Winner of CSU’s 2014 Creative Writing Scholarship

“Hey, did Will Callahan’s older brother Luke play lacrosse with you?” My dad asked during one of his cocktail hour calls to check on me at school. Will was my younger brother Ryan’s new best friend in high school and Luke was a sophomore when I was a senior. I assumed maybe he had met Luke that day at a football game or something.

Getting pestered by Mato, my girlfriend’s dog as I played with him in her bed, I answered with a half giggle, “Uh, nah he wasn’t on varsity when I was there but I definitely knew him. He was kinda a piece of shit actually.”

            My dad gave an awkward pause and said, “Well, I don’t want your night to take a turn for the dark side, but uh, he got hit by a train last night.”

            “What?”

            “Yeah, he’s dead.”

            “Jesus.” I had just gone home the night before to watch my little brother and Will play football. In fact, I was shrugging off a conversation with Luke and Will’s overbearing mother about how great Luke was doing at his new college not but twenty-four hours before.

            My girlfriend, Annie, stopped what she was doing across her bedroom and turned to look at me. I stared blankly back at her.

            “Yeah, probably a suicide,” my dad said.

            “He wasn’t smart enough to kill himself,” I answered without thinking.

            He sighed, “Well, whatever happened, it happened.”

            “Fuck. Is Ryan doing alright?”

            “You know I think so. He has just been down in his room for the past few hours,” he said. “You should text him.”

            “Yeah,” I said, still looking at Annie in disbelief, “I will. How’s Mom?”

            “She is feeling pretty shook up, you know her.”

            “Yeah,” I said. “Well shit.”

            “Yeah, I just thought I would let you know. Are you going to just hang at Annie’s tonight or do you have plans?”

            “Uh,” I said, not really thinking too hard about the answer to his question. “I’m not really sure yet.”

            He responded quickly. “Well, maybe you should just hang with Annie.”

            “Yeah, yeah,” I said, and began my goodbyes.

            Annie sat down on the bed and asked me what was wrong. I explained the story and she gave me a hug.

“It’s ok,” I said, “I mean I barely knew the kid. He was actually kinda a piece of shit.”

            “Well still,” she said and hugged me again.

            As I embraced her hug my phone began to go off again. This time it was a number I didn’t recognize. “Hold on,” I said and answered it.

            The other line blew up with a rough and angry voice. “Stephen?”

            I knew immediately who it was. “Hey Phil, I know why you’re calling, man.” Phil was one of my best friends from high school, but I hadn’t talked to him for over two years.

            “So fucked, man,” he said. He sounded like Drunk Phil. “Fuckin’ got hit by a train.”

            “I know, man, it’s crazy.”

            “You know I used to take him to school, when we were juniors and seniors and he was a freshman and sophomore.”

            “I know, man. You were the first person I thought of when I got the news.” I could hear his angry tears on the other side of the line.

            “Fuck, man, he was just starting to figure his shit out too—I mean he was really starting to become a good kid.”

            I hadn’t really heard of the kid for over a year and simply agreed that it wasn’t fair.

            “Probably some fucking frat hazing bullshit,” he said, “there’s no reason he was wandering by some railroad tracks.”

            “I don’t know, Phil.”

            “I fucking know, man,” he said, “God damn it. You know they found his body in New York?”

            “New York? He was hit in Ohio.”

            “Yup, the damn train dragged his body all the way to New York. How fucked is that?”

            “Fuck.”

            “Yup,” he said, “I’m gonna go to the funeral—are you going to go?”

            “I don’t know,” I said.

            “Well I’ll fucking be there. I’ll see you there if you go. Love you, man.”

            “Yeah,” I said, “Love you too, dude.”

            Annie rubbed my shoulder as I leaned back against the wall. “You ok?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “I mean I should be; I didn’t even like the kid.” And I really didn’t. When I was a senior in high school I was constantly hearing about the kid screwing up or getting caught for something—whether it be stealing, driving drunk, fucking someone’s girlfriend, or even shooting himself in the leg with a gun that belonged to a dad of one his friends. The kid was a genuine fuck up.

“Well, it’s hard when anybody dies, you know?”

“Yeah,” I said, “but fuck.”

She rubbed my shoulder and let me sit and think.

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to go out with the guys tonight,” I finally said.

“Well you don’t have to, you can just stay here with me.”

I thought about it for second. “I don’t know. I should go. I haven’t really gone out for a while and promised I would.”

