“Am I willing to jump from a moving car?” I asked myself and myself said “Absolutely”. I looked over at Eddie as he drove the car and once again realized this could turn out badly for me.
It started with a friend Dave and his girlfriend Debbi. Eddie was a friend of theirs and one weekend they had invited me to spend the day with them in the city. To my surprise, when I arrived ready to go, they introduced me to Eddie and informed me he was going with us. I wasn’t thrilled—I was worried this was a setup. I made it clear to my friends that if they had hopes about anything happening between me and Eddie, they needed to adjust their expectations.
They assured me it wasn’t about that. My friend explained Eddie was a young guy from a small town who my friend had taken under his wing. They were just trying to get him out for the weekend to get him to meet people.
I got a very bad vibe from Eddie. He raised the hair on the back of my neck. I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t be alone with him ever again.
Eddie didn’t say or do anything unusual. He was quiet. So it wasn’t anything he said or did. It was just something I felt radiate from him, and my instincts told me “Danger Close”.
After that outing, I made it clear to my friends that I would go nowhere with them if he was coming along. They insisted he was a sweet guy, shy around women. I said “nope, that ain’t it”. We agreed to disagree, and they said they wouldn’t invite me on any outings that he was part of.
And so it came to pass that one Sunday evening I was at my friends for a housewarming party. Dave’s girlfriend was supposed to drive me back to the barracks.
The evening had gotten late and it was a work night so around midnight I asked Debbi to take me back to the barracks as she had promised. By that time the only ones left were Dave, Debbi, me and Eddie.
Dave and Debbie were too drunk to drive me and Eddie was going back to the barracks. After some back and forth with Debbie I realized that the only way back to the barracks was with Eddie.
What a long strange trip that was. I got in the car and thanked him for the ride. He sat ridged in the drivers seat hands at 10 and 2 and looking straight ahead silent. It was creepy and I tried to make small talk, he was silent, I don’t mean quiet, I mean the kind of silent you feel. He kept driving I thought well at least we are going in the right direction. I kept up my side of the conversation while I thought “Am I willing to jump from a moving car?” I asked myself and myself said “Absolutely”. I moved my hand to the handle and kept on chatting.
Then the silence broke as he suddenly said “Let’s just go somewhere” I was like “Uh, somewhere?” he replied “I’ll go by the ATM and get a lot of cash and then we can just go anywhere” I started talking about how I couldn’t miss work, taking off somewhere on a work night was just not something I could do. He continued driving silently and I thought the idea of throwing myself from the car seemed reasonable.
When he pulled into the bank parking lot, alarms went off and my brain transitioned to survival mode. Had my bladder been full I’m sure it would have emptied. I thought I’m going to disappear and no one will know what happened. So I got out of the car and walked back and forth in front of the ATM so they would at least know I was there. As I sat back down I thought well it looks like it’s throwing myself out of a moving car or talk my way out of this. He got back into the car and the heavy silence returned.
So I started with “hey Eddie it just sounds like you don’t feel like being alone we all feel that way. I know I do. It’s tough in the barracks when you don’t know anyone. Why don’t you come up to my room for awhile we can hang out and watch some TV. I thought the safest place I could be was my barracks and my roommate I had for over a year had always slept in our room.
I just kept repeating the same thing over and over. Thank God, we ended up in the parking lot of the barracks. He got out of the car silently and followed me up to my room. Now it’s 01:00 or so and as fate would have that was the night my roommate didn’t come home.
He sat himself at the foot of my bunk and I turned the TV on. I asked if he wanted anything to drink, he sat silently eyes fixed on the TV. I sat down at the head of my bunk I surveyed the room for weapons I could use, I took a long look at him head to toe, no obvious vulnerabilities he had heavy work boots on the same kind I was wearing, feet can be very vulnerable so I spent a few minutes trying to talk him into taking his boots off and get comfortable. That way stomping his feet with my work boots would be a force multiplier. He just sat silently staring rigidly at the TV, now it’s around 02:00 and we sat silently like that till about 03:00 when I asked him to leave because I needed to get some sleep, he just sat silently and I swear his eyes got dark. I kept saying this up till around 04:00 and finally I told him I got a chief with a real hard on for me. If I’m not there at 05:00 he will be at my door at 05:05 and believe me you don’t want to get on his radar. I kept this up till around 04:45 when he silently got up and walked out.
I breathed. I wondered had I just been freaked out about nothing, was I making it something it wasn’t? had my past violent experiences colored what I felt? Was I being “paranoid”? I pondered that for a while and came to the conclusion that trusting my gut has kept me alive so far and I wasn’t going to stop now.
Not long after that Eddie moved off base and Dave and Debbi gave him a housewarming party. I didn’t go, as I stuck to my “no Eddie rule” but they did tell me they gave him a big stuffed penguin which he named Cujo, I mean come on man he was a strange guy how did nobody see it.
Not long after that I got a call from Dave asking if I’d heard from Eddie, no I hadn’t, It would have been strange if I had. Dave asked if I saw the news about a local woman being stabbed to death and that they were looking for a sailor. He said that’s Eddie they are talking about. They found a woman who had been stabbed to death in his parents home. He was nowhere to be found and a note had been left on the mirror saying something like “we have your son” They looked for a month or so before they found him, I believe he pled guilty but wouldn’t say what the motivation was.
When the guys at work found out I knew him and had spent an evening with him they called me Petty Officer Lucky for awhile.
Lucky.
I kept thinking about that night in my room. Four hours of him sitting there staring while I talked and talked trying to find a way out. Four hours I didn’t close my eyes.
It was eerily reminiscent of the several hours I had spent convincing my father to put the gun down.
I thought about Debbi too drunk to drive me home. Dave insisting Eddie was harmless. That stuffed penguin named Cujo.
Nobody saw it. But I did. And forty years later, I’m still checking exits.