PART 2-Prequel
December is usually a lovely month in
Florida. My friends usually donned light
sweaters and jackets, and sometimes, there was a nip in the air.
This one Monday morning, December
13th, 1971 did not begin as ordinary weeks began, in Satellite Beach. A very small
and quiet, beach community, Monday mornings were much the same: quiet and
small. But not this Monday morning.
I was gathering things for school when there
were lots of sirens, that were filling the air.
They sounded as though they were on
the street behind us (I , later learned, they nearly were).
I remember my mother quipping that a
"cat must have gotten caught up a tree" (to cause such commotion in
our quiet town).
One of my first classes took place in our library. I remember there
was an "electric humm" in the room, of people talking. The girl next
to me told me a story of a man down the street shooting and killing his entire
family. I thought she was telling me about something
that happened some time ago. But she clarified that it had happened that
morning.
Turning into my own thoughts, it
clicked. "Oh" (I thought) "That is what all the sirens were
about". I recall, throughout the
day that I would run into fragments of the story, at lunch and before class commenced. I found it deeply sad and sort of
incomprehensible.
It haunted me, but didn't really
touch me, until a few days later.
In home room, I had a arrived a bit early to Mr. Moll's classroom.
Homeroom, really wasn't a wonderful thing. It was upstairs and , announcements
and attendance taken. Now that I think of it, I found it a bother. As I arrived
in the classroom, two boys were taking chairs down from tables. One boy pointed
took a chair down and pointed to the chair and announced emphatically "I'm
not ever sitting in THAT chair. THAT chair belongs to a dead boy!" I remember my gaze revolving up to him and
saying "What? What are you talking about?" I'm not sure if I said it,
but I do remember thinking "That's Duke's chair".
Mr. Moll seemed incensed and insulted
by the proclamation and said "That's ENOUGH!"
I remember my eyes resting on Mr.
Moll, who, (now that I think of it) oddly, looked back at me.
I think I said nothing else. I think I looked
down at my books. Mr. Moll didn't want
to clarify and he didn't want anyone else talking about it either.
If anything of note happened the rest of that
day, I don't remember it.
I do recall several "post scripts"
to this story, however.
My mother worked for "Virginia Fried
Chicken" and many of the teen-agers gathered there. My brother and sister
(9 and 8 years older than me) were friends with many of the teens that worked
there as well. There was a conversation after that day, that I remember.
One of the larger young men said he was considering
taking a "job". It seems the family of the deceased family needed
someone to clean the house. They were going to sell it. They were going to pay
$500. to whomever took on the task. The young man said he didn't believe it
would "bother him" because he "didn't know the family".
Another post-post script-
As I said , Satellite Beach was then
a small community. My sister and brother went to High School with the daughter
of one of the police offers on Satellite Beach Police force.
It happens, that I attended school with their
younger brother. Many years later, this son mentioned his father was the
official photographer for the crime scene.
"There were way too many
photographs for dad to process by himself. " He had helped his father
process photographs, but really didn't remember most of the images.
I count that as a blessing.
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