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Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details. Coming Home continued. Not long into the journey upriver did the feeling that I was at the funeral of a complete stranger come upon me. While the storm clouds opened up again, driving the water-skiers to safe havens, I heard story after story of Kelly's life after High School. The stories were told in a verbal language I understood, but the culture, from which these tales had developed, could not have been more alien to me than any that may have developed centuries ago on Mars. You have to understand where we grew up. West Columbia, at the time of our youth, was made up of maybe 3,500 people. There were five traffic lights, two banks (not affiliated with any chain), two real gas stations, a 7-11, a U-Totem, a Dairy Queen, a Ben Franklin's, a motel, two small grocery stores, one small apartment complex, and two car dealerships. If we wanted to see a movie on the big screen, we had to go to Angleton or Lake Jackson. Starting in junior high (7th and 8th grade), our school population grew with the addition of kids bused in from Damon, Brazoria, Wild Peach, and Jones Creek, and still our graduating class numbered only 222. We roamed the neighborhoods and no one was afraid of us, because we knew everybody - and they knew our parents. The only times we locked our doors was when we were planning to be out of town over night. We knew "gay" had a meaning other than "happy" but that was something we encountered only on TV. I listened to the stories, hoping to hear something I could relate to, something that would remind me of Kelly, from so long ago, but it was a lost cause. He had wanted to enter a Halloween costume contest but he had all sorts of trouble finding the right shade of pink and a particular type of feather for his pink flamingo costume. Then there were several stories from those three summers that he had spent, as a nurse, at an all-boys camp in New York. These were the accounts of a stranger. I had come to the wrong funeral. It was somebody else, with the same name as that of my best friend from childhood. I hoped when we docked that I would have time to reach the funeral that I had driven so far to attend. After we turned around for the return leg of our journey, we joined hands and listened to Kathy's brief prayer. Then we each took a carnation, or a rose, and gathered at the railing on the port side, away from the now intermittent rain that blew in from the right. We tossed our flowers upon the water and filed, one by one, to the urn, to gather up what remained of Kelly and fulfill his final wish - all of us except for me. This was something for the people, he knew in his later life, to do. I had said good-bye to him several years before, on a happy, sunny day after a trip to Galveston, and I wished to leave it at that. I could not dip my hands into the ashes of someone I did not know. That would have been a lie of the heart, a false act played against someone who deserved more. I stood at the stern of the boat, by the engine room, and as close to the paddle-wheel as I could, trying to drown out my thoughts, trying to hide from myself the urge I had to jump overboard, to get away from these strangers. I did not belong here! As I watched the ashes drift down, upon the water, I recalled what Dorothy had said earlier. Kelly had puzzled her with his request to have his ashes scattered here, but after stepping back and thinking about his life, she understood. This was where he had spent many hours, as a child fishing, crabbing, and water-skiing. This had been a happy place for him, a place of carefree innocence. Then it happened, just as suddenly as a flash of lightning. Memories of twenty years ago exploded in my mind. The first time I had ever been on skis was with Kelly, on this very same muddy river. I remembered worrying about water moccasins, those times when I fell and was forced to wait for the boat to come back for me. We spent many a summer's day fishing off the pier, slinging out the crabbing nets and chasing off the sea gulls. Those days were often followed by nights of telling ghost stories, in that creaking old beach house, and then staying up until sunrise, because we had scared each other so. The tears were on my cheeks before I knew it and I did nothing to hold them in check. This was not a farewell; this was my old friend's coming-home party and he had been kind enough to invite me. It was the least I could do for him. The End |
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The author can be contacted at: "Brad Anderson" brad@jpats.com |