Damen put the script into his tuxedo pocket, saying “Jose that was a great performance, man.”
“Hey, you did pretty good yourself,” whispered Jose with a smile.
“Thanks.”
“No, thank you, Damen. I don’t know anyone who would have done this for me. I mean, my dream of winning an Oscar came to be. But, the dream of reading my speech while holding the Oscar didn’t, and it just pisses me off that it didn’t.” Jose’s voice got a little louder toward the end of his sentence, and his body started to get a little weaker. He turned to his father, who was standing over him, and added, “But, this one dream did come true for me, Damen, and you helped me achieve it.”
Damen held onto Jose’s hand tightly, still feeling the warmth to his flesh, not wanting to lose that temperature. “What dream is that, Jose?” Damen wanted to know, he was serious about it, and he craved to know what his real dream was. Damen just wanted to keep Jose talking and be there for him all the way, hoping that by doing this, he’d have a chance to survive, for some reason or another.
“The dream of seeing my father watch.” Jose’s mouth stopped moving, and suddenly, abruptly Damen felt coldness in Jose’s hand, instead of warmth. He looked at his eyes, and saw them closed, he watched his chest, and saw that it wasn’t moving up and down; death interrupted his answer.
Damen started to shake him, speaking, “Jose?” Comprehending, even though this was hard, beyond enigmatic, stifling to his own soul, but by the feeling in the air, the stiffness through the window’s night, and the coldness on Jose’s flesh, Damen saw that he was gone, forever. Bit by bit, piece by piece of his body, Damen watched as his life slowly seeped out of him, until it was comprehensively abandoned. He looked up, even though he was afraid to, but he still looked up at the heart monitor, and saw its flat, long, bright green light, witnessing no heartbeat, and hearing only a long strip of a screaming sound that came from it.
As he stared at the monitor, Damen saw a vision of Sugar Valley, and all of them playing in its body at the age of ten. Screaming out with joy to their young voices, and still frolicking the game of pretend, they were happy, content, and most of all, friends for life. He turned away from the monitor, shaking his jaws, hitting his upper teeth with his lower ones, the reality finally hitting him that Jose was gone. That’s when Damen yelled, “No, please somebody, help me, Jose? Jose, please, you can still pull through. Please, you asshole, don’t die on me!” Chuck came over to him and hugged him tightly, trying to calm him down, seeing that he was causing Jose’s parents to become highly emotional with their tears of sorrow. “No., no, Chuck, Jose you can’t die on me, you can’t ... Please, please, Jose, wake up.” Damen broke free from Chuck’s hug and began to shake Jose again. “Please, Jose, he’ll wake up, he will, I know he will. This wasn’t supposed to happen, we were all supposed to be happy out here. Remember, Jose? Remember our plan?” Damen yelled before Chuck grabbed him again and gave him a tight hug. “You son of a bitch, please wake up. I don’t know what to do, Chuck, I just don’t know what to do now. Why, why, this wasn’t supposed to happen, he was young, this doesn’t happen to people like us.” He pulled away from Chuck’s grasp of a hug, and spoke with utter calmness, “I know, I’m gonna find Darell.”
Damen ran to the doorway, as if he was on another mission again, a journey to find his last friend and tell him of the news. But Chuck stopped his running by speaking, “Damen, Darell’s ... dead. Jose already told you about his death, remember?”
Damen collapsed again. This was too much for one person to handle, let alone Damen Schultz. This old shock, that felt new to his memory, transformed his voice to being shaky, feeling like he was going to have a heart-attack, a stroke, a seizure, something that would symbolize that he was under too much stress. His voice was tuned, shaking out, “How?”
