The ongoing Wall Street protests remind me of her. I first saw her in a van filled with college students and a couple of townies like me headed for a protest in DC. It was 1984.

The way she moved fascinated me. She and her coterie were in a seat in the middle of the van, lying on their backs, wheeling their legs in the air while Ferron’s Shadows on a Dime was playing.

Memory for me consists of motion. I can’t remember a face, though she was pretty, looked just like one of the models in the daughter’s Seventeen magazines, but it was a generic sort of beauty.

We talked briefly in the church in DC where we were washing up before going to the Mall. And again in the midst of the march, her telling me about Jello Biafra running for president. I saw a banner for a group I wanted to walk with and left her.

That evening, back at the van, her foot was bandaged and she was limping. She’d been playing in one of the fountains and cut her foot on a piece of glass.

On the ride home we were in the back, her foot in my lap, her panties twisted around the ankle (a fashion statement I wish more women would adopt).

Kelcey and I had been going through a rough spot. Things were getting better. Maybe one of the things that helped was this bit of human contact; I didn’t feel so isolated.

We ran into each other periodically after that, on campus or in town and I fell utterly in love with her, a huge crush.

About a year later, she’d been away at her co-op job, she was fresh looking and sunburned in the midst of a winter blizzard. We were standing in line in the small grocery story in the center of the village where we lived. She smiled at me and her voice dropped an octave. “I’m so cold and lonely.” The cashier was watching us, like she’d never heard that line said quite that way.

She made her purchase and was waiting outside.

Winter storms energize me. I love to walk in the bitter subzero cold, enjoy the quiet and snowflakes hitting my face. I wasn’t cold and I enjoy being alone.

I knew what I wanted was forever and what she wanted was a partner for the night. I knew she couldn’t come home with me; the daughter who was fifteen would utterly flip out. And I knew what Kelcey offered was what I really wanted and needed. So I walked past.

After that she was distant. Not exactly unfriendly but none of us likes rejection. I still loved her, but no longer woke up with her name on my lips.

A couple of years later there was an article in the newspaper about her killing a man (a boyfriend?) and partially dismembering his body.

Back in ’84 in the van my knife was borrowed by those up front to cut cheese. When it was passed back, she took it and cleaned the blade. “They don’t know how to take care of a good knife,” she said, handing it to me. The knife was a gift from Kelcey.

Kelcey knows if some day the murderess by chance knocks on our door, I can’t turn her away. I won’t say no this time.

And, Ferron is absolutely fantastic live.