Three Trees In A Triangle (Jerry Banfield Supernatural Writing Contest)

Of all the trials and tribulations I have faced in my life losing a best friend had the most lingering effect on me. It wasn't a friendship that grew out of the bonds one normally acquires in early childhood, it wasn't until later on in my late teens I had come to know him. We had both come from broken homes, his mothers marriage ended in divorce after two children, his grandparents took him and his sister when mom married another man. The way he explained it to me was the grandparents took them to give mom a new fresh start in life after a terrible marriage at a young age. His mom moved out of state with her new husband and he never saw her much. The grandparents were great people, they were a black family living in a white neighborhood which often brought its own prejudicial problems, grandma was a school teacher and grandpa a janitor at a local school. I had come from a family that was in and out of the foster care system mainly because there was six of us. Ironically many years later I decided to go to counseling and after a few sessions the counselor realized our family was on her case load when she first started out and worked for the local family service division, she remarked we had one of the largest case loads on record. Talk about spontaneous history into the background of one of your clients, wow, could that even happen twice in this world. I remained a client of hers for eight years, going through the details of my sisters death at the hands of a mass murder, the on and off imprisonments of three brothers, the death of my father and the effects of the abuse as children that led to the troubles that eventually would find two bothers ending up being lifers, the death of my sister and myself in counseling all those years. When I was sixteen I ran away from home after four years of struggling to continue to face the abuses of my mother when our family service worker told me at age twelve I was to old for a foster home and that no one wanted foster kids my age. I guess then it only seemed natural to form a bond with someone in life who also had many bonds broken, this is a story of our friendship and his death and the supernatural experiences that followed me afterwards.

When I met Kevin it was through my boyfriend at the time. They had grown up together in a tight knit group of half a dozen with him sticking out like a sore thumb being the only black one in the group. Unlike his white counterparts its was hard for him to get a job so he'd often come over with his guitar during the day, help me get my housework done then we'd sit around listening to music, pretending we could play guitar and smoke weed. He actually was one of the smartest people I'd ever met in my life, he was well versed in history, wars, the ideology of the Cable, a lot of things I had never really pondered. He always backed and encouraged me in the decisions I made. When I finally decided I didn't like living under the dictatorship of having to work then come home and be the exclusive keeper of the house he'd always stand behind my ex-boyfriend making gestures and faces while he would be criticizing me about the becoming failure of doom moving forward without him in my life. It was a reiteration to me that someone felt I had the strength to move on as a woman, his standing there nodding up and down behind his back with that you are pegging the wrong person with all that blabber expression on his face. Maybe he just knew because we had both survived losses in our lives that other sheltered people couldn't see, losses that built strength to endure to figure out and endure hardships versus the sheltered advice from parenting. It was definitely a friendship that endured the tests of the times.

Kevin eventually had two children from another long time member from the group. When they decided to get married she asked me to be the bridesmaid. When it came time for the minister to utter that rigmarole of let no man come between he leaned towards me as he said it. I realized then why she asked me to be the bridesmaid, she must have wanted to assure I close enough for him to lean over and say that to, she must have conveyed to him prior about how strong our friendship bond was and how sometimes they'd argue about it. Many years later after they weren't together anymore his girlfriend quip to him on the way out the door how he couldn't find time to do this or that but whenever she shows up your right out the door. He always had my back. I remember one time I was working with this guy I couldn't stand, obviously he couldn't stand me either and unfortunately he also lived around the corner from me. One night he took his truck and backed it up into my car then used a golf club to smash my windshield. I knew it was him because I went up to his house and there were pieces of my car that landed on his bumper with the golf club laying on the ground. One night Kevin went over there when they were all asleep and torched his motorcycle. I never asked him to do that but I guess Kev felt justice needed to be done since the cops wouldn't even go over there and look at the evidence. Shortly after Kevin got married his grandmother passed away. He struggled to find jobs and often would work doing drywall and paint jobs. It wasn't consistent enough work though that eventually they lost their apartment and became homeless. Kevin went his way and his wife another, grandpa ended up taking the kids through social services after a battle ensued between the two. Kevin wasn't allowed to stay with grandpa though grandpa would leave the door unlocked and he'd sneak in at night except on nights that the social worker would be dropping by the next day. He'd often come over and I knew he had no where to go so I'd deliberately fall to sleep on the couch watching television with him and he'd stay and watch tv, maybe he'd fall asleep for awhile but he was always gone when I got up the next day.

