As soft as a mother reading a bedtime story to a sleepy baby, she softly replied, “Come, we need to talk.” She took a deep breath and began, she explained from the start. From finding out we were visiting Dad’s car to why the tow truck owner wanted to talk and where and how she found the jacket. Sure it was hard not to butt in and ask a thousand questions but I was at the edge of my chair hanging on to every word. For every time she said something, it was more important than before.
No matter how many questions I had or even tried to ask, not any one of them could have been as important as what she was saying. She explained the details of each witness who had all seen the same guy doing the same thing; leaving the car that hit Dad with a heavy jacket on and then moments later running from Dad’s car with just a tee shirt on. Which left me instantly with the same thought Treasure had. What did he know, what did he see, could he have helped or could he have taken my dad’s life. Either way, these were questions that we just couldn’t leave unanswered.
So we started with the jacket, we looked for names on the inside and we only saw (HAMMER), we knew that had to be a nickname and the football patches showed he was a seasoned player but the school colors were way too flashy for our small town. With little help from the local police and little help from the town, we were seeing our dream of finding out anything slowly slipping away. The local police called it an open-and-shut-case of DWI where two men lost their lives, end of story. And when we brought up the jacket and the sighting of a stranger, they all said the same thing, find him and we will question him, until then we have nothing, and as far as the jacket was concerned, they said it had no reflection on the cause of the crash.
Everywhere we turned after that showed us just how past the wreck the town had become. The town that stuck together while I was a child seemed to just become cold and emotionless. We asked so many people and bothered so many people that even going to town was getting harder for us, from being stared at to being avoided, it was clear we were the crazy ladies in town. Except for my girls, they had my back and thank GOD for that because over the next year I was really gonna need them, in a big way we would need each other.
After it was clear we weren’t getting anywhere on our own, Treasure decided to put the jacket in the closet and told us to take some time and let things settle down. She returned to her daily routine work and gym, and I wanted to help her normalize her life as much as I could, so the girls and I never spoke of the wreck, Dad, or the jacket in front of her. But I knew acting normal wasn’t gonna hold up because her heart was hurt too bad, she grieved and was so lonely she would sleep in Dad’s old shirts and I would catch her looking at the jacket hoping for a clue to what happened that night.
Chapter 5
Another Loss
We both had hurt so much that I tried to be strong for me and her. I would run to town for her and I would leave the house for her and I guess I never saw that the more I helped her, the more shut away she became. Soon she turned into a ghost in her own life, she just went to work and home. The gym stopped, the walks in the park stopped, hair pulled up instead of fixed, then little makeup went to no makeup at all. I never realized she was slipping away as I became more involved in school. The group and I were balancing out and the more Treasure’s life was falling apart, my life was finally coming together. When you promise someone you will always be there for them you never really know the depth to that promise. We made that promise and it wasn’t till it was too late that we saw we failed at that promise. When you love someone and you see them slipping away from the normal and you don’t step in and help them get back on track, it’s that moment then that you failed them.
Watching them act out of character and you going on in your own life as if nothing is wrong only makes them feel more normal in the chaos that has taken over their life. If I would have known my acting normal contributed to Treasure’s downfall I would have stepped in long before it got so bad. People deal with the loss of a love one in their own way and I lost two parents so that loss is hard but I could not imagine the loss of a boyfriend or husband because days turned into months and her health deteriorated so fast that I had never realized she was hurting by being alone and missing Dad. I never thought anything of it when the girls dropped me off from school that evening, seeing Treasure’s SUV home that early wasn’t a surprise so I grabbed the door, not even reaching for my key, thinking with her being home the door would be opened. But I felt the door was locked as I had left it that morning. I dropped my stuff in the little chair as I walked in, emptied my arm, and called for Treasure in a loud voice. Only paused to hear the noise coming from her room, not knowing if it was music or her alarm clock, it was so loud it was clear she would not hear me so I ran upstairs calling her name over and over.
I reached the top and realized she had not left the house, her uniform still lay on the handrail of the upstairs ledge, at that time I felt something may be wrong… I pushed open her door, hoping to find her gorging some ice cream, the depressed woman’s go to food. I was not ready for what I saw, the woman who was my best friend, laying there lifeless. The girls must not have had ample time to leave because when I screamed they stopped and ran through the door I left open. They found me on the floor, Treasure lay over her bed lifeless with one hand holding a pitcher of her, Dad, and I, and the other slightly open with a half empty bottle of sleeping pills. The pale, cold skin on her face was an indication that she had taken her own life. I had now lost three parents and I was lost and confused. I don’t know much about that day but I know I never wanted to end up like that. When the girls finally got me up, I stood over her as we all cried, and I asked my friends right then to never let me get that bad, to please step in, to please never look into my eyes and see nothing and not do something.
