Squeezing the Grape

I talked to Michael Darnay a couple of days after it happened.

 

Michael had remained in the hospital for nearly a week. I did not know him then. Now I do. Many people do. He feels awful, Michael says. He still gets headaches, and has nightmares after reading bad stories about himself in the newspaper about the people he killed and how many got hurt. Some were injured very badly. The news article say he was running with a bad crowd. He was not.

 

They found him in a field half out of his mind after the whole thing went down.

 

His best friend Anthony was there too and feels responsible, only because it was his idea. He tried to keep Michael from running into the field after it happened but couldn’t. As a result, Anthony still has a cast on his left leg. He doesn’t like the stories in the newspapers as they imply Anthony was a gang banger. He isn’t. That was the last straw. During our last conversation, Anthony said he had plans for leaving Colorado once he heals.

Anyway… I want to tell their story and mine; after all, I was there. I’ll start with how I met Michael and Anthony and why I worked hard to defend them.

To be clear - I’m not a lawyer or anything but did have time for a side project. I’ll also tell you how I fell in love. It happened the same day I ran into Michael and Anthony.

 

Funny how things work out.

 

For a bit of background: It was a lousy time for me as a freelance writer in Boulder, Colorado, working against deadlines set by a fool. I was squeezing the grape and did not like any of it. The managers wanted the writing done fast. Hard to do your best when you know the end is coming.

 

It is the job of a freelance writer to do one’s best or business will dry up. The attitude changes though; lots of things change. Contractors are like company pets. I became part of the family… but now I have to leave. Kind of like looking at your goldfish, belly up in dirty water.

 

To be honest, I’m not bitter. That’s how freelancing works. When you bought the goldfish you knew one day it would go belly up. My year in Boulder will be over by the end of the holiday season. That’s bad enough, now this on top of everything else. It made me sad.

 

I always feel sad when I have to say goodbye. There are many sad people during the holidays. always feel a dreadful year, there will be more. This is why I was feeling lousy. And very soon, I had to once again start looking for work. At the moment, I have a couple of prospects but neither of them are terribly interesting. But it is harder now to find work. People are scared to do anything with strangers.

 

Back to the story.

 

I was greeted by cool autumn wind after leaving the office; it rushed through the nearly bare trees with a sound like a wave of applause. The signs of holiday sales and Halloween celebrations seem contrived now after the world changed. I used to like the fall - gusty and warm in the sun when the leaves dance in the wind. Merchants try to cheer us… but there is no cheer. This year feels different, as if I was just going through the motions. Wounds will do that.

 

Still walking quickly, I crossed the red-bricked pedestrian mall littered with swirling leaves of gold, red, purple and brown. Shops, bars, cafes lined each side of the mall with unkempt planters of flowers now scraggly twigs and bare trees in a neat line down the middle. The wind burped with stop-and-start gusts, the kind that makes you walk like a drunkard after that last unfortunate drink. A line of high of slate-gray clouds tumbled down the mountain with a mutter and groan of faint thunder.

 

About then, a mounted police officer rode by on a chestnut stallion. The horse’s muscles twitched when walking, his hooves landing heavily on the bricked pedestrian mall. Clomp… clomp… clomp. The cop wore a black cowboy hat and eyed everyone. The police were everywhere these days. Not in a menacing way more like the ever present guards of a sacred tomb.

 

It was four o'clock, I had time before the 5:15 bus to Denver. I plodded along, hunched against the gusts, hands in my pocket, shoulder case bouncing against a hip, toward the Irish pub, a block from the station.

 

I walked past nice bookstores, stopped and took a moment to critique my reflection in the windows.

 

Dark side of forty still in good shape, six two in shoes, long legged, and broad shouldered. Not bad. Longish, fine brown hair fluttered in the wind. Okay… I’m on the dark side of forty, still in good shape, six-two in shoes, long-legged, and broad shouldered. Not bad. Longish, fine brown hair fluttered in the wind around a mustachioed square face, brown eyes and slanted smile. I shifted my attention to another bookstore and noticed the window was packed with new releases. Cool… I shuffled closer while putting on my reading glasses on to read the dust jackets. Long ago, flickering computer screens, website-designing, writing endless manuals and editing others’ work totally ruined my eyes. My ex-girlfriend said the glasses made me look intelligent. Whatever.

