Three Loves (Chapter Fifteen)

I stepped into Dave's friend's office, and he told me that he'd been getting threatening phone calls related to me, but he wasn't specific. However, he told me not to call his mother's anymore and not to come visit him, either.


I showed him the diet-related nic-nak I'd gotten him, and he told me that he really appreciated my getting it for him but that he couldn't accept it at that time.


This was starting to get MORE than a little scary.


I didn't hold the people who were affected by all of this responsible--but I had the feeling that they might have unintentionally hired assistants who were more than a little cut-throat.


Anyway, I thanked him for letting me know about this.


I knew what I had to do next.


I went home and wrote out some instructions for the kind of Celebration Of Life service I wanted in case I were to die young as well as telling how I wanted my worldly goods to be distributed. And I left a note for my DEMOCRAT LAWYER not to live the rest of his life blaming himself for this in any way.


Then, I called my folks and told them that I had a top-secret writing assignment to do--but, if they didn't hear from me, they were to look for notes telling the general direction in which I'd be going that would be tucked into the hymnal on the music staff of my piano. But they were NOT to look in the hymnal unless they didn't hear from me for a day or two. Of course, what I'd put in there were the instructions of what to do in the event of my death.


I can't remember if I called them from a pay phone up the road or told it to their faces--I certainly wasn't about to use my own phone to do this--but I got in contact with them in a different way from how I'd told them I was doing a writing assignment to ask them not to answer the door to anyone they didn't know until I came back.


I did this in such a way that they would think it had to do with blowing the cover on a writing assignment rather than anyone being in any danger--but I made sure that they knew how important that this was.


After that, there was somebody I needed to get in touch with quickly, and that was a team mate of my DEMOCRAT LAWYER who had been a grade ahead of him.


I won't go into any details here, but we'd met a couple of months before, and he knew how I felt about his high school buddy. I'd mentioned his name in a letter I'd sent to my friend, so I just wanted him to know that, in case the letter had been confiscated from my friend and had gotten into the wrong hands, his life might be in danger!


Anyway, I went close to where he lived and called him from a pay phone with the news. We talked for a long time, and he told me that he didn't think that he'd be in any danger because he had no interest in politics whatsoever and hadn't seen our mutual friend in several years.


The rest of our conversation was pleasant, and he told me about some of the educational projects he was into (He teaches) and about his pets.


After we were finished talking, I felt a lot better and started driving towards home.


I don't know that there was ever any real danger to Dave's friend. Dave told me that some of his ex-wife's cousins were associates of the crooked detective I mentioned sometime back, so they knew where he lived and probably threatened to beat him and his mother up or something if he kept on giving me information. They probably wouldn't have really done it, but the guy wasn't going to take any chances to find out.


Again, my DEMOCRAT LAWYER never came to Anderson, and I didn't see him until that December when I saw him in the car and his face really lit up bigtime (as did mine)! Note: I mentioned this encounter in Part Twelve.


Besides all of this happening in 1991, Ruth asked me if I would like for her to take her publication back. She told me that several of her readers had written to her telling her how upset they were that I was making it a quarterly, and she would be able to keep it coming out every other month--and it would also be good therapy for her, now that she was feeling better again.


(Note: Even when Ruth feels better, there isn't a day when she's totally pain-free. This week, she's hoping to have some surgery that will repair the damage to her body. Her older sister had the same thing this past year and came through it with flying colors, so I'm hoping Ruth will, too, so please keep her in your prayers! Thanks!).


Anyway, I told her I had no problem with that whatsoever.


She changed the name of the publication from JUST FOR FUN to FUNTASTIC to symbolize the new beginning for both it and her.


One more really interesting--and rather gross--thing happened in 1991.


Kevin Price and I had been in the habit of eating at Richards Restaurant nearly every Friday evening except when the weather was too bad, we were out-of-town, or we were sick.


Lately, though, Friday after Friday had gone by with one or both of us being busy.


