Sandusky Burning, page 8
I walked back to my lot and out onto Sparrow. He passed the street and was heading east. What the fuck was he out doing this late? I decided to take a walk. Take a walk on the wild side.
I thought about the train bridge. The crazy bridge that flared out onto the lake and then joined the shore near the pond. I always had the urge to walk out and take a look. I wanted to do it now. Just hang out and watch for the train and see if I could get off the tracks in time. Or not.
I heard a camper door slam to the right. It was the black guy with the shiny metal RV. The Airstream. His air dream.
Mr. Lone Ranger. The tall dark stranger. He was walking from the shower house. Our eyes met. I nodded. He nodded. He kept walking. Grand-fucking Central Station out there tonight. I heard the racket from the train passing. The trains always ran on time at Sandusky Grandusky Central Station.
I walked up Sparrow until I was in front of the office. The office was really dark. I beheld the sky. It was dark too. The side door opened, and the four-eyed employee who looked just like Michael Moore walked out, wearing a backpack and pushing a ten-speed. He didn’t see me.
“Hey, Michael!” I yelled, way too loud. He jumped, and his ten-speed fell over. This made me jump too, and I almost dropped my bottle. He stumbled, and his backpack slipped off one of his shoulders, spilling papers. Then he fell to one knee.
“Sorry man, shit,” I said as I walked over.
The guy seemed startled for a minute, then pissed. “No. I got it,” he said, standing up and picking up the papers.
“Let me help,” I said, bending over to pick them up. I reached with my right hand, but it was holding the bottle of bourbon, and I spilled some on the ground, as well as on him, his papers, and his backpack. Alcohol abuse. I started laughing.
“No!” he said harshly, causing me to lock up for a minute.
“Sorry, Michael,” I said, standing back up.
“My name isn’t fucking Michael,” he hissed with an angry look on his face. He shoved the papers back into his backpack. Back into his backpack. Was that why they called it a backpack?
“Sorry, dude,” I muttered, watching him. “What the fuck you doing out here in the office so late? Is the snack bar open?”
He glared at me for a moment as he picked his bike up. He attempted to pedal off, nearly fell, caught himself with his right leg, and then steadied himself.
“You drunk?” I asked. I started laughing. The guy who was sky-high and brandishing a bottle of bourbon was asking the tough questions.
He ignored me and pedaled off. As he approached the guard booth, I saw movement inside. Someone was actually guarding the campground. I started walking in that direction. As the guy-who-hated-being-called-Michael passed the booth, a hand shot out.
“High five!” a voice yelled. The hand connected with his elbow, and he veered off to the right, hopping over the speed bump and swiping the storage garage that had the rental pedal carts and the community lawn mowers. He fell again, his backpack opened again, papers came out again. I walked over but didn’t bother to help. The lyrics to the Beatles song about needing help came to mind and I started humming it.
Patrick came walking out of the guard booth, laughing his ass off. This guy was a piece of work. Peace sells. Peace works. Peaceful twerks.
“Help! He needs somebody!” I started singing.
Patrick just stared at me blankly. Who names a Mexican kid Patrick? I guess his parents were trying to whiten him up or something. We had shared a pipe a time or two. I guess he wasn’t bad. With his shaved head, tattoos, and constant glare, I never felt comfortable with him.
“What happened, Data?” Patrick laughed. “Let me help you, bro.”
Michael jerked back. Not Michael, Data. The dude from Star Trek. Was he an android?
Data was furious now. “Stay the fuck away,” he said in a squeaky voice. Away, away, away. The last word Data said seemed to echo, but it wasn’t that loud, and we weren’t in a canyon, so it was in my mind. He once again picked his papers up and stuffed them in his backpack.
When he pulled his bike up again, he struggled to straighten out his handlebars. They were bent and pointing to the left, even though his front wheel was straight.
“Let me get those bars bent back,” I said as I walked over. He lifted his arm in a “stay away” motion. I stopped again.
