Chapters Forty-Six to Fifty-One (End)

Chapter Forty-Six

“227 Duke, violent psych possibly armed,” the dispatch said.

“That’s Fred’s house,” I said.

“If that’s Fred and he’s armed, I’m not getting near it. That boy’s sick and he’s not taking me with him,” Tom said.

“He’s just upset about his brother and he’s probably drunk. It’s just around the corner. I’ll go in and talk to him.”

“I’m staying in the ambulance and we’re staying around the corner until the cops say it’s clear.”

“Fine.”

“Hey, where are you going?” Tom shouted as I went out the door. “You’re as crazy as he is.”

I knew Fred and I knew the cops, and that was a bad combination. The cops hated Fred because Fred wanted to be like them but wasn’t. I ran through the back yard and out onto Fred’s street. I could hear the sirens in the distance. I looked to my left and saw Tom, instead of staying where we’d been had come around the corner and was waving at me to get back in the ambulance. I saw Fred’s car in the drive and the light on up in his room, so I went right up the stairs. Fred had been terribly moody and angry since he came back from Germany.

The door was open. Fred had a revolver in his mouth. He sat at the kitchen table.

“Don’t!” I said.

He looked up at me with eyes I not seen before. There were wild and scared.

“Give me the gun. Give it to me now. The cops are coming. Man, what are you doing?”

He took the gun out of his mouth and very slowly pointed it at me. “How about I blow your face up?” he said. “How many people’s faces should I mess up before we can get a law passed allowing people who want to die to die? How about I just start messing up everyone’s faces. Pow! Pow! Pow! Maybe then we get a movement.”

I held my hands up. “Fred, come on.”

Behind him I could see the history channel was on TV, Allied planes dropping bombs on Germany.

“Fred, your brother wouldn’t want this. I know your upset, but we can get someone to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk to anyone.”

I glanced to the window and saw the lights of the police cruisers. The shades were open. I went right to the window and pulled them down. I didn’t think Fred would shoot me, but if the cops saw him holding a gun on me, he’d catch a sniper shot between the eyes. That was for sure.

“You shouldn’t be moving around when I’ve gun pointed at you,” Fred said.

“You shouldn’t be pointing a gun at me. Now give it, give it here.” I walked right towards him. His hands were shaking. “Give it up. There’s a better way to handle this.”

Suddenly he pointed the gun at his temple. I kept walking right at him. Fred wasn’t the smartest guy and I didn’t think he’d have time to think out what to do. Besides if he really wanted to kill himself, he would have done it.

I reached him, reached up for the gun and he let me take it. I put it in the side leg pocket of my work pants. I put my arm around him, and he laid his head on my shoulder and cried. “It’s all right,” I said. “It’s all right.”

“It’s not fucking fair,” he cried. “It isn’t right.”

“It’s all right. It’s all right.”

“He and I should be out drinking beer....”

“Look we’ve got to take you in. I can’t leave you here, but we’re going to get someone to talk to you.”

“I don’t want anyone to see me.”

“Look, here.” I took off my EMT jacket and had him put it on. “You still have to come in, but just follow me.”

We walked out together. They had cops behind cars with rifles pointed at us. We held our hands up, and the cops frisked Fred. I told them he had admitted he was distraught over his brother’s death, and was coming voluntarily. I knew I was treading on thin ice, but I didn’t want Fred to be branded as a freak. I knew he was just upset by grief, and maybe the antidepressants he was on were fucking with him. He liked women and beer too much to want to off himself. I wanted to protect his reputation as much as I could.

I rode with him on the way in. At the hospital, he and Tom stood at the triage desk just like two EMTs. You’d never know he was a patient. I told the triage nurse he was distraught and had threatened suicide, but was willing to talk to someone. She nodded, and instead of putting him in the pschy unit, got him a private ER room. A couple hours later we took him over to the IOL.

“What’s in your leg pocket?” Tom asked when we came out of the institute.

“Nothing,” I said.

“It doesn’t look like nothing.”

“Drive over to East Hartford,” I said.

“What?”

“Don’t clear, just do it.”

Something in the way I said it, made him follow my directions. I had him stop on the bridge over the Connecticut River. I got out and went over to the side. I waited until no cars were approaching, then took the gun out and dropped it down into the river below.

Tom looked at me when I got back in.

“I may underestimate you,” he said.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Carrie called me. It was late at night. I wasn’t usually home till after midnight, but since I had spent the day volunteering at the homeless shelter, I had gone home at ten, and was about ready to turn the light out.

“You’re home?” she said.

“Ye-ah, this is where I live.”

