Three of my dad’s fingers on one hand were charred on the end. Two fingers on the other hand matched. The guy with the torch had been working from the pinky finger toward the bigger ones on each hand. Lucky for us, I guess. Dad still had enough strength in his hands to do most of the work.
In the dark, with my dad copying my movements, we dug three graves in a row beside the twins. They weren’t deep, maybe three or four feet. Through it, Dad kept forgetting that some of his fingers were ruined, and when he gripped the shovel handle too tightly he cried out. His mind had all but lost its ability to create new memories. Good for him. He didn’t have to live with the pain of another dead child. He didn’t have to have that pain compounded by the truth of the matter, which was that he was still tall and strong despite his years, and could have killed those three punks with his bare hands before they’d so much as put a bruise on anyone in the house. But his mind was too weak to figure out what needed to be done.
Addy was in the kitchen, trying futilely to comfort my mother. But Mom was suffering. She wouldn’t get off the kitchen floor. All the effort left in her had been spent on moving to a place on the floor where she could lay on her side and see through the doorway into the living room. There she bawled, watching Levi’s blood coagulate on the floor while his eyes stared unblinkingly at nothing.
Whatever was left of my mom in her debilitated brain was dying.
I stopped shoveling to wipe stinging sweat out of my eyes. Dad stopped too, and copied me. His eyes might have been stinging, or maybe they weren’t. I picked up a few water bottles I’d laid on the ground and handed one to Dad. I drank half of mine. He drank all of his, and we went back to work.
It took us most of the night to finish.
When we laid our shovels down, I tried to get Dad to sit and stay in the chair he used for watching the twins’ graves. He wouldn’t. He wanted to stay by my side. Maybe something down in the core of his brain was healthy enough to understand I was the last of his children. Maybe he wanted to protect me.
Dad followed me through the kitchen and into the living room. Addy moved silently out of our way.
As soon as Dad saw Levi, his face twisted and his mouth fell open and he wailed again, louder, more painful than when that dead goon under the dining room table had been burning his fingers with the lighter.
Dad fell to his knees beside Levi. He petted Levi gently, like a puppy.
I knelt beside Levi, rolled him on his back, and wedged my hands beneath his body. I strained to lift him. If Levi hadn’t been so thin, I’d have had to drag him. In my mind, that would have been too degrading.
Neither Mom nor Dad did anything to help. They didn’t stop me either, though Mom’s sobbing grew more intense.
I gingerly carried Levi’s body through the kitchen and out the back door. I crossed the dead lawn and laid him beside the hole nearest his two dead brothers. Mom and Dad followed me out, both getting down on their knees beside Levi’s lifeless body. I climbed down into the hole, lifted Levi again, and gently placed him in the bottom of the grave.
Addy stayed in the kitchen doorway, allowing my family its private moment burying their firstborn son.
As I was climbing out of Levi’s grave, Mom climbed in and lay down beside his body. She held him and sobbed. Dad’s tears flowed silently down his cheeks as he stared into the pit containing his wife and dead son.
“Mom,” I said, “You need to get out. I need to bury Levi.”
Mom didn’t acknowledge.
“Mom, please.”
Nothing but tears.
I let her cry. I gave her some time.
Looking for the right words with which to proceed, I said, “None of this is your fault.”
Fault, even if they understood it, didn’t matter. Grief consumed my parents. Still, it was a funeral, things needed to be said. “I don’t know if there’s a Heaven or Hell. You guys believe in that. I hope you’re right, and I hope Mason, Caden, and Levi are in Heaven. I hope all the bad people in Houston are in Hell, and I hope they suffer. But I sometimes wonder if Hell isn’t just down there anymore. I think maybe the world is turning into Hell too, and good people like you and Dad were accidentally left here by God, suffering, though you don’t deserve it.”
I sat down on the edge of the grave. I was tired, more from the burden of everyone’s pain than anything I’d been through that day. My legs dangled into the pit as the weight of what I was doing bore down on me. Those first shovels of dirt on Levi’s face were going to be hard.
I let Mom and Dad cry a little longer before I said, “You guys took me to church because you thought that’s what good parents were supposed to do for their kids. And when I told you I didn’t believe in any of that stuff you let me stay home on Sunday while the rest of you went. Mom, I know you believe in that church stuff with all your heart, but I never thanked you for not making me feel bad because I didn’t.”
Mom shuddered, and she buried her face in Levi’s bloody shoulder.
“We never had any money, but I know you guys always did your best for us. Mason, Caden, and Levi, they always appreciated that you were good parents. They loved you. And if it wasn’t for that damn Brisbane flu, I’ll bet they’d have grown up to be successful, good people. I think Caden would have been a doctor.” I looked at Dad. “Don’t you?”
Of course, Dad said nothing.
“Maybe Mason would have been a lawyer. And Levi, he was so smart, I’ll bet he’d have had started his own Internet company or something. I’ll bet he’d have been a billionaire one day.”
I took a look at both my parents. Maybe they understood what I was saying, maybe they didn’t. I like to think they did.
The next part was a lot harder than I expected it to be. “I reached out and put a hand on Dad’s shoulder. “I don’t want you to suffer anymore, Dad.” I looked down at Mom. “You don’t deserve to live in Hell.”
I got to my feet and walked over to the porch where I’d left the shotgun after I’d reloaded it.
Addy had seated herself on the back steps by then. She looked at me when I picked up the gun, no judgment in her eyes.
Mom stayed in the grave with Levi. Dad watched me until I came over to take his hand. “C’mon.”
He got up.
I led him away from Levi’s grave and stood him up at the foot of the empty grave on the far end of the row. I turned him to face the hole. “Close your eyes, Dad.”
He didn’t respond. He just stood where I’d left him. “I love you, Dad.” I raised the shotgun, aimed the weapon between his shoulder blades, and I pulled the trigger.
With the gun’s thunder echo rumbling through the neighborhood, my father collapsed into his grave.
Feeling the hollow again, the same one I felt when I saw Levi’s body on the living room floor, I walked back to Levi’s grave and looked down at Mom. In her eyes, I saw that she understood what I’d just done. I hoped she wouldn’t hate me for it.
She pulled Levi close, kissed his cheek, and held him so tight I thought she might not let go.
When she was done, she stood up and she looked up at me. “This is Hell, Christian.” She reached over, took the barrel of my shotgun, and raised it until it was pointed at her face. “Don’t let this haunt you. Don’t make this world a deeper Hell than it is. I hope you find whatever piece is missing from your soul that keeps you from being happy. I hope one day you learn how to love.”
“I already know, Mom. I love you and Dad, and Levi, and…”
She shook her head. “I know you think you do. But that’s okay. I know in your way, you feel something for us. I know you’d do anything for your family. I always knew it. In your own way, you’re stronger than we are. You’re able to do for us what we don’t have the strength to ask of you. It’s like Dr. Rajan said, you’re different. Maybe you were born at just the right time. Maybe the rest of us should have lived sooner so we never would have had to see what a wicked place the world has become. This world is for you, Christian, not for me, not for Dad, not for Levi or the twins.”
I didn’t know how to respond.
Through her tears, she smiled at me. “I’ll always love you, Christian.” She looked down at my brother and said, “Levi always needed me in a way you couldn’t understand. I’m going to go with him to Heaven.” She knelt down and then leaned over on an elbow as she closed her eyes. “Leave us together, please.” She lay down, pulled Levi tight to her breast, and closed her eyes. “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy—”
Bang!
I looked down into the grave, hoping the one shot had killed her. I watched for movement, a breath, a twitch, but saw none of that. At least I hadn’t prolonged her suffering.