I had a hard time fitting this one into Reddit’s post limits, so part three is going to be coming in two parts. The second part will be linked here when it’s up.
I had a hard time adjusting to my cousin Sandy’s death.
Part of me always blamed myself, still does. I would go to bed repeating the thought that if I had just listened to stupid Jensen and gotten in the stupid car then we would be on our way to the stupid Whispering Village in search of even more candy, and Sandy would have gone home the biggest winner that night with two hundred dollars and a bag full of our candy.
But I hadn’t listened to stupid Jensen. I had been stupid Aggie and I let myself get sidetracked, caught up in some sort of hallucination, and now my cousin was dead. A couple of days after the incident I had managed to convince myself that the clown I saw was a trick of the mind, and that lack of sleep or nerves or stress from planning the perfect Halloween had caused me to go temporarily insane. That would explain why I thought I saw Miss Ransom’s ring on the finger that beckoned me across the street that night. I had had an acute psychotic episode, that was all.
An eight year old with access to WebMD can convince themselves of anything.
Whether I did this to rectify the gaping logical holes in the events of that night, or to give myself a chance to provide a better cover story, I don’t know. Either way, I had pretty much forgotten the clown aspect of the story by the time Christmas rolled around that year. I wish I could have forgotten more of that night.
Holidays after that were never the same. It just so happened that the first major one to come up after Halloween is Thanksgiving.
Fucking brutal it was.
Besides Sandy, Uncle Randall and Aunt Laurie had two kids, a boy and girl. Both were younger than Sandy, his son, now the oldest, a Freshman at one of the local highschools. I don’t think Sandy’s siblings said a single word to anyone that night other than saying yes or no when their parents asked if they wanted a plate. And their parents. When it came to Uncle Randall, I hardly recognized him. The brutish, hard-shelled exterior had vanished overnight and was replaced by a sunken solemnity. He emanated a feeling of resigned hopelessness, you could tell just by looking at him the man was lost in one of the deepest griefs anybody can know. Sandy was his favorite too, his oldest kid and the one he expected the most from. Sandy was set to run Randall’s home HVAC installation company when he retired, it was Randall’s dream to have a Bethesda Family Business passed down over generations. It hurt to see my once strong Uncle cut so low. On the surface, my Aunt Laurie seemed no different. She was a collected and calculated woman, and any crack in the armor would invite pity, and with Randall in the state he was in, pity was the last thing she needed. But if you looked long enough, you would catch her in a moment when she thought nobody was looking, and the mask would come off. I’ve never seen such pain just in someone’s eyes. The twinkle that had illuminated them before was completely gone, replaced by a hollow, soul crushing darkness that went deeper than it should have. I remember wishing in that moment, when I saw the truth of the hurt that my Aunt Laurie was experiencing, that I would have been run over instead. That Sandy had tripped, or gotten a slow start and just missed out on pushing me out of the way. In that moment I would have given my own life to remove what I saw in my Aunt’s eyes.
I would have done anything to take away the guilt I felt.
It took me a long time, but I was eventually able to forgive myself for that night. It took years to understand that it truly was not my fault, and that in the state that I was in, there was absolutely nothing I could have done to change the outcome of the events of that night. It took a long time, but I made it there.
But one detail never stopped bothering me. Why had my Uncle Jeremy been in the passenger seat that night? I still hadn’t told anybody. I had sort of made up my mind not to. Nobody else was close enough to even see that there were two people in the car, let alone that I got a look at them before being pushed. Well, nobody who was still alive to say something about it. No, I knew that the only people who knew about Jeremy’s presence in the car that night were Jeremy himself, that strange figure driving, and me. Some part of me wanted to keep the mystery to myself until I was able to solve it. It was something I could hold onto so that, maybe, if I could at least figure this out, then some of the guilt I felt would leave me be.
I wish every day that I had told the cops immediately.
