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Arrested Spirits….
It was a mild summer night on the Eastside of Detroit. The heavy thumping of bass speakers, fading tail lights, spinning chrome-mags, and the rumble of bored out, built-up, small block Mustangs that cavalcaded around the blocks, gave the tired streets new life. Traffic on Eastside was beginning to thin out and the good people of the world were all returning to their homes, their beds, and their loved ones. Anyone left milling around the streets at this hour was looking for drugs, money, or sex…or all three.
On the corner of East Outer Drive and I-94, the yellow hue of a gas light lit the small asphalt and gravel parking lot behind the Exxon station. The service station stood in testament to the story that once was the Motor City; a place where big cars proudly rolled off the assembly line, a place where good middle class jobs could be found, and a place where people once cared about their neighborhoods. But just like the city, the service station had seen its best well behind. The overhead service doors had been boarded up and bulletproof glass had been installed to protect the attendant. The fenced-in parking lot behind the building that once held cars waiting to be serviced or claimed, now held cars that were stripped down, rusted, and abandoned . The building’s back lot looked like a scene out of a modern war story; cars with displaced quarter panels or on blocks, a motor on a stand, miscellaneous tires pilled up, a bumper lying face down and filled with water where black soot climbed the white block walls… a car had been burned too close to the building… and one forsaken sofa sat along the fence at the service drive to the freeway.
For a while Kevin held it together. He had a job as a landscaper, and then as a printer for the Detroit News, but only after the union had been busted. He was married….then divorced; had a daughter he wasn’t allowed to see and owed an insurmountable amount of child support. He had been battling addiction all his life and was diagnosed schizophrenic while attending mandatory rehab a few years prior. He had half-heartedly tried to remain intact during the last year of his mother’s battle with lung cancer, but close to the day after she was cremated, he began his final descent.
He first moved north of the city, where he found a small house on a quiet lake. He went to work for his uncle’s painting business. He made a decent wage and at times felt the need to make a run to the city to score drugs. It was something he controlled at first; but when a few customers complained about things gone missing, he soon lost his job. This had been Kevin’s life story in a nutshell; he loved to do drugs and he didn’t mind stealing to get them. He had stolen from just about everyone he knew, especially the ones who cared most for him.
On a cold Christmas night he unexpectedly stopped by my house with Jesse. He said he’d met her at a gas station; that she’d been in a brutal fight with her ex-husband and was now staying with him until she “straightened things out”. I knew the one thing they held in common but kept my questions to myself, wishing him well as they drove off in his mother’s Dodge Intrepid
Eventually Kevin lost his house and the safe harbor it provided. By now he and Jesse had both acquired a heavy heroin addiction. They now lived in the Intrepid and on the streets, close to the source that plagued their will. While Jesse began prostituting to support their habit, Kevin took to robbing and stealing.
They spent their days in obscure circumstance, hiding from mirrors and light. The money was never enough. They would part at night and not see each other for days, each wondering if the other was still alive or had been arrested. Jesse would find herself waking up on the floor of some abandoned home, while Kevin kept an all night vigil at his mother’s car. Kevin’s manic need for Jesse’s incurable spirit now possessed his soul. He bought a gun…but had no money for gas… and soon his deceased mother’s green and dilapidated Dodge Intrepid found its way to the back lot of the Exxon Mobile station at East Outer Drive and I-94.
The last morning, returning back to his deserted hideaway, he spotted Jesse wandering down the street. She was disorientated and half dressed. At first, Jesse didn’t recognize Kevin...She resisted. She was as strung out and numb to what she had become as she could ever want to be. And Kevin, with what little faculty he retained, knew that they had reached the end of their run. He led her back to the parked car to sleep off the daylight hours under his watchful eye. In the backseat, among the piles of clothing and blankets, among the empty discarded packages of cigarettes, and among the papers and pictures he never intended to lose, Kevin began to think of his own mother. And, as Jesse breathed softly with angelic tempance, he visualized the woman that she might have been, given a different set circumstance.
