Common Sons

by Ronald Donaghe

  She set the coffee pot back on the stove. She kissed Joel and Tom. “I guess I’ll turn in too. Turn out the lights when you two are finished. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  They walked to their little house. The moon was full and, in the clear night air, it was almost as light as dawn. When they got inside, Joel lit the lamp and carried it into their bedroom. He set it on the wooden crate, and sat on the edge of the bed, pulling his boots off. “How do you feel, Tom?”

  Tom managed to pull off his shirt before he began to break down. He opened his arms in front of him in a helpless gesture, then put them around Joel. “Mother actually wants me dead!”

  Joel held him, tightly, rocking him gently. Tom squeezed him harder. “Cry it out, Tom. Go ahead. Get rid of it.” Joel was angry, feeling the tears soak his shirt. Tears like these should only come at death. Bury them, then, he thought. Disown them like they have you. He had been shocked when his mother had told him. Considering all that had happened to him, Tom had done very well. Unable to find words of comfort, Joel pulled Tom down on the bed. They lay together until Tom had quit crying. In the dim yellow light, Joel sat up and looked down at him. He wiped Tom’s sweaty hair from his forehead. He bent down and kissed his eyes, tasting the salt of his tears. “Just don’t hate them, Tom.”

  “I don’t. I can’t. But I would probably feel better if I did.”

  “No, no,” he soothed. “It’s their loss.”

  They kissed deeply. Joel felt the warmth of Tom’s arms on his back. “I’m just glad that you didn’t go away.”

  “And I’m glad your parents helped us. Joel, if they’d acted the same way as my parents, we’d really be in trouble.”

  “I know. I don’t think I’d be able to handle it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I’ve acted so damned smug these last few weeks. I haven’t lost a thing, but you’ve been through shit, just to be with me.”

  Tom smiled. “Are you worth it?”

  “What? Me? Only if you married me for my looks, buddy.”

  “I did, Joel.” Tom looked serious. “That and to have a place with you.”

  Joel grinned and kissed him again. “You know how close we came to breaking up. If we ever fight again—”

  “Which we probably will,” Tom added.

  “Okay, when we do, let’s remember why we’re together.”

  Tom sat up on the bed. “I feel better now.”

  “I feel lucky,” Joel said, and blew out the lamp.

  CHAPTER 18

  To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal.

  Ecclesiastes 3:1-3

  Wednesday, June 16

  Funerals had never affected Tom in quite the same way as this one. In Wheeler’s Mortuary one block off Main Street, two blocks away from Common’s downtown area, a small gathering attended the Strouds’ funeral. Perhaps fifty people signed the registry that would be given to Edna’s children. Neither Eva nor Douglas had the heart to make the twins attend the registry, nor did they want to greet mourners. So as he passed by, Tom was greeted by a woman from the church behind the table. She handed him a pen to sign his name, but she could hardly look him in the eye. She had no doubt heard rumors. Tom could hardly recall her name. He wrote his signature self-consciously: Thomas Mathew Allen. Why not Mr. Mathew Reece-Allen? A new name to face a new life, but he settled for his old name—for now.

  The woman at the registry could and did look at the twins. She hurried from around the table and made sure to press a Christian hand on the cheeks of Patrick and Detrick behind Tom; she whispered quietly, filling the air around them with soft hisses, saying she was so sorry, so sad. Her sympathy was well meant, he supposed. But he was affected by the total emptiness of the sentiments—or maybe by feeling that no words could allay the confusion and sorrow the Stroud children had shown as this day approached.

  He’d attended many funerals as a member of the Allen family, attendance being mandatory as part of his father’s ministry. But he had never felt so affected by a funeral. Before now, the dead person lying in the coffin at the front of the funeral parlor had always been “deceased,” and the person’s “passing” had meant little to him; it was easy to believe that what remained was only flesh and not the person at all. The real person was a soul winging its way to Heaven, literally entering a place where it would dwell forever. That is, if the person had been saved through Jesus Christ. But at this funeral, he felt a greater loss. A loss not his own, but he felt strongly the loss of the Stroud children.

