Vero Beach, Florida, lies in Indian River County. Nationally, there is no county with a greater income disparity gap than this one. That is to say, the wealthiest people who live there earn more—by eye-watering amounts—than the poorest. And they don’t even live far from each other. If you start on the east side of the county and head west you can actually see the economic decline. The rich live at the beach, the farthest eastern location you can go, literally right up on the Atlantic Ocean. The beach itself is pristine. Most of the neighborhoods in that area are gated, small shops and boutiques sell everything from flip-flops and sand shovels to designer clothes and handbags. But all you have to do is cross over a bridge, and the view changes.
If you were to go west and a little north you would find yourself in one of the poorest southern areas in the country, all concentrated in a few streets. Homes on cinder blocks with open holes on their sides, taped up with a garbage bag. I had one friend who lived there, and I would drop him off sometimes after football practice. I’d see people sitting on street corners, drinking forty-ounce beers and talking shit. Once, I had dropped my friend off after the sun had begun to set. As I was leaving his neighborhood, I came to a full stop at a stop sign and some teenage kids—the same age as me—jumped on the hood of my car! I panicked as they smacked the windshield and shouted. I was terrified before I realized that they were laughing. They were just hazing the white boy. It was sobering, to say the least.
My family lived on the beach, but not in one of the elite neighborhoods. It was like we were in the club, but not in the VIP section. West is really where the action lies. The beach side is tame, quiet, reserved, and well, lame. Super lame. Especially if you’re young and want… anything to do. It’s exactly like a country club if a country club was a whole city. Most of the beach people are old or at least older. Nothing really happens there. Golf and cocktail parties are most of it. Everything closes super early. West, on the other hand, is where the regular folks, country bumpkins, and weirdos work and live their lives. So it is the place to go if you’re looking for something interesting or fun to happen. Like parties in the orange groves with fire pits and rednecks fighting over whose truck has bigger tires. There were some wealthier people who lived out west as well, probably because you could get so much land. I once dated a girl whose family could have lived anywhere in the world, and they chose to live there.
Once, when I was in my early twenties, I was home for the holidays, and my younger sister, Jane, asked if I would go with her to visit my ex-girlfriend’s family on a Saturday night. Our families had been close in the past, but it had been a few years since I’d seen my ex or anyone in her household. Even though there were no hard feelings, I was reluctant.
“Head all the way out west?”
“It’s not that bad. Come on.”
She was right. It was probably only six or seven miles. The girl and I broke up my sophomore year in college, and I had been out of school a little over a year, a fresh-faced kid living in Los Angeles with showbiz dreams. It might be fun to see them all and share some stories about pursuing comedy in Hollywood. I finished drinking my beer.
“Okay, let’s go see them.”
My ex had a lot of siblings, and to make things extra weird, Jane had actually dated her younger brother at one point. Yeah, kind of strange, for me at least. They’d remain on again, off again for years. This was probably an on-again phase. Some real Kardashian shit before it was a thing.
As we crossed over the bridge I started complaining.
“This is going to be weird.”
“No, it won’t. They’d all love to see you.”
I went north on Indian River Boulevard.
“What are you doing?”
“Driving.”
“They live the other way.”
“I can head west on 60 up here.”
“That literally makes no sense.”
“Let’s go home.”
“No, it’s fine. Fine. Take 60.”
I was going the long way because I hadn’t driven in Vero for a while, and I had forgotten where to turn. I wasn’t only hesitant to go visit the ex’s family, I was now being criticized for my driving and directional sense, which is, of course, very threatening to my manhood. I was officially irritated.
“I knew this was a shitty idea.”
The road that takes you from IR Boulevard to Route 60 has a pronounced curve, first to the right, then to the left, before you cross over US 1 and head west on 60. As the road curves right, you notice a large grass field on your left. Now there are businesses there. At the time it was an empty field with a chain-link fence around it.
As we passed the field Jane jumped.
“Did you see that?!”
“See what?” I was already past it.
“I saw something in the field.”
“No.”
“Go back.”
“No.”
“Tommy, go back. I saw something out there.”
“No.”
“Please!”
This was especially annoying because we were on a one-way street, and the only way to see this field again was to navigate a series of turns: left on US 1, left another light up, head east, turn back left again on IR Boulevard, before coming back to the street that led to the curve.
“Are you serious? Let’s just go see them. I don’t want to go back around!”
She pleaded.
“Tommy, I’m begging you. I saw something.” I could tell she was sincere. The look in her eyes, her voice. I turned left and complained.
“Goddamnit. Well, what did you see?”
“I don’t know… something.”
“Something. Great. Can’t wait to see it.”
Now as I approached the field again, I slowed down and I saw it too. A light. It was shining from the ground, but not straight up. It was obstructed a bit, but still a notable light in a field that didn’t have lights. I parked next to the field, and we got out of my parents’ Toyota 4Runner. Jane and I stood next to each other and stared.