Finally, though, we had a Friday that was doable for both of us.


The day before, I was promoting a couple of my chapbooks and doing some other activities in various parts of the tunnel system.


One thing I did was to eat lunch in the cafeteria in the basement of the State Office Building.


"If you don't mind. . ." I began to the cashier. . .then I saw her! Who? Little Ms. Lawsuit. She had just paid for her tray of food and was about to find a place in the dining room when we were suddenly eyeball-to-eyeball.


I looked right through her and continued talking to the cashier: ". . .I think I'll go around the line and look at everything first. Then, go through the line again after knowing what I want to buy. That way, I'll know all of the choices available to me before I start picking them up."


The cashier told me that would be fine, so I thanked her and kept a poker-face as I went by that proverbial "elephant in the room" that had taken the form of Little Ms. Lawsuit.


There was one time before when I did something like this.


I was riding the school bus one morning, and the driver had just stopped to pick up the friend who usually sat by me but had been waved on. So I was still sitting alone in my seat and was looking out the window when I saw what looked like a bull attacking a cow.


Finding that to be pretty interesting, I looked even more--then realized what those two were up to.


There were a lot of guys back where I was seated, and I didn't want to look any of them in the face, so I just kept staring out the window as the bus moved along until such a time that another friend boarded the bus and sat beside me.


Then, I turned to my newly-arrived friend and started talking small-talk as if nothing had happened.


I made a note of where Little Ms. Lawsuit had decided to sit in the dining room so I could sit as far away from her as possible.


This situation was very uncomfortable for me--and one of the reasons for its being so might seem surprising, but it's just the way I am.


I stole a glance at her as she sat there eating.


She had done some very selfish and underhanded things, but she was a human being. She loved her family and she enjoyed good food just like I did. I knew she must have not had the best self-esteem to think that she had to step on other people to get ahead instead of letting her own talents and qualities speak for themselves.


Had the circumstances been different--had I not fallen in love with the guy she'd used and discarded--I would have responded to her differently when I saw her beside the cashier.


I would have included her in the conversation between the cashier and me, and I would have made a note of where she was sitting so I could join her when I'd gotten my food.


Once there, I would have talked to her and tried to help her to think of focusing on her selling points instead of using others to get ahead.


I had a lot of conflict going on inside, because part of me was so turned off by her actions that I really didn't want to have anything to do with her; another part of me wanted to minister to her; and a third part knew that I couldn't reach out to her at this time when I wasn't in touch with my DEMOCRAT LAWYER so we could talk about what I should do if I ever came across her. I didn't want it to get back to him that I was siding with the enemy--as if Little Ms. Lawsuit and I had been in cahoots all along.


The next day, I woke up feeling queasy, and I was considering calling Kevin to postpone our getting together.


However, I thought the queasiness was from my encounter with Little Ms. Lawsuit, and I wasn't about to let this person not only keep me apart from my DEMOCRAT LAWYER but, also, from Kevin.


I decided to go to Yip's and have a Chinese lunch, thinking that a little gentle food on my stomach would make me feel better.


I felt better for a little bit--then, the queasiness came back again.


Most Friday nights at Richards, I had the chicken stir-fry over a bed of rice, along with the dinner rolls that came with it, some iced-tea, and, usually, some sort of dessert. More times than not, I'd order it with the salad bar and make a couple of trips there.


But this wasn't the night for that.


I told Kevin I didn't feel that great, so I was just going to have some kind of carbonated drink, a grilled cheese sandwich, and a dip of vanilla ice cream.


When the food arrived, I ate it very slowly after taking tiny bites. Instead of better, though, I was getting to feel worse and worse. I told Kevin about running into Little Ms. Lawsuit.


Kevin told me that he had just looked at me, amazed that my face now had a greenish hue, when I suddenly let go and wall-to-wall-carpeted our table with a pureed return of what I'd been able to eat that night, plus hot and sour soup, won ton chips, Oolong tea, fortune cookie, and shrimp with lobster sauce over a bed of fried rice.