Jeremy was suspiciously absent from Thanksgiving that year. In my head I decided that he was afraid of my Uncle Randall confronting him, even though Randall would have no reason to and in fact would likely have just leaned on him for support. Nobody had a single reason to suspect Jeremy’s involvement in the accident, and I wanted it to stay that way. I resolved that come Christmas I would have my interrogation ready, and that I would find a way to confront him that would give me the truth, but also show him that I wanted deep down to try and spare him the worst consequences. It felt so horrible at the time, but I was so much closer with my Uncle Jeremy than Sandy. I hate saying it but the thought of him going to jail, or worse, scared me worse than the fact that he was potentially involved in a hit and run. One that almost killed me. The world works differently when you’re eight, and sometimes, even if you know the right thing to do, you can convince yourself that you can do better anyways. I thought I’d find the miracle solution to all the problems of that night when I talked to my Uncle Jeremy. By the time Christmas rolled around I had a yellow legal pad full of ideas and theories and questions that I kept hidden in a special section of my sock drawer. I packed it safely in my backpack, and when we arrived at Gramma’s house I hopped out immediately and scanned for Uncle Jeremy’s car.
But it wasn’t there.
That was alright, he must have ridden with someone else, that happens sometimes. I ran inside, ready to see him sitting in his spot on Gramma’s couch, silver Coors Light can in hand.
But he wasn’t there. And he hadn’t been. Apparently he wasn’t going to be there at all, some sort of horrific stomach virus he caught at work. He couldn’t risk spreading it to us, he said.
I deflated in a manner similar to a hot air balloon struck directly by a thousand birds. Through many wounds and painfully.
It would be almost four years before I saw my Uncle Jeremy again.
The years between our encounters were fairly uneventful, as far as my family goes. Anna, Jensen, Ozzy, and I all graduated from Elementary School and moved on to the great wild west that is middle school. Jensen and I had tried to end up at the same school, but his parents had gotten on some sort of tear about him being behind in classes and needing more rigor in his life, so they enrolled him in one of the stuffy three year conservatory schools instead of a public middle school. Anna, Ozzy, and I however, all lived relatively close to each other, so we all got naturally slotted into the same Middle School. John Seabury Middle, located fifteen minutes from my house by bike. I had gotten on an independence streak the Summer before sixth grade and decided that I didn’t want my mommy to drop me off at school anymore and that I could bike myself there. I spent all summer practicing the route, making sure I knew all the shortcuts in case I left late one day, knowing where all the most dangerous intersections were. I even started to make friends with some of the people I’d regularly encounter on my bike rides.
One of my friends I made that summer that I remember particularly fondly was Meat Market. That wasn’t his actual name, I learned eventually that his name was Jonas Fincher. We called him Meat Market because every morning at eight thirty we could find him sitting in the Meat Market parking lot smoking a cigarette and drinking a tall can out of a paper bag. I say we because, at some point during the summer, Anna decided that she wanted to get in on this whole take yourself to school thing and started biking with me, meeting me at the junction where the streets we lived on intersected. Jensen also tagged along. Despite not going to the same school anymore, we were too close to not hang out so we all made a concerted effort to spend quality time with the three of us. We had developed a pretty tight bond at this point, and our morning bike rides only served to solidify that as we transitioned into the next phase of our lives.
“You kids got summer school or something? Why do I always see you out and about so early in the morning!”
This was my introduction to Meat Market. No introduction. No hi, no hello, just, who are you and why are you not where I expect you to be right now? There was no more perfect way to encapsulate the man.
“No sir, we don’t have school or anything. I go, or well, I’m going to be going to Seabury Middle next year, and I wanted to get some practice on the route I’d have to take to school so it’s easier when the actual time comes.”
I don’t know why I felt the need to explain myself to this man. Maybe it was the blunt tone he used, or the way he looked at you as if answering his question wasn’t an option. Or at least not an option you wanted to seriously entertain.
“Hmmm. Smart kid. I like you. You’ve got a look that says you’re smart.” He looked at Anna and Jensen. “The other two, not so much. But hey, too many cooks right?” He punctuated his bit of philosophy with a swig from his drink and a dry raspy laugh, the result of the cigarettes most likely.
“Hey who the f-” I shot Jensen a glance that killed his sentence mid stream. He had developed a habit of responding to situations with aggression, even if that might not be the best option for his physical well being. I quickly turned and shouted, hoping to cover for my friends’ almost insult.
“We all do well sir. Jensen here graduated top of our fifth grade math class.” I said with an air of confidence I didn’t really have. I did feel angry at him for making fun of my friends without even knowing their names.
“Well I’ll be damned. Congratulations, Jensen! Do you want a cookie or something? Here, I think I have a cigarette you could bum. I’ll even light it for you.” Meat Market extended a hand which held a cigarette pack, one sticking out higher than the rest. Jensen looked at me almost confused, as if expecting some sort of last minute bait and switch. Before Meat Market could enact any plan he had, I quickly feigned receiving a phone call from my mom. We said sorry but we had to leave and quickly pedaled back in the direction we came, completely forgetting the purpose of our ride.
