A short story written in the wake of the nightmare at Pulse in Orlando, Florida.
Down Bound Train
Jess pushed her hair behind her ear, and took a sip of the scotch whiskey she’d been tipping back to smooth the edges of a late afternoon in an empty house. She considered the whiskey a medical necessity in her efforts to forget the man she’d loved with all of her heart. He hadn’t always been the nicest man in the world. He’d been sharp and sarcastic at times, and perhaps a bit too self-centered. But for all of his acidity, he’d always held her heart firmly in his capable hands.
In her mind, he was one of the best people she’d ever known. He’d always tried to do what he thought was the right thing in life even if he hadn’t fully succeeded in his efforts. They’d had some wingdinger arguments about what that slippery concept actually meant. Their individual points of view often resulted in very different answers, and she often wondered if doing the right thing was maybe a little different for everyone…at least most of the time. There was always that current in the stream of life that carried the basic core of the things that were always right no matter what your point of view. That was the kind of thing they’d spent hours pondering in the past.
Now he was gone…probably forever. At least he wouldn’t be walking in through her front door and calling out her name like he used to do so often when cocktail hour was near. If she saw him again, it would depend upon the existence of some other dimension like heaven or hell or some multiple universe lost out in the stars.
He’d died horribly, throwing up blood on the floor as he choked to death, his liver pickled with the brine of the whiskey he’d used to try to make himself forget all the right things he wished he’d done. He’d been a hard man, one who dealt out death to others many times during his life. He’d once said he remembered the feel of every bullet he’d ever shot into any person he’d thought was Charlie, and that remembering it was a burden he’d carry for life. He’d been a judge for the last thirty years of his life and sent several people to die on Death Row for crimes against their fellow human beings. He regretted every one of them at least once a day, only to justify the extreme penalty he’d imposed within the next moment, overcome by the memory of crime scene photos that dangled in his brain like red hot pokers raking through the coals of his memory. He was adept at hiding the truth of his beliefs in the ashes and smoke that clouded his brain.
It was late afternoon, but the sun was still bright, casting long shadows in the wooded part of her back yard. She swished her second cocktail around in her glass and sipped the dark brown liquid, enjoying the taste of the smooth single malt scotch and the feel of the sparkling bubbles of the Pellegrino water. She wondered what she’d do with the rest of her Saturday, the only day she kept for herself. She listened to Bruce Springsteen singing in the background about a down bound train, and felt tears leak from her eyes as she imagined the thunder of a train pulling her further down into the depths of the depression that comes from loss.
The doorbell rang but she ignored it, staring out at the bamboo that she’d planted because he liked to remind himself of the place where most of his nightmares had been born. The Nam, In Country, that was a topic that invaded his mind every day as he jumped from thought to thought, which soldiers he should have saved, which women he could or should have known carnally, which ports gave him the best memories, which times he should’ve died. There was an endless stream of memories that he fell into on a regular basis.
She smiled sadly as she remembered his obsessive love of one scene in the movie Apocalypse Now, the clip when the colonel, sounding so wise about the state of life in a war zone, said…”Charlie don’t surf.” Some days he’d play that scene over and over, rewinding each time the choppers flew overhead into the distance. He’d get lost in his memories and the roar of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. He’d roar in pain and agony born of the lost lives and bodies that were damaged beyond repair, and then proclaim that America was doomed because Charlie, whatever that concept meant to him, don’t surf and Americans do. He was sure that his beloved country was the new Rome, destined to fall to the barbarians he called ignorance and sloth. But there were other days when he was brilliant, filled with deep insight, a delight to be around, making her laugh and cry with his thoughts about the world.
She sat up when she heard the front door open. She was either being home-invaded or a friend had come to see her, someone close enough to have a key. She didn’t really care which it was. A friend’s face would be a welcome sight, but if it was something more nefarious, she wasn’t about to do anything but offer the intruder a drink. That was one of the things they’d disagreed upon. He would’ve had his gun out and ready to blow away anyone who tried to mess with his home. She didn’t want to actively participate in any kind of violence. He’d fretted constantly that she had no real security. She’s always responded that she was secure because she didn’t fear death.
“Anybody home?”
As soon as she heard the voice, she knew her friend Tony had come to check on her. She sighed, wishing he wouldn’t worry so much about her state of mind. She really was all right, but her friends knew how much she’d cared about Joe, her faded G.I. judge.
She got up and called out, “I’m in the sun room.”
Tony stood at the door. He held a copy of Newsweek and two cups of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.
“I brought you a coffee.”
“Hey, thanks. What are you doing over this way?”
