Travis’s father sat ashen-faced and stoic at the front of the room. He looked behind him, saw Lydia and Dill, and turned immediately back forward. He knows we know.
Travis’s mother came up to Lydia, Dill, and Amelia. Lydia didn’t think it was possible for anyone to look more ravaged over Travis’s death than her and Dill, but Travis’s mom did.
“Thank y’all so much for coming.” Her voice cracked. “You were good friends to my Travis and he’d have wanted you here.”
“We loved him,” Dill said, tearful.
“Yes, we did,” Lydia said.
“My mom sends her apologies that she couldn’t come. She couldn’t get off work,” Dill said.
At the front of the room sat a plain pine casket. Inside lay what appeared to be a wax sculpture of Travis in a cheap blue suit—plastic and unreal somehow. They approached with trepidation.
“I love you, Travis,” Dill whispered, tears pattering on Travis’s lapel.
“Dill,” Lydia said, tears streaming down her face. “Cover me. Hug me.”
As Dill embraced her, Lydia pretended she was holding onto the casket for support. Then she reached in and tucked a tiny package into Travis’s suit jacket, where it made a slight bulge.
Amelia followed behind them, weeping. She spent a long time looking at Travis’s face.
Before taking their seats, a particularly elaborate and beautiful flower arrangement caught Lydia’s eye. She read the card, which was from Gary M. Kozlowski:
Rest, O Knight, proud in victory, proud in death. Let your name evermore be a light to those who loved you. Let white flowers grow upon this place that you rest. Yours was a life well lived, and now you dine in the halls of the Elders at their eternal feast.
Dill and Lydia stood at Travis’s grave gazing at the fresh brown dirt covering it, long after everyone else had gone home. The sky was incongruously, callously blue.
“He’s got his signed page from G. M. Pennington and dragon necklace,” Lydia said, not looking up.
“That’s what you put in there with him? How did you get them?”
“I went to his mom. They released his personal stuff to her, and his signed copy of Bloodfall was with it. I cut the signed page out of the book and got his dragon necklace. The staff wouldn’t have fit, or I would have put that in there too. But I’ve got it. I’m going to give it to you later to hold on to. I don’t deserve to keep it because I gave him so much grief about it.”
“We’ll figure out the right thing to do with it. I wonder how Gary knew to send that card and flowers.”
“I called his agent. I told her what happened and I told her to convey to Mr. Kozlowski how much what he did meant to Travis. That it was probably the best thing that ever happened in his life before he died.”
“I wonder if that would have been Travis someday. A rich and famous writer, taking the time to meet with kids who were like him.”
“If Trav ever became rich and famous, there’s no question he would have. He gave me one of his stories to read on the day he died.”
“Did you read it?”
“Yes.”
“Was it—”
She laugh-cried. “It sucked.”
Dill laugh-cried with her. “But he’d have gotten better, right? He planned to take writing classes.”
“Of course he’d have gotten better. It was his first try. If he’d had forty more years, like Gary, he’d have been great.”
They let themselves cry for a few minutes.
Lydia sighed and wiped her eyes. “He was brave.”
“One of the bravest people I ever knew.”
They stood there a moment or two longer. “Let’s go somewhere,” Lydia said. “Someplace that feels like being alive and together and happy.”
The Column soaked up the warmth of the afternoon sun. Dill ran his fingers over what Travis had written—it seemed like years ago. We leave so little behind. They sat with their backs against it. Dill loosened his tie.
“You’d have learned more about Jesus than about Travis in that eulogy,” Lydia said.
Travis and Dill’s preacher had given the eulogy, and it was long on the light and the life and the resurrection and short on actual details about Travis’s life.
“I guess to be fair, though, he didn’t know Travis very well. And what do you say about someone who’s only lived seventeen years?” Dill said.
“You can’t really talk about all his grandkids, huh,” Lydia said.
“Travis loved Bloodfall, Krystal burgers, and his staff, but he’d never kissed a girl.”
“Travis never kissed a girl?”
“Did you ever hear him mention it? Who would he have kissed?”
“Yeah, good point. He was headed that way, though, it looked like.”
“Not that you’d be able to say that much about me at my funeral,” Dill said. Hadn’t kissed a girl either. Never worked up the courage to tell the girl he wanted to kiss how he felt about her. Didn’t even like Krystal. Won a school talent competition. Recorded a few videos of his songs that were generally well received by the people who saw them online. Did laudable work at Floyd’s Foods; rarely missed spots while mopping; was up for night manager. Had a couple of close friends. Maybe put his dad in prison, or at least his mom thought so. Did just so-so on the whole faith thing. The end.
“I think lives are more than the sum of their parts,” Lydia said. “I don’t think it’s fair to measure them in accomplishments. Especially not with Trav.”
They listened to the river. Dill wondered if it existed before any humans had lived and died at its banks. He wondered if it sounded the same then. He wondered what it would sound like when the last human died. Rivers have no memory; neither does the soil, or the air.
“Where do you think he is?” Lydia asked quietly.
Dill pondered. “I want to say heaven. Truth is I’m not sure. I hope someplace better than this.”
“When I think about it, sometimes I drive myself into a complete panic. Wondering if he’s falling through space right now. Falling and falling and falling and it never ends. This empty black void, but he’s aware. Of it. Of himself. He still has all of his memories.”
“As long as he has his imagination.”
“Yeah. I also wonder if heaven is maybe whatever you most wanted it to be. Maybe Muslims get up there and Allah’s waiting for them. And they’re like ‘See? Right all along.’ Or Travis gets up there and he gets to drink mead out of a horn or something.”
“I hope that’s true,” Dill said. “I have a hard time believing that all of Travis’s memories—everything he loved, all that he was—don’t exist anymore somewhere. Why would God make such a universe in someone and then destroy it?”
“Do you still believe in God?”
He fiddled with his shirt cuff before answering. “Yeah. But I think maybe he made all this and got in over his head a little. Like he can’t keep track of all the bad stuff that happens or stop it.” He reflected for a moment on what he’d said. “How about you?”
“I don’t know. I want to. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don’t.”
A humid gust of wind mussed their hair. “Do you ever wonder how many springtimes you have left?” Dill asked, brushing hair from his eyes. “We’re seventeen now, so we get sixty-three more springtimes if we’re lucky. Like that?”
“I hadn’t. But I will now.”
“I guess the answer is always one more, until it’s zero more. And you never know when the answer will be zero more.”
They watched a vulture turn lazy circles in the distance, floating on updrafts, gliding. “Nothing stops when we’re gone,” Lydia said. “The seasons don’t stop. This river doesn’t stop. Vultures will keep flying in circles. The lives of the people we love won’t stop. Time keeps unspooling. Stories keep getting written.”
“Lydia?”
She turned, tilting her head, seeking Dill’s face. “Are you okay?”
He studied his feet. “I’m not sure. I’m numb right now. But I can feel the darkness coming. The way you can see a storm coming. I can hear voices in the darkness.” He paused, gathering his strength. “I need to tell you something about myself.”