Jomon and the three grandfathers sit in the twisted roots of a cottonwood tree.
“We’ve all told you our stories,” Hi says. “What have you decided?”
“What have I decided about what?”
“Are you still planning on killing yourself?”
Jomon looks from one boy to the other. He can see bits of his own face in each of their faces.
“You all did,” he says. “You all got to go. Why shouldn’t I?”
“We told you we regretted it,” says Angel.
“I don’t believe you.” Jomon looks at Hi. “If you’d stayed alive, would you have changed your life, or just been the same miserable man, drinking and hurting everyone around you? Would you have taken the time to get to know your son? I think you killed yourself because you were too lazy to try to have a real conversation with the only person who really cared anything about you.”
“No, no. I killed myself because I wanted to be with my wife.”
“That’s a lie,” snaps Jomon. “You believe it because drunks believe their own lies. If you wanted to be with your wife, you’d do the things she liked to do. You said she liked to look at new things? You could have spent your own life looking at new things, starting with your son. She would have been with you then.”
Jomon thinks of the things his mother loved. She loved to sit and draw with him at the kitchen table, using his crayons to create beautiful pictures of the Guyana countryside. She loved to sit on the front porch under a full moon, letting the moonbeams wash over her face. “Moonbathing,” she called it.
He hasn’t done either of those things since she died.
He turns to Angel. “I don’t believe you, either, because if you’d stayed alive, you would have had to live with everyone knowing you had a gay son. You got him out of the country and set up for a new life, but do you really think that made up for him knowing you were ashamed of him?”
“I was not ashamed,” Angel says to Barnby, who is looking at the ground. “I was afraid for you. That’s why I got you out.”
“That explains why you sent him away,” says Jomon. “That doesn’t explain why you killed yourself instead of going away with him. You were prepared to end your life but you weren’t prepared to change it? You could have been happy.”
“I didn’t think I deserved to be happy,” says Angel. “My father never wanted me.”
“So what?” asks Jomon. “Your son wanted you! I think you never wanted to be happy because then you’d have to admit that you wasted most of your life being miserable.”
“No, no, I …”
But Jomon has already moved on to Barnby.
“I understand you the least of all. You had way more opportunities than either of these two. You knew you had talent. I know you were lonely, but there are a lot of lonely people in Guyana. You could have helped them. Imagine what my father …”
Jomon feels himself starting to cry. He shakes it off and gets to his feet.
“You’re all liars and cowards,” he yells. “You have nothing to teach me.”
Nearby, in a small clump of trees, Gather is getting alarmed at the rising sound of the human voices. Humans shouting often led to humans killing, and she does not want to be killed again.
The boy doing most of the shouting is coming closer and closer to Gather, getting louder and louder with each step. Gather peers down at him through the tree branches.
“I’m better than all of you because I’m going to kill myself before I have kids. You’re the first suicide?” he asks Hi. “Well, I’m going to be the last. The whole sorry family ends with me.”
The three other humans are now on their feet, moving quickly toward the shouting boy and Gather’s hiding place.
She feels trapped. She needs to move. Plus, she smells a large stand of cannonball flowers on the other side of a big open area — an area, she can see from her great height, that is covered with humans.
There is a battle between her fear and her stomach. Her stomach is winning. She gets ready to move.
“You don’t have to end the family pain by dying,” shouts Angel. “You can end it by living.”
“What’s the point?” Jomon yells back. “You can’t tell me it’s not all lousy.”
“You are so stubborn,” says Barnby. “You’re just like your father.”
Jomon runs at Barnby and lands a punch, right to Barnby’s head. Barnby drops to the ground.
“I am just like my father!” Jomon shouts. “He saw nothing good in this world, and neither do I! You are all just empty, useless ghosts. Tell me one thing worth living for. Just one thing. You can’t! Because there is nothing! It’s all garbage. It’s all —”
Gather steps out of the thicket, right in front of Jomon.
First comes one giant, hairy leg, a leg as tall as a person and as thick as a tree, with a foot as big as a boat and toenails long and curvy.
Out swings her other leg, then her tummy, round like the moon. Then her arms ending in claws that can get her any fruit or flower she desires.
Jomon looks up, way up. Then up some more.
The words he was going to say vanish from his throat. All thoughts are forgotten as Jomon stares up at Gather. The three grandfathers stand by his side.
Jomon has been to the museum. He knows what he is looking at.
“It’s Megatherium,” he breathes. “But they’re supposed to be extinct.”
“So are we, my great-great-grandson,” says Hi. “So are we.”