The Writers' Circle

I'm sure none of you can believe you're here. You-uh, you all knew her. Most of you went to high school and middle school and elementary school and preschool here, in this town, with both Jane and I, and you all knew her. She was beautiful, and smart, and strange. I'm sure you all remember when she was quiet in elementary school. No one really talked to her, did they? You know, it was fine though. You all know that she was quiet anyway, and solitary. It was her thing I suppose.

You all knew, also, that I loved her. Like, a lot. I mean, we got made fun of and stuff in grade school for being best friends but-I mean, that's what kids do, and it's not like any harm was meant. I loved her then. I didn't tell her, but I did love her. I told her for the first time when it was our freshman year and we were at a football game and the light was reflecting off her hair and she was bundled up and she was so beautiful that I couldn't help it. I just hugged her because, I mean, I'd never seen anything so beautiful. And I told her.

I guess it's like, we were made for each other. At least I get that feeling. Even though my father didn't like her because her father was poor, I mean I still loved her and spent time with her. One thing I always remember-do you guys?-well, it was that she was always, like, dusty. You know what I mean? I mean, maybe dust came out of her faucet or something, but nevermind, I'm sidetracked, I'm sorry.

God, I loved her.

Do you remember, the next year? All of us turned sixteen, and we got our father's trucks and we drove through town causing trouble. And we all felt so cool, especially when the town would put up the drive-in theatre every other Saturday. Ha, and sometimes-John Samson!-you, you would sneak whiskey from your house in underneath your shirt and you would give it to people. Ha, everyone loved you for that.

Jane, well, she didn't get invited. Not many people liked her because she didn't talk to anyone really. I mean, its fine though. In her mind, she had better things to do. You know-well, I mean, I bet none of you knew this, but Jane loved to write. She wrote beautifully, and it was fascinating to read because she came up with things and people that I never knew could exist. I'd never been out of this god-forsaken little town of ours, and she knew about so much more in cities and suburbs and towns with numbered streets, and I'm sure all of you would have loved it. But you never asked. No one ever asked.

I knew her. You didn't know her. You absolutely didn't know her. How many of you had talked to her, ever, and had a real conversation and found things out about her? I'm talking about ever. I know few of you did. Yet you sit before me? You are honoring her, and you don't know her? Do you feel shame?

Sorry.

She dropped out. You all remember that? It was our sophomore year. Her dad was sick and her mom had left the year before and she had no brothers so she had to help him and take care of him and she had to help him take care of the fields now because he couldn't be out there planting all the time with him being sick and all. You all thought she did it so that she could go do crazy girl things. She didn't. She took care of her father because he was poor and he was quiet too so no one else knew. You-you all were horrible to her after that. You all did bad things to her house and she would call me and ask me to help her fix everything up before her father saw. She would ask me why, and I told her that I didn't know. Why did you all do it? I guess everyone needs someone to hate, and you were all nice people so you couldn't hate each other. She was chosen, and not she nor God had a say in it.

We put up with things for a long time, until senior year. I was the oldest in the school, remember? I turned 18 and there was a big party. She didn't come because me and her decided that it would be better if she stayed home because her father was very sick then. I dropped out of school soon after the party. You all told me how sad you were when I did that. After school everyday everyone would come see me at Al Burton's car shop on Walner Street. Right next to the grocery store, remember? I loved it but Al would get mad. You all would pretend to have car problems and you'd spend hours there while people looked at your cars when there was nothing wrong with them and then didn't even buy anything. Ha, those days were fun, lots of fun. You all didn't know, though, that I was working and giving money to Jane to take care of her father. She couldn't plant and harvest and maintain the land anymore because she couldn't do it by herself. Her father was getting bad, and he couldn't be working anymore. He wasn't even old, and she always prayed and asked me why God chose him to make suffer. I told her I didn't know, but I made money and gave it to her and him and they would eat and have electricity. It was like a book, like a sick story that we had no control over. Jane's father had said that if he couldn't pay me back, that someday God would, and I felt very, very good inside for helping him when he said that.

