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The Dead Walk
Maybe it’s true what the old legends say, about the dead walking the earth this time of year. I stepped out of my house just after midnight, to stroll around the neighborhood while chatting on the phone with a friend. It’s something I enjoy doing when the weather’s nice. It’s a quiet little neighborhood.
I was a little way down the street when I first heard what sounded like footsteps behind me. Like somebody (or something) coming up fast. I turned quickly and it was nothing. Officially, I decided it was just the crunchy leaf noises that threw me. Unofficially, I wasn’t so sure.
Sometimes the only people I see when walking this late at night are actually cats. A small black one with a white neck waited till I got close to run back up on his porch and peek out at me. A tabby with a green collar and little bell followed me noisily until I left her little zone.
I thought I heard more steps behind me and turned. This time there was somebody there. But he was far off and turned down a side street. Not following me. It was one of those nights where cars drive by suspiciously slow. Or maybe everything just seems suspicious because of the way the air feels this time of year. It’s hard to know for sure.
But when a woman yelled to me from the other side of the street to call the police because her husband had just punched her in the face, I did know for sure… well, sort of. I got off the phone, and crossed the street. She was upset, with a hand on her face - also very drunk. She asked me to call the cops. I dialed 911, and handed the phone to her.
“You know the situation better than me.”
She talked to the operating and explained what happened. She was altogether very calm, suddenly much more collected than she had been. Much more earnest in letting them know that she didn’t need a paramedic but that she did want to press charges. She got off the phone and thanked me. I told her I’d wait with her at the corner until the car came by. She said I didn’t have to, and I was vaguely concerned that the husband was going to come out. But I figured what the hell. Seemed like the right thing to do.
Before she talked to the operating, she asked me what the cross street was. It was right above her head. “Harriet” I told her. After she was off, I asked if she lived in the neighborhood. “No,” she said. And told me where she was from. By now, I could see her face more clearly under the street light. For somebody who’d just gotten punched in the face, as she described it, she didn’t seem to be black and blue or bleeding. But who knows, it’s not my call to decide what happened to her that night. All I could do was wait with her.
“My son died,” she told me.
“I was pregnant, but my son died. And I told my husband that my son probably died because his father was an alcoholic. And that’s when he hit me. Boom!” She made a gesture, whiskey wafting off of her. “Do you have a cigarette?”
“No, I don’t. I’m sorry,” I told her. That’s another thing people always ask you when you’re walking around at night. As if only somebody with cigarettes would ever dare walk around then. Or somebody craving one.
“Well, let me just go inside and get one,” she said. “You don’t have to wait. My girlfriend will wait with me.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” I said. “I’ll wait here till the car comes just to be sure.”
As she went back towards the house, I heard a man yell, “That’s right bitch, you just keep walkin’! You come in here and suck this dick!”
“I don’t do that!”
“Oh yes you do!”
Honestly, I didn’t know if she was even going to come back outside. I thought maybe the whole thing was some weird set-up, a game of some kind. Maybe she didn’t really even want the cops to come at all, and that’s why she’d made an excuse to go back inside. I stood there waiting, pondering over it all. I looked at my phone, to see how long it had been since she called. And then I looked up at the street light, and I had one of those moments.
One of those moments where the world stands still.
Telephone wires criss-crossed in front of it. Behind the light was the sky, purple. The first stars I’d seen since I could remember. The air was clear and crisp. The perfect autumn night. Standing there in the periphery of somebody else’s weird life situation, everything that had been weighing on me, that I’d been worrying about just melted away.
I was expecting a squad car. Instead a little van rolled up. Almost a mini-van, but not quite. It seemed almost cute. Like it was a family car, designed to deal with modern family situations. As they pulled up, I nodded, and pointed over at the woman coming out of the house.
“They’re here!” she yelled. “I’m going.”
As she came down the stairs and back to the corner, a cop got out of the driver’s seat and said sternly, “You the other half a this?”
“No,” I said. “I’m just the guy with the cell phone.”
“You’re the what? Who made the call?”
“She did,” I said. “With my phone.” The cop eyed me suspiciously.
She grabbed her head again, “I just stopped him to use his phone.”
“Tell me what’s going on here,” the officer commanded her.
Immediately she launched into what I could tell was going to be a lengthy diatribe. All I heard was, “He thinks I was cheatin’ on him, but I ain’t never cheated on him. I stood by him, even when he was in jail.”
I backed up and walked around the officers, who were still eyeing me suspiciously out of the corner of their eye - I guess that’s just what they do. “I’m gonna take off guys.” And then I walked back up the street, back home. It felt like some kind of weird turning point. Like I’d crossed some threshold in my life, there tonight under the street light, waiting for the cops to come. It was all very freeing somehow. Not sure how to explain it, or if I really even need to. I guess just sometimes the dead walk the earth. And you can be one of them or not.
November 4th, 2005 at 5:02 am
Beautiful.
November 4th, 2005 at 8:32 am
I’ve got little to add to that, other than recognise one great story.
OK, one thing to add. I’m another who enjoys taking walks at night. Your comment about cigarettes is so true. On the rare chance that I run into anyone else, and they’re not walking a dog, it’s almost certain that they’ll ask for something smoke related. Though I’m in Canada, so it’s a bit of an even mix betwean requests for cigs and rolling papers.
November 4th, 2005 at 8:46 am
Great story, Tim. I’ve had a few experiences like that myself. Things just seem to switch. I dunno about anyone else, but the experience is always a feeling thing rather than a thinking thing for me.
