s true,” I commented.  “I was attacked.”

“He claims that he did it in self-defense,” the detective told me.

Self-defense?  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.  I always feel guilty when I even squash a bug, so to think that someone beat the shit out of me out of self-defense was beyond my comprehension.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I answered as I sat there, a tear finding its way down my cheek.

There was another moment where the silence and tension became so thick they could be cut with a knife.  As I sat there, Justin slipped out onto the deck and sat in the chair beside me.

“From his comment and the comments of other people that I’ve interviewed, though, it doesn’t quite add up,” Rob commented.  Perhaps he was just saying all this to make me feel better, but it wasn’t working.  Fuck things adding up, I was attacked.  My mind was still trying to deal with that revelation.  “Ryan, why don’t I let you go for the evening, and you can call me tomorrow or Wednesday, when you’re feeling up to it.  Okay?”

“Yeah,” I said as I just turned off the phone.  I wasn’t trying to be rude to him, but it was just what happened right then.

“Ryan?” Justin asked after a moment of watching me stare off into the darkness of night ahead of me.  When I didn’t respond right away, he became upset.  “What happened?”

“He…” I started before beginning to bawl like a baby, “... he said it was all in ‘self-defense.’”

“What?” Justin asked in disbelief.

Parker, at some point, had slipped out onto the deck once he realized that we were sitting out there.  He put his hand on my shoulder; I flinched.  I could feel the looks my brothers were giving each other as I sat there, reliving the hell that I’d put myself through since that fateful Sunday morning.  Delta Goodrem’s song “Be Strong” was running through my head.  I don’t know why; perhaps it was to tell me not to do something rash, something that I indeed could have done in that moment, something indefinable and uncertain. 

“Self-fucking-defense,” I managed to say.

“What are you talking about, Ryan?” Parker asked.

“The guy who did this said it was all done in self-defense,” Justin responded.

“No fucking way!” Parker said.  I could feel his heart beating wildly and his level of anger rising.

For the life of me, I still couldn’t see what had happened.  I just felt like it wasn’t all in self-defense.  I would never have done anything, drunk or sober, to bring anyone to that point.

“I’m going to the tree house,” I stated as I stood and walked off the deck into the forest that was our back yard.  I climbed the stairs and went inside, forgetting that I couldn’t stand in parts of the place.  My brothers were following me.  I could feel it.  They didn’t know what I was hiding out there.

“What are you doing?” Parker asked me.

“I’m about to get so fucking blitzed that I forget this night has fucking happened,” I answered as I pulled out the can and, with shaky hands, started filling the pipe with weed.

“Dude.  You’re dropping shit all over the place,” Parker said as he took things from me.  As my hands shook, he packed the weed into the pipe.  Justin was simply standing outside, watching as Parker and I stood inside.  “Aren’t you coming in?” Parker asked Justin.  Justin just looked at both of us and stepped inside.  He opened up a window so that the risk of a contact buzz wouldn’t be as great, since he’d shut the door.

I sat in my ‘smoking chair,’ and, after a moment, Parker handed me the perfectly packed pipe.  I took one hit and then offered it to Justin and Parker, who, for their own reasons, didn’t accept it.

“So, how long have you been smoking?” Justin asked as he and Parker stared at me.

“A few weeks now,” I said just before I began to exhale.

“Every day?” Parker asked.

“No.”

“How often?” he went on.

“Three days a week or so,” I answered as I took the second hit; and since I wasn’t obliged to pass it to anyone, I hoarded all the high for myself.  “Only if things get to me really bad,” I said as I held the hit in my lungs to take full advantage of the euphoric properties.

“Are things really that bad?” Parker asked.  Being a Leo, he always got right to the point.  There was no beating around the bush when my older brother was around.

“Parker...  There are days that knowing that I have weed out here is the only reason I get out of bed.  I mean, I get up most mornings, I go to work; but before I go, I have to come take a hit to get up the nerve just to leave the house.”

“You’re smoking that shit and then driving?” he asked.

“I know it’s stupid.”

“Damn right it’s stupid!” he interjected.

“Please don’t yell, Parker,” I asked as I held the pipe down.

“Sorry,” he responded, quite uncharacteristically for him.

“You could always come to the gym while I’m practicing and work out or something,” Justin suggested, sweetly.

“Yeah.  Or you could write,” Parker went on.  “It’s just that this shit could get you in a lot of trouble, possibly even kill you.  Do Mom and Dad know about it?”

