Work Text:
-
Gary is dead. So the soldiers on my doorstep tell me while I stare at his bicycle. That rusty old thing lies in the yard, right where he hurled it after coming home the last time. What will I do with it now? I can’t ride a bicycle anymore, not with my ankles so swollen and my back so brittle. Will it just rust away, lying there, until nothing’s left of it?
One of the soldiers hands me a neatly folded American flag. I’ve never owned a piece of cloth so fine. Would it be treason to make something out of it? It will be hard without Gary here. Lately he has been helping me put the thread through the needle, it takes me ages these days. But on the other hand, there’s no hurry now. No one needs me anymore.
So a colorful shirt, maybe. A nice shirt. I don’t own many nice shirts.
“Ma’am, your grandson walked 233 miles and survived to see the dawn of the fourth day. He was one of the six most resilient marchers. The memory of his perseverance and strength will encourage the lasting boys to complete the Long Walk”, the soldier says. So it was still going on. Other boys were still marching on, even though Gary was dead.
The soldier was young. A bit older than Gary. Was it you? I wanted to ask. Did you kill my boy?
“We congratulate you and express our sympathies for the sacrifice your family has made for our nation”, the soldier continues and hands me a blue, see-through plastic bag. “Here are the possessions your grandson had in his person when he passed. His body will be delivered home as soon as the Walk is over.”
I hear my own voice speak. “Can we have an open casket?”
I would like that. In my husband’s funeral Gary refused to let go of the flowers he was supposed to lay on the coffin, and our pastor laughed, and he called Gary a beautiful child, he really did. No one had ever complimented Gary, so that simple compliment did make me very proud. So I’d like to have an open casket. I never really knew how to dress that boy, or what to make of that hair of his, but I know the owners of the funeral home, they could make his corpse look nice. Our pastor could bury the same beautiful child who had once made him laugh.
“That isn’t usually advisable, ma’am.” My look must have darkened, because the soldier continues: “But your grandson will have a respectable funeral. The government will cover the cost, of course.”
He says the word respectable with weight behind it. Like he knows something I don’t, like they are doing me a favor I never asked for.
Had they notified Brucie and Elaine? They have to, right? Custody or not, they are Gary’s parents. Or would I have to tell them? Tell my darling boy he isn’t a father anymore?
The soldiers ask me if I have any questions. I want to ask whether Brucie and Elaine know. I want to hear if Gary behaved himself. That’s what I told him before he left, I know he has a mean streak and he doesn't even notice it himself sometimes. So I told him to be good, I smacked him on the back and said be good. I want to ask whether the other kids gave him a hard time. They do that sometimes, he is a weird little thing, and kids are tough on weird little things.
But I ask nothing.
When I close the door, Pebble jumps down from its favorite sleeping place on the shelf. It approaches me and pushes itself against my feet. I will be getting rid of it as soon as Gary is in the ground. Gary loved that thing, but I don’t know what to do with it. I’ve hardly remembered to feed it during these few days, even though Gary put all the cat food on display before he left. Pebble is an ugly excuse of an animal. I got it for free from a neighbor who had unwanted kittens and was going to drown it along with its siblings. I told him that the social worker lady thought a pet would help Gary with “social skills”. I got to keep the wretched thing, and Gary still had no social skills. But he did love Pebble.
Gary has lived with me full-time since he was fourteen. That’s over four years now, I realize. They wouldn’t let him live at home anymore. I didn’t want the kid, but they said they’d never let Brucie see him again if I wouldn’t take him. So I did. It was the end of a long dance of Gary living with me from time to time and Brucie and Elaine trying to make it work at home. Some time later Brucie and Elaine moved further away, leaving me alone with Gary.
