The Subversive Summer

((Original named: “It Was Summer Again”) (based on actual Events, 1967))

So finally I had to see it, to believe it, not that believing it was all that important, but on my own belief, my own negative or—and/or personal conviction that her only defense was to frighten me cold, Nothing’ wrong with her first and last idea, to which the only answers was nothing—seeing (not hearing) was believing even if she denied it, refuted it, I could claim it, affirm it, even if no one believed it—I’d know (and I think everyone else knew anyhow).
In any case, that’s how it stood, how it was, going to be—until that is, proven otherwise, and at present all that remained was to go and find out which would be like walking into a lions den (‘Did you do, or are you doing, what others are saying you are doing, or what I think you’re doing?’) No one to save her…if confirmed.
Because during the rest of the summer of 1967, she was getting more and more uneasy, restless; oh, she was still meddling in the emotions of anyone who paid her attention, as the neighborhood called it, but when confronted with it, she overlooked it, perhaps by familiarity of her friends, I being one, but there was no way to stop her fraternization, or flirtation, especially with the two in question.
This, until the end of summer when she had a party, whereupon I suddenly realized—when it dawned on me—one main thing: it was Dan and Jerry that was her social pattern (on the sly). John and Rick and Doug and all the others from the neighborhood, unlike Dan and Jerry who wouldn’t wait for her affections—who demanded them at the party, right then and there, and Dan who felt confrontation, would not agree to leave her alone, which was the reason David got involved between the three, when Dan left, he no longer had anyone to fight with, and he was a tinge mad, crazy, mentally unbalanced (as everyone already knew); so no one should not have been surprised when he came back with a shotgun, nor did she say anything to help the dispute between the two devotees. She could have said ‘I got to do something, I simply cannot let this build up,’ but she said nothing.
‘It’s all right,’ she must have told herself, ‘they’ll settle it.’
And Dan said to Jerry, “Come out!” and David was already outside the apartment, and they knew each other long enough.
And nobody said ‘Wait!’ or ‘No!’ just gripping their teeth, her with two hands and holding her breath until she heard a shot and stopped or stopped long enough to say “I told you so,” and everybody now or nearly everybody hushed…
David was dead. And now I thought she would panic but she didn’t even pause—so I remember, “Oh no,” she said “David,” she let out a long sigh, “the police will be here soon,” then Dan ran.
“Yes,” she said, breathing calmly and slow, ‘they’ll catch Dan he can’t run far!”
I walked out of her small apartment onto and into the hallway, and I knew once she was free of this mess, away from any kind of court order or inquiry by the police, she’d be back to her old ways—nobody could challenge her intentions, because nobody knew them—I had even dated her once (years prior), but quite briefly. She was deaf to all around her, she’d never agree to refrain, and I simply told myself it was a disagreeable world engaged, we all lived in; everyone, especially us youthful, and childlike, semi-adults, were trying to deal with the deadly monstrosities thrown our way, which involved—especially in our neighborhood—an ongoing war. And perhaps, if she was at peace, if peace was possible for her—all the better.
I don’t know what she thought, only I know closely what I thought—it was summer, a hot summer, a death occurred, and a date was booked into a chamber of my mind, likened to as if it endured a train crash.

No: 480 ((9-29-2009) (Dedicated to David)) ••
Inspired by actual events