Beneath the Weight of Sadness

by Gerald L. Dodge

  “Stop it, Tommy,” I screamed. “Get off him, you asshole!”

  Instead of listening, Tommy released Truman’s neck and slammed his fist into his stomach. It was an awful sound and still Truman said nothing. He looked at me for a moment and then rolled onto the ground and curled into a ball.

  “You fuckin’ faggot pussy,” Tommy said and then hit him again, this time on the side of the head. I hit Tommy with my open hand on the side of his head, but it didn’t faze him, it only intensified his next fist that caught Truman in the neck.

  I went over to the bench where the bat was and slid the gloves from the bat. “Stop it!” I screamed. “You’re going to kill him!”

  Tommy hit him again, again in the neck.

  “You son of a bitch!” I screamed. I pulled the bat back and hit Tommy squarely in the ribs. He turned over and away from Truman and leapt to his feet. His look was that of some wild and crazed animal. He wrenched the bat from me and pulled back to hit me and then stopped.

  “See!” he screamed, saliva spraying from his mouth, tears rolling down from his eyes. “See! All you had to do was come with me. All you had to do…”

  He was shaking as if he’d just stepped out of cold water, his eyes filmed over with some hatred I’d never seen in a person before. He turned and looked at Truman, who was still in a ball, his hands protecting his face. Tommy walked over to him and lifted the bat and for a moment I thought he was going to do as he’d done with me. Stop the action. But he didn’t. He brought the bat down and hit Truman directly on the crown of his head. The sound was sickening.

  “Tommy!” I screamed. But it was too late. Tommy raised the bat and hit Truman again, almost in the same place.

  “Oh my God!” I shouted. “Oh my God. Truman!”

  And then I saw Tommy raise the bat again, and then I ran. I ran over and around the bench and around the memorial and into the grass and toward the street that led to Main Street. When I got to the edge of the grass, I stopped and took off my sandals and then I ran again. I ran all the way to my house. I ran and ran and ran, thinking all the time that, if I ran fast enough, I would run right out of this nightmare and it wouldn’t have happened and I would wake up and my world would not be like it is going to be for the rest of my life.

  The first spatters of fat rain hit my face like the fingers of God as I reached the door to my parents’ house. I practically ripped the door off its hinges, as if getting inside would take me away from a kind of evil I’d never known existed before that early Sunday morning.

  Carly

  Thirty days after Truman’s death

  I came so close to telling him, his body so close to mine and his eyes so sad that I knew he was dying. I felt his hardness and I knew it was only because he was crazy with emptiness for Truman, and all I had to do was tell him, and I couldn’t. I could not. It had nothing to do with self-preservation, because there was only one thing that kept screaming inside my head.

  How am I to tell these grief-stricken people that the reason their son is dead is because I was sleeping with a brutal murderer? And how am I to tell my parents?

  My father is racked with pain over my inability to smile or laugh with him. He is puzzled and I know he went to see Ethan and I know he wants them to see me, to ask me to come to their house. But I can’t. I can’t walk into that house and see where Truman lived, where he walked and talked and laughed and kissed me and touched me.

  When I see his image in my mind I begin to cry. And Tommy keeps coming to me in school and I know what he thinks. I know he thinks we’ve conspired, because I haven’t gone to the police. I watch him in the hallway and he acts as if he never picked up the bat and killed another human being. I see he is becoming more confident as the days pass and I haven’t said anything. At first he would come up to me in the hallway, and as I’d walk past him he would whisper, “Please, Carly. Please say something.”

  But now he’s begun to come to me when I’m at my locker, and actually, once, put his hand on my shoulder. I wrenched away from him.

  “Don’t you even touch me,” I whispered fiercely.

  He pulled back, shocked, and then, like Tommy, he smiled as if that would make me relent.

  “We need to talk,” he finally said.

