by MC Webb
George scooped Matthew up and got him onto the ATV. He strapped his son’s body to his, then turned an ashen colored face to me.
“You’ll be all right getting back to your ride?” he asked.
I nodded, and watched him go, helpless. I stood still. I hadn’t realized I was crying until I noticed my shirt was nearly soaked through. I stood for a long time, looking around the ground, for what I don’t know. I was so numb and foggy. It wasn’t until I got to my own ATV that I figured out what it was I had been looking for.
Matthew had a head injury. That was a fact. Another fact was he always, always, always wore his helmet. I couldn’t find his helmet. That’s what I was looking for.
I retrieved my helmet from the ground and placed it on my head. I was cold in spite of the heat. I drove home, not thinking. I don’t remember what I told Nana when I got there, but we were at the hospital ten minutes later. Mrs. Logue was rocking back and forth. Her hands clutched her face.
She was wailing, “Not my boy. Not my boy.”
The doctors pronounced Matthew dead. His parents signed a form to allow the hospital to donate any of Matthew’s organs that they could. I watched this from the outside of my body, only taking in bits and pieces.
Josh stood, arms crossed, staring at the floor, not moving. He was not crying. He showed no emotion. In that moment, I thought we must feel as dead as Matthew was. I walked to Josh, and we held each other in silence until it was time to go. Nothing more to do.
Somewhere a graduation celebration was starting without its honoree. Nana and Papaw took me home. When I entered my room, my dress for that night’s graduation was hanging on my wall mirror, still in its light plastic bag, taunting me.
I had been so proud of my grown-up dress. I had imagined Matthew would think me pretty, and I thought of the ease of slipping out of it later, as we celebrated alone. I tore it down and threw it aside. I couldn’t bear to look at it.
I went to my stash of pills and took a handful. I no longer cared. I wanted to die in that moment. My hero was dead, and with a jolt of horror, I realized my husband was dead.
I would never be Piper Logue, like I had scribbled on my folders and every blank piece of paper. I would never walk down the aisle in Nana’s dress, with Matthew waiting for me at the end. It was a stupid dream, and I had been a fool to buy into it. I had no promise. I had no plan.
I allowed sleep to come. I didn’t wake up for hours. Nana came in and kissed my forehead, but I had no memory of hearing her—just the whisper of the kiss, and the smell of her bath salts.
It was four in the morning when I opened my eyes. Something had awakened me, but I laid still, trying to figure out what I’d heard. A knock on my window made me sit straight up, wide-awake now. Looking, I saw Josh through the glass.
I got up and went to open it for him. He motioned for me to come out. I got my stash of weed and then climbed onto the porch roof, where I had spent so many nights recently, dreaming of my wedding day. In my heart, I had known it had to be too good to be true. People like Matthew were too good for girls like me. Daniel was right. I never would be happy.
I sat next to Josh without speaking as he rolled tight the joint. The sky was starting to change color. Josh lit the joint inhaling deeply then handed it to me. We smoked in silence, trying to numb ourselves, until we couldn’t feel the pain and absence of his brother, and my lover.
After a few minutes of us passing the joint back and forth, Josh finally broke the silence.
“We have to pick a casket tomorrow,” he said mechanically.
I just nodded and took another hit. More silence. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. If Matthew was my husband, Josh was definitely my best friend. Lana was my best friend too, but I only got to see her when she wasn’t working at the drug store now, on her days off.
Josh, I saw every day. At school, we ate lunch together. At home, we roamed together while Matthew studied or helped tutor younger students for extra money, money he loved spending on me. The money was unimportant, but the care he took of me was priceless.
That would never happen again, and the thought took me under, to a dark place. I began to weep, my body shaking. Josh wrapped me in his arms, and I noticed he too was shaking with sobs of his own. We clung to each other as the sun rose. I glared at it. I had been hoping it would stay down, so I could forever walk the dark night alone.
