PART II- History
Travel
March 8th, 2031. It’s 0642h, and I find myself trying to figure out if the TSA agent who patted me down a few minutes ago was coming to the close of a long night, or the start of a long day. In either case, he had the word ‘sleep’ stamped across his eyes in the way that only the terminally unrested seem capable of possessing while still retaining some measure of ambulatory function. I sit now in a largely empty area of hardened blue plastic chairs, situated some fifteen feet away from a boarding agent whose squared spectacles are so powerfully reflective that I could more readily discern what’s on his computer screen display than what his eyes actually look like.
These mid-sized airports, regardless of the devotion or lack thereof to the standards of cleanliness required by the average person, always seem to have a semi-persistent aroma of dust and sweat. It isn’t the kind of thing you notice right away, especially if, like me, you are a smoker, and are only really interested in figuring out a way to locate a smoking area near your boarding gate by means of either your eyes, or, more likely, the tantalizing and familiar whiff of burning tobacco in the vicinity. But after a few minutes in one spot, unable to detect such a wonderful little sanctuary, one almost can’t help but wonder why they suddenly envision some corpulent and grotesque mush pile fo a man sitting in the chair that they’re seated upon not ten minutes earlier, wheezing asthmatically and sweating so profusely through their clothes that they have left a residual olfactory trace of themselves in the plastic. As for the dusty smell, I’ve never been able to really pin that down; running my fingers along the backs of these chairs reveals nothing.
‘Look Back Magazine’ has been more than accommodating with me as regards the expenditure of funds to secure my flight from Minnesota to Georgia, but they also didn’t want to spring for a last-minute ticket from MSP to Atlanta, and thus I find myself here, just over the state line at a fun-sized airport in Wisconsin.
The pilot and co-pilot for my flight just headed onto the plane. I thank Christ silently that they primary pilot appears to be a man in his mid-40’s with the kind of aloof swagger only veteran pilots seem capable of moving with onto an airplane. The co-pilot looks like he should be prepping for his SATs, not in charge of the lives of however many people are going to be hurtling through the air in mankind’s finest metal middle finger to the laws of gravity.
**
0732h. I’m quite thankful to have been one of the first people to situate themselves in the waiting area, because now that the rest of the hapless souls who will be my flightmates to Georgia have arrived, they have discovered the same cruel joke that most folks waiting to board planes come upon in airports the world over- there are not enough seats for everyone. I would like to just once meet the man or woman who designed these slivers of Hell’s seventh circle plopped down in the Mortal Coil, so that I can slap them and ask if they’ve ever seen the crowds for a commercial flight.
One of the ladies standing nearby, a prime candidate for the ambiguous notoriety that might be attached to an Instagram ‘model’ or ‘influencer’ years ago, is wearing so much perfume that I dare not open my mouth, because even with my lips practically glued shut, I can taste the cloying chemicals she has lathered herself in like a suicidal chicken strolling into a KFC and rolling itself in the twelve secret herbs and spices.
**
0805h. Death By Perfume is, of course, seated in the row directly in front of me here on the plane. The cosmic humour of this arrangement is not lost on me.
Somewhere here in the coach section of the plane, a couple can be heard grumbling at one another in rapid but soft-spoken Spanish. I don’t know what they’re saying, unfortunately, thanks to my foolish choice in middle and high school of taking French instead as a second language course. Despite not understanding the words themselves, I recognize the tones, which can be just as entertaining, or depressing, depending on your own perspective.
It’s a man and woman, likely a couple. The woman’s half of the dialogue is rapidfire, annoyed, and verging on the borderland of true speech and serpent-like hissing. The man’s half is much more muted, apologetic, and seems to consist of a lot of monosyllabicisms. As the last of the passengers gets situated, there’s a pause, followed by muffled laughter from both of them. The air feels suddenly a lot less tense from back there.
**
0900h. The previous tension is now emanating directly from me, and has nothing to do with anybody else on my flight. It has to do with the newsmagazines and binder-clipped printout packets I have situated on the pull-down tray hovering over my lap. I could easily have all of this material compiled in a digital dossier on my tablet, but there’s something still so appealing to me about the immediacy and permanence of feeling the glossy magaszine pages, the printed copies of website articles, as opposed to a list of hyperlinks. It’s difficult to convey if you haven’t felt something akin to it, or if you’ve done the majority of your reading in your formative years on screens instead of a physical page.
The top three pages of the clipped papers is from the New York Times’ website, dated April 17th, 2021. It is now almost a ten-year-old story, but the headline and sub-header still drive a spear of ice into my gut when I read them:
‘244 DEAD IN STUDENT MASSACRE-
Final total may be as high as 270 in school assault in Deertrack, Georgia.’
