Yellowriter

 

Shakespeare had a rather blunt message at the ending of Romeo and Juliet; true love can kill a person. There are two of my close friends who lay about three hundred yards from one another under six feet of dirt and sod. I wrote previously of my deceased compadre, Robert Brown, but there is another who gets saluted each time I pass the graveyard, which lies on the east side of town. His life was tragic and brief, and the more I think about him, the more I am convinced that he died, not of lacerated bones and tissue, but of a broken heart.

The group of guys I grew up with during the sixties and seventies were affectionately referred to as the Indian Sage gang. We weren’t a gang like the kind that menaces our streets today, but we were no angels either. Four of the gang met in kindergarten at the Desert View School in Lancaster, California. One of the first friends I ever had was Donald Keith King. When he got older we called him Don King. A boxing promoter of the same name (and slightly wilder hair) emerged on the national scene about the same time our Don hit puberty, but he didn’t mind sharing his title with someone famous. It wasn’t a problem, because boys being boys, and malicious little snots to boot, we all had nicknames. We called Don football head.

A lot of nicknames pinned on folks just don’t seem to fit. I have always been a master of the nickname, and most of my given call signs stick for life. I am reminded of this quality of mine as I look at the faces of my kindergarten class. Don’s noggin looks like a football covered in sandy blonde hair the consistency of an over ripe coconut. He had olive colored skin, huge lips, and ears that looked like they were sewn to his elongated melon. In the picture also are some of the other members of the Indian Sage gang. I see Robert Glasscock, whose nickname later in life, for life, would be called Gob. Bruce Graves is in the photo and he will be dubbed Buns. Little Patrick Egan is there; his future name will be Bear. James Ross is there as well, but he joins the group a tad later, and is only referred to as Ross, but it fits well.

Donald was a lover. He was a passionate boy in everything from sports to the way he laughed. He had one of those corny, drawn out banters when he was amused, the kind you can actually identify a person by. You know the guy, the one with the laugh? Oh yeah, him! Don discovered girls at an early age and though many were put off by the shape of his head, (Do you have a tumor or something?) he was never short on female company. Some of the time he adopted the hyena and wilder beast philosophy. Like a hyena, he would circle the pack of girls and look to pick off a weak, sickly one.

The venue for the hyena approach was the Mormon Church and their youth activities. None of us had the least bit of interest in what Joseph Smith had started, but every other Saturday night the Mormons put on a dance, and that meant a whole room full of pretty (and naïve) girls. I am ashamed to tell my kids that I only learned how to tie a tie so that I could attend the Mormon dances. Bruce was a member in good standing (his bishop didn’t know him like we did) and we would all get together in slacks, shirts and ties and head out to see what flowers were on the wall.

Don had a way of knowing potential. He was like a baseball scout discovering a future Cy Young Award winner. He would focus on a wallflower and make her feel confident and pretty. Most of the time the self-fulfilling prophecy came true and the girl would blossom into a fantastic beauty, who, unfortunately, was still in love with Don King. Don’s projects were many and diverse so I’ll limit myself to a couple of his greatest conquests, the last of which, I believe, cost him his life.

Annette Baker looked liked a starved librarian. She was thin to the point of having translucent skin. Don had picked her off the wall at a Mormon dance and soon she emerged from her cocoon as the gorgeous butterfly none of us, but Don, knew she was. They went everywhere together and she even talked Don into meeting the Mormon missionaries. She dreamed of marriage, children, and keeping her virginity until her wedding night. Don, like most sixteen year old boys, with a part time job, and a car, had other ideas. Soon the pressure to put out became too great and the campus couple split. Don rebounded quickly, but I remember Annette sitting alone in the cafeteria, looking longingly across the room in an effort to catch his attention. Don never looked, as was his nature, not to look back. Now, it seems that it was a survival instinct inbred perhaps into all with a head shaped like a pigskin ball.

Soon, Don was scoping out the new wallflowers at the Mormon dances. He refused to dance with Annette and she hooked up with a returning mission who married her as soon as she graduated high school. Good for Annette; she got everything she wanted in life, except for the guy she truly loved. A new batch of freshman was on the wall as we all entered our senior year of high school. There was a diamond in the rough and Don spotted her right away. Marilyn was a fourteen year old brunette with a heart-shaped face and the beginnings of a full and voluptuous figure. She was timid and it took much coaxing for her to dance. The rest of us wrote her off as too young, but she moved the man with a football head in a way no other had.

Thrill seeking is a part of youth. All of us do something dangerous and dumb just for the adrenaline rush. Don became addicted to the rush at an early age and it wasn’t a concern until he got a car. A 1966 Plymouth Fury III may not look like much, but the boys at MOPAR decided that the family sedan needed a 383 big block engine. It did little for the gas mileage, but oh how that machine could move! The last time I rode with Don the Fury became airborne at ninety five miles an hour. In the now it can be told department I actually pissed myself that night somewhere between liftoff and the two-point plus two-point landing. Thank the Lord I got my own car soon after! The death-defying travel became more tolerant when Don had to get a new car, a six cylinder with about half the horse power. The stunt that brought the end of the Fury was a hundred mile an hour dash down the freeway. Gob, Lani (Gob’s girlfriend), and Bruce were all screaming for him to slow down. Don started in with his maniacal laughter until the bumping started. Don stopped with the chortling and eased on the speed. The thudding under the car ended with the dive shaft disconnecting and then lodging itself under the chassis. As the Plymouth slowed it was literally shish-kabobbed through the rear seat floor board by the driveshaft. The shaft/skewer came up right through the middle almost making an entrée out of Gob and Lani. That was the end of the family hot rod and we were all glad to see it go.

