I didn’t want to tell him I was digging graves. Raised to respect any kind of honest work, it was not because I thought it was beneath me. No, I was afraid he might ask how I found the job and I didn’t want to tell him. I’d found it hard to talk about Zoni or my parents, so I never told him about how I buried them in the backyard.
Getting them dug up and moved was how I got the job. The Monday after he and Tremaine left, I kept my appointment with the funeral home, and even though there wouldn’t be a funeral, they took care of all the paperwork for me, and got the cemetery space.
One of the guys with the grave digging company the cemetery used, told me they didn’t have enough people to operate all their backhoes and I’d have to wait, but if I thought I could handle it, I could dig the new graves myself and save. They would dig them up and someone from the funeral home would deposit them in their coffins and transport them to the cemetery. All I’d have to pay for would be that and the grave liner. I agreed to do it.
I’d been prepared to use a shovel but was relieved when I learned I wouldn’t have to. They gave me a two-day crash course in the use of a backhoe and the day before, I’d gotten the job done and laid my folks and Zoni into their final resting places. I didn’t have enough for headstones but I planned on getting them as soon as I could.
The head of the grave digging company heard how well I handled the backhoe and how precisely I dug the graves, and asked to meet me. He said there was a huge demand for gravediggers and offered me a job. Having gotten no other offers, I took it. It would pay the rent, and for things like power and food, which were quickly getting damned expensive.
I lied to Will. “I’m doing deliveries. Pay is okay.” I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. When he got back would be soon enough for him to know.
“Great! Okay, I’ll call you when we get to Miami. Man! I sure wish I had your knack for getting people to like you right off. Heh, I know that’s how you got the job. Finding somebody who’ll let you use their phone is the pits! What we need now is all those phone booths the old folk say used to be everywhere.”
He had a point. Maybe the phone companies would eventually install some phone booths now that cellphone service was extinct though I doubted it. And he was right about folk tending to take a liking to me. The funeral home director had, and so did the man at the grave digging company who offered me the job. It was a family joke that I would never go hungry because somebody would always want to feed me.
He hung up and it was a week before I heard from him again. He probably didn’t call any sooner because he was afraid I’d nag him again to come home. Admittedly, my unease about him leaving had grown but I knew he wasn’t going to listen, so I didn’t waste my breath.
“We’re in Miami and we’re booked on a ship to Jamaica. It was hard getting tickets but we finally scored. We’ll be in Jamaica in a week. Boy, things are kinda messed up here. The National Guard is all over the place looking for a gang or something. We’re on our way to get something to eat. I’ll try to call you back before we sail but don’t get upset if you don’t hear from me. Finding a phone to use here is worse than it was in Georgia. If there’s no way to reach you from the ship, I’ll call you when we get to Jamaica.”
He didn’t call back. I could only hope he’d gotten aboard the ship and there was no way to make a call from there. But two weeks later when there still was no word from him, my boss allowed me to take a leave from digging graves, and I went looking for him.
He never made it to Jamaica.
I found him in a morgue in Miami. I looked down at my young cousin lying on that slab and I would’ve cried but I had no tears. He turned eighteen in April and had just graduated from high school. He was to have begun his college freshman year in the fall.
That crazed rage that hit me on the first day of the Event, rose in my chest again. If it hadn’t been for that… thing… he’d still be alive. I found that I was angry with him for leaving, but, most of all, I was angry with myself for not trying harder to get him to stay, or to have at least gone with him.
I trembled as I fought to control my fury. It would only serve to get me into trouble if I didn’t and I needed to know what happened to him. I also needed to find Tremaine.
The morgue gave me Will’s belongings, which included his identification, his car keys, and the money belt he’d been wearing which, surprisingly, still contained cash: five thousand dollars. I was astonished at the amount as I hadn’t known he had that much.
I got the story from the police. He was waiting to board the ship when one of those gangs for which the Guard was searching managed to slip past them. These were people that fell over the edge and stayed there and they used violence as a means of expression. They didn’t simply beat folk, either. They graduated from clubs and bats to assault rifles.
Will and Tremaine weren’t the only casualties from that day. The morgue was full of victims of that bunch. They mowed down a whole line of people waiting to board the ship. The Guard made sure that particular group wouldn’t be killing anybody else but it wouldn’t help my cousin.
Tremaine wasn’t in that morgue so I checked the others and his name wasn’t coming up anywhere. No one had a record of him but I kept looking. I checked every John Doe I could find at the morgues and when that didn’t pan out, I checked the hospitals.
It took two weeks but I found him in a hospital in West Miami. The reason it took so long to find him was that his passport was missing – the police said probably stolen – and he had no driver’s license so he didn’t have any identification on him and was in a coma when brought in. He came out of it after a week but was unable to remember his name or much of anything else.
The hospital authorities would only let me view him through the glass at first, but allowed me to go in after I lied and said he was my brother. They sent for a doctor who explained his condition. He said Tremaine took a shot in his left shoulder but the gunshot wasn’t the reason he was in a coma. That was because he’d received a hard blow to the back of his skull causing a critical concussion. He thought the boy would get back his memory and seeing me might help jog it.
The doctor was right. It took a couple of days but he began to remember. He was still in serious condition but he would live. Within three days, he remembered everything except the actual moment of the shooting. The only thing he did remember was hearing a couple of pops and Will yelling something and then diving at him slamming him to the pavement. Everything went black after that.
That explained the concussion and hearing that pointed out to me that Will likely saved his friend’s life, but at the cost of his own.
He cried when I told him Will was dead but I wasn’t surprised that he still wanted to get to Jamaica as soon as he could leave the hospital and replace his ID.
That’s when I learned why Will had so much money on him. Tremaine didn’t have a money belt and Will was carrying it all for the both of them. Tremaine remembered where they’d stored Will’s car and I gave him the money belt and the three thousand dollars he said was his, and left after promising him I’d return.
I found Will’s car and sold it to a man trying to get to California who paid me a good price. Then I rented a cheap motel room and stayed until Tremaine’s release from the hospital at the end of another week. I knew it was pointless to try to get him to give up trying to get to Jamaica, so, since the hospital required a partial payment for his treatment, which took half his cash, I gave him some of the money from the sale of the car to get a new passport. Then, I set him up in the cheap room I’d rented, wished him well, and left.