“See?”
“Yeah.”
I scanned the whole area and then noticed that the fence was missing in a spot. It was torn down.
“Look at that.”
It was the point where the curve of the road began. I scanned the field some more and started walking toward the light, and then I saw it. The light was the headlight on a motorcycle. The motorcycle was lying on its side.
“It’s a motorcycle.”
“Oh my God. Tommy, is there someone there?”
My heart started beating quicker. I walked up to the bike as she stayed by the road.
“No.” All I saw was the motorcycle. No one was lying near it.
“Oh my God. Where do you think he went?”
I kept scanning the field. The headlight only lit up portions of it. Then, in a dark spot, I managed to see him.
“Call 911!”
“What?”
“Call 911!”
Twenty yards away I saw a body, and my own body went into fight-or-flight mode. My adrenaline spiked, my throat dried up, I was breathing heavily, and my heart was racing. Once I was within a few feet of the body I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what I was going to see. I could only make out that it was a man lying on his side. I didn’t know if his face had been torn off or if his insides were splashed all over this field.
“Sir,” I was almost whispering. I couldn’t get my voice to project.
“Sir!” I was trying.
I inched toward his body for the last few feet, like he was going to jump up and scare the shit out of me with a “Gotcha!”
I extended my index finger and touched his upper arm. “Sir, you… are you… okay?”
He groaned. A deep, short groan. Like when someone is getting you up in the morning and you want to stay in bed because you ate what you were told was a mild edible which turned out to be the corner of a “Star of Death,” a 1,000-milligram nightmare treat. The kind that your brain needs days to reboot from.
Back to the scene of the accident:
“He’s alive!”
Jane was on the phone in full panic mode.
“He’s alive! Come here! Tommy, where are we?!”
I ran back to Jane and took the phone.
“We’re between Indian River Boulevard and US 1 heading west on 60!” My voice was shivering with anxiety.
I went back to the man with a little more confidence. I have zero medical training, but one thing I’ve learned over the years from watching a lot of shows with accidents is don’t move an injured person. That’s pretty universal. A lot can go wrong when you move someone after an accident if you don’t know what you’re doing. I wasn’t even contemplating moving this man, but my thought was to try to get him to not move.
“Sir, you’ve been in an accident. Just stay still. Paramedics are on the way. Just… stay still.”
His groan started, and this time it grew, like an engine on an old car. His body started to move.
“Sir, stay still. They’re coming.”
It was too late. He slowly pushed himself up with his right arm and was sitting up when I saw something that will forever be burned into my memory.
The top of his head flapped open. Like a peel-top can of Sanpellegrino Aranciata. My mouth hung open.
“Oh my God! Sir, don’t move!”
He turned his head left and right, and with each movement his head flap followed.
“Oh, fuck!”
Police and paramedics arrived, and then some more and more. I was pacing before Jane called me over to speak to a police officer.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
As I recounted the story of how we found him, a helicopter landed in the field, presumably to take him to the head reattachment center or wherever they specialize in doing what this man desperately needed.
When I finished telling the police officer what happened, he looked at me with a very straight face.
“Have you been drinking?”
“No.”
“I can smell it on your breath.”
No fucking way. This was going to happen now too? Before I could say anything, he jumped to it.
“You should get out of here. I’d hate for your being a Good Samaritan to end the wrong way.”
“Okay.”
I got in the car with Jane, and we went west. At my ex’s house, what had just happened became the talking point of the evening, obviously. I mean, I was prepared to share tales of open mics where fights break out and commercial auditions where what appear to be mental patients, who are actually actors, pace back and forth in the waiting room as you cross your fingers that Domino’s will choose you to introduce their new crustless pizza in a national commercial. But finding an almost dead guy moments earlier seemed like the headline story.
Almost a year later I was living on my own in Hollywood. I lived in an apartment complex on Highland Avenue. All Hollywood apartment buildings have a lobby with locked mailboxes for the tenants. Those mailboxes mean a lot when you’re young and trying to make it.
“What’s in the mail today?” streams through your mind as you approach your little chamber.
Is it a bill I can’t afford? Is it a residual check I wasn’t expecting? Maybe it’s a card from someone I went to high school with.
On this day I opened my mailbox and saw something unusual. It was a red envelope with big, official-looking lettering and the word “SUBPOENA” clearly printed on it.
I opened it and saw that I was being ordered by a court in Indian River County, Florida, to testify at the trial of a man whose name I didn’t recognize. As I read it further it hit me: Motorcycle man was being charged with multiple crimes, and they were ordering me to take the stand. I thought about it. Fly back to Florida to tell this story in court?
I knew better. I should have stayed on the beach that day. Should have stayed where the little old ladies and the stuck-up retirees go to bed too early and have no fun. I had a traumatic experience and now a potential new world of shit with this trial, all because I agreed to go out west.
Fuck that. I threw the subpoena in the trash.