“What are you doing tonight?”

“Going to bed. Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I was just calling to see what you were up to.”

I could tell from her voice she’d had a couple glasses of wine, not drunk, but not sober either, not that she ever was at this time of night. It occurred to me that maybe she was calling me because her plans had fallen through, and it was getting late and she didn’t want to be alone.

“I haven’t talked to you for awhile. Everything okay?”

“Yeah, sure dandy,” she said, sounding a little annoyed, like she wanted to say, “All right? I’m calling you at ten at night, drunk because I’m lonely and not happy.”

“Good, glad to hear it.”

“You want to come over?” Her voice cracked a little, and that crack went like an arrow right into my heart. She wanted me.

Don’t do it, my brain said. Don’t even think about it, but my heart said, don’t listen to him, she needs you, she’s learned that, all that cheap sex she doesn’t want it, it’s not what she needs. She needs someone who cares, someone who understands the pilgrim soul in her, a decent man. That decent man is you. And then my dick piped in. Whoa dude, remember me. What are you nuts? Within a half hour, I’ll be kissing her cervix. Don’t exercise me, I’ll grow soft and flabby and shrink like all those old men’s penius’s in the nursing homes. I’m out of shape. Boot camp calls. Let me work it. Yeah, let’s work it.

Two against one.

“Okay,” I said. “I can come over and talk.”

Chapter Forty-Eight

Instead of pulling my mouth to her opening mouth and plunging tongue, she just hugged me, hugged me and then led me in by the hand. She sat me down beside her on the couch, and said, “I’m so glad you could come over. I’ve missed you.”

When I said nothing, she said, “I’ve really, really missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” I said, as non-committably as I could.

She started sobbing. She leaned her head on my shoulder and sobbed uncontrollably. I held her, held her while she cried. I patted her back. She kissed my neck, but I did not submit. Not yet.

“It’s just, it’s just been so hard,” she said. “There are a lot of jerks in this world. I don’t know why they are all attracted to me.”

I felt like saying, gee, I suppose you include me in this company. Maybe she felt me stiffen a little, then she laughed and said, “Not you of course. You the only one who’s ever really cared, ever really treated me right. It’s not like you just want to fuck me.” She laughed again as she wiped her eyes. “Not that you don’t mind it.”

“It’s is a perk of seeing you,” I said.

We both laughed, and she wiped another tear, then she locked onto me with her eyes, locked on and stared and I was caught. She reached around to the back of my neck and slowly pulled my mouth toward hers, and then we were going at it, our tongues wild for each other, her hand held my wrist so my hand was rubbing her breast, then she tugged at my belt and we were back half on the floor half on the Ottoman, and she was grunting and groaning and I was doing some of the same.

We fucked that night like we had not fucked in years. I had not even taken a Viagra, but it did not matter. My pent up lust was natural and I performed at the peak of my powers. She did not take her eyes off me.

That night I lay next to her, listening to her snore. I was not certain what I felt. It was good to be back with a woman at my side, but I feared after the novelty of reuniting was worn off, we would fall right back into the same old patterns. I wondered if people could really change. If you were selfish, you would always be selfish. If you were hateful, you would hateful. If you were easily deceived, wanting to believe the best, would you ever change. If you were without backbone, would you ever grow one. And if at heart, you just wanted people to be happy and loved, would you ever find it yourself.

I did not know where we were going, but at least for that night, I was less alone.

Chapter Forty-Nine

“I don’t believe you,” Tom said, the next morning. “I just do not believe you.”

“What?”

“You horny little dog.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your neck is covered with hickeys again.”

“So, what if it is?”

“You are a glutton for punishment.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I’m going to take you to ADRC. Put you through rehab. See if we can’t get you dried out altogether. You looked like you had gone straight, but I could see it, I could see the little shakes and twitches behind your alter boy persona of these last week’s. You’re a junkie, a junkie for that chick’s evil hoodoo. We’ve got to set you straight. Either that or buy you some chains so you can keep her caged in. Hell maybe you ought to marry her, that way you’ll always have it to come home too, but then again, I don’t know if you can domesticate those kinds of urges.”

I just tried to ignore him. Though the truth was I knew that I needed some kind of answer, some kind of solution to the Carrie situation. I spent my life living day to day and I knew I needed a longer-term outlook. I had to make a break one way or the other.

“463, 220 Capen Street for the unknown,” came over the radio. “Possible welfare check.”

“220 Capen,” Tom said. “Your lady friend. We haven’t heard from her for awhile. Were you on the outs with her too? This is turning into reunion week for you.”

