EPICENTER OF AN OVERDOSE
love, loss & injustice in Appalachia
Tim's Marine Medals
National Defense Service Medal
Combat Action Ribbon
Kuwait Liberation Medal
Southwest Asia Service medal
You grow up a trouble-maker. You graduate high-school in 1988. You go straight into the Marines. You come home. It's 1994. Mental health and PTSD are not topics anyone ever discusses in your circles. You hold an array of jobs, including diving for Underwater Engineering & Associates, super-intending construction, conducting at Norfolk Southern Railroad, managing sites for Tennessee Valley Authority and managing coal facilities at Xinergy. You have a string of failed marriages, becoming a beloved stepfather but never having a child of your own. You're a high-roller and a gambler. Then you lose it all. In your 40s you move in with your sister and her family. At some point, you start using. In 2016, your sister finds out. You agree readily to go into treatment, but there's no room in any local centers. You suffer through urgent detox and withdrawal at your local VA. You go home. You go back to work, at Sperry-Rail. At some point you start using again. Family suspects, but doesn't know. You have to take drug tests regularly for your work, and you pass them. In 2019, your best friend finds you dead in a motel room the day after Thanksgiving. Step-father, uncle, marine, veteran, biker, gambler, husband, son, brother, friend, lover -- now a statistic.
What happened to Tim
Above: Tim in high-school, 1980s.
Below: Tim with nephews, 1990s.
CHAPTER 1
The silver dually truck pulls up at the curb with a stream of exhaust and a blinding glint of early-spring sunshine off its hood.
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As the door slams open and the wind stirs the hesitant white blooms of the dogwoods, two little boys run barefoot towards the truck. Skinny in baggy clothes, both hold their palms cupped as if to receive communion.
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Uncle Tim walks around his car with that omnipresent expression like he’s just eaten something sour, brows furrowed, right hand rhythmically tapping his can of wintergreen chaw. Buzzed hair and sunburned skin, the kind of square face that reads all-American and the watery blue eyes of diluted Irish blood.
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The boys run up to him, blond and sun-darkened. The air smells of diesel and just-blooming irises as they hold up their hands and shout for him to look. Caterpillars crawl in small unweathered palms, dark velvet bodies and gummy feet.
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“Ah, cool,” comes the low Southern croak, “Wanna see a trick Uncle Tim learned in the Marines?”
The eldest of the boys, hyperactive, extroverted, affirms.
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Uncle Tim grips the caterpillar gently between two fingers and drops it down his throat.
While the eldest stares on in shock, the other boy silently closes his hands around his caterpillar and lowers them.
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Uncle Tim chuckles as his sister — the boys’ mom — steps out of the house and admonishes him in an equally thick drawl.
“What?” he asks innocently. “They wanted to see.”
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Inside he hands a candy-bar to his toddler niece. He has been and will be called many things: soldier, biker, redneck, gambler, addict. But to the five kids that fill this blended family household with duct-taped linoleum floors and a pack of dogs and more love than any family could know what to do with, he will always be uncle.
Tim (front left) on a hike with family. Behind him (back right) is his brother-and-law, Bill. Tim with nephew, Robert Ryan Smith.