Here, In This Place: An Origin Tale

WHAT HAPPENED THAT DAY

CONCLUSION

That night was the first one David spent had spent sleeping in a bed for some time, his long body curled around Claire’s, slumber finally coming to him while his arms were about her. In the darkness they moved closer together, both glad to be rid of an old loneliness, and in the night they woke to continue what they’d began, moving into the different poses and positions of affection, and sex, orgasm releasing sleep in David again as he passed out, leg draped over Claire, face in her shoulder.

But perfect sleep did not come, for now came a strange dream of a young man being chased through streets in the middle of the night, and he shouted for help but no one came, and in the end, he was lifted off his feet by one of his pursuers who pushed him against a wall and began to… this was the strangest—maul his throat like a dog, or like some monster.

David shot up from bed almost shouting, and in the dark he was glad he hadn’t disturbed Claire. Despite the picture before his eyes of some poor blond boy with his throat bitten out, knowing that in the real world Claire slept in his bed calmed him, and he sank back into the covers with her.

At the Grey Note, Dan Rawlinson was oppressing his guitar as well as the ears of the manager, one Burt Alexander, a mild mannered, bespectacled Black man in his thirties, who was more into the laptop where he was typing lyrics than the twelve year old beside Dan who was beating on a set of drums.

When Myron Keller walked into the club which would not open for several hours, he shouted, “How can you take it?”

“Everyone’s feeling feelings today,” Nehru, who did not seem to be feeling feelings, but seemed to be quite prosaic, said.

Dan stopped playing, which signaled to the light skinned curly haired boy to stop beating the drums.

“All of that anger,” Burt directed, “Put it into your music.”

“I’m not a writer like you,” Dan wiped the back of his hand across his face.

“Well, you’re not an anything like me,” Burt said. “But you can do wonders with that guitar.”

“Tell you what,” Dan crossed the room. He was in need of a hair cut, and his white tee shirt was plastered to him with sweat, “if you give me lyrics, I’ll do something with them.”

Burt pushed the lap top toward him.

“See if you can work with these.”

Burt Alexander and his partner had run the Grey Note for the past five years. They’d come down from Michigan and been in a fairly successful band. The Grey Note was for them to serve food and drink and play their own music, but Burt and his partner KJ had begun looking for other, younger musicians, and so Dan and his band had come along. It was just what Dan had wanted, a collective, a musical family, and just what Burt said he had wanted too.

“You’re a genius,” Dan said.

“You would not be the first to notice.”

“This is the first time I’ve felt good all day,” Dan began strumming his guitar.

“This may require acoustic,” he said, as even his gentle notes sounded a little angry.

“So, is Bill still going to be your drummer?” Burt asked.

“He’s good at it. I mean, he’s the greatest.”

“Can you keep it strictly business?”

“We’ll see.”

There was a sudden cacophony of drums and the boy said, “Dad! If that chump doesn’t want to be the drummer, I will.”

Burt only raised an eyebrow, but Dan said, “We may take you up on that.”

“Yes,” Burt added, “and in the meanwhile, go easy on those very expensive drums.”

“What brings you here?” Dan said to Myron.

“I’m on my way to the funeral.”

“Funeral?” Burt said.

“Cody Beeker. The officer who killed himself. He was part of our neighborhood. You’d said something about coming.”

“I did, didn’t I?” Dan said in the voice of someone who had once thought of doing a thing he now had zero taste for.

“Go ahead,” Burt said. “Do it.”

“Yeah,” Dan said. “Do we have a minute so I can clean up and put on a decent outfit?”

“We have several minutes,” Myron said as Dan was gathering his things.

“Who knows?” Burt said. “A funeral might cheer you up.”

 

Longing for light,

we wait in darkness.
Longing for truth, we turn to you.
Make us your own, your holy people,
Light for the world to see.

Christ, be our light!

Shine in our hearts.
Shine through the darkness.
Christ, be our light!
Shine in your Church
Gathered today.

 

Cody’s family had thought that this joyful boncing song was appropriate to bring his body into Saint Ursula’s. David disagreed, but of course said nothing. Funerals were sad occasions. He was expert in them. He was one of six pall bearers in their dress blues who brought the heavy casket up the steps of the cathedral and into the large church. He’d only been inside Ursula’s once, and had been overwhelmed by its size. It had not always been the cathedral. The old one, Saint Patrick’s, had burned down and never been rebuilt, but Saint Ursula had apparently always been a grand church, and when the diocese had made it the cathedral, they had invested in making it grander still. Everywhere were mourning people and marble, woeful and troubled saints filling stain glass windows, and behind the pall bearers, came altar boys cloaked in the white incense they swung, and after them, the priestsm their white robes, lined in black.

Longing for peace,
our world is troubled.
Longing for hope, many despair.
Your word alone has power to save us
Make us your living voice.

Christ, be our light…!

 

It was as they settled the body of the boy onto the catafalque, David realized this song was, in fact, just the right song. Cody had lost his peace in the end, and David was on the verge of losing his own.

On the oher side of him, father of two, dutiful looking, only a little more pudgy than he had once been and still looking like he had as a soccer player, was Domenico Ciamente. They saluted Cody and then genuflected. There was a great stone or marble, crucifix over the white stone or marble or who knew altar, over the brass tabernacle. David had not prayed in a long time. He felt either superstitious or hypocritical crossing himself. He didn’t dare to ask for any peace. He hadn’t talked to God in years.

“Not really ever,” David corrected himself.

 

“Brothers and sisters:
Hope does not disappoint,
because the love of God has been poured

 out into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
For Christ, while we were still helpless,
died at the appointed time for the ungodly…”

David had once stumbled into an argument between a believer and an atheist, and the atheist had talked about what a comfort religion was, and that’s why people sought it out. David, despite not being much into religion, has been feeling rather on religion’s  side that day and been resentful, but now he felt that it was a comfort, felt himself lulled and upheld by these words he barely understood from a book he hadn’t really ever troubled to open.

 

Indeed, if, while we were enemies,
we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son,
how much more, once reconciled,
will we be saved by his life.
Not only that,
but we also boast of God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we have now received reconciliation…

 

All the pallbearers were sitting together, and Dom, with his black wings of shiny Sicilian hair, was looking tired and sad, the tip of his long nose bending toward his lips, almost. When he hadn’t known where else to go or what else to do, it had been Dom who had told him to go into the police.

“You’ve been to college and everything. You’ll do great.”

David did not dare look to his right. To his right was, after Jimmy Halowinksi and Chuck Darrell, Codys casket, and then, on the other side, his family.

A woman came up to the pulpit and the organ music filled the great space of the church while she sang:

“The Cup of Salvation, I will raise! I will call on the Lord’s name…”

 

He had spotted Dan Rawlinson and Myron Keller. Dan had always been a good looking guy and Myre could clean up well. How strange to see them, how strange to see Dan twice in the last week after not having seen him in years. He grabbed his shoulder during communion. They’d catch up in the cemetery. It felt better to know they were all together, and people like that were in the world.

David had not expected that the funeral would last so long, but he did not mind it. David Lawry needed something to do with his mind, and with his time. He might go to Dom’s for dinner tomorrow night, and be caught up in the loudness and shrillness of a proper Italian family. After the season of death, David was used to arriving, sitting through a mass. He was used to the second march to the hearse and the last one, riding the city streets to the cemetery, marching to the grave.