We called the police and they came, took our statements, and properly removed the body. Carla’s mom showed up and had me gather some things and move to their home as being there alone at my age wouldn’t be a good idea after all I’d been through. So we locked up the house, and I tried to put these days behind me. After losing another loved one, I realized my heart had been through more than I was ready for, although I didn’t know then how connected to my dad’s wreck all this was and how that night changed my life forever. The house was a home Dad paid off early in life and he had an insurance policy that Treasure set up for me before she decided to leave this earth. So I was well taken care of on the money side of things but outside our group I didn’t get attach to others and did not let anyone in either. I would go by from time to time as the school year came to an end. The long summer days allowed for us to go inside the house and pack up Treasure’s things, she never had kids so we kept her stuff in the attic with Dad’s stuff, we felt that was best. We found it to be easier than we thought it was until we came across it.
It was the letterman jacket that sent her on a search that broke what little heart she had left. It took the very last breath from her, killed her, and left her without any of the answers she sought. I stared at it, almost too scared to touch it, fearing it had some kinda power to take lives. Although any other day that would sound crazy but today I was standing in the house of my dead father where that jacket had been found in his wrecked car and now I was standing in the closet of the room where Treasure took her own life looking at the same jacket; so this day was not normal on any scale. Kayle being the bravest of us all quietly spoke and coming from someone as loud as she was it’s funny how we listened to her more when she spoke softly than when she was loud. She said, “Y’all take her downstairs, I’ll remove the jacket and take it to the attic.” That’s what they did and we locked up and left. Not being around that jacket and not seeing Dad’s car under that same oak tree at the wrecking yard downtown, I found my life having hope to level off. I put my mind on school and being an animal vet and only looked ahead not behind me. Our plans were to open a vet’s office and work together once we were outta high school.
Normal in a word has a clear meaning
but normal in definition is all in interpretation. When you live in chaos then what is normal? Not having a mom I never really knew what I was missing by only being raised by my dad. When my dad passed, I finally had a mother figure without a dad. Normal was something I stopped looking for and tried to just make it through the day and leave yesterday alone in hopes that in my days I could look forward to my week ahead till that turned into months. That kept me stable, I was too broken to find normal. I had money in the bank, a roof over my head, and a plan; that’s all I had time for. We all took jobs that would help us with our hopes of our own vet’s office and we studied every chance we got. The other three girls in our group had relationships and they were patient with me and didn’t make me feel bad because I didn’t share their need for a companion. Love to me meant loss and I had lost enough to love, nope, love wasn’t for me and they knew that. Besides, I don’t know if I was bitter or boys found me to be bad luck because I wasn’t asked to go out by anyone anyway.
Chapter 6
Hello from the Past
I was far from being a cat lady, I was tall and beautiful, I just had no trust in love, and I guess boys picked up on that and no matter how amazing you look, not believing in love has to be ugly in every sense. Graduation was a few months away and we all were sure to pass. We had our senior trip all planned out, it was ocean view and sand in our toes and sun on our skin. Carla’s family really stepped in for me. The last years of school were easier, being stable and being in a house full of people made not feeling lonely easy. It was always noisy with her brothers bothering us and her parents always had family and friends over to swim and cook out. It was easy to be numb to my own sadness when I could live as someone else in their family. Soon graduation came and the after party at the big hall was where we all went to celebrate. It was a fun night with plenty of friends to send us off. Everyone knew everyone except that one older guy who was as much the star as we were due to the fact that he was new and in whispered voices people were asking who he was and where did he come from.
The only time I could ever say I really have seen him was behind the old tire shop in town. I always thought he was homeless. I wondered if he had a child he was there to see and how someone who had grown up like me without a parent, only to find out years later that they had a dad. I was correct about the part that he was here to see someone and I came to know exactly who as he approached me, grabbed my hand, and with a wheezy old man’s voice, he asked me if he could have a minute. Without knowing what on earth he could have to talk to me about and my curiosity getting the best of me, I agreed. He was so old and bent over from bad living conditions that I felt I should be helping him as we walked, but he firmly gripped my right arm and pulled himself together and escorted me as the lady he saw me as. He found a bench outside the hall under a low burning streetlight as if to hide, I guess from years and years of being alone and hiding in a weird way I could relate and I too felt okay being in the dim light. He took my hand and said, “Dear, for many moons I’ve watched you and wanted to know if you got his message,” and at this time I started thinking he was just an old man who was scaring me.
He kept telling me he knew my dad tried to send me a message. The old man could tell I was getting upset and he must have been torn between just walking away or finishing, and with his age and poor health he pushed on to ask me to hear him out. He added that he knew Treasure got the jacket and he thought then the message was gonna come out but the loss was too much for her and he did not want the same to happen to me. He spoke of her with such passion that it was as if he knew her as I would find out later that he was her dad and he had a good job and it was only when Treasure was a baby that her mom left him and took her and moved away and refused to let him see her. He fell into deep depression, lost his job, then his house, and gave up so he made his home behind the old tire station and watched over it at night. He was there the night my dad was hit, he told a story that shook me from the inside. He said when Dad’s car was hit, the driver of the other car died instantly. But your dad was screaming help me, my heart stopped, could he be right, why hasn’t he told the cops, he went on to say he heard Dad scream as the passenger got out hollering I’m not going to jail. He said a passenger, meaning there was someone else there.
