by David Connor
"Why doesn't he look like Renny?" Frank asked.
"The rest of him is someone you never knew."
"Who?"
"What does it matter?"
"I insist you tell me!"
"I may as well." Vaughn paused to light a God damned cigarette first! Frank stared at him and waited. "Arthur Ottley."
The unfamiliar name came on a cloud of deadly chemicals which had already done damage to Vaughn, damage Frank could now see in the bright morning sun. "Who?"
"The out-of-towner whose ashes you delivered the day after your friends both died."
"I don't understand." Frank couldn't breathe, and not due to the carcinogens.
"He'd been in an accident similar to them. A hit and run. No witnesses. No emergency contacts. No hope for recovery." Vaughn stood, but leaned one hip against the bumper of the old truck. "He had been in the infirmary for quite some time. The hospital and authorities were unable to track down one single relative in the first days. Perhaps he was indigent, a bum estranged from them all. I was told of him by certain contacts, as I have been on the lookout for such people from time to time."
"For?"
"He was kept alive for me," Vaughn said cryptically. "Barely. His outsides were not so bad, his insides a mess. When a heart became available, the both of them, it was too serendipitous to let pass. It was not something I had fully planned ahead, but I had definitely toyed with the notion. Once it was decided, well, it was perfect—meant to be. You never had to know, except life did not return as we had hoped."
"We?"
"I have associates you will never know now."
"Now? Because you are…?"
"Because I am dying and because… I do not feel as if you are suited to such endeavors. That has been proven by your continuous obsession. This is not a line of work where a persistent conscience is a benefit. You wonder. You obsess. You think." Vaughn chuckled. "You are too damned smart. I had to cover the girl, lest you see the incisions. The boy, his chest was already a mess, from the accident."
"And long before," Frank said quietly. "I'm confused." He wasn't totally. The words made sense, even the concept, but so much was missing, a backstory, a reason. "I delivered ashes to the post office." Frank spun around. Vaughn wouldn't meet his gaze. "Someone claimed him?"
"At the very last moment. She saw the death notice and came here. By then, Arthur Ottley was gone and Liam was within hours of being born. This relative had no time nor interest in Arthur Ottley when the hospital finally called her. The first thing she asked me was if he'd left an inheritance. Her lack of grief would have been the same over her distant cousin's ashes or those from the butcher shop."
Frank felt ill. "Vaughn! That's…" He had no words.
"Tell me what part of you loves Liam and what part does not, even knowing all of this."
"All of me loves him," Frank uttered, still completely stunned. "All of me, damn it! To the depths of my soul."
"Having seen it with my own eyes, I know it is all of him that loves you as well, beyond what I tried to create. He loves you to the depths of his soul, Franklin. And that is something no surgeon can create. No one can transplant a soul, certainly not I. That is the work of God. It is something the living have only. I asked you, as Liam lay in that bed, why you looked away. I said it then, that he had a soul, but I was wrong. It was not there yet, dear Franklin. He was a shell, until he had life, real life, and then his soul appeared. You know the difference. Think, son, you've seen it. You've felt it. When you put yourself upon him nearly naked, did you feel his soul? I venture to guess you did not. Yet even with distance between you, can you not feel it now?"
There was a difference, certainly. Liam felt far more alive under a million blankets than he had with nothing between their naked bodies, but that's because of the machines, because Liam had yet to move or speak. It wasn't because of any spiritual mumbo jumbo! Or was it? "Vaughn… I… I just don't know. I want to love him. I want to be with him, but how… with this… this curse I have?"
"Just be."
"I was ready to be. Finally. Then he showed me he is not. There are two choices. I get in that truck and drive off… or… or…" Frank reached for Vaughn's sleeve. He grabbed it, carefully, yet desperately. "You made him for me. You gave him life for me. For him, Vaughn, for him… so he can be happy, I need you end mine. I need to die."
Chapter Ten
All the color drained from Vaughn's face. "Why would you ask such a thing from me, Franklin?"
"You know precisely why."