 

Disappointing. The titles on display were the usual stories but outdated, written in a different time before the world changed. Not many will care much about self-help, or dieting and sugar free cookies or a dreamy fantasy.

 

The newspapers and books will be about a world of reality and fantasy, something surreal. They will be a mixture of the unfathomable too-real horror with themes of patriotism and bravery and failed policy. The stories will also discuss boots on the ground, bombs and our angry new president from Texas. This is what the people want now. Sigh. I waved goodbye to my reflection and moved on.

 

The Irish pub was not crowded. My ears and nose stung from the chill. I ordered a beer and a whiskey from the bartender and sat up front in an inglenook between the fireplace and a big window. Fortunately, I had this corner to myself. Irish music whispered through the house sound system. The sun shone low through the picture window withy clouds poised to chase the sun below the horizon.

 

Outside, a row of small maples shook off their golden leaves as a retriever would after a swim in a lake. The blue gray Flatiron Mountains jutted up and over Boulder, framed by the big window, a storm rolling down like a slow avalanche. I wanted to climb them. From high in the air, on a clear day, Boulder looks like an accumulation of rubble that slipped down these mountains. Heaped up in neat geometric mounds, its streets are runoffs for great streams of snowmelt. I like it here.

 

I settled on a high stool before an all-too familiar tall table with uneven legs, retrieved a newspaper from my shoulder case, turned the pages into the sunlight and leaned on my elbow to read. Not surprisingly, the stories were more of the same grim news of that awful day nearly a month ago of airplanes crashing into tall New York buildings. I had been to those buildings. Now they are rubble. It was on everyone’s mind. The digging, constant digging, with machines now. Human touch was futile. Even the dogs gave up. Now it’s about war, showing tanks and armored personnel carriers streaming across desert sands. This terrible deed was done by the same damn people who took our embassy in 1979. Well, sort of. The attack didn’t come from any particular country, of course, but from the type of people who despise western thought and culture.

 

After a while, a young waitress appeared. I had seen her many times. They know me here. I have played with the house band many times, which consists of a loose collaboration of local musicians. Usually on the banjo but occasionally on the guitar. I couldn’t carry a tune in a tote sack, so I never sang.

“Another then, sir?” she said with a crooked fleshy grin. The stool/waitress height ratio made it such that we could see eye-to-eye.

“Yes please, Jameson, and the bill, I have a bus to catch”, peering over my reading glasses, fumbling with my wallet while eyeing the status of my mug. Everyone is nice to each other these days. At least there’s that.

 

“Awful isn’t it,” she said looking at my paper. She had a slight Irish accent. I wondered where the pub management finds these people in Boulder. The bartender has an accent, as did most of the wait staff. Dressed in white shirt, dark slacks, black shoes and white apron gave the place a European air; the whole place was thick with things Irish. There are days I stay until the last bus but not today. I wanted to write tonight. I like to write when in a crummy mood.

“It’s horrible. Never thought that day would come,” I told her, shaking my head.

“Just the Jameson's then?” she replied.

“Plus, there’d be an indecency rap if I have to piss in the parking lot.” That made her smile. She left.

I like the workers here, students mostly, I hope they don’t have visa problems because of all this madness. Two of the cafes where I eat lunch have lost people. They were just working and now they are gone. I heard their work visas had expired. Nowadays, apparently, rules are enforced.

 

 

Denver Express

Shortly after five, I left a tip and trudged to the station, feeling warm from the whiskey. I had no jacket and the temperature was dropping noticeably. I cursed myself for not bringing a coat. The depot was not crowded.

 

Three buses parked at 45-degree angles, engines idling with a growling snore, smoke wafted up and hung under the roof. The DENVER EXPRESS was in the middle, my bus. The LONGMONT and DENVER LOCAL were getting ready to load. These two left five minutes before the EXPRESS. My bus catches them since they make more stops leaving Boulder. A cop walked by, his eyes searching, thumbs hooked in the front of his belt, gun ominously displayed. The city replaced the slack-jawed unarmed rent-a-cop with a tough member of The Force a few weeks before. The police were everywhere now. It reminded me of Europe after 1972 Munich Olympic disaster when I saw police with automatic rifles. I had to carry ID with me everywhere. I wonder if the same will happen in the States. There will be changes.

