by Lance Berry
He scrambled over the leather seat of the limo where his father had left him, and stood on his knees, hands and face pressed against the tinted window. In the distance, he could see a group of people–some seated, some standing–gathered around a closed coffin. A priest stood at the coffin’s head, reading from a bible. Travis couldn’t hear him, of course; he doubted he would’ve been able to, even if he rolled the window down. He looked and saw his father and Auntie Lisa standing in the group, arms wrapped tightly around each other. His father’s face was as stone-set and unyielding as when he had told Travis “no” a few minutes ago, denying him the chance to say goodbye to his mommy. He didn’t understand why his father wouldn’t let him be a part of the funeral group, even though he had no choice but to bring him along, since he hadn’t been able to find a babysitter. He wouldn’t give Travis any reasons at all, just “you’re not old enough,” which wasn’t any kind of real answer. She was Travis’ mommy, not his! Travis’ lips curled down into an angry frown. He should’ve been allowed to say goodbye!
How he hated his father sometimes.
He turned his attention to Auntie Lisa, who leaned her head against his father’s shoulder and cried openly. Even through her tears, she was so beautiful. Auntie Lisa had tried to argue for Travis’ right to attend the funeral, but his father wouldn’t hear it. “The boy’s not old enough to really understand what this is all about,” he had said sharply, seeming as if he might explode at her at any moment. On any other day, Auntie Lisa would have argued harder and won–she was the only person his father never won an argument against. But as the two adults went back-and-forth on the matter, Travis saw that her lips trembled, and her sea green eyes were filling with tears. Finally, she gave up and slumped back in her seat in the limo, and it seemed as if every last bit of strength had drained out of her. Travis couldn’t believe she had stopped arguing, but he knew it meant his cause was lost; once his father had his mind made up, things would go the way he wanted them to, and that was it. It was the way things had always been and probably always would be.
Travis sighed as he stared out the window at Auntie Lisa, wishing he could say something, do something, to take her tears away. She was the only person in the whole world he loved as much as his mommy…maybe now the only person in the whole world left for him to love.
Travis suddenly flung himself back into his seat, arms crossed defiantly as his child’s brain began to cook up mischief. His lips wrinkled as he shifted his eyes back out the window, now looking at the driver who stood outside by the front passenger door, reading a newspaper. He seemed oblivious to everything around him, biding his time on the sports page as he blithely waited for the affair to end.
Stealthily, Travis slid off the seat, his pants cuffs temporarily riding halfway up to his knees as he carefully lowered himself to the floor. He took a moment to unbunch the underwear wedgie he had accidentally given himself, then cautiously unlocked the rear door on the driver’s side, and pushed it open…just a bit. He glanced back: from his crouched position, he could no longer see the driver on the other side, but the man’s face didn’t suddenly appear in the rear passenger window, peeking in to see what was going on. Good–that meant he hadn’t heard the rear door open.
Travis poked his head out and looked down; although the AirKar only hovered about three or four feet off the ground, because of Travis’ small size, the grass beneath might as well have been a thousand feet away. Travis anxiously huffed a couple of times, then swung his tiny feet out the door and over the side, letting them dangle a moment–an attempt to get used to the chasm before jumping into it. He looked back at the rear passenger window again, now almost wishing the driver had heard him, so he could rush over yelling “What are you doing, kid? You crazy?” and snatch him back inside.
A thought came to him: She’s my mommy.
And on its heels: I want to say goodbye.