For the past few months I had really slowed down on my partying, and my friends hadn’t responded to it in the best way. In the past year I went from being a “Titan” of the nightlife—a giggling mess, stumbling, mumbling at random women and leading midnight shenanigans with my friends—to a more or less reserved kid just trying to graduate college and move on with my aspirations of becoming a writer without dying from a hangover. During that time I had found Annie, and she and Mato had become somewhat of a supportive refuge in my supposed transition.  

The change, however, was hard on my friends at times, and always hard on me. I was constantly dealing with them berating me for no longer being the rambunctious no-worry-fool I used to be and for trying to pick up whatever pieces my life was becoming. They began to call me the “Hermit Poet,” and at times that’s what I felt I like. But I just wanted to find a way to make my writing dream work.

“Let me call Colton,” I said, “Just to see what the deal is.” I picked up my phone and called.

On the other side I heard a, “Fuckin yeah, oh, hey what’s up, Stevieboy?” Colton was already drunk and giggling.

“Hey Colt, what are you up to?”

“Just the same old shit, drinking whiskey, jammin’ tunes at the house.”

“Yeah, yeah. Well what’s the plan?”

“You’re asking the wrong dude, but probably a party. You gonna come booze tonight, Stevie?”

“Well—“

“Com’on, Stevieboy, rebel.”

“I was thinking so, but I got some shitty news.”

He sobered up a bit. “What’s up, man?”

“It probably won’t affect you much, and you’re already having a good time.”

“You can’t do that, man. You gotta tell me now.”

“Well you know Luke Callahan?”

“Yeah, that dumbass a few years younger than us?”

“Dude’s dead—got hit by a train last night.”

His voice was still drunk, but a little bit quieter, “Shit, man, well fuck. I’m sorry, dude. I know you probably played lax with him and everything. That sucks.”

“I mean I played just as much lacrosse with him as you did football, dude.”

There was a slight pause at that. “Yeah, man, well we got a bottle of whiskey over here, so if you’re feeling up to it you should come booze, man.”

I hung up the phone and collapsed into a pillow.

“Does this mean you’re staying?” Annie asked.

I sighed and let out a long exasperated, “Fuckkkk.”

Over the next week Annie and some of my family members checked in on me periodically, always asking if I was planning on going to the funeral. The answer usually depended on the day but mostly leaned towards no. I really didn’t know the kid too well, nor did I really like him or his classmates. I really didn’t care to see them or deal with the whole scene of my all-boys catholic high school.

But that Wednesday I found myself caught feeling strange about the incident again. I sat down at my desk with a glass of Irish coffee and began to try and write a poem about it but still was unable to understand what the hell I was feeling. All I knew was it didn’t feel right.

I tried to do some research on the incident and googled his name to see what I could learn. It took me a second to find anything, but when I did it wasn’t about Luke’s death. It was a news article about him stealing a printer from a University of Colorado dorm room. The article had a big picture of him on a security camera with a printer under his arm.

I shook my head remembering the story. A year before, his first year in college, Luke had been caught stealing a printer out of a dorm room, but weaseled his way out with a lame excuse. Apparently, Luke claimed that another student told him he could go and borrow their printer, but he had walked into the wrong open dorm room. Like I said, the kid was a walking fuck-up.

  I went back to google and tried another search, this time putting in “Miami of Ohio train death.” The article came right up. They still were not releasing Luke’s name, but it did say everything that had happened. Around three in the morning he had been struck, and a couple found him on their Saturday morning walk the next day. So much for his body being discovered in New York, I thought.

I took a sip of whiskey and shook my head, thinking of all the nights I had stumbled home alone, only to wake up with no clue how I had arrived in my bed—or all my friends who had called me lost at three in the morning, miles away from their intended destination and barely able to articulate where they were. The poor piece of shit was just dumb drunk, I thought.

A few moments later my phone began to ring. It was my mother.

“Hey Steve,” she said.

“Hey Ma,” I said, “How’s your week going?”

“Well I just got off the phone with Mary Bonham, and got an update about Luke’s funeral.”

I took a deep breath and looked back at the article. “Yeah?”

“It’s going to be on Tuesday.”

“K, I have a test that day, but I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “How’s everyone doing with that down there?”

“I don’t know. Your little brother isn’t saying much, and I haven’t been able to talk to the Callahans. Mary did kinda give me the low-down though.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well I guess the Callahans were actually flying out to Ohio that weekend to visit Luke, because he had just transferred out there.”

“They were at the game that night, did they leave right after?”

“No, they left that morning and got off the plane to the news.”

“Jesus.”

“I know, that poor woman. I can’t even imagine what she is going through. I mean, I don’t even understand how she is getting out of bed.”