**
1100h. We are about to descend toward Atlanta, and I have returned all of my materials to my backpack. I’ve only got one checked bag to retrieve once I get into the airport proper, and it is exclusively clothes, small toiletries, and the plastic hinge-top packs of crank-rolled cigarettes that I packed pre-flight. I’ve got a travel-sized slide type cigarette maker in my backpack, so all I need for the time that I’m going to be in the area is to stop into a convenience store or tobacco shop and buy tobacco and tubes.
This is ‘The South’; I should have no trouble there.
As the plane starts to notably descend, I can’t help but find myself wondering how, if at all, the physical layout of the town of Deertrack has changed since I left last time. It has been almost five years for me, since my mother passed away. With both of my parents gone, there’s been nothing to draw me back there, until now. Part of me wonders if this assignment has been a subconscious excuse to come home, as it were.
All right, the captain has just given the final announcement.
**
1145h. The moment I thought to do so, I finally turned my cell phone back on and checked my voicemail messages. There were three, but only one of them is pertinent to my coming to Georgia, and it gives me a flutter of hope. Deertrack’s Police Chief, Felix Carlyle, called me back to let me know that he would be willing to sit down and talk to me for one of the interview pieces in this project.
In a minute here, I’ll be heading to the car rental and picking up my loaner for my time here in Georgia. Before doing so, I just want to take a moment to remind myself that this is not a ‘hometown retrospective’; this is about Delta Heights, and what happened there in 2021.
**
1515h. Deertrack, Georgia. It took me far longer to get from the airport to the southern outskirts of Atlanta than I would have initially thought. Even arriving on a weekday, the traffic in the metro itself was the sort of nightmare that one only comes across when they absolutely do not want to. I’d had no true sense of urgency, as it were, until I found myself caught in this urban gridlock; the moment I was lodged in it, I felt an enormous pressure in my chest, threatening to crush my lungs if I didn’t get out of the city and get out NOW.
That having been said, I’m now at a TransAmerica Inn just five or six minutes west of Deertrack proper. I took a little cruise around the outskirts of the town, making a long, looping circuit around its borders, reminding myself of what the town is like along the edges. The onrush of memories that I thought might be waiting for me didn’t come.
I seemed to have forgotten how little time I spent on the town’s actual borders. Most of my childhood and formative years were spent downtown, in the heart of this quiet, semi-rural suburb of Atlanta. I’m putting off going to the town square or anywhere near the school until tomorrow, at the earliest.
For the time being, I intend to use the take-out menu to order some pizza, and go over some of my documents.
**
2040h. So, I may have just been kidding myself earlier, thinking that I wouldn’t remember anything being out here on the edges of town, or that I wasn’t going to be leaving my rented room. It was about two hours ago that I heard what I first mistook to be an older vehicle backfiring outside, and opted to step outside to take a look. Upon exiting the room, I heard two more echoing ‘CRACK’s, and recognized them for what they were; they were firearms reports.
I headed to the check-in office down at the end of the walkway from my room and inquired with the bored-looking twenty-something overnight clerk, having recently arrived for his shift, about the sounds. “Probably some folks getting in a few rounds down to Jessler’s before they close.” Jessler’s, it turns out, is a shooting range situated half a mile down the road from the TransAmerica Inn. I wondered why I’d never heard of it before, why I couldn’t remember it, and one more inquiry with the clerk revealed why that would be; the place had opened for business just four years ago. It hadn’t been out here when I was a kid.
People often remark upon how much their hometowns change in their absence, especially if it has been a long time since they were back. I hadn’t thought it would be so disorienting for me personally, but as I returned to my room, I thought back. When I’d been in Deertrack to attend my mother’s funeral, I hadn’t really taken in my surroundings. I had been so absorbed in the ritual motions of seeing to her funeral arrangements and attending to the business of it all that I’d numbed myself, consciously or otherwise, to the environment around me outside of the immediate. I had stayed, at the time, in the house that had been hers and my father’s, the home where I’d grown up. They had made so few changes to it in the time since I left for college that it had all sort of blurred for me.
And I’d left the very next day after her service. My only contact with the bank had consisted of giving them the okay to list the house with a local real estate broker. She’d e-mailed me all of the pertinent documents when a buyer showed interest. Everything was handled officially and efficiently through e-mail and standard mail, with my never having to set foot back in Deertrack until now.
Not counting those few days to take care of my mother, I hadn’t been back here in over a decade. And a decade, dear reader, can change a lot of things about a town.
**
2130h. Before turning in for the night here, a note about the following section. What will follow in the coming pages are re-prints of several articles produced for various outlets in the days and weeks following the Delta Heights Massacre in 2021. Some few of these articles are more opinion/perspective piece than facts-oriented journalistic accounts, and they will be clearly marked as such after the headline, byline and contributor names are inserted, along with the source site/paper in question.