Junk of Circumstance - 9.13-14.2010

I had moved out of my Father’s house when I was nineteen, but only to Portland from Lake O. It wasn’t far enough away for my tastes though.
     A couple years before I had, as a gift to myself for graduating high school, bought a VW camper and taken a one month tour around the western US, covering 9000 miles in thirty days in a vehicle that shouldn’t have made it past Eugene. Along the way I and my friend who was travelling with me spent some time in Colorado, and I absolutely fell in love with the place. While there are many details about that particular time, this is not that story, nor is it the story of the failed attempt to move there permanently a year later with the same friend that culminated in a gathering in said van, of a bisexual hippy girl and her vegan dog, a railroad tramp who was clearly mentally disabled named “Rerun” and a black anarchist with a bihawk hairdo who was clearly socially maladjusted, running afoul of the law in the eastern expanse of rural Utah, in a town that can only be described as “The Outer Limits”.

   No this is a story of what happened when I actually successfully moved to Colorado. I had licked my wounds from the earlier attempt to move to the continental divide for two years, and while I was laboring here, in Portland, a good friend had moved out to a small town in the Roaring Fork Valley, downstream from the town of Aspen. I had never thought about moving to the western slope, instead having focused before on the area in and around Boulder, but we had talked quite frequently since he had made the move, and he was adamant that it was a beautiful area and I had to come out to see. So, I found someone else who was willing to make the trip with me, an educated malcontent who was a fierce proponent of Carlos Casteneda and peyote and dreadlocks, and he seemed likeable enough to me and willing to share time behind the wheel so I said why not. So we set out one night in March, and turned the car to the south, as I had the pesky matter of an outstanding warrant in one aforementioned state of Utah that had yet to be handled through proper legal channels, and therefore precluded a direct route to my mountainous shangi-la. We would drive straight through taking turns, and trying to avoid as much as possible any unwanted attention from the fuzz, which was difficult considering it was a VW bus covered in Grateful Dead stickers and hand painted on all body panels, yet necessary because of the incredible amount of illicit substances that we were brazen enough to load up in various places inside of the van. For my part I had two sheets of something lysergic stuffed inside of a guitar pedal and was convince that in the event of a search the police would not dissect it, as it was clearly marked that opening the guitar pedal would VOID THE WARRANTY, and as long as it didn’t smell funny, there should be no probable cause for them to destroy the contract that I had with digitech by way of my purchasing their product. Anyways with the exception of a story I’ve already told in here before about me falling asleep at the wheel at speed near the four corners region of the American Southwest, we arrived in Boulder which was my companions destination and we went our separate ways, he staying there and me left with another 3-4 hours to drive across and sometimes through the mountains.
      I stopped in Beaver Creek and called my friend, who said that he would come and meet me when I got to Glenwood Springs, and help guide me in to what would be home for the next month, though originally it had been expected to be for much longer. So we met on the side of the road at night, and we began a two VW caravan driving up the valley, me with visions of a scenic mountain cabin dressed with picture windows, overlooking a beautiful vista in the morning, and crawling with free-loving, ski bunnies by night. What I found when we finally turned down the drive was a double wide trailer, sat ‘tween a single wide and a manufactured home off of a single lane road that paralleled the newer, modern highway. I parked my car and was struck by the contrast of the rushing river to the back of the property and the sound of the highway to the front that clashed completely with the mental image I had set myself up for. Moving towards the fence around the dimly lit trailer with a rolled up twin foam mattress, and my sleeping bag, I met a lifelong friend. My friend Brett’s dog, Chia. And when I say met, I mean she jumped at my face in the dark, teeth snapping, and almost ripped my throat out. My friend had failed to mention that an aggressive, black dog guarded the grounds and didn’t like strangers. It turned out this was not all he had failed to mention however. It turns out that he had failed to mention to the other four people sharing the trailer, anything about my arrival, or the fact that they should be expecting a new roommate. Road weary, I had some quick introductions with a couple people and set my bed up, falling into a deep, long deserved sleep.

    The next day I woke up, a stranger in a house of strangers, but after talking to a couple people for just a couple minutes, I knew that we would all get on famously. One of my new roommates was a girl named Allyssa. She was one of those people who seem infinitely curious about life, and completely non-judgmental, almost a fawn in the woods, but very sweet and I knew I liked her right away. It turned out, the feeling was mutual, and while I had taken a ride up valley that day to cheat my way onto my first real Colorado mountain, she had taken the initiative to invite some of her friends down valley to meet her new roommate. So when I arrived at home I was introduced to a new girl, named Emily. She was a girl with a sparkle in her eye, and a thirst for life that was almost insatiable.
     We hit it off right away, and she decided to stay the night. I was liking this place very much indeed. Funny thing about not knowing anybody, is when you meet a large group of people, you just don’t know about any pre-existing relationships among these people. Coincidentally, I had met all but one of my new roommates up to this point, Chia’s person, Brett. This would be resolved shortly.
     The next day, I awoke on the pullout sofabed, aware that there was someone else in the house that hadn’t been there before. It was Brett. He walked through the living room, and seeing me with my eyes barely open, offered a sheepish grin and a nod, walked out the front door and closed it behind him. Later I would find out that a mere two weeks prior, him and Emily had been an item. Great, my second day in town and I’ve already made an enemy. As it turned out, he wasn’t as bothered as I’d imagined, and gave me a pass, which I was glad for because I was pretty sure he could kick my ass. To this day though, we are great friends, the kind that can go years without talking, pick up the phone and it’s like nothing has happened.
     In the next couple weeks, me and this group of new friends got to know each other very fast. This is what happens when six people live in a double-wide, snowbound trailer with no TV, a radio with limited channels, burgundy wine and marijuana. Emily and I had a little thing, that we both decided wouldn’t go anywhere, but still had a little soft spot for each other. One day, she, Allyssa, our friend George and I were riding in the back of my friend Orion’s VW. Laying down in the back which had been converted to a mattress over a storage area, driving around the backroads heading into Carbondale, Allyssa asked the question. “What do you want people to do when you die?”