  Edna Stroud was dead. Henry Stroud was dead. Kenneth Stroud was dead. Eddie Stroud was dead. And now he didn’t confuse the abstraction of death with the real thing. Beneath all four coffin lids lay the bodies of the Strouds. Dead, gone if there was no soul. And he didn’t really know any more if there was a soul, as he was reminded, once again, of Joel’s statement: “If you bust my lip, my soul will bleed down my chin.” Because of that, the loss was greater to the Stroud children left alive, alone. Edna’s spirit, if there was one—what love she had managed to infuse in her children—lived only in the flesh of her flesh. But if there was no eternal life for her, neither was there eternal torment. Then how much more precious the energy of her love, living in the flesh through her children?

  But what about Kenneth? If you were a believer, you would say that, yes, there really is a hell. But did he ever have a chance to be saved? What a cruel punishment, if there was literally a hell, that he should burn forever in a pit of damnation for snuffing out four lives, one of those his own, with no chance of redemption because he had committed an unforgivable sin by killing himself. Tom couldn’t imagine even Kenneth’s brutal murder of his family as justification for hell. Kenneth had killed in a rage, then killed himself. Why? Because he wanted to? Or because he drew a bad hand at birth? Or because somewhere along the way he made a selfish choice and decided to be an evil person? Wasn’t it punishment enough to now be dead, to also be gone? It would be easier to justify eternal damnation in hell if you had eternity to screw things up, but Kenneth was only nineteen. And for a few thousand days of life, if you took the teachings of his old religion to heart, Kenneth would be condemned to hell for billions of days and then after that, billions more. But days without number? Unendurable, everlasting torment? What would be the point?

  Until now he hadn’t realized how much his religion asked of its followers. A person faced cosmic punishment for finite, infinitesimal life on earth and the mistakes he made there. Of course, if a person was truly repentant, by the grace of God, he might be saved. But the true believers would have to live in utter fear on this earth, being accountable for sins forever, like Kenneth, for moments of despair.

  He thought of Joel sitting on the other side of the twins, watched him waiting for the eulogy to begin. What did he think? Surely he believed that when a person died there was nothing more, because Joel really was a creature of the flesh, totally happy with life in general; and even in their roughest days, he had only given his love—first to me, he thought, and now also to the Stroud children. Joel’s left arm rested lightly on Detrick’s shoulders. And although Joel was just staring blankly ahead, Tom knew that his attention was on Detrick and the other children. But Joel had talked in terms of God as simple being, and maybe then, the Strouds had just been…being. To a human, such a complete, literal loss of life would be more complete if, when he died, he simply ceased to be. So one’s life on this speck of cosmic dust was that person’s only time to be alive, and then would come the time to die and be no more.

  Organ music played continuously, sad music, low, appropriate, Tom thought. Most of the people were members of his old church. The Strouds had very few friends, it seemed. A couple of guys Kenneth’s age showed up looking uncomfortable, and Tom guessed that for awhile Kenneth would live on too, through what friendship he had sparked in so
meone else’s life. Maybe he had even loved his family.

  Eva and Douglas sat in the front row on either side of Sally Ann and Henry, Jr. These two children at least seemed to have cried themselves out. Maybe, like the shortness of their attention spans, their grief would be blessedly short. But even though Henry, Jr. seemed merely curious now, earlier today he had asked, “You mean Eddie’s not sick anymore?” showing that he dwelled on the mystery of death a little while longer—in Eddie’s case, allowing him to rest from his sickliness. The hurt, the tears, though, had passed. Sally Ann had cried off and on for her mother until the afternoon before, and Eva had to win her over by degrees, had to win her trust, and now Sally sat with Eva as if by right. Tom thought that Eva had also become Sally’s mother by the same right.

  But Patrick and Detrick had only begun today to break down. Earlier, Douglas, he, and Joel had taken just the two of them to pay final visits to their family. The twins had cried over Kenneth and Henry, but passed quickly to their mother, whose face looked even more bony and stark lying in the casket. She was wearing probably the finest dress she had worn in many years. They had held up well passing by her. Not until they stood next to Eddie’s casket did they break down. Detrick fell to his knees, his face twisted in pain; he wailed, “That ain’t his face! Paddy, he never looked like that!” He had clung to Patrick, crying. Patrick, too, racked with sobs, had sunk to the floor, and they cried holding onto each other until Douglas and Joel helped them out onto the sidewalk.

