I'll start with a message from an old friend. Then I'll plunge in. The waters are very deep...
"My dad taught Michael for a bit in high school. He says he was one of the few people in this world who lived every day to the fullest and got the most out of life he could. He left us far too soon, but he really made a positive impact in this world greater than most folks who live til old age do. I am so sorry for your loss. The entire Tournear family is intelligent, loving, and witty. You will help each other through. Much, much love, Mark."
-Laurie
Sometimes the best intentions can have the most disastrous outcomes. How that phrase bit me when I thought of it for the first time a couple of months ago. Maybe a few pages from now, you'll agree that it does slip sharp, venemous fangs in.
I guess I didn't bring up Michael very much before this because I've still had a lot of grieving to do. It washes over you like the sea crashing onto a rocky point. The water runs right across you, contouring itself to your body. But it takes time and maybe a little effort to dry yourself. Your lighter and your phone are shot, and with wallet photos it's hit or miss. You heal, but things are eternally altered. There are scars.
(I wound up going through a lot of therapy later, but they always wanted to gloss over this part and get back to the topic of the hurricane. Maybe it was a directive issued by the American Psychiatyric Association. It's no wonder I dropped the treatment, huh?)
We won't spread a coat of varnish and call it good today. I'll open the floodgates and let this vile soup out.
I've heard Michael referred to in conversation as the black sheep of our family. Was it because he was the first of us to smoke? Or that he always seemed to be part of the sort of crowd that trouble gravitated to? Hearing that today, it seems a little rude. But I'm biased. Monday morning quarterbacking is my only remaining option.
(I'll admit he was pretty sharp at the art of swindling. At 12 years of age, he was the most clever shoplifter I'd ever lain eyes upon. He came out of a store this one time with maybe 20 cartons of cigarettes and a bottle of Wild Irish Rose stuffed down his pants. Not a fairy tale.)
But people that say those sorts of things always forget to mention the amazing things about him - like how he'd wring every drop of enjoyment out of each day, as if in a race with time (man's only natural enemy); or how quick he was to smile at you, to tell you that he loved you, or to give you a hug. Most people are lacking in those qualities.
His legal troubles began when he was still in school. He began dating the daughter of a police detective. Her father, knowing exactly what crowd he was a part of, laid down the law. They were not to see one another. They decided to run away together, across the state line to Mississippi.
I don't remember all of the details: whether he asked someone to come get him, or if they were caught while there. The end result was the same. Michael was sentenced to his first go-round as a ward of the state. It was juvenile detention that first time.
I'm not trying to build the impression that the local police department was out to get an innocent. I've already stated that he was always up to something, but things eventually deteriorated to the point that they were always looking for a bust - even when he was playing nice.
I found out for myself one night when he asked me to take him for a ride. He wanted to show me a '66 Plymouth Fury that he was thinking of buying. He kept going on and on about how that model was a V.I.P. Edition, so I agreed.
My car was brand new, and my temporary plate had come untaped from the rear windshield. It was only a 15-minute trip, but as luck would have it, a deputy pulled me over to check it out. When he saw my license, he asked me if I was the one that had run off with the cop's daughter. And you wonder why the Tournears buckle their seatbelts and drive the speed limit? ("Heh heh heh," sez the Crypt Keeper.)
Naturally, more troubles followed. He wound up going to jail several times. But who's to say that he wouldn't have done his stretch that first time, then did his best to be a good boy? I just wonder if always having that black mark against him made him think he had no other choice but to live outside of the law.