“I don’t know,” I lied, knowing that my brother would become enraged if he knew they were aware and weren’t trying to stop me from my ‘self-destructive’ behavior.

I took a few deep breaths as the silence permeated the room.  I didn’t want to think about anything, but thinking was all I could do.  I wanted so badly just to remember something, anything, to recall an image of what had happened to me.

“Ryan, I know you might not believe it,” Parker started as he sat next to me, “but you are gonna get through this.  I speak both for me and Justin when I say that we’re not going to just let you… slip away.  We’re not going to allow you to lose yourself in all this shit.  You’re smarter than both of us put together, and you will find a way through this.”

“I don’t think that I will ever be okay again,” I commented as I looked up at the ceiling and let the high settle all over me.

“You have to be,” Justin said, his innocence still relatively undisturbed.

“He said that I lured him to my place.”

“Did you?” Parker asked.

“No.  I mean, I’m not that kind of fag,” I said.

“I don’t know,” Justin chimed in with a sly grin.  “You’re pretty faggy.”

“Punk!” I said to my brother as I continued to look up at the ceiling.

“Bitch,” he responded.

“I thought that’s what the Carter kid called you,” Parker added.

My brothers laughed at one another for a second.  I so wanted to join in with them, but I couldn’t.  My mind couldn’t wrap itself around something funny right then.  I took two more hits from the pipe as my brothers laughed at each other.  By then I was more numb than amused by them.

“Ry?” Parker asked when the two noticed I wasn’t joining in.  “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” I answered sedately.

“He’s gone,” Justin commented.

“What would you know about being gone?” Parker asked.

“I’m just saying.  He seems like he’s floating,” Justin argued.

“He does, kinda.  Of course, with his height, you could say that he looks like he’s floating most of the time!” Parker fired back as he and Justin laughed again.

“Come on, Ry.  You have to laugh at us at some point.”

“Maybe in a minute,” I commented as I lifted my head from the ceiling and looked at my brothers.  “I’m sorry for being a downer, but I just wish it was all over.”

“Ry,” Parker started, matter-of-factly.  “It will be over soon enough, and you will have your chance to laugh at that motherfucker when he goes under the jail.”

“Yeah, and Parker and I will be there to make sure that he doesn’t start any more shit with you,” Justin added.

“Gracias,” I softly began to weep a little bit.

“Like I’ve told you before, if you want, I will go to his house and blow his shit into space,” Parker said.

“OOH!” Justin sparked an idea.  “I could tie him up to a chair just past a vaulting table, but close enough so that I wouldn’t hit him or anything.”  Parker and I both looked at my brother.  “Then I could just vault until he got so scared I was going to hit him and he pissed himself.”

“Now there’s an idea,” Parker said.  “See...  Sometimes you’re more than just a dumb jock!” he joked.

“Hello.  Pot calling the kettle black!” Justin shot back at Parker, who’d played football and baseball all through school, worked out, and tried his hardest to sleep with as many girls as possible.

I must have been so far out of things that I didn’t know what I was saying or doing.  I started giggling through the tears.

“What?” Justin asked.

“You said pot!” I giggled.

“God, you’re a dork!” Parker added as he smiled a little bit.

“Yeah,” Justin added.  “The guy who chose swimming ’cause it was easy.”

“Hey,” I joined in the conversation.  “Swimming is hard as hell.”

“I don’t know about that, but there are some swimmers that make me hard as hell,” Justin shook his head.

“You know.  You two are my favorite brothers, but y’all both put so much stress on me as the only sperm donor of the family,” Parker inserted into the conversation.

“I love you guys,” I said as I sat up in the chair and propped my elbows on my knees.

“We love you, too,” Parker said as he put his hands on my back and rubbed up and down.

“And we don’t want anything to happen to you again,” Justin added.

We stayed in the tree house for hours, until just after one in the morning.  My brothers talked me down from the high, a high that might have led me to do something rash in light of what the detective had told me.  I think I’d taken them for granted my entire life.  There had never been a moment when I imagined living life without them around.  I recalled annoying Parker as a child; I remember the day that Justin came home from the hospital and the fact that I was no longer the baby of the family.  I thought about how my life had been enriched by the two of them, my brothers, men who had dealt with their own demons to become the people that they were right then.  I admired their strength; I admired the wisdom and innocence they both possessed.  In short, I was grateful to have them... very, very grateful for the support that both of them were willing to give me, despite their own lives going on all around them. 

To be continued...

Posted: 12/16/11