"Franklin…"
"Oh, Vaughn. Don't be so dramatic. After what you just told me, it shouldn't be a major production."
"If that is what you think, then you have not listened enough."
"You gave it a fifty-fifty chance of working." Frank got back into the hole and dug. The ground was nice and soft, but hand digging a grave still took a long time. By the time Frank was finished, he had to convince Vaughn to stop his heart and then bring him back. "We try it for a brief time. If it doesn't work, we try it again and again."
He dug quietly for a good long while, allowing the request to sink in. He knew Vaughn well. Vaughn was a thinker. He paced, stopping to look down at Frank a while, and then he would sit again, with his chin on his palm like the statue. He was considering it.
Now Frank was excited as well. He was a digging machine, nearly as fast as a backhoe would be, at least in his own mind. He fantasized about everything he and Liam had done, the intimacy in the woods, in the yard, in the bathroom and the kitchen and the front steps. With the added senses, of touch, scent, and taste, it would be—what? How could Frank even dream up how it would be with nothing to base it on?
No.
There was the one kiss. That was not a pleasant memory, though. So Frank pushed it away and tried to remember the non-erotic kind of kiss between him and his parents. That memory was reachable. It was also bittersweet, except the sweet got somewhat lost. Melancholy filled him, but he would not allow that, not when there was some sort of hope, some sort of resolution, finally, to allow him and Liam to really be together.
Frank conjured up the sound of Liam stroking himself and the image of the two of them enjoying the insertion of the tube. With his eyes closed, Frank envisioned Liam up inside him using the same rhythm with which he tugged at himself to thrust in and out. Soon, he was breathless, not just from the exertion of digging.
"Of all of that," he said, as if Vaughn knew what he'd been thinking. The showy point in his dirt-covered pants might have been a clue. "Out of everything…" Vaughn had come to the edge of the pit at Frank's voice. He stared down at him. "Of all the things Liam and I could do then," Frank said to clarify. "Kissing would be my favorite, I'm sure."
"The grave is good enough. Let's proceed."
"And then we will go back to the mortuary and try?"
"Franklin."
"There's no time like the present. Have you noticed? I use contractions now, Vaughn. All the time."
"Your giddiness is bordering on foolishness. You are also coming to annoy me."
"'You're coming to annoy me'." Frank said it with incongruous glee. "Try it. Say it like that."
"Your mood makes the idea tempting. I have rarely seen such joviality from you."
"Isn't it strange?" Frank came partway up the ladder. He looked up at Vaughn. "I haven't felt it, and all it took was thinking about death."
"It doesn't frighten you?"
Frank thought a moment, still hanging onto the side of the ladder. "Not in the way you think. I have been afraid of life for so long… disappointed, really. That's how I felt the last time I died, remember? It wasn't bad, though. It wasn't at all creepy, as people often think. I suppose the decaying, rotting, decomposing body aspect, the worms and the bugs and the gasses... Yes, that is creepy. I'll know none of that, if what I experienced before was death." Frank climbed up and out. "You know what? We're not even going to consider that. It's not going to happen. I have to believe that what yo
u accomplished with Liam is light-years ahead of what you could do with this acquaintance of yours, either one. Am I right? How long ago was it—the two times you tried to take away the curse?"
"Many, many years."
"Well, there you go. There is equipment now, like the machines or whatever it was you used to keep Melissa's and Renny's hearts alive outside of Liam and then in him. I want to know how someday."
"You seem so accepting now. I thought the idea bothered you. I have marks on my front door from your fists that say so."
"Hmm. I think the lie bothered me more. I don't know, Vaughn. I feel what I feel when I feel it. There's something magnanimous about allowing two young lives to go on in some way. And I will think about it more before I think about it less. Maybe eventually I won't think about it all." Frank pulled the ladder and put it in the truck. "Vaughn… I can truly tell you have the desire to do what I am asking. Take the personal aspect out of the equation. Pretend you don't know me."
"That is impossible."
