Chest Compressions

Actions and Cuts

Photo by Kirill Teslia on Unsplash

They’re filming the story of Billy Curstell’s life just down Burt Road today. Laura Van Frangham is playing Billy’s mom. Not sure who is playing the dead girl in the river.

They got a bunch of 1987 cars for the movie. Not a damn person in our neighborhood owned a brand new car when all the shit from the movie was going on. And Billy’s mom didn’t look like Laura Van Frangham. She looked more like Danny DeVito.

The people who really know Billy know they ain’t gonna tell the story right. Because the newspapers never did, back when there were newspapers, and the crime re-creation shows like Bullets & Handcuffs never did either.

You probably know part of Billy’s story.

Buncha kids from Evergreen Flats and Brightmoor and the Smith Projects were riding their bikes in Rouge Park, looking for lost hubcaps to sell.

Seven of the kids on bikes got bored, pulled off to the part of the park where sometimes people dump whole cars for insurance jobs, or cars they stole and gagged before they could get it to a chop, or never knew where a chop was in the first place.

There was a girl there, where someone jammed a pallet in the Y of a big oak tree, just kind of the cheapest, easiest tree fort you could make.

She had just snorted a bunch of dope. The kids knew that, coroner confirmed it.

Marcus Ungram and some kid I didn’t know named VaShawn Golden raped her, Puff Hildon busted her head with a big hunk a concrete, they threw her in the river.

Billy Curstell had a fucked up life. His dad was a straight up scale model of an asshole, always screaming about Jesus between pulls of an Olde E forty.

Billy wasn’t perfect, but he was a good kid by our neighborhood’s standards, scrawny like a green bean that got left under the carousel of a microwave and cooked twelve dozen times before it’s discovered.

Billy’s dad found a way to get him thrown in Waterman Remedial, which was for the kids who were like slinging mad dope and punching teachers and shit. Billy was maybe stealing some hood ornaments and shoplifting a Tahitian Treat.

He was just out of Waterman, even shyer than before, skinnier than before like he was afraid to touch the weight bench or even the commissary.

And after Marcus and Puff and the rest of those kids took off, Billy turned around on his bike and pulled that girl from the river by the foot.

I wasn’t there, so I don’t really really know but Billy said the only reason he touched the girl’s breast was he was feeling for a heartbeat, which Billy said wasn’t beating, and about four different medical examiners argued about it in court.

Billy was convicted of accessory to aggravated rape. As an adult. Billy Curstell had just turned 16.

He tried to tell the court he would have helped the girl, but she was dead already.

At the time of Billy’s conviction, the girl was unidentified. Jane Doe. Most likely, according to cops and guys who thought they might know a little something about it, a prostitute.

Billy turned 18 in prison, didn’t have it easy.

I know most of those details ain’t gonna be in this movie with the brand new 1987 cars and the big huge lights.

Before Billy’s nineteenth birthday the victim was identified. Leslie Marie Vindelli. Her parents identified her from crime scene photos and a belt buckle. They are from Friend, Nebraska.

They spoke to Channel 7. On camera. Thanked the cops. Then Leslie Marie Vindelli’s mother said they had prayed on it, and they didn’t think Billy Curstell was guilty of harming their daughter. Thought he was honest, and too young to be incarcerated.

I don’t know if Wayne County Prosecutor Ward Walker told them to blow it out their yappy Nebraska ass or what, but Billy stayed in jail.

Then the Vindellis got serious. They got a lawyer for Billy. Woman named Melissa. I don’t know shit about law except that I have the right to remain silent, but she filed all kinds of motions and arguments and I don’t know what, but they paroled Billy Curstell.

They didn’t overturn the conviction, just lessened the sentence and paroled him.

A woman with a walkie talkie asks me if I wanna be in a church scene. Shit yeah I do, I never been in the movies. I wasn’t even on TV the night Screen Three at the Ford Greenfield Drive In got hit with a molotov, and tons of people were on TV that night.

I see Darrien Permian and he tells me Rick Barry Garner is playing Billy’s parole officer.

We both say “Get the fuck outta here” at the same time.

Rick Barry Garner was in the X Men, he…he aint nothing like Billy Curstell’s PO.

I wonder if Rick Barry Garner is gonna be in the church scene with me. Doesn’t seem like he would be. Seems like the church scene might be Billy and his parents.

Billy’s dad didn’t take him back when he got paroled. Guess he said Billy was nineteen, was on his own. Billy moved in with his cousin Jeff in that little yellow house right behind the Dunkin Donuts.

Went to see Billy. He didn’t want to talk about prison. Didn’t want to talk about the night in the park. Told Jeff that Jeff had to get high outside because his PO could drop by any time. Jeff said okay, but they would discuss that in more detail in February, when it was ten below.

After a few months Billy started getting high, a little, here and there. Just weed,but nobody wanted him to piss dirty and go back to jail. He said it was nothin’, but motherfuckers always say shit like that and it is something, they get a case, a violation.

And Billy never had that swagger like something was nothin’.

They’re making a movie about his life and he still don’t.

They got a whole, gleaming white trailer full of toilets parked at Burt Rd and Keeler to make a movie about Billy Curstell and he just looks lost and kinda scared.

Billy Curstell started drinking, and then I was sure his PO was gonna pop him and violate him.

I was like “ you wanna go back to prison Billy? Victor Kay and Tito and Schoolcraft Mike all like prison. Three hots and a cot.

Billy shook his head when I said that, naw, he hated prison. Wants to get a job inking Marvel Comics or at Isaacman Popcorn making caramel corn in those big ass vats you can see through the north side windows.

I tell him that ain’t gonna happen if he pisses dirty.

Then Billy tells me a secret. He blurts it out laughing, but like his eyes got these red rings around them, and his skin looks like it’s hot when he says it.

Billy Curstell is getting a movie made about his life because of all the crazy shit that happened in Rouge Park and in court, but mostly because of this:

Billy’s PO had a heart attack right in front of Billy and Billy gave him CPR he remembered from the year he tried to be a lifeguard at Brennan Pool in Rouge Park.

He didn’t pass the class to be a lifeguard because he couldn’t lift enough weight out of the pool, treading water.

But they say he saved his PO’s life.

On a commuted sentence.

Because God told a family Billy was innocent of harming their little girl.

That’s gonna make a good movie, I guess.

I’m in the third row in church. They gave me a shirt to wear, and a clip on tie. Took my own shirt from me and put a tag with my name on it.

The actor playing Billy is 20 feet from me. He’s better looking and in better shape than Billy, but everyone is in better shape than Billy was then and even is now.

Here’s the part that probably isn’t in that kid’s script.

Billy’s PO didn’t just have a heart attack. Billy’s PO had a heart attack sucking Billy’s dick.

Apparently after prison Billy preferred receiving to giving. Ain’t my thing, but I guess I can kinda understand.

There wasn’t an internet when Leslie Marie Vindelli was murdered or when Billy Curstell was on trial.

People on the internet now wanna know why Billy could save his PO and he couldn’t save the girl in the park.

They seem to miss the part where Leslie Marie Vindelli’s head was bleeding into the Rouge River like motor oil from an abandoned Tahoe.

If the internet ever finds out Parole Officer Winston Scheefer was sucking Billy Curstell’s dick, they’re gonna be merciless.

Inside Glory Ebenezer Baptist Ministry, the film crew is getting ready to shoot the church scene.

One of the people on the crew tells me to look straight ahead and stay quiet.

For the life of Billy Curstell, I’m gonna stay quiet.

*****

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