A pic of the actual factual church and graveyard
in Botetourt County, Virginia....
It was a weird
feeling to look out the window from his room and…no car.
He stood there
looking out the window.
“Oh,” he thought and
snapped his finger. “Bet Diane has my
car.”
Tyler turned around,
grabbed his phone and punched in Diane’s number.
Diane answered.
“Hey,” said Tyler,
“How are you?”
“Probably better
than you,” said Diane.
“You have my car, right?”
There was laughing
on the line.
“You don’t
remember,” said Diane. “You told me to
drop you off at your house and you’d come get your car.”
“Where do you live?”
“I’m about two miles
from you,” said Diane. She gave him the
address.
“I’m on my way
over,” said Tyler. “I think I’ll jog
over, I feel great.”
“You’re probably
still drunk,” she said.
Tyler laughed.
“I’ll be right
over,” he said.
Tyler threw on some
clothes, splashed some water on his face and dashed out the door.
He broke into a run.
It was a sunny day
with a hint of spring coolness in the air.
He thought about the
night before.
It was his birthday
and no one was around to help him celebrate.
He decided to head on over to the radio station and hang out. He grabbed his prized plastic drink cup, the one
from Burger King with The Fonz from “Happy Days” on it, filled it with ice,
grabbed a can of Coke, put it in his pocket and grabbed his bottle of Jack
Daniels.
Tyler set himself up
in the sales office, propping his feet up on J.R.’s desk. It was a passive aggressive move on Tyler’s
part….he didn’t like J.R., J.R. didn’t like him so it was righteous that Tyler
prop his feet on the asshole’s desk.
From his vantage
point he could look right through the open door of the production room where
Diane was working on commercials.
All he knew about
Diane was that she was easy to talk to, and that’s why he came to the radio
station in the first place, he thought she would probably be working.
Tyler'd take a swig of Jack, chase it with a swig of Co-Cola and say, "AAAAY" just like The Fonz on the TV show.
Tyler'd take a swig of Jack, chase it with a swig of Co-Cola and say, "AAAAY" just like The Fonz on the TV show.
Now it was the next
day and he was standing at her door, panting from the run and knocking.
The door opened and
there was Diane wearing an oversized red and black checkered flannel shirt and it
sure looked like she wasn’t wearing anything else. Her long brown hair falling on her shoulders.
“Well HELLO,” said
Tyler with a smile.
“Don’t get any ideas
mister,” said Diane. “That’s not where
you and I are at. Come on in.”
Tyler stood at the
door.
“I have made a big
mistake,” he said.
“You ran all the way
here didn’t you,” said Diane. “You don’t
regularly run, do you.”
“Nope.”
“Dumbass. You’re still drunk.”
Tyler came in and
plopped himself down on the sofa.
“You sure know how
to show a girl a good time,” said Diane.
“I’m sorry if I was
rude,” said Tyler.
“Oh you weren’t
rude,” she said. Then she started
laughing.
“All I remember is
taking swigs of Jack Daniels then chasing ‘em with Coke from my Fonzie cup,”
said Tyler. “Where IS my Fonzie cup?”
It was a Burger King "Fonzie" cup just like this one....
“I’m sure it’s still
in your car,” said Diane. “You didn’t
have it in the graveyard.”
“The graveyard?”
Tyler sat up and looked Diane in the eyes.
“Oh damn,” she
laughed. “You don’t…you really shouldn’t
drink, buddy.”
“Well,” said Tyler,
“it was a special occasion, my 21st birthday you know.”
“Yeah, that was one
of those things you kept saying over and over last night, ‘I’m 21, where’s the
magic?’”
Tyler put his hand
to his mouth and raised his eyebrows.
“So anyway,” said
Diane, “you wanted to go on a mountain ramble and YOU WANTED TO DRIVE and I
said ‘Aw hell no. I’ll drive where you
want to go but you ain’t drivin’.’”
“So I finished up my
work and we took off, we headed up the interstate and before I knew it we were
in Botetourt County. And you kept
saying, ‘Drive, drive! We’ll find the
magic.’”
“And you drove,”
said Tyler.
