Plaquemines Parish : We Do It For Love
Chris Sheard
Absolutely dead pan. No emphatic tone or hint of emotion at all. If I told him his house was on fire it would go something like this:
-Holy fucking shit Andy your fucking house is on fire!
-Well...’spose I outta find a hose.
But what was amazing about Andy was once you got him talking a whole world of knowledge and experience opened up. He had stories and jokes for days but for the most part he just sat on them, smiling quietly like a guy with a hundred bucks in his back pocket.
That’s why when upon meeting me that night he didn’t say a word he just grabbed me by the shirt and lead me out the front door I was uneasy.
-Andy, what’s up, what’s wrong?
Gasping for breath he found a way to get out
-Take me to the hospital.
I thought he was having a heart attack. Now, in my mind, when emergencies come up I’m very cool and collected. I see myself somewhere between MacGyver and Batman. But the truth of it is that I’m probably more like Chicken Little and hysterical monkey. So when I went to go inside to get the keys to the truck from Matt I meant to calmly and briskly stride through the hall, find his tent and tell him:
-Matt. Andy is having a heart attack and I need to take him to the hospital. May I have the keys to the pick-up?
But instead I went tearing through the front shouting:
-Ohmygodandyahavingaheartattackgimidakeetadatruck!!!
Luckily Andy was not having a heart attack, because that motherfucker would have been dead. He was having a panic attack, which happened somewhat regularly, I later learned while sitting with him in the ER .
Andy, panic attack and all finally calmed me down and gave me the keys to the rental car he was driving at the time and we took off toward the highway to drive an hour up to Belle Chase to the nearest hospital. We got about 200 yards when taking a turn too fast I ran that fucking rental car into a pole. That, people, is EC: I’m going to try to save your life, and potentially actually save it but it’s gonna cost you about $300 in body-work to your car.
Oddly enough the crash calmed Andy down. It snapped him back. Suddenly sober, but forgiving and understanding and in his down-home Andy manor he said “let’s just go easy til we get there” still breathing a little heavy but half-laughing at what had just happened. I drove fast but not gunning it, and in a strange way it was a peaceful kind of ride.
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