God Saved Gale Myers

God Saved Gale Myers, the Lone Pine Gazette front page read. Ernie Roy, the last remaining reporter of the small-town weekly, caught up with Gale less than an hour after he’d returned home from a business trip in New York City. The date was September 13th, 2001.

Gale flew from New York to Mill Haven, then hailed a cab for a three-hour ride back home. The congregation of nosey bored Lone Pine residents awaited his return like the second coming. For the first time, the quiet cul-de-sac gravel road of Reese Settlement was ripe with anticipation.

He looked anxiously out the window as the taxi slowed to a crawl amidst the wave of trespassers and on-lookers. His right hand continued brushing back his thinning, sweat infused hair. A nervous tick Gale had since the balding began back in the 80s, when he was only nineteen.

The voice of Meredith, his ex-wife who had flown the coop two years back, echoed in his mind like a migraine. “You can dress him up, but you can’t take him out. You can dress him up, but you can’t take him out.” Those words invaded his thoughts more often than he’d care to admit. He hated her guts, but what he hated more was that she was right.

His tie hung loosely around his neck like a noose, and his shirt was wrinkled and damp. After all these years in insurance, wearing the same outfit each day like a cartoon character, he never wore it well. Circumstances be damned, he always looked like he’d woken up in Tijuana after a week long bender.

“I ain’t never seen no more than a couple of folks down this way in my whole life.” Jimmy Mann, the cabbie said. “Gale Myers, a goddamn rockstar. Well, I’ll be damned.”

“Can you turn around, please? Jimmy, can you do me a solid and turn around? I-I-I can’t deal with this. No way. No way.” His head was shaking back and forth, and his hands were waving in front of him like he was a hockey referee calling back a goal. “No way, no way!”

“I’m turning around alright, but you sure as hell ain’t going to be in this cab. Now get out of here. If you play your cards right, you could be a housewife’s early morning regret.” Jimmy ended the conversation with a wink and a smile.

Gale sighed and opened the door. Meredith’s voice returning. “You never stand up for yerself. You let everyone push you around. Are you even a man, eh? Is there anything down there?” She used to say this before grabbing him by the testicles and laughing.

He got out of the car and looked around at all the folks that had never paid him a second’s worth of attention in his 36 years on this planet.

“Gale, Gale. Glad to see ya, buddy. Welcome home. Welcome home.” His old math teacher, Bruce Jensen, and his wife Polly called out.

“That must have been so terrifying, Gale. We’re here if you ever need anything,” said the Allen sisters, Helen and Gertrude, who had humiliated Gale throughout his time at Lone Pine primary, middle, and high. But were now thinking of ways that smart ole Gale could monetize this tragedy. And when he did, they’d be there offering a shoulder to cry on. Or whatever else it was that Gale needed to help him get past the trauma.

Tony Mancini, the owner of Mancini’s Pizzeria on Albert Road, yelled out, “free pizza for a year, for this guy right here.” Then he started clapping, urging the rest to follow suit. “Come on, everyone, clap for Gale. The survivor.”

“Gale! Gale! Gale! Gale!”

Gale walked through the crowd, nodding his head and forcing what he hoped was a convincing fake smile. Hands were outstretched. He shook them, thanked them and finally walked up the three steps to his front door, tripping on the last one. Meredith again reminding him that a real man would have fixed those steps by now, but who was she kidding? Gale wasn’t no real man.

“Thank you everyone. I really appreciate this. But I need some rest. It’s been an exhausting trip, to say the least. Thank you.”

“Who saved you Gale, because we know you didn’t save yourself?” Meredith’s sister, Connie, yelled out in a vain attempt at humiliating him. She nudged Meredith in the ribs, making sure she didn’t miss her genius quip. Meredith was too busy looking at her ex-husband with intense hatred to notice her sister.

Connie rolled her eyes, and returned her gaze to Gale, feeling proud of her shallow dig. Always a loyal follower of the mantra, “for every peg another is knocked down, is one more that I climb.”

Gale answered. “God saved me. God saved me,” trying to make it seem like he didn’t notice them at all. For this small Catholic community, that was the right answer. The crowd cheered for Gale Myers like they had in his dreams so many times before. He waved the peace sign with both hands and went inside.

Ernie sat in his red Chevrolet that was parked across the street. He wrote the quote God saved me in his handy little notebook. Headlines were often the hardest part of the job, but sometimes they just jumped right out at you. He chewed on his toothpick, waiting for the crowd to thin before eventually evaporating. Then he would get his story.

On the other side of the door, Gale sat on his carpeted floor, trying to rip the tie off of his shirt. He was declining into one of his famous panic attacks. “Calm down, buddy. Calm down. It’s okay. It’s ooookay.” He kept repeating through sharp breaths.

He reached in his pocket for his little orange bottle of pills. There were only five tablets of Xanax left, and he dry swallowed them all, before laying on the carpet and staring at the ceiling fan.

Gale found that trying to focus on an individual blade occupied his mind enough to relieve some of the panic, when he was facing code red anxiety.

The fan and the sound of cars, and chattering men and women leaving his property brought some temporary calm. “Get out here. Go Home. Please. Go Home.” Gale said, as he rubbed the carpet back and forth with both hands.

