An Even Bigger Butterfly, Part 11 and then some.
Adolf's car was a brutalized mess just forward of the driver's side door, but none of the Unseemly Trinity were injured. This doesn't explain a blessed thing, I realize, and so it's time to tell you Something Important.
People have passed through my life, will pass through my life, and maybe some of you are transients now. Some of you will come in and leave more often than I'd like; some will stay for no good reason, or leave for the same.
When Matt and I were running our overweight white heinies off, we weren't doing it for Adolf, Muggs, or the Gook. I wish we were. That would be the caring thing to say, the nice thing to say. The truth is that we were running for someone who slip by us one time too often.
We were running for a kid named Joe Barbiero.
Matt wasn't always the cuddly drummer boy he is today (ever see Jason Patric, the actor from Lost Boys, Rush, and Geromino, with a beard? That's Matt.) He was a clean-faced kid from The Hill when I met him. He'd been hanging out one day, and had made the acquaintance of a slick little hipster from Fair Haven (this being Barbiero...at Notre Dame, you get an insulting nickname, a self-enforced title, or you lose your first name for four years.) In Matt's sophomore year (my junior one), Joe introduced us. We hit it off immediately, two incredibly manly music geeks with good teeth and questionable judgment.
Joe was trouble, and he was one of the best friends I ever had (namely, because of his troublesome nature.)
I first met him during my first freshman year (I had two, because I was so good at it). He tagged along back to the house for lunch, along with two other misfits. After a lengthy discussion of how tough he was, we decided to wrestle.
I learned a lot that day; namely, never let a Fair Haven kid keep his keys, or he'll smash them into your genitals, several times, with great force and alacrity (I have two older sisters; it wasn't debilitating until later in the evening.)
Given this bizarre melee, we decided that we should be friends. He was obviously a great fighter (ok, he was a cheap-shot artist...but an artist, nonetheless!) and I was clearly a great strategist (I let him wear himself out abusing my family jewels, then fell on him at top speed)
We shared many a lighter moment, and many a lighter for many a moment, over the next three years.
He was always calling me to join him on some stilted double-date, often suggesting that I might get lucky. (Given that I was almost always due to endure the recycled affections of a girl that Joe had dumped, I don't think luck is a word I'd use.) Sometimes I went...and there'd be no girls at all, for either of us. I learned a lot of ways home from Joe's house, and I came to realize that, if he was assuring me of a ride home from one of our hangs, I'd better bring bus fare.
On September 24, 1988, he called me and asked if I wanted to tag along on a mass expedition. Several people were piling in a car, and he assured me that there would be at least one unattached girl. I demurred yet again, citing a need to actually do homework (for a change), but, in all honesty, I was really tired of being a fifth wheel. I knew some of the girls involved, and frankly, I didn't see a chance with the one I liked...nor did I trust the girl who was driving. She was Joe's girlfriend, a girl with a history of family issues and mental instability. She'd just gotten her license, so her father had either lent her a new car or bought her one. I never really asked about that part.
They'd just left her house on Hartford Turnpike in North Haven when she decided that they were better off driving down a two-lane state road at almost 100 miles per hour.
Then she turned around to talk, according to all accounts. Turned around. At 100 per.
Joe grabbed the wheel, or tried to. He wasn't wearing a seltbelt.
The car swerved, hit a low retaining wall, and bounced. Joe was already through the windshield when the car flipped twice.
It took a few hours for the chest trauma to finish him.
That's what Matt and I saw, not a carful of friends broadsided at just-past-walking speed.
Adolf, Gook, and Muggs were fine. In retrospect, it was obvious that Matt and I were not (in comparison).
You'd think that this, with all its delays and stammering attempts (on my part) to write it, is close to the end.
No. The car accident was the biggest event of that evening, but this is not just about that evening.
A stone has been cast, and it is still in mid-air. The ripples are yet to come.