The World Ends at Dawn
Jim felt half awake and half asleep; half alive and half dead. He could also feel himself trying to swerve to one half more than the other, but right now he couldn't tell which one he was headed for.
He tried to listen to the minister speak about Plato at the funeral on that gray, cloudy, dreary afternoon, but it was just noise, no words, no coherence, no meaning. At one time he could look and see Plato laying in the coffin, looking peaceful for the first time since he'd met the kid; but he also looked around the cemetery and saw everybody else who was there. Plato's nanny, his own parents, Grandma, Judy, some of the other kids from school. It wasn't a big turnout for Plato's life. His parents had been contacted by the police the morning after he died and the funeral had been held off for a few days to give them time to come, but they never did.
Not really wanting to draw attention to what he was doing, Jim glanced up at the sky and saw the dark clouds. Oh they just hung in the air, looming, threatening to open up but they never did. He wished it would rain. There was nothing else that could be done to make everybody, himself included, feel any worse about being out here at the cemetery again than they already felt. Thinking back, Jim recalled the conversation he and Plato had had at the planetarium. "Do you think the end of the world will come at night time?" "Uh-uh, at dawn." Why did Jim have to be correct? He didn't even mean anything by it when he said it, but it certainly had come true in the way that he said.
Faintly, he could hear Judy's sniffs and sobs as she tried to keep from breaking down entirely. Glancing over through the corner of his eye he saw her, her cheeks wet, her eyes pink, all the while she kept a steady hold on the small camera she had brought with her and snapped a picture of Plato. Some people had thought it was in poor taste but she and Jim had agreed that if the people at the funeral home could make him look good enough for an open casket funeral, they would get a picture of him when he looked like he was just asleep.
This was the second funeral they'd attended in one week. Buzz's funeral was three days before. His had to be a closed casket ceremony; all his friends came and throughout the whole event they glared at Jim as though he was responsible. He knew he wasn't, he was involved, as they all were, but he didn't kill Buzz. And yet, now as he looked at Plato in these last few minutes before they lowered him into his grave, Jim wondered how much a role he played in this untimely death.
Nobody really stepped up to speak for Plato, though the housekeeper did keep going on about how her poor baby never had anybody in the world that cared for him. She kept telling everybody how John's father had left them and his mother had gone to Hawaii, and left him all by himself on his birthday. His birthday. Jim shook his head and swore, Plato died a day after turning a year older. What kind of cruel trick was that for fate to play on a person? Trying to forget about it, he remembered another cruel trick fate had done to all of them. At Buzz's funeral, his parents had been there, naturally both were about delirious with grief, they had just lost their only son. Sometime during the funeral, Buzz's father, a big, burly man, came over to Jim and grabbed him and started screaming at him, blaming him for Buzz's death.
"Get your hands off of my son!"
He had hardly recognized the voice at the time, but it belonged to his own father. His father, who he had never seen lose his cool before in all his life, grabbed this much larger man and knocked him cold right in the jaw. Buzz's father shut up after that, and everybody quieted back down, but nobody could believe that Frank Stark, who had been a quiet and passive man for most of his life, actually had it in him to punch another man. Especially not during the funeral of the man's own son. If Jim had ever figured anybody in his family had it in them to clock a large man, it would've been his mother, or maybe even his grandmother, they could both be very mean.
That in mind, Jim looked back and saw his mother and grandmother. They stayed back from everybody else, close to the gates. His mother was dressed in a respectable black dress with a black veiled hat. Grandma on the other hand was wearing a fur coat over her dress and looked like she was on her way to a Hollywood cocktail party after the service. As far back as he could remember, Grandma always had the same look on her face. She never seemed to grow upset by something, just annoyed, bothered…that's how she looked now, like this whole funeral was an inconvenience for her. Well who asked her to come? In contrast, his mother actually looked sorry for Plato. He guessed even she couldn't be completely hardened by a kid dying, not when she had had to see it up close and personal. With Buzz it was different because she wasn't there, she didn't see his body, she didn't watch the car go over the buff.
Remembering that scandalous event from Buzz's funeral, Jim couldn't help but laugh. He did it a couple of times but when he knew everybody was looking at him, he wiped his face in his hands and the laughs quickly became sobs as he started crying. What was going on? In one day, two boys had died, brutally, unnecessarily, and in one week, all who cared about them had come out to say goodbye to them.
Judy went over to him and put her hand on his shoulder, when he turned away she rubbed his back comfortingly and said, "It'll be alright, Jim."
He shook his head. It would never be alright, he knew that. He thought back to the conversation he'd had with that officer at the police station the night they were all picked up. What was it he had said? I don't know what to do anymore, except maybe die. It sounded very appealing to him now. He wished he was dead, then he wouldn't be having to go through all this pain and misery. In a way he wished he was the one dead instead of Plato.
Judy knew that they were going to bury Plato soon and asked Jim, "Do you want to go over and say goodbye to him?"
He didn't want to but he knew he had to. Grabbing onto her hand for the courage to do this, he walked over to the coffin and looked at his best friend. He was dressed in a dark outfit like he usually wore, but it was highlighted by the flame red jacket that was lightly draped over his shoulders. It had somehow gotten discarded when they took him away so Jim and Judy went to the funeral home and gave it to the people working there, instructing them to put it on Plato before they released the body.
Tears filled Jim's eyes as he looked down at this poor, lost, kid whose life had ended far too early. He couldn't say goodbye to him, even though he knew he had to. He couldn't say anything, there wasn't anything to say to him. In truth, he didn't want to say 'goodbye' so much as to tell Plato 'I'm sorry', but he couldn't even bring himself to say that much. Standing as close as he did to Plato, Jim saw that he was right, the people at the parlor had done a good job to make Plato look like he was just sleeping. Jim wanted to believe that was the case. What he wanted was to grab Plato and shake him and yell at him to wake up and quit playing this horrible trick on them. What he needed was for all this to be a horrible nightmare he would wake up from, but he knew he wouldn't.
Jim felt his heart pounding like it would rip out of his chest, and suddenly he couldn't breathe. He pulled at his collar to loosen it from his neck but everything he saw started to see stars and he collapsed alongside the casket. He heard, only vaguely though, people calling his name as he felt them rushing over to him. The last voice he heard as everything he saw turned to black, was his father's. About unconscious, Jim turned over and saw his father hovering over him. Frank Stark in his black suit and hat, a worried look on his face, grabbed at his son and tried to get his attention. Jim heard his father vaguely, as if he were underwater and his father was standing on the dock calling at him, "Jim, are you alright? Answer me, Jim, can you hear me?"
Everything turned to black and Jim laid his head back against the ground, and suddenly everything became still and quiet.