When Death Knocks At Your Door

You realize just how quickly life can change

Months after first meeting Danny at a tavern, he enters the restaurant in Mahone Bay, where I work. Just as surprised to see me as I am to see him.

He strides over and greets me with a big hello and a hug.

Co-workers and customers stare.

I don’t care what they think. Let them be shocked. I know Danny well enough to know he’s a good guy.

They just can’t see beyond his appearance: his long, black, wild curly hair and scraggly beard. His loud, deep, gravelly voice. They don’t know he’s as gentle as a kitten.

“We should go out,” he says, loud enough the whole place can hear.

“Sure,” I say and smile, taking his hand and leading him to a table.

“What time do you get off work?” he asks, pulling out a chair and sitting down.

“Seven.”

“I’ll pick you up. We’ll go to the Lunenburg Exhibition.”

“I’ll need to go home. Change my clothes.”

“No problem,” he says, picking up the menu. “I’ll drive you.”

“Okay.” I nod and then ask if he knows what he’d like to order. He says two hamburgers and fries. I take his order and head back to the kitchen.

In the kitchen, my co-workers rush toward me, asking questions all at once: “How do you know him?” “You crazy?” “Going out with him?”

I shrug off their concerns, assuring them I’m aware of what I’m doing and all is fine.

After work, Danny picks me up as promised. I light a cigarette as soon as I get in his truck, and we head to my place.

When Danny and I enter the kitchen, my mother takes one look at him and her mouth hangs open. She wrings her hands while I introduce him to her and my father.

Dad immediately strikes up a conversation with him.

My mother follows me through the house, asking if I’m crazy, telling me I can’t possibly be serious to go anywhere with such a guy.

I laugh off her concerns as I laughed off my co-workers’.

“You know nothing about him,” I say. “I’m going out with him, and that’s that!”

“Are you sure it’s safe?” she says in that tone of hers.

My mother has no idea how safe he is compared to the many other situations I get myself in. I’d like to tell her Danny saved me from spending the night on a foreign fishing vessel.

“Yeah,” I say, in disbelief. “I’ve been out with him before. He’s fine.”

While I dress, my father takes Danny on a tour of the property, showing him all the stuff in the boathouse that must be moved out for me to start turning it into my home.

My father comes back in the house, all smiles, pleased as can be, announces Danny is buying the make-and-break boat engine, one of the larger items my father was concerned about getting rid of.

I grin, satisfied that at least I made one parent happy.

On the drive to the Fisheries Exhibition in Lunenburg, Danny takes the straighter stretch of highway through Northwest instead of the one along the shore through Mader’s Cove.

I’m surprised when he slows the truck and turns off onto a logging road.

“Where’re we going?” I ask, suddenly a bit nervous.

Without missing a beat, he says, “I like to reverse the order of a date. Get to the sex part first. Then go out and have a good time.”

“Okay,” I answer, thinking it a bit strange, but what the hell. I’ll be sleeping with him anyway, and it’s not like we’ve never had sex with each other before.

He parks the truck, and we exit. He leans me up against the hood and we fuck. Then we switch to inside of his truck, on the seat, doing as many positions as we can manage.

Afterwards, we climb back and head to town.

We end up in the beer garden — really a big tent — with a live band playing. The evening is filled with lots of talk, laughter, and introductions to people he knows — which seems like everyone present.

Hours later, outside in the parking lot, Danny and I stand talking to another group of people. Wherever he goes, it seems as if everyone knows him.

Back at my place, Danny spends the night.

We talk about poetry, and he borrows one of my books, promising to return it when he gets back from his next trip to sea.

We lay on our backs on the mattress on the floor after having sex, and I share my plans to fix up my father’s garage, originally a boathouse.

I talk about how uncertain my future seems and how short life can be.

I say, “Why should I wait to do anything when who knows if I’ll be around tomorrow?”

“That seems like a sad outlook,” Danny said, and gave me a kiss.

While I speak these words, I have no idea how foreboding they will turn out to be.

A few weeks later, my sister and I are outside in the backyard when our mother yells, “Come listen to the news. That guy, Danny, he’s dead.”

I go in the house and get her to repeat what she heard. Thinking it must be a mistake, I wait until the news comes back on the radio to hear it for myself. To believe it’s true.

I was expecting him back from sea any day now.

Instead, his truck left a turn on the road and he died in the crash.

I’m barely able to believe what I’m hearing.

He’s dead. Danny’s dead.

My breath stops. My stomach knots. It’s so unreal, so shocking. Death hits like never before. Someone I was so close to is dead.

What if I had been with him? It could be me, too.

My mind spins with thoughts of him, memories of our good times. I recall the words I said about life being short. How ominous. We had no idea his days were on a fast countdown to the end.

Danny’s death reinforces how right I am about doing what I want now and not waiting, because there might never be a later.

In the days that follow, I decide not go to Danny’s wake. So many people will be there who’ve known him for much longer, and I didn’t know him well enough or long enough to justify my presence.

I don’t want to seem like some kind of a groupie. I’d rather grieve alone, savour the few times we had.

Who knows if there could have been more?

I’m sad for both of us, and the book of poetry he borrowed, that I’ll never get back.

My head spins with so many thoughts I need to shut out, so I deal with my pain in my usual way: I crank up the music, blasting “Bohemian Rhapsody,” one of my favourite songs by Queen.

I play the song over and over while downing beer after beer, and smoking a joint, until I’m so drunk and stoned that just like the words of the song, nothing really matters to me.

BARBARA CARTER is a visual artist and writer with a focus on healing from childhood trauma, alcohol addiction, and living her best authentic life.

Here are the other Danny stories.