 

I ambled over and sat on the short wall at the far end of the station. I lit a cigarillo and leaned against the stairwell outer wall. At my feet, leaves and wrappers eddied in the breeze. From this vantage, I gauged the progress on the building going up across the road for the past week. The workers were tearing it down all the way up to rebuild. They’re doing that now in New York and Arlington where General Lee used to ride his horse.

 

The people began to queued up to the buses. Passengers with a slow shuffle, resigned expressions, lost in a momentary dream, blank stares at vague distances. The LONGMONT riders were dressed in standard workday attire. Coats, jackets and sensible shoes found in any suburban discount store. Their queue was straight, neat and orderly. The DENVER LOCAL crowd had that urban bohemianism look, young, pouty and bored. Baggy pants, dyed T-shirts, pierced facial parts and colorful body illustrations here and there. A few with hockey sweatshirts; must be a game tonight. The LOCAL crowd slouched to their seats.

 

In my mind, I wrote ten-second stories on a few members of each group as they boarded. I speculated to what ends they will meet at the termination of their ride. What measures of dignity they muster to lean on when studying their residue of their day? Wondering, also, at a glance, what ten-second…

“First and final call for the DENVER EXPRESS, now boarding at gate two”.

 

That redundant announcement annoyed me. I joined the clump forming around the EXPRESS door.

 

Bonnie Carton, a colleague trotted up to me as passengers were beginning to board. She had her bicycle.

 

“Hi there, could ya' watch this a sec?” She parked her bike at my feet. She usually rides her bike around Boulder after work and doesn’t take this bus.

“Sure. Do you want me to put it on the rack?”

 

“Oh no. Thank you anyway,” Bonnie turned and scooted off toward the depot.

 

Bonnie is a pleasant looking woman, mid-thirties with a lean build, demurring manner, easy laugh, and always smiling. Her eyes sat like sparkling Kashmir blue sapphires on light golden pillows. She was fresh-faced with milky skin, pink cheeks and lightly freckled like the bottom of a bowl of cereal. She wore no makeup. Her shoulder length straw-colored hair lapped across her face from the wind-tunnel effect in the boarding area.

 

But that’s all I know. Bonnie is the type that offers no clues about their lives out of the office. She wore no rings or jewelry, displayed no pictures on her desk or mementos of excursions. She offered no conversations of exotic vacations with a lover. I imagine her living alone with a cat. Maybe she was a lipstick lesbian or asexual. I guarded her bike while she went off to pee.

 

I like Bonnie. She is easy to work with when I had writing assignments sponsored by the marketing department where she works. I hardly ever saw her outside of the office except for this day.

 

Two tiny and old Mexican women nervously fingered their purses for fare. They were the first to board, taking seats in the front row. A man that I’d describe as a Quasimodo’s stunt double followed them. Bonnie, back now, secured her bike in the rack on the front of the bus. I supposed she felt comfortable loading the bike herself. I let her in front of me.

“Not riding today?” I wanted to start a simple chat thinking she may want my company on the ride downhill to Denver.

“No, last minute plans. Plus, the weather and all,” She said this with no hint of what these plans might be. I shrugged and boarded. Last minute date I figured and let the thought drop for the betterment of my ego. I was running out of time to break the ice with her. I don’t know if she knew I was leaving. I didn’t want to run the risk of being crushed by a nonplussed response to the news. I watched her bounce up the steps, fanny pack wiggling. I thought whoever was sleeping with Bonnie was a lucky man or woman.

 

A couple sat near the front. He was thin, straight and narrow frame with bushy salt-n-pepper hair and thick mustache, sunken eye sockets and transparent skin. Bony wrists jutted out from an undersized black pea coat. He looked as though he slept in a coffin. There was no difference in width between his shoulders and his waist. He sat and angled against the window. She was much shorter but well-proportioned mousy brown short hair and gray-blue eyes. Her face was cheerful, round and open with dimpled chin and plump cheeks the color of zinfandel blush wine. She wore a nametag I could not make out. She slid into the seat beside him and immediately began fumbling through a capacious sackcloth purse plopped on her lap. They could have been peasants from the Russian Ukraine.