  I slammed my locker shut and walked away. I could feel his eyes on the back of my head and realized I was relieved he’d finally touched me. It was a turning point, and it was that same day that Ethan followed me to the park and we hugged. I had this throb of desire and I confess I wanted to do something to make that poor man feel better. I could see this great sadness in his eyes, his face sagging with the weight of his boy gone from his life for good. I wanted to take him into the woods and pull his pants down and take his cock in my mouth and relieve him. And I know that sounds weird, but I couldn’t think of what else to do, and I thought of all the times I’d gone into the study when Ethan was there and plopped on the leather chair, my legs draped over the arm of the chair, and I could tell, at times, Ethan was looking at my legs. And I liked his eyes on me. I liked the heat of his eyes.

  “You’ve always wanted to sleep with my dad,” Truman would say. And I didn’t know if it was true or not. He was so hot for an older man and I would laugh at Truman and think, No, Truman, I’ve always wanted to sleep with you but you’re not exactly available. And I remember laughing with Truman one time, Truman saying that Ethan was the sacrificial lamb because he, Truman, knew what I wanted and he couldn’t do that for me.

  And I know what everyone would be thinking if they knew: How could I not have gone to the police right away? How could I let that monster of a boy walk around in his new suit of clothes, thinking we shared a conspiracy and that I would eventually come back into his arms—or even if he doesn’t think that, being confident I’ll never say a word? But why does he think that? How can he imagine I would not think what he did was the vilest of actions? Is he so stupid that he thinks I can continue walking around with him in the same school, the same town, the same biosphere as me?

  But then there was that small and slight crack of doubt. Did I see that bat hurled into the air as I angrily walked away from the two of them, spinning in that arc of light and then disappearing into the black night?

  I did not do that, Carly. How can you think I would do that?

  “I know you’re still sad, Carly,” my father said. “Your mother and I know that and we understand, we do. But there is nothing for you to do but to begin to heal. I miss Truman, too.” He put his finger in the air to stop me. “Please, Carly. I know most of your time with Truman was over there, but I know how much you loved him. We knew what a good boy Truman was despite whatever he was in your life or didn’t become in your life or whatever…”

  “Please, Daddy,” I said. “Please just leave me alone on this. You have to trust me that I’ll get better, but it has to be on my time and no,” this time I put my own finger up to stop him, “I don’t want to see a counselor and I don’t want to go the Engroffs’ to…what? To commiserate with those people who have lost their only son? It would be like me saying to you I understood what you were going through if you had prostate cancer.”

  And then I began to cry and my father took me into his arms and I smelled his aftershave and stale coffee and a hint of late-afternoon perspiration and I compared it to the smells of Ethan Engroff and how I had wanted to take him into the woods and do something to make him forget at least for a few minutes.

  “I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do, Carly, but I won’t let it go on much longer before I do step in and demand you get some help. No softball? You hardly look at your books? You rescheduled your SATs? I know, I know, you don’t have to say anything, but it can’t go on like this. Your mother and I are beginning to go slightly crazy with worry.”

  And it was then, with that mild ultimatum, that I knew I could not live with the kind of torture I felt every single night when I tried to sleep and instead heard that sickening sound of those fists and saw my
Truman down on the ground, never to get up again, never to look at me with his beautiful black eyes, never. My betrayal was an agony. It was agony that I had not only betrayed Truman by ever once being with Tommy Beck, but, even worse, that I’d betrayed Amy and Ethan by not going to them straightaway and telling them the truth. That I had stood by and watched their son brutally murdered by a person not fit to even be in the same room with Truman, let alone to touch him or think he had the right to end his life.

  I can’t imagine how much he must have been freaking out after I left that night. I don’t know what he did with the bat or with his own bloody clothes. I know he must’ve thought so many thoughts those first few weeks. Because even though he almost immediately started walking by me in the hallway and giving his little show of regret and contrition—Please, Carly, please, I did not do that! How could you think I would do that?—I knew what he really was thinking was, How do I find out if she is going to finally tell? I know that’s what he was thinking. I know he was.

