13. Everything a Travesty

“Allistair, heed these words. Encourage your father to fish more than work. Do not do so with anger or frustration. Rather, offer such reprieves with a smile. No, no. I know you. Don’t say, ‘Why the fuck don’t you just go fishing?’ Say something like, ‘Why don’t you go fishing today, Dad? I got this.’ Encourage your father to fish more than work.”

Those were my mother’s final words to me. It was six months after her death before I understood her prescience. Without her at the auction house to play referee, my father became impossible. Every conversation devolved into an argument. Every catalog meeting ended with him screaming at me or the staff. Every idea, every appraisal, every auction — everything was a travesty.

That was his favorite word: travesty.

So for two years, I did as my mother had suggested: “Why don’t you go fishing today, Dad? I got this.”

It’s funny now. During that last dinner with William, he said to me, “Had the world not ended and had your father died under normal circumstances, the statue would have been returned to me upon his death.”

Normal circumstances. Yeah, it’s funny now.

They found Dad smeared on a boulder in the Lackawanna River near his favorite trout pool. The coroner concluded he had been attacked by a bear. That same night, the news reported others — many others — mauled to death in or near rivers, not just locally, but everywhere. The world ended the next morning. My father didn’t get a memorial; his remains never left the county morgue. It pissed me off that we were about to have a funeral for William, ugly and odorous and smoky as it was going to be.

With autumn’s arrival, it was imperative not to waste any good firewood. So I asked the Crimson Confession’s mules to pull their pair of wagons out into the field where the knights had fallen. After Betty and I unhitched the mules and removed their tack, they refused our invitation to remain and the four of them galloped away braying phrases such as “Freedom, motherfuckers!” and “Up your cunts!”

The deployment of two .50 caliber machine guns had made it impossible to separate the remains of the knights from those of the zombies and the horses. Betty, Kyle, and I — with the help of about a dozen neighbors — recovered from the mess whatever weapons we could find (including my cousin’s saber), and then we raked and shoveled flesh, bowel, and bone into the wagons. Kyle fired up his ATV and hauled William out to the makeshift pyre. He was stiff and colorless, like a farcical marble sculpture. We finished the task by early afternoon and returned to our homes sticky and starving. After a thorough wash and a big lunch, Betty joined me for a nap.

“You okay?” Betty asked as she snuggled up to me in bed.

“I don’t even know what that means anymore,” I said.

“I know that tone,” she said. “What are you feeling guilty about?”

Why don’t you go fishing today?

“No, it’s nothing like that,” I lied. “Just… realization.”

“Care to share?”

“No.”

“Okay,” Betty yawned. “I learned a long time ago to only ask once.”

I changed my mind about sharing, but Betty was already asleep. So I closed my eyes and pondered my epiphany.

Everything society had ever held aloft, everything that we had ever elevated as ecumenically unimpeachable had been burlesque disguised as nobility. Even my vocation, auctioneering, had been an exercise in irony and folly. In the end, no matter how many majestic words I had used to describe my career, I sold dead people’s shit to people who would inevitably die. Only when everything fell apart, only when we lost everything except the will to survive and to protect those we love, did we realize that we had been adrift and without purpose. Perhaps then it wasn’t this apocalypse that was absurd, but everything that came before it. We labored and worried and paid our bills. We celebrated our victories, lamented our mistakes, and planned our futures. We dreamed. We consumed. We congratulated and judged ourselves and each other. We did all that while hundreds of hydrogen bombs were lying in wait beneath our feet, and the key to one of the detonators had been kept by my own father… inside a statue on his desk… in my own auction house… where I sold dead people’s shit to people who would inevitably die.

Maybe Dad was right. Maybe everything is a travesty.

At dusk, Kyle pushed his DJ equipment onto his porch and blared Chopin’s “Funeral March.” Betty, Liam, and I proceeded to the gore-laden wagons in the killing field. Kyle and the rest of the neighborhood soon caught up with us. When the gathering seemed like it was complete, I lit the pyre.

The music finished. I stood at Betty’s side and watched the fire. She elbowed me and whispered, “You should say something.”

I sighed, stepped forward, and faced the crowd. The flames warmed my back and illuminated the throng of somber faces before me. The familiar aroma of burning flesh filled the air.

“Friends and neighbors,” I announced, “thank you for your condolences and assistance today…” My words failed me because they were not genuine. I was consciously employing a mournful expression, which made me aware of the bandage that was on my left cheek, the bandage covering the injury that William had inflicted upon me. Faux melancholy became indifference and I continued, “So my cousin and his cohorts are dead. As far as their camp goes… I don’t know… take whatever you want for yourselves and burn whatever is useless. Amen.”

I shrugged and began walking to my house. Some of the neighbors turned toward their homes. Others lit their flashlights and moved to start salvaging the camp of the Crimson Confession. Betty, Liam, and Kyle walked with me.

“Nice eulogy, Jack,” Kyle chuckled.

“Yeah, beautiful,” Betty scoffed.

“I don’t give a fuck anymore. I offer no more quarter to travesty,” I said. “Liam, your mother and I have to go out tonight. Kyle is going to stay with you at our house. Make sure you eat and feed the dogs. Other than that, spend your evening as you see fit. Betty, wheels up in 30 minutes.”

“What’s a eulogy, Dad?” Liam asked.

“Exaggerations and lies you tell about someone after they’re dead,” I answered.

“Oh,” Liam said. “When I die, I want people to say I could shoot laser beams out of my eyes and that my farts could kill anyone within a ten-foot radius.”

It felt good to laugh. Maybe Dad was wrong. Maybe everything is a comedy.

Betty took my hand and said, “Let’s go destroy ourselves an Omega Key.”