His newly acquired classic was the beginning of an obsession with older vehicles. If it was sitting in front of someone's house with a big For Sale sign on the windshield, he'd be in touch with them pretty quickly to discuss price. Then again, if your old clunker was sitting in the backyard under a coat of dust with tall grass growing up around it, Michael would eventually try to persuade you to sell it to him. He could get any engine to run, but was equally adept at taking whatever parts were compatible with another vehicle if they'd be more useful elsewhere. That was a talent that went all the way back to childhood, when he'd take apart motorized toys and rig the motors to run little gadgets of his own design - I remember a few handmade boats and cars. He later learned a lot by spending time with our cousin Yale - who was already on the way to his career as a commercial fisherman, and had been working on Uncle Russell's boat and tinkering with old junked-out cars since he was big enough to pick shrimp or change an oil filter (which in our little neck of the marsh, comes at a young age. We still scratch our heads at some of the kids today, who remain unemployed until they begin college - our little fishing community was built on a strong work ethic). I saw Michael go through many cars & trucks, but I still believe that the Fury was his favorite. Eventually, his skill with auto mechanics caught someone's eye, which led to a job with a local towing service that had a junkyard (can you say spare parts?) and needed someone to do mechanical & body work. Before long, he was working on stock cars for friends that were into racing.
(Just prior to this, he worked for a contracting outfit as a wireline/pipeline construction helper. During one of his trips to jail, I worked part-time in his place. When he got out, they kept both of us working long enough that we got sent out to a few job sites together. In the years since, I've spent so many hours in a deep blue funk, trying to recapture every detail. Every minute. Every word.)
What happened was this:
Michael began an affair with a young lady that lived in Grand Bayou (said affair resulting in the birth of my beautiful niece, Jaci). He would routinely come over, then leave his girlfriend - whom we'll call "Jane " from here on out, in an effort to avoid using the impersonal "girlfriend" 4,000 times or so - at our house while he'd head off for a tryst with this other woman.
She and my wife became best friends (some people claim they were lovers, but in light of what happened, there were so many different stories being told, and I just didn't have the strength to listen to every tall tale that was making the rounds). They remain close to this very day.
We'd already been clashing a bit over the fact that she thought my mother judgmental, and didn't like the lifestyles my brothers were living. Family time became one-sided. I'd bend over backward doing favors for her entire family, but we couldn't even take the time to see mine. Whether it was refusing to suffer the wait while I looked through the records at the thrift store where my grandmother worked, or generally avoiding my mom, whom she thought too judgmental and controlling. There was always a perfectly acceptable reason for staying away.
It's a shame about the thing with Mom, really. What mother doesn't think she knows best for her children? We lived two streets over from one another. There was no excuse.
With her new friendship, things got worse.
When they were fighting, my wife would try to shield and protect her from Michael. With alarming frequency, the instances of him not being allowed in the house because Jane didn't want to see him increased.
My stepfather's family had a Christmas party at a lodge in Buras. Michael wound up being ejected from the party after they got into an argument.
A few nights later, we were exchanging gifts early, because I had to be back offshore before the 25th. She was still angry about the party, so she begged my wife and I to keep him away. Eventually I bent to pressure and went on the back porch to talk to him. He chastised me pretty harshly for choosing friends over family. I persuaded her to talk things out with him, and we asked them both to spend the night with us. It turned out to be one of the last times he was at my house.
But not the very last. That happened in January.
My sister-in-law's youngest son came to visit for a few days. On the day she was due to pick him up, she called to ask if we could bring him home. As usual, we had a houseful, so I gathered his things and brought him to Buras alone...
When I got back, I was informed that the police were on the way to pick my brother up. Apparently, he and Jane got into an argument on the front porch, and she tried to go inside. He attempted to restrain her. My mother-in-law, who was outside smoking, tried to help and a tug-of-war war ensued. Then, according to their claims, he raised a hand as if to hit her. Feeling threatened, she told my wife to call the police. (She later told my mom that she didn't really think Michael would have hit her. Once things had gone irrevocably wrong...)
Michael had no desire to go to jail again, so he disappeared quickly.
My wife called my mom and told her that the police were on the way. Mom rushed over.
Meanwhile, I was stuck with the indignity of having to write out my wife's statement for her. How I cursed the fact that I had the best grammar that night.
We'd expect no less than what Mom delivered. She skipped the pleasantries and went straight to nuclear.
