The Funeral, Part One... (draft)
10/12/07 17:46
Only my
grandfather arrived to greet me at the Newark/Liberty
International Airport upon my return from Europe,
where I'd been to Poland on a Fulbright scholarship
and then to France on an artistic fellowship. My
grandmother was entertaining an old friend that way.
The rest of my immediate family, though I love them,
have always been too consumed by their own personal
dramas to care about when I entered, or exited the
country. Generally, the response when I call them
from over a static-filled and submerged sounding
trans-Atlanic connection is: "Where are you, now? I
didn't know you'd left."
Once we had crossed the parking lot and stowed by bags in his car, my grandfather turned the key and while pulling out of airport parking: "Did they tell you about, AB?" From my grandfather's tone of voice, I knew that my friend AB was dead and that he knew also that no one had told me.
"We didn't want to tell you about it, because we know how you worry. And we knew that you would be home soon."
I had been traveling for the better part of two days. I was tired. My eyes began to swell. And I became briefly petulant in my exhaustion. While I don't remember exactly what I said before collecting myself, but I believe that it sounded something like: "Why I am I the only one left free?"
"Well, when is the funeral?"
"Tomorrow morning."
"Well, it's a good thing I got my dark suit," I said in an attempt to add some levity. In a family as large as ours, we often joked that it paid to travel with a dark suit. Someone was bound to die. And, then again and again. My family is old Southern, they believe that death comes in threes.
The truth is that I wasn't the only left free. Out of the five of us who ran together as boys, Hammy, Quany, Joey, AB - my nickname remains known only to family and intimates - the boy we called "Joey the Thief" was also free. The last I'd heard, he was married at 18, or 19 to a woman at least a dozen years his senior and a had had few children, before she met him and that they had added some of their own to that number. "Mr." Hammy, my best friend growing up and the boy we'd all have followed anywhere and who looked to me always for advice and counsel during our juvenile adventures and mischief, had made page 3 of the local tabloid newspaper for his crime "sprees" - and he actually was an impressive criminal, if you can understand that - was in prison. The same went for Quany, whom I loved as a brother because of how close our mothers had been and how closely together we were born - we shared our chicken pox - was imprisoned too, for a murder that happened during the course of a staged robbery.
AB - Arnold Poole, was one of my oldest friends, though we hadn't run together for years. Our families crossed in so many ways, that it would be difficult to explain here. Younger and smaller than all of us, he was also perhaps the most tenacious. We'd bonded almost immediately after an accident that the other three of us had caused when he was only 3, or 4. We expected to be punished, but AB was not a snitch. After that, where we went, he went also. Our lives had taken different paths over a decade ago, but we had still be children together. No matter where I've been, I've never been able to replace that feeling of those nights on the stoop under the street lights, all of us waiting to be older. We went back to the time when my tongue pronounced its vowels differently and only one way.
I'd known about his gang involvement, but I hadn't known how high and how quickly he'd risen through the ranks of the East Trenton Bloods gang. AB required his own body guards; the small boy had grown into a small man - but a man who commanded the blind respect of the larger and less brave. While his family mourned him, I wondered if I was the only one who thought about what he had to do to gain that respect.
The bodyguards, though, aren't always around. One day, while out one night to run an errand, AB was shot dead by a man with whom he and his crew had gotten into a brawl with earlier. At a week shy of 25, AB was dead.
The morning that AB was to be buried, I had my first fist fight with my 19 year-old brother. There's still a scar on my chest, between the opening of my collar that I hope will fade with time, but is visible. Gregory, my brother, said that he couldn't bear to go. He'd just seen AB alive and couldn't confront the idea of his own mortality, when he was neither as cunning or as charismatic as the dead young man.
Once we had crossed the parking lot and stowed by bags in his car, my grandfather turned the key and while pulling out of airport parking: "Did they tell you about, AB?" From my grandfather's tone of voice, I knew that my friend AB was dead and that he knew also that no one had told me.
"We didn't want to tell you about it, because we know how you worry. And we knew that you would be home soon."
I had been traveling for the better part of two days. I was tired. My eyes began to swell. And I became briefly petulant in my exhaustion. While I don't remember exactly what I said before collecting myself, but I believe that it sounded something like: "Why I am I the only one left free?"
"Well, when is the funeral?"
"Tomorrow morning."
"Well, it's a good thing I got my dark suit," I said in an attempt to add some levity. In a family as large as ours, we often joked that it paid to travel with a dark suit. Someone was bound to die. And, then again and again. My family is old Southern, they believe that death comes in threes.
The truth is that I wasn't the only left free. Out of the five of us who ran together as boys, Hammy, Quany, Joey, AB - my nickname remains known only to family and intimates - the boy we called "Joey the Thief" was also free. The last I'd heard, he was married at 18, or 19 to a woman at least a dozen years his senior and a had had few children, before she met him and that they had added some of their own to that number. "Mr." Hammy, my best friend growing up and the boy we'd all have followed anywhere and who looked to me always for advice and counsel during our juvenile adventures and mischief, had made page 3 of the local tabloid newspaper for his crime "sprees" - and he actually was an impressive criminal, if you can understand that - was in prison. The same went for Quany, whom I loved as a brother because of how close our mothers had been and how closely together we were born - we shared our chicken pox - was imprisoned too, for a murder that happened during the course of a staged robbery.
AB - Arnold Poole, was one of my oldest friends, though we hadn't run together for years. Our families crossed in so many ways, that it would be difficult to explain here. Younger and smaller than all of us, he was also perhaps the most tenacious. We'd bonded almost immediately after an accident that the other three of us had caused when he was only 3, or 4. We expected to be punished, but AB was not a snitch. After that, where we went, he went also. Our lives had taken different paths over a decade ago, but we had still be children together. No matter where I've been, I've never been able to replace that feeling of those nights on the stoop under the street lights, all of us waiting to be older. We went back to the time when my tongue pronounced its vowels differently and only one way.
I'd known about his gang involvement, but I hadn't known how high and how quickly he'd risen through the ranks of the East Trenton Bloods gang. AB required his own body guards; the small boy had grown into a small man - but a man who commanded the blind respect of the larger and less brave. While his family mourned him, I wondered if I was the only one who thought about what he had to do to gain that respect.
The bodyguards, though, aren't always around. One day, while out one night to run an errand, AB was shot dead by a man with whom he and his crew had gotten into a brawl with earlier. At a week shy of 25, AB was dead.
The morning that AB was to be buried, I had my first fist fight with my 19 year-old brother. There's still a scar on my chest, between the opening of my collar that I hope will fade with time, but is visible. Gregory, my brother, said that he couldn't bear to go. He'd just seen AB alive and couldn't confront the idea of his own mortality, when he was neither as cunning or as charismatic as the dead young man.
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