Brucie wasn’t a good father to Gary, I know that. But he is my son, and he is a good man. He makes friends wherever he goes, there has always been a sort of magnetism in him ever since he was born. Brucie was the sweetest boy growing up, and took such good care of the dolls I made when I thought I was expecting a girl. He carried them with him everywhere, and refused to eat unless I gave the dolls a snack as well. There’s no way that sweet boy would have treated his only child like the social workers claimed he had. It was that wicked Elaine who made him bad. Made him so unhappy he hurt Gary.
And it wasn’t like Gary was an easy child. I never understood him. I don’t know if anyone ever understood that child. The social worker lady thought Brucie made Gary the way he is, but I know it must have been Elaine’s fault. It was the drinking, I’m sure of it. You shouldn’t drink while expecting, everyone knows that by now. Gary came out a bit funny. He has never been a normal kid, always a bit wonky.
Maybe I’m being unfair. He was a cute boy, at times. Like every morning, when he helped me with my compression stockings, he used to tickle my heel and grin. In those moments he was so like his father, sweet and lively.
I take the blue plastic bag and sit by the table. I glance at my favourite armchair. I can’t sit in it now, it’s so hard to get up from without anyone helping me.
The bag doesn’t have Gary’s clothes in it. I don’t like to imagine why. There’s only the hat I bought for myself from the flea market but decided Gary would need more. Sometimes I buy things before I remember I am no longer the brisk woman who needs a sun hat. I insisted that Gary should take it with him the day he left. I don’t claim to know anything about the Walk, but it must get hot. I packed scarves too, in case the hat would be too hot. I didn’t want him to get a headache.
The hat smells like Gary’s hair. It’s not a pleasant smell, but it’s familiar.
There’s Gary’s cat charm, the cheap one from the gas station that says Love is my cat. The cat in the charm looks nothing like Pebble, but it was the only one with a picture of a long-haired cat, so Gary took it. I always thought it silly but he always found a way to have it with him. Wrapped around his wrist, tucked under his shirt, hanging from his belt. Maybe it was a way to keep Pebble with him. It was his only friend, after all.
I never thought Gary could win. I don’t understand the Walk, even though Gary claimed he did. He rattled on and on about having a plan, how people would underestimate him for being so skinny, but he would be the last one laughing when he would walk those fat bitches to the ground, to which I snapped at him for because I am fat and he shouldn’t say “bitch”. Then he hurried to the other room and I don’t want to know what he did, even though I know what he did, and he came back grinning about how the people placing their bets for him would earn a small fortune, the odds are pretty high, you know. But I always knew he wouldn’t win.
I just didn’t realize he would actually die.
The last thing I pull out of the plastic bag is Gary’s camera. It’s broken. You can’t really trust the government to deliver valuable things like that. Pity. I could have sold the camera, I’m sure it was still worth something, but nevermind then. The film is still inside. I should get it developed. I know I should call Brucie and Elaine, but first I want to go get Gary’s pictures developed. There’s a place nearby, a neighbor who knows this stuff. No one will refuse to develop pictures from the Walk.
Gary used to say he’d like to learn to do it himself, to have a dark room and all that. Was that the only time I ever heard Gary talk about the future? He wasn’t really a dreamer, that one. Everyone I know seemed to agree. Nothing will come of that kid, people said, and I wasn’t even offended, because no one ever complimented Gary.
And they were right, weren’t they? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, nothing to nothing. For the wind passes over him, and he is gone.
I walk over to the neighbor’s house and ask him to develop the film. He is kind and sympathetic. He promises to get right to it. I come back and I’m exhausted.
I walked a mile.
-
Elaine picks up. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
I’m silent, taking a drag of my cigarette, and she breaks down, howling like an animal. I think she might be drunk. I’ve always disliked Elaine. The social workers always blamed everything on Brucie, but Elaine was no saint either. She too hit Gary, even right in front of me. Had no decency, that one. Gary hit himself too. I still remember a time years ago when I was angry at him for wetting his bed and he started banging his head with his fists. Smacking his cheeks, scratching himself. He looked crazy, like he should have been in a straitjacket. I screamed at him. Said he can’t do that in front of people. They will stare and think someone taught him that.