"Then pretend you do. I mean, remember you do. Liam was a gift of love to make me happy. Vaughn, didn't you just say you've never seen me happier?" Frank wanted to grab him to make the point. "Please. There's no other way to release me of this burden, and therefore Liam too. If Liam will not leave me, I have to die."
"No."
A clatter of shovel handles falling against the tubes of the casket lowering device startled the pair. They turned. Liam was there and Frank reached for him.
"No, Fank."
"Liam… How much have you heard?" Then, as always, Frank pulled back. "In order for you to thrive…"
"Too much." Liam jerked away. He turned to run, rearing back when he almost collided with his father—with Vaughn. He stumbled. His arms whirled like propellers, and his feet slipped from beneath him. Before Vaughn could grab for him, even if he would have had the strength to stop it, Liam fell into the open grave Frank had just dug.
"Liam!" Frank crumbled to the ground and stared down at him. "Liam!" There was little else he could do but yell his name, as the man he loved panicked, jerking and twisting in the dirt after the initial thud. "I'll get the ladder."
Liam got to his feet. He turned in each direction, as if there would be something behind him but rock and dirt. Of course, there wasn't. When that realization apparently set in, Liam started scratching at the sidewalls of moist clay, like a desperate beast attempting to climb from a trap. The noise that came out of him, a blend of wailing, shrieking, and a guttural yell, was heartbreaking. If one made a list of terrifying situations, Frank, despite his occupation, had always figured being stuck in an open grave would certainly be near the top. The literal nature of it was bad enough. The mental connotations it brought forth, however, were an added source of terror.
"You'll be out in a moment, Liam. There's no need to be frightened."
The words fell on deaf ears.
"Soothe him, Vaughn, will you, while I grab the ladder. He's too panicked to listen to reason."
"Is anything broken?" Vaughn struggled to get to his knees beside the open hole, six feet deep. "Help me," he said to Frank.
As Frank reached for the wooden ladder, he thought back one year, to a night he'd found himself in a similar situation. Frank had been to the floor of a freshly dug grave maybe a hundred times or more. Only that night, Halloween night, 1964, there had been no ladder, not down there with him or close by on the truck, because Frank was not at work.
As Frank dropped the ladder for Liam, he wondered if Renny's two accomplices last Halloween had been the same two buddies at the gas station store the last night Renny took breath as himself.
*~*~*
Nearly everyone in town knew the route Frank took home at the end of the work day, often after dark during fall and winter. The men wore ski masks. Two of the hats were all black, but one had red threads that formed chevrons across the forehead. He held a flashlight—the guy with the red trim on his knit hat. Frank had no idea who he was, but one of the other two was definitely Renny. Frank knew his voice quite well, even after not hearing it much over so many years.
One of them put a hood of some sort over Frank's head. Maybe a pillow case.
"Stop! I'll hurt you."
The assailants laughed off what must have sounded like a hollow threat. One tackled Frank to the ground, tied the hood tightly at the neck, and then raised Frank to his feet. They kicked him several times, the three of them, it seemed—one at a time, and then all at once—in his legs and buttocks. Even when Frank had fallen back to the ground, they kicked him in the back and in his gut. One of them yanked him to his feet after several blows. "Get up, Freak." Renny, maybe. Then someone kicked him again.
"Knock it off." That was definitely Renny. "That's enough," he ordered.
They must have been wearing layers—gloves, at least. It was after the lightning strike, the one that had made Frank more of a monster. The ones who knocked him down and picked him up, the ones who grabbed and jerked him about, they seemed not at all affected though.
"Freaky Frank! Freaky Frank! Freaky four-eyed faggot Frank!" The chants began, the name calling, and it continued for a while. Frank's hood never came off until the group of them stood at the waiting grave. There was barely a moment to reconcile the scene, to understand what was happening or the frightfulness of what might be about to, before Frank was shoved in.
The three of them spat on him.
"Shit."
Spitting in a ski mask wasn't easy. Frank almost laughed when one of them cursed, knowing, just knowing, he had spit all over himself.
"Trick or treat faggot?"
"Your trick, our treat," Renny said.