  Tom felt Patrick beside him now; from the corner of his eye, he saw that the tears just wouldn’t stop rolling. But he was silent. And Detrick drew ragged breaths and kept swallowing, staring straight ahead.

  Across the aisle, the elders and deacons of the church sat staunchly dignified, heads bowed. Decent men, all of them, Tom thought. Elder Romaine had even come over—made a point of it—and pressed his hand into Tom’s shoulder. “You’re to be respected for coming here, Tom, considering many members of the church.” Tom knew what he meant. The elder struggled with the right words. “I’m sorry for your loss, as well. If you ever need help or any counseling I can provide, you are welcome in my home.”

  Tom’s eyes had burned with quick tears, but he had managed to smile. “Thank you, Mr. Romaine. I probably will need to talk, one of these days.”

  He watched his own father now—no longer his father—go quietly to the lectern behind the four gray caskets. They were arranged like spokes on a wheel. A few flowers had been donated, but the central focus was the four caskets. It was the gruesomeness of their deaths that was hardest to forget during his father’s eulogy. He talked of carrying on the family name, the Stroud children in turn bearing children. Generations hence, he said, there would be Strouds. Beginning with the three surviving sons of Henry and Edna Stroud, there was hope that one day they would be three strong fathers to carry on the Stroud name. “In that there is hope,” he intoned. “Where today we can only see loss and grief over such tragic deaths, tomorrow Patrick and Detrick, and Henry, Jr. will have families.” Once, during his talk, his father caught his eye. “Tomorrow is hope, my friends. For today is Jesus, God’s only begotten son, in whose name, by whose grace, by whose own death on Calvary Cross, by whose resurrection, we know God’s love and mercy, so that we can hope for the morrow.”

  There were tears in the gathering, real tears, tears of emotion, tears squeezed out in some cases, stingily, misplaced tears recalling other loved ones. But it was the dead Strouds that Tom cried for. He felt a quickening within him, a way to view death, face it, know that the most important contribution he could make toward God’s being was to contribute affection and love and work to the living, to the Stroud children, to teach them that the world Joel loved so much, the physical, knowing part, was itself sacred, that the very transitoriness of flesh and bone, blood and brain, the stuff of what made a human, was to be cherished, now, today, while breath and thought animated them. And the passing of his love to them all, to these boys, to the two little children, to Joel, to Eva and Douglas, made him a part of the Reece family also.

  As they left the funeral home out the side doors that led to the hearse and family limousine, Eva sat in the back of the limousine with Sally Ann asleep on her lap. Patrick and Detrick sat beside her. When they were in the car, with the door closed, Douglas pulled Tom aside. “When we leave the cemetery, Son, you and Joel take the twins out on the town this afternoon. Have a hamburger, drag Main. Ride ‘em around. Show them it’s good to laugh, and show ‘em they have to start fresh.” He patted Tom on the shoulder. “When you finish, pick us up at the Romaines. We’re going to have that talk with them about adopting the children.”

  Tom and Douglas smiled at each other. “Good, Sir,” Tom said. “I know they’ll help you.”

  * * *

  What struck Joel so strongly about the funeral was how quickly it dissolved as they came out of the chapel into the bright noon sunshine. The streets were busy with lunch-time traffic as they got into their car and followed the hearse out onto the street. Sunlight and wind flickered in and out of the car window as they picked up speed on Main Street, as they headed for the cemetery on the east end of town. Most of the gathering did not follow the motorcade. When they parked along the fence under the evergreen trees, maybe five cars pulled up behind them. He stayed close to the twins through the short ceremony and, as gently as he could, pulled them away from the sight of the raw earth that lay open to receive their parents and their brothers.

  “What kind of music you guys like?” He said, now, as they drove away. All four of them, Patrick and Detrick, Joel and Tom, were sitting in the front seat of the Reece’s Cadillac.

  Patrick grinned. “I dunno, Joel. We din’t have a radio. You choose.”

  He tuned in a station with an endlessly rocking rhythm. He and Tom moved in time to the music on either side of the twins.

