The House On Dale Street

Chapter 1

I stood waiting for the Greyhound in the rain. It was only a drizzle, I didn't mind it much. Besides, it had been so hot the last few days and the rain felt nice. I was thinking about Hazel. She was my girlfriend. Hazel Lynn. We had been dating on and off for the past two years but recently we had made it official; we were an exclusive couple now. I felt good about that decision. In fact, I was getting really sick and tired of other girls I'd dated. The thing is, girls are crazy. Really crazy. Almost every single girl I'd ever dated was crazy as a loon. The last one had been a crier. She cried about everything. Even when things were good, when we were having a nice time, she'd start crying. Of course, I would have to ask her what she was crying about and no matter what had started her crying, the reason was always her father. It was always her dad. He wasn't very nice (brutal was the word she used when describing him) and he didn't pay her any attention, but I didn't understand why she was always crying about it. My dad didn't pay me any attention either, but I was able to let it go- not think about it. Hazel's dad was even worse and she never even talked about him, but this girl- her name was Carol-she cried on a daily basis. Boy, was I glad to see her go.

Hazel was crazy too, but in a different way. I think I would call her more of a good kind of crazy. At least she was the kind of crazy I could deal with. She was the kind of crazy who was up for anything. She wasn't scared of much and I liked that. I called her a 'broad'. I said it in a joking manner but the truth was, it was sort of true. She drank her coffee black and she swore quite a bit and she wasn't scared to let anyone know what she thought of them if it came down to it, but she was nice. She was a lot like me, in fact. She could really give you the eye. She told me that growing up her idol had been Nancy Spungen, the punk rocker girlfriend of Sid Vicious, the one he'd killed at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City. I asked her why Nancy Spungen and she said she liked her bleached blonde hair and her bad attitude and her gun necklace. I guess she'd read a book about her when she was young and it had stuck with her. Anyway, Hazel and I got along better than any other girls I'd dated. We seemed to think the same and we came from the same kind of background. Her parents didn't think much of her and mine didn't think much of me so, we had decided that we weren't going to take up any more of their space and we'd made the decision (pretty much on a whim) to move to Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee. Why Red Boiling? Why not? Actually, I'd never even heard of the town and neither had she. But my friend Bobby was dating a girl from there and I'd gone with him a few times to visit her. There was something I liked about the town, something I hadn't expected to find when I first visited. The word Hazel had used was "serene." She said the town was serene. I wasn't exactly looking for serenity but the town made me feel some sort of way. It was a small town, actually, a tiny town. I'd never thought I'd want to live in such a small town- I was a city boy, I always had been. But, I suppose the appeal of the town was that it was the opposite of my hometown. In my hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee there seemed to be ghosts on every corner and in Red Boiling I had no ghosts. Not literal ghosts, of course, but the ghosts of my childhood, which had been a rough one. On my end, Red Boiling Springs seemed like the ideal place to run away from the world and not be found.

No one was really looking for us anyway but we thought Red Boiling seemed like the kind of place you could go to get away and we were looking to get away.

I pushed through the few people making their way onto the bus and squeezed into a seat near the back. The seat beside me was empty and I hoped it stayed that way. I was looking forward to a nice long ride. In silence, I hoped. I'd brought my Walkman just in case I got sick of the silence or in case people began chit chatting and getting on my nerves. My luck, some chatty Cathy would plop down beside me and yammer on the entire way to Nashville. I had one of those faces people always seemed to want to talk to. In that case, I planned on sticking the plugs in my ears and tuning them out, maybe listen to some Al B. Sure or some Ready For The World. The year was 1989 and in those days people were not on their phones or the internet and when they sat down in the seat of a Greyhound bus, they actually sat there. Unless of course, they brought a book or headphones or something. But usually they sat and talked or looked out the window. It was nice in those days the way people connected. Connected not only to one another, but connected to their environment. Sometimes I miss those days. Actually, what am I talking about? I always miss those days. Days before technology took over and everyone became absorbed in their gadgets and tuned out the world around them.