      Not thinking too much of it at the time, we engaged in a thorough debate about what our personal wishes were, undoubtedly our answers being tinged with the hippy ideals that we were so full of at the time. We arrived at our destination, the liquor store and I being of age went inside to get some ingredients for jungle juice that we were going to be making for a party later. Everclear, gin and whiskey were all procured along with some kind of fruit punch and we headed back to the house to prepare for debauchery.
      The party was a great success, and I finally thought I had found a place I belonged, and I in the short time I had known these people had genuinely grown to love them and accepted them as my new surrogate family. The night after the party, we were all enjoying an impromptu music jam, and some improv theater that Brett and I called “Theater of the Absurd” when I heard the slightest sound out by the road. I didn’t think anything of it right away, but within a few minutes, the dogs in the house had grown quite restless. Finally after watching them try to jump through the front door window, we decided to investigate. We opened the front door and up on the road, about one hundred feet from our driveway, we saw the flashing lights of an ambulance.
       We were all at the house when it happened, all of us but Allyssa. She was due home any minute. As it turned out, she never made it. Sadly, while she was walking home from the bus stop, and holding hands with her boyfriend, a car was driving down the road, old highway 82 to be exact, but on that night it reverted to it’s colloquial name, “killer 82”. Driving the car was a sixteen year old girl, newly freed with her drivers licence, and a car full of friends, who just so happened to be trying to light a bowl of weed rested on an arizona iced tea can. Allyssa was struck by the car, ripped from John’s hand and thrown over fifty feet into the culvert up the road by our neighbors house. The sound I had nearly convinced myself was nothing, was the sound of her life leaving this earth. This fact has always haunted me, and even as I write this now the thought brings me to tears.
     As if this wasn’t bad enough, it turns out Allyssa’s boyfriend had a police record with the local sheriff, and was known in town for drug offenses. This meant in the sheriffs eyes that we were all suspects in our friends death. We didn’t have much time to grieve, before we rushed down to the hospital they had taken her to in a wailing ambulance. Sitting next to me in the car was John, and I had only met him once before, but I held his hand and he kept saying the same thing. “She’s gone, John, she’s gone. I could feel it.” I tried my best to stay strong, but my gut was telling me the same thing. We drove down to Glenwood Springs and were told to go wait in the chapel. A nurse came by a few minutes later and asked if anyone of us could identify the body. We knew she was gone.
     While at the hospital I made a phone call to Aspen, where Emily lived. I told her she needed to come down right now. Emily was Allyssa’s best friend, they had been friends from childhood, and it was from Emily’s asking that Allyssa had moved to Colorado. Emily was at a party, and she was very high that night which I didn’t know at the time. She begged me to tell her what had happened, and after protesting several times, I finally told her, Allyssa was gone. This was met with the most earth shattering moan I have ever heard uttered by human lips, and my heart exploded in my chest We arrived back at our house and had at this point been shocked back into sobriety enough to actually be out at the road, which was blocked off at the time, and talking to the sheriff. I was telling the sheriff that we had never met the girl that hit her before, and other things I thought might help, (I don’t know, I think I was trying to hide myself from the emotion of it all, and thought I should try and help.) This was when Emily showed up. She got out of her friends car with tear filled eyes, pupils the size of saucers, and being faced with the truth of the moment, collapsed. Brett rushed to her side and buoyed her up, walking her towards our house. Immediately the sheriff said, “what’s she on?!”
     I jumped in his face and said, “HER BEST FRIEND JUST DIED, SHE’S COMPLETELY FREAKED OUT, GET OFF HER BACK.”
     He threatened to arrest me, but thankfully one of his deputies redirected his attention a moment later as my friend who was standing just to my side whispered to me, " I was gonna swing on him if he tried something." It was a night of hell. A night of loss, a night of sadness, and a shattering of our little piece of heaven that we had built out of an overpriced, under-insulated double wide trailer lying by the side of the road, “old killer 82”. The next day our landlords, who happened to live next door and were good christian folks, gave us a phone call. They said, " We don’t know what you kids are doing in that house, but if you have any kind of drugs, we recommend that you get them out of the house, the Sheriff is investigating you, and they think you have something to do with this."

   We were crushed. Not only had we lost a beautiful friend, but now we were being investigated in her death. That night, by moonlight we buried a danish cookie tin in the backyard under the largest oak tree. It’s contents were as follows, two sheets of something, a QP of something, and several ounces of another thing that is often times an ingredient in spaghetti, but not this kind. We all stood out in the back lot, listening to the river when I decided to say a few words. I can’t remember what I said, except for when I looked up to the sky and said, “Allyssa, we know you’re still out there, if you can just give us a sign you’re okay.” At that moment three shooting stars passed overhead, witnessed by no less than six people.

    After about a week, we were contacted again, and told the sheriff was backing off us, and no longer felt there was a connection between us and our friends death. After two more weeks, all but two people had left the house, and within another two weeks, I had nowhere to live, only knew about four people in the whole state, and was living in my van.

Down.

By the river. Believe it or not, this is the beginning of the story, but this being a basketball blog, the rest of the story will have to wait for another time, and possibly another place.

BTW, just this year I found out that a few years back, Emily suffered a stroke while she was sleeping, and died. If there is an afterlife, I think the two of them are hanging out somewhere talking about how crazy all that ish was, and how happy they are to be back together, and how the world is a slightly dimmer place for their absence.