“Hey, Chris, can I get a hit of that?” Patrick asked, pointing to the bottle. I forgot it was in my hand. Mr. Hand, you dick! I did a soft Jeff Spicoli laugh.
Before I could answer, he had my bottle and took a huge gulp from it. He handed it back.
“Whoa!” Patrick shouted. He took a pair of sunglasses out of his pocket and put them on. “Wow, that was the missing ingredient, boy!”
I started laughing. “The secret sauce!”
We laughed together. Data had bent the handlebars of his antique bike back the best he could and was pedaling off again.
“Well, this place looks pretty fucking secure, wouldn’t you say, Chris?” Patrick asked, folding his arms and leaning back as if admiring his work.
“I would say so. Myself. You got this security thing down to a science. Why do they call him Data?” I asked, taking a drink from the bottle.
“Don’t know. You seen Chuck?” he asked.
“He was scooting around a little while ago.”
“I ain’t seen him in a while. I will be in the security booth if he needs me. Securin’ shit,” Patrick said and stumbled back toward the booth. I lifted my arm in a wave.
I started walking back to my place when I saw some white things fluttering on the ground by the fence. Some of Data’s papers had blown over there.
I heard the train horn. I had missed my chance to dance with the train out on the bridge. A minute later, I felt it roaring by with its lights shining on the trees and the RVs. I started singing the song “Night Train” as I swayed back and forth like Axl Rose. Then I moved on to “Train Kept a-Rollin'” by Aerosmith. But that was a cover of a song by some other band ...
I lost my train of thought. I turned around to say that out loud but realized I was alone, so I just laughed to myself.
Walking over, I started picking the papers up. I would give them to Data tomorrow. After stuffing them in my back pocket, I started walking back toward my camper.
Tomorrow. It already was tomorrow. I had to work in a few hours. The gloom of my life set in and macheted its way through the good vibes I was feeling. Every day that same urge to escape my life. The grand escape, not just carrying on my life in a new geographic location and fucking it up again.
After a few minutes, I realized I wasn’t walking in the right direction. I was in the playground area, standing in front of the deflated jumping pillow. It was this crazy yellow-and-red monster inflatable pillow the kids bounced on like maniacs. I bounced on it drunk once but got yelled at because I had my shoes on. Lighten up, dude. I shuffled around the pillow, looking for a way to inflate it, but couldn’t figure it out.
The big pile of deflated rubber looked comfortable, and I decided to sit on it. I would never get the chance to hang out on it during the day, so this was my time. Fuck these kids, it belonged to me. And my sandals were on! After setting my bottle down, I leaned back and raised my two middle fingers up toward the office building.
I took another big swig of Beam and walked into the middle of it. I made sure the cap was on my bottle and sat down. Then laid down. Crickets. Where was the moon?
Brady 3
6:45 a.m.
Running was the last thing I wanted to do. But I hadn’t exercised in a while, and the weather was fair, so I felt I had to.
My head throbbed a little from the drinks. In some respects, it was the new normal. I couldn’t remember the last time I hadn’t had at least a few drinks in the evening, and some sort of hangover the following morning.
My cell phone was my alarm, although I rarely needed it. Unless I needed to get up unusually early, my eyes generally just popped open around wakeup time. I didn’t need the snooze function either. Once awake, I didn’t drift back to sleep.
I had my phone plugged in and sitting on top of my gun safe. It was a small, black safe with a keypad and a fingerprint reader. One swipe of my pointer finger, and it popped open. I was never a big weapons guy, but I was a self-defense guy. I had a Glock 23 with a full magazine in it and another full mag lying next to it.
I sat up and tried to get a read on my hangover. It wasn’t severe enough to derail my run. There was always a troublesome voice in my head urging me to evade exercise, but I seldom gave in to it because I was too unforgiving of my own laziness.
This hangover was a three or four on a scale of ten. I envisioned one of those scales in the doctor’s office for patients to describe pain, with cartoon faces displaying emotions ranging from happy to oh shit, I’m dying. They should make one of those charts with drinking cartoons. The range could be from buzzed to blacked-out, with tipsy, impaired, and shitfaced cartoons along the spectrum. I was probably in the tipsy category the night before.
