Beneath the Weight of Sadness
Beneath the Weight of Sadness
By Gerald L. Dodge
Copyright 2014 by Gerald L. Dodge
Cover Copyright 2014 by Untreed Reads Publishing
Cover Design by Ginny Glass
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
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This is a work of fiction. The characters, dialogue and events in this book are wholly fictional, and any resemblance to companies and actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Beneath the Weight of Sadness
Gerald L. Dodge
In memory of my father, Ernest A. Dodge and my other father, Richard F. Siemanowski
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Sherryl Snare for all her support during all the years I’ve been writing. She has always been a great inspiration. Also, I would like to thank Jenny Hubbard for her constant encouragement. I would like to thank Candace Dodge and, of course, Carson Dodge and Josiah Hubbard. Wylie O’Sullivan’s contributions were invaluable. Special thanks go out to Kimberley Cameron for her faith in this novel from the beginning. The novel would not be what it is had it not been for Ethan Vaughan’s insightful ideas during the editing process. The novel is a better novel because of him. I would also like to thank Jay Hartman and K.D. Sullivan for their commitment to the story.
Ethan
The day of Truman’s death
My son was murdered on a Sunday at approximately three a.m. My son, Truman, was gay. I remember walking to get
The
Times
on Sunday morning, before I was told about his murder, and remarking to myself how blue the sky was. Like on many days in New Jersey after a heavy rainstorm, the clouds had moved out and the March morning was breezy and brilliant. Most of what happened after the two cops arrived at our house has been erased from my mind, but I often think of walking to get the paper, before I knew that my son was dead, and feeling happy I was alive and living where I was living and loving the woman I had loved for twenty years. I suppose I remember that part because it’s in such severe contrast to what entered my life a few hours later, when I learned that my son had spent the night lying facedown in mud, beaten so I could only recognize him by his soft blond hair and his lovely long hands.
We didn’t name Truman after Truman Capote. It wasn’t some self-fulfilling prophecy, or anything like that. My grandfather’s name was Truman and I loved him as much as I’d loved my two parents. And he was the farthest thing from gay. He was a retired brigadier general in the U.S. Army. Truman, Amy, and I had decided never to tell my grandfather our Truman was gay. We worried he wouldn’t understand. As Truman put it, “I don’t want Papa’s heart to give out.” But I did tell him after Truman was gone. We were at the funeral, and when he saw my searing look after I divulged Truman’s homosexuality he only bowed his head and wept.
As soon as the cops pulled into our driveway I knew Truman was dead. I know that sounds…what, like I’m claiming psychic powers? Like a grief-stricken father rewriting history, because it offers the possibility that my Truman is in some other dimension, some heaven where I will once again see him, his face whole, his body not brutalized? No. The cop car pulled into the driveway and a terrible panic rose up from my legs and arrived in my heart at the same time the doorbell rang. I knew Truman wasn’t home and he was supposed to be, and I knew why cops came to the doors of worried parents. It wasn’t entirely unexpected. We were always fearing the worst for a son who was an anomaly in a town ruled by white Republicans. By people who raised their children to believe in easy answers for the world’s complicated problems. There was no room in their universe for gay people, and especially gays who, like Truman, were not afraid to announce themselves.
Amy was in the back of the house drinking an afternoon white wine and reading the parts of
The
Times
I generally horded earlier in the day. I can still see her on the chaise lounge, tender feet curled under her legs, knees exposed by the first summer dress she’d worn in the early spring season. We’d made love the night before, knowing Truman would come home late and probably high, and when I passed by the terrace shortly before the police came and I glanced at her exposed knees I could still feel the throb of the sex we’d had the night before.
Both the cops were young. Rookies were mandated to do the dirty work of telling loved ones about death. When I looked out the window next to the front door, I saw they both had their hats tucked under their arms in an awkward attempt to signal respect and somberness.
I’m sure when they were at the police academy they didn’t envision informing parents from an upper-middle-class neighborhood that their seventeen-year-old son was dead. Still, it was just part of the job, and one they could soon walk away from to return to the land of the living, something Amy and I have not yet been able to do. And then, too, when they pulled onto the property with the high ilex hedges bordering the front and London Plane trees leading up the driveway and gardens spilling out into the front lawn and a lone patio with benches for relaxing and having a pre-prandial drink, perhaps they were thinking we deserved some heartache.