Damen’s mother got up and touched Damen’s forehead, responding, “He died of a drug overdose, baby; it just happened.” Damen ran out of the hospital room, and left the echoes of Jose’s parents, how their voices and tears still lingered down the hallway as he ran. He ran out of the hospital after he reached the first floor of it, not knowing what else to do except run. Damen past the media by fighting his way through, got into a taxi, and traveled to the only place that, for some reason, he could remember to run to; the big Hollywood sign. Once his tear-filled body exited the cab, vans, filled with camera crews and media, showed up to Damen’s sight, wanting to interview him, knowing that one of his friends died, and the other was near death in the same night. Damen ran, faster than a tear could fall, fighting the bushes and foliage, striving to climb this hill to the very top. He saw the lights of the sign, and entered into its radiant form. Standing in front of the glowing sign, Damen screamed his head off toward it, yelling at it, hating it, wanting to destroy it, wishing that it never existed.
This moment of privacy, that he needed so greatly, was interrupted very quickly. The media and other news stations followed him up the hill, and that was when Damen stopped screaming to himself, and started letting it out on others.
The media came up to him, shined their lights into his eyes and face, placed their microphones to his saliva-drenched mouth, and waited for him to speak his mind; which he did. “What do you want from me?” Damen yelled out. “Jose’s dead. Darell’s dead, are you happy now? Get the fuck out of my face, before I beat the living shit out of all of you.” They listened to his screams, and silence surrounded him. They watched him on the edge of tears, but still not being able to let it out. This made him become more frustrated, more alone. Don’t these people know I need my time? I chose this job because I love it, I choose when I want to be in front of the camera. They have times they can leave me alone. They can be alone after their 40 hours per week, but what about me? 24/7. I hope they care for me enough to back off, let me breathe, let me live. I’m just a monkey in a cage to some of them. Why did I lose my best friends? The anger took over him again. Through this imperceptible silence, Damen began running down the knoll, hill, the mountain and away from the big Hollywood sign, and the media just stood there, watching him vanish into the foliage of the mound’s hair.
Chapter Eighty-Five
Staring at the sunlight, trying not to hear a sound, wanting this moment to not be authentic, real, and trying to concentrate on something else that could make this instant feel like a fantasy. “May God bless Jose and Darell, and may they enjoy eternal life with their Heavenly Father,” the Priest said. The people stood around the caskets, and unknown pallbearers descended Jose and Darell’s coffins into the depths of the earth.
They buried them in Sugar Valley, a place where their dream began, and a place where it ended, being filled with the dirt from Sugar’s skin, and swallowed beneath its surface, where they belong, where they wanted to be when eternal rest took place. It was Damen’s wish that they buried them in the Valley, and a wish that was granted, completed for his own reasons. All Damen could do was stare at the tombstones, while the priest finished up his mass, and left the Valley’s heart afterwards. When all the people left, Damen still stayed, gazing at the two tombstones, and holding onto Jose’s Oscar trophy very tightly, feeling the sun’s body reflecting a golden image off of the trophy, and onto Damen’s right side of his face. He was so fatigued, sad, filled with a depressing rapture still, and folded in a silence that couldn’t even be heard if it was at the bottom of an abyss. He stared at the graves closely, feeling the wind blow against his face, and felt eyes watching him, as if the Valley’s eyes were staring at his soul.
“Well, I guess this is it, guys. I realize that our, that our dreams did come true. I mean, they did. But, I wish that you were still here to share it with me. I’ve decided not to go back to Hollywood. I’ve decided to stay here and become a farmer like my father wanted me to be,” Damen announced. His tears of weakness showed, tears that finally fell from his eyes, and the tears that he coveted so badly to display, but didn’t before. The tears fell onto the Oscar trophy as Damen placed it
on Jose’s grave, acting as a shrine, but hesitated on doing so, feeling frightened of approaching his tombstone, understanding that this was too real to be true. “I know you might be mad at me for my decision, but it’s my decision. I’m just not as strong as you guys.” Damen then looked at the trees, swaying about in the wind, and heard a faint voice, the same voice he heard before, chanting out its hymn of, “Damen, Damen, Damen.” It sounded like the wind, he thought it was, it had to be, but his mind was so full of stress that he didn’t pay any attention to it, not yearning to investigate its pitch.
“No, you’re stronger.”
Damen was frantic, scared, hearing a low voice, sounding like a man in distress, and turned around to see who it was. There, in a vivid distance, was his father, walking up to him.