Soon, Jane had to work too. She would work while I took care of her father, because he liked me and didn't mind. He considered me a son, he once told me. I was honored. He was a good man. I took care of him and she would work, and then I would work and she would take care of him. One night her father and I were playing cards because he said cards kept his mind sharp. She had just gotten a new job, a second one other than the place that did the laundry. She worked at the place that sold the cigarettes to us kids, the drug store. You remember, it, right? And the crazy Latin man who owned it, who was LATIN! No one had ever seen a Latin man in real life before we saw him. It was crazy. He taught us how to swear in Spanish, remember? Yeah, he was a great guy. He liked Jane, which is why he hired her for little hours and decent pay.

A couple weeks after she started though, you all knew she worked there. No one knew about how she worked in the laundry place because she worked in the back all the time and besides no high school kids cared about laundry and no one ever went there besides parents. You found out how she worked at the drug store, and you told each other. She was scared to work there, because she knew you would give her a hard time but I told her she could be strong about it then write a story and maybe someday someone outside of our damn town would read it and know all about her strength. One night, you all went in there to bother her and you were horrible. You made her cry. She came to her house in her work clothes and hit on the door and I put down the cards and her father was concerned and she was crying and shaking but she didn't make any noise. She didn't yell.

That night, I slept with her in her bed because she didn't want to be alone. After we put her father to bed, we lied on her bed and I put my arm around her and we stared at the wall; she was in her work clothes and I was in my jeans and an undershirt, and it felt like a country song. We laughed at that. I loved her at that moment, too, just like at the football game. She was beautiful in every moment, but at that time I felt beautiful too, to be a part of her life, so it was beautiful for us to lie there together.

She didn't go back, to the drug store, but she worked at the laundry place more and I worked at the car place more only you guys didn't come around as much because I stopped humoring you. High school ended, and some people left but a lot stayed. We all grew apart right after high school, huh? It was very sad. The summer after high school ended, her father got very much more sick. He couldn't play cards with me anymore, and he didn't leave bed much. It was all so sad. I guess that was a sad time but I was strong for Jane. She was strong too, or at least she was strong in front of her father. I started living at the house with her and my father didn't like that at all but it didn't matter. He was successful and he had a lot of money so it didn't matter. He was fine without me, besides he had my brothers and sisters and my mother and Jane and her father had no one. It was fine.

One night, her father was in bed and it was early and Jane took me to her room and she told me to be quiet and calm. She went under her bed and she took out a box and in the box was a sock and in the sock was an envelope folded up. From the envelope she pulled a plastic sandwich bag out of there and inside was pills, about ten. They were big and white and oblong, and it was so weird-the look in her eyes, that is. It was like I had never seen. She talked, then. She talked for a long time about her mother and how she left because she thought she could find something better and Jane said she hoped her mother never found anything better. Jane talked beautifully, more beautiful than I have ever heard a person talk, especially a person from a hick-town like ours. She said that her father had a hard, sad life and he had no where to go now but into more and more suffering and we couldn't afford to take him to a hospital, so he would just suffer some more until God spared him and took his life. She said we couldn't wait for God. She told me that the next day we were taking God's work into our own hands. She said that we had to put the pills in her father's food at night the next day, and he would be in no pain but he would die. It was better this way, I thought, because the nearest hospital was 15 miles away and it would be hard to take him there so they could do it. She said she got the pills one at a time for a long time. She said she got them from that old creepy guy who sold drugs on Fairfax Road out of town in the south about five miles, near the bar with the wooden porch. She said they were drugs but that she had enough to numb her father and then his heart would stop but he wouldn't feel anything and he would be pain-free for the first time in a long, long time.