When I called Brucie and Elaine back then they couldn’t stop laughing. They thought me getting all worked up because Gary happened to be a bit of a nutcase was so funny. I was angry at all three of them, and I think I may have taken it all out on Gary. He tried not to hit himself in front of me after that.
“I saw him, y’know. In the telly”, Elaine says. Her voice is so shaky I can barely understand what she says. “He had a fight with a boy there, or something, I don’t… I didn’t really follow, you know how they edit those things. And he was taking pictures, he looked happy, and he was taking pictures, he was fine.”
I say nothing. I think about Gary’s wish. They give the winner a wish, whatever he wants. I wonder what Gary would have wanted. I never asked him, I wasn’t that interested. Now I wonder if he would have wanted to live with Brucie and Elaine again. Gary never agreed with the custody arrangement, he never trusted social workers or cops. He bit one of the cops the night they arrested his father for the first time, when Brucie had too much to drink and he hurt his family badly. Brucie later told me Elaine had been horrible that night. She made him feel small, and insignificant, and stupid. She laughed at him, and said something that made Gary laugh as well. Brucie never meant to hurt anyone, and Gary knew it. So maybe Gary would have wanted to live with his parents again. Maybe he would have bought all of us a nice house. We all could have been together.
But he didn’t win. Boys like Gary never win.
“Bruce… Bruce is with his buddies, y’know. Always with his buddies, that one. He probably hears about it before coming back. They’ll watch it at the bar, those guys, they are betting, you know. I’ve never watched it before. It’s stupid, just people walking, it’s like watching nine-ball or chess, you know. But Bruce has money on that Stebbins kid, so he will be watching, he’ll have heard before he comes home, I’ll try to make him call you, okay… Fuck, fuck he will be so fucking sad”, Elaine babbles on, breaking down into sobs again. She sounds like she’s drowning, gasping for air.
I wonder if those guys Brucie is watching with are the same guys he used to invite over when Gary was still living with them. I didn’t like those friends, they didn’t do good for Brucie. And they were never good to Gary. I wonder how they feel when they watch television at the bar and they see Gary stopping, or falling down, and the screen cutting to black. Would they laugh at him? They used to offer Gary booze and laugh when he fell on his face, but of course the kid never dreamt of saying no. Gary was always so eager to impress men, it was the lack of friends, I think.
I wish I hadn’t sold the car so he could have gone to a bigger school. I wish I had forced him to get hobbies, to go play ball with some boys of his age. I wish he had been an easier kid, I wish he had been different.
Elaine gathers herself enough to ask: “Will they need us to do anything?”
“No”, I finally speak. “Nothing’s required of you. I will call you about the funeral.”
I hang up. My cigarette has fizzled out.
-
Pebble keeps me up all night. It’s screaming like the world is about to end.
-
The Long Walk ends. They don’t have a winner this year. I didn’t know that was something that could happen. But I never really understood the Walk anyway.
Gary’s corpse gets to the funeral home. I talk to the woman who works there and she says she will try her best to make it look presentable. The head’s not too messed up and the face is intact, she says, she has always been blunt. And he has all that hair to cover up the worst of it. So we’ll see, but no promises. We’ll be needing better clothes for him, and maybe a white scarf. A clean one, preferably. For the neck. I don’t want to hear about the neck.
Brucie hasn’t called me yet.
Me and the pastor meet up so we can discuss the funeral. He’s a fair man, takes out an ashtray for me and asks me how I’m doing. I babble on about my husband’s funeral, ask him if he remembers Gary not letting go of the flowers. I want to ask if he remembers that Gary used to be a beautiful child. He says he doesn’t remember, but he will miss seeing Gary at the parish office. Months ago his wife got Gary a job shredding old obituaries and deadheading flowers. We discuss the sermon and the hymns. We agree that he shouldn’t mention that Gary lived with me and not his parents, even though everyone around here knows that. There may be spectators, there usually are some in these funerals and forbidding them from coming might make it worse. The pastor sees how purple my ankles are and offers to take me home in his car, and I agree but say we need to make a stop on the way. The pictures are ready.
