The Ballad Of Nate Emerson

A short story written in first person narrative from a young man, who remembers a wonderful day in his life - yet 'due to other events' is also one of the most traumatizing days in his life to date.

It was late on a Friday night---wait! Actually.....it was very early on a Saturday morning, bout 2:30 to be exact.  The month was July, the year was 2011 " I was all of 20 years old.  I do remember it was quite cold, though it was in the dead of night so I wasn’t surprised.  I should have been snuggled in bed all cosy and hugging my fiancé (we both received some wonderful news the morning before) " though I wasn’t.  Instead, I wasn’t home, and I was alone, stationed in shock.  Confused? Don’t be.  I’ll start from the beginning, and the ending will make sense.

I’ll take you back to the Friday morning, alright.  I was awoken from my slumber at ‘Oh, Let’s say’ 8:30ish.  Normally I would be at work at 7am, though I had the Friday off.  Back then, I was a contractor " so I wasn’t required to work at the company every day.  I generally worked Monday to Wednesday for this company.  The reason for this, is that from Thursday to Sunday I committed myself to music.  I had a second job as a performer in a show band " I love music and still wish I could be doing it fulltime (though I know I have responsibilities to support my family first) and I’m ‘of course’ fine with that " Hey…. But one can dream! 

So anyway, I was about to have this gig that Friday night alright.  It was about an hour away from home on the other side of the city.  I remember it was an average trio gig " nice cruisy tunes along to good backings.  When I say backings, I mean backing tracks " please excuse the industry slang.  You can pick them up online for a couple of bucks each.  There is this UK site which is very good " Very realistic tracks recorded by a real band in a good studio, rather than that s****y midi stuff you find on the free sites.  Anyway I’m dabbling on here a bit " So we did this gig right, I was the bass player that night " I remember the guitarist Franklin and I were talking about how great Nilsson’s 1974 record ‘Pussycats’ was.  We agreed that John Lennon’s involvement as producer really helped make it an excellent record.  It’s amazing that you can remember certain unrelated happenings and discussions much clearer if they are to happen on a particular day to remember.  Of course I only remember this converse due to the ‘both’ happy and traumatising events that paired on this very long day.

So at 8:30 on the Friday morning, it was my fiancé, Jade, who woke me up.  She rushed into the bedroom holding something in her hand, I remember the look on her face was of excitement and happiness.  She thrust the object out of her hand and into mine.  I remember looking at this object and feeling this overwhelming sense of happiness " I jumped out of bed and we hugged with tears of joy.  We were living with my parents at the time, so I rushed down the hall to show my mum this object.  As she peered at it, she too started to cry with tears of joy and we all hugged. 

So now the only thing left to do was to head down to the doctors and find out if the home pregnancy test was in fact correct.

 

“Yes….pregnant….” Said the doctor.  He showed no enthusiasm, but why should he?? He would be telling people this same news daily.  Just another day in the life for him, going off to work with his packed lunch and water and watching the clock all day until knock off time when he could go home to his own family.  His name was Dr. Boule, he was originally from Ireland.  He always had this sort of bored attitude and I never found him very nice " though, I was always hearing how good he was with kids (My sisters little girl Isabella would always be seen by him).  I guess if Jade and I were both 15 years younger, he might have taken more interest in us both and been more polite.  Good doctor though, I do respect him for that.  What I have always found clever about him, is that he likes to wear goofy colourful hats and socks and stripy suspenders just to make himself look silly so the sick children would have something to be happy about " Clever!! 

So we received the news pretty bluntly, but we were very happy none the less.  We knew the pregnancy tests were normally accurate.  So that was that, we now had some excellent news, and we couldn’t wait to share it with our loved ones.  Only close family were to know first of course " we were to make sure we were past the danger stage of 12 weeks before blasting it all on Facebook to our friends.