She said we had to leave, too. She couldn't be in her home with her dead father. That night, we got all the bags we could find, and it wasn't a lot. She packed clothes and I packed mine and we piled them up near her doorway. It was very late, maybe even the morning, and we drove to my house. She came into my home with me and my father was awake in the study reading something. He was scared when he first saw us, but more he was just startled. I told him that we needed money, and I told him that we were leaving the next day. He tried to protest, but he knew I had made up my mind because I looked at him real seriously. He went into his room that he shared with my mother, and he came back with a lot of money, almost 3000 dollars. I had never seen that much all together at one time in one place in my whole life and I didn't know we had it. He said it was what he was going to give me when I got married so that I could pay bills for a few months and get started. He said I needed it now that we were leaving. I tried not to cry, but I felt tears coming so I just hugged him. He and Jane looked at each other, and he hugged her too. I felt very happy. I kissed my mother goodbye and my sisters, but they were sleeping on account of it being late. Me and Jane went back to her house and we didn't sleep. We lied on her bed again in our clothes and it felt like a country song again, only we didn't laugh this time.

We gave Jane's father lasagna that afternoon, his favorite meal. He loved it, but he couldn't talk so we just assumed he loved it from the smile he had and the glint in his eye. We put him in bed and Jane kissed him on the forehead and then we opened the window and closed the door, just like he liked it. Then we took the bags and put them in the cab of my truck because it was cloudy that day and it might rain. We didn't know where we were going, but we got on a highway that was heading away from the sun, which meant we were going east and that the first thing we would hit would be Indiana. We went through Indiana, and Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and we slept in the car and ate at truck stops and met very nice people. We told them we were starting a life together, and they would buy us dinner and pat us on the back.

The best place we went was Pittsburgh. Have you ever been there? It is such a large city and we had never seen so many clean people and nice cars and buildings. It was nice. We took pictures because Jane had a very nice camera that her father gave her when she was young. We took pictures, and soon we were out of that huge city. Usually, I drove and she would write and play my guitar and sleep. I liked it when she slept, because she looked very beautiful.

Do you know where we ended up? We went to New York City. She said it was a good place for writers and that I could work in the city too because she read that there was always work. Imagine! Me, and her, in New York City! None of us from this town went to any cities, let alone New York! It was such a special thing. I wish you all were there, you'd have loved it, and you all could have come and visited us, but we thought it was better if we didn't tell you we were here. We lived in a very interesting and beautiful place called the East Village. We lived in an apartment building that no one owned, so we didn't pay. We had a bunch of roommates, who were mostly crazy drug assicts. It wasn't legal, but we couldn't afford anything else and a lot of other people did it too. Besides, it made us feel "bad." It was funny. We sold my car and got 1000 dollars for us. When we first found the apartment, we laid out blankets from home, and we slept on the floor because the furniture belonged to our crazy roommates. There was a big room, where most people slept, two bedrooms and a big closet. We slept in the big closet because there was enough room for all our stuff and us. Jane called the apartment a "loft." Our first night there we sang songs with our roommates and smoked cigarettes before going back to our closet. That night though, we didn't wear our clothes when we slept.

God, I loved her then. And she loved me too. She would write, and write songs and she said that people who did that belonged on a stage. She would audition for shows at theatres and she had a beautiful voice so she would perform in plays. She was so shy, and it was beautiful to see her on a stage being loud and suggestive. I wish you all could have seen her. It was so beautiful, and you would've been amazed. I worked at this very fancy restaurant and I cleaned tables and brought people wine and told them about different pieces of meat. I made nice money and so did she but we didn't move out of our apartment. A lot of our roommates left and us and a man who dressed like a woman were the only ones left. Even when a black family moved into the apartment with us, we stayed. The man in the family was quite an interesting fellow. We thought we became interesting people then.

Soon, she got a very big show on Broadway. She was so happy. I got promoted to a waiter and I made a lot of money. It was great. We moved out of our apartment then. I was 22 and she was 22 and we moved into this very nice apartment further up to the north in the city, and we had a lot of money and we were very happy. I wrote letters to my dad and sent him back the 3000 dollars he had given me and I thanked him and I told him how happy I was. I never got a letter back, but my dad told me later that he was so happy to get mine. Our life felt like it was a country song again, only a happy one. Me and Jane both laughed about it. We were so happy, and I told Jane that God had finally paid us back like her father said, and she smiled and agreed and kissed me a long time.

