by Brad Land
——
I HAVE ONE more exam and then I’m gone. It’s four-thirty on a Thursday and everything is slow. Have my window open because the day has been mild. The only sounds I hear are an occasional car whirring by. I try to study but the test is on British Literature like Milton and Keats and I don’t care about those guys much right now. My teacher is old and boring and doesn’t really want to teach. Has never looked at us the whole semester. Always stares at the back wall. Talks over our heads.
BRETT’S HEAD IN his hands when I open his door. Turns one eye toward me from beneath the hands and it is bloodshot. The whole hall quiet. All the doors closed. I expect everyone to be running around like mad because pledge season ended last night after the final vote. But it’s not like that. The room dark. Spread hanging down from the foot of Brett’s bed. I ask what’s wrong.
You don’t know, he says.
Nah, I say, what’s going on?
Will, man, he says. He’s dead. A heart attack. You don’t have heart attacks when you’re eighteen. Just fucking dead in his room. Like that.
I can’t think straight.
This place, he says. Pulls hands back through his hair. This fucking place. He slides his hands down across his face.
I sit down on the couch beside him and lean back.
So they voted him out, you know, he says.
What do you mean?
Last night at the final vote.
I didn’t think they could do that.
I’ve never heard of it.
I thought the vote was just a formality.
It usually is. But they can still do it.
I feel like I should be screaming or running through the halls and opening doors and pulling people out, throwing them like dolls, beating them with my fists. But I don’t feel that. I don’t feel anything except this high-pitched whine in my left ear.
Who was it? I say. Were you there?
Yeah, he says. I had to be.
You didn’t have to be anywhere.
He looks at me like I’m crazy.
You don’t know, he says.
You’re right, I say. I don’t.
They wouldn’t listen. Fucking Chance and Dixon and Ben. You have to have two. Will had three.
When did they tell him?
Last night. After the vote. Late.
Brett lights a cigarette. Hands it to me and I take it and he lights another one and puts it between his lips. Takes a long drag and blows it out.
And today, he says, he just comes in his room after he’s been studying, starts talking to his roommate. That Chris Sample kid. Then he’s dead. Just like that.
It wasn’t anything to do with the vote?
You don’t die from a vote.
Still.
I get it, man, but you know we can’t know shit like that.
I don’t care. Those fucks did this to him.
I get up to leave and Brett grabs my hand, holds it for a moment and then lets go. I put my hand on top of his head.
You wanna kill them? I say.
Yeah, he says. Let’s. Tomorrow.
When I walk outside the air smells like burning leaves. I look around the courtyard and the goat is gone and there’s nothing to look at besides the clock tower at Tillman. I wait for a chime but the bell holds silent.
MY LAST EXAM is in British Lit and I don’t care about my grade at all. Because I’m done. I’m gone. For the essay question I write my name. That’s all I write. Brad. And I can’t match any of the passages to authors on the other part of the test. My pen moves and the words mean nothing and I’ll fail and I’ll leave today and bury Will tomorrow.
I LOAD EVERYTHING into my car in the rain. Drop the key off in the housing office and come back to the dorm.
I want to walk through one more time before I leave and I want there to be a shrine. I want to see weeping. I want incense and priests and altar boys crossing themselves. Contrite hearts. A procession. Dixon carrying a cross on his back. Pictures of Will everywhere. I want a posthumous induction with all the sacred rites and I want to see it on the news. I want interviews and brothers sobbing about what a loss it was and how they plan to honor his memory in some grand and significant way. A scholarship. A statue. A memorial. But the hall is silent.
I knock on Brett’s door and no one answers. Knock again and look behind me when I hear a door open. Chance McInnis takes one step out into the hall and looks at me. Takes off his white baseball cap and scratches under his chin. Coal black hair mashed down around his forehead. Barefoot. He stares at a spot on the floor. Spits. Turns around slowly, steps back into his room and closes the door.
I DRIVE HOME in the rain and when I get there I go to my room and shut the door and sleep.
This is what I dream:
There’s Will all balled up on the ground. Holding his legs up against his chest. And we’re all there. Me. Brett. Chance. Everybody. We’re all standing around him in this circle. Brett kicks him first. Then Chance. Then me. But Will doesn’t move. The feet just keep landing on him and he doesn’t whimper or scream or flinch. And there’s no end to it. This kicking. It keeps on. And Will’s eyes are always open. Not looking up or at us. Just open. Staring out in front of him. Across the floor. At the feet when they split his jaw.
MY FATHER SHAKES me awake the next day.
Hey, he says. I rub my eyes, look around and for a minute I don’t know where I am. The fan above my head whirs, makes the room move. The pages of a book next to my bed flap with the air. He touches my forehead.
Hi, I say. What time is it?
You gotta go, he says and then he turns and pulls the door shut softly behind him.
From the hall I see my mother sitting on the couch, legs pulled up against her chest and coffee in one hand. She’s staring at something and when I touch the door to my brother’s room, she turns her head to the hall, stands up and walks toward me. She’s still holding the coffee, and I have my hand on the doorknob, she looks at me like she’s studying my face.