That morning, I wanted to get in a four-mile run. I had set my running clothes out the night before to reduce the chances that I would weasel out. I put on a pair of black running shorts, a gray Warrior Dash dry-fit shirt, a pair of black dry-fit socks, and a pair of gray Saucony running shoes. I grabbed a water bottle from the fridge and drank half of it in one swig.
I slid my cell phone into a black cloth running case and fastened it to my arm. I stepped out of the camper and locked it behind me, putting the key in my pocket.
The heart-rate indicator on my watch, a Garmin fitness tracker, reflected a higher-than-normal reading. Drinking alcohol always caused that, as my heart churned harder to metabolize the poison in my system.
I walked to the back of my lot to stretch and paused. The outdoor kitchen area door was open. Alcohol-induced carelessness. I went over and pulled it closed.
I walked out to the street and pushed a button on the right side of the watch. Scrolling through the exercise categories, I selected “Run.” It searched for a GPS signal for a moment, then the red indicator changed to green. I took a deep breath, pushed the start button, and took off.
I started off running north on Starling. The campground was quiet. A bit of sun was showing through the clouds. The train horn sounded off in the distance.
I glanced at my watch, which was displaying the duration of the run and my pace. I was averaging about an 8:20 per mile pace. Not bad. A few years ago, I was in the low sevens, but that was before my family life siphoned away most of my training time.
The train barreled by as I ran up to the trail, heading east. I wondered how I slept through the continuous train traffic by the campground, but I actually seemed to sleep better in Sandusky than I did in Medina.
The view from the trail was scenic, with glimpses of sunlight shining through the trees and the cattails waving in the breeze along the surface of the water to the north. I emerged at the east end and ran back to the shoreline area. I approached the tent sites, which showed no signs of life. A dog started barking from somewhere.
Rounding back on Seagull Drive, I passed alongside the kids’ area. I cut through between the deflated jumping pillow and activities station, to the east of the swimming pool, entering the south side of the campground.
There was an empty bottle of Jim Beam beside the pillow. I considered stopping to throw it away, but I didn’t want to interrupt my run. I figured the campground staff should see it and would realize they needed to crack down on some of the partying.
I ran back along the east side that had a series of cabins backing up to a tall stockade fence separating the campground from an auto dealership. In front of the cabins were several rows of campsites with full hookups, followed by rows of smaller cabins. The cabins were at about half capacity, judging by the cars parked in front. The west side had another series of seasonal sites, with some larger cabins along the stockade fence running parallel with Nickle Drive.
I circled back and passed by the security booth. An older worker with a blue US Navy baseball hat was standing there and waved. I waved back.
That route was about three-quarters of a mile. I considered just doing a few more loops within the campground and calling it quits, but then I took a left at the security booth and ran out toward the trailer park. The freedom to improvise was part of the allure of running.
I exited the campground and took a right up East Shoreway Drive. There were trailers in varying states of upkeep on either side. Most of them had a tree or two on the small lots. Overall, the area was unremarkable.
Occasionally a car passed by, but for the most part, it was quiet. The sidewalks were oddly narrow and full of deep cracks. A dog barked, and I saw a pit bull mix chained to a front porch. If that chain broke, I would have been in deep shit; it seemed very angry.
I’d had a half-dozen scary encounters during runs, with dogs who were not properly restrained by their negligent owners. Although I had never been bitten, I had been pursued, which definitely escalates your heart rate.
Palmer ended at West Shoreway Drive, where I took a left and headed south. This took me out of the trailer park, and it ran along the western parking lot of the Cloverleaf Apartments. They resembled a run-down housing project, grimy and beaten up. The lot was full of junky, rusted-out cars. Weeds grew through cracks in the pavement.
Just past the apartments was the entrance to Eagle Creek, a gated community. There was a black wrought-iron gate that lifted to allow vehicle access when activated by a keycard. Beside the main gate was a gate for pedestrians to use. There wasn’t an actual security booth.