We never got married. Things happened really fast, but we never did. She always wanted to get married back at home in the field behind her house where she used to work, and she would get married all alone with me and her and the preacher and that's all, then we'd live in her old house. She loved solitude. Her show on Broadway ended, and she decided to stay at home for a while and write because she loved to write. After this happened she became less happy and more quiet. She said it was because as much as she loved writing.it was an awfully insightful experience, and that it was scary and sad to write about things.

When we were 24, she still hadn't gone back to work, and it didn't matter because I could pay the bills and buy food but we didn't have a lot of extra money. It didn't matter. I had her. I hope you all have that feeling someday, if you haven't already; the feeling that everything is okay even if it isn't, but it is only okay because someone you love is happy. It's a beautiful feeling.

Do you remember when we came home that one time, the first time? We were 24 and we drove here again in a different car that we had bought. We came back, and a lot of you all had families now and were working out near the college or in the town. It felt very nice. You didn't ask us about her father, and when we went to the house everything was clean and in the same way we left it only that her father was gone. He was buried outside in the back and someone told us that he had died peacefully in his sleep of his sickness, and me and Jane just smiled to each other. We were all mature and old and still here and you guys were fine and nice. She was so happy, that at night she cried. She was so glad that you all liked her finally. You all felt kind of bad, and it was nice that you were nice to us. We had a lot of great times then. We were all happy and had young families and a lot of us had a husband or wife. We were only there for a week, and we didn't get married even though you tried to get us to. I don't know why we didn't; I think Jane wanted to, but she said no anyway. She was probably embarrassed. I remember we told you all stories about New York and you all were amazed and you told us we didn't talk the same and that we looked like New Yorkers like the ones on the television and we all laughed and drank whiskey, only it was legal this time, Johnny Samson.

We were so happy, and I loved her. I loved her a lot and a lot. We drove home after a week and we felt warm inside and happy everywhere. We were on a highway one night in Ohio, and the radio was playing and it was late and I was thinking about pulling to a motel soon to sleep. We could afford it now, instead of sleeping in truck stop parking lots. Jane woke up and sat up, and she held my hand and she leaned against my shoulder and I felt very, very nice in that moment, and I felt like I was a man.

Oh, man, I loved her. A song came on the radio that neither of us had ever heard. We listened. It was a sad song and it had an acoustic guitar and a twang-y voice and it wasn't country, it was different, but it was very, very sad. The lyrics came through the speakers clearly and loudly, each syllable pounding into our brains and hearts as the sad song played. Jane began to cry. I knew why, too. The song was about a lot of things that we felt and it was about our life it seemed. The song was about two people who loved each other and made sacrifices for one another and the ones that they loved, and they had no money and they left their town where they grew up and they were sad about it because they drank too much alcohol, and she cried for a long time. I cried too, and I think she saw, but she didn't say anything. She cried in the car, and in the motel, and she was crying when I fell asleep with my arm around her and my clothes on.

In the morning, she didn't cry. She stared at things and she was silent until we passed the exit for Pittsburgh. She cried then, and I asked her what was wrong. She said she had decided not to write anymore, because the song she heard was so beautiful and it said everything she could ever want to say. I understood. She said she didn't think she could say anything else, because every time she wanted to write a story she could only think of the song and how she could never write anything that beautiful. After that, she didn't sing or write. She was very silent and she stayed in the house a lot and drank wine. She was very sad. She was a writer, whose gift and will had been destroyed and she kept destroying it more in her mind, playing the song over and over and she was so sad. She tried to kill herself one time, when it was late at night and she drank a lot of alcohol and took a lot of pills. I took her to the hospital, and it was the first time either of us had been in a hospital since our birth and it was scary because she looked scared and pale and sad. The doctor said she was okay, and they next day we paid our landlord and left our apartment with our stuff packed in our car in the backseat and we came back home again.

