Reflections from Richard Cranium: Joel Turner

By: Richard Cranium

Joel Turner was a simple man. He loved the simple things in life like a soft taco from Taco Bell late at night, a Slim Jim with a bear claw and burnt coffee from the 7-Eleven in the morning, and a double cheeseburger minus onions from McDonald’s at lunch. He wore twice bought button downs from thrift stores and khakis he grabbed in a 3 pack from Sam’s Club on his sister’s membership.

His favorite TV show was Family Feud with Steve Harvey and didn’t understand the whole concept of Netflix or Hulu when you can grab TV shows right out of the air with one of those new-fangled digital antennas they sold at the Dollar General. His steal toed boots were the most expensive objects he owned, and it was only because his boss man required him to have them for his safety. Joel felt that the concern for his well being was genuine. His boss man felt the concern was better for his workmen’s comp rate and knew that another Joel was right around the corner unemployed and waiting to buy their own steel toed boots.

Joel’s sister forced him to upgrade his old pay-by-the-month flip phone to a newer pay-by-the-month smart phone that Joel often had loud arguments with when it wouldn’t comply to playing the ten-minute YouTube video of conservative truth bombs his friends would send him. And Joel couldn’t understand all the hoopla over smart watches when a digital one from an end cap at the local Piggly Wiggly did the job of keeping time just fine.

For Joel Turner, the world was moving at a pace that he struggled to keep up with. Being “woke” meant not sleeping, and the concept that he was privileged since he was white lost all meaning when he would find himself standing in the same line surrounded by black and Hispanic men waiting to fill out the same application for the next term job announced by the city. But to be honest, Joel really didn’t care as long as he got his minimum wage at the end of the week.

In the 27 years Joel had seen, race wasn’t something that held any weight. He really didn’t give any credence to what the people around him looked like and didn’t understand when the angry college students labeled him a racist as he walked into the civic center to see the local Republican candidates for mayor of Manteo, NC – his hometown.

Three nicely dressed men were on the stage when Joel took his seat beside his sister and her four children. He thought to himself that he would like to have clothes like theirs then got lost in a torrent of when he would actually get to wear such things. He could wear them to church, he thought, but then he’d have to deal with Ida at least once a week – and Ida would be even more unbearable with him looking that pretty. He did not want to draw any more attention from her than he had to. So church was out.

He could wear the suit to the annual chicken stew, but then thought about the inevitable foot race with the local volunteer firemen and the shoes just wouldn’t cut it. He could wear it to go shopping, but everyone looks down on gussied up people at the Walmart and Piggly Wiggly. And God knows that if he bought it just to wear around the house, he’d look like the silliest asshole this side of the sound.

His sister plopped her two-year-old in his lap and shook him back to reality and the first speaker.

The man behind the microphone was in his fifties and spoke quietly. He was the owner of a few surf shops on the banks, and he noted how he had lived in the area his whole life watching his father build the surf shop empire that he now controlled. Joel hated those shops. This guy wouldn’t get his vote.

The second speaker was booed down before he could speak. According to Joel’s sister, this man was the reason why the bridge between Manteo and Nags Head was being considered for a toll. He was notoriously known for working in and out of the local municipalities and fleecing the locals of summer season revenue through projects promoted for bringing more people during the off season but instead afforded him a new car every year. His wife was wearing pearls in the front row.

David Smiley was a tall man in his mid-forties. He had a full head of hair with strands of grey peaking through the dark brown layers that lay perfectly still as he moved. From his swagger to the podium to the authoritative way he released the microphone from its clip to the commanding pacing back and forth across the stage, Joel Turner saw a messiah.

“Friends, I am here tonight because I am sick and tired of how our community, a strong and proud community, has been run into a deviant hole of unethical and unrealistic bull shit.”

The words were the voice of God to Joel. He’d never seen a politician say bullshit, and he’d never heard anyone in a suit that nice use the phrase sick and tired. He was enthralled. The toddler squirmed to get free and did so only to be grabbed by Joel’s sister and plopped back into Joel’s lap. Joel didn’t even realize it had happened. The words were still flowing out of David’s mouth like a beautiful stream of elixir, and Joel wanted it all.

