Page 76 of The Serpent King

“I wonder if that would have been Travis someday. A rich and famous writer, taking the time to meet with kids who were like him.”

“If Trav ever became rich and famous, there’s no question he would have. He gave me one of his stories to read on the day he died.”

“Did you read it?”

“Yes.”

“Was it—”

She laugh-cried. “It sucked.”

Dill laugh-cried with her. “But he’d have gotten better, right? He planned to take writing classes.”

“Of course he’d have gotten better. It was his first try. If he’d had forty more years, like Gary, he’d have been great.”

They let themselves cry for a few minutes.

Lydia sighed and wiped her eyes. “He was brave.”

“One of the bravest people I ever knew.”

They stood there a moment or two longer. “Let’s go somewhere,” Lydia said. “Someplace that feels like being alive and together and happy.”

The Column soaked up the warmth of the afternoon sun. Dill ran his fingers over what Travis had written—it seemed like years ago. We leave so little behind. They sat with their backs against it. Dill loosened his tie.

“You’d have learned more about Jesus than about Travis in that eulogy,” Lydia said.

Travis and Dill’s preacher had given the eulogy, and it was long on the light and the life and the resurrection and short on actual details about Travis’s life.

“I guess to be fair, though, he didn’t know Travis very well. And what do you say about someone who’s only lived seventeen years?” Dill said.

“You can’t really talk about all his grandkids, huh,” Lydia said.

“Travis loved Bloodfall, Krystal burgers, and his staff, but he’d never kissed a girl.”

“Travis never kissed a girl?”

“Did you ever hear him mention it? Who would he have kissed?”

“Yeah, good point. He was headed that way, though, it looked like.”

“Not that you’d be able to say that much about me at my funeral,” Dill said. Hadn’t kissed a girl either. Never worked up the courage to tell the girl he wanted to kiss how he felt about her. Didn’t even like Krystal. Won a school talent competition. Recorded a few videos of his songs that were generally well received by the people who saw them online. Did laudable work at Floyd’s Foods; rarely missed spots while mopping; was up for night manager. Had a couple of close friends. Maybe put his dad in prison, or at least his mom thought so. Did just so-so on the whole faith thing. The end.

“I think lives are more than the sum of their parts,” Lydia said. “I don’t think it’s fair to measure them in accomplishments. Especially not with Trav.”

They listened to the river. Dill wondered if it existed before any humans had lived and died at its banks. He wondered if it sounded the same then. He wondered what it would sound like when the last human died. Rivers have no memory; neither does the soil, or the air.

“Where do you think he is?” Lydia asked quietly.

Dill pondered. “I want to say heaven. Truth is I’m not sure. I hope someplace better than this.”

“When I think about it, sometimes I drive myself into a complete panic. Wondering if he’s falling through space right now. Falling and falling and falling and it never ends. This empty black void, but he’s aware. Of it. Of himself. He still has all of his memories.”

“As long as he has his imagination.”

“Yeah. I also wonder if heaven is maybe whatever you most wanted it to be. Maybe Muslims get up there and Allah’s waiting for them. And they’re like ‘See? Right all along.’ Or Travis gets up there and he gets to drink mead out of a horn or something.”

“I hope that’s true,” Dill said. “I have a hard time believing that all of Travis’s memories—everything he loved, all that he was—don’t exist anymore somewhere. Why would God make such a universe in someone and then destroy it?”