George Ansbach had been leisurely driving down Mt. Rushing Highway through the Plateau, nestled in a rare, relaxed frame of mind, still reeling from Angeline’s sudden death. He listened to a John Klemmer CD, a soothing tenor sax melody. As he approached Uptown, he passed a red Firebird parked haphazardly on the side of Ginkgo Avenue.
In the driver’s seat, head back, mouth open, slouched Butch Simtreen, a former drug friend of his daughter Becky. The car was running. Guns and Roses played loudly. On appearances, Butch was napping. It just didn’t look right. George pulled over, jumped out, and jogged back. Butch was unresponsive. Upon checking the red haired, pockmarked face, he found hints of breath and pulse. A 3-inch square of foil sat between Butch’s thighs.
Becky’s dangerous addictions had led to the emergency room many times. Her near-death experiences were soul-breaking memories, consequently George took drug abuse awareness with a keen, special interest. As a Vietnam vet, he had had too many friends who had veered and crashed into that swamp. While Becky was now a vital part of the farm and was providing care for her grieving dad with his many bouts of PSTD, she had once been a walking wreck.
George grabbed his cell phone and called 911. He gave his location, the specifics of the emergency, the person involved. He ran to his truck and reached in the glove compartment, grabbed a small kit bag and returned to the scene, checking back in with the dispatcher.
The dispatcher commanded George to remove Butch from the vehicle and put him flat on the ground, and to extend his head back. George took a different step.
“The subject is a drug user. This is clearly a drug overdose. I am administering Narcan now into his nasal passage.”
“Somewhere close a flicker works a metal roof, nak, nak, nak. Camouflaged guerilla bird, not like a woodpecker, decked out like a British officer in the Revolution. Nak, nak, nak. The jungle, the snakes, the dank so far from the warm quilt, from the wood stove. Nak, nak, nak, face in the muck, trees shredding above, shrieks to my left, cries to my right, moaning within. Search for the carotid, that pulse, that fleeting bird, the guns, the end of it all, the end of it all, the peace that comes only in stupor of exhaustion, marching, marching, trudging, the snakes, the spiders, the bullets in ambush sound like any flying pest, but does this one, that one whisper my name? Drag him, drag the private behind the tree. Give him his moment of awareness out of fire, his grasp of the inevitable end, then the welcome shaking of the hand of God, the introductions, the passing. Nak, nak, nak. Every noise a wakeup call, all bloody death-defying taunts, the sobbing, shaking. I can’t shake it. I’ll never shake it. You lose a friend; you lose a wife. Why hang on by a thread when you can just let go and float down into the recliner and lean back? Why nak, nak, nak fight? Why? Why do their bullets and our helicopters begin to sound the same, some strange drum duet, some long Dead jam that goes and goes and. Brush back the hair out of his eyes, although he is seeing now with other eyes, struggling to wonder where is where. Nak, nak, nak. I’m sleepy. My eyes lids are so heavy. What I would give for a chair in the emergency room, waiting for survival, not surviving death. I am here. I am alive. And I listen and He says to us, Butch, I will not leave you until I have done everything that I have promised you.”
Many seconds pass before Butch jolts. George hears the sirens approaching.
Butch jolts again, eyes now wide open. George places his hand on Butch’s shoulder. “Sit still, fella. Sit still. You’re OK.”
The sirens grew in volume; a Warhaven Police squad car brakes to a stop, closely followed by a Warhaven Fire Department ambulance.
About ‘The City Council’
The City Council is a work of fiction that sprang from observing contentious politicians. This narrative serial was initially conceived as a radio project back in 2006. That year it began to be published in print in the White Salmon Enterprise. It now appears every two weeks in the Columbia Gorge News.
This creative writing is set in the imaginary western town of Warhaven, which lies at the confluence of the Rushing and Big rivers. The town was settled in 1867 by veterans of the Battle of Gettysburg, who sought to leave the carnage and duplicity of the East for a more harmonious society in the West. In Warhaven, city government works efficiently with altruism for the commonweal of the community, which is the work’s overriding theme.
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