Fated

Driving a truck cross-country gives a man a lot of time to think, especially when traveling through what seemed like an endless desert, that alone can stir-up any long lost memories, as quick as a dust storm can kick-up clouds of blinding sand. I was on my way back home to Okeechobee, on a trip that started off in hell. Well, hot-as-hell. "Sin City!" Smack-dab in the middle of summer. Here I was, surrounded by nothing but vast desert, where every inch of land is withered from the scorching sun, so hot, that even the tumbleweeds scurry to avoid the blazing heat.

As I kept trucking down the desolate highway, a rabbit suddenly appeared from out of nowhere, and ran directly in front of my path. And just when I thought it would make it safely across the road, it stopped dead-in-its-tracks. As I continued barreling straight at the little critter, it remained perfectly still. Frozen in fear. I instinctively knew I could not swerve an eighteen wheeler to avoid hitting a little rabbit, so the closer I got to the inevitable road kill, the more I blessed the vultures soon-to-be next meal. I cried out! "Don't move little' guy!" I did not want to look back, but I did. Not at the rabbit, but at myself. I looked all the way back, to the very beginning. . . . . . . . . . .

The heat, the terror in that rabbit's eyes, together, they conjured up a story that my mom had once told me, a long long time ago. It was a hot, sweltering night in mid July, the year was nineteen sixty, my mother, still seven months pregnant with me laid next to my father in bed, when suddenly, she recalled, my dad clutched his chest, then gasp, and by the time she had realized what happened, he was dead from a massive heart attack! The tranquility that I must have felt in-utero had to become an abysmal environment. In an instant, both of our lives were literally turned upside down. My mom had just lost the father of her six children, and soon to be seven. Me. "LUCKY NUMBER SEVEN."

Like howling winds that echo throughout the desert canyon walls, I can still remember hearing my mom grieving over the death of my father coming from inside of that bedroom, even now, some fifty years later. Weeping, that would only stop whenever I tried to reach-up and turn the door-knob to enter her room. Being so young back then I never understood as to why she was crying so much, particularly with it being several years after my father's passing. Furthermore, I don't recall seeing any framed pictures of dear ole' dad being displayed around the house, let alone, knowing anything about him at the time. My mom must have thought that any stories about. . .

my dad's demise should not be told to me until I was much older, most likely in an attempt to thwart off any distrubing emotions that I might have experiened at such a young and vulnerable age. Nevertheless, my father's life-story would be a tale with a plot that never had a chance to fully unfold. Like a book, with many of its chapters ripped right out of it. Slammed shut! With its bookmark stuck, dead-center, right in the middle of it. A very short-story without a happy ending, placed high upon a shelf, collecting dust. . .

Like being duped by a mirage on a sun drenched desert horizon, I felt deceived, like I was traveling backwards, as I continued going further and further into the past, where memories, that were once lost in the sands of time, were all now tagging along with me for the ride. Nevertheless, like an artist that changes a blank canvas into a vibrant piece of art with just a few brush-strokes, the vast desert landscape soon gave-way to northern Arizona's red rock canyons and vast pine forests. I sensed something new on the horizon, other than a change of scenary, and that I would soon be, in more ways than one, on the road that was less traveled.

The various twists and turns throughout the mountain passes created a kaleidoscope effect in my mind's eye. The hypnotic like state-of-mind produced an array of childhood memories, that played back in my head like scenes from an old black-and-white flick from the distant past. As I decended down the mountain, each scene became more vivid, as if now being viewed in high def. From high atop the mountain, down to mere pebbles that lie beneath the surface of the creek beds below, so too was the hierarchy in my family, of biblical proportions. And from the very depths below, it would be I, who was fated to cast the first stone.

I counted on my fingers. . . One. Two. . Three. . . Four. . . . I knew if I added my thumb to the count it would equal five, and then, and only then would I be able to go to school with my older siblings, but until then. . . My thumb sucked! Because turning five years old seemed like an eternity at the age of four, especially when I stood at the front door and hopelessly watched as my older brother and sisters ran off to school without me. After they rushed out the door, I’d run over to the kitchen window, and from up on my tippy-toes get one last glimpse of them from my high window sill view, turning the street corner on their way to school, ever so slowly, fading from view.

