The tank driver, round 2.

I feel terrible about my character degrading post on The tank driver. I feel terrible that I judge the man, he really is a man with thoughts, a heart just like everyone else. All things I knew, All things I forgot.

Tonight the conversation drifted to drugs. Very light hearted accounts of drug induced silliness on all those nights that the comercrials tell you you'd forget.... Anyway.

At 15 the tank driver smoked pot, all he did, all he was into. The week before his 16th birthday he gave it up, Decided to be done. A month later, all the ones he smoked with got into crack. Now everyone in his clique is either dead or in prison ( know, this is pretty ass-generic, but I believed it, and felt it) When he was seven His Friend _____ showed up to his house in the summer, 4 in the mourning banging on the window of his cabin where he had been living the "infinite" life. Fishing, Drinking, Bond Fires, Girls, being young and living.

_____ told The tank driver that he needed help, he was addicted to the shit and needed out. The tank driver was accommodating. They lived "infinitely" together and ____ was clean for 3 weeks. Three weeks of living clean.

One day the lake life had to take a break (for roommates to shower, Get food, See mom). Anyway, later on the tank driver drove to pick up ____ from his mothers house.

at the house the friend was outside, yelling about money that he owed to two black men, somewhere in the $1000 dollar range. The tank driver walked passed him, going into the house... In front of the man... He heard from behind a sound.
"cap, cap"
He turned around to see his friend falling, right there on the suburban side walk of _______, Michigan. Blood. The two men jumped into the car and sped away. With the image of this 18 year old boy, with a shot in the back, and a shot to the back of the head burning in his brain, The tank driver ran to the door. Pushing _____'s mother back into the house as she is in hysterics.
"we've got to call someone, We've got to call someone."
as the tank driver runs to the phone, The mother runs to the body. Tears, Pain, life-long grieving.

A mother shouldn't bury a child.




After all this, the tank driver's mother, with a scanner that picks up police broadcasts though air waves, knows about it before he could tell it. She meets him at the door with a hug and a kiss, And an offering to share her bed and television with him for the night. She come up behind him, with her hand on his lower back, lifting his shirt off of him, telling him he needs a shower. "you cannot sleep in my bed till you shower."

The next morning (The next afternoon to be accurate). The Tank Driver was preparing chicken to be baked in his oven. Upon throwing away the packaging to his chicken, he saw the back of his black shirt in the garbage, Stained with his friends brain, skull, and blood. Wow. His mother cares. The end of hard drugs, the end of money stress for the truck driver.
apologies to the tank driver...... I Love the tank driver.