Southernmost

by Silas House

  Asher can’t stop staring at his brother. He betrayed him, left him alone in the world all these years, but here he is. Here, alive, beautiful, the older brother who always watched over him until the day Asher turned him away. And ten years older. Lines on his face, a furrow across his brow. His hair is thinner and lighter, but his Luke-blue eyes are just the same.

  He wants to touch his brother’s face, even to reach out and hold his hand. Asher has wasted years and years. He has thrown away an entire decade he could have been with Luke, who always loved him for who he was. But Asher had not been able to do the same for him.

  For years Asher has been practicing how he would apologize to Luke if he ever found him again, but so far his lips have not lit on the right words. Everything sounds like a cliché, or hollow.

  “I wish I could take it back,” he says.

  The horizon has changed to the red of a geranium. Luke is watching the crimsoned waves and for a moment Asher thinks he is not going to respond. But then, he does. “Well, you can’t,” he says, and Asher feels like the breath has been knocked out of him by the anger that edges Luke’s words. “You can’t take back what you called me. And you can’t take back just letting me go.”

  “I didn’t know how to find you. I didn’t even know where to start—”

  Luke latches his eyes on Asher’s and his gaze is hard. “Come on, now, Asher. Quit lying to yourself. You know good and well that you didn’t even try.”

  “Not at first.”

  “Not for months,” Luke says. “When I first left, I only went to Nashville. You didn’t call my friends. You didn’t search. And so after almost a year of living not even an hour from you and seeing that you weren’t worried about me, I left Tennessee. I’d always wanted to, and you were the only thing holding me to home anyway.”

  “I didn’t know what to say,” Asher says, and he hears pleading in his own voice. “You were so mad when you left.”

  “You only had to say you were sorry.”

  “You were too stubborn for that,” Asher says. “If I had found you, you would have never listened to me. Not after what I said. And I can’t hardly blame you.”

  “But you shouldn’t have stopped trying, Asher. You should have done whatever you could to make it right.”

  “I know,” Asher says. “It took me years, but that’s what I’ve tried to do. I’ve given up everything to stand up for you. My church. My marriage. Even my—”

  Luke shakes his head. “Please don’t sit here and tell me how much you’ve sacrificed for me. The good Christian laying down his life for his faggot brother.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “You rushed into that marriage just to please our mother. You convinced yourself that you and Lydia were the perfect couple but she always wanted something you didn’t. I never much liked Lydia but I also knew it wasn’t fair of you to marry her.”

  “Not fair of me?”

  “The only thing you two ever had in common was church, man. You shouldn’t have married her.”

  “Well, if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have Justin. So I can’t have any regrets about that.”

  They are silent for a time, listening to the small sound of the water washing up on the shore and the low talk of the men behind them. A man in denim cutoffs stumbles so close to them that he kicks sand up onto Asher’s feet. He’s humming as he goes along—it’s “Blackbird,” Asher realizes—his eyes fixed on the water.

  There is a gale of laughter from the men behind them as the humming man wanders into their group and starts a drunken, barefooted tap dance to entertain them. He and Luke have brought a box of canned goods to the homeless people who gather under the shelter houses. Luke had set the box on one of the tables and walked away, not wanting to shame them or make them think he was there to convert them.

  “For all you knew, I could’ve ended up like those men,” Luke says. “I left with next to nothing. Two hundred dollars in my pocket. A gym bag of clothes and books.”

  “I worried about you, every day.”

  “I wish I could just get over it, but I can’t, Asher. All those years of remembering how you acted that day. For you, all this time you’ve been changing and getting used to that, but for me, when I saw you yesterday, you were the same person I left ten years ago.”

  “I understand that,” Asher says, and he does, although he has not thought of any of this until this moment.

  “The funny thing is, I thought I had forgiven you a long time ago,” Luke says. His face is bathed in the lavender-orange twilight. “All this time, I was congratulating myself on being such a big person that I could forgive you for turning your back on me. And now that I see you, I’m tempted to say that I did forgive you a long time ago. But the truth is that I haven’t. I wish I had, but I haven’t.”

  Asher remembers the faces of the congregation that day Jimmy and Stephen had come to church. That’s who he had been, all those years ago.

  “Still, I ought not have intentionally worried you. That was wrong, and I knew every single day that it was. I should have called and let you know I was alive instead of sending those postcards just to make you play a guessing game.”

  “Those postcards helped me change myself.”

  Luke has found a piece of green sea glass in the sand and now he is smoothing it between his thumb and forefinger, his eyes on the ocean.

  “What have you done all this time?” Asher has a hundred questions, but they all sound generic.

  “Living. Working,” Luke shrugs. “Just like everybody else. When I left home”— Asher notices that Luke still refers to Tennessee as home —“I didn’t have enough money to go far, so I wound up in Louisville. Thought there might be more open-minded people up there, at least, even if it was just three hours away. And there were. I got a job down on the docks, cleaning boats, and I started to think about what to do with my life besides just have a good time. Nothing ever did seem like enough for me.”

  Luke dancing in the kitchen. Luke reading down by the river, talking about far-off places.