After several months of listening to my older siblings talk about all of the friends they made at school, I took it upon myself to make a new friend, too. Literally. . . One morning, after my brother and sisters were away at school, I began my quest to find my very own BFF, and when I entered the laundry room and saw a bunch of dirty clothes piled high in the hamper, spilling out onto the floor, I immediately knew that I had done just that. "There! Right there!" In front of me, laid a lifeless pair of blue jeans and a huge sweat shirt. To the non observing eye laid a bunch of dirty chothes lying on the floor, but I saw a friend, who was about to unfold, right before my very eyes.

I eagerly began stuffing the jeans and sweat shirt with any clothes I could grab, until my soon-to-be best friend's chest protruded out like a weightlifter. I added a pair of black rubber rain boots for his feet, and then cheerfully introduced myself. . . . .
"Hi Herman! I’m Johnny!" . . . . . . . . .

. . . I got no response. I was devastated, but only mommentraily, because I immediately knew what was missing. I ran throughout the entire house until I finally found exactly what I was looking for. It was a football helmet, that my oldest brother Mitchell had left behind after he flew-the-coop, many years ago. I raced back into the laundry room, and topped Herman off with the helmet for his head, then greeted him once again, but only this time, with just a big-fat smile on my face, and to my delight, Herman smiled right back at me, with that huge white face-mask smile of his. Nonetheless, the immense joy I felt would soon be overshadowed.

And, as if right on cue, vast ominous clouds suddenly blanketed the entire sky, casting a huge shawdow of darkness, as far as the eye could see. The initial sound from the rain hitting my windshield mimicked a drummer tapping in rapid succession on a snare drum. . . . . . rat-a-tat-tat-tat
As I continued driving straight into the storm, thunderous booms erupted, accompanied by the now hellaious down pouring of rain, that had my windshield wipers flapping back-and-forth like the arms of a musical conductor who was trying to lead an orchestra that was completely out of control, and totally out of tune.

The storm was intense, regardless my thoughts continued riding on the long roller coaster ride. Up-and-down and around-and-around, from the present moment, to the faraway past. When suddenly, huge bolts of lightning lit up the sky, creating an electrical storm that exploded all around me, instantly transporting me back again, to what seemed like a thousand years ago. "Go ahead! Count to four, one more time, and then see what happens!" Butch, the youngest of my three older brother's, said to me. So when I stuck the knife into the electrical outlet, a flurry of fierce sparks violently shot out of the wall.

As if crying out loud, the windshield wipers began to screech across the dried glass. A perfect soundtrack for the end of a tumultuous storm and a brief sad story. As I slowly began to see more clearly through the eye of the storm, that specatular sight from atop the summit was surpassed by an even more extraordinary point-of-view. My mother's very own perspective at the time of my birth, that I would eventually become privy to. I would learn, first hand, as to why she was so fixated with me when I was born. And why wouldn't she be? What else could be better for the psyche after the sudden death of her beloved husband, than giving birth to a brand new shiny little baby boy?

Obsessed, to the point of never being let go of, as if to be a caterpillar encased in a cocoon, with the words, "Don't grow up, because I need you to always be close to me." whispered into my tiny ear. While, on the other hand, or rather, other mouths to feed, she might as well have said to all the others, "Grow up! Don't be a child, so I don't have to take care of you anymore!" Nonetheless, nobody would be left unscorned, including "yours truly," as I would be knocked off my pedistal as quick as I flew off my feet when that electricity shot through me, on that fateful day. Meanwhile, all of my older siblings would be forced to transform into butterflies, way too soon.

By the time I was knee-high to a grasshopper, three of my six oldest siblings had already left the nest to set out on their own individual paths in life. And they did just that. As diversed as the butcher, baker and candlestick maker. Mitchell, the eldest, and newly elected "Patroit of the Family," who apparently didn't get the memo, because like his predecessor, seemed like a ghost. But who could blame him? It was the 1960's, and the decade was just revving up, and besides, it would be a real drag to be hanging around the house as six of one, or half a dozen.