The thing about Rick is that he didn't save the girl in the Popeyes. Sometimes he would say "woman." Was she a girl or a woman? Who knows, does it matter? She was seventeen. Or nineteen. I forget. It was an odd number. I remember that. Strange the way facts have jagged edges like that. You can almost just seize them sometimes.
He was standing in line trying to decide whether to order the three piece chicken meal or the five piece when the guy came through the front door with the gun already out. He was screaming at her, right at her,the girl behind the counter, as he flew across the room of multifarious screams, the people running towards and out the side doors, even the front door the young man had just come through, anywhere they could escape. Dumber or more desperate, unthinking people ran into the bathrooms.
The way Rick told the story he didn't run. He just froze there at his place in line which was no longer a place in line since everyone had gone in an instant. It was as if the man with the pistol, the furious man, couldn't see Rick. He only had murderous eyes for the girl or woman behind the counter. She just froze too. Standing there in the horrible uniform that was supposed to just be a temporary indignity. Now it was how she would disappear. Rick said there was a resigned look in her eyes. He saw that even in those few moments. Why didn't she run? Scream? Do something? He often asked us this. He knew there was no answer. Maybe she was preparing to reason with him. Maybe she just knew.
It was the usual story of love (or something someone considered love) gone wrong. The moment for Rick to have acted was a very brief moment indeed. The bullet in the face followed immediately after the few short sentences, the reading of the charges against her monstrous heart. And she was destroyed, shattered, gone from view down behind the stainless counter. Though Rick saw the parts of her on the Popeyes menu board he had just been studying. Brain tissue slid down over the bright images of fried chicken, obeying the dictates of gravity, which always has a simple and well-defined job to do.
The man turned and ran after making one more declarative statement. "I TOLD you," he said. To no one. To the air. He said it as if she was still a sentient thing, a cloud of senses inside a body standing behind a counter. She wasn't. She wasn't any longer. And then he ran out the door into the snow coming down. He was apprehended three days later. He might be free by now. Who knows. It's been a decent amount of time.
Rick was drunk. Rick was high. We reminded him of these things. We said he couldn't have processed it quickly enough and he couldn't have known what would happen in those few short seconds after the man entered the Popeyes. Many lunatics wave guns around and it all ends relatively well. No bloodshed. It was a metaphysics problem, irresoluble as these things are, and we tried to get Rick to understand that. We were his friends. It could get exhausting. The scenario was revisited so many times between us all. We tried to listen.
It turned out okay because Rick later shot himself. He shot himself in the head. So, he explained, there would be a karmic canceling out. The girl in the Popeyes would somehow be given this absolute love offering, this admission that her life ended way too young for the universe to ever make sense again, for Rick ever to be at peace again. And Rick was all about peace; he was easygoing. His life had been a mellow, slow, drawn-out party. He had served a hitch in the army, but it had been uneventful. He had two divorces under his belt, but he remained friends with both exes. He could have probably gone the distance and been one of the lucky ones, if only he had not been hungry for fried chicken on that February afternoon, at just that hour. Seeing that young girl taken out somehow took him out. He was guiltless. But something in his brain would not let him see that.
Rick had explained to everyone that he had inoperable brain cancer, so everyone decided to go on this death trip with Rick to varying degrees. I mean he had announced his suicide. He was going to go off into the woods he loved and end it there. Those are the woods where he always went on "hunting trips" that were thinly-disguised drug parties with some obligatory shooting of guns at phantom deer and phantom bears and whatever phantom else Rick and his mostly lowlife but reliable friends hallucinated. They would tell you they were "ghetto rednecks." They did fine in the city but they had a country side that came from somewhere. Rick had indeed grown up in the country but had adjusted very well to living in a shit part of town. He was non-judgmental. Sweet with the vulnerable ones. Tough with the ones who would slit your throat if you ever showed a moment of weakness. Where he lived you had to fight sometimes. Rick had fought. He might not have been the brightest guy, but he could find decent work most of the time. In between, he did riskier, sometimes stupid things. But even then he played fair with people and harmed no one. Everyone except the assholes liked Rick.
Rick went alone on his final trip. He had to make it clear where he would be so his body could be recovered and there was no problem. A friend even lent him his cabin for this. He didn't want it to be a rental, some stranger's place. That wouldn't be fair. The friend would call 911 at the appropriate time and act clueless, explain his worries about his "severely depressed friend." And then things would be taken care of by strangers who had no tender feelings for Rick. It all made sense.
Rick repeatedly talked about how his brain cancer was somehow the karmic result of the incident in the Popeyes all those years ago. It wasn't some dead girl seeking vengeance. He wasn't superstitious like that. The constant nightmares weren't like that. It was just the universal balance. It was just something he could not process away. We told him he was wrong. But he wanted to keep this belief. If it somehow gave him a sense of peace, who were we to argue with the insanity of the idea?
Except Rick's cancer wasn't a karmic balancing out. It wasn't even cancer.