He looked down at the ground, vowing silently that it wouldn’t keep him away from her, no matter how much it wanted to. Taking a breath, he jumped–and landed sprawled on his stomach, the wind knocked out of him and pain rushing to his head as he bopped his chin against a stone, blood drip-drip-dripping instantly from the gash. He clapped both hands over his mouth and bravely stymied the cry which tried to rush out of his throat. Tears gushed from his eyes, down his cheeks, but he boldly refused to start crying out loud. He forced himself to his knees and stayed there a while, letting the tears run silently as he waited forever for the knots to leave his stomach…
He left the rear door open for fear that closing it might alert the driver. He managed to make his way past him by going in the other direction, away from the funeral instead of towards it, and disappeared into a small grove of trees. The blood had stained the upper portion of Travis’ white shirt, but had stopped dripping from his chin after a couple minutes. Travis tiptoed around the grove and peeked out occasionally to make sure he was still going in the right direction as he circled around the driver and the limo. Soon enough, he had passed both completely and could see, in the open space between the grove and another stand of trees, the group gathered around the coffin. They were bigger now, which meant Travis was closer. Now came the real trick: getting from the grove to the stand without his father seeing him. In all his life, Travis had never been able to get away with anything when his father was around. He had heard the expression “having eyes in the back of one’s head”. Well, his father must have had eyes in the back of his head, his elbows, his butt, maybe stuck on the tops of his shoes! His father was a captain in the United Earth Force military, and he knew soldiers were trained to have sharper senses, but Travis had never met any soldier with senses sharper than him. He inched forward slightly, pressing his body against the last tree in the grove as he watched the group. There wasn’t a lot Travis was always patient about, but he could be patient about this. He watched, waiting for an opening…even glanced up at the bright summer sky, wondering if God might be looking down on the funeral. After his mommy had been killed by the Calvorians during their attack on the transport headed to Luna, Travis had considered the possibility that God might not exist. There couldn’t be a God if his mommy, who never hurt anyone or had anything bad to say about anybody in her whole entire life, was allowed to be killed. She wasn’t a soldier, she didn’t make munitions or work aboard a Heavy Cruiser. She was just a person…a mommy…who had been on her way to Luna to visit friends she hadn’t seen in a long time. Why would God let somebody be killed because of that?
Travis looked up at the sky. Prove it! the little boy silently, angrily swore. If you’re up there, prove it! Let me get away with something, just this once. Then desperately, more pleadingly, Let me say goodbye.
He looked back at the crowd, but had to wipe fresh tears away to see them. When he cleared his eyes, he saw that his father had turned to Auntie Lisa and was speaking to her in hushed tones. She nodded, saying something back as he wiped her tears away. Travis was amazed: there was no way his father could possibly see him if he made a break for the stand now, eyes on his butt or not. He looked back up at the sky to say “thank you”, but a cloud passed over the sun.
He glanced back: his father was still looking away. Travis broke from the tree, propelling himself across the field like a rocket, his small legs pumping like crazy. He made it to the stand, out of breath, and peeked out from behind his new hiding place…his father had just turned back to an angle where he would’ve been able to see him, seconds before. Travis almost laughed triumphantly, but held it in. He gathered himself, and sneakily made his way around the stand…
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” Father Guest said solemnly. “Thus do we finally commend the body of our sister, Violet Richards, to the ground.” He sprinkled a few final drops of holy water onto the casket, and the cemetery attendants carefully lowered the coffin into the ground. Jack Richards tossed a red rose into the earth after it, and Violet’s sister, Lisa, followed suit. Each of the two dozen mourners who had come out took their
turn throwing a rose into the grave…a ritualistic conclusion for one of the most undesirable ceremonies any human could ever dread participating in.
Jack and Lisa stood together solemnly, accepting sad well-wishes from grieving family members and friends. Thank you for attending, yes we’ll see you later on, I’m glad you’re here, I’ll miss her too…Jack had once seen a joke card listing inappropriate things to say to a bedridden patient. Unfortunately, they all seemed to fit in perfectly with funeral etiquette. As the last attendee headed to the string of waiting AirKars behind their own limo, Jack rubbed his sister-in-law’s shoulder, and she nodded in silent, almost telepathic acceptance. It was time to go.