Kevin felt that his problems stole years from his mother’s life. After all, it was his baggage she tripped over that sent her into the hospital for the last time; it was her medication he stole, her church he broke into, her neighbors he stole from, and her checking account he raided after she passed. The list was deplorably endless and he could no longer bear to think of her, or what he had now done to Jesse. In his mind, demons swirled, conjuring up thoughts of suicide and perdition. He had created Hell everywhere he went, and felt abandoned by God and the church. No confession, no penance, no reconciliation would ever deem him fit for forgiveness; he was the unforgivable scourge placed on this earth to torment anything that ever loved him dearly. He resided in that car all day, smoking and contemplating the evil he had become. He hated himself more for every thought that entered his mind.
As the summer sun fell that evening, Jesse nocturnal eyes began to flutter. Her skin began to crawl; she needed a fix.
Kevin cooked what little dope he had left, shot her up, then himself. It was all gone. They had no money, no gas, and a half empty pack of cigarettes, but for a few sordid and tender moments they had each other. There was a motherly glow about Jesse now; she sparkled under the gas light. Her red hair fondly caressed the soft lines of her Celtic face as she reached out and gently took Kevin’s hand. She spoke to him with the love only a mother knows…
“We can go to my mother’s house and get clean, Kevin. I have to. My son needs me”.
Kevin’s heart sunk; his eyes swelled with tears as he broke down crying. For all the pain he caused, for all the transgressions he perpetrated; he considered that there might be one last chance for redemption. So he promised Jesse that they would leave that night, that this would all stop, and that he would deliver her safely to her mother and child. He told Jesse that he had a friend that owed him money and that he was going to pick it up tonight. He made her promise not to leave the car until he returned and then advised, that if he wasn’t back in one hour, for her to call her mother from the payphone at the corner. He took two cigarettes out of the pack and left Jesse with a kiss.
Kevin walked around the gas station not knowing how he was going to get money. All he knew was that he had a .38 and one last shot at redemption. He hung around the front of the Exxon station for a few minutes, watching the party store across the street. The street was lively this time of night; the respectable kept respectable hours.
Finally Kevin noticed a BMW with two young, white, male passengers pass slowly by… and then again, two more times. Kevin was sure that they were two kids from the suburbs out looking to score dope. He found his mark, made his way to the sidewalk, and gave them an inconspicuous wave. The brake lights went on and the car eventually began to circle back toward him.
Kevin, walking down the sidewalk, looked back over his shoulder to see if they were in view,. When he knew he had their attention, he stepped back between two buildings to wait. The corridor was dark and led down to the alleyway adjacent to the Exxon station. It was a perfect spot; the kids would see the gun, hand over the money, and then flee to the freeway to escape the ghastly horrors of the iniquitous city.
The BMW pulled in slowly and followed Kevin deeper down the darkened passageway, eventually stopping in the dim lit corridor. Kevin approached with his hands in his jacket pocket. Words were exchanged, a laugh was shared, and money was drawn; then Kevin brandished the .38 and pointed it at the head of the passenger. But suddenly, the unexpected happened…
The passenger grabbed Kevin’s arm and held it at bay as the driver threw the vehicle into reverse. Kevin was halfway inside the car as it bounced off the block and mortar walls. His legs were battered, torn, and broken; he screamed out in the face of his would-be victim, but the terror of his prey would not let him let go. Recklessly the car swung into E. Outer Drive hitting an oncoming vehicle. Kevin was thrown into the street on impact; his legs mangled, he was unable to move.
The car the kids hit belonged to an off-duty Detroit police officer who quickly understood what had happened and who the assailant was. The officer sat on Kevin’s chest and called for back-up. The .38 caliber handgun was recovered from the dashboard of the BMW and Kevin was placed under arrest.
As the ambulance made its way to the freeway’s service drive behind the Exxon station, Kevin sat up on the gurney to look out at his mother’s green Dodge Intrepid to see Jesse. His mind was confused and exhausted, and he believed for a minute he might beat these charges. The yellow gas light illuminated the asphalt and gravel parking lot where all the pieces of all the cars remained. He looked inside his mother’s abandoned vehicle but never seen Jesse again. The only thing Kevin noticed was that now the fences that surrounded the parking lot seemed taller.