I had attended only two funerals by that time, and I remembered them clearly. One was my Papaw Reno who had died on my 4th birthday, and I remember strolling beside the casket with my mother. I had not been that emotionally close to Papaw, and being so young I guess I did not have the appreciation I should have had for the loss being felt by my Dad (his son) or by my Mamaw Reno.
I also remember the funeral of toddler William, who was a step, or even a step-step, "cousin" of mine, once or twice removed, and I was about seven years of age at the time. William really was not where he was supposed to be--in that coffin--because he was just an innocent little child who had wandered outside of his house and gone into the adjacent Florida canal and drowned. Nope, he was technically "out of place". But for the scope of this writing he is not "out of place".
Early one Saturday morning in Twilleytown, AL, a small hole in Walker County and the place that I lived, my best friend Teresa came running excitedly up the hill to, and into, my house. "Amber! Amber!" she called. "Come on! There's a dead man down the road!" I was thrown off guard at what I thought she had said. I had not been awake long, and I do not function very well first thing in the morning. Maybe I had not heard her correctly.
"Huh?"
"Get dressed! Let's go...there's a dead man down the road! A man dead sittin' in a car...at the stop sign in a car!" I am already getting dressed--she, grabbing shirt, shoes, etc., and pushing them to me to hurry--as fast as I can trying to absorb what she's saying. But at the same time I was also asking her for details like, "you sure 'bout this?", "how'd you find out?", "is it OK if we go down there?", and "who's the man?". You know, that sort of stuff. I honestly do not remember most of her answers clearly, because I was more focused on the fact that Teresa probably was right about there being a dead man in town. Teresa had the "scoop" on things.
Teresa was always on top of finding out juice on folks--it kind of fell into her ears on a regular basis, sometimes without much effort on her part--and so I gave her information vault the benefit of the doubt. I hurried. As a matter of fact, by then I was feeling a strange, maybe even unnatural, urgency; I gotta' "step it up" before it gets taken away by the hearse or whatever.
Adrenaline-charged, we ran hard. Down the hill from my house, and west toward the day's point of interest. That point was situated inside the fork of the road where our little side road, Twilley Loop, veered onto the main road, Flat Creek Road. The distance from my house was around three or four city blocks' worth, and we were panting. Breathless, not from running, but rather from the excitement over what we were about to see.
Upon our arrival, there were only two or three men standing around a dark green muscle car. The "two or three men" part is really a blur, because at that point a heady sensation had come upon me due to the displaced corpse before me. I am pretty sure that I was pleasantly surprised that there was not a crowd of people there to hinder us. We had this almost all to ourselves! I am also relatively sure that by then I was salivating.
The bystanders were not authority figures, just locals, and they were discussing the situation amongst themselves. They didn't pay much attention to Teresa and me, which was beneficial to us, since we were not bothering to hide how elated we were about this find. We went over to the passenger side window of the car, which is where the dark haired, mustached dead man had ultimately rested his head. We peered into the car, scanned for blood or other "nasty", and saw nothing of the sort. I felt a sense of disappointment over that. I would like to say that I felt a sense of relief at the same time, but I couldn't swear on that last part.
We mashed our faces up to the glass, pressed our hands all over the door, and would have opened the thing if the men hadn't been standing around. I was keen to the fact that we were putting fingerprints all over the car, but my excitement overrode any common sense I had. Besides, I was sure I heard one of the men say that there was no foul play. They said the man had died of carbon monoxide poisoning. That's the first time I had ever heard of that.
Now as an adult, in retrospect, I know this scene had red flags all over it. A lone dead man neatly sitting upright on the passenger side of his car. Possibly a death at the hands of another, or at the very least, a deliberate self-offing.
I really knew we shouldn't have been pawing at the car. I guess though, after we heard the "no foul" thing from the intelligent-sounding bystander, we felt like it was fair game--this car--and we continued to peer through and smear onto the windows to make sure we got a view from every angle.
I do remember being surprised that there weren't a bunch of cops around already, but back in the days before all the social networking tools, it took longer to get authorities on the scene. Nowadays when somebody is found dead on the side of a road, the news spreads like wildfire and local Volunteer Fire Department personnel shows up as the First Responder "authorities" to keep everybody else away from the scene of any possible crime. In this day and age, every dead body gets thoroughly investigated, whether it looks suspicious or not.
But no, not back in the days before the existence of First Responders. So it was a "free for all" here on a Twilleytown morn full of fingerprints and nose-mash spots on a dead man's car window.
The crowd was building up by now, and cars were stopping to check it out. Teresa and I were being displaced by other onlookers. We were losing rank in the rubberneck pecking order. At this point we faced the reality that we could no longer freely fondle the door handles in hopes that one would "accidentally" come open.
Thoroughly edged out now, we backed away from the intrigue; still watching but in a "hands off" mode. The ambulance arrived on the scene. We watched the two ambulance men take out the rigor mortis-ridden corpse. He was paralyzed in the sitting position, and when they placed him on their gurney, they laid him on his side where he remained a frozen sitter. His arms were stuck fast to his sides. His hands were stationed against his thighs in an innocent looking relaxed pose. He had an "I'm going to sleep" look about him.
They pulled the sheet over the dead man.
Teresa and I were through here. Now walking towards home, we didn't go away empty-eared. By the time we two noseys had left the scene, we knew the dead man's name, who his friends were, where he had been the day before, where he worked, and I think what time he had left his girlfriend's house last night. Teresa and I had lot's to talk about for a while, and we were almost exhausted as we walked away from the big hubbub of activity behind us.
This was the beginning of a fairly long stream of dead bodies I would come to encounter in my lifetime, expected and unexpected. This was also the first of many that would induce adrenaline rush. I'll elaborate on that at another time. Reader, please rest assured that I am neither killer nor cannibal nor necrophile.
# # #
I've seen a few too Lane.
ReplyDeleteR