Richard's Tale
A poem for Heart Support, based upon The Tale of Jenny & Screech, by Ren Gill.
About a month ago, therapist Taylor Palmby reached out to me about collaborating on a project with Heart Support related to The Tale of Jenny & Screech — a universe created by Ren Gill.
You can get acquainted with his story and characters through Taylor’s reaction video to the trilogy, here, or you can watch them uninterrupted via Ren’s YouTube playlist, here.
It was my task to write Richard’s Story, and to imagine what he may have experienced following Ren’s “Call For Backup.”
For the sake of transparency, this is not a Ren-ordained release, but rather an outsider’s creative exploration of Ren’s dominant themes — mental health, intergenerational trauma and cyclical violence, in particular — and the ways in which we pay our wounds forward until we transform them, ourselves.
Here is Taylor’s / Heart Support’s reaction video to Richard’s Tale, as well:
Richard’s Story
“Yeah, so, the drinking — the drinking started a long time ago. It’s in my blood. You know. But like: actually in my blood. My dad — well… anyway, after that night happened… after… it got a lot worse. I got a lot worse. I took it out on her. I… uh…
She kept asking me where I went. And I didn’t know what she meant by that. Or, I knew I couldn’t answer the question. And she kept on nagging me about it.
‘Where’d you go? Where’d you go?’
There is a moment that hits as soon as the real sets in. What is actually happening. It feels like the distance between you and… anything… collapses. I’ve heard people say that — maybe on a day a parent died — they felt nothing.
And that’s it. Nothing. The space where nothing touches everything. And the weight of it…
The way this fourteen year old kid suddenly wasn’t, with all that is. And the air, everywhere, but not in him. And the lamplight, and the knife, red, and the traffic in the distance, the stench of garbage, the scent of instinct, the ringing, the immediate regret, the no and the cold, undeniable yes.
And the weight of it.
The way I tried to wish the bullets back and plug the blood in.
The violence and the wholly empty, ever-present absense.
The way the world went silent with him. And everything stopped.
I can’t seem to wash my hands enough to get what could have been off of my skin.
So, where did I go?
Nowhere, ever since then…
Any units in the area? Please — can you respond? I was assaulted by a minor. I had no choice. I drew my gun. We have a wounded caucasian male with four bullet wounds down. Please, send backup. Over and out…
—
“Patrick.”
“Patrick” is the name I can’t get out of my head, now. There is not enough alcohol in the world to drown it out (and I’ve been trying, but…) Every time I close my eyes, the kid’s still dying, and I’ve still got the grip on why palmed tight for fear.
“Please — send backup!” I plead and then, to Screech: “I’m here.” He bleeds. To God: “Damnit, where is the ambulance? Stay with me, stay with me.
What’s your name?”
He whispers, “Patrick?” He asks it like a question: “Patrick?” He weeps, “Help me. I didn’t mean to.”
And then he disappears.
“Well, I didn’t either!”
The concrete runs red, but not us — no flight here, no frozen in stone we’re fighters till the —
“Goddamn, I did not mean to end that kid’s fucking… like, I just turned the corner and there’s this — what? teen? running at me with a knife? This can’t be happening — I’ve walked this beat for sixteen years, but up until tonight? Yeah, I’ve pulled a gun but never emptied one into a life.”
—
The next day, the headlines crucified the cop who killed the child.
”Just fourteen years old,” the story goes, “same age as his sister,” whom I didn’t know he stabbed to death down the road.
Same age as my son was back home
who ever since then only served to remind me that they both had a father before I started drinking so heavy that night that my wife finally took he and our daughter away.
Same age as I was when my mom did the same.
Same. Same. Same. Same. Same. Same.
No one escapes. But I can put a bottle back, just like my old man, and his. I was six again, the night I pulled that trigger, catching fists in the flat that I grew up in and I guess No one escapes. So I exchanged my badge for a brown paper bag and when I remember to I call my kids, “I love you” I say, and: ”No one escapes,” and placate myself for abandoning them.
I still walk the streets at night, these days there’s just a sway in my gait.
And I cannot stop seeing Screech’s face.
That night, holding his head above the pavement, there was something about the way that his cheekbones cradled this last glimpse of an untouchable innocence before the breath went out of him. Gaunt-souled, but there and precious and enough for anyone who might have seen it to believe that beneath the fury was a face that only longed to know and be known.
And I knew that I’d seen it before — before I started throwing stones and covering up my own.
Years ago, my radio cracked, not a mile from where Jenny died, dispatching me to Paddington where some lady fought to stay alive and this guy — this prick — who I was supposed to bring in kept screaming, “I didn’t want to do it!”
And I know exactly what he meant.
“Oh my god,” I thought, “I am him.” And I saw: “I am Jenny and Screech and Violet. I am cuffing Stevie and locking me to the history of my dad and my mom and what my kids could become and…
Please! Send backup! Please, someone respond?
I just woke up to a mirror. I have no choice but to stop running from the ghosts that come to haunt me, or the hope that underneath I’ll find the little boy who loved to play hide and seek beneath the sheet before he just played hide, peeking through the holes before he completely closed his eyes.
Please! Send backup! Please — can you respond? I don’t know how to set my demons down but I want a hand to hold onto, I am the wounded Everyman who longs through hell and, Help! Are you in the area? Please, send backup…
Over and out.
—
“Hi, my name is Richard, and I’m an alcoholic…
Yeah, so, the drinking — the drinking started a long time ago. It’s in my blood. You know. But like: actually in my blood. My dad — well… anyway, after that night happened… after… it got a lot worse. I got a lot worse. I took it out on her. I… uh…
i love your words. they make me feel. my daughter and i shared ice cream the other night w her nashville family and we saw you sitting alone reading! hope you're well and loving your new city!