The mess I'd created was so grandiose that it couldn't even contain itself to the tabletop, getting all over Kevin and me and sliming down onto the carpeted floor.


Everybody was really kind and helpful, and I was reassured that things like this happened to everyone from time to time.


Kevin called my folks, and they brought over a change of clothing for me, which I went into the restroom to put on.


Although the encounter with Little Ms. Lawsuit probably didn't help things any, I soon found out that this wasn't the only reason I'd become sick that night. There actually was a virus going around the Madison County area, and a lot of people were getting sick.


For some reason, I felt better knowing this.


As for Kevin and me at Richards, it didn't happen again for a long time.


Kevin could still eat at Richards on a regular basis as long as I wasn't his dinner partner, and he could still have me for a dinner partner as long as we ate elsewhere. But, for Kevin, the combination of Richards and me just brought back images of my pea-soup-green face spewing vomit like a volcano spews lava!


In the spring of 1992, I was overjoyed to hear the news that my DEMOCRAT LAWYER would be trying a case in Southern Indiana.


This time, I wouldn't mention to a soul where I was going, and I would take a lot of backroads (which I love to do, anyway, as I've written about in my poem THE HIGHWAYS OF OUR PAST and other poems and prose) so that I wouldn't be tailed.


A few days before, my dad and I had gone up to Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and had a really wonderful time. I even introduced him to my special guy's friend, and we had a nice visit when he was able to take a short break from work. But I told neither of them of my plans.


We went to the Lakeview vista point along Kemil Beach and looked out on and listened to Lake Michigan.


The first time that I'd remembered being to Indiana Dunes was a quick stop during the summer of 1973 when my folks and I were taking Uncle Kermit (who had just gotten his PhD in Philosophy from I.U.) to his first teaching job since getting his Doctor's.


This assignment was in Ames, Iowa where he would fill in for a young and promising professor named Allen Harder who had, sadly, had to take a leave due to a brain-tumor. Uncle Kermit didn't know Allen from Adam, but Allen had read a lot of his papers and handpicked him as THE person to fill in for him.


Uncle Kermit wasn't interested in getting tenured in a place with such cold and bitter winters, but he agreed to take the position for a year--hoping, of course, that Allen would be able to come back and teach the following year.


He would be subletting Allen's apartment, which was located in an old house, and we helped him to fix it up and make it his own without disturbing Allens things.


I could write an entirely different story all about Allen, but I won't get off on a huge tangent here except to say that, studying the contents of his apartment, I could tell he was a Christian, an artist, a music-lover, a cook, and a packrat--a person after my own heart. I'll be writing about him--on another online site--this coming Thursday.


But, back to the Dunes, the first time I saw them was in 1973, and it was just a quick stop on our way to Ames.


It was impressive to find a lake right here in Indiana that looked like an ocean, but, at the time, it was hot and sticky and the beach was crowded, so I wasn't exactly thinking of it as being an especially romantic place.


The next time I made it to Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore was in mid-September when Marshall (then a seasonal ranger) had a stint there that would last from Labor Day until the middle of November.


He told me his days off and promised to give me my own special guided tour of the area if I were to make it up there.


I drove my car, and he sat in the passenger seat, telling me which way to turn next and pointing out landmarks to me, and I had a really wonderful time.


The entire spread of the National Lakeshore area, which was scattered here and there, impressed me--but my very favorite area was Kemil Beach.


When Marshall told me that we would be driving to the Visitors' Center and then going through a tunnel, I pictured our parking at the Visitors' Center and then walking through some kind of tunnel (probably, a lot like the tunnel system in Indianapolis, only one that was only a few feet long instead of meandering around for miles) that would exit onto the beach.


We got onto this road that was called--depending on where you were on it--Kemil Road or State Park Road.


Marshall told me to look to my left to see the Visitors' Center. It was impressive! Looked like a contemporary church. He'd later tell me that this was exactly what it HAD been--a Lutheran Church that had been bought by the National Park Service using eminent domain.


