cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Murder I'm back in the US now. All sorts of shit going on. The big thing starts about a third of the way into this entry. Munich was great, etc. etc. The motherboard on Trish's laptop (which ( was borrowing) randomly fried its self en route so I was without wi-fi the entire time. Shit, so much to write about and no idea where to start. On my flight from Atlanta to Paris the left engine of the 767 crapped out. First the electrical system for that engine failed, then about 15 minutes later the backup electrical system also failed. Long story short, we made an emergency landing in Greenville, SC. There were fire trucks and shit waiting for us on the runway and this little commuter airport had no means of dealing with a fucking 767 showing up in the middle of the night with 300 people on board. It was a whole thing, and in the end it took me a total of about 2 days to get to Germany. I'll post about Germany later. My first 'deer hunting for locavores' class was yesterday evening and it went great. I have a full class and every confidence that the rest of the course will go well. I'm teaching deer anatomy next weekend, then the following weekend I'm taking the class on a field trip to a shooting range. My surgery is in 2 days. I am pretty much fully accepting of it. It's become about more than just fixing my elbow. This sounds kind of sick, but I feel like its also some kind of crucible of pain for me to go through. Like walking in and voluntarily being sliced open and going through recovery is some sort of pennance for every wrong I have ever committed. I want the pennance. I want to face the pain and to emerge from it. Now for the big stuff. Oh boy. 40 years ago today my father's house burned to the ground. He was 17 years old. My grandmother and 5 of the kids died, including my father's 4 year old sister, Casey. My grandfather built a new house over the basement of the old one and he still lives there. Yesterday a strange car pulled up in front of his house and a man stepped out. Seeing my grandfather looking out of a window, he asked "excuse me, is this where the ******* was that burned down 40 years ago?" My grandfather answered, 'yes, it is. I'm Dave *******.' Stranger "I'm an old friend of [my father's name]." My grandfather: "Hold on a minute, I'll be right out." It turned out that this guy, showing u pat that doorstep 40 years after the fire was none other than Billy H*rsman. Billy H*rsman was a guy who my father went to high school with. I'd always heard stories about what a weird fuck he was. My father was in a band that played actual gigs, which is a big deal in high school. This guy Billy became a sort of hanger-on. A groupie that came to all of their shows and would randomly show up to hang out during practices. But the guy always rubbed my father wrong. He was a pathalogical liar. Very, very charming when he needed to be, but a liar and ultimately a sociopath. He also worked as a roadie for the D**rs for a while and stole a notebook full of Jim M*rrison's poetry, which my father saw and then months later heard the same lyrics when 'The Soft Parade' came out. At some point during a band practice my father told the other members of the band that he didn't want Billy hanging around any more. He laid his cards on the table and went through all of the shit that made this guy a total piece of shit. Remember this, because it is important. About a month later, my father's whole family was on vacation and while they were gone a handgun was stolen from the house. A neighbor later said he saw Billy H*rsman climbing through a window, but he didn't do anything or call the police because he "didn't want to get involved." Fast foward a few more months. Late September, 1969. Late at night, the house burst into flames. My father, his brother and a cousin had a bedroom in the basement and they got out through a window. Both of my grandparents got out, but then they still had to get the other 6 kids out. My grandmother went back into the fire and my grandfather was on the roof of the front porch. She was trying to get each kid and pass them to my grandfather, where he would carry them to the ground. They managed to get one of my aunts out alive. My grandmother and 5 kids died. A few days later, word got out that Billy H*rsman had bragged to someone at school that he had been the one who set the fire. That person called the police, who started an investigation but never really went anywhere. Billy had been known to be a habitual liar, so they didn't take him all that seriously. Not long afterwards, he was charged with raping a police officer's daughter. Then he disappeared and nobody knew where we went or what had become of him. Until yesterday, when he showed up at my grandfather's doorstep. He said "My name is Billy H*rsman." "I know your name. I know who you are," my grandfather replied. "You burned my house down and murdered my family 40 years ago." "Nothing was ever proven. They never proved that it was arson. You know, I still visit the family's graves every time I come back here." There was more, but I'll skip over it for now. The bottom line is that the way that he spoke, the words he used and the tone of voice he said it in, made it clear that he was the arsonist. And why else would he show up at that house 40 years after the fire? He wasn't close to any of the victims. It would have otherwise meant next to nothing to him. Certainly he had no good reason to be showing up at the scene of the crime. In the course of several phone calls last night, my father found out that Billy H*rsman had been standing right behind him when he announced that he didn't want him coming to practices or hanging around any more. Motive, confession, revisiting the scene of the crime. Billy H*rsman is the murderer. I finally know who killed my grandmother and my aunts and uncles. We found out where he lives. This shit isn't over. I don't care if it's been 40 years or 40 minutes since the crime. This shit is just getting started. I'm not letting Billy H*rsman die a free man. 2:15 p.m. - 2009-09-21 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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