  “I remember,” Asher says.

  “And that led me to going to seminary. Just wanting to feel like there was something bigger than me. Just to prove to myself that the church we’d been raised up in wasn’t the be-all and end-all of belief. Once I started taking those classes, I figured out who I really was.”

  “And who was that?”

  “Somebody who loved the mystery of it all. Right out of seminary I got sent to a church in Grand Haven, Michigan—in wintertime it was the most lonesome place I’ve ever seen—and then there was an opening for an assistant rector here in Key West—”

  “The place you always wanted to go,” Asher says. He had never heard anybody from Tennessee utter the name of this place except for Luke.

  “And a warm place after those winters up there. So I had to take it,” Luke said. “Seemed too perfect.”

  “That’s why I came here, when we ran off. Because you loved it. And because of the postcards.”

  “I guess I wanted to give you clues, in case you ever went looking for me.”

  “It worked.”

  The evening sky is purpling into darkness and all along the horizon the sun stretches out orange and rosy. So much to say, so hard to put it all into words.

  “I’ve had a good life,” Luke says. “Found somebody who loved me.”

  “I’d like to meet him,” Asher offers, hoping he’s ready to see his brother with a man, see Luke with his arm around someone, perhaps even kissing him.

  “Found the church where I belong. The place I belong.”

  Asher wants to say so much. But there is time for that. He has nothing but time. “There wasn’t a day I wasn’t thinking of you, wishing I had had enough sense to handle it differently.”

  “I didn’t run off to punish you. I left because you—all of you—made me feel ashamed. Do you know what it’s like to walk through the world with everybody thinking they know everything about you?”

/>   Asher wants to explain that he does, but he knows a viral video isn’t the same.

  “Back home people didn’t accept me once they figured me out. They tolerated me. Even you. I wasn’t about to live that way, as the town freak. But I probably wouldn’t have found my way if you hadn’t turned against me, Asher.” Those words sting—you turned against me. “So it all worked out, I reckon.”

  “A priest,” Asher says.

  “You didn’t see that one coming, did you?” Luke laughs.

  “No, can’t say that I did.”

  “I was told I was no good all my life,” Luke says. His strength is magnificent to Asher in this moment. “You all wanted me to be somebody I wasn’t.”

  “If I could change it I would—”

  “But no matter how low I got, there was always this little fire burning in me,” he says. “Sometimes it would be real small, but it stayed lit. I knew I was a child of God and nobody ever could put it out.”

  Asher moves to take his brother’s hand but just as he does, Luke stands, dusts the sand from the back of his pants.

  “I’ve missed you, Asher,” he says. “Every day. But I just don’t know.” Luke can’t seem to look at him. “I wish I could just forget it all, but I can’t. Not yet.”

  “I want to make it right, Luke.”

  “I don’t know, Asher. I know I’m supposed to be full of grace and all that. I preach that stuff all the time. But I’m not sure it’s possible after all these years. And I don’t know if you’ve changed as much as you think you have.”

  “All I can do is try,” Asher says.

  “But when you think about it, really think about it, can you accept it? Can you honestly say you don’t believe that people like me are doomed to hell?”

  “No,” Asher says, loud, instant. “I do not believe that. Absolutely not.”

  Now Luke puts his eyes on Asher’s. “Can you look at me and Sam and not think of us as different from any other couple?”

  “All I can do is try my best, Luke. That’s worth something, ain’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Luke says, after a few seconds. “It is. But I don’t know, Asher. I can’t just flick a switch and make this alright for you.”

  And just like that, Luke turns and walks away, lifts his hand to the homeless men who call out to him as “Preacher!” Asher sits on the beach, not moving, until the island has surrendered to nighttime.

  27

  Dear Evona,

  I am hoping you will not grieve too much when I’m gone. You’ve had enough of that in your life.

  You are the only family I have, as far as I’m concerned. My people back in Alabama might try to claim me now that I’m dead but Martha Campbell down on Truman has it all worked out for you. I’ve left it to you.

  Have me cremated. It’s already paid for. Spread most of my ashes here at Song to a Seagull, where I was as happy and free as a person can be in this life. I’d like for my pastor to say just a few words. Play a Joni song. Whichever one you want. My favorite scripture is Galatians 6:9 and it’d be nice to have that read.

  But I’d like it if you could spread some of me back in Notasulga, too. They never did want me there when I was living but I always missed the place, if not the people. There is a little grove of catalpas near the water tower at Tallapoosa and Lyon Streets, where I used to be happy as a girl, and I’d like to settle there. I don’t imagine too awful much has changed in Notasulga so I believe those old trees will still be standing. If not, I’ll never know the difference. The thing is that I never have forgotten those catalpa trees and how cool the shade was there on the hottest days.

  Thank you for everything,

  Olivia Bell Williams

  28

  They play “Song to a Seagull” at the service. The sleeves of their shirts flap in a Gulf breeze that is moving over the island in waves. The palm leaves lift. The sky streaks lavender and red above their heads as twilight descends.

