Brash Blackberry #7

“He should have never been there in the first place,” I screamed in Scott’s face. “John knew he wasn’t supposed to be there. This is just too fucked up.”

I ran down the steps at the front of the building and took off for my car. I jumped in, started the engine, and began driving. I’m never coming back.

***

Everything had already been paid for. The service, the flowers, the programs and the Tribute Pembroke Mahogany casket – we only wanted the best for our mother. My older brother Scott and I waited in the cry room for another funeral to let out. Mom’s was supposed to start in two hours.

“If that fuck shows his face, I swear to God I will not restrain myself,” I said.

I was fuming with anger and had nowhere to place it, trying to keep my voice down to not disturb the people in the next room. Just two days before, our mother fell to her death from a cliff. She was hiking a trail alone at the state park. She went to the top of the mountain and never came back down.

“There’s no evidence. So shut up and stop assuming it was him. They hadn’t seen each other in two years,” Scott said stiffly, looking me in the eyes.

Mom divorced John almost four years ago and he was never the same after it. Scott and I visited him sometimes, but he always seemed detached and more violent than we had ever remembered. He hated us calling him John and not Dad, but Mom told us never to forget our actual father and to never call another man Dad. The last time we’d visited John, almost two months ago, he broke my nose.

“You know what it sounds like to me? It sounds like you don’t care that she’s dead,” I said. “It’s also starting to look like you can’t accept our stepfather to be a killer. You saw how he was. He’s not right.”

“You know what it sounds like to me? You can’t accept the fact that she probably jumped,” Scott said.

I could never imagine my mother being a jumper. She was always perky and happy, always quick to do anything within her power to please others. I couldn’t believe it – she was too good to go out like that.

***

The service had already started and Reverend Quinn began to speak about the “better place” where my mother supposedly was now. I stood up and walked to the back of the chapel for a moment alone. As I stood in the back, I saw John walk in the main doors of building.

I closed the chapel doors and asked John for a quick word outside. When I realized we were alone, I pulled my 9mm out of my pocket and put it on his temple.

“Beg forgiveness for your former wife,” I said as I hit the man across the face. “Just tell me the truth and you can keep your pathetic life.”

John spun around and went for the gun. I pulled the trigger. A bullet went through the front of his throat, and John laid on the ground holding his wound.

“I didn’t do it,” John sputtered with blood coming out of his mouth. “She was always sad when you boys weren’t around.”

Scott was the first person out the front doors of the funeral home. He had a look of horror and disgust on his face as I stood over John’s almost lifeless body. Scott grabbed the gun and stared in my face.

“James, how could you?”