So later that day ‘after slowly coming down from our high for the time being’ I thought I should start to gather my gear for the gig that night, the gig was to begin at 8:30PM " I would always like to get to the gig an hour and half early, so I needed to leave home at 6PM.  My car was a hatchback, so I could easily put the back seats down and fit all my musical gear in. 

I got the venue a little early, so I had to wait for the others to arrive " I decided to grab a toasted sandwich from the café.  I think it was ham cheese and tomato.  Anyway, it was near the pokies, not far from where we were playing, that Franklin and I got to talking about music (Hence the Nilsson chit chat I mentioned earlier).  We both shared a passion about ‘The Beatles’ (both having played in separate Beatles Tribute acts at some point) We just started to get into ‘the white album’ when Deeto summoned us over to help with a couple of things, like asking the bar staff to turn off the radio and get the water bottles filled up to a ‘Not freezing, not boiling, but warm bath temperature " Deeto was our band leader and has always been very particular and surely suffers from some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder. Not long after I finished holding cables down with my foot for Deeto, I shared my wonderful news with him and Franklin (I know I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone except family, but I just couldn’t keep it in all night, okay!) " Besides Jade told her workmates as well, so I didn’t feel too guilty about it.

Anyway, I remember Deeto mentioning it over the mic during one of our sets.  I also remember his attitude towards it whilst we were packing up our stuff at the end of the night.  Deeto is a lifetime Bachelor, and has no interest in settling down and having kids (I don’t think he is very fond of kids), simply a self-obsessed muso who lives by himself, goes to bed at 5am every morning and sleeps in till 3pm in the arvo.  He just had this sort of ‘well, you’re fucked now, your life’s over’ attitude when he said “I guess you’ll need all the gigs you can get” He sort of laughed as he said it like id made some kind of mistake in my life.  Whatever!! I thought " F**k you! I couldn’t help but think.  Just because he wanted to die alone someday.  I wanted to make a family of my own, have a son who could carry on my name.  On that note - I did find out ‘when my fiancé was 20 weeks’ that we were having a boy!! I was so excited, I would have been happy so long as the baby was healthy, though I knew I really wanted a son!

But anyway, I’ll tell you more about that later.  For now, I want to go back to that night and recount what happen on my way home, of course something bad had to come out of such a wonderful day.

 

So I was driving along right, firstly I pulled into a Maccas drive through (That toasted sandwich only tied me over momentarily) " as I’m coming up to the speaker box, I’m suddenly ambushed by 3 or 4 aboriginal blokes, hoping I could buy them some food.  Now, I’m far from racist " My wife is a quarter aboriginal, I have no problem with the aboriginal people.  But these guys did scare me, I didn’t want to buy them food, Jade and were trying to save a lot of money back then.  I can’t remember what I said, (maybe I said I didn’t have enough), they did leave me alone - They just left me a little bit shaky.

So that happened firstly.  Then I got stuck in road works for a while on the highway.  Bugger!! Nothing but bright flashing lights in the dark and blokes drilling into the earth at 2 in the morning.  

Also, my eyes were getting drowsy " so the bright flashing lights were hurting my eyes as I moved slowly along in the traffic.  Finally I got out of that and it was smooth sailing for a while.

I decided to put on some music to, because I was getting tired and I had another half hour to go or so - I thought it might keep me awake.  My music of choice was David Bowie’s 1970 album ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ " What a great record " Bowie in his early androgynous stage (I mean! He’s wearing a dress on the front cover for heaven’s sake " But I love it!! The Same reason I love Tim Curry as Dr. Frank .N. Furter in the Rocky Horror Picture Show) " But that’s a different story, might head there later.  So I was getting into it for a bit there.  Then a couple of slower tunes came on.  Suddenly I wasn’t there " I was in bed at home next to Jade, and I was nice and warm.  Though in reality I was behind the wheel and starting to drift off the road into the gravel.  I had fallen asleep for only a couple of seconds, though it had felt like a lifetime.  Of course, at 80Kph, a couple of seconds asleep can cause a little bit of damage.  I guess the sudden bumpiness of the gravel had awoken me " anyway, I immediately went into panic mode and reefed the steering wheel to pull myself back onto the road, right.  This was a bad move it seemed.  The car lost control and began to spin, for a few moments, I didn’t know where I was, just remember thinking holy s**t!! This isn’t happening to me, it felt like I was having a nightmare.  I also remember thinking, I am going to die! This is it! My number is up!  Those moments that my car was spinning felt like a lifetime.  I was going to die and not know my son and he not know me.  Somehow ‘and I still don’t know how to this day’ in my state of shock, my foot found the break and a managed to pull the car up without hitting anything.  I sat stationed in shock for a few moments.  I wasn’t psychically harmed, just felt sick with fright.  All my possessions on the passenger seat were now on my lap - one of those items was my phone.  I rang home.