  Detrick patted out the rhythm on his knee, and Patrick tried to hear the words. “That’s neat,” he said.

  Joel laughed and nudged Patrick. “We know lots of neat things, huh, Tom?” He screwed his eyes and mouth into a clown’s face, looking at Tom. Joel felt happy seeing Tom grin back, but more, seeing that Tom was able to comfort Patrick and Detrick at the funeral even when the preacher and his wife were there.

  “You and Dete are lucky to be in our family,” Tom said, then, and Joel thought again of their connectedness.

  “You ever been camping, Dete?” Joel asked.

  Detrick said proudly that he had. “Out at Red Mountain. You could see all the way to town from there!” He sat up then, excited. “Could we go campin’?”

  “You bet, guys,” Joel said. “We’ve got some cousins in the mountains above Alamogordo. Just the four of us could go up there some weekend before school starts.”

  Joel and Tom had not been out together since the night Kenneth had wrecked his truck, but the streets were quiet at this time of the day. The west end of town, usually crawling with cars at the Triangle drive-in, was almost empty. In the early afternoon under the canopy of the drive-in, they ate hamburgers and drank Cokes, and Joel got to know his new brothers and, he hoped, they got to know him and Tom. “We’re fourteen, goin’ on fifteen in September,” Patrick told him. The twins ate hungrily. “These are great!” Paddy said, his mouth full. He drained his Coke between bites.

  It was hard for Joel to realize how much Paddy and Dete had missed out on. They told him school was the only place they usually went, hardly ever into Common, never anywhere else. “You haven’t ever been anywhere else, ever?”

  “Naw,” Dete said. “Kenny—did. All the way to Texas! He ‘as allus goin’ somewhere.”

  “Well, we will too,” Joel said. “Me and Tom are going to take you everywhere we can think of. Mom and Dad like to take trips every summer. They usually take me along, but it’s your turn now. Yours and Paddy’s.”

  “You just name it,” Tom said.

  But Detrick got quiet again, his mouth full of hamburger, his cheeks bul
ging. He gave Tom a quick smile, then swallowed hard to get the mouthful down his throat. “Thanks. I jes’ can’t think of nothin’ better’n right now!”

  They spent the rest of the afternoon in town with their parents. Suddenly the Reeces had become a large family, and Joel walked along proudly with them all. Douglas took the twins into Lindyer’s Boot & Saddlery and got them new boots. Eva outfitted Sally Ann with Oxford loafers and some girlish little dresses and some boyish little play clothes. Henry, Jr. chose tennis shoes over boots, and in the toy department in White’s Auto, Douglas bought him a football and a hand pump.

  They ate dinner in town as the sun was setting on the long June afternoon. They took up eight chairs and the waitress had to put two tables together. Douglas sat at one end of the table and Eva at the other, and between them on either side Tom and Joel regarded each other with goofy, teasing smiles. Sally Ann had scooted her chair as close to Eva as she could get. She was busy picking through her food and showing Eva various parts of her salad. Joel laughed to himself at Sally’s fascination. Douglas was equally beset with Henry’s adoration. Henry babbled at Douglas ninety miles and hour. “I kin’ run real fast in these shoes! I kin’ climb up real high now. Can I play with my stuff when we git home? And you know what?” Douglas nodded between bites. “What, Henry, Jr.?”

  Paddy and Dete, Joel regarded together, like one glass of water in two containers—one half empty and the other half full, or like two sides of an argument. Each was unique and had his own personality, but so many of their gestures and reactions were interchangeable. Detrick seemed to be the least happy most of the time, the quietest. But he didn’t miss out on anything Patrick said or anything said to him. They laughed the same way, but Dete had a way of pulling in his shoulders after laughing and ducking his head, as if someone might steal the feeling from him. Patrick was most likely to be embarrassed, but in a way that made a person feel it was all right. If he turned red, he didn’t try to hide his embarrassment. When he laughed, he looked around, sharing his laughter. And tonight, Joel saw that when Patrick was happy and laughing, he was a very handsome young man. He was most like his mother in that way; before Kenneth got kicked out of school, there had been times when Edna was happy, and when Joel had seen her laugh. He had thought she was a beautiful lady.