I nodded. I knew how he felt.
We knew the route to her grave well. We had walked it together half a dozen times in the past few years and I had walked it alone a few more times. There had been times when life had all been too much and I needed to come talk to Mom. I hadn't mentioned those to my brother. Though we both know it feels like our guts are falling out every time we do this, we both feel like it's weakness when we admit we came here. Szandor may have come here on his own but I've never heard about it from him. Dickie said he once brought Szandor here when really drunk; my brother cried on the tombstone. It hurts to just hear that, but I can't admit I know about it and give my brother the hug he surely needed.
Only a modest headstone marked Mom's grave. She had died so suddenly and we had been so poorly off financially that we were unable to afford anything fancy. We wouldn't have even known how to bury her if it wasn't for help given by neighbors, both financial and psychological. We'll always be eternally grateful to everyone in South Egan and they never need to worry about asking us for favors.
I tear up every time I see the epitaph on the stone. Beloved Mother. She was so much more, but that title is enough. She was always the best of us.
We had brought no flowers, but due to the rain, any flowers we had brought would have been drenched and dispersed soon after we left. The rain also meant we were almost alone in the cemetery, the only other visitors were just a couple under an umbrella far away paying their own respects.
I never know what to say, even though I've been here before. This time I started with, "We miss you." The words were clumsy on my lips. It felt like a dumb thing to say. But... what do you say to a grave, to the spirit of a person who never answers back? No matter how many times, I knew no way to start talking to her that didn't make me feel stupid. Maybe I'm still not comfortable talking with her, even now. Then again, my brother suffers from the same affliction.
"Mom, I'm sorry," came his weak voice. "It was my fault."
Szandor says this every year. Once we're home, I remind him that he is wrong. It wasn't his fault. It had nothing to do with him; it would have happened no matter what he did. He never believes me.
I put my arm around my brother as he cried his tears.
"We're okay, Mom, in case you're worrying about us. If when you're looking down on us, you're not sure... if you wonder... just know... we're okay, Mom. We're doing our best," I said, pausing. "But sometimes it doesn't work out right. We want to make you proud, but..."
"We're doing our best," echoed Szandor, but his voice was more choked.
"Life is hard," I said. "It must have been harder for you having to raise the two of us alone. We've never been the best kids... But now that we're adults, we have to admit life is hard. It's hard to do what's right, it's hard to make it along in life without being horrible people. But we're trying to be the men you wanted us to be. Men who do what's right and do right by people. We've tried to go our own way with that, but I know it's not what you wanted for us."
"But we're the men you raised," said Szandor. "And we're trying to be better men."
"Yes, we're your sons and we have to stay true to who we are. I know you might not like us being monster hunters - hell, you might be looking down on us from Heaven and worrying about us every time we go underground. But we're doing it to help people. You taught us to always do our part to help people. And this is what we ended up being good at. This is the choice we made."
"And we don't want what happened to you to happen to anyone else," added Szandor.
"I know we say this every year, but we want you to be proud of us. More than nearly anything. And we want you to know that we have each other's backs. We're family. We're looking out for each other because there's no one else that can. You would have wanted it that way."
Szandor nodded solemnly.
"I guess we're just here because we wanted to show you we're doing alright. And that... that we miss you. You were taken from us too soon and we wish you were here. I love you, Mom. Happy birthday."
I nodded to her grave and then took a walk, tears in my eyes. I always try to walk away slowly, so I don't feel like I'm fleeing the scene or running from the feelings. My brother stayed at her grave. I knew he'd want some time with her alone. We're as close as family can be, but there are some expressions of emotion he's still too embarrassed to show in front of me.
We met back at the car, both of our eyes red, the tears wiped away. We took long sniffling breaths and tried to pretend we were as okay as we claimed we were in front of her grave. Coming here was always emotionally bruising. Even years later the loss hurts like it did the day after. I hugged my brother again. We were our only family left. And we were not going to let that change. I had his back and he had mine.
