Free The Value Of Rain by Brandon Shire Page B

the hospital. From there we went to the parking lot and stood waiting in the February air for my father.
    A long black limo pulled up, its tires crunching last week’s snow, the only sound penetrating the otherwise silent day. The smell of its exhaust seemed an echo of a far distant memory, one not quite strong enough to dislodge the snow from the limbs of the black winter-hard trees. Odd.
    A chauffeur came around to open the door for me and I saw my father’s head poke out from the interior, his hand motioning me to him.
    “Courtesy of the funeral home,” he told me as I climbed in and settled across from him. “There’ll just be the service and the casket. He won’t actually be buried until spring.”
    I nodded; Caufield and I had discussed this over the past week. The service would be held in the cemetery with a non-denominational minister and some workers from the funeral home to act as pall bearers. As far as I knew, Henry and I would be the only people attending.
    To his credit, Henry didn’t try to press conversation on me; though Caufield had informed me that he was eager to get me released and become a part of my life. Whether this was for my benefit or his own (with the proximity of his impending death) Caufield wouldn’t say. But maybe it was the mutual need Caufield saw in us that prompted him to push us together.
    When we arrived the cemetery was as grey and cold and bleak as the dark shadow under Death’s wing. The only color on the entire landscape was Snow’s rose colored casket; a smidgen of pink unlife in the causeway of death. His body was not there but I immediately fell into a vision of his open casket.
    The minister would pause in mid-sentence as I moved in and asked that they open the casket.
    “Please. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye,” I would say.
    Snow would be pale. He would still look fragile; a bird fresh from the egg, all the short years of worry and inner torment finally bled free from his features. I would realize that he would be the last; that his memory, along with that of Robert and Bruce, would move inside me; jostle my mind to a new froth whenever my ire began to abate. Together they would hook the bone; slip inside and claw at the marrow each time I thought about forgiving my family for what they had done to me, to us.
    I would take a single rose from the wreath that had been sent in my name and put it in his hands. From beyond the area they had cleared for this solemn occasion, I would take a handful of snow and sprinkled a few flakes across his lips with my fingertips before I leaned in close.
    “I love you.” I would have told him.
    I stood before the service was finished, took one last look, and walked back to the limo. This was useless; the casket was as empty as our lives had been. It was time to leave the Birch Building. Nothing there had value anymore. I would leave and travel; my wake affecting only that to which I clung. Holding nothing, I could affect nothing, and thereby be affected by nothing. Within that void I could husband my misery and turn it to malevolence; my passions becoming like the river Styx, wide and deep and dismal. The desiccated corpses of my previous lovers popping up from time to time to bob in the black spume of hate and rejection; reminding me of my self-conscripted mission.
     
     
     

Chapter Eight
February 1991
     
    “Hell is a lonely place, isn’t it Charles?” Charlotte asked as I stared out the window, unconsciously attempting to compute the worth of the snow-baked fog outside. It involved an entire logarithm; too much air, not enough water…
    “You’ll know soon enough,” I answered as I turned around. I was alone with her again. Sylvia had left to comfort the familiar sobs of her husband.
    Charlotte grunted. “Give me another cigarette.”
    I walked over, put one in her mouth, and sat down in the chair next to her as she composed herself within her pillows. Once settled, she sat puffing in silence.
    I watched her