This is a story I wrote about a young man with sociopathic tendencies, and how he deals with a family ordeal.
Two days before Gavin’s father died he was in a cheerful mood, and even left his bed to make his own breakfast in the morning; three eggs over leftover rice. Gavin could hear his father’s heavy breathing from his bedroom and considered getting up to help. He imagined him struggling to bend over as he reached for the pan, holding his stomach as if to keep his fragile insides from spilling across the linoleum. The oncologist had said that abdominal pain was to be expected, and prescribed an assortment of narcotics to help simulate a normal lifestyle for him. Gavin waited until he heard his father eating to leave his bedroom. His little brother was already awake and eating a bowl of cereal in front of the television. His father was watching Noah laugh at cartoons and smiled at Gavin as he entered.
“I could’ve made that for you, you didn’t wake me up,” Gavin said.
“No need, I feel pretty good today,” his father said. “And Noah kept me company the whole time.”
Gavin knew this meant watching T.V. while their father made him cereal, but didn’t say anything. He couldn’t expect his brother to understand the situation any more than he could expect his father’s cancer to disappear.
“Actually, I was thinking,” his father continued. “Maybe we could go on a walk today. We could walk down to the lake where your mother used to take you.”
Gavin nodded, though he didn’t exactly feel up for a walk. Many of his friends spent their Saturdays at the park by the lake and none of them knew about his father’s sickness. He had heard enough of their jokes to imagine what they would say with his father as their subject. At least Mr. Clean has eyebrows. I wonder if he has superpowers. They would never say it to Gavin’s face of course, but he couldn’t stand the idea that they would have a laugh about it when he wasn’t there.
“I should study for the bio quiz I have on Monday, but you guys should still go since you’re feeling good,” Gavin said. He knew his friends wouldn’t recognize his father unless he were there with him.
“Okay, there are flash cards in my desk drawer if you want to use them.”
The day before his father died Gavin took the car to get some groceries. He had a list of things the doctor suggested for his father’s comfort: eggs, yogurt, berries, whole grain pasta, greens. Gavin had learned to shop on a budget in order to keep the remaining cash his father had given him. He sometimes considered that it might be wrong to take his father’s money now that he was on unpaid leave from his job, but was never asked for change, and figured his father wanted him to have it. Part of him felt that he deserved some sort of compensation for taking care of his father on his own. The neighbors would sometimes drop off dinners for them, but that happened more frequently when his father was first diagnosed and wasn’t yet weakened from the radiation and chemotherapy. It was now that the dinners were needed, but sympathy was exhaustible when your sickness lasted this long.
At home Gavin found his father in bed with a half empty bottle of gin in his hands. “Do you want dinner?” Gavin asked.
“No, close the door.”
Gavin moved to leave the room. “Come here,” his father said. “Close the door and come here.”
Gavin closed the door and walked to the edge of the bed. “You’re drunk.”
“It helps me feel good,” said his father. “Want some?”
“No. I was planning on going to Jeremy’s.”
“I miss your mother, why hasn’t she visited yet?”
“Why would you even ask that?”
“I’m so sick,” said his father. “God I’m sick.” He looked older to Gavin without his hair, like a monk of some kind; a weak and defenseless monk. He wasn’t like the monks who mastered kung fu, or the ones who had incredible balance. He was thin and tired and would have trouble lifting even a ten-pound dumbbell.
“You were feeling better yesterday.”
Gavin’s father sat up against the headboard and carefully placed the bottle of gin on the nightstand. “I wanna be buried next to my wife. Promise me you’ll bury me next to her.”
“You’re not dying, the medicine is gonna help you,” said Gavin. Noah opened the door and signaled for Gavin to come play with him. “Noah, please get out for a second. Dad isn’t feeling good,” said Gavin.
“I’m gonna watch T.V.” said Noah, and closed the door.
“It’ll cost too much to ship me to Louisiana if I die, but if we drive there I can die there and get buried next to her.” He was slurring much more now and Gavin wanted to leave the room. His father had never talked about his death so openly before, as if it were a definite thing, something they had to plan around.
“You have to stay here, for treatments.”
“If I die in fucking Georgia the state will bury me here,” said his father. “They’ll take you and Noah to… to your grandma’s house and put me in the first hole they find. That’s what they do to people with no money.” Gavin pictured his fathers corpse contorted in a ditch, suited men standing above with big shovels.
“I’m going to Jeremy’s,” said Gavin. “I told him I could hang out.”
“Promise me that I’m getting buried next to her, I need to hear you say it.” His eyes were wide and bloodshot, and he leaned towards Gavin with his hand behind his ear.
“I promise.”