When I got into my the later half of my twenties I met a guy and ended up having a child. The relationship never worked out and I found myself being a single parent. Every single night after I had my baby Kevin would make it a point to stop by and see if I needed anything. It took him quite a bit of time not to giggle after I had my baby, he'd always shake his head in disbelief that I finally did have a kid. Of course on my part there was always this wishful thinking that things could change so I was in a in and out of relationship with the father for a couple more years but in that time I ended up with another baby. Alcoholics though can always go through these periods of good behavior before sinking back into their old habits, it was a hard lesson to realize. I eventually got a job making enough money that enabled me to save to buy a house, I wanted to buy rental property because I had so many male friends who had taught or could teach me more of the things that would enable me to succeed at being a landlord. A few months prior to me buying my home I came home from work one night, pick the newspaper up off the porch and there glaring in the headlines was a story about a grandpa who got killed crossing the street taking his granddaughter to girl scouts the night before. They were looking for the mother and father of the children to inform them. As I kept reading and saw his name I was like that's Kevin's grandpa. I went over to where I knew he stayed sometimes with his new girlfriend and told him the shocking news. One daughter was critically injured despite the attempts by the grandfather to push her out of the way of the on coming car being struck himself and killed. The children went to live with their aunt after that until the one daughter got well enough to travel out of state to live with Kevins mother, she told the family when I needed a new start he was there for me and now it's my turn to return the favor to him. Kevin never seen his kids after that and the tragic events that was yet to come would guarantee that they'd never be afforded an opportunity to come back and see their father. Despite all the naysayers who said no one would ever finance a home to a single parent Kevin told me don't listen to them you can do this. I still remember the day just like it was yesterday standing in my yard of my duplex watching him come into my yard, pick me up off the ground in a big bear hug while twirling me around in circles repeating I knew you could do it over and over again. This wasn't where I wanted to be in life but it worked for now, there was a park across the street to take the kids to after work, I planned on living there for five years then moving onto to something bigger and better. I never fully intended on moving back to let along staying close to the proximity of everything that would remind me of what I struggled to get away from but things don't always work out like you plan them and that would be the best advice I'd ever give anybody contemplating living somewhere they don't really want to be convincing themselves it will only be temporary...never take anything for granted.

Kevin went on to have another child with his on again off again girlfriend. In between he stayed with a friend he knew all his life who had went in the complete opposite direction of most his friends. Though he'd still show up to do work for me and the traditional Christmas night gathering together we had done for years he always said he didn't want my neighbors to give me a hard time about a black guy seen leaving my house in the mornings so after grandpa's death he got closer to his old friend when in need. His friend ran a drug ring basically from my understanding, all's I ever really understood of that relationship was that he'd always tell me he wasn't a guy I should become accustom to hanging around. One day Kevin stopped by he said he wanted to tell me he was going away for a long, long time. He claimed he got busted in a meth house operation. I never saw him again after that. A few weeks later his girlfriend came over and said she hadn't seen Kevin in a couple days and wanted to know if I heard from him. I said he was here a few weeks ago but I hadn't heard from him since. She said some friends of his came over and knocked on the door, she told them he wasn't there. A couple minutes later she claimed they kicked in the door and dragged him out. We got into her car and went looking around and asking questions. She informed me that what Kevin told me wasn't the truth and that his friend had him drive a van over to some people's house who owed him money and when they got smart with his friend a couple other guys he took with them shot the couple, one survived but the girl died. I asked if she was talking about the case that had been unfolding in the newspapers and she said yes. Needless to say every where we went no body was willing to talk about what happened to Kevin, some even warning us not to come back asking questions. I don't even think she had brought the car to a complete standstill and I was out of it and calling the cops. They confirmed everything she said and would start looking into where Kevin was. After a couple days they called me back and said they had done some surveillance to see if they could locate Kevin and questioned her about what had happened the day they knocked on the door. She denied to them telling me they dragged him out of the house. She told them he willingly left with them and said he said he was going to go work on a motor with them. That's pretty much the way it stood for the next ten years. They didn't care about finding out what really happened to him after they finally broke the case by getting one of the guys to talk and got convictions on all of them. It haunted me for years how he was basically cheated out of life by his skin color and then wasn't even worthy in death of being found let alone given an explanation as to his death because of his skin color. He was just another black guy that didn't matter.

Ten years later I was sitting over at some friends house. This guy comes in and I'd never seen or heard of the guy before but for whatever reason I just off the wall I asked him if he knew Kevin. Just right off the wall like that, off the top of my head for no apparent reason. He replied he was there the day Kevin was murdered. He starts telling me that Kevins friend got pulled over by the cops one night. The cops start separating them and asking questions. He said that Kevins friend got paranoid that someone was talking to the cops and he figured it was Kevin. So they drug him out of his house and took him out in the woods and shot him in the head on some property that he was renting at the time. He claimed because they had each blamed each other over who shot him and the fact they couldn't find the body they couldn't charge anybody for it. He said he took the cops out to where they buried the body but someone must have moved it. The way he was talking was like this was some big fantastic thing they had gotten away with, he seemed even gleeful about the whole ordeal. I broke down crying and told him that that was my best friend he was talking about. He tried to tone it down some but realized he was failing and he left. When I left there that night I was actually scared more than I had ever been in my life despite the fact I normally carried myself with a lot of self confidence in my ability to defend myself from taking karate when I was younger. No amount of self defense was going to live up to that kind of evil and this man had just about confessed murder to me.