  A few times when he walked by and said the same words, Please, Carly, please, I dropped my shoulders as a sign of recognition or surrender and I knew at once he was encouraged until one day he stopped there and waited as I took the books out of my locker. When I stood I saw his face, and he had that look of remorse but also of assurance I’d once loved to see.

  “I thought…” And he stopped and waited for me to say something but I didn’t. I didn’t walk away, either, though, and I could see a sliver of relief that I stood there. Tommy’s expression then reminded me of the times I’d gradually opened the door to my room after a scary movie and finally walked in to find everything was the same. I could see he was making those same calculations in his head.

  “What?” I finally said, impatiently. “What do you want, Tommy?”

  “I thought…I thought we could talk. I thought maybe after school…”

  “I’m busy,” I said before he could finish.

  “I just need to talk to you is all, Carly.”

  He’d used his eyes to get me to do things in the past so many times and now he was doing it again, his eyes smoldering with the whole background of his father being an asshole and his mother putting up with his father and kissing Tommy’s ass and his sister Sam resenting the attention he’d always been paid because of his athletic ability and the coaches making the teachers make special cases for him and me, me, me, sleeping with him for all of those reasons and the fact that at one time I’d thought he was so beautiful to look at. He was using that now, using his eyes to try to draw me back.

  “What do you want to talk about?” I said, shifting my book bag so it wouldn’t be so heavy to one side.

  He leaned into me and I smelled the special cologne he wears and I wondered if he was already wearing it for someone else. He put his face close to mine. “You know, Carly. Jesus Christ, we have to talk about what I’ve been trying to tell you and you won’t fucking listen. I don’t know what happened after I left, but it wasn’t me!”

  “You might need to talk,” I said. “I didn’t do anything but watch, Tommy.” And then I wondered if I’d said that a little too loudly. The hallway was clearing for the next class.

  “No, we do. I need to talk to you.”

  I nodded and looked away from him and down the hallway. We stood side by side for too long. I heard the second buzzer for our next class. Finally I looked at him.

  “I have to go. I have class.”

  “Can we?” he said, his voice persistent and almost full of alarm.

  I looked away from him again and nodded.

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. Soon.”

  I started to walk away and he grabbed me by the arm. I turned on him and stared at his hand. He withdrew it quickly. I turned again and began to walk away. Again, I thought of Tommy cracking the door to his room, hoping there was not anyone or anything on the other side.

  Ethan

  Thirty-one days after Truman’s death

  From Persia to Tioga County and Wellsboro is approximately a four-hour drive, depending on traffic. I left at four in the morning on a Wednesday. I didn’t tell Amy. The drive was as beautiful as it had been when I’d gone there with Amy and Truman now two years ago. It was almost the same time of year and, although the first time was an adventure for all of us, I thought of this time as an adventure also. Alone. I’d bought a six-pack of Heineken for the ride and the six-pack sat on the floor of the passenger side for most of the ride. The trees, as I got further on Route 80, had less fully developed leaves, even though it was now the middle of April. It had been a long and hard winter in that area. I’d read that in the Google research I’d done. The trail the three of us had walked to the bottom of the canyon and its return was closed due to mudslides and felled trees. It didn’t matter. I wouldn’t be hiking this time.

  For the past three weeks, every Wednesday, I’d taken eight hundred dollars cash out of the TRUAM business account. I told Susan not to be alarmed by the withdrawals. I told her I’d needed the money to begin to search for a place for Amy to “rest.” She’d nodded her understanding. This was one of the reasons I’d always felt so happy to have Susan, to keep her content with raises and good insurance and tolerating her fastidious and fussy and finicky personality. She protected my interests. But now I wondered if I should fire her. She had that suspicious, sidelong look whenever monetary questions arose, as if the money were partially hers and she needed to keep a close watch on it. In the past I’d appreciated her exactness about TRUAM’s money, but now it only complicated these transactions.

  The farther west I drove the harsher the land became. It doesn’t have the softness of the part of New Jersey where the three of us live. The two of us now. The trees struggle in this harsh and less loamy soil, and I thought of Truman and how he’d struggled in an environment that spurned those not suited for the political and social climate I’d unwittingly placed him in. Or maybe I saw it as a struggle… No. His murder proved that where I’d made him and Amy live was not suitable.