“Yeah,” I said and let her know I would see if I could make it to the funeral, disregarding her speculation on the feelings of losing a child. I didn’t want to hear or think too much about what my mother would do, how she would look, or how she would feel in that circumstance.

The next Monday I drove the hour-long drive home after class for the funeral. The weekend had taken my mind off of Luke and I was my joking self when I got to my family. I woke up the next day scrambling around the house, looking for scraps of nice attire for the funeral and laughing at myself all the while. Even on the way to the funeral, I was playing songs on my iPod for my mom with a smile on my face, letting her know what the lyrics meant and when each guitar solo was coming. A part of me felt bad, for acting excitable and happy on my way to a funeral, but I continued playing my songs anyways.

            When I walked into the church I saw familiar faces everywhere, faces I really did not want to see. I saw my high school coach, my old teachers, kids who used to ask me to buy them booze on Fridays, and even my high school fling’s brother, all wandering around the lobby. I was back in high school again.

My parents lolly-gagged around looking at all the collages of Luke and signing the guest list, while I ducked my head and tried to usher them into the church for some seats before I was seen. I didn’t want to be asked about how my supposed novel was going, nor about my retirement from college lacrosse. It was something most of them could never begin to understand.

            We walked into the church and the place was damn near full. I found somewhere to sit and quickly got my parents to sit down, all without anyone seeing me. For the next few minutes I cracked my fingers waiting for the service to start.

             Eventually a voice came on over the loudspeakers to start the funeral; it was a familiar one, the school president’s—Father Steele. The piano began to play the opening music, while all of Luke’s friends proceeded in with a hand on the casket.

Father Steele began mass and I fiddled with the songbooks in front of me as he offered the usual condolences for the family. When he started to talk about Luke he said something peculiar and off-putting for his usual cliché funeral homilies.

It was something along the lines of “Those who knew Luke were not always very pleased with him. But those who did know him can say all those things Luke did were to put a smile on someone’s face. He lived life through endless shenanigans, most of which shouldn’t be repeated in this church, and always reminded you never to be afraid and to always have fun.”

Well they’re not sugar coating it too much, I thought, that’s good I guess. I hated funerals. They always seemed to be just a caricature of the good sides of a person. Call it dark, but hearing about only our angel side in our death makes me wonder why we don’t celebrate the part of the person lived as a human.

As Father Steele went on about Luke I found myself critiquing it and the entire funeral—each uninformed comment about Luke, and every comment about his angel self in bliss in heaven—wondering if Luke would even like any of it. I know I wouldn’t. As I sat analyzing the whole thing, I began think about my own funeral.

I definitely wouldn’t have Father Steele do my funeral, Perhaps Father Pinne? Nah, he is too feeble to give mass anymore. Shit, I thought, I need to meet a priestly friend who can tell people about the real me.

Organs began to play following the homily. It was the same old music you would hear at any other funeral. I sat thinking about what my funeral playlist would be. Neil Young’s After the Goldrush, for sure, and My Morning Jacket’s Butch Cassidy would be badass. Oh, and Warren Zevon’s Play It All Night Long to end. Yeah, now that would be awesome. I need to tell Mom this, I thought, only to remember moms are not supposed to preemptively plan their son’s funeral.

As the Eucharist was being prepared the entire church began kneel down to pray, as was custom at that point in the mass. But I sat like a stone in my seat, only moving to glance around for someone who also wasn’t kneeling, until I finally had to remind myself I was back at Regis, a catholic school, at a catholic mass.

I saw my mom look back at me from the corner of her eye and the cliché Catholic guilt set in. It was the first time I had been to mass with her in years, and the first time she had seen me not participate. But I remained sitting. I wasn’t sure what I believed, and I was pretty sure catholic customs were not going to be a part of whatever it was.

Eventually everyone got up to receive communion and I remained sitting. My mom went off with a quick glance, nothing more, while my dad looked down at me with a dumb look. “Are you, not—not going?”

“Nah,” I said with the shake of the head.

And with a nod he proceeded down the line.

As each person returned, and awkwardly brushed their way past me back to their seat, I really felt the heathenism taking hold. But this is how I wanted to do things; I didn’t want to pretend I was all in for something when I wasn’t.

The next part of the mass was the eulogies, the longest stretch of the funerals, and where the majority of the fake flattery takes place. The first speaker was a teacher, whom I never had, but who taught English.

She got up to the podium and said something along the lines of, “Luke was an acquired taste.”

I laughed with the rest of the church.

