Too late? he said.
Afraid so, I said.
The violence with which the Mels dragged him out of the room and propelled him down the stairs (even as he protested that to take him now, when the solution was so clear to him, was insane, was an outrage, was a terrible crime against the world) seemed, to me, excessive.
But there was nothing to be done about it.
I moved away, to the window.
—
The wedding was winding down. Guests were piling into shuttle buses, which rolled away down the street, headlights coming on, going off, coming back on again. There were shouts, bits of off-pitch singing, promises to meet again. On the front lawn the bride and groom (drunk) were bidding a digressive goodbye to a (sober) group from the mother of the bride’s church. A few spare children, exhaustion-delirious, dodged in and out of a hedge, one of them with a tail-resembling napkin tucked into the back of his pants.
Through the crowd, unseen by them, came the Mels, dragging my charge along on his stomach. Though still resisting, he was swiftly being converted by the pain and shock of it to acquiescence. He requested that they stop, please, stop dragging him, he’d walk, he’d willingly walk. They stopped. He got to his feet, and the Mels set off at a rapid pace, him stumbling along behind on the rope, the tenor of his resistance softening into pleading.
Behind him followed his mother and his father, separate beings again, not speaking to each other. Soon, I knew, their pathswould diverge and, forgetting about him entirely, they would wander off separately, to seek their respective solutions to whatever kept them bound in this realm.
Up above, the sky was full of those collective regional dead, fleeing the death-room, dispersing back to the fields, yards, offices, and nooks between buildings in which each normally, fitfully and unhappily, resided.
The moon was the highest it had been all night.
A single cloud moved slowly past it.
Two pronghorns of our ilk were tightly, repetitively circling my charge’s mailbox, this being the place where, hundreds of years before, they had been killed in successive months by the same mountain lion, who, nearby, staggered around in eternal reenactment of its last moments, having choked to death on the haunch of the second.
It was hard, this life.
Poor regional dead, stuck here, confused and discontent.
Poor pronghorns, who’d died so scared.
Poor mountain lion, ditto.
This life would, for no reason, smash its big fist down into this or that face, no apologies. While the rest of the world watched, then moved happily on.
Including my face.
I’d gotten blown up.
ME.
Lloyd had remarried quick, gone on to have kids, three kids. After his death, he’d fled this realm without so much as a goodbye. My dipshit killer had lived to a ripe old age, having forgiven himself.
A nice girl had been born and lived and loved and all that andthen got killed for no reason by some random dumbass and all her plans and dreams were just gone.
And the world completely forgot about her, like she’d never evenbeen.
It was sad, so harsh.
Just cruel.
I couldn’t stand it.
The Mels, for fun, gave the rope a hard yank. My charge fell with a cry to his knees.
Was there nothing to be done about all this suffering?
Elevationflared within me.
