Sandusky Burning, page 9
As he approached the gate, he stopped in front of the console and swiped a card. The gate began to rise. However, the guy just sat there.
I passed alongside him, and he looked over at me and smiled. He gestured his hand in a sweeping motion as if to say, “after you.” I smiled as best I could, hesitated a moment, and ran past him and beyond the gate. He revved his engine a few times and followed, rolling slowly down the street. I turned right and ran about a hundred yards, turning into the parking lot of a bowling alley.
Glory Bowl. That was the name of the alley. Such a blatant off-color reference, and yet there it was, on a big neon sign in front. It had to be a play on “glory hole.” I tried to envision youth bowling leagues with the place emblazoned on their shirts. I nearly laughed out loud when I imagined what the graphic on the shirts would be.
I figured I would do a loop in the parking lot. I glanced behind and saw the motorcycle guy had pulled in right behind me. I felt my tension rise as I reached the sidewalk in front of the alley and slowed a little. Was he tailing me because I was running through his gated neighborhood?
His vanity plate suddenly made sense. GLORYB. Glory Bowl. The bowling alley was his. It was my bad luck to run into the parking lot that was the Harley guy’s destination. If I had just run up to Columbus Road, I would have been free of him.
He rolled up rather close to me as I approached the building but turned right and traveled behind it. Circling the parking lot, I ran back to the street.
The motorcycle engine revved again loudly, and then there was silence. I continued running back toward the camper, reminding myself to check the run stats later to see how high my heart rate had climbed during that particular segment of the run.
As I ran back in the direction of the campground, I could not get the motorcycle guy out of my mind. He had a lot of things going on in this small geographic area. I glanced over as I ran past the Cloverleaf Apartments. Did he have a stake in this too? I thought it would be worth looking into online property records on the county recorder website to see what names were on these properties.
Chuck 3
8:35 a.m.
My damned walkie-talkie shrieked, startlin’ me and sendin’ a pain up my left shoulder. That pain seemed to happen a few times every day. Christ.
The pain went away, and Data’s voice crackled through the speaker. “Chuck, we have a problem over here at the jumping pillow. Can you get over here?”
“Yeah,” I said, placing the walkie-talkie back on the dashboard. The battery was nearly dead; I would need to charge it. I forgot to bring it back to the office last night.
My head was poundin’. Completely poundin’. I felt queasy.
I dropped by the office when it opened and tried to eat a piece of bacon and toast from the breakfast buffet, only to hurl it up in the garbage can outside of the pool. An old couple walkin’ by didn’t seem to appreciate that. There was always a set of fuckin’ eyes where you didn’t need ’em.
I was in the far northeast corner and headed west, roundin’ the northeast shower house and goin’ south on Hawk. I was afraid somebody had vandalized the jumping pillow. Some dirtbag from the tent area had too much to drink a few summers ago and slashed it up with a pocketknife. Replacin’ that thing was expensive.
Headin’ west on Seagull Drive, I was careful to drive in the grass to the right of the speedbump. I hit one earlier and nearly threw up; it set my head to poundin’ even worse.
I didn’t remember comin’ home the night before. Well, not the night before, it was earlier that mornin’. I woke up all sprawled out in a lawn chair in front of my camper. My back was killin’ me from sleepin’ awkward. There was a pile of puke over by the grill I had to clean up, retchin’ as I did. Sharon would have gave me some shit if I just left it.
Startin’ work early was always a bitch, but this was killin’ me. The sun was out and bright as hell. Hangovers needed cloudy days, with rain or snow keepin’ you indoors. Not cloudless and sunny. If I hadn’t had my sunglasses to protect me, I would likely have died.
After I half-ass cleaned up my puke, I limped over to my golf cart and found more puke on the hood and wheel well on the driver’s side. At least I had the sense not to puke inside. There was also a big scratch alongside the fender. I looked closely, and there was some brownish gravel in the scratch, so it was most likely from the bricks of a fire pit. Much better to hit that than a car or RV.