Marilyn’s parents did not approve of Don and worked hard to keep the love birds apart. A parade of proper Mormon boys was invited for dinner, and her folks monitored her comings and goings as best they could. But true love always finds a way! They cut school to be together and used friends to run interference for them. Don pushed her sexually, but she refused to go all the way with him. My friend, for the first and possibly last time in his young life, had been smitten. I heard him talk of joining the Air Force and coming back to marry this love of his. He stopped looking at other girls completely and the rest of us knew that he was in love.

Don turned eighteen in February and Marilyn’s folks turned up the heat. They vowed to charge him with statutory rape if he persisted on courting their daughter. The Mormon Church got involved and forbade them to be at dances together. Remember the reference to Romeo and Juliet? They became even more resolved to be together. Marilyn had blossomed over the winter and resembled a mature and stunning college freshman. Don was proud of her and showed her off to anyone who would look. The two planned a solidarity and defiance that would end in marriage and a family. I think I even heard something about a white picket fence.

The silence was disconcerting. We returned from Spring break our senior year and the Mormon girls avoided the entire Indian Sage gang. Something was up; I could sense it. Don was sad on Monday and Tuesday when Marilyn failed to show up at school. The Mormon girls said that she was sick, which I suppose turned out to be true. By Wednesday Don was a mess so I took matters into my own hands. I sought out a Mormon girl whom I was particularly close to and got her alone, away from where anyone could accuse her of telling the truth.

“Where’s Marilyn? Did her parents put her in private school?” I asked. She began to cry.

“It’s worse than that! She’s married!” she sobbed. I was stunned. She was only fifteen.

“To who?”

“A twenty-eight year old the parents met while he was on his mission. They married and are living in Utah. He’ll never see her again!” she cried.

Life has a lot of horrible assignments. I remember when I had to tell my wife that her father had died. Telling the kids that their dog got ran over was another winner. At age seventeen I learned about delivering the tough news, you know, the way things really are.

He jumped out of the chair in his bedroom when I told him, his eyes filled with hurt and rage, the kind of hurt that only comes from losing love. He grabbed me and shoved me against the wall.

“Powers, you son-of-a-bitch! Tell me you’re lying!” he screamed as he tightened his grip. The tears came streaming down my face, hot and salty.

“Hit me if it will help, but I swear to God it’s the truth…I’m sorry.” I replied. Instead of punching me, he held me. It was a good thing no one was home at the time because the agonizing, guttural screams that came from my friend would have shocked anyone in earshot. After he calmed down, I left. Donald Keith King, after that Wednesday, was never the same.

My friend was right. We never saw Marilyn again. Don rebounded by going to the other extreme and the nasty, trailer-trash bimbos he brought around made us all think of Marilyn’s beauty and charm. Don developed an edge to his personality and it was a wall none of us could scale. He joined the Air Force with Jim Ross and Robert Brown and the three of them went to Basic and Technical Training school together. Jim married his high school sweetheart, Monica, while home on leave and I spent the ceremony watching Don and trying to read his thoughts about that one great love that was not meant to be.

I saw Don only once more. It was on a water ski trip while I was on leave from my own stint in the Air Force. His laugh was gone, and he drank tremendous amounts of alcohol. His new girlfriend was named Terri, and she was in the Air Force as well, stationed at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas. She was nothing like Marilyn and the contrast made me think of what losing her had done to him. I talked to him eighteen months later via telephone. He told me of an accident that left him with a broken hand, the fact that he was still with Terri, and that he had recently purchased a motorcycle.

My Dad’s horrible assignment was to tell me that a week after I spoke to him Don was dead. He was killed in a motorcycle accident. While traveling on a dirt road at an excessive speed, with a passenger riding on the back holding a pizza, the twosome was met at a blind intersection by a fast-moving station wagon. He swerved and threw the rider, who only broke his leg. Don was killed instantly.

As I wait at the funeral to carry the casket of my friend, aided by others of the Indian Sage gang, I look back in the church and see many of the Mormon girls who kept the secret of a Utah marriage. I meet the man who was thrown and he tells me that Don saved his life. It was the final adrenaline rush. Terri is there in the back. She leaves before the service is over and does not go to the graveside service.

I hold it together until the honor guard begins to fire their rifles, a three gun salute. In that moment I think of Marilyn and wonder what she must be feeling. I’ve heard that she is a mother of two now.

The salutes are explained now and I’ll continue to give them. Robert Brown reminds me to make the most of each day. My friend Don tells of the power of love, its ability to build up as well as its power to destroy. Yes, Mr. Shakespeare, the message is blunt, but the substance of the thing makes it a lesson well-learned. My heart is not broken, but it has many pieces missing. My friends have each taken a part of mine with them to the other side and just like my friend, Don; I will never be quite the same.