"Ghoulish monsters like you belong in a grave!"
Frank was in one. Mission accomplished, and so the others took off.
Frank wasn't particularly unnerved once alone. In fact, he calmed considerably the moment Renny and his mates had taken off. He'd half-expected to be beaten until he bled. His hip was a little sore from being kicked, but otherwise no bones were broken, no blood had been drawn.
In the hours that passed, at least by Frank's estimation, he thanked God several times they hadn't touched him more than they had. He'd been worried about their safety as much as his own. Frank quickly reconciled himself to being at the bottom of the pit until Vaughn arrived in the morning and threw down the ladder. He'd been sitting, actually humming El Capitan, when—"Frank!"—when he first heard the voice. "Get up, Frankie. Come on."
"Who's there?"
"Get up, man. Hurry up."
"Renny?"
Frank could hardly see through the pitch darkness, but the white stripe on the blue sleeve of the jacket Renny had on stood out.
"No. Betty Crocker. Drag ass, Frankie. Grab ahold of me."
"Why?" Frank asked.
"So I can get you out, idiot."
"It was you put me in." Frank couldn't see the logic before him.
"Do you want rescued or not?" Renny was whispering—whispering quite loudly. He may as well have spoken full out.
"I believe I will wait," Frank said.
"For who? The Boogey Man? Dracula? Just do it, dummy."
"I… I cannot … touch you."
Renny leaned forward. Frank could almost make out his face as his head came into view. He definitely smelled of booze. "What are you talking about?" The words came with an eighty-proof vapor.
"Go, Renny. I will wait for rescue in the morning."
"Why are you talking funny? All Shakespeare, or whatever."
Frank thought about what Vaughn often said. "I do not… I don't know. Go home."
"You damned fool! Don't be a turkey!" Renny giggled then. "Wrong holiday." He chuckled some more, enjoying his drunken reverie.
Frank smiled too. Renny would have gotten the "not a creature was stirring" joke, the one the ant hadn't, right before the lightning strike.
"Give me your hand, Freaky… Frank... Frankie, I mean."
"Your jacket. Take it off, Ren,
and tie it around your forearm," Frank said from his entombment.
"Just take my damned hand, man! Fast!"
"Why? You afraid your comrades will return and find out you're here to save me?"
"Comrades? Vaughn Hellier got you talking German, Frankie."
"I think it's French."
"Who cares? And screw them! Phil is a dick and Deej is an asshole. Just do it! Let me help you." There was a desperation in Renny's tone, possibly compunction for many years' misdeeds. And he kept saying "Frankie", not "Freaky Frank" or "faggot".
"You do it, Renny. What I said," Frank instructed. "Tie your jacket to your arm, so the sleeve hangs down like a rope. I'll wrap it around mine for leverage. Is that the right word?""
Renny huffed, but he followed the directive. "I don't know. Fucking pain in the ass."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah." There was a slight bit of humor still, like two old friends in a silly predicament. "Pull me up by the fabric," Frank said. "The material is strong. It's won't rip."
"It better not, or you'll be buying me a new one with creepo Hellier's dead people money."
The plan worked. Though Renny grunted more than was probably necessary, the two had no trouble pulling Frank from his subterranean trap.
"Thank you."
"Whatever."
As Frank unwound the sleeve from around his wrist, he looked at Renny. He could barely even make out his features in what little light there was from a full moon filtered by thickening clouds. Then headlights in the distance illuminated him. The look on Renny's face, it was one Frank remembered from high school—middle school, maybe—during Renny's sweeter days.
"Why are you friends with them if you don't like them?" Frank asked, referring to 'Deej' and whoever. The names were unfamiliar. They must have been guys Renny had met after high school. "Seems to me it makes more sense to have friends you like."
Frank had been quite plucky if he was remembering it right. The verbal battle had seemed almost like foreplay—quite enjoyable.
"Shut up, Frankie." Renny waved away the question, but answered it anyway—sort of. "I shoulda stayed friends with you, is why. I think I'd be happier."