A bridge underpass just outside of town....... winter 2012...... Poconos.....
The young woman who had died of an overdose under a bridge below a highway under-pass, was not the wandering homeless vagrant that her finders thought her to be. She was in reality the married mother of three and had lived in a nice home only ten miles from this lonely stretch of highway where she was discovered by passing motorists on a cold January day. She was also a girl that I was in love with as a teenager back in rural Pennsylvania. Målin was a blue jeans and t-shirt kind of upstate girl, with deep brown impish eyes and shoulder length auburn hair that was the same color as sugar maple leaves in Autumn. She was an inscrutable girl who loved to collect small antique glass bottles and vintage cups and plates. She projected a very flea market-down on the farm-upstate aura, but also had a very, very dark side. I was deeply saddened, but not shocked upon hearing of her tragic end.
Summer late 1980s ...... another rural area close by ......
"Oh Fritz, you're calling so late!", we're all asleep here, just go to bed, Ill see you tomorrow". Målin then hung up the phone on me. I was standing in the dark dumbfounded, still holding onto the now dead reciever for a good long five minutes after she hung up on me. I stood staring outside and I could see fireflies through the kitchen window sparkling on and off in the moonlit night. I was preoccupied however with her surprising abruptness on the telephone and I felt like she didn't want to talk to me because I had interrupted something that she didnt want me to know about. My heart started racing and my head spinning... I could sense that something was wrong but I just couldn't put my finger on it. I heard several screech owl's ghostly calls coming from the deep forest across the street as I dashed out into the starry night, hopped on my five-speed bicycle and sped off to Målins home, about one mile away. The sky overhead was unbelievably beautiful and clear, I could see the entire Milky way and every constellation possible including the North star and Ursa Major. The entire heavens above were illuminated and glowing so brightly as to actually cast soft shadows on the trees and objects below. Those shadows were very dark though and made it hard to see any distance away, as this was rural America and so there were no street lights on the country road as I peddled through the eerie blackness. I lost all light as I passed the power lines and sped through Brendon Park, which was really just a desolate area of dense forest broken with small openings due to the power lines. The trees grew thicker and thicker and soon draped over the road and blocked all of the sky above. I could hear a Whip-poor-will calling louder and louder as I flew through the darkest and scariest area of my ride. I still did not know why I was driven to go to her house... they were all asleep, what was I expecting to find? I realize now that I was following my inner voice and that inner voice, that intuition, is never wrong.
My heart was beating faster and I was sweating as the Whip-poor-wills lonely call echoed more and more incessantly. I got to the top of the hill and an escape from the pitch black forest, as I was now in the silver light of the moon and the stars again. I saw a huge meteor streak across the horizon and disappear as I stopped to walk my bike by the long stretch of hay fields just before Målin's home. I could smell the sweet golden hay and could also see dozens of fireflies blinking in the small veil of mist that hung over the meadow like a blanket of low clouds. All of a sudden the Whip-poor-will stopped... and I heard the whispers of a young girl and boy talking softly and giggling. They were also smoking weed and in each others arms in a flattened area of hay by an apple tree. The Whip-poor-will started again, louder and louder, as I shouted out "Målin!".
I was devastated, she had lied to me and was cheating on me with some dirty, long-haired, drugged out hippie that hung out in the dive bars on the wrong side of the tracks of town. Målin chased after me and tried to calm me down, but I was done with her. We had been dating for over a year and I always knew somehow that she had been leading secret lives and loves behind my back, I just didn't want to see it at the time.
She ruined so much for me. My former love of the whip-poor-wills call would only remind me of that night of betrayal and the loss of a large part of my innocence and my youthful wonder of nature. I walked my bike back home crying, I was seventeen.
A few years later...... the same old town......
I found out later that Målin had been seeing several paramours behind my back and that she was also heavily into weed, speed, coke and anything else that she and her close friend Ni-ni could get their hands on. I felt like a fool and that everything between us had been a lie. I was shocked and completely turned off by all of this discovery as I never touched any drugs and did not even drink alcohol. I also found out later that she and all of her siblings were addicted to heroin and were all then on methadone programs. It was in that moment of "seeing the light" and real clarity that I no longer felt foolish or jealous at all, just very relieved that nothing had worked out between us. What a tragedy that would have been... I was spared the black hole of addiction.
I felt such deep empathy for her parents who were wonderful to me and I was shocked at all of this outcome, because they also did not smoke or drink and kept a beautiful, loving home.
Målin had all of the things that I didn't have and wanted so badly... but she threw it all away.
The brutal truth came out later, when Målins mother told me many sad and insightful stories about the family. It seems that both of her parents and her brother had all been raging alcoholics and had abused Målins mother terribly, even beating her physically and emotionally. Målins father also grew up in a similar scenario over a tavern, with alcoholic parents who ran it... and he never wanted to return to that nest of addiction either. He didn't have to though, sadly both of his parents died in their forties from cirrhosis of the liver.
Only now today, can I understand what happened with compassion and sympathy. The addictive pattern had skipped a generation, but was reborn with Målin and her siblings. I can still remember to this day how she would love to wear my flannel shirts or big sweaters just like my sister would. I can recall building bluebird houses to put on the old fenceposts that surrounded the horse pasture and sitting in the swinging chair under a quince tree, with a beautiful view of the hills beyond their small farm. It was a stunning panorama of rural America... golden hay fields divided by old stone fences, apple orchards and a background of endless forests of pine, oak, hemlock and birch trees. It all seems like a time and place that never really happened now.
I felt great sorrow for her parents, especially her mother who is still alive today and living in another state, alone.
Copyright @ 2015 All Rights Reserved
Written by Fritz Von Ludwigslust
Photo by Fritz V.L.
