river rat: Edgedweller, a preview Some of you are aware of the book I'm working on about my brother. A la John Ball, here's an excerpt of a near finished chapter ten. At this point in the story I've just learned that it was a suicide, not murder as he would've had everyone believe. Two more sections of this chapter will appear soon.
Edgedweller-Chapter Ten
Bury Me
The trip home was longer than I remembered it ever taking. Winding through the woods on a narrow strip of beaten asphalt my truck found every pothole, my eyes, every dead roadside animal. The drive took days, weeks even. Each turn reminded me of a time he was in the car with me going through the back roads between Orange and Chatham counties, Garth telling stories, talking big.
At Frosty's store he'd always ask to pull over so he could pick up a six pack of beer and some cheese-the last few years that's about all I ever saw him eat-cheese and beer, sometimes fried chicken greasy in a sack.
Driving past Frosty's-not pulling in for beer or cheese or chicken-made me realize that every tree on the way, every song on the radio, the old haunts, each neon sign we made together-all of it would forever remind me of him.
Wake up, walk the dog, feed the cats... grab the gas can stashed yesterday under the trailer skirt next to the lawn mower...
Driving home, the tasks ahead of me-my own to-do list-lined up, standing along the side of the road like billboards from hell. "Claim the Body" "Buy an Urn" "Hire a Crematorium" "Tell the Family One of Us Committed Suicide"
I just couldn't believe it. Garth set himself on fire. Isn't self-immolation a statement made by monks displaying incredible physical discipline protesting a cause, seeking martyrdom? Holy men take that kind of exit.
"Not really," the fire marshal told me. "We don't let it out to the papers when this happens, you know... to protect the family from the publicity." It happens often, he told me, Detective Richards backing him up.
"Several times a year," added the cop.
Unlike any monk, Garth set his death up, not to protest a gross injustice or to make a poignant societal declaration; rather he tried to frame up his girlfriend for his murder. In committing the act, he took as company in his own misery Karyn's pets, innocents, incapable of moral fault. Garth's way was so unlike the dramatic solitude of a monk's immolation. I don't know what made me the angriest: his selfish departure from the world or burning the dog and cats as he went.
Gather the cats, herd Misty into the room, close the door. Easy does it kitties. Douse the room. Hold still Misty...
"Bury Me!"
I pulled off the side of the road, half in a ditch; hearing the echo of my brother's voice in my head, the truck leaned hard to the right skewing the horizon beyond the hood. Garth once shouted "bury me!" to me in the month after he moved to Chapel Hill. He meant it when he said it, and with him dead, I had to honor his wish. Somebody had to, anyway.
It was a dozen years earlier on a fall evening spent drinking bottles of wine, standing on the fringe of fraternity court, listening to Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts with a group of javelin, shot put and discus throwers-teammates of Curt's and mine at UNC. From the sidewalk packed with dancing co-eds, distant from the stage, we saw frat boys on the mansard roof of a rundown house, pealing slates from the roof and sailing them into the crowd. The once stately building began to show its tarpaper in a broadening black cancer spreading by half a square foot each time a drunk pulled off another tile. A dozen thin boys in Oxford button downs and loafers scampered over the tall roof, pulling down great chunks of history the way spiders crawl a web for mayflies.
A slate landed at our feet, shattering gray flints against our shins. We'd have ignored the sleight if it weren't for the walking wounded. A girl limped, slouched over, coming from within the crowd, covering a wound on her face, blood running through her fingers, down her wrist. An older drunk, Keith, a homeless townie nicknamed "Machine Gun" whom we'd given spare change in the past, showed us part of a slate stuck in his shoulder. "Someone should do something about those assholes." Machine Gun grunted, pulling the slate from his bony cap of muscles, laying the smooth wet shard at our feet.
The first bottle left my hand in a high arc, not unlike the casual toss of a snowball, the bottle tumbling end for end, landing in a hale of glass on the balcony let into the roof where the slate tossers stood.
The pop of the bottle and the shattering glass acted as a cue for the rest of those in the crowd thinking the same thing, that someone should do something about those assholes. The ensuing bottle and slate fight set the tone for our evening, landing one of the frat boys in the hospital with a shattered knee cap; the result of a javelin thrower's high velocity wine bottle connecting on the outside of the boy's weight bearing leg joint.
Garth rarely accompanied us into town, having surprised me on occasion with solo trips like the one to the library, and from time to time, a clandestine journey to a pool hall on Airport Road. His interest in hearing the Hot Nuts play live on stage pulled him up the hill with us to the party on a night when he more than likely would've remained back in our condo reading science fiction novels or watching Japanese monster movies, breathing most of his air through a bong.
It was Garth who suggested we buy a case of Boone's Farm Kountry Kwencher while he stuck to a flask of warm Boodles gin. He proved invaluable in the munitions line during the great projectile war keeping each of us supplied with bottles or rocks. By the time we finished our wine and he drank his gin, the bottle fight was over and we'd decided to flee the scene, headed up town to He's Not Here, a local beer garden famous for packing students into its dirt courtyard and low ceiling bar like fish in a tin.
Garth didn't look well after finishing his flask and drinking one of the bottles of wine-who would? His hair had wilded itself into a black shock of Aqua Net and humid muss. He wore his casual Saturday uniform: a black sweat suit with hoodie, a white tee-shirt and running shoes. He was just able to keep up with our slow amble two blocks from fraternity court to stand in line at the bar, weaving ten feet behind us.
A hundred or more students stood with us in line. Garth leered at every girl and taunted every guy, begging for a fight. I'd never seen him belligerent before, in public or private. He snorted like a bull and made catcalls, for the first time embarrassing me, afraid I'd run into people we knew.
Despite his act and wild appearance, friends still wanted to be around him. He was funny and his irreverence was complete, uninhibited. In line we drank more, Garth drank more. The bouncers at the bar-lacrosse players-welcomed us, including our brother, who growled at them as he passed; incoherent by the time we passed through the gate. Once inside, I lost track of him, spending time with friends and teammates sipping on blue plastic cups full of stale beer, checking out the crowd. Garth cruised by our group every half hour, lurking, prowling like a predator.
At midnight our entourage left the walled garden area to sit on the stoop of a nearby yogurt shop, stopping to relax with friends as they came and went, contemplating late night greasy burgers or biscuits.
A loud clatter of voices, shouting voices coming from the gate, was followed with Garth being toted bodily from the bar, one bouncer for each arm and leg. They ran him, a bum's rush, down the sidewalk and dumped him ass over elbows into a tall boxwood near the street. He screamed like a cat, more animal sounding than man, landing silent on the back side of the shrub in a heap.
I ran to him, each of the bouncers passing me, shaking their heads, one telling me that Garth was tossed for sneaking the grab of a co-ed's breast while making out with her. His lip was bleeding and a tuft of foliage hung dark green from his collar. I nudged him awake, careful moving him, fearing his neck may have snapped.
"What?" he asked, eyes closed.
"What?" I asked back.
"She was kissing me," he opened his eyes, grinning. "The breasts are part of the kissing package, don't you think?"
I didn't know what to say. I laughed, thinking that anything could have happened and that Garth probably was asking for what he'd just been given.
"She was kissing me," he repeated, and then he vomited for the next five minutes at the base of the row of landscaping.
I helped him ease down to the ground on his side in a thicker mound of dry pine needles hidden from view in a shrub a few feet away from where he'd emptied his guts. Garth passed out, snoring within seconds of becoming still.