I would find out in later years that eminent domain had been used widely and not always fairly in the creation of Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, and I believe, to this day, that there could have been a way for the National Lakeshore to be established without taking people's property unless they were wanting to sell. But, again, that's another story.


Although he was continuing to do ranger work, Marshall's health had been fair-at-best at that time in his life. I think to this day that a lot of that had to do with stress and needing someone to listen to him re: both the joys and disappointments of his life. Marshall and I had a lot of long conversations--both in person and on the phone--and that really helped him to feel better.


Anyway, I was surprised when we didn't stop at the Visitors' Center and mentioned that I'd been under the impression that we'd be stopping there to go through the tunnel. But he told me that we were to keep driving to go through it.


We crossed Hwy 12 and a railroad track, went a few feet, and then were covered by a tunnel formed by trees on each side of us that had branches meeting above us. This God-made tunnel went on for almost a mile.


We came out on the other side, and the scenery was beautiful! Absolutely breathtaking!


Marshall directed me into a parking lot to the right of us. He told me that he didn't have a very high energy-level, so we couldn't walk far, but that we could walk a ways on the beach if I wanted to.


I thought that sounded like a plan, so we parked and began to walk along the road until we got to some wooden steps leading down to the beach.


Words can't BEGIN to describe how breathtakingly beautiful it was! Even before we got to the steps, I could see the lake, which was a very intense robin's egg blue.


The sand was a sort of ivory-beige color and light-green ferns grew out of it here and there. Seagulls soared overhead.


As we walked along the beach, I noticed homes that seemed to be built right into the sides of dunes, and I told Marshall that this spot reminded me of the movie A SUMMER PLACE, to which he told me that, when he was stationed in Texas, that movie was being made there, and he got to watch the action whenever he had leave.


It was all so lovely! The ocean-like sound of the waves of Lake Michigan, the sand beneath our feet, the seagulls overhead, and the wonderful homes to our right.


I said that it was as if we had gone through the tunnel of trees and had been transported in time back to the 1940s or 1950s. That was how Marshall came up with the name "Botanical Time Tunnel" to describe the gathering of trees we had driven beneath the branches of to reach this beautiful place!


From then on, each time that I visited Kemil Beach, I would go to a pay phone and call Marshall at whatever phone he would be available at and hold the receiver out in the direction of the water to try enable him to hear it. There would usually be too much noise going on around him for him to hear it, but he always appreciated my trying. And I'd also tell him whether or not I could see the Chicago Skyline (something that depended on how clear the sky was).


That time in the spring of 1992 when Daddy and I were up there, the timing was so perfect. It was quiet enough around Marshall that he could hear the waves coming and going, and I was able to report to him that the Chicago Skyline was in very plain view.


I would remember how wonderful that little trip was as I was driving down to Southern Indiana a couple of days later. There had been so much love, joy, beauty, and acceptance associated with that trip, and I suddenly began to contrast it to what rejection would feel like.


What if I were to go down there and have him to tell me to go away, leave him alone, and never come around again? I had to pull over to the side of the road, because my tears were getting in the way of my driving.


When I got to the courthouse, I found out that the case had been postponed for a few days. Everybody down there seemed very nice and helpful, so I was feeling much more confident the next time I started down that way.


I left very early that Tuesday morning--I was on the road before the sun even rose.


There was a little bit of fog, but not enough to make driving dangerous.


As I drove through Emporia where the grain elevator was, I noticed a train parked on the track with its headlight glowing like a star in the mist.


In short, the entire drive down there was a really romantic one.


At last! I was at the courthouse! I went inside, found the courtroom where he would be, and quietly entered.


I spotted him right away. He looked around to see who came through the door and recognized me. However, he kept a neutral expression on his face as if he weren't all that shocked that I'd shown up.

TO BE CONTINUED. . . "Three Loves (Chapter Sixteen/Conclusion)"