by Mark Tufo
Mike was going to start with some chitchat but he didn't think he could pull it off, not this incapacitated. "Ron, I'm in some trouble."
Mike could hear Ron sit up, his cobwebs of sleep quickly dusted away. "I'm listening," Ron said.
For the next forty-five minutes Mike proceeded to tell him everything that had happened that night, from the mushrooms to the hot girl, to the drool, to the evil trees and the walk up the stairwell, finishing up with his now hiding out in his room. Ron patiently listened to his baby brother rattle off a tale of a bad trip, offering words of encouragement along the way. "Just stay in your room, Mike. It will be over in a few hours."
"Will I be the same? Will I be sane?"
Ron laughed. Mike instantly felt at ease. "You'll be fine and even a little wiser for the wear."
"Ron, thank you," Mike was nearly in tears. "I didn't think I was going to make it there for a while."
"You weren't planning on doing anything stupid, were you?" Ron asked with concern.
"No, nothing like that, I just, I've just never felt this way. I am completely fucked up."
"Good night, Mike."
"Good night Ron, thank you."
"Any time."
'Any time' ended up being twenty-eight and a half minutes later. "Hello," came Nancy's voice again. To her credit there was not a hint of menace.
"Uh hi, Nancy, is Ron there?"
"Ron..." Nancy said, handing the phone to him.
"Hey Mike," Ron said. "What's up?"
"Still fucked up," Mike told him.
This time it only took a half hour to get Mike away from the abyss of despair.
"You alright this time?"
"Yeah, I think I'm over the hard part."
"You call me if you need anything, you understand?"
"I'm okay now, I think."
"Alright then, good night again Mike."
"Good night, Ron." Mike did feel better. It only took one more call before Mike was back onto fairly even ground. He would not sleep at all that night and when Paul showed up the next afternoon he found Mike sitting on the mattress, his back up against the wall.
"Holy crap, roomie, you look like shit!' Paul exclaimed.
"Yeah, but I feel much better than I look."
And that was it. It was that act of kindness alone that pushed Ron from distant brother to trusted friend. The bond had only intensified as the years went past. Mike could think of no place he would rather be when the walls of Little Turtle fell than at his brother's side.
AFTERWORD (OR AFTERTHOUGHT) - JOURNAL ENTRY 31 -
Almost decided not to put this in my journal but once I figured I was going to I had no room so I put it here at the end.
So when I was sitting in the hospital at Camp Custer (obviously before Eliza came a calling) doing my best to not go insane, strapped to a bed because apparently I'm a bad patient, this assh…, I mean guy comes up to me, says he found my first journal. I almost shit myself, which given the circumstances wouldn't have been a memory worthy incident. I'll relate how the encounter went.
Just so you know, I was almost asleep at the time when the guy grabbed my foot.
"Hey are you Mitchell Tulbert?"
"What?" I asked coming out of a drug induced stupor.
"Mitchell Tulbert, are you him?"
Now normally I won't give my name to anyone who didn't know me, it's that whole paranoia thing. But I was pretty heavily morphined up and I didn't have all my faculties. "I'm Michael Talbot."
"Yeah that's what I meant. I've been looking for you."
Now it's never good news when someone you don't know is looking for you, it usually revolves around a warrant.
"Are you from the IRS? Fast Tax said that I could claim any kids under the age of 18 living in my household and Henry is as much one of my kids as any of them. I mean he never talks back, hardly ever complains. Sure, he smells like wet garbage sometimes but that's sort of his appeal."
Assh… I mean Guy says, "No, I'm not from the IRS. You have a kid that smells like wet garbage?"
"Long story," I told him and would have waved an arm to disperse my words if I wasn't restrained.
"No, I was foraging for some food out in Colorado, in a place called Little Turtle. Not much left except one row of housing and the sign to the complex."
My heart at this point is thudding in my chest.
"Gotta admit man, coming across your place saved my life. We were running out of everything, food, clothes you name it. So I'm rummaging around in what I guess was your office."
Why do I feel violated?
"Sure did have a lot of Red Sox stuff, was a Philly fan myself."
"Of course you were," I said, urging him to keep talking.
He looked at me sideways and then kept going. "Man, you had more MRE's than we could carry. Sat there for a week fattening up on them. I looked over your books too. You had a lot of zombie fiction, wasn't really in the mood to read any more about them."
Couldn't blame him there at all.
"Then I come across your journal. That was some informative stuff. You sure did have a lot of grammatical errors and what not."
"You do realize it was a journal right?" I asked him, and he nodded in reply.
"Yeah but it even looked like you made up some words."
"I'm sorry Ass… I mean Guy. I was struggling to survive at the time. I was just trying to get a point across anyway I could. Didn't really have access to a dictionary or a thesaurus."
"Yeah, but couldn't you have cleaned it up a bit?"
"Dude, what are you, an English professor? Don't read it if it upsets your delicate constitution. Just give me the damn thing will you!"
He looked down at his feet. "Sorry, I can't."
I was boring holes through his head with my eyes.
"We used it for kindling somewhere outside of Kansas."
"So how the hell did you track me down and for what fucking reason? To let me know I might have used 'there' instead of 'their' or I used one too many commas? Do you see a tweed sweater with leather patches on my elbows?" I was pretty much screaming at this point.
BT moved his privacy curtain over and eyed the man. "Talbot, you want me to kick his ass?" he said menacingly.
Douche…, I mean Assh ..., I mean Guy backed up, having got a full look at BT.
"No, he's fine. As soon as he clarifies a couple of things he's leaving on his own."
Guy again looked over nervously at BT. Even in traction the big dude could impose fear in a badger.
"Well…well, um your journal said you would be going back east and when I ran into this place (meaning the base) I thought that maybe you might also be here, so I started asking around."
"Wow, now isn't that just my luck. Tracked down by a critic," I said, and BT laughed.
"He's giving you shit about what you wrote in a private journal? What an ass," BT echoed.
"You'd think I was charging him," I said. BT and I both started laughing like loons. The guy left in a huff sometime during our outburst.
If you find this journal could you please not use it for kindling I would greatly appreciate it.