“We cannot stand by as the leadership of our country drives our once patriotic sensibilities, our homegrown values, our very cores of right and wrong into an abyss of woke ideology and racial politics. We cannot allow the out of touch liberal media and its perpetrators of misguidance tell our children that they are racist because they are white. We cannot allow the intellectual elites of our community tell our children that our once amazing history is evil and wrong! They do not see you starving so they can go to school and study feminism. They do not hear your children crying because you can’t afford to take them to the doctor. They do not smell the stench of poverty and hopelessness that you smell every day. But I do!”

Joel Turner had found a message he could understand. He found a man he could follow. He found a cause he could get behind. He would have voted David in for President at that moment, let alone Mayor.

David caught Joel out of the corner of his eye and turned his focus on him. With his forefinger, he targeted Joel who’s story David could read in seconds without asking a single question. “Son, are you tired of dead-end jobs that pay next to nothing?” Joel nodded his head. “Are you tired of living week to week not knowing if you’d be able to eat the next day?” Joel nodded again, this time with some ferocity. David looked back across the crowd. “Friends, just like this young man, I am tired of watching our community fall into a hole of shit after liberal hippies come crashing through from the university and steal all of our money just to turn around and tell us that we are racist and have no empathy for the minorities of our community. What about you? What about the empathy for you? What about the empathy for our friend over here – what’s your name son?”

The question came with the forefinger directed at Joel.

“Joel Turner, sir.”

“Joel it is nice to meet you. Do we want to loose empathy for Joel? Do we want to pretend that many of us like Joel are forgotten because some liberal asshole decided that Joel didn’t deserve help because he is white?”

The crowd was now alive and answered with a uniform “NO!”

“Neither do I, friends. Vote for me and I will give you this solemn promise – I will make sure that everyone who deserves help in our town gets it no matter what they look like or who they are. I promise to take back our town from the liberal slime who have corrupted it.”

There was a resounding round of applause accompanied by whoops as the politician bowed. Joel, toddler in tow, rushed to the stage to meet the man who was the first person to ever see him. As he shook his hand, Joel offered his services for the campaign. David accepted the offer. Joel was ecstatic.

The next few months were a whirlwind of eye-opening experiences for Joel Turner. For the first time in his life, he saw the underbelly of his hometown. He was a first-hand witness to the real animosity of the people on each side of an imaginary political line. Words he didn’t know became part of his lexicon and much like David had seen him, Joel was seeing people for the first time. He was seeing the poverty in the grocery store, the hopelessness in the Dollar General, and the comfortless misfortunes of so many as they stood in line at Walmart.

Joel was waking up.

As he became more and more attentive to the world around him, his new mentor was explaining the evils of society in ways that enraged Joel. He told Joel about the weight of the government laying on the backs of the poor while the wealthy drank the wine. He told Joel about how the public money used to curate the local tourist industry was pocketed more and more by liberal elite people constantly looking to improve their portfolios and pension funds. He convinced Joel that everything he had been told was sacred in Manteo belonged to Joel and everyone like Joel. It was time, David said, to take those things back.

Joel took him literally and set out to reclaim one of Manteo’s prized treasures for the people.

The Elizabeth II was a 16th century replica of the ships used in the 1580s that brought the Lost Colony to Roanoke Island for Elizabeth I and Sir Walter Raleigh. It was built to give tourists a unique view of the 16th century and why the colonists may have never wanted to be found. The tiny quarters and tight conditions of the boat could make anyone aboard it wonder what the hell these people were thinking to begin with. Even Joel thought that life must have sucked pretty bad to board a boat this small for a future in a place that none of them had ever seen. At least, he thought, they could grab TV shows out of thin air.

The Elizabeth II was his target as he believed he could steal the boat and sail it around the island as a demonstration to his peers that the town really did belong to them. That Manteo was not going silently into the night of liberal corruption. He was a one-man force ready to make his stand. He would deliver the revolution to the people the next day during his lunch break. He had figured he could accomplish the heist, sail the boat around the island, and return to dock within an hour. Joel’s sense of timing wasn’t that great, but his calculations were based on the speed of the smaller motorized boats that whipped around the island daily. He didn’t understand that sails on a 16th century replica made the boat slower.