"Did you bother to think about the fact that Michael is on probation, and he could go to prison for 7 years?!? You never get the law involved when it's family! You handle it on your own."
Right about that time, we heard Michael yelling for Jane to come outside and talk to him. Mom and Steve ran outside to see if they could do anything before things got out of control, as they are so often wont to do.
The rest of the conversation I only heard, but I might as well have been out there. I've been hearing the words in my dreams ever since.
That parts that are always the same are the police officer ordering Michael to approach slowly with his hands in the air; Michael refusing and stating that he isn't going back to jail, he just wants to talk to Jane, he can't be brought in for that; Steve telling the deputy to put the gun away if he didn't care to have his fucking teeth knocked out.
Then the horrors begin. In some of the dreams Michael is shot dead in my front yard. In the others, my stepdad gets between them before the gun goes off. In either case I wake up praying for sanity. I imagine I'd be sitting in a rubber room right now had either of those things occured.
Mom ran back inside screaming "I need to use the phone, now!"
"Michael has a gun?" asked my wife.
"Of course not! The deputy pulled a gun on him with no provocation. Steve jumped between them.
"Wait! He's picking up now...
"Jiff, this is Remonia! Your deputy just pulled his weapon on my son, and my husband stepped between them! You better come get him before sombody gets killed!"
Fearing a reprimand, the deputy holstered his firearm. Michael was never one to ignore opportunity when it knocked. He took to his heels and disappeared back into the woods. Without a moment's pause, we all followed.
I guess it was a foolish thing to do. Any of us could have been shot, but we didn't care by this point. We were worried sick.
By the time we came out on the other side (in my mom's neighborhood), backup had arrived and there were half a dozen or so policemen combing the street with flashlights.
Michael was at Mom's house, trying to get into her front door. One of the deputies asked him to come down so they could talk.
"No! I told you I'm not going back to jail."
When one of them came onto the porch and tried to grab him, Michael turned around and threw a punch at him.
"You motherfucker!" he said, and dove at Michael like a torpedo, knocking both to the ground. There was a short scuffle, but soon enough he was handcuffed and taken away.
Mom let me have it the next morning. It didn't matter that I was gone when things went down. I think she was mostly lashing out because my wife wasn't going to face her.
Substantiated or not, she was afraid of what my brother might be capable of. Her fear, coupled with the evening's events, had rubbed off on the kids. So instead of leaving bad enough alone, she decided to file a restraining order against him.
My brother was no longer allowed at my house. Would in fact be arrested if he showed his face there.
... and there was nothing I could do about it.
Our relationship with my family went from strained to almost nonexistent. I didn't have a clue, but the after-effects of that night would alter the landscape permanently. There's still something there, but one must circumnavigate the craters left by the quakes.
As if the arrest wasn't enough, now everyone was even angrier. Sure, I could go somewhere and see him, but - as stated - he wasn't allowed at my house, and under no circumstances could he approach my wife or my children.
This is the point that estrangement occurs. Your options - avoid everyone with your partner, or make an effort to see them and be overwhelmed by the outpouring of vitriole - both stink.
I finally realized how angry he was at me when she had another death in her family. She asked me to call Michael's house and ask if she could speak to Jane. He told me no and hung up.
This poisonous cake was definitely done, because here came the icing.
We went to the Mississippi coast to attend a Prince show and have a little honeymoon (we never had a first, so we can't call it a second). Jane and my stepsister stayed at the house to watch the children.
At some point during the weekend, my sister called to tell us that Michael had come to the house to pick Jane up. He had grudgingly accepted their friendship, but to honor the restraining order, had been coming only halfway down our street to pick her up. This time was a direct violation. My wife urged my sister to call the police, and he was picked up again.
Yale put up the bail money, so Michael signed his truck over to him as payback. He got his hands on a four-wheeler somewhere and began using it to travel all over the parish. This, to bring your mind back to beginning of this passage, was when good intentions - sure, we'll call them good no matter how misguided they were - led to complete and total destruction.
