Kenneth Tingle - Strangeville

STRANGEVILLE

PART 1

By

Kenneth Tingle

Strangeville

Copyright
©
2012 by Kenneth Tingle. All rights reserved worldwide.

No part of this publication may be replicated, redistributed, or given away in any form without the prior written consent of the author/publisher or the terms relayed to you herein.

Strangeville: Part 1

Cover design: Haley Thibodeau

First Digital Version – United States of America

March 2012

Table of Contents

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

About the Author

For my wife, Kathy, my one true love.

For Ken, Jr. and Nicole; you’re the reason I get out of bed every day and face the world.

I went up to the White Mountains to kill myself. It seemed like a good place to do it, as far as killing yourself goes. There were thousands of acres of untouched forest all around me; little valleys, rivers, caves, and everything else the wilderness could possibly include. So if you picked the right spot, no one would ever find you. And that is exactly what I wanted—to never be found. It seemed to me that suicide was the ultimate admission of failure, like saying to the world, “I can’t handle what life sends my way.”

I was standing on the edge of the highway, looking up at the massive slope of one of the mountains. Dusk was setting in and the details of the landscape were starting to blur, making the mountain look like just a point going up into the sky—a shadowy spike reaching for the heavens. At the base I could still make out the towering pine trees. But disturbing thoughts started to bother me; what if some bear or wolf started chewing on me after I was dead. Maybe my nervous system would still be active. Then I’d feel every bite tearing me to pieces, and I’d lay there comatose in excruciating pain. What if I still felt things for awhile after I was dead?

All of a sudden, I felt like I needed to go to the bathroom. I had eaten a big bowl of chili for lunch, and it was looking to make an exit. Someone had once told me that when you die all your muscles and sphincters completely relax. What if I killed myself and a big old crap came out? Then a few days later some hiker accidently stumbled upon me. The ambulance guys and police would be really pissed. I could envision them standing around my body, looking down and saying, “You would think this guy had the decency to take a dump before he did it! Let’s just say we couldn’t find him, and let someone else deal with this.”

Eventually, everyone you knew would find out. They would be standing around the water cooler at work, saying, “Did you hear about John? He killed himself up in the mountains. They found him with a big old turd hanging out of his rear end, poor bastard. He should have taken a dump before he did it.”

A car went by and the passenger glanced at me as they passed, curiously eying this stranger standing on the road looking up the side of the mountain. I was glad they couldn’t read my mind, because they would probably want to be a Good Samaritan and pull over. They’d give me a bunch of bullshit as to why the world was so wonderful.

I felt a huge fart coming, but I was afraid to let it out. There are farts, and then there are chili farts. Chili farts are always risky. If you’re lucky, you’ll just spray paint your underwear brown. But if the chili gets the best of you, it’s a full blown explosion. I wasn’t willing to take the chance, so I clenched my butt tight as I wobbled over to my car. Between the fear of being eaten piece by piece, and not wanting to be found with crap all over me, I said the hell with it. It was just another failure in a long list of failures. All I wanted at this moment was a toilet.

I headed back down 93 South, sweat forming on my forehead from clenching my butt so tightly. “Oh, come on! There must be a damn gas station around here somewhere,” I muttered out loud.

After the longest ten minutes of my life, I saw one of those gas station/ truck stop kind of places. I pulled in, screeched to a halt in one of the parking spaces, and hobbled inside. I was walking funny, clenching as I went along. Anyone watching would know exactly what was going on. It was a walk that screamed “Emergency shit coming!”

There was an Indian guy behind the counter. Even truck stops in the boonies were owned by Indians now. “Do you have a bathroom?” I desperately blurted out.

“You need this key” he answered. I reached for it. “Oh, you must buy something first. Bathroom is for paying customer only.”

“Can I just get it when I come out?” I said with pain in my voice.

“Oh, no, maybe you just stink up place and leave; for paying customer only.”

I tossed a pack of gum angrily on the counter, yanked my wallet out and placed two dollars next to it. I took the key from his hand and hobbled toward the sign that said
Restrooms.

“What about your change?” he called out behind me.

“Keep it!” I yelled as I fidgeted with the lock and ripped the door open. I yanked my belt to the side, pulled my pants down and plopped on the toilet.

Instantly, there were explosive echoes coming from inside the toilet bowl, filling the entire bathroom with loud, vile, distinct sounds of debris splashing into the water. There were long, extended, gassy echoes that sounded like the horn of a passing train. I knew everyone in the store could hear and I didn’t care, but someone actually knocked on the door, and hollered, “Hey, Bud, you gonna be long?” came the raspy voice of an old man.

“Trust me, you don’t want to come in here,” I called out, my voice echoing throughout the bathroom.

There were more gassy echoes from the toilet bowl, and I heard the old man calling out to the Indian guy, “Hey, you got another crapper in this place?”