I drove over to the east shower house, went in the bathroom, gathered a stack of paper towels, ran some water on them, and managed to clean the golf cart up without pukin’ again. Luckily, there were no campers around. I entered the building again and washed my face with cold water. That made me feel a little better.
I was still feelin’ drunk and dizzy as I pulled up to the playground area. It wasn’t supposed to be open until 9 a.m., but both swinging gates were open. It was my job to lock them when it closed at 10 p.m., but I forgot to.
A few golf carts and work carts were parked on the fringes by the chain-link fence, and a small crowd of people gathered by the edge of the jumping pillow. One was Data. The others were campers.
I tried to play off how rough I was feelin’ as I walked up. I thought about a cigarette, checked the inside of the golf cart, and didn’t find any. Maybe that was for the best; sometimes they made me nauseous after a rough night.
Data waved as I walked up. The black guy in the Airstream at 65 was there too. A sudden drunken memory hit me hard, and I think I flinched. Somethin’ about gettin’ caught diggin’ into someone’s camper fridge last night. I couldn’t quite grab the full memory. Jesus Christ.
The other two bystanders were the elderly couple who had seen me throwin’ up in the garbage can earlier. I put on somethin’ I thought was a smile but doubted it looked real.
“Hey, folks,” I managed to croak.
“Hey, Chuck,” Data said nervously.
“Somethin’ wrong with the pillow?”
“Uh, yeah, there is somebody passed out here. Why wasn’t the playground gate locked?”
“Who?” I asked, ignorin’ his question. I would blame it on Patrick if Travis pressed me.
“Um, Chris from 51,” Data said softly, almost whisperin’. I walked closer to the edge and saw a figure lyin’ there on the deflated pillow. I recognized the greasy black hair. He was missin’ his shirt, just a pale figure lyin’ on his side.
“I found him earlier when I was cutting through here on a walk,” Mike said, takin’ a step closer. He was wearing an Atlanta Braves baseball hat, a red Under Armour T-shirt, black gym shorts, and gray runnin’ shoes with white socks.
“Is he alive?” I asked in a whisper, feelin’ that pain in my left arm again. I was havin’ trouble catchin’ my breath.
“Yeah, I checked his vitals. I put him in the rescue position. Someone better call an ambulance,” Mike said. His voice was a little too loud for my liking. I could feel it in my head.
The elderly couple were millin’ about over by the swing set, so maybe they weren’t able to hear that. Them being old and all.
“Rescue position?” I asked, not knowin’ what the fuck that meant.
“You turn him on his side, so if he vomits, he won’t choke on it and die. It looks like he did a fair bit of vomiting earlier, but he is breathing, so there’s that,” Mike said, foldin’ his arms. “They don’t teach you any first-aid skills working at a campground? What if you have to pull some drowning kid from the pool or the lake?”
“Fuck no, I ain’t no paramedic. Let’s see if we can get him up,” I said, walkin’ gingerly toward the figure.
He appeared to be sleepin’ soundly. Then I saw a few small piles of light brown vomit next to him. Some of it was on his gym shorts and the side of his face. The sight of the vomit stopped me in my tracks. Then the smell of it hit me. I backed up a few feet, got caught up in the pillow fabric, and fell back flat on my ass.
I stood up, not takin’ the hand Data was tryin’ to offer. I shuffled quickly over to the side to a garbage can along the fence and barely made it there as I threw up into it. About two feet over on the other side of the fence, a middle-aged black guy with flowery swim trunks and a white tank top was walkin’ a small little dog with a red bow in its hair, frownin’ at me. The dog started yippin’.
“Another one of those and you’ll have a vomit hat trick,” the old man who had seen me pukin’ earlier said. I didn’t look at him. I wiped my mouth with the inside of my elbow and walked slowly back.
“Did you radio Travis?” I asked.
“No, he isn’t due in until lunch,” Data said.
“Yeah, but somethin’ like this usually ... never mind, no police or ambulance involved, he don’t need to be here. I can mention it later,” I said. “Let’s try to move him.”
