On the night Perry died, the gang met up at Saints to drink a beer in his honor.
Brody was the last to arrive, her eyes swollen and rabbit-pink. Ordinarily she would never show her face without makeup, but grief has a way of making us forget the things that used to be important. She was still beautiful, although none of the guys would admit that they sometimes dreamed of her dark hair spread out over the pillow they slept on.
Jax had already ordered a pitcher. He poured her a glass as she pulled out a stool and flung her purse on the table.
“Has anyone talked to his dad?” she asked.
Mike lifted his head; his blue eyes were lined with red, turning his sorrow into something almost pretty. A sunset. “His dad was the one who called to tell me.”
“What happened? He just lost control of the car?” Brody asked.
She grabbed a bunch of napkins from the dispenser with intentions of wiping her nose, but began shredding them instead as Mike relayed the story. It was such a shitty, stupid way to go: a car accident on a wet road. The other driver had crossed the center line and hit Perry head-on. Brody imagined his dad thinking about all the times he’d ever yelled at Perry for spilling his milk at dinner, leaving his bike in the driveway, not cleaning his room. How he would hate himself for it now.
Donovan began to weep openly at the table, not covering his face or attempting to be quiet. Brody admired it, even though people were turning to look. It was a Thursday night and the college crowd was out in full force, throwing back two-for-one well drinks like there would be no tomorrow. She wished she was somewhere else suddenly, someplace darker.
The door banged open in a sudden gust of wind that sent the shredded napkins swirling into the air. Brody watched as they danced and tumbled like confetti before finally settling on the sticky floor. Fall had arrived and everything was dying except the winds, which hummed and buzzed through the shorn fields like something alive. Indiana took autumn very seriously.
“I think we should have a Halloween party in Perry’s honor,” Brody said suddenly. “It was his favorite holiday and it’s the least we can do.”
“We can do that,” Mike said thoughtfully. “I don’t know how much we’ll feel like celebrating though.”
“It’s not about us,” said Brody, raising her voice to be heard over the rowdy patrons. “It’s for Perry. We all have to wear costumes, though. Remember how it used to piss him off when people came to a Halloween party without dressing up?”
“He liked being someone else for a night,” Donovan said, swiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. “He told me once. He was bullied a lot when he was little, but on Halloween he could hide behind a mask and no one would mess with him.”
“Get your own drink, asshole,” said a guy at the bar. His voice was overloud in the way anyone’s is after three or four beers.
“I didn’t touch your beer, Todd,” his companion said gruffly.
“Jeez, tensions are high tonight,” Mike said. Brody looked around and realized he was right; it wasn’t even a game night, but all over the bar people were raising their voices or looking around with sour expressions on their faces. Her nerves could feel it; they were twanging like guitar strings beneath her skin. She picked at the flesh around her thumbnails, an old habit from childhood that made her feel like she was eight years old and awaiting punishment for some infraction.
“Remember when those two bros started throwing hands during March Madness?” Donovan asked. “Perry got right in between them even though they were both a head taller than he was. The bartender gave him a free pitcher that night.”
“He hated that shit,” Mike said. “His brothers were always fighting. It used to drive him nuts.”
The jukebox started up, blaring an old Beastie Boys number from back in the day. Jax shook his head.
“Christ. This was his favorite song.”
“Maybe we should go someplace else,” Mike said. “Everything here just reminds me of him.”
“I thought that was the point,” Brody said, twirling her beer glass around in the condensation on the table. “To remember him.”
“It hurts, goddammit!” Mike cried. “I’m already tired of thinking about how scared he must have been, how he’s going to look in the casket and what his mom is feeling. It’s only been two hours since he died and I’m sick of grieving. How the hell am I supposed to have a Halloween party in Perry’s honor?”
Jax put a gentle hand on Mike’s back. “Hey, man. We all feel it differently.”
They sat silently for a long beat, until a crash sounded from the kitchen. Plates and glasses shattered to the floor, presumably from a tired waitress with an aching back; the cacophony sent shoulders hunched up to ears across the room. Brody felt like her skin was crawling. She had been on passing terms with anxiety for a while, but this was the worst of it. She could almost feel an invisible piano hanging over her head, waiting to fall.
“Come on, let’s go,” she said, grabbing her purse.
The guys followed her out into the wind. They walked to their cars beneath a harvest moon as Perry watched from the stained-glass window, still holding the tray he had pulled out of the waitress’s hands. Shreds of napkin fluttered around his feet as the door whooshed closed; a hush fell over the bar as the song came to an end, almost as though they were waiting for Perry to say something.
“None of it,” he whispered. “Nothing worked.”
Two women sitting near him shivered as a cold finger swept up their spines, then resumed their conversation.
—
Amanda Crum is a writer and artist whose work has appeared in publications such as Barren Magazine and Eastern Iowa Review and in several anthologies, including Beyond The Hill and Two Eyes Open. She is the author of two novels, The Fireman’s Daughter and Ghosts Of The Imperial. Her first chapbook of horror-inspired poetry, The Madness In Our Marrow, was shortlisted for a Bram Stoker Award nomination in 2015; her story “A Shimmer In The Parlor” was a finalist for the J.F. Powers Prize in Short Fiction in 2019. She currently lives in Kentucky with her husband and two children.
Atmospheric and well-written. Love the ending.