Not only was someone else there but they knew what had happened to my dad. With a face full of tears I was hanging on to every word. He said the kid had a big jacket on and was screaming, “Shut up, dude, die already!” He approached the passenger side of Dad’s car and saw Dad was alive, he pulled open the door and saw me standing there asking him to help my dad. The kid pushed me away and told me to go back where I came from and said he wasn’t leaving any witnesses. He said if I didn’t wanna die with this guy then I should leave and stay quiet. Your dad with his last bit of life fought to the very end. He whipped his bloody face then grabbed the kid’s arm to show he was there when all at once the kid grabbed a piece of broken metal and smashed Dad in the face until he was no longer breathing. Then he wiped his sleeve clean through his jacket and said the truth dies with you old man. He touched my head as he looked away and said, “You must think I’m a coward, don’t you?”
I hugged him saying, “No, I do not, sir, there was nothing you could have done. Don’t blame yourself at all.” He went on to say he used a handheld type radio and hid in some bushes and after the wreck was cleared out, a cop car picked him up, and they left.
I thought my life could not get more complicated from the loss of my family to the never-ending drama and now I find out that Dad may have lived and was killed not by just a kid but a kid who was hauled away by a cop. The old man told his story just as he lived it that night and every night after in his nightmares. He walked the streets every night scared to fall asleep because he heard Dad’s voice in his head over and over. He told me he was drunk every day since that day until he saw my face in the paper and he knew I would be here so he sobered up and came to tell me that my dad fought for his life and I needed to seek the jacket out and find the man who killed my dad. The old man saw the crowd that was watching me cry and he wished me good luck and vanished into the darkness of the night. My sobbing was interrupted by the presence of my three sister-like best friends holding me as I cried as I had many times before. In a panic there was no way I could ever get out what had happened between me and the old man as he opened up to me. As Carla was hanging her car keys over her shoulder, I knew my dad’s house key was on that ring so I leapt up, snatching them up, and running to her car as a trail of girls followed behind me.
I unlocked the driver’s door and gave just a brief minute for them to get in as I drove away. I sped away going as fast as I could, nearing my house with every mile, hearing them asking me where we are going and hanging on for dear life. We pulled up at my house and I killed the car and ran to the door, unlocked it and was halfway up the stairs before the girls caught up to me. I busted into the room across the stairs where Treasure took her last breath, they stood at the door as I dug in the closet like I lost a winning lottery ticket. Knowing this room and my history and my panicked state of mind, it was obvious to Kayle what I was looking for and she knew I wasn’t going to find it there as she remembered on that horrible night that she took the jacket and brought it to the attic to store it. Like a disappearing shadow when a light comes on, she slipped out of the room. That’s when she knew it was time to go to the attic and get the jacket. It wasn’t long and she returned with a strange high school looking jacket while we were sitting in the living room on the long couch where we had been waiting. After I went front to back, left to right, and top to bottom what felt like a thousand times, the other two jumped in and started looking and without trying to be funny asked, “What are we looking for?”
I was exhausted and out of breath when I fell back on the bed, holding my head saying over and over, “It’s not here, it’s not here,” and Madison being Madison always found the strangest things to say, at what always seemed to be at the wrong time but alwa
ys worked out for us.
She said, “Talk about doing this over again, the last time we were in here like this…Kayle walked out…” Then like a light went off in Carla’s head, she grabbed my hand, and pulled me downstairs, dragged me as fast as she could, as we both went sliding down the last step, falling at the feet of Kayle holding the jacket I looked so hard for.
She had it lying across her lap and asked only one question, “What happened tonight that caused us to enter this nightmare all over again?” I explained from start to finish, word to word what the old man had shared with me on that park bench just a few hours ago. I told them the story of how my father lost his life at the hand of a thug who killed him. And that jacket held the key my dad sent me to tell me what happened. I told them that the old man was Treasure’s dad and he was homeless and we had to do something for him.
With our thoughts in a whirlwind and all of this happening at once we had no idea where to start so we jumped in the car and went to the old tire shop, hoping to find the nameless man who had impacted my life with all the answers that Treasure took her life over because she couldn’t find them. We honked and screamed until he came out thinking something was wrong or he was in trouble and he knew with age and the stress being homeless had put on his body and mind that he was in no shape to harm us. We calmed down long enough to tell him we were not there to get him in trouble but we were there to offer him a home and a family and we would start with a shower and a hot meal. We loaded him up and brought him to my house and gave him a room and his own bathroom, it was a life he could only dream about. It was a few months before we gathered our thoughts together on how to handle the news that had come to us by the wonderful old man who was found to be named Douglas Gray. The man who was just a body in a back of a tire shop only seen by the nighttime sky now had a name and a home with four new granddaughters.
Cries of Innocence Page 3
