For Dan

Posted on April 23, 2012 by daniel

I’m not sure I really knew Capt. Daniel H. Utley, 33, who was killed in the line of duty April 20 in some place called Bamako, Mali, his latest stop in a distinguished Army career that no one who’d once known him as simply Dan Utley would’ve predicted he’d lead.

The full circumstances of Capt. Utley’s death aren’t clear. And due to the nature of the work he was doing, we might never know exactly what happened that day, when he was among six people who were killed in a vehicle accident in the capital city of a chaotic African country.

It’s difficult for me to comprehend the bravery Capt. Utley surely exhibited during his decade in the military. The guts, the intestinal fortitude. This is because I remember a Dan Utley whose fragile digestive system once became so tangled and twisted by the noxious combination of salted peanuts and Pepsi that he vomited out the back window of my gold Honda Civic as it rolled down Happy Valley Road in Glasgow, Ky.

Salted peanuts and Pepsi. A mixture apparently so powerfully horrible that the guy couldn’t even hang on for the 30 seconds it would’ve taken me to pull into a parking lot.

Who the hell falls violently ill to peanuts and Pepsi? I asked Dan that question repeatedly for years. I don’t recall his answers. I assume, however, that he plucked one of my own embarrassing failures from the painstakingly detailed mental files we maintained of each other’s most egregious screwups and tossed a similarly insulting question back at me.

I knew the real answer, though: Bad asses get sick from peanuts and Pepsi. Because Dan was a bad ass. I knew it then, and I definitely know it now. A lot of years, a lot of life and a lot of drifting apart separated me and the Dan who went on to become an American hero. But he was a hero to me long before that.

Plenty of people knew Dan better than I did, especially folks who met him after he left Glasgow for the University of Louisville and eventually for the Army. For a few years in high school, though, we were usually a package deal.

We shared a neighborhood and a first name. He used the informal “Dan,” even though he did formal things such as tucking in his shirts, combing his hair and completing homework assignments. I’ve always used the stuffier “Daniel,” even though my teenage years were a mess of wrinkled polo shirts, comical disorganization and an overpowering lack of motivation to finish even the simplest academic tasks. Much of what Dan did seemed to be fueled by some degree of forward thinking, purpose or planning; if I planned anything, it was typically in an effort to avoid having to do any further planning. We were, in many ways, very different. For instance, he couldn’t have cared less that I played guitar in a silly little rock band. And I found his pontifications about the political philosophies he espoused excruciatingly boring.

In the ways that counted, however, we were symbiotic. We were smart. We were funny. We were sarcastic. We were self-deprecating. We enjoyed high school, but as an amusement more than anything else – neither of us considered anything that occurred in those days to be a life-altering or life-defining experience. We reveled in a brutal sense of humor that might’ve, at times, been hurtful to people. Dan and I had few sacred cows, and we didn’t think you should have many, either. Little was off limits. In hindsight, I’m sure we crossed lines more than we should have.

I suppose we got away with it because we were clearly harmless. We were goofs who sucked up to teachers, caused virtually no problems and were steadfastly loyal to our friends. We weren’t the most popular guys around, and associations with us scored a person zero points in the teenage social structure. But we carved out our niche and made it work.

We often entertained ourselves in ways that appealed to no one else, save for a couple of our guy friends, Alex and Spencer. A summer afternoon might’ve involved igniting a Barbie doll in a metal bucket, because it’s important to know whether Barbie melts or burns. A slow Friday night might’ve been spent steering his Volkswagen Rabbit along Ky. 90 to Summer Shade and back, simply because we realized we hadn’t been to Metcalfe County in a while, which was clearly a circumstance that demanded immediate correction. We learned the hard way that the county kids who populated the cruise line in front of McDonald’s didn’t appreciate being videotaped by interlopers from the city. I’ve heard rumors that a bull might’ve been struck in the scrotum by a BB fired from a Volkswagen Rabbit, and that the shooter(s) might’ve been wearing sombreros at the time, but I won’t confirm or deny those reports.

Still, as well as I knew Dan, he often seemed alien. He was usually a step ahead – and if not that, then at least a step off to the side. I distinctly recall his decision in our junior or senior year to use “Green Onions” by Booker T and the MGs as the soundtrack to a class project. It’s not an obscure song, it’s not exactly a random song. But it was definitely unexpected in the mid-1990s, and it was a choice that absolutely no one but Dan would have made.

That’s what I loved about Dan. He was impossible to pin down. He was a sweet guy who regularly laughed to the point of physical incapacitation, but who could also unleash gloriously profane and poetic rants. (If you were a dude who happened to be on a date one night with a girl Dan wanted to be on a date with, be thankful you couldn’t hear him besmirch your character. For hours and hours.) Dan was a force, and it was a challenge to keep up. He was always tinkering, exploring, scheming, learning. I don’t know whether the breaking point was his fascination with the folding shovel, or the CPR dummy, or lounge music – but eventually I stopped being surprised by whatever attracted Dan’s focus. I just tried to keep up.

We went separate ways after high school, and within a few years, I realized I wasn’t keeping up at all anymore.

Then, one October – I’m almost certain it was Halloween night – my phone rang. It was Alex and Dan, calling from Louisville. Dan was tired of law school, he was angered by 9/11, or something like that. In any event, he was joining the Army. I’m pretty sure I called him a dumbass, told him he’d be blown apart by terrorists. I think he agreed. We all laughed. They hung up. And that was the final time we shared a moment that felt like the old days.

I saw Dan once or twice after that call, and we emailed off and on for the next decade. At the time he died, though, I hadn’t really spoken to him in a few years. He was always somewhere on the planet doing ridiculously awesome things, while I was doing far more normal things, never too far from home.

Since word of his death came Friday, a lot of us who ran in Dan’s circle in Glasgow have lamented that we weren’t more diligent in maintaining contact. Of course, I wish I’d tried harder. At the same time, though, I don’t know that either of us felt the need.

I’ll forever believe that our paths crossed at a time in our lives when we needed each other the most, and in a few short years we squeezed more out of our friendship than many people do in a lifetime. I’m crushed that he’s gone, confused about why it happened and sad that I’ll never hear from him again. But my life was absolutely enriched by his presence in it, and I am proud to have been part of his. We all have a list of people who are most special to us, and Dan has permanent residence on mine. I hope that somehow he knew that.

Dan and I spent a lot of time in cars. And we listened to a lot of music. We didn’t agree on much musically, but we found a sort of unofficial theme song in “Windfall,” by the band Son Volt. I went for a drive Friday night after hearing the news and listened to the song. I thought about Dan. Even without taking into account our history with “Windfall,” it just seemed to fit.

So here you go, man. For probably the thousandth time. And for the last time.

“Windfall,” Son Volt