Chapter 3: May Song

After helping to unload the truck from our four day trip, I got home, quickly showered and threw myself into bed intended to sleep the next day straight through. Instead the phone rang just a few short hours later. It was Erin and she needed my help.

"I need you to come get me now!" This was about all that she would or could say, but she sounded hurt ... badly.

I drove like a man possessed and ran every stop sign and red light on the way and got to her house in less than ten minutes. I began to ring the doorbell and just about broke the door beating on it. In a few minutes Erin shuffled slowly to answer the door, and I barely recognized her. She had been beaten all over and her face and arms were a solid mass of bleeding welts and swelling bruises. She was bleeding seemingly from everywhere and the blue terrycloth robe she was clutching around her now was spotted all over with purple-red drying bloodstains.

I sat her down into a chair to cry, and immediately called 911 and reported a domestic assault and requested an EMS unit. I then asked Erin where her clothes and things were kept and where I could find some suitcases, and so informed I went upstairs and began packing her things.

To say that I was incandescent with rage would be an understatement, and she was not going to spend another minute in that house if I could help it.

I had left the front door wide open for the Police, who responded extremely promptly, and before I knew it I was being confronted by a woman officer who had a gun drawn on me and I could tell she was just itching for any excuse to pull the trigger. I kept my hands high and identified myself repeatedly as Erin's friend who had come to her aid, and not her abuser, but I would gladly lie peacefully on the floor so she could cuff me until my story was confirmed, which it fortunately soon was.

The officer never did quite apologize for nearly shooting me, but she did help me finish packing Erin's things and take them out to my car. At the last moment, I found the bloody rattan switch that Marla had used (among other things) to beat Erin with and I took it with me. EMS by then had arrived, and they wasted little time in getting her into the wagon and off to the hospital with the sirens wailing to clear the way, with me in my car right behind them. She spent the next six hours in the Emergency Room where her wounds were cleaned and bandaged and x-rays taken (two cracked ribs and a minor concussion from being repeatedly struck and then pushed down the stairs was the worst of the damage). There was a little internal bleeding due to some vaginal and anal tearing, but it soon stopped and was not considered to be significant fortunately. Eventually an official Police Complaint was dictated, written out and signed by Erin and we filled out the forms to get a Restraining Order against Marla, preventing her from contacting Erin in any way.

"Your offer of reconciliation didn't go over as well as you had hoped, I see", I quipped, once we were finally alone together many hours later in her hospital room. She tried to laugh herself silly, but her ribs hurt a bit too much and I promised to make no further jokes and I just held her hand. She soon she drifted off to sleep in a medicated fog, and I got a few fitful hours of sleep myself in the chair beside her before she was released the following afternoon. We picked up her prescriptions that included some pain killers, and I took her to my apartment and put her into my bed where she slept all of that day and a pretty decent chunk of the next full day as well.

Naturally, we cancelled the first few intended days of our recording sessions, and my apartment was constantly flooded with band mates and assorted friends and well wishers. Invariably someone was now always crashed out on the sofa (usually Irv), so I grabbed some sleep in my mother's old rocking chair next to Erin's bedside. When awake, and not otherwise engaged, I began to read through her collection of hand-written spiral bound books of poetry. Those had been among the first items of hers that I had packed at her ex-lovers home. She began writing when she was just fourteen (she was now about to turn twenty-five later this summer). The material was better than good, some of the poems were really special, and some of my favorites I flagged with book markers for her to later sing for us in the studio, assuming we could find the right musical accompaniment.

It took a day or so, but eventually I finally got nearly everyone thrown out of my apartment, except for Irv, who defied every hint I offered that it was ok for him to go home now, and who now seemed to be permanently implanted upon my sofa. I did have one surprise visitor from one of the last people I ever would have expected. Darryl!

He looked thin, but healthy, his eyes showing that he was off of the junk and that he planned to stay that way. Just as I had predicted, nearly immediately after the breakup of the band, Samantha had dumped him in Kansas City and split town with a new boyfriend, and with the rest of Darryl's cash. One of his new band mates gave him the money for a bus ticket back to Houston and he had been back getting his head straight for the last month or so, and had just now started to check back in with old friends.

I had never met Darryl before he had become the drug addicted pawn of Samantha, and I must admit I liked this new and improved Darryl. He mentioned before leaving that he might swing by our practice hall to hear the new sound of things before we left, and I encouraged him sincerely to please do so.

The next morning, Erin was ready to be up and about, and she sat at my small dinette table while I started to cook the three of us breakfast wearing just a pair of old shorts. I was out of clean shirts, as Erin had worn my last clean one last night ... everything else I owned was now in the washer. Irv as usual, was seemingly asleep on my sofa. Erin came into the kitchen and hugged me from behind, and asked me the serious question that I had been expecting for some time.

"How come, since we've now been sleeping together for over a week, you have not tried even once to kiss me, let alone tried to fuck me, and I've seen the way you look at me. You want to do both ... badly".

I turned to face her, and holding her I kiss her bruised forehead gently. "Don't you think the timing lately would have been just a little bit poor for either of those things?" I said with a wink. She hugged me closer.