Brian and Trevor’s neighbors from childhood had moved. The street where they had learned to ride bicycles appeared blank under the searing sun. It felt unreal, as if no children now—or ever—ran around shouting there.
Why go in? The body was at the town funeral home, awaiting cremation.
But Trevor insisted. “You and I began life right here. Spoke our first words. If we fully face it now, we can only go forward.”
“Why aren’t you smoking ganja, Trevor?”
“Nothing to celebrate; too late for blessings.”
“Trev, you have some with you, though.” Seeing he didn’t, Brian asked, “No stash even at the Days Inn?”
“Daddy worked on his vices—that’s how evil he was.”
[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]
The filthy, run-down, cluttered mess of a house smelled so bad they choked. Mildew, defeat, and stale alcohol hardly added to the main stink: human rot. More than once, Trevor and Brian drew back, struggling against nausea.
Ready to run outside, Brian looked at Trevor, who was determined to confront the remnants of their past.
They circled through the kitchen: swollen and pocked linoleum; a trail of white powder, probably rat poison, lay clumped along the baseboards. A week’s worth of dirty dishes overflowed the sink and covered the counters. Trevor opened the refrigerator and slammed it shut.
Upstairs, Trevor’s narrow bedroom faded toward invisibility. His toys, CDs, and horror movie posters remained undisturbed but so old, so dead. That kid Trevor who had slept in the bed was now a ghost.
Brian’s room had become a storage place for fishing rods, tool kits, newspapers, planks of wood, old sheets, and boxes of YMCA trophies.
Their dead father’s bed was unmade. Clothes he probably wore were strewn everywhere. Trevor checked his mother’s closet: still filled with her old dresses, jeans, and shoes, lingerie hanging on three little hooks.
At the hotel Brian tugged on Trevor’s braids. “Come on, no pot? Really?”
“Ya, mon. No celebratin’. Smokin’ for pure joy now would be a sin.”
The next morning they sat in the funeral director’s office. Brian didn’t want an urn. In fact, he didn’t want the ashes. The funeral home was not allowed to dispose of them. Trevor said, “Ah…I’ll take them. Just wrap them up somehow.”
The director left the office; it would take half an hour.
Trevor came close to cracking a smile at Brian. “I’ll dump them in Hot Springs where I drove the car off road. Remember? A white truck saved me life.”
The next morning, when they were almost home, the highway turned to gridlock. Trevor stood up and called out of the car window to Officer Ingersoll, who was on duty and walking through the bottleneck. “Yahso! Mi fren’, blessings up!”
Red-faced from the cold, the vexed policeman thrust his chest toward Trevor’s face. “Since Christmas morning your fans have been showing up even when we explained you weren’t here. So they had to go without Prophet Trevor’s Christmas message. Now they’re back, trying a third time.”
“Crosses dis.” Trevor got out and waved the cars away. “You can not follow me. People: you want answers? They’re inside yourself. Nowhere else.”
Finally the cars dispersed and Brian reached Angelina’s gates, which she ordinarily kept staked open. Brian had a key she’d given him the first day he had moved here. Once inside, they discovered the grounds were almost empty.
Jacob, Royce, Earle and Zanz had planned trips home for the holidays, bringing their Asheville girlfriends. The students and faculty had all gone home after the festival. And Kaya and Angelina, after an hour of people showing up for Trevor’s words, drove to Kaya’s friends on the coast.
Carla materialized, though, just when Trevor was finally sharing a smoke with Brian. She needed Trevor’s opinion.
(Click here to read the nest episode)