Some Nights
When we got back into New Avalon, it was just past dinner time. I dropped Szandor off at his apartment, reminding him that we were going to meet with Meat tomorrow about the new job. He nodded as he got out of the car. Of course, that was really a token statement. I knew I'd see Szandor at Twin Eagles, our favorite bar in our old neighborhood of South Egan. We both needed to see friends and we both needed to drink. And unsurprisingly, when I arrived at Twin Eagles about nine o'clock at night, I did indeed see him there.
I wanted to relax and see friends since we had been gone from town for a while. I was meeting Lem. If you didn't consider Szandor, Lem was my best friend. We'd been best friends since a young age and we just stayed friends no matter how much things had changed. We're in such a comfortable friendship because we accepted each other for who we were. When he came out as gay, I just shrugged and said it didn't matter. When I told him I hunt monsters that most people don't believe exist, he also shrugged and said it didn't matter. He's since seen some of the things I hunt and I've seen his boyfriends, so we know we're both on the level.
Lem looks like a Detroit rock city metal head. Long dirty blonde hair, stubble, and an endless supply of shirts of old school guitar god bands. He doesn't exactly look respectable - granted, neither do we. But he looks almost like an anachronism left over from the Seventies or Eighties. Despite his look, he's doing better than both Szandor and I. Though he shared our roots and our lack of college, he taught himself programming from books. At this point he had a great job programming something strangely called Ruby on Rails, which didn't sound at all like computer stuff to me. He hadn't moved to the west side of Avalon and gotten an attitude, though. He had too much family and too many friends in South Egan.
In fact, he had just helped his aunt relocate. While she lived in South Egan, she was close to the North Egan border. Too close. North Egan was one step down from a disaster area since explosions had destroyed nearly a whole block and damaged a fair amount of buildings. That on its own was terrible for all Egan residents. For days there was an almost noxious stink in the air from the smoke. But then came the construction crews. Like ants descending upon a picnic, in just a day there were corporate barriers and signs proclaiming an Avalon renovation.
North Egan has always been kind of a bad area. South Egan is kind of a poor neighborhood, but North Egan was poor and crime-ridden. The city had failed to do anything about it, so of course it never got better. But that construction company was coming in to rebuild North Egan. They want to make it a stunning example of what Avalon could be. Big condos, mixed use, a shopping mall, an organic grocery and a yuppie hipster heaven. Sounds great, right? And it probably is... if you don't live in an Egan neighborhood. If you lived in North Egan before, you were probably renting. Guess what, even if your home survived the destruction, it's still getting bulldozed. Your landlord sold out. And you're never going to be able to afford to live in North Egan when it gets rebuilt. So you have to find somewhere else to live.
Even South Egan was feeling the effects. The north end was getting a lot of noise and smoke from the construction. But those landlords were starting to sell too. Real estate adjacent to the revitalized area would be worthy of mid tier renovat
ions. We were not sure if that trend was going to continue south and change all of South Egan, but it was a fear. Where were all those people going to move on their income? They might not be able to stay in the city. They might need to move out to the cheaper suburbs like the Ville... assuming they can afford it.
Again, for those who lived in most of South Egan, that was intellectual. But for Lem's aunt, right on the border, those were real concerns right now. So Lem helped his aunt move. It was more expensive and Lem was helping with rent, but he found her a place in Riverside. Not too far from her home, but far enough away that the wages of progress would take much longer to catch up with her there, if they ever did.
Greeting Lem, I gave him a good hug, he offered quick condolences, and we ordered a couple of pints at the bar. Lem cocked his head, "Your brother sure is festive tonight."
I looked over to a table where my brother and his friend Dickie were sitting, a small collection of empty glasses in front of them, their arms around each other's shoulders, a drunken song tumbling from their lips. They made quite a pair too. My brother, pale, thin, dark punk hair, piercings, tattoos and a ripped Black Flag T-shirt with his arm around Dickie, a light skinned black kid with a wide, warm smile in a green army jacket and a short bright orange mohawk. They were stumbling over the words to Sid Vicious's version of "My Way". Well, they were until they got to a verse neither of them could remember, then it died out, much to the delight of everyone else in Twin Eagles.