But I didn’t move forward. I couldn’t hang with the puke; it would send me to the garbage can again. Data looked at Mike, and he nodded.
“Hey folks, if there is nothin’ else you need, we got this,” I said, directin’ it at the elderly couple. The black guy with the Yorkie, or whatever the fuck kind of dog it was, lingered by the fence. He shook his head and kept walkin’, pullin’ the dog along.
The elderly couple didn’t move at first but then turned and started walkin’ toward the office. Good thing those two were probably tech ignorant and likely wouldn’t be leavin’ a campground review on Yelp.
Travis was always goin’ on about reviews left on Yelp. Compliments were never brought up, but the complaints were thrown in my face. The music was too loud at night, dogs barking, kids running wild, broken beer bottles, blah blah blah. A complaint about employees pukin’ wouldn’t go over good. About as good as a post about a junkie passed out at the playground.
Mike and Data walked over to Chris. Mike situated himself by his head, Data by his feet. Mike slowly rolled him onto his back. They counted to three and picked him up, with Mike grabbin’ under his armpits, careful to avoid touchin’ puke. They slowly walked him off the pillow and over beneath a tree, where they leaned him back against it.
Chris 2
8:40 a.m.
There I was, being escorted out of the tower. Not guided or led, physically escorted by two security guards, semi-frog-marched, with each grasping an elbow. A third had a cardboard box with my personal items.
This walk of shame was not a complete surprise. The shift had begun like any other. I arrived for work at Cleveland Hopkins Airport right on time, like I almost always did. Never early, generally on time, occasionally late.
This was seldom appreciated by the person I was relieving, but sometimes I just flaked out. I had been written up a few times, but hey, I was a federal employee. What could they do to me?
My gig as an air-traffic controller was a good one. I had the aptitude for it, as I first discovered as a senior in high school when I took the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test, a standardized military test to see what sort of job I qualified for in the air force. I figured I would get a decent job, maybe as an aircraft mechanic or a computer programmer or something.
My ASVAB score came back really high. Not jet-pilot high, but air-traffic-control or foreign-linguist high. Learning a foreign language sounded like a drag, so I went with air-traffic controller.
My first four years in the air force, I managed to be drug free. I had cleaned up prior to going to basic and was able to stay off them.
While stationed at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, I met an airman in the barracks who was getting his private pilot’s license. It sounded interesting, so I enrolled and began working toward getting mine. The classroom stuff was easy, and the hours behind the yoke were amazing. I couldn’t imagine a better place to learn piloting than the Hawaiian Islands. From that point on, I was able to continue logging hours at the various places I was stationed, although buying my own aircraft was way beyond my financial capabilities.
It was during my fourth year that I stumbled. I was stationed at a Royal Air Force base in England, outside of Suffolk. I had a weekend pass and went to the mainland with a few buddies. We bought rail passes and explored.
After making a few stops, we ended up in Amsterdam, and that was when my drug habit came roaring back. It started with a little weed and got worse. Whatever I found that I could smoke, I smoked. By the end of the weekend, I was totally baked and incoherent, and it took an effort for my buddies to pry me out of our hotel and get me back on the train. I didn’t remember the journey home.
I never fully recovered from that relapse. My last two years, I played cat and mouse with the drug testing program, never getting busted. But my work performance degraded. After I was caught sleeping in the tower one night, I was told that if I reenlisted, it wouldn’t be as an air-traffic controller.
I had been struggling with depression since I could remember, and that was the root cause of my drug problems. Numbing myself had been necessary just to get through the day in high school. I was able to stay clean in the air force because I was involved in a dynamic and positive profession, but after a while, it became the new normal, and the normal became boring.
About three months from being discharged, I received an inquiry from the FAA about applying to civilian jobs. Apparently, my track record still appeared okay from the outside. The sleeping incident was handled in house and didn’t make it to my permanent record. I spoke with my supervisor, and he agreed to give me a recommendation. He wanted me gone. I was a liability, and he wanted me to be someone else’s problem.