I’m sorry about what happened, she says. Sorry about all of it.
It’s all right, I say. It’s okay.
She goes back to her room and shuts the door.
I open the door to my brother’s room and he’s bunched up on one side. I almost step on Chance McInnis’s head. He’s asleep on the floor. He had to spend the night because our town is only an hour from the funeral and his is farther away. I shake the doorknob so Brett will wake up. He pulls his eyes open slowly and closes them when he sees me standing beside his bed.
We’re gonna be late, I say.
Okay, he says without moving. Okay. Chance shifts below me and when I look down at him I want nothing more than to judge him, to ask what he is doing on my floor, to make him leave, push him out into the cold morning air with nothing and watch him shake and shake and shake.
12
INSIDE THE LUTHERAN CHURCH people packed tight, mashed together into long polished wooden pews. Four stiff older men handing out programs and shaking hands. The stale air inside the church and the light from the stained glass in colored bands across the heads and shoulders of people seated in the pews. Brett and I pause a moment inside the vestibule, look down at our bulletins like there will be something taking place we need to know. But there isn’t. It’s a funeral and we’re buying time before we make the long walk down the aisle across the gray carpet and nod toward people we know and grasp hands and rub shoulders. I let Brett take the first step and keep my head down because I don’t want to see everyone heaving and the girls’ mascara-streaked faces. I watch my brother’s feet and we don’t stop until we near the front. Brett stands back and lets me go first because he knows I don’t like sitting on the aisle. He guards me. I haven’t let my eyes move toward the front since we stepped inside the church but I can’t keep them down anymore. I pray silently that the coffin will be closed and right now I don’t even believe in God but I keep mumbling and raise my head and the coffin is closed. Its white planes gleam underneat
h the lights. Flowers placed carefully on both sides and on the closed lid and there’s this picture of Will beside the coffin. He’s smiling and I think it must be his high school senior picture because he’s got on a tuxedo. His hair billows on the sides and I’d almost forgotten his face even though he’s only been dead for a few days. I want to cry but nothing comes. The organist plays some soft hymn over and over, touching the keys and glancing up at her music sheet. I put my head back down and weave my fingers together in front of me. Someone’s scratched the name Ritchie into the pew. The marks are childish and I like that they’re here in all this perfect polished wood.
TARA POWERS COMES from the other side and sits down next to me. I look over when she nudges my shoulder and I don’t know what to say. I hate all these required pats without words. But there are no words. She looks up front and then I feel like I should say something. I look up at her face and her makeup is streaked and she looks beautiful and sad with the light gleaming off her hair. I think about how she kissed me and how she held my hand and I’m trying to think of something to say like it’s okay it’s okay I know I know but everything seems wrong. The small light hairs running the length of her arm catch all the light. She pulls her hand up to her face. Shields her eyes. Reaches into her purse and pulls out a tissue, wipes the corners of her eyes and lets her hand fall into the space between us. She’s still holding the tissue and I reach over and lay my hand across hers and she turns the hand up, puts her fingers between mine and the tissue is misty between our palms and we just sit motionless and clasp our hands tightly as the bodies fill in around us.
WILL’S FAMILY FILES down the aisle toward the family section. A brother who looks like a smaller version of Will leaning into his mother, she wraps one arm around his shoulder, tilts her head into his. Their eyes cloudy and filled with rain and no no no it shouldn’t be like this they shouldn’t have to weep for Will and goddamn this place goddamn all of this.
I look over at Brett and then he’s in the coffin, his cheeks sunken and rouged, hands crossed over his waist and I’m in the family section and I tell myself it will never happen like this it will never be like this.
I SQUINT MY eyes hard and Brett’s looking at me looking at him and he knows it too he knows it won’t come to this. We will grow old and gnarled together and watch everyone die. He lays his hand on my knee and I put mine on top of his and we just sit there with the organ chanting thick notes and the light from outside settling on our heads and I can feel the blood throbbing through us both. I can see the cells moving through the raised veins in our hands and arms, I can see the hair growing on my brother’s head, I can see his heart pulse and breathe and I know then that Brett and I will live forever.
We’ve seen too much. We know how the world tears people open. But we hold the thought between us for a moment, let it live and breathe because it makes us like we were before, kids who knew the world could not exist without them.