​

Several more climbed in front of me. Bonnie sat about four or five rows from the front. I followed a short, roundish, redheaded man with a goatee. He rides this line often, sometimes carrying a guitar. I thought, for the zillionth time, to ask him about that someday. He must have seen me carry my guitar or banjo case on the morning run to Boulder. A handful of others climbed aboard. I took note of no one else as I waddled down the aisle shoulder pack bouncing rhythmically from seat to seat. I took my seat on the back bench so I could stretch out my long frame, which does not fit the dimensions of public transportation.

 

Loaded, we lurched through the streets of Boulder, the sun a golden strobe flashing through the branches, the driver negotiating traffic. She is a good driver.

​

We traveled Canyon west to Broadway, skirting the university campus lined with college-town cafes, restaurants and shops, then east on Table Mesa Drive across town past old brick homes in various stages of disrepair. The street torn apart by a summer-long widening project. We snaked through barriers, cones and groups of orange-vested workers with their huge Jurassic machines. Along the way, we picked up a few students near campus at an edge-of-town park-n-ride. Fifteen or twenty passengers now. This is why I liked the 5:15. It is not a popular ride, most of the students and pros have gone home, the bar crowd still whooping it up in town.

 

We cruised onto the turnpike to Denver, gained momentum, the great motor settled into a harmonic confluence of high whine and low rumble. The bus passed rolling brown fields of scrub trees and bushes and the occasional gathering of bovine nosing the ground. To me, those hills resembled undulating waves swelling against the Flatirons—like a seawall. The dwindling open space fending off encroachment, farms falling victim to developer's blade like some diseased organ.

 

I watched the mountains peel away toward the west and settled down for the forty-five-minute journey. The turnpike traffic, though compacted, was moving at a good clip. I watched the traffic pass us. Then a prison bus pulled alongside, and for a few miles we rode together. I could see the occupants’ faces, hard and angry through the bars. Each wore white jumpsuits; the guards wore blue uniforms.

 

They are a microcosm of a different realm. The captured army of the underworld. I made up mental stories about them like I did for the people on the boarding platform. What they were thinking. Did some want to fight in the war or did they care? Locked up in a nervous country with cops on every corner. I imagine they regretted their crimes that got them a ticket on that bus.

 

They are men without a country. They are deviants of social control that standard norms set by the political state and those outside the state. The passengers on that bus are an early warning system that something is terribly wrong. Biologically, they are no different. The deviants on that bus have a different reference group from which to draw support. It is in this reference group where they form a sense of self.

 

The bohemian crowd were unlikely to volunteer; prisoners cannot volunteer. Many of Longmont group are reservist or guard, weekend warriors now looking at a fulltime gig in a foreign land or here if things get worse. That has happened before - at Kent State and Mississippi when the guard killed citizens illegally. It was a case of reference groups demonstrating their sense of social norms that ran afoul of the political state and its control and got some of its members killed.

 

Perhaps I could write for a Pentagon contractor as my way of serving. I’d been toying with this notion recently. I had jobs with the government in the past and still had contacts. They had survived the attacks. I dropped the idea though, the Pentagon needs guns, the pens have run out of ink.

Finally, the road became a smooth rolling band of concrete, the sun settled low just over the tops of the Flatirons. Lumpy clouds with gray bellies hovered over the horizon. The sunset will be colorful. It may rain tonight always a good time to write when it rains.

 

I was thick with weariness so I leaned back, breathed out the accumulation of the day in a long slow hiss. I tried to read but gave in, closed my eyes, burrowed deeper into that place in my mind where images and words meander, and rocked to the drone and parlay of highway and diesel engine. Shadowy flashes and reverse images painted pictures in a kaleidoscopic dance inviting a dream to chase away the involuntary twitch of mm tired body.

Though I didn’t know it at the time, I was about to meet Michael and Anthony. In later conversations, I’d learn much more about them, so let me introduce you. Understand their connection to the awful drama about to take place…