Despite the prickly first encounter we had with him, Meat Market proved to be one of the better friends we made that summer. Once we realized that his animosity was genuinely how he showed affection, we began to appreciate the strange but sage nuggets of wisdom he could offer. We found out that he was some sort of lawyer in a downtown office, but that he lived two blocks from the Meat Market, so before work every day he would stop and do what he called his, “Nascar Grab N’ Dash”. Two jerky sticks, a pack of Marlboro Reds, and the drink that we learned was a tallboy of Monster Energy. Every morning he would sit on that stoop and drink his energy drink and smoke his cigarettes and eat his jerky, and every day we’d stop by and hear about the cases he was working on or we’d tell him about what summer reading we were working on that week. He always took great joy in knowing that we were actively involved and engaged in our schoolwork, and spoke often of how important it was that we kept at it and stayed in school. Meat Market became a genuine symbol to us, a symbol that marked our real transition into the adult world. Jensen and I even took him up on that cigarette offer one day. Anna wasn’t there, I think she was sick, but Jensen and I still wanted to do our ride. Meat Market must have had some weird notion about girls smoking, so when he saw it was just us, he offered two of his prized Marlboro Reds to us.
I hated it and stopped immediately. Jensen got about five puffs in before he had to lay down and put the thing out. Meat Market started laughing when Jensen started to say that he might throw up.
“I told you to take it easy! They’re called cowboy killers for a reason.”
I never smoked again after that, but every so often I’d catch Jensen in the backyard of a hangout, or under the bleachers at school after he eventually convinced his parents that he would actually try to do worse if they didn’t switch him into Seabury. I never said anything, I don’t think he wanted people to know. As far as I know he quit once we got to highschool.
Eventually, my morning bike rides became fully mine again. Jensen was the first to drop out, deciding that he didn’t mind being driven to school if it meant that he didn’t have to work up a sweat before first period. Anna hung on a little longer, but during the school year she started to get sick a lot, so she fell out of the habit between days off school and days of being too weak to bike.
So eventually the morning chats with Meat Market turned into one on one sessions.
I genuinely learned a lot talking to Meat Market, and he gave me some of the most wise advice I’ve ever heard in my life to this day. One of the conversations we had changed the way I view life to this day. I remember that I was all messed up one morning about some girl I had a crush on. I was trying to work up the courage to be able to ask her out but I just couldn’t get myself to do it.
“I mean, it’s just so damn scary. I’m basically throwing myself out there with a fifty percent chance of completely failing. It just feels like such a pointless thing to do.” I put my head in my hands and stared at the asphalt. “I just don’t want to feel like a failure.”
“Hey. Stop that.”
“I know, I know. Self pity smells shitty but I can’t help it-”
“No. Not that. Although you’re right, stop that too. But I mean stop with that mindset, it’s nonsense.”
I didn’t understand what he meant. How could a fear of failure equate to nonsense, there was a very real sense of failure actively facing me if I asked her out on a date. I told him I didn’t understand.
“Okay first answer this for me. What is your desired end goal of asking her out?”“Uhh, for us to go out?”“On a date?”
“Yeah I guess on a date.”
“Okay. Good. So, failure in this case means that the end result would be you not going on a date with her, right?”
“I mean, yeah that’s kind of how I’m looking at it.”
“Okay. So if the end result being no date is failure, then answer this. What is the end result of you not asking her?”
It took me a second, but I got there.
“I guess, it would be that, since we’re not going out, it’s already a failure.”
“Exactly! As of right now, your chances of failure are at one hundred percent.”
I frowned. He had lost me. The idea of one hundred percent chance of failure just made me feel worse. He sensed this, and quickly corrected his course.
“But let me finish. What I was saying was, if you don’t ask her, failure is guaranteed. By asking her, suddenly it’s fifty fifty, she could say yes she could say no, but now there’s options! What was a sure thing suddenly isn’t so sure anymore. And so what if she says no, that’s already what’s gonna happen if you don’t ask her. So just go for it and live knowing that at least you gave yourself the chance to succeed, instead of only giving yourself the chance to fail.”
I was speechless. He was right, Meat Market had flipped my viewpoint on its head. All of a sudden choice and potential and uncertainty took on a new beauty to me. I relished these moments with Meat Market, savoring every conversation with him for each drop of knowledge. I remember that conversation we had like it was yesterday.