THE PREACHER COMES from a side door and reaches the pulpit with ragged steps. He smooths the sides of his black robes and pushes his glasses up. His eyebrows twitch like they’re snagged by fishhooks. He looks out over the patchwork of bowed and somber heads. The Bible in front of him open, he lowers his eyes, scrolls his index finger down the page. Brett shifts next to me, crosses one leg over the other. A bead of sweat runs down his forehead and his hairline looks damp. He swipes at it, lays his elbow on the pew’s railing. I look back down at the etched name, rub my thumb over the grooves like I might gather some secret from its curves. Everyone stands and I shuffle with a hymnal and look over at Tara for the page. I don’t sing and we sit down. The preacher starts talking about how it’s hard to face a death so young and then he reads from the big Bible about Jesus being raised from the dead and Will was a good young man yes a fine young man and there’s nothing to do but take comfort in the fact that Will is with Jesus now yes Will is with the Father with the Son and there’s no pain and it doesn’t hurt there it doesn’t hurt anymore. I rub my eyes and turn my head. Look behind Tara. Pick out some brothers. Chance a few pews back. Ben Moore sitting beside him. And I look behind Brett to find more because they should all be here. Everyone. Our heads drop, and the preacher starts a prayer but I keep my eyes cracked, shift them to each side to make sure everyone is bowed. And I want to run to the front, take the microphone, stand in front of everyone and pound my fists on the pulpit, point out the brothers who got rid of Will, tell everyone, make everyone listen to me, these are the soiled, these are the impure, these are the men who choked this dead boy’s heart. Everyone rises silently and outside the air is bright. The sharp wind bruises our cheeks. Brett walking beside me tall with the dress shoes and the sport coat and I keep stumbling over cracks in the concrete on the way to the car.
INSIDE THE TWELVE-YEAR-OLD black BMW my father has loaned us Brett and I smoke and listen to the radio. It’s an oldies station with Sam Cooke singing some tune about never being good at Geometry or Biology but if you’d love him too what a wonderful world it would be. The air outside flows through the crack in the window and brushes Brett’s hair back. He raises his cigarette to the slit, grazes the edge of the railing when he pulls it back in. Rubs the spot with his index finger and says fuck.
Doesn’t really matter does it? he says.
What? I say and I think he’s talking about life or death.
Burning this. He points to the mark he’s left.
No. I guess not. We’re smoking in here, right? I hold my cigarette up inside the car and it begins to gather in a thick cloud.
He won’t notice, he says.
Dad?
Yeah. He knows anyway.
He’s got an idea.
Yeah.
I raise my cigarette to the railing and burn a spot. Brett looks over with the smoke coming from his mouth.
WHAT I THINK will be a cemetery turns out to be a memorial garden. I’m used to weathered and crumbling granite and here the absence of headstones seems strange. A long row of cars pulls in ahead of us with blazing headlights. At the entrance a large American flag hangs limp. A thick white cross made of stone is planted in the center of a roundabout and we follow the line of cars toward the back of the garden.
Brett parks the car behind Chance’s Blazer and we sit for a moment watching the cars pull in around us. Brett studies the rearview and then looks at me.
Hard, he says.
Yeah.
Look at all these people. He leans his head toward the crowd that is gathering around an open white tent.
What?
I don’t know. Doesn’t seem right. I nod my head. It’s like everyone’s all heaving, he says, but three days ago nobody gave a shit about Will. He wasn’t anybody.
I liked him.
Brett looks at me and shakes his head.
Whatever, he says.
I did.
Yeah, and he was my best fucking pal, too.
I didn’t say that.
You didn’t even like him, though. I mean he was a nice guy.
You’re wrong. You don’t even know.
THE DOORS ON the hearse open and a few men pull Will from the back. They drop the wheels and clasp the gold handles on the sides. Will’s roommate Chris at one corner and they all walk with lowered heads toward the tent. Put Will in the middle of the tent where he’s surrounded by standing flower arrangements. I notice for the first time that there’s this arrangement of orange and white flowers shaped like a tiger paw and I think how insignificant it is. A school’s colors and symbol. Behind and above the tent a large billboard that says the best shopping on the Grand Strand one mile ahead.
Okay, Brett says. Turns to me again. You liked him. So what. What does that matter?
It matters something.
Not really. You see that over there. Brett points toward the tent. That’s him. In that box. They’re gonna be throwing dirt on his face in a minute. And all these people are gonna think then, right then, that they loved him, they loved him so so much. He was everybody
’s best fucking friend. He shakes his head. He was nobody’s friend, he says.
I don’t say anything because I know he’s right.
But you know, I say. Does it really matter? If we all love him for a second can’t that be enough? The words feel flat in my mouth.
No, he says. That’s not enough.
Chance gets out of his truck ahead of us and looks back. He nods and places his hands in his pockets.
Yeah, like that fucker, Brett says. You think that’s love when Chance feels sad? Fuck no. That’s not love. It’s fucking guilt. All it is.
You’re right, I say. I hate them too. I hate them for everything. I lean my head against the window.
Brett props an arm against his knee and rests his fist beneath his chin.
Well, he says. Looks over at me.
Yeah, I say and we open the doors.
I TRY NOT to step on any graves because I know I’m walking on dead people and I can see them snarling in their holes, baring their teeth like dogs.
Tara is standing a few people back from the front. She sobs, brings a hand to her face and the mascara rolls down her cheeks all black. She turns and sees me coming and holds her hand out. I take it between mine and I’m standing and holding hands with this girl that I barely know anymore and she squeezes her fingers tight like she loves me, like she won’t ever let go. I keep my head down and people brush against my arms and then I’m closed in by all these black coats and over the tops of heads I can see all these brothers. Chance with his head bowed, his hands crossed in front of him. Ben Moore pats another brother on the back, shakes his hand at the same time like some official greeter, like he’s giving a sales pitch.