The next day, at noon, Joel’s old Ford Ranger pulled into the parking lot of the Roanoke Island Festival Park where the ship was docked. He spent the $11.00 to get into the park and headed straight for the boat. To his luck, there were only two visitors on the boat when he boarded and they didn’t pay much attention to him as he went to frantic work at releasing the sails and prepping the boat for departure. When he came around to the helm, the two visitors had left, and the boat was sitting free in the dock ready to move.

Joel waited.

The boat didn’t move at first. Then it rocked a little as if it was realizing that it wasn’t tied down. Slowly, as wind began to rise, the boat moved. Joel’s heart raced. The boat moved a little faster. Joel’s heart raced more. A gust of wind came crashing from behind and lifted the sails out in front of Joel as he kept the ship as straight as he could. The boat moved faster. Joel’s heart raced faster. The poles that served to anchor the boat slipped behind Joel and the boat. And still the boat gathered speed. Joel’s heart gathered speed. The open sound lay to the left of Joel. His eyes moved left to set his target. Joel’s hands moved the whip as to move the tiller.

The boat stayed straight.

Joel moved the whip again to get the boat to move left.

The boat stayed straight.

Directly across from where the Elizabeth II remained docked was a waterfront restaurant called The Avenue. It sits on the second floor above the boardwalk and looks out onto the Manteo Marina. Large glass windows on the waterfront side show most of the marina and the sound that leads to the outer banks and Nags Head. Joel’s sister had been a waitress for the restaurant for almost ten years. She had met three of her four baby daddies at work before each one-night stand. She was on her shift that afternoon and found a curious development happening at two of the tables at the windows. As she glanced out, she (like her patrons) saw the Elizabeth II careening straight for them. It took a few seconds to comprehend what she was looking at. Usually, the boat didn’t leave the dock unless it was being taken to its winter dock or a hurricane was coming.

It was mid-July and the weather report was clear for days.

As the boat continued to approach everyone realized that it wouldn’t stop until it had brought whatever crew on it to the restaurant. Concerns were raised not in fear but in confusion. Joel’s sister stood with her hands on her hips watching the boat get closer and closer. To everyone’s relief, the boat began to slow down. The wind that had carried it thus far had died away, and now it was pure inertia that was driving the boat through the heavy water.

On board, Joel watched as his sister’s employer grew larger and larger. The two docks in his path were clear of boats which would only allow “Elizabeth” the opportunity to smash into the dock unencumbered. This gave Joel a sigh of relief. His sister, watching from above, understood something her somewhat dim brother did not. The bow was so long and pointed so high that it would pierce one of the windows of the restaurant. As the boat loomed closer it slowed to a crawl. The bow, as she had predicted, began to push on the glass. Instead of stopping the boat, the resistant glass seemed to aggravate the boat forcing the window to give way to its bow. The couple who sat at the window noticed the catastrophe before it happened and quickly jumped away from their food. Once the glass cleared itself, the bow continued into the restaurant in what could be noted as the slowest shipwreck on record. “Elizabeth” seemingly and daintily cleared the table of its contents before coming to a final stop followed by a low groan from the wood settling into a resting place.

Joel’s sister, speechless and still confused, looked down the bow into the steering. There, with a look of horror, stood her little brother. Once he saw her, he smiled and waved.

Joel was sent to the Dare County Detention Center for a sentence of two years. David renounced who he called a “hoodlum” but won the race for mayor. Joel, despite the name calling, celebrated the victory and sat in his cell happy he had been a part of David’s campaign.

It only took eight months for David to lose his seat as mayor. A whistle blower came forward and spilled about campaign finance violations, bribes, and of course David’s lining of his own pockets with public money meant to be allocated to new property development on the island. Once he was convicted, David was sentenced to 8 years in prison and sent to the Dare County Detention Center. The guards led David to his cell where across from him a familiar face peered back at him.

“Mr. David!”

David looked up. “Joel Fucking Turner.”