Heh, and I also go out for walks at night (well, on the weekends, as I work nights). So I can also say that people tend to ask for a smoke late at night, but I happen to smoke myself and can oblige ‘em.
November 4th, 2005 at 9:06 am
You were just treated to a view of the underbelly of humanity. The ones directly under the bootheel of the Archons. Though their Archons may be alcoholism, petty crime, and domestic violence. They almost seem like a separate species, and I’m sorry if that sounds elitist, but could our worlds and consciousness be any more alien from one another?
November 4th, 2005 at 11:31 am
They almost seem like a separate species, and I’m sorry if that sounds elitist
Um, it does, especially to a person raised in a similar family situation. Sorry, not really meaning to call you out - I actually understand what you mean, sort of - but “they” are definitely not a different species. They’re just people caught in bad situations. And if they’re lucky, they get out eventually, and become indistinguishable from your educated friends with decent jobs and good grammar. They just have buried scars, is all.
November 4th, 2005 at 12:33 pm
While I’m sorry to sound insensitive, I have seen that these people who are just caught in bad situations do indeed have a chance to turn themselves around and often chose not to do so.
My sister was married to an alcoholic, from a family of alcoholics, who beat her and flung her children against the walls. He is still an alcoholic and is still violent. She on the other hand now owns her own business and owns (outright) her own home. My own parents beat us, to the point of not being able to be seen at school for fear of their own arrest.
As much as I would love to give these people a free pass for being abusive assholes, I cannot forgive a person who with full knowledge and conscience decides its ok to abuse others to make themselves feel better, and as for their scars, it does not legitimize the violence they feel the need to visit upon others.
When you’ve decided you’ve had enough of being a victim and making excuses for abusers, it does indeed make you another species. Alcoholism and abuse are very evocative of the things that I believe Archons would seek to preserve in humanity to continue their ignoble rule over mankind. So am I better than an alcoholic and child beater, you’re damned right, I am.
November 4th, 2005 at 2:32 pm
yes you are gina. just because you say you are…..the idea of free will is only part of the story. the other half is responsibility. go ahead and be a drunk and think you`re a victim if you want to but realise that gina will kick your ass if you do it on her shift. and so will i after being raised by a cathoholic semantic terrorist.
steering back onto topic somewhat i find that my best bikerides are under cover of dark. the road seems less hard on the wheels and i get the sensation of almost flying. one has to watch how transcendant one becomes for fear of becoming prey to the spirits of the carniverous automotive spirits roaming the roads mind you. a small rear aiming l.e.d. light is enought to keep them off my heels.
November 4th, 2005 at 4:01 pm
This make me think a lot about something that has popped up for me lately, ie the issue of who is worth helping and who is not worth helping.
I let a crack whore into the lobby of my apartment building once as she was being menaced by her pimp and was yelling help, as soon as I let her in she began taunting the guy through the bars and then let herself out and back into his arms within a few minutes, long gone before the cops showed up.
It takes time and energy to help people. Who should you help? Someone who will just repeat their mistakes again, someone who is disrespectful and ungrateful? Or someone who will learn from their mistakes and be ready to hit the ground running with new plans and a new purpose given the opportunity?
The example I gave above doesn’t really fit these questions I know - its too immediate and temporary. I am thinking more along the lines of doing healing work for someone or helping them to find a job or a romantic partner or whatnot.
I only have a limited amount of energy and I want to put it where it does the most good. Sometimes that means not helping people I care about deeply because they refuse to face reality and so any improvement in their situation will be short lived.
Sometimes that means helping people I barely know because they are ready and willing to make any changes they need to make from their end too.
(41) Jesus said, “The person who possesses will be given more. And the person who does not have will be deprived of even the little that that person has.”
It seem sto me that some people are basically buoyant and make good use of assitance they recive so that it is not wasted energy, instead it multiplies and returns.
Other people are so damaged and deluded that any help you give them is just throwing good energy after bad.
I wonder if that’s what Jesus meant by the above, actually.
November 4th, 2005 at 6:14 pm
I’ve found moments on the subways where everything just seems to be a dance, going on mechanically, with none of the parts realizing it. I’ll try to observe all the patterns among the people on the train possible…say, ah…that row is all guys and they all have black shoes on, say, or how many people are reading something and what their reading, noticing when someone rubs their face and then noticing that another person, then another person, all in different places on the train, all in their own self-contained, eyes-down bubble, will then rub their faces…I’ll consciously seek out whatever patterns I can like this and sometimes, don’t ever know what makes the difference, my perception will just “click” over into something else, into seeing that mechanical, beautiful and comical dance of things going on and it’s crazy and beyond words.
Is this off topic a bit?
When I go on a walk, it’s pretty solitary. Sometimes I’ll get asked for directions or change, but mostly I’m left a lone and just wander. It’s a different thing.
As far as the people in bad spots and whether to help them or not, I just make arbitrary choices about it, mostly. I haven’t found it helpful trying to determine who will be a worthy recipient or not, I just make a choice completely at random and decide not to expect anything, good or bad, to come of it.
November 4th, 2005 at 6:24 pm
oh and - beautifully written story BTW!
November 4th, 2005 at 8:41 pm
That reminds mke of a really ridiculous news story I read recently, about spending thousands of dollars to build ‘panic rooms’ in the homes of abused women, so they can keep living with the bastards who beat them…!
November 4th, 2005 at 9:42 pm
wow, if you can find that news story i’d love to read it!
November 5th, 2005 at 2:53 pm
or it predisposes women to build them “just in case”.