Home Leaving

The sky was the color of pastel. Oranges, purples, blues, and muted reds hung mist-like in the twilight air. It was warm, and insects sang in time with the classic rock song on the radio. If Elijah squinted just right and used his imagination, he could almost see fireflies dancing at the edge of the pasture. In those nameless moments between the heartbeats and songs on the radio, he remembered seeing the sun rise over Kilimanjaro, noon on the streets of Bangkok, or that special sunset in Barcelona when Alabaster asked him to marry her.

Alabaster wasn't with him on this trip. They were going to help her parents with a move when the news about Dad came. It wasn't horrible, in the end; have a little bed rest and try to learn the virtue of not pushing oneself. Still Elijah felt it was important to pay a visit. He and Alabaster agreed she'd go to help her parents, only coming if things took a turn for the worse, which seemed increasingly unlikely. Dad understood, telling his son to send his love to the daughter in law.

Elijah was going to be leaving the next day. Seeing that Dad was feeling better, there was no need to stay much longer. This place, where he had grown up, held little for him now except his parents anymore, and he would only visit on rare occasions. Besides, he missed Alabaster. In five years, they had rarely left one another's side for much else than going to the bathroom.

There were sometimes, on such visits, he'd go and see Jessup. They had known one another since childhood, but long since went their separate ways. Perhaps, back in high school, Jessup McCray was somebody, but with the exaggerations and revisions of memory, it may have just been he was a legend in his own mind. He once had the goal of being a self-made millionaire by the age of twenty-five, but seven years later, that goal was more a pipedream, which whittled away at his finances with the weekly purchase of lottery tickets.

It wasn't that he didn't work hard. Jessup had been at the feed store since high school, with occasional shifts at the hardware store and the Mexican restaurant. But he liked to blow a lot of his paychecks on beer, which showed in the fledgling paunch around his once muscular belly. Unlike Elijah, he never saw the need to leave the borders of the small town they grew up in. Often, when something entered his tiny world he didn't understand, he became belligerent, uttering hate-filled speech that often included the word faggot.

Because of this, Elijah didn't always make an effort to hang out with Jessup. When his grandmother died, ten years earlier, Elijah took the money she left him to study and travel the world. He was the one possessed of an odd driving curiosity that compelled his desire for going places and experiencing different things. Sometimes, he would give a look out from under his dark wavy hair and an impish half smirk, like he knew a secret, which had made others uneasy at times, getting him called strange or spooky. Elijah did sometimes seem to have keen insights and observations, but he never saw the reasons for the accusations.

The only reason he could think of to visit Jessup this time was because of Dad, and how a few times growing up, he had acted like a surrogate father to him. It was why Elijah was sitting on a rickety porch of a dilapidated farmhouse watching the sun set over an unused pasture with classic rock playing in the background. Normally, he only listened to that kind of music when on a long roadtrip with Alabaster or on certain evenings, with certain twilights, when he decided to contemplate whiskey and remember his childhood. As he watched the growing darkness, he allowed himself to forget where he was or why he was there, enjoying the single moment and listening to the song on the radio.

People living in competition
all I want is to have a peace of mind...

The hiss of an opening bottle and beer being pushed in front of his face brought him back to where he was. Jessup was standing with a silent grin on his face. That half-glazed one he got when he had been drinking since late afternoon. Elijah took the beverage with a slight smile and a nod of the head.

"Thank you, Mister McCray," he said.

"You're welcome, Mister Raitt," Jessup acknowledged, taking a seat next to his childhood friend on the porch. "Your dad's doing okay then?"

"Yeh. Giving my mom a hard time and everything. He just needs to learn to take it easy."

"Well, you know he likes to push himself," Jessup said, draining his beer in a single gulp. "Did you want another?"

"I just started this," Elijah said, taking but a small sip. "Besides, I'm leaving early and I have a long way to go. I don't need to be getting blasted."

"Suit yourself," Jessup said, opening another beer and all but inhaling half of it. "Anxious to get out of here?"

"You could say that."

"I don't get that about you; why you decided you had to move away. Why your dad's always telling me about all these wild places you're going," Jessup grunted. He made a sweeping gesture toward the darkening pasture. "The way I see it, everything you'll ever need is right here."

"And that's how you see it," Elijah said simply. "But that's just not my way. You know that."

"I just know out of everyone I know, you've changed the most, Eli," Jessup said. "Take a look at me..."

"You're growing a beer gut."

"Well, maybe just a little one," Jessup admitted. "But I really haven't changed at all."

I know, and it makes me sad. It makes me sick. You're like that one pool out by Mom and Dad's where the mosquitoes would come from; stagnant and smelling of decay.

Elijah did not voice that, although he may have once wanted to. The words burned on the tip on his tongue. Instead, he took a longer swig of beer, to wash away the burn. He remembered something a monk told him when he was in Nepal; how sometimes the greatest act of compassion was to let one discover the source of their own suffering and overcome it without another's help. Elijah let his eyes drift out into the darkness. The first stars were beginning to peek out.

"We all go our own way, Jessup," he whispered finally.

"I guess."

They were silent for what felt like hours. Songs on the radio changed. Sometimes, the DJ's voice would come on or something would be advertised. In some ways, the radio offered the same low droning as the sounds of the insects all around them. Jessup finished another two beers, and started another. He was beginning to sway a little. Elijah finally made it the halfway point on his first one.

"So, you're leaving early?" Jessup asked finally. The slur was starting to creep into his voice.

"First thing," Elijah replied. "I should be back home by dark."

"That's good. Get back to your little lady."

"I'm not sure when I'll be back," Elijah said. Jessup's head snapped around, his eyes burning like a man possessed.

"You never came back!" He snapped. "The Elijah Raitt I knew went away a long time ago. Someone who looks like him comes around every-so-often to visit his folks and maybe, maybe comes over and has a beer with me."

Jessup was shaking. Elijah found himself a little worried, knowing how Jessup liked to sometimes solve problems with his fists. He was drunk on top of it, making reason so much more of a foreign language to him. The last time he got this bad was around Christmas, when Elijah and Alabaster had come to see his parents. That time, Jessup did take a swing, narrowly missing Elijah, before falling into the coffee table. He cried his vomit-laden apologies before passing out in his own drool.

Elijah prepared himself to move, hoping it wouldn't come to that. Then, as soon as the wave of anger rose in Jessup's eyes and voice, it crashed. His gaze softened again. He gave a big smile and patted Elijah on the shoulder.

"Hey, it's okay, stranger," he said. "We can be friends too."

Elijah breathed a sigh of relief and offered his own smile. They lapsed into silence again. Jessup was no longer slamming beers, but Elijah was still nursing his. Part of him wanted so desperately to escape after the outburst, but another part of him seemed to think it would be bad form to do so. They gazed out at the slowing unfolding stars and listened to the radio.

After a time, Elijah began to fumble the beads strung along his left wrist. A set of prayer beads he had gotten in Nepal right after meeting the monk. Dad called them Voodoo beads.

"You look like a goddamn witchdoctor with those things, Eli" Jessup grunted.

"My dad said something like that."

"Where did you get them?"

"A monastery outside of Kathmandu," Elijah said.

"Now why in the hell did you go to Kathmandu?" Jessup asked. The distaste in his voice made it plain he didn't want to hear the story.

"Because I wanted to," Elijah said with a shrug. "Is there really any better reason?"

Jessup just snorted, and that was it. No further words passed between them that night. Not even a farewell when Elijah stood up to take his leave.