Summer of '71 Chapter 19

So, you may be asking, did this really happen?
Yeah, it happened, alright.
I and a bunch of friends went out for an afternoon of fun and instead we got caught up in a murder-suicide; a personal tragedy with really bizarre overtones.
A young man my age was so troubled that he was able to convince himself and two of his closest friends that he should die, and they made it happen.
I was troubled that summer too, and so were many young men my age who still worried that their lives would be cut short by being sent to Vietnam.
We still had Richard Nixon to deal with, and Watergate was still on the horizon.
Chuck Zeller had to work that day, so he heard all the gory details later that evening.
John Marcone, Chuck and I and Bruce Zane from Wenonah were looking forward to going to a new college down in Atlantic County. We found an apartment in Pleasantville in August, and John and I had a few "adventures" before school started.
Keith Madden, Lynette Kean and Alan Kinkle were headed back to Gateway for their Senior year.
I would lose track of Dave Yurkow that fall, but I would link back up with him the following summer.
I saw Sherri Ehlers a few more times that summer, and we parted "just friends".
I don't know what happened to the boys who so willingly put an end to their friend's life.
Who knows how it affected their families.
I quit my job at Underwood-Memorial Hospital soon after the incident and just bummed around till college began, even though I really needed the money.
I wasn't too bothered by it all, but every now and then I would have the same dream over and over.
The body of a young man would come floating up to the surface of a lake and I would come face to face with it, its hands a chalky white, its face all purple and blue.
The body of a young man who walked into a sand wash on a moon-lit night in June.

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