Time would not stand still. I would have to go through with the funeral. The burial would cover two people. I was dead when Matthew found me years ago, and he breathed new life into me. When he died, I died again right along with him, returning to the dead girl I knew I was.
Josh and I said good-bye to each other when the sky grew bright, and he returned to his home, to his broken family. I remained on the roof and watched as my papaw started his day, walking to the barn with a bucket of oats for the horses.
He spotted me, and if he thought it was odd for me to be sitting on the roof, he didn’t say anything. He yelled up and asked if I wanted to come with him.
“Give me five minutes.” I said.
I hurried back inside and dressed at breakneck speed. I couldn’t stand the thought of staying in my room, with the dress I bought just for Matthew. I threw on clean clothes and stopped to look down at the blood on my clothes scattered on the floor. I held it to my face. The loss of Matthew was agony. And it had just begun.
chapter thirteen
We buried Matthew close to his grandmother in a churchyard a few miles away. He was dressed in a dark blue suit. There were dozens of people there to show their respect. People cried and talked about how wonderful Matthew was and how handsome. I didn’t shed a tear.
The Logues had me, Nana, and Papaw sit with the family. Mrs. Logue hugged me and told me to be strong, that Matthew was in heaven now.
I didn’t want to be strong. I wanted to be mad as hell and demand heaven release him, send him back to me, where he would stay until we were both old and grey and could die at the right time, together. But I didn’t share this with Mrs. Logue. She wept in a sweet, broken way.
The men’s faces were stony, but the slump in the shoulders of the older Mr. Logue told me he was having a hard time keeping it together. Josh held my hand through the service and again at the burial. I concentrated on the tendons in his big hand as a distraction of what was taking place around me.
The high school honored Matthew for his work in science and the goals he set. Most of all they honored him for his contagious, optimistic attitude and the kindness he showed others. I had been loved by the perfect man. I knew that.
Funny how I saw Matthew while alive as mine, as my lover and husband. I never gave much thought to how he was just as kind to everyone else in his life.
The preacher said Matthew was in heaven, and he would be performing work for our Lord now. I hoped that was true. If there ever was an angel, Matthew Logue was it.
Nathan came home and stayed a few days. He, Josh, and Matthew had always been buddies, and he admired Matthew a great deal.
Nathan had recently signed with a Hollywood studio to do music for a soundtrack. I was happy for him, but in a distant and disconnected way. I was too busy grieving the death of my hopes and dreams to care much. Lana stayed with me the first couple of nights. Nana left us alone, to talk and be girls. I lay on the bed stoned most of the time. I drank too.
Lana informed me, while she opened a bottle of Johnnie Walker, “There is a reason country singers drink their sorrows away. It’s what we are supposed to do.”
Then she filled my glass. This was a vast contradiction to what Nana believed.
“Alcohol never did anything good, except create unwanted babies and make whores out of their mothers,” she would say.
I didn’t care. In my mind, the more I was absent from the present, the better off I would be.
Lana knew a lot about a lot of things. Like vodka doesn’t smell on your breath, and what pills went well with what drinks. She never would leave much at a tim
e with me. Lana knew all too well the cutting could easily go deeper if I wished it to. The right combination would set that course of action. She was well aware of this.
…
I walked through summer like a zombie. I would be somewhere and could not remember how I got there. I slept some days all day. Josh and I spent our junior year quietly. I would watch him practice now, not wanting to wait in Matthew’s truck alone. Most of that year was a complete blur to me.
Jean-Paul began to hunt year-round. He tried a few times to talk to me, but I was busy being drunk, and grieving. He was pleasant enough, but he was not Matthew. I was polite and to the point.
The following summer as Josh and I hung out at the riverbank tossing rocks and talking, he decided to drop a bombshell on me.
“We’re moving, Piper,” he said without preamble.
My head snapped up to see if he was serious.
“Why?”
This is where Matthew is. This is where I am. I was going to be abandoned again? Why did time not stop as I wished it to? I was dirty and no one wanted to be with me, I reminded myself.