Just as Lem was my closest friend who wasn't blood, Dickie was Szandor's closest friend. They had even been in a punk band together, one whose name escapes me because I honestly never cared. That was until Szandor got the Spider-man Syndrome and decided that monster hunting was too time consuming and he couldn't have a personal life. He said he'd be letting the band down if he always had to run off. I personally had counted once, maybe twice where he needed to cancel on band practice, so I thought this explanation was bullshit. Maybe Szandor was afraid of failure or afraid to let someone besides me down, I don't know. It put a strain on their friendship but thankfully didn't kill it. Szandor needed more friends, not less.
"Szandor sobers up quick, so let's give him this moment," I said.
Lem and I talked for a while as I smoked a cigarette. When no more drunken songs were forthcoming, we decided to join Szandor and Dickie.
"Ah, good of you gentlemen to join us!" said Szandor boisterously, raising his glass. "My comrade and I were just discussing how we all need to pool our resources."
Lem and I sat down in the other two chair and I lit another cigarette.
"How do you figure?" said Lem.
"We were discussing how we were two princes of Avalon," said Dickie, clearly very buzzed. "Four princes now!"
"And yet, all of us are single!" said Szandor.
That was true, this was a rare moment. Lem was boyfriendless and I had taken a break from dating. Szandor tends to strike out, so that's normal. I don't know a ton about Dickie's love life, but I guess this was a sign that he was similarly unentangled.
"The world should be our... what's that... uh..." said Dickie.
"Oyster?" suggested Lem.
"Yes, oyster! The world should be our oyster!" He took another drink. "Whatever that means."
"What my esteemed colleague is trying to say," said Szandor with good humor, "is that we should be parlaying our youth and beauty into success with members of the opposite sex... or the same sex too. Sorry, Lem."
Lem shook his head with a smile. "It's fine, Szandor. I know you're typically only thinking about your own dick."
"But why shouldn't I? He's right here!" said Szandor, grabbing Dickie's arm and pointing with a huge smile. Then he laughed.
So when you're around Dickie, there are dick jokes. Dickie's typically the first to make them. It sounds cheesy and lame, but after the first five thousand times, it becomes endearingly funny.
"But seriously, friends," said Dickie. "We're all suffering a shortage of bedroom companions. I propose we go on the hunt! I can think of no finer wingmen!" Dickie raised his glass in a toast that only Szandor answered, clinking his own nearly empty pint glass.
"So you just want to go pick up girls?" I said. "Then go, nobody's stopping you."
"Here?" said Szandor. "There are no hot girls here. Sorry, Maybell, no offense."
Maybell, the fifty year old bartender who had worked at Twin Eagles for longer than any of us had been alive, shrugged. She stood at the bar not ten feet away cleaning a glass. "None taken."
I'm not sure why I was being the downer tonight. Maybe I hadn't drank enough, or maybe I was hiding my own reluctance to go out on the prowl. Maybe it was the thing I was avoiding. I looked around the club, noting there were at least a few younger women.
"What about them?" I said.
"We were thinking of girls that we hadn't known since elementary school," said Dickie.
This was a fair point. Twin Eagles was a neighborhood bar. It wasn't a ritzy Midtown bar or a trendy Southend dive, keen on attracting new customers. It was just a neighborhood bar, focused on neighborhood regulars. We knew about half of the people in the bar by name and the other half were related to someone we knew.
"Fresh blood, Mikkel, fresh blood!" said Szandor with relish.
"So you're looking for girls who have no idea who you are," I said with a grin. "Good move. The Szandor Mystique usually drives them in the other direction."
"Ha ha," said Szandor sarcastically. "But Dickie and I were thinking... Southend!" He threw his hands up indicating sparkle or a boom.
"You want to pick up college chicks," I said.
"And college boys. Right Lem?" said Szandor, looking for support where he could find it.