Noah was still at school when Gavin found his father’s body. Gavin assumed that he was asleep when he entered the room, but soon noticed that his eyes weren’t completely shut, and then that he wasn’t breathing. Gavin stood next to the bed and stared at his father’s face. His mouth reminded him of Noah’s; with thin lips that tilted upward at the ends causing him to always look happy, like a perpetual grin. Now that Gavin could see the smile, he couldn’t look at his father’s face without seeing it. He started to feel sick to his stomach.
He left the room and walked outside, taking deep, staggered breaths until his heartbeat slowed. His neighbor was listening to music as he washed his car. Gavin remembered the meal that the man’s wife had brought over when she heard the news: green bean casserole and chocolate chip cookies. Comfort food she called it. Gavin wondered if they still worried about his family, or if they just assumed it had all blown over, like a seasonal cold, or like the death of his mother. These things happened after all. Statistically they had to happen to somebody, and who else than Gavin Stewart? Twice. His neighbor was over forty and hadn’t lost either of his parents; Gavin had met them at a Super Bowl party a few years earlier. Gavin watched the man. He was whistling Tom Petty as he washed his car, and Gavin figured that such a joyful activity was reserved for those whose parents were alive, reading the newspaper somewhere, reading someone else’s obituary. Gavin thought about the fact that he was now technically an orphan, and wondered what his friends would say about him. Even Tanner the retard has parents that love him.
Gavin remembered that his brother would be returning home soon. His mouth began to fill with saliva and he sat in the grass, closing his eyes until the sickness left him. He considered telling his neighbor about the body in his house. What could his neighbor do to help? Call the cops? Gavin had a phone, and he knew the number. He remembered what his father said about the state of Georgia taking his body and not giving him a proper burial. Could that have been true, or was it simply drunken manipulation? He remembered the promise he had made to his father in order to be allowed to leave the room. He had assumed that they would talk about the prospect of driving to Louisiana once his father was sober, but didn’t see him before heading to school that morning. He had made the drive once before when he first received his license because he had never visited his mother’s grave. The drive was eight hours without stopping, seven if he was stopping at his grandparent’s house. He could make it overnight. He would arrive in the morning and his grandparent’s could help from there.
Gavin thought about how crazy driving his father’s dead body across three states sounded. He wondered if his mother’s death had desensitized him to the idea. It couldn’t be normal to treat death this way, as if his father’s corpse was some sort of cargo. It couldn’t be normal, especially so soon after. It didn’t feel to Gavin that his father had just died. It felt to him that weeks had passed since his father’s death. Perhaps the impending threat of his pancreatic cancer made this day more digestible. He realized that he never actually felt sadness following the discovery of the body, just uneasiness and a deep worry for his brother. He couldn’t imagine the pain this would cause Noah, who was still facing developmental issues tied to the death of their mother. Any minute now a car would pull up and Noah would step out. One of the mothers that volunteered to help Noah in this time of need would soon wave goodbye to a smiling kid completely unaware that his remaining parent is gone forever.
Gavin decided he needed to move quickly if he didn’t want Noah to have to see his father like this. He pulled the car backwards into the carport beside the house. He figured this way if he couldn’t reach his grandparents by phone he would be able to use the back up plan without having to move the body in front of Noah. He opened the trunk, spacious enough for two bodies or more, and lined it first with blankets, then with trash bags covering the entire trunk floor. He hurried to his father’s room; his heart pounding for fear that his brother would witness him carrying their father’s lifeless body. The carport was fairly hidden alongside the house, but he knew that he should hurry. He avoided looking at his father’s grinning face as he slipped one arm underneath his back, and the other behind his knees. The chemotherapy had shed what little weight his father once had, and so lifting him off of the bed came easily for Gavin. He felt the cold skin of his father’s arm beneath his hand, the lifeless arm that once held Noah in this same position, once held both of his children. Gavin didn’t rush the walk to the car to ensure he didn’t drop the body, something that would undoubtedly cause him to become sick again. He had forgotten to leave the sliding door leading to the carport open, but managed to push it open with his foot. He noticed a van slowing near his house and couldn’t remember if he recognized it or not, waiting inside the door in case it was his brother’s ride. The van turned and drove down an adjacent road, and so Gavin continued outside. He managed to position his father’s body in the trunk so that only his knees needed to bend, and placed another blanket over the body. He wondered how quickly rigor mortis set in since he didn’t seem to have any trouble contorting the body to the shape of the trunk. He closed the trunk and went inside.
He looked for the number to his grandparent’s house, but couldn’t remember where his father had kept it. He heard a car door out front and walked to the window. Noah was heading through the fence gate and towards the carport. Gavin opened the sliding glass door.
“Hey buddy, how was school?” he asked.
“Fun, we caught bugs and named them,” said Noah.
“Cool! I actually have good news.”
“What?”
“Dad said that we can go see Grandma instead of going to school for the next few days,” said Gavin. “I just need to put our clothes in the car.”