“Mom can’t handle it here anymore. Dad is at his breaking point, and Grandpa is agreeing to go with us to Florida now. I’ll start my senior year there, and I am being scouted by a few colleges for a full scholarship.”
He paused a minute to let me take all this in. Josh watched my face cautiously as if expecting me to faint.
I said nothing. What could I say? No, please don’t leave me? Don’t you know life is over? We just need to sit here and wait to die?
I kept my eyes down, so he couldn’t read me.
“When?” I asked the water.
“Mom’s there now, getting the house in order. Dad hired an agent to sell the farm. We will be leaving by August, so I can get enrolled in school and have a couple of weeks to get settled.”
He said all this in a rush, as if it would hurt me less if I got it faster. That was three weeks away. My heart ached. I couldn’t say anything. I’d lost Matthew, and now I was losing Josh. Lana talked of being an actress, so she’d be next. Of course, I’d be alone. Just as Daniel always said I would.
Josh sat down, and put an arm around me. Matthew was taller, but Josh was bigger. At six-one, he weighed in at an impressive two-twenty-five. Big and beefy, but quick on his feet, the way linebackers are supposed to be, as he had proudly told me. I laid my head against his shoulder. He sighed and kissed the top of my head.
“You know, in the old days,” the sheepish grin pronounced in his voice, “the brother would take the place of the one who had died. I could easily love you, Piper. I do in the ways that count. You could come with me. We could go to college together. My family loves you already. It’d be easy.”
I snorted a laugh and elbowed him in the ribs.
“Yeah, right. We’d kill each other,” I said, but then I caught myself envisioning the idea of being with Josh.
It would be an easy life, but Josh was not in love with me. I was more of a kid sister, someone he loved to tease and hang out with.
“I do love you, Josh. Like a fat kid loves cake,” I smiled up at him sadly, meaning it.
Josh smiled back at me, just as sadly.
“You got to go on, Piper,” his voice cracked with emotion.
His words stung me, and I looked down to stop the tears from showing. He put his hand under my chin and lifted my face to look at me.
“I’m serious. My brother believed in life. He planned to save lives, and make the world a better place to live in. You dishonor his memory by staying in mourning.”
His words hurt. I knew he was saying the truth. I cried on him, and when all my sobs were gone, I promised him I would move on, and I would live my life. I promised I would visit him in Florida, and he promised to visit me.
We were family and nothing, not even death, would change that. I wanted to crawl in a hole and die, but Josh saying I dishonored Matthew’s memory had prodded me to not give in to that feeling.
I said my good-byes to him on August first. Lana kissed him deeply, and I blushed from the heat coming off them. I hugged all the Logues, and waved them good-bye until they were out of sight. We all walked heavyhearted back to the house.
Lana spent the night. She wouldn’t tell me, but I had a suspicion the power was off at her house again. Nana checked on her grandmother often, and I could hear her mumbling when she hung up the phone about just how worthless Nicole Morris was.
“Trashiest thing breathing, I tell you,” she’d exclaim, shaking her head.
Nicole would apparently regularly steal her mother’s social security checks and blow the money on her booze. She had several children by different men. None but Lana lived with her, and Lana only stayed for her grandmother.
Even though I promised Josh I would move on, I couldn’t find a place to start. I started my senior year alone and sad. I stayed doped up. I was a pro at it now. I took up to four Xanax a day, smoking weed on my way to and from school. Papaw got me a small Toyota truck. It was clean and comfortable, but most importantly, he said under his breath, it was “safe,” like this was a dirty word.
Papaw was not as outwardly affectionate as Nana, but I felt the love he had for me. I was helping Nana with babies all the time now, and even delivering them on my own as she supervised and coached me through it. I helped Papaw in the shop, but could not stay in the room if he had to put an animal to sleep.
I would go out in the field with him to teach hunters how to field dress and preserve their kill. This didn’t bother me so much since the animals were dead already. I did what I had to do to keep breathing.