I only saw Meat Market a couple more times after that. By now it was February of my seventh grade year, coming up on Valentine’s Day. The last conversation he and I ever had was Friday the 10th. I remember because it was the Friday before a Tuesday Valentine’s Day. The girl from before, Serene Tuttle, and I had started talking a little bit more regularly, and I owed a lot to Meat Market. It was because of his advice that I even asked her out in the first place. I almost had a heart attack when she said yes, and the smile on Meat Market’s face the next day was so wide I swear he almost ripped the corners of his mouth. At this point in time though, things weren’t so good. There was a huge field trip coming up that all seventh graders at my school went on where they loaded us up onto a couple buses and took us away to a camp in the middle of the woods for three days. This year it would fall on Sunday the 12th and run through Tuesday the 14th, Valentine’s Day. We were supposed to be back before the school day was over on Valentine’s, ruining any parent’s hopes at a romantic eve without their kids. It was almost cruel, sending us back right at that time. Giving our parents hope just to dash it all away.
Meanwhile, Serene was dashing any hopes I had when she spoke to me the Thursday before we left for the trip.
“She said that it wasn’t a mistake. That she hadn’t put my name down because she didn’t want to bunk with me. I mean what the fuck, like, I’m mad that she did that but I’m more mad that she didn’t tell me like now I’m stuck with Stinky Steve Rankins and Martin “Been Fartin” Lattimore. Our cabin is going to smell like wet BO and literal ass. One simple text and I’m rooming with Ozzy and Jensen instead. It’s like she wanted to punish me, and I don’t even think I did anything! It’s been like three weeks. How could I have managed to piss her off that much in such a short span of time?”
I looked at Meat Market expectantly, he usually had the answer for these types of situations but was staying unusually quiet.
“What do you think? I mean you usually have the magic answer, you have every time so far. So tell me what do I do? How do I know what she wants?”
“Even Jesus himself wouldn’t have that answer for you. Now I can help you talk to women, I can even help you get a girlfriend if you really listen. But I’m not a mind reader, and that sounds like what you need.” He seemed tired, more so than usual. “Listen, I know how you’re feeling. It’s a rough spot to be in, not knowing where you stand. But I’ll tell you what. You’re smart enough to pick up what she’s putting down, so pick it up and consider yourself lucky. Some guys don’t get as much as enough time to blink before they find out they’re no longer with a partner. What’s meant to be will come back anyway, so there’s no need to worry.” He closed his eyes, leaned back, and took a long, slow drag of his cigarette.
As usual, Meat Market was right. He had said just the right words to make me understand that no matter the outcome, I had to accept it for what it was and move on. Appreciate the advantages I had already had, and try to do better next time. No use dwelling on the past when you’ve got a whole future ahead of you.
“Listen, kid. I’ve got something I’ve gotta tell you.”
I turned, confused. Was Meat Market dying? The tone in his voice was concerning, but not quite enough to really scare me.
“You know how I’m a lawyer, and sometimes my clients need me for special services. Well I got a job working on retainer for a big big big guy out in Silicon Valley. Basically means I’ll be his live-in lawyer.”
I was happy for Meat Market. I told him as much before I realized why he had told me.
“Oh.”
“Yeah kiddo, I’m sorry. I hate to break it to you this way, in the middle of a time like this too.” He sounded genuinely sad to have to leave. “Hey, don’t feel bad though. You’re a smart kid, you don’t need an old loser like me filling your head with inane ideas. Go live your life, I’m sure you’ll do just fine.”
The thought of a morning without Meat Market was almost scary to me. He had become such a fixture, such a fountain of knowledge that imagining my life without his anecdotes and mental gems was almost impossible.
“There’s a lot of people who are gonna tell you what to do in this world, kid. The only person who can decide which of them wins is you. Make sure you do the best you can at picking the right one.”
“I will.” I tried to pack enough meaning into those words to show Meat Market how much of an impact he had had on me.
“Good.” He lit another cigarette, and went back to staring at the people across the street eating breakfast in some street side cafe. I gathered my things, and biked the last ten minutes to school. Bracing myself for the conversation I would have to have with Serene.
I didn’t get the chance until Sunday when, as luck would have it, Serene and I ended up being assigned bus seat partners. It was 5:30 in the morning when we loaded up, with plans to leave at six for the long drive ahead of us.