The Meaning of Danger (non-fiction, short story)

The Meaning of Danger
(Based on actual events, name have been changed)


It is said when danger lingers about, animals have a sixth sense, and thus move out of its way. So do humans, if only they’d pay attention to it. (Summer of 1962)

Chick Evens


I met a man when I was fifteen years old; he was twenty-years old at the time, a handsome looking fellow, had a car he borrowed always from his brother, he had several of them. They drank a lot, and he seemed to get into trouble without much effort, I only met his brothers once, and that was enough. I remember him saying, the older robust brother of David Osmond’s,
“I want to try your ring on,” is what he said to me, and I said no, and David whispered in my ear, I suggest you do as he asks, he’s a little crazy. The brother was perhaps thirty-five, build like a wrestler. I said no, and he looked at me, and he said, the older brother, “Are you sure you want to keep saying no, because, I heard what my brother said, and he wasn’t kidding.”
I tried to keep my posture, but his eyes told me, something was coming, and quickly, he and three of his brothers were in the kitchen with David and me, and his sister was out in the living room with the two girls, one eighteen-months old, the other around six-years old.
As I pondered on this idea of taking off my ring, and letting him see it, plus, pondering on what was this man really like, I remembered how David drove the car a week earlier, into a fence, and laughed about it, almost killed us. Then I thought about the time we went into the restaurant, and he ordered all these hamburgers, and everything under the sun, and said to me,
“Let’s go Chick!”
And I said,
“We got to pay, you said you’d pay, we can’t leave without paying!”
Then he said,
“Then you stay and pay, and if you can’t I’ll give you a call at the detention center, where the police will take you for thief. And if I were you, I’d not tell my name to the police.”
So I thought all these things within the clap of a second, and he turned to me and said, the big older brother said,
“Have you come to your conclusion?”
David looked at him, said, “Take it easy, he’s just a kid!”
“Yes,” said the older brother, drinking down a third beer, “a kid with an eye for trouble, he sees things, and knows, but won’t give in until I have to tare him apart.”
“He’ll give you the ring back, Chick,” said David, “please let him have it to wear for a few hours.”
“Ok,” I said, but I knew I’d not see the ring again; how did I know, call it intuition.

When you are fifteen, even coming from a rough neighborhood, as I was brought up in, things haunt you; David and I left the place, it was in the housing projects, St. Paul, Minnesota, far out towards the South East part of town, and he took me home, down to Cayuga Street, by the Oakland Cemetery.
“I’ll see if I can get your ring back for you by tomorrow, or if I don’t see you tomorrow, since everyone is drinking at the house, perhaps the following day or two, but don’t expect to see me for at least a few days more, maybe three.”
“No problem,” I said as I got out of his 1958 Mercury.
“Perhaps it would be better Dave if you don’t go back there, all that drinking, and your brother seems out of it.”
“Don’t you start telling me what to do now Chick,” he replied, and I smiled, and simply said “Ok,” and left.

He had went back to his sister’s apartment in the project complex, drank that night, and the next day had stayed over. Give me a call, he said,
“I really got a hangover, can’t see you today, maybe tomorrow or the next day, got to baby-sit the kids for sis tonight. I hate to do it, but I told her I would, her and her husband are going out with my brother, you know the one with the ring, he said he’ll give it back to me tomorrow.”
David was about five foot ten inches tall, dark black hair, very good looking, slim, built well, had spent some time in St. Cloud, reformatory, I had found out, matter-of-fact, I had found out just before he called me, and figured if I get the ring fine, if not, I best stay away from him, lest I end up in prison. My instincts again, and I was learning to cooperate with them.