  I saw now how arrogant I’d been. I thought of the day I’d bought Amy the Dolce & Gabbana and how pompous I was to think I could just begin a business and that the world according to me would continue to grant me unending privilege. I’d continued on that course until the day my son was killed. My spurious notion that our lives were special, and protected somehow, not by God, really, but by some inscrutable force, was wrong, very wrong. Now it’s clear that my belief system, such as it was, was haphazard and self-important. The one-star general would assent to that characterization. If he’d voiced his opinion, he would’ve said, Boxes? Who the fuck makes a living manufacturing boxes? Good question. Who does? I did. Although the general had been in the business of boxes also, but his contained bodies. World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm.

  Taking Amy and my Truman to Europe and crisscrossing the United States and having our long weeks and summers on Cape Cod, staying weeks on end in Camden, Maine, and it seemed so perfect because I’d invented it all and felt…what? god-like? impervious? likely to appear on anyone’s fatuous list of what success is, because I’d invented some way to make money that didn’t require thought? Every night since Truman had died I’d been hashing over the same admissions of my own guilt, drinking whiskey after whiskey knowing we should’ve lived in Manhattan—I think of Manhattan as full of profiteers, though of course it would’ve been a better, more open place for a gay kid to grow up—and I should have done work that had nothing to do with the pursuit of profit and the community of profiteers who inhabit the town and area of the state I housed my wife and child in. I was guilty. I was fucking guilty. Now I had to show contrition.

  Driving on 80 West I felt Truman in the car with Amy and me again, bemoaning his involvement in this “hare-brained” idea. I was the genesis of all the hare-brained ideas. And I should have known that the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania—the Grand-fucking-Canyon! in Truman’s mind—would be boring as sin to a fifteen-year-old kid. But he’d love
d it and I have the pictures to prove it. Amy took a picture of me and Truman on the trail coming back up from the bottom of the canyon, arms around each other, his head resting on my shoulder, his smile the real, genuine Truman smile, me smiling too, knowing that, quixotic trip or not, my son was glad to be with us. The vacation had been a success. Truman had been gregarious, warm, very close with us both. He may have been experimenting with cigarettes at that time. He’d leave the room in our hotel at midnight, stealthily, thinking we were both asleep. I wanted to get up and follow him, but Amy refused to let me.

  It’s Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, Ethan. No one is going to steal him away from us. If he’s smoking, he’ll soon quit. There was that smell of cigarette smoke when he returned an hour later. I wanted to say something, but I didn’t.

  And he did quit. Amy was right. Not a speck of evidence that he ever smoked tobacco again, even though I smoked until I was in my mid-thirties and still long for a Camel non-filter on nights when I anguish to see the face of my son. I don’t, though. I only prevent myself from lighting up because of Truman. Don’t you see, Tru, that everything I do now, every action I take is considered under your scrutiny? I want to please you. I want you to still love with me. You will see.

  Off of 80 and onto Route 15 North toward Wellsboro, through spectacular country. Mountains on either side of the road. Suddenly I began to cry. I could feel Truman in the back of the car, prone on the seat, texting or reading, or listening to music, anyway refusing to sit up and look at the view. His own silent protest for having to join us.

  I paid cash for gas and, even though I have an E-ZPass, I paid cash for the tolls. When I reached the outskirts of Wellsboro, I found a small motel with vacancies, poised on a hill overlooking a small valley. There were a few trucks in the parking lot, and I decided to go inside and see what the reception area looked like. There was a television blaring behind a curtain. The room was small with pine walls and a large picture of the real Grand Canyon, perhaps as a joke. There was a Coke machine, a rack stuffed with brochures for “sights to see,” an ice machine, curtained windows (clean), a counter shiny with polish. No smell of cigarettes. Two chairs with plastic covering, but clean, on either side of a window looking out at rows of rooms on two floors.