I heard his feet shuffling away, like he was using a cane or something and then it was quiet. After a good ten minutes, I washed my hands and walked out, stopping at the counter to get my gum. An Indian woman had come out of the back room and was standing next to the man. She said something to him in their native language, shook her head in disgust, and they both gave me a dirty look like I had defiled their home.

I got back on 93 South for the three-hour drive back to Massachusetts. The White Mountains was so far up in New Hampshire that if you went north another hour or two, you would be in Canada. Funny thing was, I was so sure I would go through with it that there would be no drive home.

“Just another failure,” I muttered to myself and clicked the radio on. “Ooooh, wooo, wooo, wooo, don’t worry, be happy. Don’t worry, be happy now.” It was that old Bobby McFerrin song and it just got me irritated. I turned the dial quickly for another song. “Can you hold on for one more day, things will go your way. Hold on for one more day!” What did Wilson Phillips know about anything? I clicked the radio off. Phillips and Bobby McFerrin could take their optimism and stick it.

The moon cast odd shadows across the highway as I drove along in a trance-like state. How did my life get to this point? One thing about long drives—it gives you too much time to think.

The great writer, Leo Tolstoy, once said, “I am always with myself and it is I who am my tormentor.” That was me…always with myself, tormenting myself. The decision to commit suicide didn’t happen overnight. It was a long sequence of events that built up over time, eventually leading to a feeling of hopelessness, a constant despair that was with me all the time. Driving alone in the darkness only seemed to magnify the feeling. I reached in the glove box and pulled out the bottle of sleeping pills that I was going to use to do the job. Getting the prescription was pretty easy; I went to see my doctor, told him I had insomnia, and he just wrote it without a second thought.

When the pharmacist handed it to me in a little white bag, I looked in his eyes for a second, like a teenager buying alcohol and hoping he wouldn’t get caught. I threw them back in the glove box in case I finally found the courage to do it.

The moon was sitting just above a mountaintop in the distance, only the top half visible, the car gliding smoothly along as the road twisted and turned. Everything worked together to lull me deep into thought. My mind went to Abigail. I picked a lot of my classes just because she would be there, and I always sat right behind her so I could smell her perfume. It took me two years to find the courage to ask her for a date. When she accepted, I couldn’t believe it. It felt like I’d won the lottery.

We spent a lot of time together at first. We went to movies, for long walks, to baseball games, and sat together for hours in bars just talking about what we wanted in life, sometimes slurring after too many drinks. I never told her how much I loved her. I was afraid it would scare her off. Then one day there was the note: “Can we just be good friends?”

Like taking a remote control and fast forwarding to the next scene in a movie, my mind went to that horrible Friday afternoon. I had just finished high school the week before. I was in my bedroom, the rain pouring down so hard you couldn’t see out the window. My parents went out to run an errand together and were running a little late. The phone rang, startling me out of my thoughts of college, and then I heard that somber voice, “Is this the Campbell residence?”

“Yes, it is.”

“This is Dr. Daley. Are you related to Mr. and Mrs. Michael Campbell?”

“Yes, I am. Is everything okay?”

“Could you come to Lawrence General Hospital? Just ask for me in the emergency room.”

“What is this about? Why do I need to come to the hospital?” I asked frantically.

“We can talk when you get here,” he said as he hung up the phone.

I never had a chance to say goodbye. Someone ran a red light and just like that they were gone. I numbly went into the morgue and identified them, the magnitude of everything not hitting yet. The doctor and nurses said some things as I stood there, but I was so deep in myself, it was just some mumbling I couldn’t decipher.

I found myself outside in the parking lot, looking over the mill buildings along the banks of the Merrimac River, the rain making the red bricks shiny and new looking. Then I just walked off into the rain and I don’t remember how or when I got home.

The high beams of an oncoming car snapped me out of it. My car swerved a little as I turned the wheel to avoid them when I rounded a bend a little too fast. They went by at the right time; I just couldn’t bear to think anymore. If I had gone through with it, maybe I would be with my parents right now. Maybe there was a heaven. But driving along in the moonlit shadows with my memories haunting me as they did, it was hard to imagine heaven or anyplace like it.

I got back to my apartment in Lawrence around 10:00 p.m. In the hallway entrance, I unlocked the door and felt my foot stepping on a bunch of mail. There was one piece still hanging out of the slot in the door. I bent down to get it, but then stopped. Why bother? It would be bills, urgent notifications of the millions of dollars I had won, once-in–a-lifetime discounts at my local car dealer, dream cruises for peanuts, and all this if I just called by a certain date. Then there’d be pictures of a sad puppy with pleading messages to give now before the rascal perishes. The message was always different, but the end result the same—part with your money.

So I just turned and walked up the stairs and went through the second door into my apartment. Before I even clicked the light on, I saw a red number “3” flashing on the other side of the room; three new phone messages. I hung up my keys and clicked play.

