Hillbrush Park
by m.s.wardrip
Take Tommy Scott for example. That kid lived next door to us when we were growing up. Tommy got killed at least five times that I knew of. He as ran completely over by a semi-tractor-trailer. I saw it with my own eyes. He fell out of a one hundred foot tall oak tree. He drank poison. He got beat up by the Ferguson brothers and I heard he was in other non-survivable car crashes. The kid was tough and you couldn’t kill him. He had a weak side and that was girls. He would give them whatever they asked of him. It didn’t matter what it was, it made him feel important to give those girls anything they wanted. Most girls just played him to see how far he would go. It was a game. They would get him feeling sorry for them and then come in for the kill. He lost over a hundred thousand dollars like this. They nickle and dimed him to death. Not just a few but quite a few we on to him and sucker bled him dry. He didn’t care. He just was happy to give. Happy to live.
Tommy Scott was tough and he knew how to make money. He would dare a business owner to do business with him. He would guarantee double their money back if he failed to meet certain quotas. He always met or exceeded what he said he would do. He was good at what he did. He insisted on affordable quality. He got the most bang for his buck. He was a bully and a saint. A warrior and a peacemaker. A troublemaker and a problem solver. Tommy Scott always got his way, even with the girls. He was playing them to watch them play him. He took pleasure in being taken. Haha! What a nut!
Then there was the edge. Tommy hit the edge when he started down the long lonely road of prescription painkillers. A simple fall down the stairs and a broken arm that left him in pain started him on the road and he just sped up running down that road until it came to a brick wall sudden stop.
Tommy was dead from a massive heart attack induced by an overdose of prescription pain killers. They killed his pain alright. They also killed Tommy. Tommy’s Dad was devastated. Everyone told him what a good guy Tommy was but it didn’t ease the blow. He just wasn’t ready for his son to die.
Hillbrush Park is where Tommy used to come to be alone. He said he used to come here to paint with his words. Tommy was a poet. Here are some of his words in a poem.
“Big Terrible Thunder”
by Thomas Scott
Ten thousand rounds of mouse tracks encircle a single carcass,
They gather by the hundreds to witness the dismantling,
A chunk here, a whisker there,
A tooth disappears, fur flies quick.
A day, a week, a month later,
The smell dies away,
No sign of a groundhog,
No telltale skeleton evidence is on the scene.
A young boy fell off a cliff,
With his parents on vacation,
In the mountains the boy watched TV,
A movie about a mountain man's journey,
Out West and beyond, the hero adventured,
So did the boy, right into the night,
Into the forest, and over the edge,
To his certain death, no imagination,
Dead, really dead,
Call off the search,
Go home rescuers,
All hope is lost.
Witness the dismantling.