As we pulled up, we could see the pile of newspapers at the door, five days worth. The mail man, who met us out front, said he had called. “She hasn’t picked up her mail this week. I almost called yesterday. It’s not like she hasn’t let a few days slide in the past, but I’ve never seen her go this long. Usually the visiting nurse brings it in. I don’t know why she hasn’t. Maybe she went out of town. It’s just unusual.”

Tom and I looked at each other. “You first,” he said. “If she’s home, one way or another, it’s going to be stinky.”

We went in through the back door. The house always had a musty aged smell to it. Miss Broadbent and her health aides didn’t always clean up after her dog. The air today was heavier with a hint of a familiar rotting smell. The closer we got to the stairs, the more pronounced it became. “I better get the monitor,” Tom said.

If that was her, he was right, all that we would need was a six second strip and to write down the time.

I started up the stairs. Smells didn’t affect me like they did Tom. He was a great paramedic and fearless, but he had a weak stomach when it came to dead bodies. He carried around Vick’s crème in his bag that he sometimes put under his lip to ward off the smell. I just tried not to breath through my nose. Upstairs, even I had a hard time with it. I looked in the bedroom. She wasn’t in the bed. The bathroom door was open. I glance in. There she was.

She looked like she’d fallen off the throne some time before. She was leaned up against the radiator, which was slowly baking the flesh off her. It looked like the dog had eaten some of her leg. It was dark raw and ripped open. She’d had to have been dead five days. Her body was swollen with gas, and if I hadn’t known she was white, I would have thought she was black.

“You find her,” Tom called from downstairs. Then I heard him gag. I heard him heave, and then swear.

“Yeah, I found her,” I said.

“Do I need to come up?”

“No. You don’t even need a run a strip. She’s long gone.”

“Fuck, I’m going outside. And I heard him retch again.”

I stood there looking at her, thinking how sad it was what our lives come to, what her life and all the dreams she’d once had had come to – this, rotting alone in a bathroom, being nibbled on by your own dog, no family or friends to look after you. I wondered why the visiting nurse of home health aide, hadn’t found her sooner. Maybe they’d thought she was out of town too when they knocked and no one came to the door. It was a shame.

I thought about how her family had come to the end of its line. I looked down and saw the dog standing next to me, looking in at her too. I thought about giving him a good kick, but then I thought, a dog like a person has to eat, has to do what it has to do to get along, to survive.

That was when a gleam caught my eye. It came from under the radiator. I went in and got down on my knees and looked. I knew what it was. It was her ring, her diamond ring. It must have fallen off her skinny finger when she died, and rolled under the radiator.

I reached down and picked it up. It was a beautiful ring. I imagined how she must have felt when she first received it. A ring like that had seen a lot itself, from the day it was clinked out of a wall in some South African mine. It had arrived at her house and glimpsed a young beauty, and then every day had seen her slowly age, and now rot. I wondered where it would go now, and if it would ever see the face of another young woman, and then it dawned on me.

The ring had been a curse to her. She’d be etter off without it up in heaven, where she could be free to find a new man. And the ring, maybe it needed a new start to, a new chance to delivere on its promise. Plus, it was a big diamond took big to go back in the earth. She had no family, no one to pass it on too.

I put it in my pocket. Who the hell would ever know?

“She good and dead?” Tom said.

I nodded.

“So what do I write.”

“Found pulseless, and apneic in advanced state of decomposition.”

“Advanced state of decomposition. That works for me.”

I was quiet most of the rest of the night.

“My condolences,” Tom said.

“For what?”

“For your grief.”

“My grief.”

“On the passing of your old gal. Don’t fret too much. There are plenty of other old ladies out there who I’m sure would like the companionship of a younger man, someone to pick them up when they fall, wipe the shit off their butts.”

I just looked out the window, much more serious thoughts on my mind.

Chapter Fifty

I looked at myself in the mirror. I was twenty-six years old, but I felt forty. In two years on the road I had seen people at their best and their worst. I knew that death waited for all, from the lone man in the nursing home to the crying baby birthed on the bathroom floor. It might take awhile to get the baby, but it would get all of us in the end. It could be as sudden as a bullet to the brain or as slow as a metastizing cancer or steady decline of Alzheimer’s. I had no doubt that someday I would too, would be in a nursing home, left to die an undignified death. I just hoped I wouldn’t have to suffer, wouldn’t have to lay paralyzed in a stroked out crippled body, unable to speak or move, but fully aware of the hell around me. The question was what kind of life would you have in the meantime?

I was no Superman, that was for sure. No George Washington, Abraham Lincoln or Mahatma Gandhi. No Mother Teresa.