During the last month or so of Michael's life, he seemed to be making peace - with himself, yes, and with others that he'd burnt bridges with at some point. He spent a lot of time studying his bible and talking with my cousin while working on his shrimp boat. He told me later that my brother was constantly showing him passages that he found inspirational. He approached my father-in-law in a bar one night, apologized for the disturbance at our house, and said that he missed his niece and nephew very much.
The last time I was with him, we had just gotten back from evacuating for Hurricane Ivan. A spider bite on his leg had left him feverish.The wound was not healing. He spent the evacuation with my dad. The pictures they took wound up being his last. My "brother-in-law" and I visited him at Dad's house. They had a pretty animated conversation. He didn't speak to me much, and still seemed rather delirious.
On September 27, 2004 he skipped a trip on the boat. He had to go to court for the restraining order violation. He rode up to Grand Bayou to see Jaci, after which he stopped at Fremin's to see Dad. They took a ride across the levee to see a dock that Dad had been building.
When he dropped him off, he said, "Dad, Carol is one of the best things that ever happened to you . Don't worry about any of those skirts you've spent the last ten years chasing. Just stay with her. She's really settled you down. She's good for you."
He then stopped at Aunt Betty's to tell her goodbye. We always wondered whether he meant that he might be going to prison, or if he'd had a premonition. He stopped at Mom's and soberly told her that he was tired of fighting. He just wanted to find out what court costs he'd have to pay and serve whatever time they gave him.
"I'll start over with a clean slate after that. I don't want any more trouble."
Then he changed the subject and told her there were some places he wanted to take her riding. He said he'd been back there with a lady, and that the ruts they had to navigate drove her wild. Said if he brought her back there, she'd have Steve back there riding soon enough.
That evening, as I was packing to go back offshore, my wife told me that she'd been talking with her dad, and that they felt that Michael wanted to make amends with people, and seemed to be making an effort to straighten out his life. She'd decided to drop the restraining order when they appeared in court the next day.
"But we'll tell him that he can come over as soon as the kids are comfortable with the idea of seeing him again," she said.
I'm sorry, my dear. It was too little too late.
At 8:00, I cut my hair, showered, and laid down for a nap.
The phone rang at 10:30, jarring me out of my mini-coma. It was a habit I'd conditioned myself to as preparation for long road trips. My wife got up and answered it.
"It's for you."
"Who is it?" I mumbled.
"The police."
"What?"
I took the phone.
"Am I speaking with Mark Tournear?"
"Yes, sir."
"This is Dale Pelas with the Plaquemines Parish Sheriff's Office. Do you have a brother named Michael Tournear?"
"Yes, I do."
"We need you to come to the hospital. Your brother's been in a four-wheeler accident."
"Okay."
"You should call your mother, too."
"Yes, sir. I will."
I hung up and told my wife what had happened while dialing Mom.
When I got her on the line, she asked - herself more so than me - why these things kept happening and what could possibly strike us next. I assured her that we'd meet at the emergency room.
I didn't get right out of bed. Part of it was weariness, but maybe somewhere inside there was a growing certainty that "next" had teeth. Sharp ones.
My wife finally broke the silence by asking me, "Are you going to the hospital?"
"Yeah. I'm going."
I got up, turned on the coffee, and got dressed.
I drove over there imagining him on the examination table, arguing with the doctors that they couldn't put a cast on his leg. He had too many things to do and couldn't afford to be slowed by crutches. That was my last thought before the film exploded, then drifted down in a thousand smoldering fragments.
(While I was on the road, Mom called the house in a panic. Where was I? I needed to get there now. My wife tried to reassure her that I was on the way.)
When I walked into the emergency room, the police officer came out and asked me to follow him. An Indian doctor led me to a consultation room where Mom was sitting.
"Your brother sustained multiple injuries. We did all we could. I'm sorry, but he didn't make it."