We learned from Rick's brother six months after his death by self-inflicted gunshot in the woods that Rick never had inoperable brain cancer. He didn't have brain cancer or any form of cancer at all. It was true he had been spending excessive amounts of time in the hospital, but it was for the treatment of a variety of chronic ailments, none of them fatal, and severe psychiatric problems, including PTSD. None of us were following the cancer narrative that closely since Rick wouldn't allow us to "dwell on it." He had never been a liar, so everyone just believed it all.
And Rick had exhibited the sort of symptoms you expected of someone with a brain tumor. He had serious memory lapses. He was often greatly confused. He needed shepherding. Later, we learned this was probably his severe mental illness and declining state of mind, coupled with the serious battery of psychotherapeutic meds Rick was taking (and probably abusing).
His friends felt horribly hoodwinked for having taking this death trip with Rick. There had been farewell parties, sexy "going away" parties. Girls had offered their favors, some from tender hearts and some (we suspected) for more lurid reasons. Does it turn some girls on to do a guy they know will soon be six feet under? Do they feel the way those hands linger on them and how those hands seem to know those breasts are among the last breasts on earth they will ever caress? Did Rick's tongue lap the honey with special, mortal ardor? He gave us all strange thoughts. He never made it out of his forties and that makes you think. You expect to make it out of the forties, at least. Everyone does.
You look back at a guy like that. You look back at a guy with bad luck like that.
The Popeyes is still there in the worst part of town. I'm guessing no one who works in that shithole knows a girl was dropped behind that counter. This is a whole other generation. Sometimes they'll vacate a place like that. They always do if it's a massacre. Or the curse of the memory of the deed will do the place in. But this one's still going. It's been remodeled a few times. It serves the needs of one of the poorer neighborhoods. The projects is right across the street. I'm guessing there was some discussion, but hunger and need won out. There's no grocery stores for miles. You can walk there if you don't have a car.
Actually, a man was driven right over and dragged by a car piloted by a junior congressman. less than a block from the front door of that Popeyes. This was in the middle of the night, a few years after that girl or woman was murdered. I could say her name but I won't. I don't know why I don't want to say.
There were no witnesses to that bloody dragging but the victim and the drunk congressman behind the wheel. A video camera in a downtown parking garage in the Capitol complex caught him examining and cleaning up his rental car. When he was arrested, he said he thought he had "hit a sign." The young man had been dragged twenty or thirty feet. He knew it was no sign.
I've never even been inside the Popeyes. I lost a taste for meat years ago and even when I did eat that nasty shit (I'm thinking now of hairs like pubic hairs on the skin of fried chicken) that greasy shit gave me the trots. I know people who swear by it. I"m sure people fall in love in there. They do that sort of thing everywhere. If I ever went in that place, I think I'd just leave my body. But you know they don't put a tombstone in the middle of a fried chicken shack. No, wait. Two tombstones.
He was standing in line trying to decide whether to order the three piece chicken meal or the five piece when the guy came through the front door with the gun already out. He was screaming at her, right at her,the girl behind the counter, as he flew across the room of multifarious screams, the people running towards and out the side doors, even the front door the young man had just come through, anywhere they could escape. Dumber or more desperate, unthinking people ran into the bathrooms.
The way Rick told the story he didn't run. He just froze there at his place in line which was no longer a place in line since everyone had gone in an instant. It was as if the man with the pistol, the furious man, couldn't see Rick. He only had murderous eyes for the girl or woman behind the counter. She just froze too. Standing there in the horrible uniform that was supposed to just be a temporary indignity. Now it was how she would disappear. Rick said there was a resigned look in her eyes. He saw that even in those few moments. Why didn't she run? Scream? Do something? He often asked us this. He knew there was no answer. Maybe she was preparing to reason with him. Maybe she just knew.
It was the usual story of love (or something someone considered love) gone wrong. The moment for Rick to have acted was a very brief moment indeed. The bullet in the face followed immediately after the few short sentences, the reading of the charges against her monstrous heart. And she was destroyed, shattered, gone from view down behind the stainless counter. Though Rick saw the parts of her on the Popeyes menu board he had just been studying. Brain tissue slid down over the bright images of fried chicken, obeying the dictates of gravity, which always has a simple and well-defined job to do.
The man turned and ran after making one more declarative statement. "I TOLD you," he said. To no one. To the air. He said it as if she was still a sentient thing, a cloud of senses inside a body standing behind a counter. She wasn't. She wasn't any longer. And then he ran out the door into the snow coming down. He was apprehended three days later. He might be free by now. Who knows. It's been a decent amount of time.
Rick was drunk. Rick was high. We reminded him of these things. We said he couldn't have processed it quickly enough and he couldn't have known what would happen in those few short seconds after the man entered the Popeyes. Many lunatics wave guns around and it all ends relatively well. No bloodshed. It was a metaphysics problem, irresoluble as these things are, and we tried to get Rick to understand that. We were his friends. It could get exhausting. The scenario was revisited so many times between us all. We tried to listen.