I interviewed with the FAA in Tampa Bay and was offered a job a few weeks later. I was given a few airport choices and decided on Cleveland Hopkins Airport, to be closer to my family in Michigan.
This job prospect returned me to sobriety. I quit smoking as soon as I was offered the job, knowing a drug test was imminent. I made it through the remainder of my enlistment, received an honorable discharge, and packed my shit for Cleveland.
The opportunity was a good one. It was at a high pay level, so I was making a lot more than I had as a staff sergeant in the air force. I bought a cheap Nissan at a used-car lot in Panama City, loaded it up, and left the air force base and my military career for good. I drove up north to Ohio and found an apartment in Brook Park, the city where the airport was located.
After additional training, I began my career as a civilian air-traffic controller. I performed well and earned the respect of my peers. I had gone clean trying to get the job and remained clean. That wasn’t too hard because I didn’t have any bad influences.
I had a few friends at work, and all of them were straight. We’d get together for a few drinks or to catch a sporting event, but nobody was into drugs.
That changed when I made the mistake of taking a week off and visiting my parents in Jackson, Michigan, my hometown. It was only about a three-hour drive from Cleveland. While hanging out at a local bar in Jackson, I ran into an old high school buddy.
The next thing I knew, I was sitting in his truck, smoking it up. That was pretty much what I did the rest of the week. When it was time to leave on Sunday, I called into work and stayed an extra day to get more high time in.
When I returned to work, there was an incident on my shift. It wasn’t even my fault. A coworker working an adjacent position made an error, and two planes passed too close to each other under his direction. The FAA policy was for all close calls to be followed by drug tests. So, although I didn’t make a mistake, I was called in before the end of my shift and forced to give a urine sample on the spot. It came back hot.
A week later, I did a drug retest. Two days after that, I was escorted off the airport premises. I was officially suspended with pay, pending a hearing, but the union could offer little help. I wasn’t some government paper-pusher; I was tasked with guiding dozens of airplanes filled with thousands of people safely to the ground each shift. I lost the hearing and a few appeals, and a month later I was terminated.
I picked up odd jobs, managing to keep my apartment for a year, but getting my car repoed. I met Candy at the bar around the corner from the apartment, a blue-collar dive bar with a pool table, a jukebox, and cheap drinks.
We hit it off, and I moved in with her at her dumpy apartment for a few months before a stoner friend of mine told me about a job opportunity his cousin had hooked him up with in Sandusky.
Gravity Junction was building a huge sports complex a few miles down from the park, which would feature several outdoor fields that could be used for soccer, baseball, and lacrosse. They urgently needed laborers from the spring through the fall.
I was working as a cook and dishwasher at Candy’s bar and making minimum wage. The construction gig paid double that. My friend acquired a junky RV and set it up at the Sandusky Shores Campground.
Unfortunately, my stoner friend ran into some bad luck. He got pulled over outside of Toledo carrying a huge stash of weed and pills. He had enough contraband to get charged as a dealer and was locked up until his trial in the fall.
So, I inherited the trailer we were going to share. Candy had a conflict with her boss at the bar, quit her job, and moved in with me. That was lucky, because I still didn’t have a set of wheels, so I could use her car to get me to work. And since she was a bartender, if she worked the night shift, there would never be a conflict. It turned out she didn’t have any interest in getting another job, so there wouldn’t be any conflict whatsoever. My luck was just amazing.
The work at the sports complex was all manual. I wasn’t opposed to working hard, but some of those twelve-hour days were brutal. The most demoralizing reality of my situation was that I could see Griffing Sandusky Airport from my jobsite, so every day I had a reminder of what I used to be. The opportunities I squandered were very clear, as I watched the small planes come and go all day while I shoveled dirt or walked around with a trash bag, cleaning up the worksite throughout the day.
In a different world, I would be working there as an air-traffic controller or piloting some rich guy’s G6 to Put-In-Bay Island for a weekend trip. Instead, I was a hundred yards up the street with a shovel, digging a trench to lay drainage pipes for the new sports park.
