The Pride of Jesse
By
Darrel Bird
Copyright 2010 by Darrel Bird
The Pride of Jesse
Part 1
Jesse Smallwood awoke to the sound of the alarm buzzer. He reached over and gave it a whack. He got up, showered, and shaved while his coffee was perking, then poured himself a cup and sat down at the little dinette. He thought about Gail Dorsey, his bride-to-be. In just a week, he would be married to the prettiest girl in L.A. He had met Gail six months ago while surfing at Laguna Beach. Her beauty had knocked him off his feet, and he had ended up asking her to marry him. She had accepted his proposal.
Jesse loved to surf almost as much as he loved to build cars. He and his high school friend, Gil Smith, had opened a custom shop in Costa Mesa – The Speed Shop – and they had made a go of it. They had worked together on hot rods since they were teenagers; they were both now twenty-two years old.
As Jesse sat with his coffee that January morning, his thoughts turned to the new employee Gil had hired. He remembered how yesterday the fellow had asked him if he “knew the Lord.” Although Jesse hadn’t said anything, he had thought plenty, and he resented the question. He wondered why Gil had even hired this dude; he was nothing but a do-gooder. Jesse didn’t want to hear the religious crap. He had just glared at him and said “Let’s just get the body on this car,” though Jesse did have to admit, the guy knew his way around cars. Plus, he was a hard worker.
Life couldn’t be better, Jesse thought. I’ve got a ’59 Corvette Stingray, a going business, a knock-out chic I am going to marry, and I don’t need the God crap.
“I’ve got the world by the tail,” Jesse said as he downed the last of his morning coffee. He reached for the keys to the ’Vette and bounded out the door. He revved the engine, felt the power, and racked the pipes just to annoy his neighbor, who worked late and was always griping. He drove through the north end of Redondo Beach and hooked the 405 freeway entrance. He was doing ninety when he entered the freeway.
He let off the gas a bit and adjusted his speed. “I don’t need another ticket. I got three already,” he grumbled, as he let the car settle to a smooth 80 miles an hour. Up ahead he saw a fog bank. He didn’t think much about it, but he instinctively slowed the car to 70 miles an hour. The freeway was filling with cars making the early morning commute. He glanced over at a trucker hauling a load; the trucker looked straight ahead.
Just as Jesse was about to enter the fog bank, he glanced over at the trucker again, expecting him to slow down. His eyes went wide when he saw the trucker slump over the wheel. The truck veered into Jesse’s lane, glancing off the rear fender of the ’Vette. The car went into a spin as Jesse lost control. He heard the squall of tires on either side, as the truck slammed into one car after another. Then he hit the truck’s trailer and Jesse Smallwood’s lights went out.
He awoke in deep pain and tried to figure out where he was, and then he remembered the truck. He couldn’t move his arms or legs. His arms were pinned between the steering wheel and the door. Jesse heard a siren as an ambulance pulled alongside a fire truck sitting a few feet away. He heard a motor crank up as they began cutting away the ’Vette’s door. Excruciating pain tore through his chest as the door fell away. They laid him on a backboard and strapped his head to the gurney. He got a glimpse of the wreckage on the freeway as they lifted him into the ambulance.
His car was an unrecognizable mass of metal and splintered fiberglass. Wrecked cars, fire trucks, and ambulances were everywhere. Black smoke was boiling up from one of the cars and he could see the rescuers working to free someone from the burning vehicle. Jesse passed out again as the ambulance attendant slammed the door shut on the devastation.
He awoke in a hospital bed with an I.V. in his arm. There was some pain in his chest, but none in his legs. A nurse came in and gave him a shot and he went to sleep again.
Three hours later a doctor came in, raised the covers on Jesse’s feet, and poked around. “Did you feel that?” the doctor asked.
“Feel what?” Jesse replied. The doctor grumbled some words Jesse couldn’t make out, and left the room. Jesse fell back into a deep sleep, and slept all that day and through the night.
The next morning old Grumbles came in with another doctor. Grumbles lifted the covers on Jesse’s legs.
The other doctor said, “We are going to use a pin to stick you in different places. Tell us when you feel it.”
Jesse could see the doctor poking him up and down his legs, but he felt nothing. After a while, the second doctor spoke. “I’m Dr. Gillespie, and that old codger there is Dr. Swan. I am a neurologist, and he is a neurosurgeon. You are paralyzed from the waist down. The accident crushed your spine.” Doctor Swan nodded his head in agreement.
Jesse was in shock; how could this be? How did he end up in a hospital, paralyzed? But all he could manage to say was, “Are you sure?”
Dr. Gillespie said, “Yes, we’re sure.”
“I will be back around to see you later today,” Dr. Swan said as he turned to leave. They both walked out of the room, murmuring something Jesse couldn’t hear. Jesse lay there alone, trying to take it all in.
Toward noon the hospital staff allowed Gail in to see him. “A-a-are you all right?” she stuttered as she took in the I.V. and all the monitors Jessie was hooked up to.
His words were thick from the pain medication, as he told her what the doctors had told him.
She looked wild and frightened as she took his hand in hers, and it was as though he was looking into a stranger’s eyes. The eyes he saw now were calculating, like a banker who had come up short.
I must be dreaming all this, Jesse thought, as he looked at someone he did not know.
After Gail left, Jesse lay there thinking. Surely I’ll be able to move my legs as soon as I get my strength back. This is just too crazy. I have to help Gil get the Mustang finished. The Mustang was a car they were doing for one of the Hollywood crowd, and it was worth big bucks. They stood to make six month’s worth of wages if they finished the car on time, and he could not afford to be laid up.
Jesse Smallwood lied to himself all that week. This could not happen to him, he reasoned; he would not allow it. Gil came to see him a time or two that week, complained about how busy he was, and left quickly.
The weeks passed slowly as Jesse healed. Finally, the day came when the charge nurse came into his room with a wheelchair and told him he was being discharged. It was time to go, and Jesse Smallwood had to face the facts. His legs hung uselessly as he tried to get into the wheelchair. The nurse helped him, and then rolled him out to the street. He went home in an ambulance, wheelchair and all.
They rolled him into his tiny apartment in Redondo Beach and wished him good luck. Then they were gone, and he was left alone. That was when Jesse Smallwood came unglued. He tried to get out of the wheelchair, sure he could walk, and fell to the floor. He lay there weeping with frustration. Then he wrestled himself back into his wheelchair. Now he was mad!
He sat there and cursed Gil, Gail, the trucker, and the new employee. He swore at God for his having been born. He was all alone.
It was at that time Jesse saw his ball bat over in the corner. He picked it up and looked at it. A rage such as he had never known or imagined that he was capable of came over him. He began to swing at the TV, then the stereo, then the knick-knacks and the pictures of him and Gil in various hot rods. Pictures of him and Gail, and of his mother and father, all came crashing to the floor in shards of glass.
He went from there into the kitchen and broke out the window. He smashed the refrigerator door. The
toaster went flying and fell to the floor with a clang. Finally, the grumpy neighbor called the cops, and they came and hauled him off to jail.
They kept him there a week on suicide watch. They finally sent him home in a taxi, unwashed, unshaven, unprepared, and crippled for life.
The landlord had fixed the broken window, and he came over to tell him if it ever happened again, he would be evicted. Jesse was as broken as the window, but it wasn’t anything the landlord – or anyone else – could fix. He ordered a couple of bottles from the liquor store, and proceeded to drink himself into a stupor.
Part2
Joe Burton grew up with blonde hair, buck-teeth, a bad