Post by Seth Dillinger on Aug 30, 2018 0:06:54 GMT -5
The mud pulls at Seth's shoes, violently jerking them off of his feet, like some sort of natural vacuum. Seth pushed through the thickets, leading his boyfriend Dennis on some incredulous journey through an abandoned marshland. He held a cooler in one hand, and a flashlight in the other. Crickets chirp and frogs call out in the blinding darkness.
"Almost there."
He trods through, finally coming to a clearing. A small moat-like river creeps around the bend, separating the ground on which they stand from a smaller island-like landform in the center. Old beer cans and trash are litter strewn about, along with othis aborted things. Seth Dillinger sighs and takes a long, sentimental glance around the area.
"Things just aren't what they used to be."
Dennis eyes Seth out of the corner of his eye, a bit confused and even moreso, frightened.
"So... why'd you bring me out here?"
Seth lets a proud smile grow across his face as he takes Dennis by the hand and pulls him towards the water.
"Come on. I'll show you. You wore old pants and shoes like I said, right?"
He motions down towards his ragged jeans and dirty old boots and nods. The sawgrass and cattails blow gently in the wind, the ground oozing a miasma of rotted roots from dead trees and fetid earth. The two of them wade into the thigh-deep water, unsure of what hydra or monsters are lurking nearby in the murky water. Dennis’s teeth dig into his bottom lip; a nervous reflex. Seth Dillinger simply trudges ahead, bright-eyed and enthusiastic. He pushes an old tire out of the way as it floats by, watching the rubber wheel sail on down the river. Memories surged through his synapses, and old friends were suddenly right next to him, laughing and telling dirty jokes and ranking the girls in their middle school between one and ten.
“Ewww! Something just swam past my leg, I can feel it!"
Dennis suddenly sprints forward like an Olympic runner, darting out of the water and up onto safe ground on the island. The river's bottom trips him up with broken bottles and old bits of rock. Seth smiles warmly and follows a few moments later, setting down his red and white mini-cooler and laughing wildly as he collapses onto his back on the slick embankment. Dennis is left bewildered.
"So... can you tell me where we are now?”
Seth puts his hands behind his head and gazes up at the stars.
"Dennis... welcome to The Island."
"...what, is this a bad Lost rip-off? Living out some fantasy, Seth? Do I have to call you Sawyer and you call me 'Freckles' or something.”
Seth shoots upright, laughing at Dennis's joke. Dennis isn't as amused.
"Nah, of course not. This Island has no mystical powers or pockets of antimatter or anything like that. It's just a simple piece of land in the middle of a swamp. It's the place where I went from being a boy to being a man... had my first taste of alcohol here... my first taste of a girl's lips... my first cigarette…”
Dennis raises and eyebrow.
“…a girl’s lips?”
Seth chuckles.
“Like… had to find out for myself, right?”
Seth trails off, comprehending the culmination of his actions. He finally stands from the slick embankment, stumbling and cutting his hand on a rusted can. He curses out loud, sticking his dirty and bloodied hand to his mouth and licking at the wound. Dennis took a step forward towards the embankment to check on him, but he waved his off.
"I'm fine... just a little cut."
Seth digs his toes into the wet earth and pushes up, finally making it up the hill. They take a few steps forward and Seth once again stops, finally on flat ground. Dennis rests his lanky forearm on Seth's shoulder as they stood atop the hummock on blood red clay and looked back across the country they had just crossed.
"Well, we made it.”
"I almost didn't think we'd make it. At least not completely intact."
"Heh. Me neither. I can't believe it's mostly still here."
Seth walked inland, the palm of his hand still at his lips and the cooler dangling in his left hand. Dennis stoops and picks up the abandoned flashlight, flicking it on and scanning the immediate area. Seth sets the red and white cooler down at the base of an old oak and sets about gathering driftwood and tinder that littered the Island. Dennis finds a nearby boulder and plants himself on it, becoming a stationary part of the island.
"So this is your little childhood island, huh?"
"Not just an island, Dennis. This was our sanctuary."
Now, from the high point on the island, its full glory came into view. The "inner sanctum" where they sat was lined by rows of pine trees a few feet below. Once past the three line, nothing but stumps and dead oaks or bits of trash remained. Probably from when the country club kids would party there. The kids were around even back in Seth's days, but they had been run off after the heron stopped nesting there. Once the wild parties stopped, the heron came back. Back in the day, it had been their island - Seth and his best friend Matt. It was there the day Matt's grandmother died of pancreatic cancer, and it was there the day Seth’s grandfather's weak heart quit. Seth remembered meeting Matt there as even younger kids when his dog, Sam, was hit by a train. And the Island was there for Seth the day Matt died.
If only all places could be like it, and not otherwise.
Seth returned a few moments later, carrying an armful of firewood and plopping them down on the ground, setting to work on starting a campfire. Dennis wore a long sweatshirt, barely covering his boyshorts and engulfing his arms. He moseyed over to the red and white cooler, pulling back the top and grabbing a Yuengling.
“You want one?”
Seth glanced back and nodded as Dennis handed him a beer. He slipped his finger under the tab and cracked it open, feeling the freshness slide bitterly down his throat. Setting the cold one down, he turned back to fervently work on the fire.
"So you just wanted to show me this place?”