As they turned to leave, however, Jack’s ears pricked up. He stopped abruptly, his mouth creasing into a hardened frown, somehow almost knowing what had happened before he viewed the evidence. Lisa turned to him, wondering what was wrong, and then she saw:
Hunched into a ball, his knees curled up to his chin, Travis leaned against a tree in a small stand not far away. His face was streaked with tears, and he cried steadily as he stared at the hole where his foster mother had been lain to rest. Jack purposefully strode over to the boy and for a moment, Lisa feared he was about to give him a good verbal going-at for disobeying him. She rushed over just in time to hear him gently shush his foster son as he gingerly, lovingly, scooped him up in his arms. “I know, little soldier,” the tall, thinly muscular man with prematurely graying hair said softly. “Believe me, I know.”
As the trio headed back to the ‘Kar, the two attendants watched them a moment. They had seen instances like this a hundred times before, and would probably see them a hundred times again, before the day would finally come for their own families to mourn in the same way while new attendants shrugged in a disinterested manner and casually dumped uncaring dirt onto fresh graves…just as they did now.
Jack cursed out the driver vehemently for not keeping a better eye on Travis, and vowed six ways to Sunday that he’d put in such an unfavorable report to the man’s superiors, that Mars would develop a breathable atmosphere before he’d ever chauffeur another limousine. Travis sat on his Auntie Lisa’s lap in the limo, watching through the closed window as the driver tried alternately to apologize, then attempt to explain that he wasn’t a babysitter. But he couldn’t get past Jack’s invincible anger, and even backed away a couple of times when it seemed the elder man might actually take a swing at him. Even through the closed window, Travis could hear his father saying a lot of bad words he hadn’t heard him say in a long time, along with several new variations on them. Finally, chastened and defeated, there was nothing the driver could do but slink back to the limo and drive the family home.
It was a four hour ride back to the town of Garrison in upstate New York, where Travis and (now only) his father lived. During the entire ride, the boy refused to sit with him; he instead clung to his aunt’s waist, gripping her as if he were a man cast overboard from a sinking ship, clinging to the last life preserver on a storm-tossed sea.
Garrison was a small, pleasant town just far enough away from the New York Wastelands that no lingering radiation made its way up from the remains of the City proper. It had been nearly thirty years since the Calvorians learned to turn Earth’s nuclear missiles back upon it, and their first target had been one of the most densely populated cities on the planet. The Great City was gone now, and in its place was a radioactive death zone. Survival above ground was only possible because of the installation of mile-high atmospheric processing vanes which dispersed much of the hard radiation, but even then the time was limited to barely forty-five minutes. Some of the outer boroughs–Long Island, Queens–survived the main blast, but paid the price of permanent quarantine as many of their citizens died slow, lingering deaths from leftover fallout. Upstate New York was safe, and it had been here that Jack Richards and his wife had decided to relocate with their adopted child, once he had moved up sufficiently in rank to declare his own posting.
As the ‘Kar made its turn onto Aqueduct Road, Jack admired the quaint beauty of the neighborhood. The town had a rich history and not much had changed in nearly a century. The houses were somewhat different in design, some slightly bigger, and there had of course been more development both communally and industrially. But overall it was a postcard-perfect place to raise a family. Jack shuddered, feeling his reserves of emotional strength falter slightly. But he couldn’t grieve now, in front of the boy. He would allow himself private time later for sorrow, perhaps even cry a bit. But he needed to be strong now, for his son… even if the boy didn’t want him anywhere near.
The family got out of the limo, Lisa carrying Travis in her arms. The child’s eyes fluttered a bit, his own reserves ebbing. Jack cast a last angry glare at the driver, who said nothing as he closed the rear passenger door, seated himself behind the wheel once more, and drove away. A short while later, Lisa gave Travis a bath, which he cried all the way through. She couldn’t tell whether his tears were because of the bath itself, from some lingering pain from his earlier fall, or the realization that his mother was gone had finally begun to sink in. She gently asked him why he was crying, but his tears only flowed more freely. Afterward, she used some dermal sealant to dress his wound, dried him off and took him across the upstairs hall to his room. His crying stopped as abruptly as it had begun, and she followed his silent gaze across to his desk, where a foot-long model of a United Earth Force Heavy Cruiser rested on a stand. It had been a gift from his mother, the only war-related thing she had ever allowed him to have. No guns, no toy dissection kits of the enemy, no UEF posters. Violet had always believed that with the constant exposure to news, movies and other war-related media, young children could easily go into sensory overload. At what point do you allow children to just be children? she would always say. But Violet knew how much Travis loved the look, the design, the majesty of the mile-and-a-half-long ships which ceaselessly defended Earth, and so she had given it to him for his birthday…the last present she would ever give him. The boy had showered his mother with kisses the entire day, and painstakingly assembled the model by himself. It was a perfect assembly, and he had never been more proud of anything he had accomplished in his young life.