“Yeah,” said
Diane. “I’m bored shitless, it’s a
Friday night, I ain’t doin’ anything.
Might as well.”
“So you know, Tyler,
I was born and raised here and I ain’t never been beyond Fincastle, ain’t got
no reason. So here it is 10 at night and
we’re up at Eagle Rock and driving and driving and then you tell me to turn off
the highway on to this li’l ol’ road.
‘We’re going to Glen Wilton!’ you announce.”
It was about that
time that Tyler saw that the flannel shirt really was ALL that Diane was
wearing. This messed with his head for a
moment but then he re-focused.
“’This is my ancestral
home,’ you said two or three times.
Okay, so here I am somewhere, oh I don’t know, 40, 60 miles from home at
night and you direct me to an open field where there’s this ANCIENT, and I mean
ANCIENT church with…”
“I mean this is
FREAKY, it’s a full moon night, an ancient church in the middle of
nowhere. We stop, you stumble around to
my side, open my door, take me by the hand and lead me into THIS GRAVEYARD.”
“It’s a nice place,”
said Tyler.
“I’m sure it’s real
pretty in the daylight, Tyler. BUT THIS
IS NIGHT, THIS IS A FREAKIN’ FULL MOON NIGHT.”
Tyler chuckled a
little.
“So we sit down in
the middle of this f#*kin’ graveyard and you proceed to tell me about all your
dead relatives buried there.”
“The one I remember
most was ‘poor Uncle Jim,’ you called him.
Your grandmother’s little brother…”
“Cooked through and
through like…” Tyler started but Diane interrupted.
“’COOKED THROUGH AND
THROUGH LIKE A POT ROAST,’ you said. Yeah,
that was 1918. Poor sumbitch was working
at the pig iron furnace, it was the end of the day and the new guy working the
slag basket at the top of the furnace let it down too fast and Uncle Jim and
the guy standing beside him got covered in molten pig iron…”
“Yeah, and…”
“Don’t interrupt
me,” said Diane holding up a hand to Tyler’s face. “I want to show you I was listening…..so
there’s your great-granddaddy, superintendant of the pig
iron mines coming home after work and there’s Uncle Jim’s dog howling in the
back yard. Your great-granddaddy walks
in the house and and your great grandma says ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with
that dog.’ And your great granddaddy
stops, looks at the missus and says, ‘Momma, I believe our boy is dead.’ And
about that time the klaxon horn from the furnace goes off, signal of a big
emergency.’”
“And then, and then,
and then…you fell backwards and passed out or went to sleep or whatever right
in the middle of your story about Uncle Jim,” said Diane. “So there I was, in the middle of the
mountains of Botetourt County, I didn’t have a f#*kin’ clue really where I
was. I’m in the middle of a graveyard on
a full moon night and I have no idea how long you’ll be out.”
“I sat there, looked
around. There was a big ol’ hoot owl
somewhere off in the distance. No
cars. No people.”
“Then, all of a
sudden, like 10 or 15 minutes after you passed out, WHOOP! There you sit bolt upright again and pick up
right where you left off. I MEAN RIGHT
WHERE YOU LEFT OFF! And you say, ‘They
loaded Uncle Jim and the other guy on a train bound for Lynchburg and they were
moaning, screaming and crying in pain.
And they died along the way.’”
“You told me about a
few more of your dead relatives,” said Diane, “then you got up, took me by the
hand, helped me up and we walked to the car.
I got in, you got in and I drove
us back home.”
Tyler sat there with
a smile on his face.
Diane smiled back.
“I feel like shit,”
said Tyler.
“And so the hangover
begins,” said Diane. She pulled the car
keys out of her shirt pocket and handed them to Tyler.
“Reckon I’ll head on
home,” said Tyler, taking his keys. I gotta
be at the station at 3.”
“Drink a lot of
water, take a nap,” said Diane.
Tyler stopped at the
door, turned, and looked into Diane’s eyes.
She smiled and
looked away.
“Not today, Tyler,”
said Diane. “I appreciate you being a
perfect gentleman while you visited.
Let’s you and I go out sometime, hunh?”
Tyler smiled, turned
and walked out into the sunny day.
-30-
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