by Jeff Zentner
Dr. and Mrs. Blankenship, dressed in black, walked up. Dr. Blankenship, looking uncharacteristically grim, kissed Lydia on the cheek and shook Dill’s hand. Dill and Lydia introduced her parents to Amelia. Dr. Blankenship sighed and looked at his watch. “Well, I think the hour is upon us. Shall we?”
They went inside. The funeral home smelled of old hardwood, lemon furniture polish, and white lilies and gardenias. Hippie Joe was there. He and Travis weren’t close, but he went to all students’ funerals. A couple of Travis’s shop teachers came. A few people Dill said he recognized from church. Then, to Lydia’s considerable annoyance, there was a pack of classmates from Forrestville High, none of whom had ever known or cared about Travis particularly when he was alive, but in death saw a grand opportunity for drama and pathos.
Travis’s father sat ashen-faced and stoic at the front of the room. He looked behind him, saw Lydia and Dill, and turned immediately back forward. He knows we know.
Travis’s mother came up to Lydia, Dill, and Amelia. Lydia didn’t think it was possible for anyone to look more ravaged over Travis’s death than her and Dill, but Travis’s mom did.
“Thank y’all so much for coming.” Her voice cracked. “You were good friends to my Travis and he’d have wanted you here.”
“We loved him,” Dill said, tearful.
“Yes, we did,” Lydia said.
“My mom sends her apologies that she couldn’t come. She couldn’t get off work,” Dill said.
At the front of the room sat a plain pine casket. Inside lay what appeared to be a wax sculpture of Travis in a cheap blue suit—plastic and unreal somehow. They approached with trepidation.
“I love you, Travis,” Dill whispered, tears pattering on Travis’s lapel.
“Dill,” Lydia said, tears streaming down her face. “Cover me. Hug me.”
As Dill embraced her, Lydia pretended she was holding onto the casket for support. Then she reached in and tucked a tiny package into Travis’s suit jacket, where it made a slight bulge.
Amelia followed behind them, weeping. She spent a long time looking at Travis’s face.
Before taking their seats, a particularly elaborate and beautiful flower arrangement caught Lydia’s eye. She read the card, which was from Gary M. Kozlowski:
Rest, O Knight, proud in victory, proud in death. Let your name evermore be a light to those who loved you. Let white flowers grow upon this place that you rest. Yours was a life well lived, and now you dine in the halls of the Elders at their eternal feast.
Dill and Lydia stood at Travis’s grave gazing at the fresh brown dirt covering it, long after everyone else had gone home. The sky was incongruously, callously blue.
“He’s got his signed page from G. M. Pennington and dragon necklace,” Lydia said, not looking up.
“That’s what you put in there with him? How did you get them?”
“I went to his mom. They released his personal stuff to her, and his signed copy of Bloodfall was with it. I cut the signed page out of the book and got his dragon necklace. The staff wouldn’t have fit, or I would have put that in there too. But I’ve got it. I’m going to give it to you later to hold on to. I don’t deserve to keep it because I gave him so much grief about it.”
“We’ll figure out the right thing to do with it. I wonder how Gary knew to send that card and flowers.”
“I called his agent. I told her what happened and I told her to convey to Mr. Kozlowski how much what he did meant to Travis. That it was probably the best thing that ever happened in his life before he died.”
“I wonder if that would have been Travis someday. A rich and famous writer, taking the time to meet with kids who were like him.”
“If Trav ever became rich and famous, there’s no question he would have. He gave me one of his stories to read on the day he died.”
“Did you read it?”
“Yes.”
“Was it—”
She laugh-cried. “It sucked.”
Dill laugh-cried with her. “But he’d have gotten better, right? He planned to take writing classes.”
“Of course he’d have gotten better. It was his first try. If he’d had forty more years, like Gary, he’d have been great.”
They let themselves cry for a few minutes.
Lydia sighed and wiped her eyes. “He was brave.”
