The Day We Remember the Dead

For better or worse Spinner was a part of me, and I was a part of him. Sometimes better, mostly worse.

If I'm honest it's ten in the morning not night, this is my fourth drink not my first and Spinner is not remembered fondly.

When life is happening and the shit is going down, everyone has only the short term plan of survival and perhaps self preservation in front of them. Nobody is looking objectively at the way the hand grenade was thrown, people are too busy ducking and dying to care if it was a hand over throw.

There's no rear view mirror either. In that moment, and nothing happens in a vacuum, we have no foresight or hindsight and the two different paths before us look equally shitty. So we chose one and hope we're right.

Everyone does that, even the most anal auditor does that. Spinner did that too. But then again if I was Spinner, I wouldn't want to look back either. For him hindsight was like a trek to the peak of Everest, bodies along the path point the path out.

To feel hate he must have known love, and he did love me and I did love him; however the familiar refrain that love can overcome everything is not true.

Hate was Spinner's normal default emotion, a sure way to make friends and influence people. Sadly, nobody was there when Spinner shaved in the morning, when he saw only a tiny beaten little boy. A hurt little boy. That's all he was. Under all of that deflection, was a child.

I knew Spinner then.

Spinner and a little baby girl and an old box and a world of pain he would carry forever.

I knew Spinner then.

The first time we met was in the city. It was the same year his step-mother raped him. That is a Pandora's box which will remain closed here. The idea was to explain about Spinner and well, as explanations go, that one word covers much of it. Taints him and his memory. It did not start there, and it did not end there, and he was not yet fifteen.

Back then Spinner still had a heart, and he gave it to me. In return I gave him mine. He still has it.

We were a young couple, just eighteen, and we fell prey to the drugs and booze and other vices quickly. It doesn't seem wrong when everyone you know is doing it.

A day came when he told me a woman had given him some horse for a quickie, at the time I could not determine what pissed me off most, that he had shot up without me or that he had sex without me.

It was when the bright green of spring deepened into summer green that she came to our door. It was the first of two occasions our paths would cross. It was one of those moments where the universe almost seems to be weighing one person against another.

There was an argument because she told Spinner the child she was expecting was his and Spinner first laughed it off, then stopped laughing and back-handed her so that she flew backwards and hit the kitchen wall.

He stepped closer to her, I will never know why because in that moment, shock hit and I shouted at him. He froze, crouched over her and slowly straightened up.

I really don't remember much more of that year, it was full of fighting and her pimp slash boyfriend got in on the act as well.

The baby was born at home. The boyfriend called to let us know - a girl. Spinner was adamant that it was not his. I suggested we go and have a look. Pointing at him was a long shot because if the baby didn't look like him, then it definitely was not his.

We arrived in the middle of a domestic argument with a newborn screaming for food. It was pandemonium and it was a matter of when someone snapped, not if.

After everyone was quiet, I placed her wrapped warmly in a sweater I had taken off, inside a box. I found a blanket in her bassinet and wrapped that around her too so that it covered most of the blood on her head.

Spinner sat against the wall, blood dripping from his hands. He was staring at something far away, he wasn't looking at her with her legs awkwardly angled and her weight resting on her broken neck.

He raised his eyes and looked at her boyfriend, slumped over the couch as if he was sleeping. He came back from that far place and looked at me, the question was in his eyes.

I took the hammer back off the shelf and pushed it into my bag, still watching him, waiting to hear that I'd done the right thing. That he would stop hitting me and would let me into his world, because I loved him. But he said nothing.

We left after he had washed his hands. As we went down the stairs, he took the box from me. We didn't know what to do with her, so we took her home. We wrapped her up in more blankets and tied everything in a neat parcel with a sheet. Then we stuffed her into the chimney, and waited.

We were sure the police would arrive any second. Days passed. When more than two weeks had passed without us being thrown into jail, Spinner said it was our second chance.

I was grateful for a second chance, and so was he, until we discovered that all the emotional baggage from our first try came with the second.

We made a go of it, opened our own pub eventually. We moved to better accommodation several times, always finding a spot to stash our little bundle. Our only little bundle.

Everytime we moved, the memories came again and we would startle in the middle of the day at a loud noise. Everytime, weeks passed and the worry of the police showing up, faded away again.

Yet, at the same time, every new place we lived in, was just a little bleaker, a little darker. The atmosphere deteriorated a little further. It was tense, we fought a lot. I got hurt alot.

I would pack my bags but I would not go. Many times Spinner would give sex to someone for drugs and then there would be peace a while between us, when the monster slumbered.

When he hurt me most I would take her out and hold her and sing to her. To tell her that he didn't mean it. In the end she always returned to her hiding spot and I returned to mine.

Spinner started sleeping at the pub, it got so bad. Then suddenly the day was there as if it was pre ordained. I came into the pub with the first delivery, as usual. Nothing seemed wrong, in fact, it was a sunny day and the whole world seemed to be remarkably cheerful. I ordered his usual for lunch and took it to his office.

We were both drinkers, I knew he drank to relax enough to fall asleep at night. And there he was, mouth open, snoring.

No, there was no sound. None. There was no sound of breathing. I could hear the blood rushing in my ears but I couldn't hear him breathe. I wasn't sure so I called a barman over and asked him if he could hear Spinner breathing.

He looked quickly and looked back at me and tried to lead me away. He said Spinner wasn't breathing but that was impossible, Spinner had to be breathing. He assured me that he was not breathing and I asked him how he knew for sure. He said that Spinner had shot off the other half of his head. He was dead.

Seconds, minutes, hours, days, spin around like swirls of dull color, black, brackish, dirty. Spinner is cremated and I move again. I take her with me. After I had moved I got Spinner's ashes in an urn. But the thing that struck me most is the way the house acted.

It was dark and grey and you could taste the bitterness. I brought the urn into the room and it brightened immediately. The sun shone and for the first time I noticed the walls were actually a pastel peach color, not grey.

I repeated this about three times with the sun coming and going, and the only thing I could conclude was that it was her.

Now she is also ashes, her remains are in a small urn right next to Spinner's. Spinner was something bad that never really ended and she was something good that never really started.