“But lucky for me, I had him for three straight years, and those three years I learned a lot about this kid. Initially Luke was just another troublemaker—a very funny troublemaker—but as the years went on he began to show much more than his skills at disrupting class, one of which was writing—which a lot of people never knew about, but I had the privilege of reading all of his papers and many of his pieces.”

Writing? I thought. That kid couldn’t write. That kid didn’t think about things.

As the teacher continued she revealed Luke had developed a passion for film and writing screenplays.

So the kid wanted to make shitty American Pie movies. Yeah, I get that.

The next speaker was one of Luke’s best friends from high school. He got up and nervously talked in the microphone. “I can’t talk about most of what Luke and I did, in a church that is.” The congregation laughed. “But if Luke was here he would tell you any way, and he would do so in the best way. Luke was an amazing storyteller. He used to come to the lunch table and take up the entire period telling you about his weekend, always making you feel like it was a lot better than yours—even if you were with him the entire time.”

I thought back to my high school lunch table. I was always the master of ceremonies, telling how much we drank, where we hid from the cops, who fucked some strange girl that weekend, whatever. The lunchtime story was where I thrived in high school. 

The friend finished and Will got up. I could hear the crowd whispering, That’s Will. Yeah, yeah that’s Will, the younger brother.

Will began, “My brother Luke was my hero.”

I nodded my head—yeah, yeah—expecting just that.

“I always looked up to him. He was my superman.”

I continued to nod my head unsurprised.

“He lived like he was invincible. He was the epitome of carpe diem. And for a while, I really began to think he was invincible. He survived two serious car wrecks, numerous run-ins with the law, and even the bullet of a .38 special.”

The congregation laughed again.

“It’s no wonder, it finally took a freight train to stop you, man.”

You could feel the congregation gasp at the statement.

“I love you, Luke. You will always be my hero.”

The congregation began to sniffle and whisper, but I found myself thinking about my little brother.

That summer, as Ryan and I were drunk looking out at a Costa Rica night sky, he said something I would never forget: “Keep talking to me Stephen. Because, you know, I uh, I look up to you and I trust you. I really do.”

I began to shake my head. That poor kid—fifteen and lost the person who he trusted most to show him how to live.

The next and last speaker was an uncle reading a letter written by Luke’s mother to Luke. It began with something along the lines of, “Luke, Lucas, Lukiepoo, I love you. You were always a socialite, parading around with others, doing God knows what, and that’s why I can’t help but wonder and be hurt, knowing you died alone on those tracks.”

I started to think about that moment. Poor kid, was shit-faced and lost. Probably didn’t feel a thing as that train came flying by. Not a fucking thing. Well, if he was a writer, at least he went out in a romantic way. Neal Cassady would be proud.

The letter went on to say, “You were a storyteller, you wrote so many great short stories about your escapades, and I know you never finished that screenplay, but keep writing it up there, because Heaven is the perfect place for a dreamer.”

That last word, dreamer, stuck with me. I found myself thinking back to the only time I distinctly remembered talking to the kid.

It was at lunch, on a Monday, and he had just gotten in trouble for something—smoking pot, stealing, or showing up drunk to school, who knows. I was a senior, the captain of the lacrosse team, and I decided to approach him about it all. I didn’t want to yell at the kid—I understood where he was coming from, I was the partier of my grade—but I just wanted to tell him to be smarter. As a captain I thought that was my job.

I approached this 6’2” behemoth, two years younger than me, and started to talk to him about fucking up. What I exactly said, I can’t remember, but I remember reaching up and putting my hand on his broad shoulders.

“I get it, man, believe me, I do,” I said. “But you gotta keep your head on a swivel around here. Once these teachers see you fucking up, you’re labeled the fuck-up. I mean have a good time, dude, but you gotta be a little smarter.”

He looked back at me with the most trusting blue eyes. They glowed with understanding, a real remorse, with something that to this day I can’t put into the right words. “I know, man. I know. I’m trying, I really am,” he said.

And that was that.

As I remembered that moment and heard the word dreamer, I stuck my hand into my pockets for a pen and paper. I had thought of a poem I was working on, something called “Let the Poets Cry.” My hand shook as I began to write more lines to it,

“Let us be confused,

Let us drink,

Let us fuck,

Let us stumble—“

And as I hit the word stumble, I felt my mom touch my shoulder, and with a teary-eyed voice say, “Keep writing, Stephen.”

            I shrugged her hand off of me, and began to break down, feeling my eyes swell, and my breaths shorten, and quickly underlined “stumble,” before looking back up at the altar. That piece of shit lying there in that casket was chasing after his own confusion, his own dreams.