Someone to watch over me...
I remember my friend John Clements.. I know I'm potentially giving something away but oh well.
He introduced me to mules when I was a teenager, he had two one was a "Tennessee walker"?? I think it was tan and seemed to me as large as a horse though he could point out the differences. We took the mules for a ride through some blueberry fields and junkyards. A warm sunny day, we jumped a small creek (small enough to step across) but I remember almost falling off when the mule lunged forward. The memory is not as sharp as it could be. I've faded almost all my memories of John.. Teenage trauma mostly now I remember the car crash I had with him.. Sitting in the Burger King feeling tough and scared looking at a car w/ 2 people in it who sat there all night while john was working. Me with 2 or three knives and a machete under the seat. John told me had taken a trailer to New York for someone and been paid and then refused to do it again. That's why they waited for us. It started snowing. The strange car turned over as we came out of the door and ran to his mothers Plymouth duster. Then a scary ride, I only remember sliding and white. I think I saw the tree that flipped us but it might be imagined.. He dragged me out of the car I was told. I just remember sitting in someone's living room barely conscious with paramedic wrestling with me trying to get my leather jacket off, as I fought for a cigarette and cursed them and threatened them not to cut off my jacket... Even semi conscious I was tough, but there was John eye bloody perched on the edge of a wingbacked chair apologizing to me. He felt so bad. I found out later he carried that for a year before he died in a worse car accident.. That morning was the first time he talked to me in a while besides just in passing. He felt too guilty for almost killing me. I never held it against him but I guess he never knew that.. I don't even recall what we said but I know we agreed we were friends again.
Then later that night Randy on the phone his eyes so wide so scared to tell me. I kicked some furniture screamed, ran outside and up the street. Stood there cursing god not believing.. Then for days stood around hating the fakers and teen drama people who wept for him.. Their feelings could have been true, but I didn't believe them.. Even at his funeral I wanted to speak to talk about John, but I was never asked and would not have been much good as I sat there glaring at his grieving parents.. Throwing all the blame at them I'm now sure they must have felt for themselves. I didn't even stay another explosion I ran out across the street sobbing punching a tractor trailer a feed store??
All my memories of john swirl back into this drain of his death/ funeral.. All the happy memories are leads attached to the sad and pull me there stronger than any riptide.. John was always a redneck, I never understood him, his ways but he was always the Marlboro man and didn't care who thought it.. Rabbit fur black cowboy hat.. I have a picture of him in it but his face is too dark to see.. My thirteenth birthday party...
I understand him better know.. Now I have a bow a shotgun and a desire to wear manly hats and be thought a rugged untouchable individual.. I miss my friend.