Page 310 - Some Dance to Remember

280 Jack Fritscher

Uncle Les wrapped the graveside ceremony. Ryan watched everyone
trail down the hill after him. Annie Laurie walked Kweenie to the long
stretch limos that waited for the family. Ryan turned to Charley-Pop’s
gravestone.
“So,” he said, “what do you think now about Thom?”
He felt a presence cutting into his back. He turned. It was Sandy
Gully. Her face was flushed with more than tears.
“I hate you,” she said. “I hate him.” She threw a single rose hard into
Thom’s still-open grave. “I know what you did to him. I know what you
did with him. I know what you two did together. He loved you and you
treated him like an animal. He said you called him nothing but a breeder.
He said you called me a cow. You called my children no-neck monsters
right to his face. It’s all your fault. He’s dead because of you. You killed
him. You...You...” She searched for the word that Ryan feared she would
shout for all Peoria to hear. “You...You...Intellectual!”
Ryan grabbed her arm and fiercely said, “That’s homosexual! That’s
what you mean. That’s what you hate. All you bitches hate it.”
“I mean I hate you. I’ve hated you from the moment we met in the
train station. I hate you for being what you are. I hate your whole family.
I hate Kweenie. I hate Annie. I hate Charley.”
Ryan slapped Sandy hard across the face. She fell backwards on her
butt across the mound of dirt covered with green plastic grass. From down
at the cortege, no one seemed to notice. The grave diggers, waiting to fill
in the hole, turned away and continued their smoke as if nothing had
happened. They had seen everything graveside anyway.
“I’ll sue you,” Sandy Gully hissed.
“You don’t have a leg to stand on.”
“Help me up!” She eeked a small scream.
“Gladly.” Ryan bent over her. He put one hand behind her neck and
one behind her waist. “Play it as you lay, my dear,” he said. “By now they’re
all watching us. You look every inch the bereaved widow throwing herself
down on her husband’s grave.” He pulled her to her feet. “Stand up, bitch.”
“You fag bastard,” she said.
They stood on the edge of the grave holding each other as if they were
dancing. Their separate grieving became for a brief moment one. In spite
of everything. It wasn’t a dislike of women that made Ryan gay. It was,
beyond his sexual choice, his claustrophobic fear of the meanness of fam-
ily life. He pitied men who sacrificed their very selves to be husbands and
fathers and ended up, if not dead like Charley-Pop and Thom at an early
age, then old and gray and outnumbered, the solitary male chauffeuring
,
©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
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