Do Not Exceed

Triggers and Excuses

Photo by Douglas Bagg on Unsplash

I’m not assigning blame. Not to a person. Or a word.

But words have weights. And contexts. And sound powerful to 11 year old kids.

I feel terrible, but I don’t remember what happened first: Me shattering my ankle skateboarding or Benjamin Duffy getting killed.

They could have overlapped.

Lots of things feel like they overlap, and the stuff I want to peel away is covered by stuff I can’t.

Two days after I got home from breaking my ankle, my mom called the pills “painkillers.”

The doctor called them “a little something for pain.”

My grandma called them “relief.”

It’s not my mom’s fault.

But if she would have known…

Benjamin Duffy was a Down Syndrome guy who collected carts in the FreshLife Grocery Store parking lot.

When it was raining he told people it was raining, even though they had to know, and he loved to open umbrellas and car doors for people.

As I sit here, a partly formed adult, I realize Benjamin was what people call a “community treasure.”

There are no real eyewitnesses to Benjamin’s death.

It’s happened in fucking Glenmouth Falls, which had almost zero crime. No one expects to hear a gunshot downtown. And how would they even know what it was when there wasn’t a second one?

One gunshot to Benjamin’s chest.

A woman lost on her way back to Grand Rapids stopped at FreshLife for a pop and some chips.

All she could describe was a dark, relatively new car.

Cops hated us skateboarding in Valor Park. I knew what they look like when they were pissed.

Cops were on TV taking turns being pissed, vowing to bring the killers to justice.

The woman from Grand Rapids swore there were two men in the car.

But didn’t know what kinda car. Or what year. It was dark.

I got home from the hospital after dark.

Everyone in town talked about “killers.”

The Glenmouth Gazette, this silly little four page newsletter that had usually stories about Glenmouth Cheer coming 3rd in Class D and stuff like that, had “Search for the Killers.”

I stared at that vial of pills my mom called “painkillers.”

The word gave them weight.

Mystery.

Teddy Lerner got a lot of sympathy when he broke his leg skiing. They brought a whole  school Christmas party to him.

I got none, because sweet, chubby, kind Benjamin Duffy was dead.  The cops were saying it might have been a thrill kill.

The whole town kept talking about killers.

I can hear myself making excuses.

I know it.

My second trip to rehab is almost over.

I should be past this.

Painkillers. God I crave them.

Such a strong word.

Painkiller.

The cops didn’t give two cheese curls about kids skateboarding in Valor Park after Benjamin got killed. It just got erased from the priority list.

Baggy Culbreth was grinding Chaukman Fountain, cops drove right by.

I wasn’t supposed to skate. My bone wasn’t ready yet.

I did anyway. And broke the damn ankle again.

I knew what a painkiller was this time.

I never spent three days without a painkiller since, except when I’ve been in rehab.

My parents have a lot of money.

Everybody in Glenmouth Falls has a lot of money.

My parents sent me to the best rehab.

The day after I got out of rehab the first time someone got shot in Glenmouth Falls.

It was the first shooting since the day Benjamin Duffy died.

The cops weren’t pissed that time.

Because I broke into the Kedelson’s house. 

And the person who got shot was me.

Ambulances come quick in Glenmouth Falls.

When they got there I could barely talk.

But I remember asking for a painkiller.

***

I told more than a few people that I would make the stories concerning addiction free. I know I haven’t always done that. But tonight I felt obligated.