Lisa gently stroked his hair and kissed his forehead. “I’m going to be here a couple more days, kiddo,” she said softly. “Maybe we can go to the comic shop tomorrow? Pick up some copies of…what’s that book you’re always raving about?”
It seemed to take a moment for everything she had said to register. Finally, he looked at her with blank eyes. “Captain Kane of Earth Command,” he answered, his voice seeming very far away. Lisa nodded and kept her smile in place as she said, “That’s the one! We’ll pick that up, and some others, too. How’s that sound?”
Another moment to register. “Fine,” he said tonelessly. His lower lip trembled and tears filled his eyes once more. “Why didn’t Daddy want to let me say goodbye?”
“Because I didn’t think you could handle it.”
Lisa turned to the bedroom door. Travis sat up, his mouth curling into a deep and angry frown. Jack stood in the door frame, his tie and jacket removed, his dress shirt unbuttoned slightly. He shoved his hands in his pockets as he continued, “I didn’t want to expose you to the pain of seeing your mother buried. Hell, I almost couldn’t handle it, Travis, and I’m a grownup. I just didn’t think you’d be able to deal with it. I wanted to spare you the pain.”
“She was MY MOMMY!” Travis suddenly exploded, his scream seeming to shake the room. Tears streaked his dark features and he wailed as he threw himself back onto his pillow, burying his face in its soft embrace. Lisa slowly rubbed his back, attempting to soothe him, even as she cut Jack a hard glare. She mouthed the words “get out”, and he did. As Jack Richards headed down the hall to his own room, his son’s cries followed him, refusing to be left behind even as he closed the bedroom door. He sat down heavily on the bed which he and his wife had shared only a week before, and stared at the
floor for a long while, realizing too late that it had always been Violet who owned all the strength in the family. It had been her choice to adopt Travis. Her choice to explain to him, when he would one day be old enough to understand, how his real parents had truly died. Her strength, her love, which had really helped define who Travis had become thus far in his life.
And in the end, Jack Richards could only wonder that if it had been he who had died in an ambush en route to one of the lunar colonies, would his son be laying in his bed, shedding tears at all…
Auntie Lisa kept her word and more, actually staying for two weeks. She and Travis took trips not only to the comic shop, but to anywhere else he wanted: the movies, the park and lake near the tram station, and even twice to the zoo. Even though he was home on funeral leave, Travis’ father rarely went with them to any of these places and Travis was glad for it. He smiled only around Auntie Lisa, even though she told really funny jokes at the dinner table in an attempt to prove to his father that he could still smile. It was hard, but Travis held his smiles back in his father’s presence– determined, in his childlike way, to punish Jack for not letting him say goodbye. No matter the effort Travis went to, however, Jack seemed indifferent at best. He had tried at first to find some rapprochement with his son, the few times he had accompanied them to the zoo or the lake. But realizing the boy would give him no quarter, Jack ultimately decided it was better not to seek any, and simply wait for him to get over his feelings of hurt and anger. It was inevitable that at some point Travis would need or want something from him, and when that time came, Jack would simply seize the moment to sit the boy down and have a heart-to-heart with him. To some degree, he was pleased that Lisa had stuck around; like Violet, she had a calming effect on the boy, and tempered his moroseness with some much-needed joy. Jack never told her this, of course, nor did he ever thank her for staying; it was never good to let someone know just how dependent you were on them for anything.