And in the looks department I was hot shot either. My mother told me I was handsome. No girl ever did. Two years back I would never have imagined I would have had the kind of relationship with Carrie I did. Never imagined that sex could be so consuming, not the emotional turmoil so great.

I was who I was. I had as I mentioned started going back to church, but would not have been surprised should I be struck by a car killed that I would find myself directed southbound when I came to the great junction on that death road. Sorry, buddy, not every one gets to head north, and you, ah hem, you have some stains on your record, though I do note a few stars.

And if God were to appear before me or his son Jesus and ask me to explain my life, I would simply tell them I was prepared to accept whatever punishment or tender mercies that had in mind for me.

Yes, I stole a diamond ring off the finger of a dead woman, but it was a ring that had fallen off on its own, and I had after all, taken care of the woman who had owned it, and in a way, I may have been the closest living person she had had left as a sort of family. I believe that she wanted the best for me.

I stood on Carrie’s doorway and rang the bell. When she opened the door, I could smell her lasagna and the marinara sauce that came from a recipe of her mother’s. I had asked her to cook dinner for us, and she had agreed on the condition I do all the dishes. She wasn’t a bad cook, but she had never learned to clean the kitchen as she went. I on most occasions preferred to go out, even if it cost me money, just because it took so long to clean up the kitchen after she had cooked.

I wouldn’t go through again, our love administrations, played out so many times before, against the ottoman, on the carpet, and against the couch, and who did what to whom. Suffice to say we sat naked at the dinner table, eating our lasagna, which was quite good, while Carrie finished off the bottle of wine and started another. I only sipped at mine. I wanted to keep my head clear, make certain of my intentions, and make certain that I saw clearly what I was about to do.

After a dessert of strawberries and brownies, which we ate on the couch while watching a Chris Rock video that had Carrie in hysterics, I drew her a hot bath, and massaged her back. She was starting to get horny again, but I asked her to wait, to show patience. I had brought a candle and it gave a red glow and nice scent to the bathroom. I excused myself a minute and came back with my hand behind my back. While she asked me what I held, I knelt before the tube and looked her over in all her large warm nakedness.

“I want to ask you something, but I want you to think it over. You don’t need to answer right now.”

“What?”

“Wait a minute, I have a little speech I have prepared.”

“You’re not going to ask me something kinky are you?”

“No, no. Just relax and listen. I’ve been thinking about this for some time, and I’m just saying I want you to think about it as well. I don’t need an answer right now.”

She was looking at me like what kind of trick question was I going to ask her.
“Like I said, I don’t need an answer now,” I told Carrie, “But I’d like you to try this on.”

And I pulled out the ring, and slipped it on her finger as she held her stunned hand out, her mouth wide open.

“My God,” she said.

“Carrie, I’d like to you to make an honest man out of me. Will you marry me.” And I was shaking like a boy asking for his first kiss.

“Oh, Tim,” she said, “I don’t know what to say.” She looked at me, and her face changed completely, and I saw tears come from her eyes, and she reached for my neck and hugged me to her, hugged me like I was a teddy bear she would hold onto forever. “No, I do know. Yes, yes, I will. I will,” she said.

Later, after we had made love in her bed, a long slow love with her looking at me like I was a new man, and she rolled on her back and stared at that ring on her finger, she said, “Where did you ever get the money?”

I hesitated a moment, and then said, “Some things are best kept secret. I have been working a lot of hours.”

“I never thought anyone would marry me, that anyone would ever want to actually marry me. I’m a bitch you know, and yet you still want to marry me.”

“I do,” I said, though I felt a little trepidation like maybe I had forgotten something I should have remembered.

She just stared at that rock like all her luck was changed for the better. And I wondered what I had gone and done.

Chapter Fifty-One

I would like to say that we lived happily ever after, that fate had meant for me to see the glint of that ring under the radiator, and to put it in my pocket, and to take it home with me, and place it on the finger of a good woman, who would become my bride, the mother of my children, and fire and light of my life. I remember how that night Carrie looked at the ring with such hopeful eyes, as if she were seeing in the ring uncomplicated love, children and a happy old age in a nice house surrounded by a fence, she saw a world that was fair and just, one that brought love to every little girl no matter how damaged or cold or cynical they had become.

