Death on Alii

WARNING: NOT AN EASY READ

The only thing Jason ever said to me was, “Sorry, sister.” In my head I sneered back, “I’m not your sister.” The apology lame. Issues with my upstairs neighbors.

His friends parked their cars in my parking space, even after I told them that the guest parking was just across the parking lot. While I don’t have a car or any use for the space, it is directly in front of my condo. The visitors brought loud music and conversations that filtered into my bedroom window, some times past midnight. The irritation pushed me to complain to the condo office. It wasn’t the first complaint. Before I arrived on island, the police had been called to quell a domestic disturbance.

Every day life carries all sorts of challenges. My challenge was to keep peace with my neighbor. But, Jason faced greater demons, ones I can only imagine and then not very well. His “sorry sister” apology was delivered with too much friendliness, a type of familiarity that drifts through the air when someone is intoxicated. Jason and his parade of friends were a nuisance. Yes, I lost a little sleep, found oil stains on my parking space (I'm responsible to keep it clean), but the crossing of our paths left my life unscathed.

Until this afternoon. I only heard the impact, a loud yet muffled sound, the type of sound a baseball bat makes when striking a pillow. Something wasn’t right about that sound right outside my condo. It happened fast and stopped suddenly. The sound of flesh meeting metal, flesh crashing on pavement.

On the asphalt heated by the mid afternoon sun, Jason laid bleeding. Struck by a motorcycle, carried down the street, his body bounced off the pavement, not like a rag doll, but like the body of a man, twisted and confused. He came to rest face down. Seconds later a stream of blood ran out from beneath his head. Slight gasps of air gurgled as his body tried to do what it had instinctively done since birth. Breathe.

My towel cradled his head soaked in red. It was all I could offer. Others got there first. I turned to my Lord and prayed.

It could have been a gun battle, except the motorcycle laid wrecked further down the hill. Twenty feet away from Jason the motorcyclist, also drunk and doing sixty in a 30 mile per hour zone, was sprawled face down. His blood looked like Jason's, thick and dark as it seeped away from him, no different than a bad oil leak.

A woman dressed in a short black dress check for a pulse. She yelled over, "Does he have a pulse?" I looked at Jason's wrist. I didn't answer. I don't know if anyone did. In the distance sirens screamed. She turned the motorcyclist over and began to administer CPR. The sirens were too far away, on an island that suddenly seemed so big. He’d never know who he struck.

There was too much blood. The thickness crawled along the pavement, as if it tried to escape the place it had always been. When they rolled Jason over to allow air to reach his brain, his mouth was filled with blood, his face smeared with flesh. The indignity of force stripped his pants from his waist exposing him. But he would never know the embarrassment.

I've never seen a body so broken. I turned away and clutched my chest. I felt my heart beat, but how fragile it was.

It is not often that Alii Drive becomes a quiet street. Traffic in both directions halted. The sounds of Sunday afternoon became muffled whispers of speculation. Residents, joggers, walkers, bikers all stopped to study what had happened. As if we could understand and put it back together. One moment a man, standing in the middle in a wide center turn lane, carrying a bag of ice is displaced when motorcyclist coincidentally arrives in the same time and place. Two lives collide with such force life is knocked right out of both.

I never heard the ambulance leave. Jason and the motorcyclists were pronounced dead before it arrived at the hospital.

Tonight, the neighbors set a lei on the bougainvillea near the spot where Jason's bag of ice landed. Two men lost their lives just outside my condo. I don’t suppose you see souls rise from catastrophe. Too bad. I waited. If I saw Jason's soul standing there I would say, “Sorry Brudah.” And mean it.