  There are a dozen of them: Asher, Justin (Shady sits at his feet, watching the house like he expects Bell to come out the front door), Evona, the pastor, his wife, a handful of folks that Bell has known ever since she came to the island. Most of them hadn’t seen her for years, back when she still went to the grocery store and to church. The last few years she had kept to herself more and more, mostly because she was sick, but also because she had tired of the world itself. She had cut herself off from the news or any kind of television. The world is too much with us, she’d told Asher the day she explained why she never left the house, never watched the evening news anymore.

  The pastor looks different outside, in the sunlight, much younger. There is an elegant kindness about the way the pastor moves, and a kind of calmness about him. He wears a black cassock with a white frock, a white stole whose ends lift in the breeze, threatening to take flight. He holds the Book of Common Prayer out on his palm as if it is floating there.

  Once the song ends the pastor clears his throat and reads Bell’s favorite scripture.

  After a brief silence, the pastor speaks again: “Everyone the Father gives to me will come to me; I will never turn away anyone who believes in me.”

  The pastor nods and Evona scoops her hand into the urn, gathering ashes, which look more like heavy sand. Asher has officiated at many funerals but nobody from his church had ever been cremated.

  Bell had smelled of frangipani and had cooked big meals and played the piano but now she is ashes.

  “In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our sister Olivia Bell Williams,” the pastor reads, his voice becoming more solid, more real, “and we commit her body to the elements; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

  Evona releases the ashes. They fall in a cloud around the frangipani tree.

  “The Lord bless her and keep her, the Lord make His face to shine upon her and be gracious to her, the Lord lift up His countenance upon her and give her peace.”

  Evona shakes the remaining ashes from the urn, moving backward around the tree. She has saved the Alabama ashes in a small wooden box.

  “Join me in the Lord’s Prayer,” the pastor says, and everyone obeys, all of their voices lifting together. Although Asher’s head is bowed, he opens his eyes so he can look down at Justin. His son is watching the sky, not joining in for the prayer, although he knows it as well as Asher does.

  “Grant eternal rest to her, O Lord; and let light perpetual shine upon her. May her soul and the souls of all the departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.”

  “Amen,” they say in unison, and this time Asher can hear Justin’s small voice in the mix.

  Asher and Evona have laid out a lunch on the tables by the pool. They had moved around in Bell’s kitchen together like parts on the same machine. Silent while Justin sat at Bell’s piano, figuring out how to play a Tom Petty song. He is picking it up on his own and pecks on the keys every time they are at her house.

  Asher has taken his chances in being part of the memorial service but now he motions for Justin and they go back to the house. It is too dangerous to be mixing and mingling with people right now; anyone might recognize them after the cards and how much they’ve been on the news lately. Asher stands in the shadows of the porch for a time, watching the people eating and talking in the yard, Evona seeing to all of them. Behind him, Shady is whining. When he turns back to Justin he finds that the boy is sitting on the wicker rocker, clenching at his throat, trying to catch his breath. He can’t breathe.

  Asher rushes over to him and finds that Justin is covered in cold sweat; his dress shirt is soaking wet. All he knows to do is say his son’s name over and over, but that doesn’t change anything. Justin is struggling to talk and eventually Asher figures out that he is saying he can’t breathe. Shady barks once, then whines some more, as if telling Asher he has to do something. Asher pulls Justin to him, holds on to him as tightly as he can and feels Justin’s heart pounding against his
chest.

  Evona is beside him, grabbing hold of Justin’s hand. “I think he’s having an anxiety attack,” she says. “Breathe really slow, Justin. Don’t think about anything but your breathing, okay?”

  “Just hold on, little man,” Asher says, and the tighter he holds on to him, the calmer Justin becomes. A time passes and at last Justin has become completely still. Justin moves back into the wicker rocker, leaning over with his hands clutched before him.

  “I need to talk to Granny,” he says in a monotone, calm and measured. “I need to see her. And Mom. I need to see them.”

  “I wish you could, buddy,” Asher says. “But that’s not possible right now.”

  Justin doesn’t argue. He goes into his room with Shady trotting along behind him, and by the time Asher has followed he finds that Justin has closed and locked his bedroom door.

  29

  The Everything

  When the sun breaks through the clouds this morning Justin is already awake and outside with Shady leaning against his leg. He can reach down and fit his hand right atop the dog’s head. Neither one of them has been able to sleep. Shady has been just as upset as Justin. Dogs know things. They know and know and know.

  Every time Justin closed his eyes to find sleep he kept seeing Bell (in her muumuu strolling across the yard, in her rocker, at the piano, cooking at the stove, in her messy office, laughing, sitting with her feet in the pool, taking communion when they brought it from the church on Sunday evenings). And realizing that Bell was gone (forever) made him miss his grandmother and his mother in an aching way he had never felt before. Especially Granny. If he could just talk to her, he’d feel better.

  A couple times his father had come to the door and twisted the knob, rapped his knuckles on the wood. “Justin? Answer me, I’m worried.” The last time Justin had gone to the door and opened it wide enough to say that he was alright.

  “Can’t you sleep?” Asher asked.

  “I was until you knocked,” Justin lied.