After I get home I sit by the table and leaf through the pictures. Cats, and boys. One cat enjoying itself on a mailbox, I can’t quite make out whether its eyes are closed or nonexistent. Two boys fooling around, looking like they are dancing, very unwise in that situation. The other one looks so young, he can’t have been more than sixteen. His face is so round and scared, it disgusts me. I can’t look at the picture much longer, I flip through the others. More boys. A shaky picture of a boy lying down, a gun pointed at him. Smiling boys. Gary wasn’t a very good photographer. He liked taking pictures, but it was just his way of experiencing moments, I think. Or maybe he just liked having the camera with him. Something to hold onto, like a teddy bear, or a safety blanket.
What kind of messed up kid needs to take pictures in a situation like that? I look at the boys and I know I’m watching dead children, every single one of them is dead and their families have received an American flag and a blue plastic bag with broken things inside.
-
That night Brucie calls. He is drunk, of course. He asks if anyone is going to make a sandwich cake for the funeral, the one my sister taught him how to make before Gary was born. When I say we do not need a fucking sandwich cake, he goes silent. He really wants to make that cake, I realize.
“I tried to love that kid, you know. But he was just so…” Brucie draws a shaky breath. “I don’t know, Ma, he was just so fucking weird, y’know? And I was no good to him. And then Elaine just never got pregnant again, and I realized, shit, this is the only kid I’m gonna get, you know? Jesus. But I tried, I tried to love that little loony. He just made it so fucking impossible.”
“It’s alright, Brucie. You did alright”, I say, my voice thick. “Trying is enough.”
He cries. I listen to him and I feel my heart twisting in my chest. My poor boy. My poor, poor boy.
“I also lost a fuckton of money because that bitch Stebbins got the sniffles and went belly up. The government fucking better pay for the gas so we can get there for the funeral”, Brucie laughs tearfully. “Let me make that goddamn cake, Ma.”
Of course I let him. I always have.
-
The funeral is today and my ankles hurt. The girl next door has started helping me with my morning routine. Brucie and Elaine are staying with me but I don’t want to bother them with things like that. The girl’s sweet and the only payment she takes is a little ice cream from the fridge. She’s free to take as much as she wants, no one else in this house eats ice cream anymore.
I close my eyes when the girl zips my compression stockings. No one tickles my heel.
We did okay, Gary and me. It wasn’t good but we gave it a try.
There are way too many people outside the church, but I’m happy to find myself invisible. Brucie quickly gathers himself a flock of men who pat him on the back and say things like Say what you want, but the kid was tough as nails and I’m sorry, man. A woman we’ve never met but who calls herself Helen Sanders is crying like it’s her son being buried. She can’t stop talking to Elaine, I came all this way. I knew I needed to speak to his mother, I need you to know I forgive you. I know he wasn’t a bad kid, they never show us the full thing, they were all just children. Elaine covers her ears and says she can’t hear this now, she’s sorry, she’s so fucking sorry, and she has never looked more like Gary than she looks right now. I speak to neighbors, mostly. The ones who are staying for the memorial service, that one we’re allowed to keep in private, at least. Someone takes pictures of Gary’s corpse and when the pastor tells her not to do that she scoffs Isn’t that a bit ironic.
The service is beautiful. Gary looks just as beautiful in his coffin. I’m afraid of looking at him in case a lock of hair falls off its place and reveals a bullet hole, but it doesn’t happen. In his neck there is a white scarf I bought from a convenience store, and the cat charm. When I gave it to the woman at the funeral home, she grinned and said she has never been able to resist a little whimsy. I want to cry but nothing comes out. I have never been good at crying.
When it's over, I come back to an empty home.
I remember to feed Pebble.
-