A large portion of southern New Avalon had been dubbed Southend, the way Midtown contained a huge chunk of central Avalon. Southend covered the area from Avalon University south to nearly the lake. It came east as far as the border of Five Points. It was the bohemian part of our town. Artists, pretentious people, coffeehouse denizens, and musicians. Dickie actually had an apartment on the east side of Southend. But the other important and common residents of Southend were college students who lived off the Avalon U campus. And those that didn't live in Southend often came to the neighborhood's bars to drink. Lots and lots of students.
None of us went to college. But we were college aged, so those students were technically our peers, albeit more educated ones. I had even dated one particular student...
"So we're thinking we hit up a Southend bar, dressed to impress, and then we all have a great night," said Szandor. "That works for Dickie all the time."
"I live around a corner from one that is quite the place," said Dickie. "On the weekends I go in, talk about how I'm in a band, and usually take one home."
"So you're the one night stand king," I said.
"Not to be a Dick," said Dickie with a chuckle at his familiar quip, "but you are known to have quite the revolving door for girls."
"That's not really true - " I said, but Szandor cut me off.
"Gentlemen, gentlemen, let's not be divisive," he said, putting his hand on each of our shoulders to reassure us and keep us separated. His voice took on that of a drunken politician trying to cut a deal. "This is not the time for judgment or recriminations. Let us not focus on the past, lest we drown in it. Let us focus instead on a future of our own making."
"Szandor advising us about letting go of the past, now I know he's drunk," said Lem with a laugh.
Dickie and I also laughed, but Szandor shot Lem a sour look. "I'm just saying, we four kings, we four horsemen, we princes of Avalon, should go out for a night and see whom... who... whom... we can impress. I say we hit a Southend bar, free from our past, and see what happens. I already know Dickie's with me, what say you two?"
"Sure," said Lem with a shrug.
"Now?" I said.
"No, not now," said Szandor. "We are a little too... inebriated for that. I also left my fake ID at home. I gotta make sure
it's not peeling or anything." Szandor turned twenty-one in just days, but he had been drinking at Twin Eagles for a long time. When he had originally gotten the ID, he made a big deal of his ID to Maybell and Frank, the owner, but they had never believed it was accurate. They had known our Mom. But they just let him drink anyway. They figured if he drank here they could keep an eye on him. None of us had needed to show our ID in a long time. "Tomorrow! We go tomorrow!"
"We got that hunter audition tomorrow," I said. Meat was introducing us to the mysterious hunter of Jabberwock Jack.
"In the daytime," said Szandor. "That won't last all day. And nobody starts partying before like nine or ten. It's just the thing."
I conceded that it wasn't going to be a problem. My brother needed to get out more. And I was uncharacteristically being the spoilsport. I shouldn't be holding everyone back just because I was off on my game. "Okay, then it'll probably be fine. I'll go out with you guys."
"Then it's a date!" said Szandor. "Err, well, not a date, but an arrangement! And try to be excited about this! You can meet someone new! Someone to make you forget about whatshername!"
"I told you not to mention her," I said sourly.
"I didn't, I called her whatshername!" said Szandor proudly.
Our conversation was interrupted by a loud bar patron whose voice had been steadily rising as he argued and shouted.
"Speaking of Southend, it's come here," said Lem in a low voice.
Y'know, I hate to play into the stereotype of drunken frat boy, but holy shit, it was a drunken frat boy. He wore a gray Avalon U shirt, a baseball cap with Greek letters that meant nothing to me, cargo shorts, and an angry expression that reeked of "I'm better than you." That was reinforced by the fact he was basically saying that.
"I don't fucking come to this piss poor side of town to be treated like shit," he was saying to Maybell, leaning across the bar in a somewhat threatening manner. Maybell had her arms crossed and was unimpressed. "I come here for cheap drinks and not to hear some bullshit about ID or tabs. I don't want to hear your bullshit. I don't want any bullshit at all."
Jabberwock Jack Page 5
