Night Errands, and Erin’s Knight

It was undoubtedly her. One glance sparked me back to the grainy, olden day, home movie reel likeness of a knobby-kneed ten year old chasing her older brother’s best friend around their garage while gleefully exclaiming, “I’m gonna give you the chicken-pox!”

And so she had.

Well, so be it. I had come here with the goal in mind of visiting Memory Lane, and there Memory Lane was, sitting at a hastily assembled Friday night table overflowing with estrogen and empty shot glasses. Funny, of all the girls Tommy and I had known back in the day that this should be the one I happen upon on this here and now quest?

This juke joint had once been a hang-out of Tommy’s and mine, but like everything else it had changed. It was louder now, or maybe it was as loud back then and I simply hadn’t cared. In any event, like most changes, the ones taking place here did not seem to be for the better, so I set down my empty bottle along with a couple of bucks and headed for the door. I had almost made it out when I noticed Erin sitting quietly at an otherwise super-loud, “girl’s night out” party table. I hesitated for the briefest moment, unsure of what reaction seeing me might bring, but I was unwilling to pass on the opportunity to talk to her, so circled the table and tapped the back of her shoulder, using the nickname I used to tease her with when she was a kid to catch her attention. “Ernie?” I bent low and close to be heard above the din, so close that we were eye to eye when she turned, so that I saw every emotion flashing inside them; confusion, recognition, surprise… joy.

It was relieving to find joy in there. Almost immediately Erin grabbed my hand in hers and hustled me away from the table and up to the empty dance floor, almost as if she was embarrassed to be seen with me. I resisted, but she was insistent, tugging ever harder. There was an upbeat song playing, but I am no dancer, nor was I in any mood for dancing, nor was this shit dance floor in this tiny bar a decent place for dancing, but what could I do? It caused me to wonder how long the table full of young women had been at it, and just how drunk she was?

Thankfully, Erin wasn’t embarrassed of me. And no, it wasn’t dancing that was on her mind, at least not dancing in the normal sense. But yes, she might have had a few too many.

Once alone at the dance floor’s center we were probably mistaken for lovers, what with the way ’Lil Ernie leaped straightaway into my arms, throwing her legs around my waist, and wrapping her arms around my neck for all of the jealous sinners in the place to witness, pulling herself tightly up against me… exactly as she had that time when she was eleven and her neighbor’s big dog had gotten loose, and I’d been the one who’d come running to her screams. The way she clung gave me the impression that she was still that frightened little girl, even if she did look all grown up now. Her closed lips settled on my ear; not kissing… just comfortably there, breathing their warm breaths. My own arms had wrapped around her lower back, holding her protectively, ensuring that she wouldn’t fall. The seconds ticked by, and the minutes, and the songs. Effortlessly I held her. She should have grown heavy, but somehow did not. Tighter and tighter she squeezed til a teardrop tickled as it circled my inner ear.

And then the hard questions flowed. ”What happened, Huck? Why him? Where were you? How could you let it?”

It’s not easy being that big in a little girl’s eyes. I liked to think that nothing I could have said or done would have changed anything, but she was right. Deep down I knew it. I could have been the difference. I always had been before, back when I was here. But that was exactly why I’d left, wasn’t it?

Only the white knight can know how heavy is the armor, and how weary of wearing it one grows. But to cast that armor aside and stand naked is no more comfortable, is it?

Poor girl. It was the wrong sort of hero‘s web she had spun around the wrong sort of hero.

Hell, her Galahad had not even come home for the funeral.