I killed Peter Butler tonight.

I’m in the cold room now. I walked in from the rain, made a cup of good Jamaican coffee, and here it is, the confession. Well first, I guess I should give you a few notes to catch up on. As I walked from the fire, along the summers- burned, cracking black mud beneath me, I thought of the two I left behind; one was a hero, a lover, a crusader for justice, a junkie and a man, the other a shell, of a future or former man although I could not tell, human in nature, as far as I could make out in the rain. It just looked like a black bag on a dark wet street.
I killed Peter Butler tonight.
It had been quite a few months for Peter Butler. His mother had been battling several cancers and it was a real roller coaster ride for all of them. In manufacturing a well used self pity, Butler had begun to justify the rolling in self destruction. The first, a crime of revenge gone too far had cost him his job, and cast him to the road to look for another place of rest. As if this weren’t enough, he encountered old acquaintances along the way; friends and bullies. He ate, he smoke, he drank and he spilled blood. He presented an old friend with filmed Shamanic blessing; a Red tailed hawk feather, and promised him a Grammy. He smuggled drugs between state and country. He was never a proud man.
When I found him today he was just rising. Pneumonia had dogged him for months and the resulting pains were breaking his structure; torn muscles, ribs out, anti-inflammatory and hydrocodone. When you pile this on top of the benzo’s, the anti-depressants and the weed, you would see him setting alarms to remind him what time to take what. It is no wonder that he started taking whatever whenever he decided, after all of that. There had been four courses of antibiotics, well over ten doctor visits, brand new back spasms and the birthday of the first of seven friends; dead since his recent birthday. Pete was in fine shape, as long as he could stay in the bed. I pushed him out, brushed his teeth and fed him his morning meds. We popped the hood to the Ford around 8:30, hooked up the battery and pointed the tires towards Corolla once more.
Once at work the day started looking up, the first tour cancelled, Butler was pleased. He walked around the shop, bitching about the boss and the pain in his side. There was the toying with the idea of calling the second tour off because he felt like shit. Not only were his ribs and back aching, but he was getting these weird fainting feelings. The room would get quiet and fuzzy, sight blurred, and there was a tingling or numb buzz along his core and limbs with each step, but like lightning striking. It was there, and then it would disappear. By the time 10:30 came he had already decided to go back to the ER again, maybe get an MRI or an LP or something cool like that. He called the 1p.m. group and explained the details and was gone.
The ER was the ER; casual/cold, bare minimum and suspicious. The third doctor in as many weeks was presiding yet Peter thought it strange that although the date and all the rest of the information on the white board had changed, the name of the doctor had not. Confusion must always be to blame in these cases I think he thought. The people walked in the room and the people walked out. Peter lay there and slept for most of it. One of them came in and asked him some questions, made him move his feet, checked his reflexes, listened to his story and said he had had a back spasm. He was told to follow up with his physician and he said he would and then he went home.
Home was a fun trip for the next few hours. He walked in and his wife asked how the day had been at just about the same time she noticed the nice packet they send you home from the hospital with. “Why did you go back to the hospital?” she wanted to know. He mentioned the spasms and the feelings that he might be having a stroke and all, but it only translated as “I am a pill freak. I went to get more pills because I love them, and this says I can’t work, and you know I HATE working, period.” This would be the tone of the few words exchanged over the course of the next forever. Peter went to hide in his bed. The pain was real, but the pain in his back and ribs seemed far, far away. Every time he closed his eyes in thoughts of getting away, leaving, he would picture the route taking him along the path through the field across from his childhood home. He had so much fun in that field, and he was brutalized there, yet it was the best memory he had I guess, a plain open grassy field.
Arguments interrupted his rest. He just used them as justification for more wallowing. “No one understands” he thought to himself, “nobody would even care.” His thoughts would quickly turn to his mother, his wife, and his children for hope, and yet the justification still slipped in. He could hear the girls playing joyfully with their grandmother, his wife was able to calm down, have a small sip of wine for once in ten years, and he remained in the stew. He needed a method. As I told you earlier, he needed a push, so I was there. I have always been. No matter.