Damen hurried up and wiped his melancholy-filled tears away, wanting his father not to see his weaknesses. “Father, you scared me.”
“So, you’re gonna stay here and help me with the farm?”
“Yeah.”
His father started to shake his head in discontentment. Gawking at Damen’s eyes, he spoke silently, “No, no, you’re not. You’re gonna go back to Hollywood and make me proud.”
Without them knowing, Chuck came to the edge of the Valley and began listening to their conversation, hearing the echoes of their voices, smiling toward this sight of intimacy that should have been dealt with a long time ago.
Damen and his dad started walking through the Valley, without him speaking a word to his father. But, abruptly, this anger that Damen felt inside for losing his friends, took hold of his respect toward his dad, and shouted, “No, I’m not going back, and I don’t want to go back either. You think this is easy for me, Father, where the fuck were you in the past, when we all wanted this? Huh? Where the fuck were you? I’ll tell you where you were, you were fuckin’ busy trying to preach to me that I’m gonna be a farmer, and now you’re trying to play the parent role in this, and say for me to go back. Well, fuck you!”
His dad stopped walking, feeling grief from Damen’s tone, his words of truth, his swearing of anger. He started crying, showing tears in his eyes toward Damen’s back, and feeling the hurt of his mistakes that he made in the past that he thought expired itself in the present. Suddenly, his father wiped his own tears away, and spoke with calmness, “You never told me what you wanted to be. You never, ever said to me what your passions were. Now how the hell am I supposed to know what you wanted to be, Damen?”
Damen turned around, and bellowed with immense emptiness and pain to his voice, “Oh, come on, you fuckin’ knew, I know you did, you saw those scripts in my room, what the fuck do you think I was doing with them, collecting?”
“Okay, fine, I might have known a bit, but since you never came out and told me, I thought I could guide you into a direction that wouldn’t hurt you like being an actor. I mean, son, I don’t know, I mean, um, I’m sorry. Okay? I’m so sorry, boy, I never meant to make you run away from us, I never meant to hurt you, and I never meant to make you angry. I just wanted to be a father to you, that’s all. No one’s perfect, Damen, I just wanted to help you out with your life, and make you what I was, because I was happy with it, and I thought since I’m happy with my trade, you would be happy too.” His father ended his crying words, and waited for Damen to start up his. The wind still blew in the Valley’s stomach, and Sugar’s eyes still watched and waited for Damen to speak from his soul, instead of his mind.
Damen grinned, and spoke with calm, “I forgive you, but I’m still not going back. I’m not strong enough, I don’t belong there.” His tears flushed out, tears of sadness, adding, “This was just a moronic and stupid thing that we all wanted, that we coveted, and now look what happened? I’m not tough enough for it, father.”
“Listen to me, son, ever since you’ve left, you’ve become stronger. Why do you think your brother Greg left?”
Damen was confused, staring at him with confusion, and questioning, “He left? Where did he go?”
In the midst of it, Chuck walked away from the Valley’s edge, seeing that it was a private conversation, and exited through the forest’s body.
“He went to New York to become a painter. As soon as you left, Damen, he realized he had to do the same. And now, he’s opening up his own gallery in New York. Damen, he wouldn’t have done that if it wasn’t for you. He made his own dream come true,” his father explained, walking away from him.
“I didn’t know he wanted to become a painter.”
His father stopped in his tracks and turned around to face Damen. He grinned toward him once, saying, “Well, I didn’t know that you wanted to be a movie star.”
As his father exited the Valley, Damen stood there and watched the graves of his friends become darker as the day became night. He sat down and started talking to the graves, as if Jose and Darell were still alive. This was the place where their dream was born at, and this was the place where it ended, that’s what he kept on thinking about. Damen cried as the moonlight shined on his tears and created a lustrous reflection off his face.