 

“Hello” said mum in a tired confused voice (It was an odd hour)

“Mum, I’ve h-h-had an-n a-a-accident!!” I cried in a croaky stuttering whisper.

“Are you alright???? Nate, where are you??????” My mother asked franticly.

“I’m o-on Table Road a-a-bout 5 minutes fr-fr-from ho-o-ome” I whispered back.

 

They say most people fall asleep at the wheel when they are close to home.  They say that you put your guard down and go into a comfort relaxed mode because you can sense your bed up ahead.

I must have done this.

I was still on the line when my mum went into our bedroom and gently woke Jade up. 

“Nate’s been in an accident darling” she told her.

“He’s alright!!!! Just a bit shaken” She added quickly. 

I remember hearing a frightened gasp from my Fiancé.  I guess it would have been a shock to wake up to that - a certain strong grab on her heart, I’m sure.  I am blessed that I never had to witness her facial expression at the time.  How much she would have been worrying about me had already broken my heart enough.  I felt stupid, why didn’t I just pull over?? I guess it’s just a human fault " we only see sense after the incident has happened.

My dad came down to find me that morning.  I had ended up on the wrong side of the ride " facing the wrong way.  I managed to drive off onto the side of the road after I rang home.

When my dad got there, he was upset and disappointed at me "

“Mate… why didn’t you pull over and call me??”

I couldn’t explain to him how it all came on so quickly, I thought I’d be alright, but obviously it’s when I relaxed and I let my guard down  that it all turned to s**t.

He was disappointed at the fact that I had busted three out of four wheels.  I think he realised the next day how much of a close one it really was, and that he shouldn’t have been so disappointed about the wheels " at least I was alive.

The tow truck driver shared the same frown down approach of my fathers.  He continuously reminded me how lucky I was and all on the trip home, just as my father had.  I already felt like a dickhead - gosh! I knew how lucky I was, for sure.

I guess I shouldn’t complain, they were only stating that I should be more wary next time and pull over when I’m feeling a little drowsy.  I was only 5 minutes from home so I thought I’d be alright.  I guess I am a dickhead.  I just don’t think! As my father has always said, as my wife has said to me on a number of occasions.  Like the time I left my park break off in my car and left it out of gear " our driveway was on a hill " Yep, my car was in the garden the next morning.  Or what about the time I didn’t clean the BBQ properly? So whilst I was cooking sausages for my family - I didn’t notice the old crumby bits of charcoal that were catching on the snags.  My dad did.  He would always check up on me when I was cooking, seen as though I am useless at it.  He was right to call me a dickhead that day.  I guess I really don’t think all the time.  I go into these little worlds of my own, where nothing else matters for a while " except my own s**t.  Self-absorbed hmmm? Maybe I’m not so different from Deeto, (In small ways).

Oh! By the way…..We took a cruise back to the scene of my accident later in the morning.

It seemed I was playing a game of dodge the trees!

The tyre marks in the grass did in fact swivel in and around the trees.

To this day, I’m amazed I didn’t hit anything.

If I had of, I probably wouldn’t be here to tell the tale. 

My mum says both of my grandfathers were watching over me that morning.

I’d say she was right!