"Yeah. I mean, when Christians are having trouble, they go to church. Muslims have mosques. Me? I just come here... and I chill. I sit. And I think. And I wanted you to experience it with me.”
Dennis couldn't say anything. He just grinned.
"This has always been my sanctuary. There's many things that happened here you don't know about. Like, Matt, my best friend. You don't know why his death hit me so hard. You don't know about my grandfather... or Matt's grandmother... or any of that. The things that really hit me hard and shaped me into the person I am. All that AWF stuff is just extraneous. This... this is where Seth Dillinger was truly birthed."
And so Dennis sat, to hear a tale of a torn man.
Matt walked pigeontoed, his clubfeet turned inward. He wore New Balance shoes because they were the only brand wide enough to fit his disfigured feet. When he walked barefoot the scars from his reconstructive surgery glistened white against his otherwise tan skin. A pair of ubiquitous Lee Pipes and a ratty Olympics teeshirt completed his summer uniform. He lifted some rock in search of worms or slugs pushing the mat of blonde hair off his sweaty forehead.
"I can’t believe your grandpa just up and died like that," Matt said.
"Seems to be the way things go," I said.
"Sky was red the morning he died you know. Think that meant something?"
"Everything means something I guess."
Matt took Steve, his newly acquired pet turtle, out of the cooler and set him atop a rock. The last bits of sunlight fought through the clouds and the turtle moved to a spot where its rays managed to find ground. It watched as we built our fire pit. Matt took the tinder and built a base of dead twigs and innards of cattails. He took a larger piece of driftwood, leaned it against a tree and jumped on the middle, snapping it clean in two.
This time yesterday we were standing in the balcony of East Belmont Baptist Church. My grey suit too short in the sleeves and his pants too long. I wore my sunglasses so nobody would see me cry. Matt rocked back and forth on his heels with his hands in his pocket as he gritted his teeth. The air conditioning broken, the air stagnant and hot. The tiny church filled to burst as some kid from our chorus class played “Desperado” on acoustic guitar, painting a heroic image of my dead grandfather.
"That was only the second dead body I had ever seen," Matt said as he dumped an armload of wood at my feet.
"Me too. Your grandma was my first."
Matt took the flint and stone from his pocket and knelt importune near the dead wood, head bent in some sort of prayer as he struck the stone and sent orange sparks whirling.
"You cry at the funeral yesterday?" Matt asked.
"Not really. I loved him, but we weren't close," I lied as I opened the cooler and took a warm cola. I cracked it open, there was a pop and then brown fizz tickled my nose as I drank.
"I can’t believe that had him all laid out like that, open casket and all."
"I know."
Matt sat on the ground and leaned against a heap of cinder and old wood. He took his Swiss Army knife and whittled a stick. Steve had disappeared at some point and left Matt and me alone.
I walked out through the trees to the earthen jetty, gangly arms hanging awkward at my side, legs too long for my body. The water lapped melodically at my feet. Across the way a new neighborhood was being developed. There were already three houses built. One of them, supposed to belong to Reggie White, had one side all glass. I thought to tell Matt that Larry shouldn’t throw stones but didn’t feel much like joking. Matt came out of the wood and stood with me, that stick he’d been whittling now a spear. He held it above his head and stretched his stubby arms behind his back then stepped into the water.
"I’m going to catch a fish," he said.
"If you catch a fish with that stick I’ll give you a million dollars."
"Shit, you watch me."
He stood in that water and stabbed at fish and frogs for near half an hour. Didn’t catch a thing. After a while he tossed the spear to lie with the other rubble resting at river’s bottom.
"Fuck it," he said.
It was dusk as we headed inland, ready to sleep on the island that night. Matt rolled out sleepingbags as I drove two stakes into the hard ground. I took an old army blanket and jabbed the stakes through it. The rest I stretched out and pulled taunt, leaving rocks at the corners to complete our lean-to. Matt built up the fire again. He took the s’mores material from the cooler and we set out to make a few.
"You going golfing with me and Castle tomorrow?" Matt asked.
"Hadn’t much thought about it."
"We’re going. You should come."
"I suppose."
"It’ll be good for you," he said.
We ate our s’mores in silence, sitting on some rotted log as molten marshmallow and melted chocolate dripped down our hands and onto our arms. After s’mores we left the fire and started into the darkness. The sound of the river falling on the banks our only guide, Matt said he could tell the way by looking at the stars but he was full of it. Going back to camp we focused on the fire. The lone light in all that darkness.
"You bring those hotdogs?"
"I thought you were bringing them."
"I told you to bring them at the funeral yesterday."
Matt tossed a rock into the fire.
"So all we have for dinner is soda and s’mores?" I asked.
"Seems that way."
"Great, real great."
"Hell, at least we won’t go hungry."
I shook my head and walked away from the campsite.
"Where you heading?"
"To get more firewood."
I stumbled through the darkness, arms outstretched, feeling for trees and spider webs. I snapped sticks from dead trees still standing. The island was silent. In the morning there would be boats and jetskis and wakeboarder, there would be drunks on pontoons and the kids from the point on sunfish or lasers. But for now, this was my sanctuary. It was the place where I learned what life was about... and where I learned how to cope with death. I emerged on a flat beach-like area, the water completely serene. I stooped to pick up more firewood and there, right in front of me in the marsh, was the elusive blue heron, ankle deep and eyes cast down at the water, waiting.