“One of the bravest people I ever knew.”
They stood there a moment or two longer. “Let’s go somewhere,” Lydia said. “Someplace that feels like being alive and together and happy.”
The Column soaked up the warmth of the afternoon sun. Dill ran his fingers over what Travis had written—it seemed like years ago. We leave so little behind. They sat with their backs against it. Dill loosened his tie.
“You’d have learned more about Jesus than about Travis in that eulogy,” Lydia said.
Travis and Dill’s preacher had given the eulogy, and it was long on the light and the life and the resurrection and short on actual details about Travis’s life.
“I guess to be fair, though, he didn’t know Travis very well. And what do you say about someone who’s only lived seventeen years?” Dill said.
“You can’t really talk about all his grandkids, huh,” Lydia said.
“Travis loved Bloodfall, Krystal burgers, and his staff, but he’d never kissed a girl.”
“Travis never kissed a girl?”
“Did you ever hear him mention it? Who would he have kissed?”
“Yeah, good point. He was headed that way, though, it looked like.”
“Not that you’d be able to say that much about me at my funeral,” Dill said. Hadn’t kissed a girl either. Never worked up the courage to tell the girl he wanted to kiss how he felt about her. Didn’t even like Krystal. Won a school talent competition. Recorded a few videos of his songs that were generally well received by the people who saw them online. Did laudable work at Floyd’s Foods; rarely missed spots while mopping; was up for night manager. Had a couple of close friends. Maybe put his dad in prison, or at least his mom thought so. Did just so-so on the whole faith thing. The end.
“I think lives are more than the sum of their parts,” Lydia said. “I don’t think it’s fair to measure them in accomplishments. Especially not with Trav.”
They listened to the river. Dill wondered if it existed before any humans had lived and died at its banks. He wondered if it sounded the same then. He wondered what it would sound like when the last human died. Rivers have no memory; neither does the soil, or the air.
“Where do you think he is?” Lydia asked quietly.
Dill pondered. “I want to say heaven. Truth is I’m not sure. I hope someplace better than this.”
“When I think about it, sometimes I drive myself into a complete panic. Wondering if he’s falling through space right now. Falling and falling and falling and it never ends. This empty black void, but he’s aware. Of it. Of himself. He still has all of his memories.”
“As long as he has his imagination.”
“Yeah. I also wonder if heaven is maybe whatever you most wanted it to be. Maybe Muslims get up there and Allah’s waiting for them. And they’re like ‘See? Right all along.’ Or Travis gets up there and he gets to drink mead out of a horn or something.”
“I hope that’s true,” Dill said. “I have a hard time believing that all of Travis’s memories—everything he loved, all that he was—don’t exist anymore somewhere. Why would God make such a universe in someone and then destroy it?”
“Do you still believe in God?”
He fiddled with his shirt cuff before answering. “Yeah. But I think maybe he made all this and got in over his head a little. Like he can’t keep track of all the bad stuff that happens or stop it.” He reflected for a moment on what he’d said. “How about you?”
“I don’t know. I want to. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don’t.”
A humid gust of wind mussed their hair. “Do you ever wonder how many springtimes you have left?�
�� Dill asked, brushing hair from his eyes. “We’re seventeen now, so we get sixty-three more springtimes if we’re lucky. Like that?”
“I hadn’t. But I will now.”
“I guess the answer is always one more, until it’s zero more. And you never know when the answer will be zero more.”
They watched a vulture turn lazy circles in the distance, floating on updrafts, gliding. “Nothing stops when we’re gone,” Lydia said. “The seasons don’t stop. This river doesn’t stop. Vultures will keep flying in circles. The lives of the people we love won’t stop. Time keeps unspooling. Stories keep getting written.”
“Lydia?”
She turned, tilting her head, seeking Dill’s face. “Are you okay?”
He studied his feet. “I’m not sure. I’m numb right now. But I can feel the darkness coming. The way you can see a storm coming. I can hear voices in the darkness.” He paused, gathering his strength. “I need to tell you something about myself.”
