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Top of Victory

Victory Boulevard shoots across the San Fernando Valley like an arrow, from the foothills of the east, straight over the flatlands past the storefronts and tract homes, then up a steep slope to a dead end at the rolling hills of Ventura County. That's where I used to hike when I was in junior high school. I'd take the dusty trails in the summer and fall. In winter and spring, the rains would turn the hillsides neon green with wild grass.

My friend Rick and I ducked under the barbed wire one day and went back farther than we usually did. We sat down on a grass-covered slope and leaned back to look at the sky. When I got up, I saw four deer just a dozen feet or so in front of us. I told Rick to sit up slowly and he did, but they noticed us anyway and scampered down the hill, up and over the next hill, and then out of sight.

Sometimes I would walk down my street and instead of turning right to take the sidewalks toward Dan's house, I would turn left and climb down a hill that took me to the top of Victory, then climb up another hill to Dan's. One day when I did this I was in a storm drain, leaning forward on my way up the grade, and I came face to face with a rattlesnake slithering downhill toward me. I turned and ran down the concrete culvert so fast it's amazing I didn't fall. I didn't take the shortcut anymore after that. So if not for the snake, I might've been the one to find the body. Because just a couple of days after I saw the rattler, a kid named Davey that I knew from the neighborhood took a walk up there, so he was the one who found the body. The body belonged to a young man who wore long hair and a T-shirt. His chest had been blown open by a shotgun blast. Whoever killed him drove to the top of Victory and dumped him there, leaving a piece of paper in his hand with something written on it.

I heard about it the next day at school: A dead body was dumped up the street from my house. I was 13 and just hearing about it creeped me out so badly that I was afraid I would have nightmares. I thought if I wrote a poem letting out my fears instead of keeping them trapped inside I might be able to sleep without bad dreams. So I wrote one. It began: "They found a boy by my house today, there was a note in his hand, with blood." I don't remember the rest, and I don't know what the note said.

I didn't have any nightmares about the body, but I didn't wake up feeling good, either. I went outside to bring in the morning papers. One of them didn't carry any mention of the murder. The other one had a news brief, about two paragraphs worth of information. Detectives were seeking a suspect for questioning, but the suspect had left the state.

At junior high, it was the talk of the hallways. Anybody who didn't know who Davey was before that knew now. Each conversation about the murder would begin: "The body that Davey found at the top of Victory . . . ." I envied this recognition for Davey's role in the drama, but not much, because, really, I was glad I didn't find the body. I don't think I would've been able to sleep for weeks if I had and it wouldn't have been worth it. Good thing I'd seen that snake. A lot of the students knew that the suspect was an older brother of two kids in our school, Reggie and Amanda. I only found out about that days later, through a third-hand source, Andrea, a girl in my history class, so I wasn't sure I believed it. Andrea told me who the suspect was and that the killer's girlfriend had cheated on him with the victim, and that the murder was for revenge.

The next day, I read about it in the newspaper. The short story, three or four paragraphs at the most, said the suspect had been arrested in the Midwest, waived extradition and was on his way back to Los Angeles. The suspect was identified as the older brother of Reggie and Amanda -- I could tell from the last name -- and detectives repeated what the girl in my history class said about the victim being on the losing end of a triangle. They say you can't trust rumors, but I learned in junior high that sometimes the rumors are true.

Later that day, I was walking in a hallway between third and fourth period classes and I saw Amanda. By accident I looked into her eyes and I could tell she saw I was looking at her. I still feel bad about it. Maybe she thought I was looking at her because her brother was a killer. She would've been right, because that was what was going through my mind: Wow, there's Amanda, her brother killed some guy. But I wasn't judging her. I hope my looking at her didn't make her feel bad. Sorry Amanda. And what if I'd been the one to find the body and she saw me looking at her? Maybe I would've felt even worse. Once again, I was grateful I saw the snake.

When I was in college, I heard Davey got arrested. He had this friend who was a clerk in the coroner's office and his friend got him prints of gruesome crime scene photos. So Davey carried the photos in his coat pocket when he went to singles bars, and he'd hit on women who were talking to big strong guys. Davey was a weaselly little wimp. So the big strong guys would squint at him and tell him to bug off, or grab him by his shirt collar and get ready to break his jaw. But instead of slinking away, Davey would whip out the photos and tell them he was a professional killer and this was his handiwork and if they didn't want to end up like the corpse in the picture they would step aside and let him get to know the lady. What was he arrested for? Misdemeanor terrorism. I didn't know terrorism could be a misdemeanor, but I guess it can. I think maybe the dose of notoriety he got from finding the body that day at the top of Victory might have contaminated him for life. And maybe that could've happened to me, too, if I'd found the body. So I've had a lot of reasons to thank that snake. Thank you, snake.


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