Kenny Dalton Sleeps with Angels

When I lived in Lemay I did a four year stint as a daytime Dad-Mom, and nighttime pizza delivery driver. At the pizza joint I got to know and became friends with Kenny, who was born and bred down there, and who was a natural born streetfighter in every sense of the word: a square peg anywhere, who sometimes would go to local watering holes for the express reason of getting in some hillbilly's face, and then kicking his ass "for practice". Aside from the fact that I think we both felt like outsiders, there was really not too much we had in common. Somehow he took a shine to me, and me to him. He loved my guitar playing and wasn't shy about letting me know about it, and I liked that, alot. We had a few lessons on my back porch with the dogs and some cigars, coffee and cigarettes. He was an enthusiastic student, and had stumbled upon a riff and wrote a song around it, and would proudly and unabashedly play it over and over for me, until I could muster up enough courage to ask him to stop. I sold him the modified Mexican Telecaster my friend Karen (drummer for my seldom seen or heard three-piece, Pye-Dog) had given me (that ended up not so soon after in a pawnshop, somewhere).





Kenny, was a junkie-- heroin, and "hillbilly" heroin, i.e., Oxycontin, Percocet, Demerol, &c. I was clean and had been, and did my best to steer him in the direction of some, twelve-step fellowship. I think he actually did come with me once, but just didn't much care for it. Kenny took to me the way tough guys sometimes take, I think, to those they like or admire in some way, and who they can see are maybe a little too vulnerable, a bit too defenseless. My friend Malcolm-- pal, bodyguard, running buddy, beer-buyer and songwriting partner (from my brilliant lost, fifteenth year) was like that to me, a big brother-type: wiser, hipper and thicker-skinned, my John Lennon (he had, the glasses), me being maybe, poor old, Peter Best. Malcolm died as I was finishing up my freshman year at WU. He asphysixiated somehow, as he was taking hits off a whipped cream cannister, at the Swenson's Ice Cream Factory there in Chapel Hill, where he had been employed.





Somehow, I found myself back down there in Lemay, the other evening. I don't like going back down there. The bus ride is long, and there's plenty of time to get a little to familiar and cozy, with emotional memories that are still a bit too achingly unpleasant. But I did feel I was making that trip, for a reason, some reason. I thought it was maybe this other reason (one that I almost certainly wanted and coveted too, much). But, it turned out differently, and there it was, what it was, and just-so.





Headed home from an introductory lecture on a brand of enlightenment I was unable to afford, I found a bustop with a bench, and saw that I had 40 minutes of unscheduled time ahead of me. I sat there, on that bench at half-past nine on a Friday evening, in what I had always felt was hopelessly hostile territory: the swampy hoosier hell known as, Lemay. Me, the maybe odd, and vaguely queer looking guy, who'd been brought up southern in the quaint, bucolic and mostly kind Chapel Hill, NC, home of the Tarheels, and the Dean Dome, and where the sky is always a perfect Carolina Blue.





I looked up after a bit, and noticed across a dimly lit Lemay Ferry Road, right left of the Family Dollar, a backlit plastic sign: PIZZA & MORE. I had driven for Lemay Pizza & More, but the place had burned years ago, and I had figured that they were just no more. I had to walk twenty-five feet maybe, before I could make out the painted and unlit heading, LEMAY. I had about twenty-five minutes till the next Grand-bound bus was due.





I went in, but didn't recognize anyone. Speaking with a driver at the counter, I realized there was a Zack, now managing, who was still there, and had been there then, when I was. Busy, I sat and he came out after a few minutes.





Kenny had told me more than once that he had been declared 'dead', three times, off an O.D. He knew what was in store for him. I think the song he had played so eagerly for me, had lyrics, along the lines of, worms or maggots, and how it is, at the end-- with a body, with what's left of us. Zack let me know that Kenny Dalton, Lemay Streetfighter, my friend, had indeed passed from this life sometime last September. I know that Kenny expected the worse, or mostly just nothing, when he took his final rest. I'm just glad that Kenny's path and mine crossed, and that I was able to recognize him as a generous and profound teacher, and as a beautiful soul wrapped in a knot of ugly circumstances.





Rest in Peace Kenny D


Thank You