I got him out of bed and into the Ford. I made sure he had a pack of dry matches wrapped in a cellophane bag. We drove down to the corner gas station, the one where he used to get his smokes or his quart. He always loved to talk to the guys inside. They exchanged the daily gossip and family stuff you can’t discuss with people you know. He popped in for a second to grab a Coke. “Haven’t seen you in a while” sounded the voice from behind the counter. “Need smokes finally?” she asked. “No, I quit about ten days ago.” He said with a bit of pride. He had done it for them he thought. “So is this it?” asked the clerk finally. “This is it” replied Butler, smiling. “I guess you don’t need matches do yah hun’?” She said as he turned for the door. “Nope” again smiling as the door swung out and the rain came in, “just a little gas, I’ll see you soon, have a good one…” He walked out.
He slid the card in at the pump and punched in the four numbers and the machine told him he could have the gas. He filled his tank. After the tank, he opened the back door and shot fuel all over the seats and floor. Then he sprayed the windshield, the dash and the front seats as well as he could. Then, bending, he squeezed the nozzle slowly to soak his hat and head, felt it rolling down the inside of his shirt. He quickly sprayed his arms and legs, and calmly hung up the pump. Nobody watched as he drove away. No one had seen.
He only planned to ride a few minutes with the smell and all. He drove about six miles down the beach road to an access near where the first hotel stood that he had stayed in as a young adult, just months before moving here. There was a pretty flat sandy road to the beach, flat enough that the Ford, when driven very fast, could follow all the way down to the surf. So Butler turned down the access and gunned that bitch. He probably only hit 45 or 50 before slamming into the rutted sand, and then maybe about fifteen or twenty yards before the tires spun and he was bottomed out. Finally, he had reached his great place. Everything that I have told you before about him and here to come is sickness, and only that. Peter Butler was an ego, an apparition, a liar and a thief, always hiding behind right now. I leaned over, and whispered in his ear “go ahead, you are here now.”
As I sat atop a nearby dune I don’t know what he said in that last moment. I don’t know who he begged or who he cried for. All I saw was a flash accompanied by a whooshing sound. It wasn’t all Hollywood, more like a big family barbeque. Low blue flames engulfed the Ford and it just sort of burned like that, low, and quietly as if the rain had some effect. I never saw him move. I just walked away, looking for my lighter and then realizing, oh yeah, I quit.
And who am I?
For those of you that haven’t met me I am Samson, I met Peter when he was just that. He pointed as he spoke and turned towards the black bag on the highway, in the rain. “That shell,” he said, “that husk of a being is Peter graves Roberts. He adored me when he was just starting out more than twenty years ago, but he was soft. He needed to brush up against the real world a while, dirty his shoes a little. He was well meaning, but such a cheese ball hack. He even signed his scribbling in MY name, but I didn’t mind really, he was a bright kid. He was clean and virtuous being. He embodied that until he hit around 27. Around that time I think is when he hit that road, and then he put me in his closet with all of his notions of peace and love, and all of those moldy old note books. He created this Butler guy. He said he needed him, but all he did was get me drunk, shot me up with shit, silenced me with his screams of selfishness and cried a fool’s pitiful river until prescribed pills dried it up. He was spectacular at any thing he did while he was supposed to be doing other things. He mimicked others so well. He was a fine doormat to the employers. The legal drug industry would have called him a loyal customer. In the eyes of any food industry executive he was a happy and dumb yet well fed rat. All of the souls and soulless entities that took what he had to give only exploited those gifts, while the ones in his life that mattered most were left as battered, opened and confused as I was. So yes, I killed Peter Butler tonight, to try and save the kid everyone knew as Pete Roberts. He is that trash bag over there; he is that dark, wet street. The rains will keep him sleeping but the sun and wind will open his eyes again.”
Butler penned one more poem before turning in that identity, before I soaked him in gasoline and drove him to that beach in the rain as children slept, and junkies awakened here. I let him sign it with my name, one last time. He used to put little notes next to the tag so that future scholars might read his emotional state at the time. He got what he made. He drove his life like that Ford. At the end the vehicle was on two bald tires, had had a leaky radiator for years and a short in the ignition caused him to have to disconnect the battery every time he was to let the thing rest for more than 12 hours. He would joke with the doctors that he sometimes drew conclusions based on the seeming similarity of his auto and his clay, and the doctors told him that lots of people think that way. Who knew? He thought. It doesn’t really matter though now does it?
This is his final work.
“BE if you want to, if you must”
sad but
true

i was born
a great writer
but
with tongs and
heat resistant rags
for hands

-the will to change
of a god damned
jellyfish,

and into an ebbing tide
when all i needed
was sun and
sand

fools

go study up on
jellyfish if in
need of the
real truth


most people mistake their
progress for
struggle
-the burning intensity
of that mistaken
will.

gotta go now,
the ink from this
borrowed pen
has all but run
out.

just scratches now.