He looked at the Valley’s trees, and started to walk up to them. Stopping, right by the lake, smack-dab in the center of Sugar, he gazed at all the trees in the distance, enjoying their beauty. He then started to slow his rhythm, meandering up to a single tree, near the lake, and looking at its bark, noticing scratches in its brown skin, reading “Jose, Darell, Damen, blood brothers for life.” He rubbed the letters, over and over, and then put his back to the tree, leaned against it, and started crying again. He wanted those words to be true, verity to reality, by them being alive. As he moaned, cried out with grief and sorrow, two branches that stood on either side of him mysteriously, without him knowing it, moved down toward him, wrapped themselves delicately around his body, and acted as if they were hugging him. It was like Sugar was alive, and hugged him unnoticeably, showing its love for his soul. Damen opened his eyes, and saw the branches in front of him, like arms, trying to hug him more closely, and abruptly he freaked out and ran from the tree’s body. He turned around, three feet away from the thick plant, and looked at it in confusion and fear; exhausted and delirious, he wondered if it was alive, real, contemplating and analyzing any other option that would allow those branches to act as hugging arms. He thought about the wind, maybe it blew them toward him? Or maybe, just maybe, they were old, and hung down on the moment he stood next to it? Damen looked at it even more closely, and whispered, “Who are you? Am I going crazy? Who are you?” No answer was had, no reply was given, and Damen turned to face all of the Valley, shouting, “Who are you?”
He then started to scrutinize it, trying to figure out what was there, what was lurking in the darkness of the spiritual world. He thought it was a ghost, and the thought of that allowed shivers to travel through his body. He heard silence, a few crickets chirping away, but the rest silence, and the calm was what scared him the most. He was listening for any sound, any word that came from the darkness, but heard nothing, not even a falling stick from a tree. He could hear his own heart beating away, his own blood rushing through his veins as his nerves grew by his sight seeing nothing, but his imagination was running wild, seeing everything that is true to nightmares. The wind blew again, through this darkened Valley, and wrapped itself around his body, allowing him to feel a pressure against his shoulders and chest, as if the wind was hugging him. Damen slowly began to smile toward the Valley’s body; he knew the truth of what was lurking in the darkness. “You are alive, aren’t you?” Tears on top of tears constructed, drenching his flesh with its warm texture. “Why didn’t you stop us from leaving? Huh? Sugar, why did you allow us to go?” He sat down on the green, cold grass, and felt the cool breeze rushing against his tears, drying them with its cool motion. “I know why. Sugar, you wanted us to see our dreams. That’s why you let us go. But now, look what happened. I lost two of the only people I knew, the only two people I trusted in this Godforsaken life.”
Through the wind, Damen heard anot
her faint, faint, distant, blowing voice, saying, “I love you.” He cried more, feeling this web of confusion, draping his soul, filling it with monstrous sadness that he wasn’t ready for.
“I love you too, Sugar.”
Suddenly, through the night’s vision, Chuck came down into the Valley. He saw Damen sitting on the ground, crunched over, like he was crying, and heard what he said to Sugar Valley, but didn’t bother mentioning it to him. Chuck spoke, “Your family’s still waiting for you to come up to the house. Everyone’s still their talking about the funeral.”
Damen got up, walked over to the tombstones, sat back down on the ground again, and just gawked at their stone-like homes in a trancelike glare. “Tell them I’ll be there in a few minutes, Chuck.”
“Alright.”
He started to walk away from Damen, when suddenly Damen smiled and said, “You know, Chuck, this is where it all began.”
He stopped in his tracks, turned around to face Damen, and smiled toward his figure, his saddened silhouette. “Yeah I know, and this is where it ends. But, um, you don’t have to make it end for you, you still have a chance.” Chuck began walking toward Damen again, hoping that he could grasp some sense to his mind, and make him want to be an actor again.
“I know, but I have no other choice.” Damen got up from the ground and began brushing the dirt off his pants, adding, “Chuck, this whole time, my dream was to become a movie star. But now I realize that my dream was already reality... My dream was to have true friends, and now they’re gone. So, that’s why I don’t have a choice, I have to stay here.”
“If it makes you feel better, I think you do have a choice.” Chuck reached his dilapidated, elderly hand into his trench-coat pocket, grabbed a wrinkled envelope, and handed it to him.
Sugar Valley (Hollywood's Darkest Secret) Page 74