I found an old writing tablet the other day when I was searching for my Volksmarching record book. It was yellowed with age, having been last used around 1983, when I was still living in Wealder, Texas. Inside, it had a few short stories, a poem, and some notes that I had written just to write. I've explained on this blog site that writing has always been something I do for myself. It is strangely touching to come across these little treasures of writing by a younger me. I decided to post some of them here.

The first one, I am calling Introduction to Death. None of the pieces in the tablet were named at the time. This story however, dealt with the first time I ever really acknowledged death as a real thing. Far removed family members had died of course, but no one really close to me had. In Waelder, I would experience three deaths in fairly rapid sucession: my neighbor Jim Husky's, a fellow teacher Blain Moulding's death from cancer, and the untimely death of Mahrilla Diahl, another teacher friend who was killed in an accident on her way to work.

Jim's death was the first of the three. It really messed with my mind at the time. I am equally ashamed and mystified that I forgot all about Jim until now

Introduction to Death: Written in 1983

He had asked me for money a few times before. Usually, I gave it freely. This time, I just didn't want to. Not because I knew I wouldn't get it back- I never did. No, it was because of the way I had started to feel about him.

We had never been friends. He was just in on a pass. It was his young bride, Kathy, I liked so much. She was like me- laid back and mellow. Jim was intense at all times, breaking out into violent rages for no obvious reason.

They lived downstairs from me in what once had been a two car garage. I had lived there myself before being flooded out a year earlier and moving upstairs to a much nicer apartment. The upstairs was originally the servant's quarters for the big house next door. The downstairs was a poorly built collection of drywall rooms with a ceiling so low Mickey Rooney could touch it.

Kathy and Jim tolerated the dank little apartment because living spaces were hard to come by then. The area was experiencing what would be a short-lived oil boom. Jim had migrated here to work in the oil fields. Kathy had migrated here to get away from New York, and what ever bad things she had gone through there. They met. They loved. They married. Enough said.

The big oil boom fizzled out pretty quickly. Jim got laid off and spent most of his time partying while Kathy busted her but waiting tables to make ends meet. The partying brought the worst out in Jim. I heard their fights without concern. Even when the walls shook and the dishes crashed, she held her own against him. And, she loved him more than he had any right to be loved, in my opinion.

I loved Kathy. No not as a "love interest". She became more like a sister to me. She would come upstairs and chat with me often. She would also come upstairs to cry it out after their fights, once Jim had finally passed out. That's why my feelings for Jim had changed from acknowledging his presence to loathing his existence.

After one particularly bad fight, Kathy had moved out to a friend's ranch. She was tired of working to feed Jim's demons. She had come upstairs to talk with me as usual. This time, she didn't cry it out. This time she was through. I let her use my phone to call Bill, a friend of Jim's from the oil fields. He had lost an arm in a rig accident and won a million dollar settlement. He bought a beautiful piece of land and started a small cattle ranch. He came in his red Stingray to cart Kathy off to better days.

Jim never really said much to me after that. He had never really liked me. His days over the next few months were spent sleeping, his nights partying with friends somewhere. Late at night, I would awaken to the sounds of his trashing his apartment. Kathy came one day while he was gone and let me in to see what he had done. There where fist holes all over the drywall. The one window was broken. The door to the kitchen had a hole in it and stood propped off its hinges. It was a mess.

Kathy told me that Jim had been both hired and fired by a construction company the day before for fighting on the job with another guy. She assumed that's why he had torn the place up. I didn't tell her it had been going on nightly since she left. I don't know why. I just kept that to myself.

It was a week later that Jim came asking me for money. He needed gas to get to Oklahoma. He had heard that there were jobs there. He told me he wanted to go and get his life back on track so that just maybe Kathy would come back to him. I told him I didn't have any money to give him, which was mostly true. I could have driven over to the bank in Flatonia and withdrawn my last few dollars for him. I was going through hard times myself. The school district had gotten in trouble for paying teachers a month early every year. To make up for it, we had only gotten half our salary in September and October that year. I had just enough money to pay my bills.

But that wasn't why I didn't want to give him money. I didn't want to give him money because of how he treated Kathy. I also didn't believe that he was going to find work in Oklahoma. I thought he was running away and wanted funds for his good time. I looked him in the eye and said, "I just can't help you this time." I thought he would lash out at me, but instead he looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, "I'm begging you, man!" That scene still haunts me two years later.

Jim got in his car and drove away. He must have gotten money from someone, because he made it all the way to Taylor before he flipped his car and killed himself on highway 95. I heard about it the next day, when a distraught Kathy came by to tell me about it. It shook me to the core. I had just talked with him the night before. Now he was dead. I was probably one of the last people who saw him alive. And, what did I do? I sent a desperate man away without helping him.

They brought Jim's body back to Waelder. They brought what was left of his car back, too. It sat rusting in the junkyard near the 653 Cafe. I saw it every time I drove by, until I moved back to San Antonio.

I took Kathy to the funeral home the morning of Jim's funeral. She was a basket case. It felt odd to be her emotional support. I was ashamed that I hadn't done more to help Jim. It didn't seem right that his widow should be clinging to me in her time of need. It felt almost hypocritical. I was there to support her in her grief for the man she loved- a man that I had turned my back on.

The Jim Husky in the casket was not the Jim Husky I had known. They had made him up to look the best they could, but in doing so had lost the essence of him. Kathy noticed it too. She asked me to mess up his hair. They had it combed neatly with a part down one side. In life, he never did more than towel it dry. I reached over and did my best to make it look normal for Kathy. I half expected Jim to grab my arm as they do in horror movies. But he didn't. He just lay there dead. Somehow it hit me right then. Jim Husky was dead. His life was over. He would exist no more. The sudden awareness of death took my breath away.

Jim's funeral was the first one I ever went to. It was a surreal experience for me. Everything seemed to happen around me. I was an observer trying to figure it all out. I remember feeling like I was on the set of a movie. I was happy when it ended.

Four days later, Kathy came to my place for the last time. Her mom had driven down for the funeral, but arrived a day late. She convinced Kathy that she would be better off back in New York. I cried as they drove away. I still cry whenever I think of her or Jim.