“Yes sir,” Arnold said.
Kevin opened the door and both of the boys went inside.
As the two stood beside the bed, talking to the brother they would soon not have, an unbearable guilt began to overwhelm Kevin’s mind as he looked at his oldest son. In the pale light that pierced through the curtains—dancing across the room and slicing it in two—the boy’s skin seemed ashen and grey, darkened at the joints and hollows and gleaming like stone long since lost to the earth’s darkest places. Some would have thought he looked like a gem, an unnatural rock formation crafted in the ugliest shades of grey, but to Kevin, he could see nothing but his son, a human being slowly succumbing to a disease that seemed worse than death.
A hand pressed against his back.
Kevin tensed.
Eagle sighed.
Faintly, almost hidden in the shadows of the room, Kevin saw his oldest son reaching out to his brothers.
The hand that greeted him was not that of a seventeen-year-old boy.
No.
No boy’s hand was wracked with age, bent in two like a claw extending to grasp its prey, nor did his joints buckle under the immense pressure of death and swell in the absence of blood. No. No boy looked the way Jessiah did, with his eyes closed and his pupils long gone, and no boy ever would, could, should, as for that to be the case would be to determine that all men are created equal—that age, as long-lasting as it happened to be, was not without distinction, and that life, in its bitter progress, was not rife with challenge.
“Kevin?” Eagle said.
“Yes?” he asked.
“Are you ready?”
Kevin looked down. Eagle held a bowl of soup in his hand.
Is anyone ever really ready?
He whispered, “I am.”
Kevin knocked on the door. “Guys,” he said, “we need to let Jessiah get some rest now.”
“All right,” Arnold said. He looked down at his older brother, took his hand in his, then leaned down to whisper in his ear before pressing a kiss to his cheek. Mark did the same.
Both times, Kevin noticed, he heard three faint words before his sons stepped away from Jessiah’s bed.
I love you.
It broke Kevin’s heart to watch his boys leave the room.
“Jessiah,” he said, stepping up to the bed. “Buddy?”
“It hurts,” the boy whispered.
“I know, baby. I know.” He linked his hand into his son’s and wiped his thinning hair away from his face. “Eagle’s gonna help you eat something, ok?”
“My stomach hurts too, Dad.”
“I’m so sorry, Jessiah.”
“It’s…not…your fault.” Jessiah squeezed Kevin’s hand. The effort felt like nothing more than a child on his first day born. “Dad?” he asked.
“I’m here,” Kevin replied.
“I love you.”
“I love you too,” Kevin said. “More than anything else in the world.”
In the final moments spent at his son’s side, Kevin leaned forward and pressed his lips to the boy’s brow.
I love you, Jessiah.
Eagle stepped forward. “I’m going to help you eat,” he said, pulling up a chair to the bed’s side. “Whenever you’re ready, Jessiah.”
Kevin squeezed his son’s hand one last time.
As he left the room, a scream fighting its way of his chest, he realized that he couldn’t even say goodbye.
An hour later, Eagle came downstairs and stepped into the room. The grim look on his face froze Kevin’s heart, but confirmed what he already knew. “He stopped breathing ten minutes ago,” Eagle said. “He’s gone.”
Mark wailed.
Kevin bowed his head. It’s over.
He tried to contain himself as his sons cried beside him. “It’s ok, guys. He’s not suffering anymore. He’s…he’s in a better place.”
At this, Kevin cried as well.
Is he really? he thought. Is he really in a better place?
He couldn’t possibly know. All he knew was that, in his mind, he’d done the right thing. He’d let his son go, eased his suffering.
Leaning forward, Kevin pushed himself to his feet and looked out the window, toward the sole maple tree that stood at the top of their hill.
“Come on,” he said, looking back at his two sons.
“Where, Dad?” Arnold said through his tears.
“We need to go dig the hole, guys. Before it gets dark.”
Neither boy said a word.
In the brief moment that followed, Kevin thought they hadn’t heard him, or were too paralyzed by their grief to move. Then they both stood and followed him out the door.
In the fading light of the cold afternoon, Kevin thrust the blade of his spade into the ground and tried not to think that it was his son’s grave he was now digging. Brow furrowed and eyes halfway shut due to the glare that hovered over the trees, he slammed his foot onto the flat edge of the blade and grimaced when he met resistance, but quickly shook it off when he threw the rock into the pile. Nearby, bent double and shivering, his two sons repeated the process, first thrusting, then tugging, then depositing the soil into the slowly-growing pile of dirt.
It seemed completely unlike them, to be digging a hole for a person. People weren’t buried by people—they were buried by machines, mechanical gods created only to serve those who created them. People were supposed to sit back and watch as the events of death unfolded before them, as first the viewing was presented, then the funeral. Afterward, when they stood at the foot of death, that of which Kevin and his sons were now digging, they were supposed to pay their final respects, to say goodbye in the presence of wake to the person they would not see again until they themselves died.
Will we though? Kevin thought. Will we?
Unnerved by his doubt, he straightened his posture and traced the cross over his heart, desperately wishing for the crystal beads his father had passed down to him at his thirteenth birthday. They would be in his bedroom, he knew, locked away in a little wooden box inscribed with everything he would ever need to know.
In that very moment of weakness, where he thought his legs would give out and he would scream, he caught Eagle tracing the crown of the hill, waving a stick of incense and muttering something under his breath.
A prayer?
The smell of lavender and bark drifted on the wind as the air shifted and a slight breeze crested the curve of the hilltop.
“Dad?” Arnold asked.
“What?” he asked.
“That smell…”
“It’s Eagle,” Kevin explained, looking down at the hole before them. Though not deep enough, they couldn’t keep going. The maple’s old roots had already stopped them once before. “I think we’re done, guys. It’s not deep, but it’ll work.” Kevin raised his hand and waved at Eagle, beckoning him.
Eagle stepped forward just as the last of the incense began to burn down. “I need you to help me get him,” he said. “I don’t want the boys to have to do this.”
“Nor do I,” Eagle said, turning his eyes on the boys. “Arnold, Mark, would you go to the edge of the woods and gather any bark and stones you can find?”
“Yes sir,” Arnold said. “But bark?”
“We’re going to use it to cover your brother. It’s an old tradition.”
“Ok,” the boy said. “Come on, Mark.”
“Daddy?”
“Go with your brother,” Kevin said. “Be careful. Don’t go into the woods.”
Before Mark could speak any further, Arnold grabbed his arm and began to lead him down the hill.