March 23, 1974

There was a fight break out in the ER.  Not a full-fledged one really.  It was just that one of the security guards had gotten punched in the fucking mouth trying to detain Dad.  He was only an innocent bystander, just doing his job.  They said he flew and hit the floor real hard though.                
            
About an hour before that, all I remember was hearing my mother screaming, and then me and Nicky were out the door to see every bit of what was happening in the side yard.  We had been playing all morning inside where Junior was supposed to have been watching us.  I don’t remember when I saw him alive last.      
     
I saw Dad, Uncle Henry, and some of the neighbors all gathered and hovered over by the car.  I didn’t know how they suddenly all got there. I couldn’t make out what was going on.   My mother was screaming.  There was one guy hollering not to do anything until an ambulance got there, and then I saw the front-end come up as Dad was lifting it.  That’s when Henry reached down and started pulling Junior out from under the car.  The screaming from Mom was loud.  It silenced my ears from hearing anything else.      
   
The groceries she’d been carrying were spilled all over the driveway and I remember the dogs digging in the hamburger.  There was blood everywhere.  We didn't have a telephone.  My mother came and grabbed my hand and we took off running to the neighbors to get an ambulance on the way, there was no time for that though.  We lived thirty minutes from the nearest hospital.  By the time me and mom got back, Dad and Uncle Henry had already threw him in the truck and took off.            
           
It was cold and there was ice on the ground.  It was snowy that year in March.  The car was just some souped-up GTO that he’d been messing with the transmission and trying to get it running.  The transmission came down right on his head as one of the hubs slipped.   He had the bare hubs up on frozen cinder blocks.            
           
The state highway patrol had gotten called.  They said that a man was speeding down I-70 and out of control. That was Dad.  He wouldn’t stop, and so they dispatched a helicopter to chase him, but him & Uncle Henry already had Junior in the ER before the troopers showed up.  It was nothing but goddamn chaos.  That's when the fight broke out and that poor fella got punched in the mouth.    
 
Junior lived for about thirty minutes after they got him there.  His head was a mess.  They said he was either going to die very soon or he was going to live in a vegetative state forever.  The decision was made, and Mom & Dad had him taken off life support.  That’s pretty much all that happened that day, but it lasted forever.  Junior was 18 years old.