As soon as the dust settled from the cars heading out of Reese Settlement, Ernie got out of his Tacoma and made his way to the door. He was out of shape, and his big belly jiggled over his work pants as he strutted down the gravel driveway.

“Wait till Henderson gets a hold of this.” He said, thinking about his new boss, Jordan Henderson. The bastard that was trying to push out the old small town reporters, in favour of young city ones, who could simultaneously cover both areas.

Henderson had been on Ernie’s case for a few months now, since the story-well had dried up in Lone Pine. “We need some stories, Ernie, and we need them now, my friend.”

“My friend, I’ll show ya my goddamn friend”, Ernie said to himself while grabbing his crotch. He laughed and jotted it down in his notebook, in case he ever got the chance to use it for real on his good old pal, Henderson.

Ernie knocked on the door. “Hey, Gale. Ernie here with the Gazette, I’d love to talk to ya for a few minutes.”

“You fucked my wife. I had to do it. I had to do it.” Gale said, “I am a man, Meredith. I can do what has to be done! I can!”

“Uh, Gale? I can hear your voice, but I don’t have a clue what you’re saying. Could you come to the door, please?”

Gale looked over in the direction of the voice. “Who is it?” He yelled.

“Ernie, pal. Ernie.”

“Oh, Ernie. My friend. My good friend, Ernie. Come on in. It’s unlocked.”

Ernie came in and saw Gale lying on his back, laughing at a joke no one told.

“Jesus, buddy. Let me help you up.”

Gale was a 120 lbs soaking wet, and Ernie was pushing the 300 mark, so he hauled him to his feet with little to no effort, and brought him over to LAZ-y boy in his living room.

He went to the kitchen and poured a glass of water from the sink. “Here, buddy. Take this. Take this.”

“Thanks, Ernie. You were always good to me. The rest of em are vultures.”

He drank the whole glass in one shot, and sat it down on the coffee table, next to Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. The book was open, and he had a quote circled.

“Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be?”

“You can ask your questions, Ernie.” Gale said, lighting a cigarette from his breast pocket, and tapping the ashes into the cup that Ernie brought him. The cup read Insurance Assurance Award 1997.

“You sure, Gale? I can wait.”

“No, no. Go ahead. I always wanted to be interviewed for the paper. Funny thing is, I used to shower all the time and pretend I was getting interviewed by Leno, or Johnny Carson, or something. Always trying to perfect my answers, so that I sounded smart and articulate, ya know?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Well, first man, tell me a little about what happened. What were you doing there?”

“Well, ya know James Eberle? Grew up around here. Well, he was working for an insurance company there, and I flew over to see him. Talk a little business. I’m thinking of expanding and you know, he’s a big shot. I’m one of the little guys. I, uh, thought he could provide me a little advice. Maybe even a loan”

“That couldn’t have been a phone call?” Ernie asked, followed by his signature snort and chuckle.

“Yeah, yeah. It could have been. But I wanted to see the city. He paid for my flight, so I thought, why not?”

Ernie wrote in his notepad, but thought that Gale sounded a little suspicious. Sure, he could chalk that up to Gale’s traumatic experience, but he’d done a lot of interviews, especially in his hey-day and he thought the man sounded off. But maybe that was the young investigative reporter from the 70s creeping up inside of him. The reporter who was an important man in those days. Not the one that was sitting on Gale’s couch.

Gale stared at him, as Meredith’s voice repeated, “You killed him, Gale. You killed him, Gale”

“Shut up, Shut up.” He whispered.

“What was that?” Ernie asked.

“Sorry. Just talking to myself.” Gale answered, pulling down at the bags around his eyes with his left thumb and forefinger, while brushing his thinning hair with his right.

His head was pounding, and he was sure he was going to throw up. Five pills, Gale? Are you serious, man? He told himself.

“You sure you’re alright, buddy?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I’m okay. Just a stressful couple of days, as I’m sure you can understand.”

“I understand, buddy. It must have been awful.”

“It was.”

Gale answered the rest of Ernie’s questions, which took around fifteen minutes, then smiled for his front page headshot. Ernie told him it wasn’t pretty, but it would have to do. They both laughed at this. Then they got up, walked over to the door and shook hands before bidding adieu.

“Hey, if you ever want to grab a beer or something, let me know, eh?” Ernie said, still feeling a little suspicious, but feeling guilty too. The town never treated Gale right. He had always been nice to him, but he never stopped anyone from treating him badly either. And maybe, in some ways, he was just as guilty as the rest.

“Sounds like a plan. Bye Bye.” He closed the door, then hung his head on it. He cried deep, panicked sobs. The kind you only let out of Pandora’s Box, when the only company there is, is the guilt and pain inside your head. Meredith’s voice yelled accusations. “You killed him didn’t you, Gale? You killed him for sleeping with me, didn’t you?”

“What kind of man would just let someone sleep with their wife?” He answered. “You never thought I was worth a damn, Meredith. You never thought I was anything. Well, I’m a survivor. I made it down those stairs and out of the North Tower. I survived. I SURVIVED.” He yelled.

“You’re a murderer. How did you make it out? Who saved you Gale Myers?”

“God did. God saved me.” Then in his head, he could hear the cheers of the Lone Pine vultures.

“Gale! Gale! Gale! Gale!"

"God saved me!"