Pete,

Jerry has been missing since Labor Day 1983 and it now was the end of Memorial Day weekend 1984. My bother was a Viet Nam era Marine Corps veteran. It was in my first year at TCC and had spoken briefly in casual conversation with a gentleman named Pete who was also taking classes in Human Services. Pete and I met in the school cafeteria and we both liked to joke around and had common interests.

It was in the early hours of the morning when I awoke to sounds of dogs barking all over the neighborhood. It had bee a very warm night and yet I could see my breath in the room. I felt a presence but didn't have any idea what it could be. A spirit or something came to my window, it had no face but I knew it was my brother Jerry. The spirit told me to tell Mom that everything is OK now and that he is moving on. The spirit did this several times to be sure I understood and disappeared. I was very shaken by all of this but managed to go back to sleep. Somewhere between seven and eight AM the phone rang and it was my sister M from Walla Walla.

Apparently some mushroom pickers were on a ski slope in the Blue Mountains and there dog began digging and unearthed one of my brothers fingers. This event and the time it happened was exactly the time my brothers spirit was freed up to stop by and visit me and tell me everything is OK now.

I was now getting ready for school and was thinking who am I going to tell this story to, they will all think I've lost it. I hurried to school and went directly to the cafeteria for some coffee and ran directly into Pete who took one look at me and told me you look like you have just seen a ghost and asked me how I was doing. That began a move from being acquaintances to an intimate friendship because I unloaded right then and there. I began telling Peter all about my alcoholic relationship my brother and I had and how I'd managed to get into recovery and Jerry hadn't. I told Pete about my brothers two tours in Viet Nam in forestry reconnaissance and how he had come back a full blown alcoholic. How he'd lost his family due to his drinking and was terribly guilty about it.

I explained that Jerry was having trouble holding down a job and that because of his military background he landed a job as a guard at the penitentiary. Pete listened as I told him about the late night calls from my brother asking me how I'd stopped drinking and would tell me to tell his kids what kind of a man he really was.

I let Peter Know it was my belief that my brother had schemed up this elaborate plan to get this other psychotic prison guard to kill him and that it had worked and the gruesome details of his death that read like script from a true detectives magazine.

For some reason Pete listened to all of this, believed it and came back for more.

Pete

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