He came out and said it so bluntly! His tone was so calm that he almost seemed cruel about it. Maybe this was something he had to do all the time. I turned to Mom, and realized that I'd never seen a real case of shellshock before. The face of that sensible young woman had shattered , revealing a new one beneath it - the face of a woman embarking upon the first moments of being old. It was a face I came to recognize looking at me from the other side of the mirror.
"I want to see him again," Mom said.
The doctor led us to an examination room.
... and there was my little brother. He had a tube down his throat, one eye was swollen shut, and there was a trickle of blood that had run down his nose to his moustache. His eyes were half-open. Other than a small cut on the back of his head, he looked like he was fine. Like there was still hope.
But all hope was already gone when they called me.
Mom handed me her phone and asked me to call Aunt Betty & Dad. Aunt Betty began to cry when I asked her to come and hung up. Dad was already on the way.
When my aunt walked in and saw Michael on the table, she cried for God to strike her blind - to negate the truth that eyesight was cursing her with. At the sound of her voice, Mom realized that someone else was here and it wasn't a nightmare. She promptly fainted. We didn't get to her fast enough to stop her from hitting the floor, but we did slow her enough to escape needing stitches in her head.
Soon, all of my aunts and Cody were there. I called Jeffrey, but he broke down by the cemetery in Nairn. I sped off to get him after giving Cody the phone to call my house. That seemed easier. I had no idea what to say.
We'd stayed until the people from the funeral home had come and gone, then I went to Dad's house. We met Yale and Vicki there. Aunt Peggy had called him on the boat with the news. He brought the boat to the dock blinded by a haze of tears. We sat on the porch and talked all night long.
When I finally went home, it was nearing 5 am. My mother-in-law and Jane were there. To their queries about my well-being, I responded in a small, thin voice that I was ok.
After her mother left, my wife took me aside and asked, "Do you hate me now? Do you want to hit me? Because right now I wouldn't blame you or try to stop you."
"No, I won't hit you, and I could never hate you."
I had no idea how wrong I was. I don't hate her today. I've made that much peace with it, but the seeds of resentment were planted and growing roots now.
I decided to go back to Mom's, despite her pleas when we'd parted for me to get some rest. There, I began a week-long diet of coffee and cigarettes. By our estimation, Steve and I smoked 5 packs a day. None of us really slept.
Mom alternated between despair and anger rapidly. She reserved a large portion of that anger with which to chastise me. She was mad at Jane and my wife, but I was the one sitting across the table from her, so I got flogged in their place. She told me that my wife could go ahead and drop the restraining order now. When I told her that she had meant to drop it that very day, she called me a liar.
(Yale got it worse than I did. He had a court appearance of his own to make that day. After arguing with his lawyer about not being fit to make an appearance, he was hassled a bit for wearing shorts. He swore at the judge, shouting that he was in no shape to be there at all, much less dress himself. He told him that if he needed more punishment for his grief than he was already getting, then they should go ahead and handcuff him. Then he told them that they were so full of shit that they'd probably issue a bench warrant for his cousin, who was unable to appear in court by reason of death. He was right, too.)
After someone called to offer Michael a steady job with good benefits, one of my aunts forced Mom to take something that would help her sleep and got her to lie down. Faced with the evils of either drugging her or watching her grieve herself to death that very day, I'd say that the appropriate choice was made. I assured her that I'd get some rest, then went straight back to Dad's. At that moment I was certain I'd never sleep again.
The people from the deli where Dad worked brought plate lunches. The food they brought; their arms around us; the tears in their eyes - it's overwhelmingly awful that you must endure such hardship to realize just how much people care about you. Hour after hour, I'd been struck with the absolute certainty that a particular moment was the nadir of my life - only to be hit even harder by something else. This was another of those moments. I walked around the house, leaned my head against Michael's truck - more like hung on for dear life - and cried for an hour. My tears didn't stop for weeks.