He told her the story of the Serpent King. She clearly made a great effort to remain neutral, which Dill appreciated, but her face betrayed her horror.
And now you know who I am. Now you’ve seen the tracks that have been laid for me. Maybe the force of my destiny is so great that Travis had to die to bring it into being. Run. Run from me the way people did from my grandpa, the Serpent King.
Lydia sat confounded and speechless for several minutes after he finished. “Just because grief ruined your grandfather doesn’t mean it’ll ruin you,” she finally said. Dill detected the trace of uncertainty in her voice, much as she may have tried to mask it.
He put his face in his hands and wept. “It’s in my blood. It’s like each of my cells has this poison inside it, and the grief chemical from my brain dissolved whatever kept the poison bound up. So now it’s starting to flow free and poison me. Like it did my grandpa and dad.”
Lydia took Dill’s hand and pulled it to her. “I want you to listen to me. They surrendered to their darkness. You don’t have to, and I want you to promise me that you never will.”
“I can’t promise that.”
“Promise me that if you ever feel like surrendering, you’ll tell me.” She put her hand on his cheek, turned his face to hers, and stared him dead in the eyes. “Dill, promise me.”
“You’re leaving. You won’t be around.”
Her eyes welled with tears, and they began streaming down her face and dropping onto the concrete. She pointed and spoke with greater resolve. “Dill, I will spend my life savings and charter a private jet if I have to. I will literally tie you up with duct tape and kidnap your ass and take you home with me. Now promise me.”
Dill took a deep, shuddering breath and turned his gaze away, but he said nothing.
“Dill?” She reached over and turned his face back to hers.
“I promise,” he whispered finally. I don’t know if I can promise what I’ve just promised.
“Say the words.”
“I promise I will tell you if I feel like surrendering.”
“At least promise me that before you consider surrender, not only will you tell me, but you’ll at least try something completely unexpected with your life instead, since you’ll have nothing to lose.”
“What?”
“Anything. Go to college. Join the circus. Live naked in a tepee. Whatever. Just nothing involving snakes or poison, though.”
“I promise.”
They sat their vigil like some sacrament. Until sundown and the blood-orange winter light of the dying day cast long shadows. Dill watched Lydia out of the corner of his eye. The breeze blew her hair across her face. She wore the sunset as a flaming crown. Young and beautiful and luminous and alive, keeping the darkness at bay if only for that brief moment.
When she arrived home, her dad was sitting on the couch, looking at a photo album. He still wore his suit and tie from the funeral. She sat down beside him and laid her head on his shoulder. He put his arm around her and kissed the top of her head.
“Are you looking at baby pictures of me?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Have you been doing this since the funeral?”
“With a break here and there. Are you okay, sweetie?”
“I miss him.”
“I bet. Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really. My heart hurts, Daddy.” She wiped a tear from her cheek before it could reach her dad’s shoulder.
“Mine does too. We’re here for you if and when you feel like talking.” He drew Lydia closer to him and she buried her face in his chest. “We raised you here precisely so you’d never have to deal with something like seeing one of your friends get hurt. And then this happens. I’m an idiot. We should have moved right to the middle of Manhattan to raise you.”
“Dad. You didn’t know.”
“We made the wrong trade-offs. We made the wrong choices. We tried. You need to know that. We tried to raise you the best we could. I’m sorry.”
“I know that. If you hadn’t raised me here, I’d never have gotten to know Travis at all. Like you said that time.”
“I don’t know what would happen if I ever lost you. It would destroy me.”
“You won’t.”
“I want you to be careful in this world. My heart is wrapped up in you.”
“I will.”
After a long while, Lydia stood to go upstairs.
She hadn’t made it more than a few feet when her dad called after her. “Lydia?”
She turned around.
“If I had bought all of Travis’s wood that day, would he still be alive?” His voice sounded hollow and far away, like he was asking the question under great duress on behalf of someone who didn’t want to know the answer.