She loved it here. She felt happier I think. She would lie in the grass in the field where she used to work and I would lie with her and we held hands and we would talk and she seemed to feel happier. She still drank wine sometimes though, and that was when she felt sad. I worked here at the bar, remember, the new one? I served drinks and people were so happy about it. You all would chat with me and you would try to make plans and ask me about Jane. But Jane didn't like to leave the house or see people. She left sometimes to sit in the bar with people and talk about things, but she didn't do it often. You all thought she was strange again, only you didn't let on this time.

You didn't know when she tried to kill herself again. She jumped out of a window, but she was okay, she didn't even hurt herself, and that made her very sad.

Then almost a year went by and she barely left and I barely worked and I saw less of you all. It was okay though, because we all talked on the phone a lot and a lot of you came over with your kids, and Jane would laugh and play with them. She was not okay though. I had to take care of her, and she would lie on the floor and on the couch or the counter or her bed and she would stare at something for a long time then cry. I didn't know why, I didn't understand. Every night though, she would put her hand on my face and she would kiss me very nicely and tell me how much she loved me and she would thank me for loving her too. I thought that was very nice of her, and you all should have seen her then. She was happy when we lied in bed together, and she wasn't the sad person most of you had come to know.

You all know about the third time she tried to kill herself. One of you bastards sold her a pistol and some bullets, for a reason neither God nor mortals understand. She was in her bedroom and I was downstairs on the phone with Mike Burton. Mike, you and I were on the phone, remember? And we were talking about you buying the house down the road from ours and starting a farm together with us and your wife and your two boys. Me and Mike were on the phone, and I heard a shot upstairs. Mike asked me what it was, he says, but I didn't hear him. I had dropped the phone and ran to the place where it came from, her father's bedroom. There she was, with a box of bullets and a pistol and blood all over the wall and she was slumped over on her side at the top of her father's bed. I screamed, and I couldn't touch her but I slid to the floor in the doorway and screamed like a woman and had my face in my hands, and I think-Mike, you heard me. The next I knew, the sheriff was at my house and a lot of people came, and Mike you ran to where you heard me screaming and people and the sheriff were behind you yelling and you were pulling on me and I hit you.

A lot of you all pulled me out of the room, and I tried to fight then I gave up and people hugged me and held me but I still screamed and I cried. Some nice people stayed at my house that night while I slept. When I woke up again, I was screaming. People came and they told me that the hospital came and they said she was dead, but they cleaned up everything and they had her at the hospital and I could go get her to bury her. I screamed when you all told me that. It was horrible, horrible. I couldn't take it at all.

I'm so sorry I screamed at you. I was so glad that you all drove me to the hospital and let me get her and hold her and get her ready to bury her. When she was clean, she was in a gown that the hospital gave her and she was so pale. They put her in a coffin that they gave us for free, and the hospital brought her in the coffin in a special car. They had people who were professional hole-diggers come out and dig a hole for her next to her father, because they said that was the best, and that that was how it was supposed to be done. I cried that day, but I didn't scream. I wanted to scream when they started pushing the piles of tan dirt on top of her, but I didn't and instead people patted my back and people's wives held my arm, and people were sad but I didn't know why. None of them-none of you-knew her.

That night, I slept next to her grave with one of the blankets from when we first left. I slept on top of the blanket and some of it wrapped around me and I talked to her and told her everything I forgot to say while she was alive. I told her I loved her and that I would never marry another woman or love another woman and if I thought about another woman I would just come see her. She was my Mercedes, and no one else would ever understand why except the good old Count himself, or maybe a very special man who knew a very special woman.

The next morning, I get a call, that people want to honor her at the church and have a ceremony for her and I thought that was nice but I still didn't know why. None of you knew her. Now, we're all here and after all of my story, I still think none of you know her. I don't think anyone knew her, maybe not even me. Maybe not even herself. She was a beautiful person, and nothing could ever replicate that beauty or honor it in the way it deserves. Even I can't.

I just hope that I can write about her, even though I talk like a man from a farm and I can't use impressive language. I hope that I can somehow express her beauty so that others can see it, and maybe someone, somewhere, someday will understand. That, after all, is what she wanted.