Let's Not Meet: A Collection

he was a nice guy

I grew up in a town with just under nine hundred people. When I was 14 my entire class was forty two students. It's a farming community in Oregon, basically in the middle of nowhere, surrounded other small farming towns. My best friend Sara and I went to the varsity baseball games; we had nothing better to do. It was fun and Sara's older brother Aaron was a pitcher. Aaron's best friend Sam was one year out of high school and assistant coach to the baseball team.

Sara and Aaron's parents often left us at their house alone with alcohol and no rules. My parents didn't care what I was doing, and even though Sam still lived with his parents at 19 Sara and I had never met them. I supposed they didn't care either. The four of us hung out at the house at the same time. Because we were only 14, Aaron and Sam kept a brotherly eye on us. None of their senior friends would touch us, even if we threw ourselves at them in a drunken haze. Basically it was Aaron and Sam's fault we didn't have boyfriends freshman year.

It was one of the last games of the season, Aaron was pitching, and Sam was coaching. After losing the game the team plus Sara and I went to throw a party as usual. The parties always happened, win, lose or rain. We drank and hung out, listened to music and played drinking games. We were all completely average teenagers, with average small town lives.
After I had consumed far more vodka than orange juice I spilled a drink on the kitchen floor. Sam helped me clean it up and we stood around talking a little bit before he insisted I go lay down before I fell on my face. He helped me to Sara's room gave me a little hug and put me on the bed. Before he drove home he checked on me, gave me a little wave and said goodnight. I passed out in fuzzy bliss.

No matter how many times I go over the next day in my head it never seems right. It was surreal, something I have never understood. The next thing I remember was screaming, Sara and I woke up to her mother freaking out. In the living room both Sara's parents, Aaron and the Douglas County Sheriff stood. Everyone was way too upset for it to have something we did. I felt sick and terrified, I couldn't comprehend what was happening. The Sheriff asked me when the last time I saw Sam was. I couldn't speak, couldn't figure out what any of them were saying any more. I managed to say "I was drunk" the Sheriff asked Sara she said the same. He simply wrote it down and turned away from us. Very strange.

They had to find Sam, Sam was missing, Sam was running away. Finally I started putting thoughts together. Sam was running from the police, because he had killed his parents. He killed them when he got home from the party, with an axe from the woodshed.

He had attended the game and the party then went home. Picked up an axe and struck his father in the head while he was watching TV. His mother made it to the phone and dialed 911. Sam killed her with blows from the axe while she spoke to the 911 operator. Then he disappeared, for two days.

Honestly, from the moment I learned what had happened, until Sam turned himself in, I was in a daze. I kept expecting it to be a dream, or a sick joke. The whole two days I can't remember what I did, who I talked to. It didn't help that Sara and I increased our alcohol and drug intake.
He was such a normal guy, none of us saw what he was capable of. We were all just typical kids. This was twenty years ago, people still avoid talking about it. I never tell the story either.