Condition Other Than Normal: Finding Peace In a World Gone Mad. Gary Tetterington

yet, so far, I’ve managed to escape reasonably intact and in one piece. I’ve always known when to run away. Anyway…

      There were times when I’ve appeared so damned suspicious, I’ve expressed mild astonishment or light amusement at radar or sonar being unable to track and trace me, considering some of the methods I’ve used to get away quickly. Times were when I should have done the book and the walk that went with it.

      Now, I will concede, I happened to be about half–insane back in 1976, unstable for sure and not thinking clearly but I would have had to have been incredibly normal and prescient, to have seen and understood a blind and final confusion and perhaps a terminal judgment I was rushing madly towards.

      The original plan had been W.H. The heat was on. Truthfully, I can’t recall what I was moving from that time but it must have been serious enough for me to break for the North Country.

      I reasoned the way I did and rightly so because of the few occasions when I had held my ground. On these same foolish occasions, all I had ever known for faith and trust in a contrary judicial system were the insides of filthy jail cells.

      Logic was, any damn thing could have happened between the time I lit out and the time the law laid me by the heels and dragged me back to face the amends process, dragged me on back, kicking and snapping, to be denounced, scourged and sentenced and forced to do my time. Not good. No. Better to run away.

      Listen up. The courthouse could have been struck by a higher power. The police station could have caught fire and burned to the ground. The witnesses could have vanished without clues. Any of these unlikely possibilities I would have accepted and considered divine intervention or proper retribution. But no, it never happened, it never did and they never went away. Instead, those swinish bastards, every one of them, had their days of judgment with me, sometimes after years of frantic and frenzied running on my part. Best to keep moving.

      That was yesterday. I don’t run so much today. Today I build my own walls. The difference is, tomorrow I’ll know exactly why and when to haul ass and run away. I am an outlaw and always will be.

      What I knew, back in ’76, in Edmonton, was, all I had been doing was fading and failing and becoming smaller. Likely, it would only have been a matter of short time before someone put me down permanently. I was a bum, a peculiar and unique breed of bum. I had no home, no money, no friends and I never cared who I cheated or lied to. I never cared.

      It was an alarming state of being and a tangible wall of dark alienation had been closing in on me and I had felt it. The uniforms and the steel had to have been real close behind. Right - Time for me to book it for the high country. Time to do my magic act. So…

      One clear morning, without so much as a, by your leave and thank – you very much, I winked out and Edmonton was another blue memory.

      Now, I had done this disappearing routine, so often and from so many places, it had become a chronic grind and acceptance. Just do it and be nimble about it. Then again, leaving Edmonton, specifically, had never been a hardship or a sadness for me. Leaving Edmonton had frequently been an exoneration, an amnesty and a freedom.

      W.H., for inexplicable reasons, had suggested itself as the right place to run to and to hide from a life of constant sorrow. Perfect in fact. A thousand miles north, a boss job, make all the money, buy an expensive set of wheels and return to Edmonton as a hero. Strut into the Strathcona Hotel, dressed in fine raiment, shout a round for the house, stay personally drunk for a month and then retire into a leisurely rest home, sporting a mild liver disorder and as a gentleman. Pure fantasy. Straight fiction. Today I smile at that howler and I know I was some kind of fool in 1976.

      Ailments of every description, no cash, hundreds and hundreds of mystery miles in front of me but I wasn’t worried. Hell, way back in ’76 I was a small – time thief, never one to take more than I needed and there had to be every manner of foodstuffs and groceries between Ed. and W.H.

      In a tight situation, I had always counted on thievery as being a necessary talent to survival and in ’76 I was being squeezed and would do what I had to do.

      The places I slept you wouldn’t read about. In ditches, in razed and abandoned shacks, inside rusty and wrecked cars, in fields, under bushes and trees. And I had no sleeping bag. No. Only a moldy old blanket I had scrounged from a pair of University students, good folks I had last known and stayed with back in Edmonton.

      The weather was a loyal friend in ’76 and I did the right thing and thanked and praised God for a fine and mighty northern Alberta summer. It was sunshine and blue sky, all the way up and over a blasted and twisted mountain road. ‘Could be a whole lot worse,’ I thought but quietly realized I’d have to think more on this concept.

      The rides weren’t important and not worth mentioning so I’ll pass on describing them and keep passing on ordinary circumstance. I’m not big on frivolous detail. Use your imagination folks.

      I must say, only a real strange person would have even thought of giving me a ride. Any driver could see I was down and dirty and didn’t give a damn and I had that deep and dangerous look of a drifter. Positively, I rode with idealists and illusionists, maybe people nuts on bad drugs but certainly no one in a square – john frame of mind. No.

      I humped that sad and lonely road for a week and longer and it was a tough passage. You would have missed my smilin’ face. Except for a brief stop and reprieve in Grande Prairie, it was a dull and dismal journey.

      Jim and Grace had a house and home in G.P. and in the relatively short time I was there, as their guest, I quickly went from, “Welcome,” to, “When ya’ all leavin’?”

      I may have felt like a low cur at having gobbled Jim’s food and for having swilled Jim’s liquor and at having further abused his hospitality by doing the same to his friends. At the time and mindful of my place and position, I had felt so damned grateful for Jim’s cordiality and compassion, I had fervently contemplated thanking Grace into the bedroom for a bit of cuddle and snuggle.

      But no, not a great idea. Jim was a bug in his own unique way. Jim was a connoisseur of high – velocity weaponry and I was fully aware of Jim’s qualified love for his guns and of the indisputable fact that he would not hesitate and was fully prepared to use them, had anyone given him perfect reason. A shining incident such as me screwing his wife would have been one of them. Jim would never have appreciated an item of this description. No and in a perverse type of way, Jim would have welcomed the moment and been indebted to me. Nothing personal. Jim has ever been awaiting a special point in time. Jim is, latently, the most dangerous man I have ever had the good fortune and pleasure to call friend.

      Accordingly, I passed on a forbidden liaison with Grace as being harebrained and impetuous. Astuteness of this persuasion has begat the natural consequence of me having remained sound and whole and only somewhat re–arranged over the many years. Self–preservation has always been at the very top of my list of priorities and values.

      Still, it may have been embarrassing and uncomfortable for Jim, to have had to explain to his friends in G.P. and to G.P. as a whole, after I had gone away, just what manner of thug – like characters he had known at one time, back down Edmonton way.

      Whitehorse! I had made it without getting caught or killed. A big rig let me go and I immediately gravitated towards a 2 A.M. bar – beat I could not ignore. Now…

      Whoever had driven me to the outskirts of G.P. and put me on the road had been pleased to shoot me a double – sawbuck to jingle in my jeans. Hell, he got away cheap. After the fuss and commotion I had raised in G.P., he had every right and reason to expect no less than this good ol’ boy asking for his truck and demanding his watch and wallet.

      And so I had a few dollars and was prepared to drop it on any cheap thrill but fate stepped in and I fell across an acquaintance from the southern days. And he was buying.

      Much later, thru the blur of a smoky alcoholic cloud, just like in the movie, a brown eyed girl across the room and she owned a green metal – flaked Cadillac. Marga was her name and she was a metropolitan and cosmopolitan class of lady. She knew petticoats and palaces. She took me home. To