“Are you asking me if you killed Travis?”
“Yes.”
“No. I don’t think you killed Travis. I think it was the two men who killed Travis who killed Travis. And I don’t think you should absolve them even a little bit by accepting any responsibility.”
He tried to smile, mostly without success. “Thank you,” he said softly. He went back to looking at the photo album, and Lydia went upstairs.
She was sapped. She lay on her bed and stared up at the ceiling. Her phone buzzed.
Ugh, drama with Patrick. So over high school boys, Dahlia texted.
Lydia felt actual physical revulsion at the banality of Dahlia’s problems in the great scope of things. Not that it was Dahlia’s fault. Lydia realized she hadn’t told her. Not telling anyone about Travis was just a reflex.
Can’t talk right now. Lost a friend, she texted.
OMG, as in died?
Yes.
OMG, so sorry, love. You ok?
Don’t know.
What happened?
Well, Dahlia, not that I ever mentioned him to you (or anyone else, really), Lydia thought, but I had a friend named Travis Bohannon who sold firewood to make extra money to pay for writing classes and a new computer so he could write fantasy novels. And someone killed him for one hundred and twenty-three dollars. But he didn’t dress right, so I was embarrassed by him. And that hurts on top of all of the pain of losing him. Then Lydia felt a compulsion.
Check Dollywould in a bit, she texted Dahlia.
She went to her desk and began typing. She balked for a moment. She knew she was venturing into the belly of the beast. But that’s where she needed to go.
This is both a eulogy and a confession. But first, the eulogy.
I had a friend. His name was Travis Bohannon. A couple of days ago, while he was selling firewood, two men shot him and left him to die while stealing his money to buy drugs.
Travis was utterly comfortable in his own skin. He was who he was, and he was never afraid of what anyone would say or think. When the world wasn’t big enough for him, he expanded it with the force of his imagination. He was one of the bravest people I ever knew. One of the kindest. One of the most generous. One of the most loyal. You probably didn’t
wake up this morning sensing that the world is poorer, but it is.
He deserves to be remembered. Please look at his face. Know that he lived and he was beautiful. And that I will miss him.
And now for my confession. I am a fraud. I pretend to be all of the things Travis was: comfortable in my own skin. Brave. The anonymity and disconnectedness of the Internet allows me to present that persona to you. But the reason you’re only now finding out that I had a friend named Travis Bohannon is that I was a coward. Travis wasn’t “cool” in the conventional sense. He didn’t wear stylish clothes or listen to cool music. He loved fantasy novels. He wore a cheap dragon necklace and carried around a staff. I thought it would be bad for my blog if you knew about him. I thought it would make me seem less cool if you knew that he was my friend, so I kept him a secret. But no more. I would rather live authentically and take whatever consequences may come of it than live a lie. Travis, please forgive me. You deserved better.
She clenched her fists and wept. When she finished, she went through the photos of Travis from their school-shopping trip to Nashville. She found one of him gazing into the distance, leaning on his staff.
At the time, she thought he looked ridiculous. A child playing dress-up. As she posted it, she thought he appeared majestic. Noble. Kingly.
She completed the post and closed her computer. It wasn’t that she was afraid of a bad reaction. She knew she’d get an outpouring of love and support. People would line up to offer absolution. And it was that mercy she feared most. She didn’t feel worthy of it. She couldn’t bear being told she’d done nothing wrong.
Deathstorm came out three weeks after Travis died, to nearly universal rave reviews. The New York Times said:
G. M. Pennington faced a daunting task in tying together the dozens of disparate threads in the Bloodfall series to bring things to a satisfying conclusion. With his 1,228-page opus, Deathstorm, he has succeeded in a manner that should satisfy even his most critical and demanding fans. Epic in scope, violence, and imagination, Deathstorm is a new benchmark in the fantasy genre and cements forever G. M. Pennington’s status as the American Tolkien.