When I'd calmed down enough to go back inside, Dad and I went through the backpack Michael kept packed for trips on the boat and divided his things amongst ourselves. We sat his bible aside for my mom. Inside the cover, he'd written his name and birth date. Mom later wrote in the date that bookended his time with us. I kept his travel-sized tube of toothpaste. I never used it, but have it still. Even waded through flood waters to get it at one point. My father kept his shoes, his jeans, and all of his t-shirts. He wore almost nothing else for the better part of the next year.
The next day, the owner of the wrecker service - a former classmate and friend of Michael's, who'd worked on his stock car - took us to the place where it happened.
A local man had sustained damage to his roof in the recent storm, and had been doing repairs. He'd seen my brother pass by on the levee several times throughout the day. Just before dark, he heard an engine and looked up to see Michael passing yet again.
(According to what we've been able to piece together, he'd gone down there to visit a girl. He told her he should be heading home while there was daylight left to spare, stopped at the bar at the front of her street, grabbed a beer for his ride, then hit the levee.)
They waved at one another, then he reached down to get another nail. When he looked back up, the four-wheeler was rolling down the side of the levee with no one on it. It crashed harmlessly into the back fence of the old Marathon property.
By the time he descended the ladder, several of his neighbors were running up the levee to offer assistance. Fearing what he might see, he stayed behind to call an ambulance.
By all accounts, one of the first to arrive was a volunteer firefighter. Michael was lying facedown, but trying to get up. CPR was administered until the rescue unit (which had to approach from the long way around due to the wet post-storm conditions) arrived.
I don't know how long he remained in that waiting room, between the light and the dark, that terminator. Maybe he only had seconds. It could have been an hour. The only thing that was ever made clear to me was that he had sustained a fracture to his skull (something that I survived when I was but a tyke. What irony...), and the resultant hemorrhaging ended his life.
We were left with the assurance that he "didn't suffer." He suffered plenty!!! Mom would say when recounting it later.
Mom, Aunt Betty, and I went to make the arrangements. I picked his casket because no one else wanted to. My only non-hysterical moment of the entire time we were there. We got him a spot close to Uncle Richard so he wouldn't be alone.
The next day, Jeffrey built a cross, I painted it, and Cody labelled it, complete with his trademark Chevy symbol.
We rode to the spot on the levee and planted his cross. Cody was with our stepbrother, Steven, and he seemed rather peeved that I was drinking.
When I got home, my wife asked if I was ok. I told her that I was, then slipped into the darkness of the laundry room just as despair rose from the depths to engulf me. She came in right behind me and held me up while I floundered. Crowning this black comedy, the cat that had claimed me as her "daddy" because neither of us were very sociable came in, wrapped her paws around my neck, and wept with me.
When we left for the visitation, I literally had no idea how I was going to make it through the night. I didn't have long to wonder. We'd only been there a few minutes when Mom volunteered Jeffrey's girlfriend and I to make a montage of photos, and a display of his drawings and the model commercial fishing boats he had handcrafted from scratch. Then during the visitation, my old friend Daniel Parker showed up. He was always one to keep me laughing. His company coupled with Mom's busywork assignment had, like magic, enabled me to keep my cool.
The next day was an entirely different story.
We all met that morning, and complained of our weariness with condolences. It's true, people. When you hear enough, you grow to hate them. We half-seriously began a list of the ones we hated the most. I'm sure that every one of you that have been there have your own.
We went all out for Michael. Aunt Debra bought four gold doubloons, meant to represent brotherhood. We carried them in our pockets throughout the services, then left them with him in the end. During the morning visit, people put cigarettes, money, and various other (un)mentionables in his suit pockets. He was inundated with cards and pictures. I put pictures of my children in his hand. I'd made copies of the keys to his Plymouth, so Jane put the originals in his pocket. We planned to restore it for his daughter. A future graduation present.
I went outside just prior to the benediction. Dad was sitting on the steps alone. I told him how scared I was.
One of my cousins collared me on the way back in and asked me to be strong for my mom. He said that we could do whatever we needed to do when we got home. I'm sorry, Mom. I guess I didn't do such a good job with that one.