Of course, I wasn’t thinking any of those thoughts at the time. It was only afterward, when I couldn’t sleep and I had to slip quietly out of bed and go to the kitchen and down two large glasses of bourbon whiskey, that those thoughts and others that still haunt me every night began to take form, and I began to believe them.
I opened the door and they stood there almost expectantly, as if they were the ones who’d received me. Neither of them was sure how to begin.
“Are you Mr. Engroff?” one of the officers asked.
I nodded. I did not offer them entrance. The one who had sandy blonde hair, and a face much too young for this particular duty, deftly produced a light brown square.
“Sir, we’re sorry to bother you, but we need to ask if you recognize this…”
It was Truman’s wallet. I’d given it to him when he turned fourteen, half expecting him to toss it somewhere. I worried that he would consider the rite all Engroffs performed to signify passage into manhood trivial and hollow. But he’d carried it daily, and to see it in the hand of some stranger made me react almost violently. I wrenched it from his hand and both of the officers stepped back.
I opened it and looked inside to see if there was something missing, though I wouldn’t have had the first idea what that missing something would be.
“This is Truman’s wallet. Where did you get this?”
They looked at each other and then the one with the blonde hair said, “Is Truman your son?”
“Of course he is,” I said. “Where is he? Where is Truman?”
They moved back another step in unison, perhaps fearful of what people of privilege might do when they learn their son is dead.
The one who held Truman’s wallet looked at the walkway as if the answer might be in the pattern of the bricks.
“We found it on the body of a young man. He was discovered in the park by people taking a walk. An older couple.”
“Who is he?” I asked.
They looked at each other, and as they did I could feel the floor in the foyer tilt under my feet. My heart raced. I lowered my head and began to sob.
“We don’t know it’s your son, Mr. Engroff. We need for someone to come and identify the body. This was the only thing on the young man and so that’s why we’re here.” Again, this was spoken by the cop with the blond hair. The other one hadn’t uttered a word.
“When?” I asked, after I’d gathered myself.
“We don’t know the exact time of death yet.”
“NO!” I shouted. They jolted back another step.
“No,” I said more calmly. “I meant when does someone have to come and identify the body?”
“The sooner the better, sir. There’ll have to be an autopsy because of the nature of the death.”
I wondered if they’d been trained to say “because of the nature of the death.” The words sounded rehearsed and not even remotely connected to Truman.
I wiped my wet face with my shaking hand and took a minute to calm myself.
“What was the dead person wearing?”
“The victim had on jeans but no shirt.”
“What kind of shoes?”
“Sneakers. White. Pretty muddy. No socks.”
“Oh, my God,” I said.
Truman hated wearing socks. His shoes always smelled to high heaven. Amy was constantly after him about it. In an instant my mind filled with the image of Truman smiling, going over to her to kiss the top of her head. He did that frequently, as if he were giving her some kind of benediction for being a concerned mother. Amy would swat at him, but she loved the attention.
I began to weep again. I bent over with my head over my knees.
“You have to go now,” I said to them without looking up. “I will call when I can.”
I knew they stood there for a long time, but eventually they left, getting into their cruiser and following the driveway out, as if their car were practicing for the motorcade that would make the same quiet exit four days later. Then I couldn’t hear any sound at all except my breathing. After a while, I walked into the living room and sat on one of the couches and thought about how I was going to tell Amy that our beautiful son was dead.
Carly
Five days after Truman’s death
Truman and I grew up together. We were, like, best friends since pre-school. It helped that I only lived three houses down from where the Engroffs lived, but we would’ve been best friends if I’d lived across town. He made me laugh even when we were only four years old. That was the other thing: our birthdays were both in September and only four days apart. Truman always got along better with girls, and especially me. He didn’t like how boys were always teasing, and running around making noise and touching things that they shouldn’t and laughing when teachers yelled at them and sometimes even laughing when they heard of an animal dying or getting hit on the road. He was always a very sensitive person and he wasn’t afraid to show it.
I think I loved Truman for most of the time I was growing up, at least in one form or another. He had the most piercing black eyes and a wide smile that made you feel as if you were part of whatever he was thinking, even though most of what he was thinking was so difficult for anyone to understand. He was really, really smart. He used to frustrate the teachers, and there was this one pre-school teacher that he made cry a few times. Not because he was mean to her. It was hardly ever that. It was just that he could make people wonder what he was thinking, and when a four-year-old exasperates a middle-aged woman by being mysterious then you know he’s complex. And he was. He made me cry a few times, too, but he never meant to.