“This is an urgent message regarding your credit card accounts. There is nothing wrong at this time. If you would like to take advantage…” I hit delete and the next message started, “Are your home’s windows over thirty years old…”

“Over and over, it’s always the same crap,” I grumbled, then hit delete and started to walk away. The next message started and I stopped mid-step. It was a voice I hadn’t heard in ten years.

“John, this is your Aunt Peggy. It’s been so long since we’ve talked. After your parents died, I guess I just didn’t know what to say. I want to know how everything is with you. Please give me a call when you can.”

I sat on the couch and ran my fingers through my hair. “Why would Aunt Peggy just suddenly call?” I asked myself. Ten years had passed since my parents died.

After the funeral, Aunt Peggy hugged me tight, looked me in the eyes, and said, “You know I’m always here if you need me.”

She went home to Virginia and that was the last I heard from her. What made her call now? I wouldn’t usually call someone so late at night, but curiosity was getting the best of me. Was she sick? I looked at the clock—ten past 10:00 p.m. I got her number on caller ID and began to dial, but hung the phone up. What would I say to her? She would certainly ask how everything was going.

“Great, Aunt Peggy. I just got home from the White Mountains. I was going to kill myself but I ate too much chili, and how have you been?”

And maybe she would say, “For goodness sake, if you’re going to kill yourself, have the decency to take a dump first.”

Indecision was always a problem for me, but I made up my mind to call. What if she needed me? I dialed her number and waited for her to answer.

“Hello?”

“Aunt Peggy, this is John.”

“John! It’s so good to hear your voice. I called you this afternoon.”

“I know, that’s why I’m calling back. I hope it’s not too late. You weren’t sleeping were you?”

“Oh, no, you can call anytime! I was just thinking of you today. All of a sudden I just felt like a terrible aunt. I want to know how everything is with you.”

I paused for a second. Should I just tell her all is well? That I’m setting the world on fire?

“Okay, I guess. You know….” There wasn’t much enthusiasm in my voice.

“John, I want you to come to Lynchburg and visit for awhile. I was just thinking of your mother the other day. Life is so short. You just never know when it will be over. I miss her so much.”

A shiver went up my spine. Could she sense I wanted to kill myself?

“That sounds great, Aunt Peggy. But I don’t want to impose.”

“Oh, good lord, you won’t be imposing at all! You’re family, John.”

It felt good to hear that; no one had called me
family
in so long.

“You know, I think some time away is just what I need. Let me check with work and try to get the time off.”

“You do that, and call me as soon as you know. I still want to hear all about your life.”

“I will, and you know what? I’ll do what it takes to get there. I’ll tell you everything then.”

The next morning I went into Mr. Dooley’s office. I had been working in the financial sector for about five years now “servicing” pension plans. That’s what they called it, “servicing” them. But all it really meant was you took angry phone calls all day long from investors and fund managers. Mr. Dooley was always looking down—either at something on his desk or he was typing madly away on some Blackberry-type cell phone. Even when he walked past you in the hallway, he was looking down, texting someone back, oblivious to your presence.

I knocked on his door and he looked up just long enough to ask, “What can I do for you, John?” in a hurried manner, like he was really saying “Make it quick.”

He looked back down at some papers scattered across his desk. “Buyouts, mergers, I can’t keep track of who I work for these days,” he grumbled.

“Mr. Dooley, my aunt asked me to go see her in Virginia. I haven’t seen her in a long time. I was wondering if I could take a week or two off.”

He sat back in his chair and sort of sized me up, looking me over from my feet to my head.

“That’s an interesting tie you’re wearing, John. It’s awfully wide. If you tied a string to it, you could fly it like a kite. Ah ha ha ha,” he laughed and slapped his knee with his hand. “Boy, I still got it!”

“You sure do, that was a real knee slapper, Mr. Dooley” I said grinning. This was a good time for a little ass kissing.

He looked back down at his desk, and then gruffly said, “Couldn’t you put a vacation request in thirty days in advance? That’s the policy.”

“Well, she actually just called me last night.” I decided to stretch the truth a little. “She didn’t actually say it, but I think she may be sick.”

“Is your paperwork all up to date?”

“Yes, sir.”

“One week. I hope your aunt is okay. Tell McGuiness to cover your caseload. If he has a problem with that, he can come see me.”

“Thanks, Mr. Dooley! I really appreciate it,” I said as I turned out of his doorway and walked over to McGuiness’ desk.

He had red frizzy hair that was puffy like an afro; from the back his head was the shape of a light bulb. I tapped his shoulder, “McGuiness, I have to take a week off. Mr. Dooley said to cover my caseload.”

“What?” He spun around in his chair. “Just like that? How about a little notice! I’m up to my ass in paperwork. What if a client calls about a complicated case?”

“Just read the notes. I write good entries whenever I speak with a client.”

“Where the hell are
you
going all of a sudden?” he asked sarcastically.

“Lynchburg, Virginia.” I turned and walked away, but after a few steps spun back around, “Hey McGuiness!”

“Now what?” he answered.

“Do something about that hair. The seventies are over.”