We were married three months later in a small ceremony at Cheffries Lake side up in Windsor. We had family and a few friends. My mom, my sister, they even let my Dad out of jail to come attend, though he and my mom sat at different tables. Carrie’s mom was there and she got drunk, but Carrie was too drunk herself to notice. It was a nice deal. I rented a tuxedo just like the one I had rented the first night we went out. We had the same limo driver. I invited a few friends, Fred, who was able to get permission for a day release from the Institute of Living, and Tom were there. Fred was my best man, and made a nice toast how I was the kind of guy who would give the shirt off his back to anyone who asked. Fred and Tom, like most everyone else, had their share of beers. I had a few myself. I figured what the hell. A wedding is supposed to be a celebration. Fred ended up taking off all his clothes and jumping in the lake. They had to call the fire department to get him off the fountain. It was quite a party.

For a honeymoon we went to the Bahamas. They had a nice charter than ran out of Hartford, flew you right down there, where ten minutes after landing you were walking into the resort and they were handing you a Bahama Mama – a drink we had plenty of in the four days we were there. We’d sleep late, eat the breakfast buffet and head to the beach, a short ten minute bus ride, where we’d lay on the sand and drink. A native woman braided Carrie’s hair for her and I admit it looked very sexy on her. We’d go back to the resort around five, drink more Bahama Mamas hanging out around the pool and volcano shaped Jacuzzi. Later we’d go to the casino where we played slots and had a game where you dropped fifty cents in the machine and bet on these mechanical horses that raced around the track. The waitresses brought us free drinks as long as we were gambling.

Back in Connecticut, I moved in with Carrie and predictably I guess we had our quarrels. It was harder for me to storm out not having anyone where to go. I worked a lot, probably too much, but I was determined to pay off the credit card debt she had accumulated along with the bills from the wedding and our honeymoon.

I was used to working and could easily lose my own problems in those of others. When you work the ambulance enough, when you see the sun rise, and the sun set, when you see the changing seasons, spring, summer, fall, and finally winter, all from behind the windshield of an ambulance, when you see babies born, and so many people die, when you know every road and street and apartment and restaurant and building and back alley and highway, when the work is a part of you, you almost stop being a person, and become a part of the city, a part of the rhythm of life. There is a comfort in that, a comfort I came to seek. Seeing the hurt in so many others tends to dull your own.

You probably saw the end before I did, though I would not be so foolish as to not have imagined it when considering the possibilities. We are who we are. Carrie was who she was. I rehurt my shoulder one night, and arrived home early without calling. I heard the sounds before knocking. I went sat up on a hill overlooking our apartment. The moon was full that night, and the autumn air was crisp. You could breathe in and your lungs liked it. Though my life was not what I would have wanted, I was at least happy to be alive to have my senses. I waited until her company had left, then I waited an hour more, before I came down the hill.

She was in good spirits that night, acted happy to see me. She had a cold beer waiting for me, and a frozen pizza, cooking in the oven. She never even saw me take the pills they’d given me for my shoulder pain. After I showered, we got in bed, and she took care of me, as I looked up at the ceiling, thinking about what I was going to do with my life. She curled her back up against my side and wished me good night. I saw her looking again at the ring as she always did at night. She saw that ring and felt like she had made it in the world. I saw that ring now and just smelled a dead old person.

Carrie and I separated after a year of marriage. I still work the ambulance, but I don’t steal anymore.

Looking back on everything that happened, I guess it would be all too easy to blame my whole sorry episode on my influences, on the people around me. Maybe I was intoxicated by the power I had -- the ability to take people’s money and possessions without repercussion. But the truth is it isn’t hard to look inside yourself and to know right from wrong. I had done wrong and I regretted it.

Some nights now when I sit up in the darkness and listen to Dvorak’s New World Symphony, I wonder what will happened to me. They tell you, if you work hard enough and you believe in yourself, you can grow up to be anything. A doctor, a lawyer, a fireman, a baseball player, a soldier, or even President of the whole country. And what’s better is that even if you fail, this is a country that will offer you a second chance, many people have picked them selves out of the dirt and gone on the Oprah Winfrey show to celebrate their recovery and triumph. Yet I look around and I see so much sadness. It seems to me that we are an imperfect people, many blinded in our intentions, ruled by desires, and rarely satisfied to just perservere.

I know I will never be anyone great, but I just want to be somebody good, someone who can make a difference in people’s lives in my own small way. At work now I ride the transfer car. It’s not a bad gig -- 9-5 Monday through Friday -- running dialysis patients and people back and forth from the hospital and the nursing home. We get to see the same people over and over again, and get to know them pretty well. We exchange Christmas and birthday gifts. Some of the patients, who still live at home, will bake us cookies or have their spouses make us hot chocolate on cold days. We have attended more than one funeral of departed friends.

I go to the community college at night.



-The End-