Blue Lights Before Breakfast

"Hang him by the neck with birthday streamers from the pecan tree".

I said that about my Ex in my post about being vindicated after years of accusal.

The next morning, at 6:15 a.m., T-Birds phone went off.

One of our neighbors was calling to tell us that a friend of ours, who lives two houses down the street from us, had hung himself in the front yard from a mimosa tree.

Oh Dear God, NO!    I pulled back the curtain and couldn't see anything but blue lights.

T-Bird grabbed shorts and I grabbed a housecoat and we took off for the door.    My husband shoved me back inside and told me I didn't need to see it.    He was dead serious and I stayed put.

All I could see was blue lights from squad cars, red flashing lights from the ambulance, and people everywhere.    It was still kinda dark so I couldn't make out too much.

When T. came back he said that it was not Zach, it was the man in the next house over.       They had cut him down and were getting ready to load him in the ambulance.   

When I dropped off the mail at the office after lunch the story had morphed into this:

Zach went next door to his neighbor's house, and ACCIDENTALLY (????) hung himself from the mimosa tree in the front yard in the middle of the night.

I tried to put THAT fire out with a few facts.

1.)    Zach ain't got no tree.    He'd have to borrow a neighbor's tree.   

If you find someone on your doorstep with a long rope and they ask if they can borrow a limb, say "NO".

2.)    If Zach hung himself in the neighbor's yard, why wasn't his truck in HIS yard?   His wife never goes outside, and she cannot drive.     Zach goes out of town once a week and stays overnight.    His car was spotted there later that afternoon.

3.)    A semi-reclusive damn-near-sixty yr. old white man probably would not have twenty young Hispanics appear on the scene of his demise at 6:30 in the morning.    From what I could see, they all had on the same kind of work shirt so they must have been co-workers on their way to work before the 7:00 a.m. shift.   They all looked so shocked and sad......stunned.........

The poor soul who left was a supervisor at a local trailer plant.   Zach is a pizza delivery man.   Always has been.

4.)    The emergency vehicles were NOT in Zach's yard.    Kinda stupid to pull the ambulance into your next door neighbor's driveway if you are having your heart attack in YOUR house.

News travels fast in a small town, and it's much faster when it's bad news.   Put some misinformation or downright lies in it and it streaks thru, leaving tongues flappin' in it's wake. 

Such is the way.

I found a thread about it on the Topix website, and there are so many stories about this man, and of course none of them are good.  Lots of speculation, and the only verifiable fact is his first name.   We got that from a retired officer who had been told about it.

Here's another fact, the one nobody is talkin' around:    he left a wife and small children behind, who are going through the most horrible time imaginable, for reasons they may never understand.    Their entire world has just turned upside-down.    The wife cut him down herself.

But THAT wouldn't be as much fun to talk about, would it?