“I’m spending the night and we’re going out.”
“I’m glad you’re spending the night, but I don’t want to go out.”
“You need to get out of this house. You haven’t been anywhere since Joe’s funeral except your office or the courthouse.”
“Those are the only places I went before the funeral too. Nothing has changed that much.”
“Girl, don’t kid yourself. Everything’s changed. You may not have gone anywhere before, but you had him to hang out with then and you’re here all by yourself now. You’re becoming a hermit.”
“True…”
“And the last time you went to the club, you had a great time. We danced all night and you helped me pick my new boyfriend.”
“Tony, be real. I listened to you describe the asses of every man in the room. I wouldn’t say the guy you took home was exactly a boyfriend.”
“But it was fun. Remember, we all went out for breakfast and that lesbian girl from Tampa almost converted you.”
“Tony, you know I’m a straight breeder. The lesbian girl was nice, but she just wanted to talk to me about the gay adoption case I filed. She and her girlfriend wanted to adopt, and were worried they wouldn’t be allowed the opportunity because of the unconstitutional laws this state was still carrying on its books then.”
“Well, still, we had a great time. And tonight’s Latin Night, which is almost as good as gay prom night at Camp Camp.” Tony spent a week every summer at a gay summer camp resort in upstate New York. Her home was filled with the art projects that he regularly brought to her as gifts after his summer adventures.
“Well, I guess I could use some exercise, and lord knows I’ll get a work out trying to stay up with you on the dance floor.”
Tony grinned. “You’ll be the belle of the ball. You always make a good impression on the gay community even if you are straight.”
They spent the rest of the late afternoon hours reading by the pool and then met a few friends for dinner. It was ten o’clock by the time they finally made it to the club.
The place was packed with bodies and the music was loud. Jess was soon immersed in the beat, lost in the sound and the joyous feel of dancing. She strutted her stuff in the midst of a group of men who took turns dancing with her and each other, all of them trying to outdo each other as they gyrated madly around the floor.
All of the sad thoughts she’d been chasing earlier in the day had disappeared in the heat of the moment, the hazy mist of loving acceptance of every person for what they were, no matter what that might be. That was the thing she loved most about coming to the club with her best friend Tony. She always felt so welcome, so much a part of the group that included everybody there. Not to say there weren’t a few sarcastic comments thrown about with glee and sharp wit used to describe some of the attendees, but whatever was said or done to an individual was said or done with acceptance of that person as a part of the rainbow coalition of people from all races, colors, sexes, ethnicities, and sexual orientations joined together in a celebration of life. It was a party for the world every time she’d been there.
When closing time approached, Tony went to the bar to grab one last cocktail for them. She stood with a beautiful young man who smiled at her and lip synched the song that was playing as if he were serenading her. She was swaying in time with the tune and had just begun to lip synch back to him when she heard a strange sound that was almost like part of the song, but also completely out of place.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG1 BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! It seemed to go on endlessly, as if they’d entered a time warp.
She glanced around, confused about what was happening. Then the beautiful boy yelled for her to get down just as a big red hole opened in his forehead, with blood spraying all around him, all over her, as he fell to the floor. People were screaming, and there were sparks of light from cell phone cameras flashing all around her.
BANG! BANG! BANG! People were falling.
She stood as if paralyzed and then felt Tony’s arms around her. He pulled her down closer to the floor and began moving toward the side of the room where there was a table turned on its side. Just as they reached the side of the table, a bullet whizzed by her head. Tony glanced around and dropped to the floor. As two more bullets flew past, he pulled her down with him and then behind the table which gave them some cover.
They crouched there, listening to the sounds around them: people groaning with pain and fear, screams, shouts, more gunshots, bodies falling, breaking glass, feet pounding on the floor as they ran desperately seeking an exit. It was a din of terrible deadly chaos. She wanted to run for the door, but was afraid to leave the cover of the table.
A very thin older woman with a stylish half crew cut ran from the other side of the room toward where they were hidden behind the table which was close to an exit. When she was only a few feet away…BANG...she fell and writhed in pain, her face distorted with distress and fear. They could see that she was still alive, but not moving, a fact that was probably helping to save her life.
Tony whispered, “I’m going to pull her back here. Then maybe we can all three get to the exit.”
BANG, BANG, BANG rang out from the other side of the building, but the bullets seemed to be streaming in a different direction.
Jess nodded and whispered back, “I’ll help.”
Tony shook his head. “No, it’ll be easier if one person does it. She looks like she weighs next to nothing.”
Jess nodded and squeezed further into the corner so there would be plenty of room for the woman.
