From : Dave Laird                  1:346/11                Fri 25 Jun 93 11:35 
Hello Everyone!

                               Death by Havoc
                An Episode of Life in Stevens County, U.S.A.
                               Copyright 1993
                                by Dave Laird

I have seen death, and it has seen me. I know its name and all of its
manifestations, those sometimes awkward, tedious ways in which it arrives,
unwanted and unbeckoned. Furthermore, Death knows that sooner or later I
will surrender myself to its ultimate grip. Euclid hypothesized that death
is terminal, and who am I to dispute his logic?

Those who see death often enough begin a process of transferral in which
parts of themselves become abstracted and involved with the deceased.

The stone-faced coroner turns and says to a nearby Sheriff's Deputy, "Why,
did you see that? She died reading an Ellery Queen murder magazine. Whoever
killed her did so just as she got to the juicy part and was about to find
out who the murderer was."

A corporate executive in charge of press relations intones, "George Lambert
III died of a heart attack late yesterday afternoon while tending his
garden. He left behind Felice, his widow, two sons and six grand-children.
Also killed by his passing were three tomato plants, a half row of giant
squash and three hills of corn."

A young Sheriff's Deputy, having just lost his lunch outside in the bushes,
but nonetheless writing his report, turns to another Deputy and asks, "Can I
just write down that he had a heart attack and died taking a shit? I mean,
he fell off the pot, banged his head on the chamber pot sitting next to the
toilet, but do I have to write that down, as well?"

Last week an entire Stevens County family, the Barbour's, died of wounds
sustained by havoc. In a magnificent house atop a sunny hillside overlooking
Waitts Lake, havoc started walking through the house during a prolonged
family argument turned heinous. Once havoc claimed the minds of the family,
Barbour shot his wife, then the two children who were screaming at the top
of their lungs, something he told the neighbors he never could tolerate
anyway. Then realizing the ugliness of havoc, he turned the gun on himself,
as well, and blew his brains out all over the wall.

In the aftermath, blood and gore are there, in sufficient quantity to
satisfy even the most macabre mind. There are six little holes in the walls
where the Sheriff's Department has dug the bullets out. Of course, there are
the places, highlighted now in chalk and bloody blots upon the floor where
the bodies have lain until the coroner hauled them away.

Stevens County, like its big-city peers, is rapidly becoming a county of
anonymous dead. The Barbour family has been deceased but for a fortnight,
buried for even less, yet their faces are gone, vanished, save for in the
minds those of the immediate family who buried their bodies yesterday. Their
neighbors on either side, the Valley grocer from whom they purchased canned
goods, the restaurant owner down the hill where they often went for dinner;
none of the people knew them well enough to remember their faces, in life or
in passing.

Death in Stevens County was once a momentous affair, consisting of hordes of
people running, driving or flying to the side of the bereaved.

Seeing a huge gathering in his neighbors yard, a passing farmer asks, "Which
is it, a family reunion or a death in the family?" His wife, knitting as
they drove down the dusty road toward home, responds, "It's about the same,
wouldn't you say? 'Sides, if it was a death in the family, we'd have heard
by now."

Of course, back in those days, few, if any, died from havoc. People died of
natural causes or accidents. Sometimes, such as in the case of the numerous
Indian tribal members who regularly get drunk as three lords, then jump
behind the wheel of the nearest vehicle, they somehow combine the two into
natural accidents. Since it was natural that they would be drunk on a
Saturday night; they died of natural causes, one observes.

The ticking bomb, the hidden personality flaw, disguised as havoc, that
drove Barbour to kill his wife and children, still strolls the backroads of
Stevens County, always on the alert for new flesh. Wherever there is family
violence, where there are emotional bruises that facial makeup will never
obscure, havoc waits in the wings, looking for an ideal opportunity. This
is, increasingly, the way that people die, anonymously in the throes of
violence. It only recently has arrived in Stevens County.

It is silent now in the spacious house on the hill overlooking the lake. The
antique dining set which was bought for a small fortune last summer sits
vacant, awaiting a new owner. The morning paper still waits folded neatly on
a chair, while outside, past the windows, the lake waits placidly as the cry
of a dove echoes off the surrounding hills.

A realtor is already here, ready to find new owners for this haven on a
hillside. She is certain she already has a buyer, a well-heeled, anonymous
California couple. They'll fit in nicely with the anonymous California
neighbors.

Next door, the neighbors from California peer over the bushes, trying their
best to see what I am doing here today talking with the realtor in this
place of havoc and death, yet not willing to ask questions. That would mean
they would lose their anonymity, and they are not yet willing to do that in
this place.

"There is so much sadness everywhere, but saddest of all is no one can
remember your name or your face when you are gone."

As Dave Garroway was once wont to observe in closing his show, Peace.