“Is Dad coming?” Noah asked.
“No, he said he has to stay for his medicine. His doctor wants him to stay.”
“Okay, but when are we coming home?” Gavin could see the worry in Noah’s eyes. They weren’t coming home any time soon, but Noah couldn’t possibly understand this.
“In less than a week,” Gavin said.
After throwing most of their clothes into trash bags, Gavin took what cash he could find in his father’s wallet and dresser: just under three hundred dollars. He locked up the house, though there weren’t any possessions he deemed desirable to thieves besides their television set.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Dad to come back and say bye?” Noah asked.
“He said to go ahead, he might be able to come too in a few days.”
“He won’t have a car though.” Noah had always been more observant than Gavin, and worrying only seemed to increase his attention to detail.
“He will fly,” said Gavin.
They got into the car and Gavin pulled out of the carport. He glanced at Noah and smiled. Noah was tearing up and quickly wiping his tears away with his collar.
“What’s the matter buddy?” asked Gavin. “We’re gonna see dad soon.” He wondered how he was going to reveal their father’s death without his brother noticing his lies. If Noah wasn’t such an emotional kid, Gavin thought, he wouldn’t have to lie about the thing.
“He’s sick and I didn’t tell him that I loved him, and I always tell him,” said Noah, sniffling. “He always tells me too but he was asleep so we didn’t tell each other.”
“You can tell him soon.”
“I didn’t tell Mom either before she died,” said Noah. Gavin thought that Noah was too young when their mother died to remember such a detail, but Noah had a fascinating memory. Gavin wished he could remember things that far back.
“We’ll tell him once we reach grandma’s,” said Gavin.
The drive was very straightforward, and one highway could be used to get the entire way. Gavin told Noah stories about their mother from before Noah was born and this cheered Noah up. Gavin told him about the time that their mother let him drive while sitting on her lap, and how he couldn’t even reach the floor, let alone the pedals.
“How old were you?” asked Noah.
“Around your age,” said Gavin. “Maybe you can try it with me once we find some back roads in Louisiana.”
“I don’t know how to.”
“Well the steering is easy, it’s the pedals that are the hard part.”
Gavin enjoyed telling his little brother stories. Noah was easily amused and the stories helped Gavin forget about his father’s body shifting around in the trunk every time he accelerated or stopped the car.
“Mom and Dad never fought,” said Gavin. “Or if they did it was never in front of me. They met in the first year of college and were so in love that they got married before they even left school.” They had actually met in a bar well into their careers, but Gavin was having fun with his versions, they were more entertaining he thought.
“I never knew that,” said Noah. “Why did he want us to miss school to go to Grandma’s?
“Maybe because she is getting old and he wants us to see her before she dies.”
They were an hour into Alabama before they needed to stop for gas, and Gavin chose the station with the least amount of cars out front. While the tank was filling, Gavin went inside to use the restroom and buy some food for the two of them. He noticed a shelf of car air fresheners and immediately imagined his father’s dead body beginning to decompose in the heat of the trunk. He bought four fresheners and some pre-wrapped sandwiches for the road. As he was paying the cashier, he noticed Noah standing outside of the car, looking towards the trunk. Noah quickly squatted down near the back of the car until he was out of sight and Gavin noticed a woman standing directly behind the trunk of the car. He approached the car cautiously, knowing that any trace of worry on his face could let on that he knew about the body.
“Noah, what are you doing buddy?” He walked around the side of the car and the woman addressed him.
“Oh he’s just petting my dog,” said the woman. “He kept barking at, Noah is it? So Noah is showing him that he is harmless. Do you have a dog that rides in here often? Usually that’s what sets him off.”
“No,” said Gavin. “Well my friend’s dog rides in here sometimes actually, but not that often.” He turned to the pump and began whistling as he put the nozzle back in the machine.
“That’s probably it,” said the woman. “I love that song by the way. Tom Petty is one of my favorites.” She waved to Noah and smiled at Gavin before walking back towards her car. Gavin smiled at the woman and got into his car. He turned to Noah and his smile faded.
“Go to the bathroom please,” he said. “It’ll be awhile before we stop again.” Noah headed for the store and Gavin quickly grabbed his cell phone and dialed 9-1-1. “It’s a non-emergency… Yes, there’s a man in the street that looks to be dead or drunk or something… To the side of the Texaco station off Highway 20… I’m not sure sorry… He’s bald and he’s wearing a red t-shirt and grey sweatpants… I couldn’t tell you, it’s just off 20 somewhere, I think near Birmingham… I need to get back on the road but I wanted to make sure someone called it in… No problem let me know. Bye.”
Gavin backed the car up to the backside of the station to where the road couldn’t be seen. He got out of the car, looked around him, and popped the trunk.