I had run past there multiple times and had always wanted to take a look at the houses within. The area was quiet, so I jogged over to the smaller gate. I pushed the gate lightly, and it didn’t move. I turned and started jogging back to the street when a vehicle approached the gate from the inside. The gate slowly rose, and a dark-gray Land Rover rolled through and took a right onto West Shoreway.
The gate had reached its apex as the vehicle turned, and I doubted the driver could see the gate as it slowly lowered. Running over, I ducked beneath the opening. It closed behind me a few seconds later. I felt like I was Indiana Jones, narrowly escaping a cavern in the jungle as it collapsed behind him.
I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t sure if I could exit through a pedestrian gate or would need a keycard. If trapped, I would have to wait for another vehicle to exit and slip out.
I ran along Eagle Creek Drive heading west and came across Crosstree Lane, taking a right and heading north. The houses were amazing. Maybe five thousand square feet, sided with lake stone, pillared, and well built. There was a canal running through each block, a watery alley, with boat garages and docks at the back of each house. Boaters could travel down the canal into a channel connecting to Lake Erie. I could only imagine how much these houses were worth.
Maybe that was the Holy Grail of luxury in northwest Ohio, living in a cul-de-sac in a gated community that featured boat garages. I was sure these were summer residences, as it wouldn’t be appealing to live on a frozen canal in January. But that was what summer homes in Florida or North Carolina were for.
I ran up the street until it dead-ended in a cul-de-sac. I didn’t want to push my luck and remain in the neighborhood too long, so I decided to exit instead of exploring the other streets. At the far west end, there was another gate that exited near some condos and an indoor water park owned by Gravity Junction.
I was fairly certain that most people here would identify me to be a stranger, as I assumed the neighbors all knew each other. It would be an awkward conversation if someone called security or the police. All I needed was to have Marcy bail me out of jail and lose my government security clearance for trespassing.
I ran the circle of the cul-de-sac and headed back. About halfway up the street, I heard a motorcycle fire up. I glanced to my left and saw a middle-aged guy roll slowly out of his garage, revving his bike loudly as he slowly drifted down the driveway.
The guy was in his late fifties with that Harley-Davidson biker look, but perhaps a degree more polished. His hair was totally gray, wearing wayfarer sunglasses, jeans, and a black T-shirt with a black leather vest. He had somewhat of a gut protruding over what I assumed was a Harley belt buckle.
I knew nothing about motorcycles, but that bike seemed expensive. I glanced again quickly and thought I recognized him. Or maybe his bike. I wasn’t sure.
As I passed him, I tried to take a closer look without blatantly staring at him. I wished I had worn my sunglasses so it wouldn’t be obvious.
He didn’t look like he belonged in this neighborhood. It wasn’t that he was unkempt looking, but he appeared more legit Harley, not the lawyer or doctor who decides to be a rebel and buys a Harley during the course of some midlife crisis. He looked like a blue-collar guy who had built a business, made some money, and clawed his way into the upper class.
Then I remembered where I saw him. He owned an RV in the northwest corner of the campground, the one Chuck and the creepy Euro guy frequented. Along with a few other creepy guys. Guys who were not seasonal campers. Not that I recognized everyone who camped at Sandusky Shores.
So, he had a mansion and a camper. Not quite Elmer J. Fudd with his “mansion and a yacht,” but impressive. Within a mile of each other. Okay.
Was the camper some sort of rental property? It didn’t make sense to have your house and RV located so close to each other. I wasn’t entirely sure that he owned the RV. I wished I had checked his mailbox for a name as I ran past his house, but it was too late.
I ran back to Heron and turned left to return to the east gate. The motorcycle growled loudly as he approached me. He passed me slowly, without looking in my direction. I glanced at his vanity plate: GLORYB. “Glory be”? Was he a holy roller? He didn’t fit the image of an avid churchgoer, but some of them defied stereotypes.