The next day I called the state police because the property he described taking him to wasn't within our local police department jurisdictions. The detective asked me if I was willing to get up alongside this guy, hang out with him a few months then in the spring of the year have him take me to that property and see if he takes me to a different location then he took them. One night while sitting around with that same couple and him he wanted to get up and take a walk out of the blue. We went walking towards downtown, then up along the river towards the police department. Once we were across from the police department, right out in open view, in a particular spot he want to stop and smoke a joint. There's a reason I bring this up later on but I did end up spending the next six months hanging with this guy, having him go over and over again what happened, one time while even being wired by the police. When spring came they had me set it up to have him take me there. It was located in the country and the property had a steam that ran through it. I remember him telling me how when they buried him the water levels were up and when they were digging the hole it was hard to do because the hole kept filling with water. There was also another instance when we were walking he picked up a big stick and drove it into the stream. He also described how if he were to build his own house where he would put it and that he build a bridge over the stream so he could still reach the other side when it flooded. When we came upon the area he said was the site for the burial he said it's right over there, I look up and even ten years later the crime scene tape is still on the trees. The reality was setting in even more, I couldn't even speak, the sounds coming out of my mouth were sputters of sounds not capable of being words, I could feel all my emotions tangling up inside, tears swelling my eyes until I burst forth crying unable to maintain my composure. I asked him if they didn't find the body maybe this wasn't the right spot and he replied he remembers it because it was three trees in a triangle. I had a hard time comprehending that someone could dig a grave within the scope of three trees so closely aligned but I knew I had to regain myself and stay focused on his facial expressions, his eye movements and his tone of voice and try to walk in other directions to see what his reaction would be.

The next few weeks would be spent analyzing everything he said, comparing that to everything he said prior, drawing diagrams on paper of the property, where his interest spiked, what his reactions where to this spot and that. I even examine and compared relevance to every where he took me prior including particularly to if it was by water and as to why he felt the need to take me there. I was very aware of the spiritual communication that drove me to ask him about Kevin in the first place, I relied on that to write down where those pulls were stronger. Every time I had a feeling or a dream I diagram it on paper and send it to the detective. I don't know if he ever took it as seriously as I did but something was pulling me when I asked a complete stranger if they knew someone and that person responded with they were there when he was killed. That's more than stranger than fiction. Every year for a number of years I'd call the detective back, after a while I stopped, the answer was always the same, it's on the top of my file, I haven't forgotten about it, I got his picture right here, I was out to the property last week looking around but now over twenty years later he stills lays out there somewhere unknown, someone whose life was lived out of circumstances of color lay unheeded for the very same reason. I tried to even talk to the local cops who had the case of the shooting, I said don't you even care and his response was he wasn't worth it.

For several years I was in a struggling depression, it wasn't just the lost of my best friend, I had also lost my job after filing a sexual harassment complaint. I struggled deeply to over come the will to want to kill myself. I often took walks in a park we frequented as children, the days before we were taken away, before things got really bad, looking for those spots were we hung on tree branches over the river, so many changes trying to find those favorite trees our family sat the most under. Ironically those were three trees in a triangle to. They had revamped the road, done some redesigning in that area. I had often though if I were to kill myself I'd want to do it between those trees, I wouldn't want my family to come home and find me and I'd want to die thinking about that very small time in my life of happy carefree thoughts. When I drew all those diagrams for that detective I drew one of a reoccurring dream by a bed of water, a picnic table and a swing set with only a road leading in but no road leading out. I told him I couldn't explain it or find relevance to anything on that property or anywhere he took me but just in case something led him to a spot like that he'd think about there may be a connection. As I was walking out of one portion of the park I stopped and looked back, to reminisce about memories , then all of a sudden I was stunned that that one picture I drew was of my own death. I was standing at one section of the park closed off from the other, the picnic table was my favorite table by the water and the playground was representative of the swing set. I had been dreaming my own death. I realized how much despair I was really in, even in my dreams I wanted out. Even today when I walk there I am still amazed at how deep that period really was. How ironic that two best friends deaths did or could have drawn a correlation to three trees in a triangle. Absolutely the strangest thing I ever had to ponder.