A day passed, it was a hot summer, I was playing ball in the empty lot next to my grandfather’s house, with the Cayuga Street Gang (the Donkeyland Gang), there were about twenty-two of us, unofficial members, I being one of the youngest, and perhaps the only one that never had been in jail.
I got home that evening, and went to bed as usual, up in the attic bedroom where my brother, Mike and I slept. It was for me, a hard night sleeping, I kept thinking about the ring, but it was really much more than that, it was a premonition, something I didn’t know, but knew something was happening, something that would spoil me getting back my ring, just what I didn’t know, and to quite frank, I would never have imagined had I had a thousand guess.

The following midmorning, I called David’s house up, and he was not there, then I called his sister’s apartment up, and the phone just rang and rang and rang. I told myself I best not bother them too much, his crazy brother will come looking for me and God knows what might happen, so I left well enough alone, and went and ate my cereal.
My grandfather was at work, he owned a restaurant, down on Wabasha Street, St. Paul, and got the paper each day, he had a hard time reading it, the old Russian Bear, we lived in kind of an extended family situation. He owned the house, and my mother bought the food, and furniture, and he paid the utility bills, and did his laundry, and life went on for us four folks.
The paperboy put the paper through the door hole, and it was thin, I picked it up, out on our screened-in porch, put it down onto Grandpa’s sofa chair in the living room, and when I did, the headlines popped up in front of my eyes, like King Kong, it read “David Osmond…!”
I called my friend up, the one that introduced me to him, Richard Z, and said,
“Have you read the paper yet?”
“Yes,” he said.
“About David Osmond?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Why in heaven’s name did you introduce him to me?” I asked.
“Whoever would have thought he could do something like that?”
It was of course a rhetorical question, and I told him, I just needed to talk to someone, it was all too much, too unbelievable.

That evening when my mother came home from Swifts (the Meat Packing Company, in South St. Paul), and she asked me, as I was pacing the house from the porch through the living room then dinning room, then kitchen, said,
“You’re getting like your grandfather, pacing all the time, what is the matter with you.”
I had put the paper on the dinning room cabinet, by grandpa’s old black mantle clock, said, “Look at the front page,” and she did.
“Yaw, so what.” she said.
“That’s my friend, David Osmond.”
She looked closer, “Really,” she said, “You just never see him again,” she demanded.
“I don’t think he’ll be out of jail for a very longtime,” I commented.
In the following month, I tried to get a hold of the brother who had the ring, even went over to the apartment, but it was vacant, and he was gone. So I simply assumed right at that moment, this all was to be taken as a good lesson, good lesson for me, to avoid such characters.

•

Now let me explain what took place. That day when he, David and I met his brother, and his brother took my ring, he stayed overnight there, he was at this time, staying with different family members, and borrowing his brother’s car, he had no money to speak of, of his own, only the money he was getting from gambling with his brothers, and a few friends that came over, or was given to him freely by his family members. The following evening he babysat the two daughters, for his sister as he said he was going to do, and he drank that night, as he drank most every night, and his head started hurting. He had been released to my knowledge from St. Peters, a criminal asylum, prior to serving time at St. Cloud, at St. Peters, for evaluation more so than confinement.
His head was hurting as I mentioned, and he had told the older niece, the big sister to keep her little sister quiet, the eighteen-month old child, and she tried, and couldn’t, and he got madder and madder, until he blanked out, and shook the little girl so hard, he shook the wind out of her, and when he set her back into her prior position, she was dead, not breathing, fearful he did not call the ambulance. Now even more frightened, hyperventilating, he had picked up a lamp and swung it at the older sister, and the concussion, killed her likewise, she fell to the floor to her death. Yes, he had killed two young children, in a state of panic and frenzy.
Now supposedly coming to his senses (somewhat), he saw what he had done, and wanted to cover it up and in the process tried to hide their bodies, in the garage.
When the family members came home, he had no real story figured out to tell them except, they took off outside and he couldn’t find them. Then in the process of calling the police and his wailing for his wrong doing, they found the two corpses, the girls in the garage, both of course slain by David.
His case went to court, and there was an insanity plea, and to my knowledge he got twenty-years plus, or until he could show the doctors he was no longer maladaptive.

2-3-2009