It turned out okay because Rick later shot himself. He shot himself in the head. So, he explained, there would be a karmic canceling out. The girl in the Popeyes would somehow be given this absolute love offering, this admission that her life ended way too young for the universe to ever make sense again, for Rick ever to be at peace again. And Rick was all about peace; he was easygoing. His life had been a mellow, slow, drawn-out party. He had served a hitch in the army, but it had been uneventful. He had two divorces under his belt, but he remained friends with both exes. He could have probably gone the distance and been one of the lucky ones, if only he had not been hungry for fried chicken on that February afternoon, at just that hour. Seeing that young girl taken out somehow took him out. He was guiltless. But something in his brain would not let him see that.
Rick had explained to everyone that he had inoperable brain cancer, so everyone decided to go on this death trip with Rick to varying degrees. I mean he had announced his suicide. He was going to go off into the woods he loved and end it there. Those are the woods where he always went on "hunting trips" that were thinly-disguised drug parties with some obligatory shooting of guns at phantom deer and phantom bears and whatever phantom else Rick and his mostly lowlife but reliable friends hallucinated. They would tell you they were "ghetto rednecks." They did fine in the city but they had a country side that came from somewhere. Rick had indeed grown up in the country but had adjusted very well to living in a shit part of town. He was non-judgmental. Sweet with the vulnerable ones. Tough with the ones who would slit your throat if you ever showed a moment of weakness. Where he lived you had to fight sometimes. Rick had fought. He might not have been the brightest guy, but he could find decent work most of the time. In between, he did riskier, sometimes stupid things. But even then he played fair with people and harmed no one. Everyone except the assholes liked Rick.
Rick went alone on his final trip. He had to make it clear where he would be so his body could be recovered and there was no problem. A friend even lent him his cabin for this. He didn't want it to be a rental, some stranger's place. That wouldn't be fair. The friend would call 911 at the appropriate time and act clueless, explain his worries about his "severely depressed friend." And then things would be taken care of by strangers who had no tender feelings for Rick. It all made sense.
Rick repeatedly talked about how his brain cancer was somehow the karmic result of the incident in the Popeyes all those years ago. It wasn't some dead girl seeking vengeance. He wasn't superstitious like that. The constant nightmares weren't like that. It was just the universal balance. It was just something he could not process away. We told him he was wrong. But he wanted to keep this belief. If it somehow gave him a sense of peace, who were we to argue with the insanity of the idea?
Except Rick's cancer wasn't a karmic balancing out. It wasn't even cancer.
We learned from Rick's brother six months after his death by self-inflicted gunshot in the woods that Rick never had inoperable brain cancer. He didn't have brain cancer or any form of cancer at all. It was true he had been spending excessive amounts of time in the hospital, but it was for the treatment of a variety of chronic ailments, none of them fatal, and severe psychiatric problems, including PTSD. None of us were following the cancer narrative that closely since Rick wouldn't allow us to "dwell on it." He had never been a liar, so everyone just believed it all.
And Rick had exhibited the sort of symptoms you expected of someone with a brain tumor. He had serious memory lapses. He was often greatly confused. He needed shepherding. Later, we learned this was probably his severe mental illness and declining state of mind, coupled with the serious battery of psychotherapeutic meds Rick was taking (and probably abusing).
His friends felt horribly hoodwinked for having taking this death trip with Rick. There had been farewell parties, sexy "going away" parties. Girls had offered their favors, some from tender hearts and some (we suspected) for more lurid reasons. Does it turn some girls on to do a guy they know will soon be six feet under? Do they feel the way those hands linger on them and how those hands seem to know those breasts are among the last breasts on earth they will ever caress? Did Rick's tongue lap the honey with special, mortal ardor? He gave us all strange thoughts. He never made it out of his forties and that makes you think. You expect to make it out of the forties, at least. Everyone does.
You look back at a guy like that. You look back at a guy with bad luck like that.
The Popeyes is still there in the worst part of town. I'm guessing no one who works in that shithole knows a girl was dropped behind that counter. This is a whole other generation. Sometimes they'll vacate a place like that. They always do if it's a massacre. Or the curse of the memory of the deed will do the place in. But this one's still going. It's been remodeled a few times. It serves the needs of one of the poorer neighborhoods. The projects is right across the street. I'm guessing there was some discussion, but hunger and need won out. There's no grocery stores for miles. You can walk there if you don't have a car.
Actually, a man was driven right over and dragged by a car piloted by a junior congressman. less than a block from the front door of that Popeyes. This was in the middle of the night, a few years after that girl or woman was murdered. I could say her name but I won't. I don't know why I don't want to say.
There were no witnesses to that bloody dragging but the victim and the drunk congressman behind the wheel. A video camera in a downtown parking garage in the Capitol complex caught him examining and cleaning up his rental car. When he was arrested, he said he thought he had "hit a sign." The young man had been dragged twenty or thirty feet. He knew it was no sign.
I've never even been inside the Popeyes. I lost a taste for meat years ago and even when I did eat that nasty shit (I'm thinking now of hairs like pubic hairs on the skin of fried chicken) that greasy shit gave me the trots. I know people who swear by it. I"m sure people fall in love in there. They do that sort of thing everywhere. If I ever went in that place, I think I'd just leave my body. But you know they don't put a tombstone in the middle of a fried chicken shack. No, wait. Two tombstones.
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