The weather was mild my senior year. I helped Papaw a lot, and this meant spending time riding horses to the hunting cabins. Four-wheelers only got you so far through the trees, so we rode horses through dense patches of woods. Some hunters preferred horses, so they could have the experience of a “real” hunting trip.
We had mostly standing reservations, with hunters that knew the land well. Some brought their families to Cherokee and then rode over to hunt. We had an abundance of wildlife.
I myself did not enjoying hunting anymore. I had gone with my brother and Josh a few times, but it’s so boring, waiting for a deer to show up, and even when one did, it wasn’t always the right kind of deer. It had to be a certain age or if not the right time of year it had to be a buck. Too many rules for me.
It was different from walking the woods with my dad as a kid. We would hike, or take the horses out and spend the day, or sleep in sleeping bags at night. Dad didn’t care for hunting much. He once told me, “Your papaw does enough for both of us.” I would smile at the differences between father and his son. Dad’s general nature was much like Nana’s, free spirited and kind, with at times too much understanding. She was cultured in so many ways. Papaw was what Hollywood would perceive as a “hillbilly,” but an educated one at least.
Papaw met my Nana during the war. He lied about his age and spent three years in Germany. He spotted Nana walking with her father one day.
“She fell deeply in love with me that very moment! Couldn’t keep her hands off me!” he would tell me with a wink.
Nana told it differently. “Your papaw followed me around like a lost puppy for a month! I tried to teach him German.” Then she would throw her hands up and say, “Stubborn man, your papaw. Never as much as a word he would speak. More because he didn’t want to, than not being able to learn it.”
Nana had strawberry-blonde hair, and blue eyes. Papaw’s hair had once been mousey brown, but he had been white-headed for years now. His eyes were still deep brown, same as mine. The same as my dad’s. I got Nana’s hair though. I guess I got my build from my mother. I was curvy and tall. I had a pale complexion, as Lana always told me.
“You need to sunbathe,” she complained to me regularly.
I would stick my nose up, and ignore her. Almost everyone was pale next to her dark skin. Lana never knew her father, but she thought he might be part
black.
The day before Thanksgiving, I drove home slowly, smoking a joint. I was taking pills and smoking pot all of the time now. Lana could easily get what she wanted. She would use her beauty shamelessly, and her boss, the pharmacist, would say or do anything to get her attention.
Lana was warm and loving, but sex was never an emotional thing with her. She enjoyed being with men, yet never wanted to tie herself to any of them. It would be just another day on the job to blow her boss in the bathroom, and in turn he would look the other way as she took what inventory she wanted, a little at a time. It gave new meaning to “tit for tat” for me.
Nana and Papaw were not stupid. I was pretty sure they knew about me smoking pot, but they remained mostly ignorant about the pills. I think they were so thankful to have me in one piece after Daniel that I could do no wrong.
I parked in the drive, and headed up the back steps, prepared to start cooking, as it was my night to do so. I didn’t expect company, but we had it. Lana sat in a kitchen chair, peeling potatoes, long legs spread wide around a bucket. She looked up at me with pleading eyes, probably wondering how she got into this mess. I looked into the living room, and saw Maurice and Jean-Paul talking with Papaw. I ducked back into the kitchen.
“Hey,” I said.
Nana turned from the sink and smiled that big smile of hers.
“Hello, love. Good day at school?” she asked.
“It was okay. I’m glad I’m off.” I joined in peeling potatoes.
Lana’s long nails were normally in perfect condition, but they were filthy now, as she struggled with the knife. I took the knife and peeled my first in seconds. She stuck her tongue out at me.
I sat peeling potatoes, watching the men in the living room. They seemed to be in deep conversation.
“You should go say hello,” Nana told me, looking to see where I was.
“Why?” I asked her.
“Because they are your guests for Thanksgiving, and you’re a good Christian girl. Maurice has had a death in the family recently, and you should make them feel welcome. It’s rude not to,” she said, nudging my shoulder.