The minister gave us a textbook sermon about mourning, prayed, then invited friends and family to speak. Aunt Cathy read a poem. My stepdad spoke of him buying an old drivable RV, getting it running, then driving it illegally all over town.
"I told him he was going to be in trouble if he was caught. He asked me how they were gonna stop him in this."
Bless Steve's heart. He's always capable of getting a chuckle out of you when one is most needed. I continued with a story about the day he decided to take my children on an adventure called "Let's clear a trail through the woods to Grandma's house with my truck." The ditch proved too steep. One of them got a bruise on their forehead. Dad wound up pulling him out.
Mom spoke at length about her concerns for his soul; how she'd known she was going to lose him since January; and how although we were all hurting, not one of us could comprehend how wrong it was to have to bury one's own child... to have to say goodbye to someone that they had carried for nine months.
It was a statement no one felt the urge to follow. We wrapped things up with my aunts singing while Jeffrey played guitar. I was asked to play, but was incapable. It would be years before I felt any passion for music again (or anything else, for that matter).
I'd had no control over my emotions since we were seated. When the casket was closed, another of those moments occurred - the ones when you realize that the pain is only beginning. I had to put one of Dad's shoes back on his foot, then Jeff and I helped him up. He'd aged 20 years over the past week.
During the trip to the mauseleum, we talked about how he'd have wanted to be driven to the cemetery in the back of his truck.
When we got there, the minister instructed us to remove the casket, carry it to the appointed place, lift, and slide it into the open tomb. I tell you now, it was the hardest thing we ever did, the heaviest load we ever had to carry. In our grief, Michael weighed at least a thousand ponds.
There is no sound on earth like the screech of a casket sliding into a tomb. It will rip your heart into jagged tatters.
When I let go, my vision blurred and I fell. Someone caught me and held on very tight. I still don't know who it was. I went back to Michael and laid my hand back in the place from which it had fallen. No one else had moved. Dad came over and held on, too. We stayed there until it was time to go.
Afterward, there was a gathering in the fellowship hall of the church. We attempted to eat, but it proved too difficult a task. Jaci was walking from table to table, and while her vocabulary was limited, she had no trouble with the one word guaranteed to twist the knife a little more. That word was "Daddy." This beautiful little girl would never know her father.
After everyone had eaten a little, we walked back to the mausoleum. The burial crew had already sealed the tomb. Uncle Buddy got everyone's attention, then pulled out a harmonica. He claimed he'd been driving one day, when the urge to stop and buy one came to him. It had seemed a foolhardy notion, because he had a desk drawer full of them at home. He followed his intuition regardless. The harp had called out to him again when it was time to make this trip, so he put it in his pocket. This was Michael's harmonica, and it had a song to play for him. He lifted it to his lips, and out came a blues meant for no other time or place. When he finished, Aunt Peggy asked him to do another one.
"I'm sorry, but this harmonica has played the song it needed to. I'm afraid it has nothing else to say."
Back into his pocket it went. The ladies politely picked up the reigns and sang a few more hymns.
After a brief nap at home, we all went back to the cross.
Yale and I had sat in Michael's truck for a few hours on the morning after the accident talking about him, and we had decided that we were going to finish the case of beer that they had opened together. It wound up being the only thing the two of us drank that night. Kenneth got very drunk and wanted to go the bar. I took him home instead. My aunt cried with relief when she saw us. She was so worried that one of us might do something to hurt ourselves.
I chose to skip the benefit that was being held at my aunt's bar the next night. I had to nap a little so I could head back offshore in the morning, but wound up going anyway because Jane asked me to come get her. She couldn't handle being there anymore.
The next day, on a helicopter back into the Gulf, I saw what could have been a vision from the Almighty. That or delirium. The kingdom of Heaven, with it's streets of gold and vast mansions, was there in the clouds . I took it as a sign that Michael's soul was with God, and that everything would be ok.
I'd love to see him there one day. To know that part is true.
As for things being ok? They were going to get much worse before they got better, and I was just hours from the first indication of that.