Tony darted out and began pulling the body back behind the table. When he was close enough to their hiding place, Jess jumped out, grabbed the woman’s feet and helped move her into their tiny island of seeming safety.
Just as they got the woman situated and Tony began to crouch…BANG, BANG…he was hit with two rounds. One pierced the carotid artery in his throat and the other hit him in the center of his chest.
He and a waterfall of blood fell on top of the two women. He remained on top of them unmoving, no evidence of his life force left in his body, its weight like a blanket of flesh protecting them from harm. She reached desperately for his wrist, but felt no pulse, nothing that would grant her the reprieve of hope.
The other lady, her fellow prisoner in the space behind the table, looked at her calmly and whispered, “Stay still. Maybe they’ll think we’re dead.”
She nodded, grabbed the other woman’s hand, and squeezed. They closed their eyes and lay there, hand in hand, while blood continued to drip, soaking into their clothing, puddling on the floor around them, a red tide that signaled death’s presence among them.
She couldn’t get the sound of Bruce Springsteen’s voice out of her head as she thought over and over that her life seemed like a journey on a down bound train, surrounded with the death of those she loved the most, one of whom was dead on top of her at the moment. She held onto his body, hiding underneath it from the chaos around her, holding on to it like a life raft that would keep her afloat on the sea of life and protect her from the rising tide of death that surrounded her. She felt Tony’s spirit, merged with the spirits of all of the dead that littered the floor, hanging in the air in a futile attempt to save the living from their fate, a cloud of lost life pierced repeatedly by the metallic reality of the bullets that still rained around them, giving her no comfort from the reality of her surroundings. BANG! BANG! BANG! Each shot echoed in her head pulling her down, down, down, down, below the surface of life to the edge of the abyss.
Then she heard someone moan with pain in the silent spaces between the shots. Her fellow traveler in their little haven of safety squeezed her hand and courage flooded her senses. She chided herself for indulging in selfish thought, and felt the wave of pain and loss of life that spread throughout the room and out into the world to the lives of countless others, families, friends, fellow sojourners on the planet, to a whole population of people who had just gained some modicum of civil rights, who would feel the pain of the loss around her like a wound to the world, would feel the blind hatred and bigotry that created the monster still alive and walking in their midst, the personification of the evil that they all knew still lurked in the world.
She knew with all of her heart that Joe would agree with her that Tony was a hero, that he’d done one of those things that was right and brave from any point of view; and, that, in contrast, the man walking around the piles of bodies across a floor slippery with innocent blood was wading in the current of everything wrong in the world, of the most vile and base of any human thought or deed. She was on the precipice that divided good from evil, a place where innocent lives were being snuffed out with the personification of evil and preserved by acts of heroic conduct like that displayed by Tony when he risked his life to save that of another.
She felt a stab of love for the woman beside her and all of the people who shared the floor with them, and realized that love was the only answer to hatred and death, that love was the passageway for transition from evil to good. The two women lay together until the first responders came and pulled Tony’s body off of them, each taking comfort in the other’s presence, each unwilling to move from the shelter of the corpse that covered them from the sight of the evil that walked among the dead around them.
They had lived when so many had died in a place where the specter of death hung like a dark curtain smothering the light of life. The downward trajectory of her journey through life suddenly seemed to change course as Jess walked away from the valley of death with her arms supporting her newly found friend.
This story is dedicated to the friends, families, and people who were harmed or killed by the vile hatred and bigotry that inspired the murderous attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in the early morning hours of June 12, 2016. Let us all rise from the stench of hatred and embrace the rainbow light of love and acceptance of our fellow human beings.
You are an amazing storyteller! From the depths of Nam to the horror of Orlando you covered much social commentary in this gripping piece of reality facing those who kill or are killed by hatred and bigotry.
For some reason I don't recall the Colonel saying, "Charlie doesn't surf," but I do remember vividly, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning!" Imagining what it must be like to have napalm on your skin, running for your life as it burns and burns and burns until you can feel the pain no more. What a horrible way to die. You describe seems much more vividly than I, the mark of a writer's writer.
I will send this story to a gay friend of mine, also an author who has written a well received novel about Galveston called Two Left Shoes, Tommie McNeil.
Spoken Word
This CD will touch the deepest inner part of your humanness and spirit, you will never be the same after listening to the depths of struggle, the reality of life, the touching voice of truth. It will shock you, move you to tears. It w
Spoken Word
This CD will touch the deepest inner part of your humanness and spirit, you will never be the same after listening to the depths of struggle, the reality of life, the touching voice of truth. It will shock you, move you to tears. It w
