Last Stop

Last Stop

by Brian Feller

illustration by Sadie Hutchings

“Northbound’s late,” I say as I pocket my phone. Tony stands beside me. A small pool of water is forming at his feet, dripping from his drenched clothes. He’s wearing his favorite black bowling shirt with stripes going down each side in a bronze Celtic design. His beard is as long and wide as ever, resting against his broad chest.

“Last chance to head in and grab a drink or take a piss.”

But he doesn’t answer, just looks at me in that nonchalant way that says I don’t need to.

I shrug. “Should have figured.”

He’s been staying with me this past week, just showed up in the middle of the night. Every day, it’s been this silent treatment. I thought he might say something now since I was taking him back home.

When the bus arrives, I wait for the driver to lower the platform before I climb in, comforted by the firm rubbery thump of my cane. For a moment, it appears to me that it must look strange, a man in his thirties with a walking stick. But I let the thought pass, and we take seats in the back. Tony plops down, soaked jeans onto hard plastic.

For the first few miles, we sit in silence, staring out our windows at the grey New Jersey sky. The clouds are thick, dense, and there’s a hint of wind.

“What a shitty day,” I say, and lean back in my seat. A woman and child a few rows ahead turn and stare at me. At first, I think it’s for my cursing, but I know that’s not it. I ignore them, and they turn front again.

“Do you remember,” I whisper to Tony. “When we were kids?”

He doesn’t answer, but he shifts his attention from the window to look at me. A few drops of water fall from his hair onto his lap. His eyes tell me to continue.

“Lately, I’ve been thinking about how we were such little pricks as kids,” I say with a snort. I half expect the woman to turn again. But she doesn’t. “I remember how we used to go into ShopRite and you would lean against the shelving to block the camera while I slipped candies and whatever else into my jacket.”

Water is still dripping from his hair and puddles his large thigh. Everything about Tony is large; you could fit three of me in him. Been that way since we were little.

“And then we’d get back and pig out on snacks and shoot BB guns with your cousins,” I continue.

I think I see a hint of a smile on his lips, and I’m quiet for a minute. The bus rattles under my ass, jutting along down a pothole-filled road in desperate need of maintenance. I check my phone. Time is moving too slowly. Another twenty minutes I figure, and then we’re there. I turn to Tony and want to reach for a napkin or towel, something to dry his sopping head. But there’s nothing to use, and what’s the point anyway?

I relax further into my seat and think of the last time we were in North Jersey together. This was after I’d moved

out of Newark and into my South Jersey college dorm. I’d been so focused on my studies and my girlfriend that before I knew it, it’d been two years since I’d visited home. I guess it didn’t seem like such a long time because my parents and sister would drive down and book themselves a room in a quaint hotel nearby. But I eventually got homesick, longing for familiar streets beneath my feet. So, I went back during summer vacation, and Tony and I met up for pizza before swingingback to his place. While I sat on the couch and he was busy shooting off those same BB guns with his cousins, I couldn’t help but think that I was somehow beyond this—that I’d grown up in my time away—and he was still the same child I’d once been. That was the last time I saw Tony.

“You know,” I say. “I had a pretty bad accident last year.”

I lift my cane up, turn it this way and that for Tony to see it better. For a moment, I’m tempted to poke his belly with it, watch the handle press in. I imagine the wood cutting in like a knife, straight through him. I’m disturbed by the thought. “Got sandwiched on the highway. Fucked up my back pretty bad.”

Up ahead, the woman turns back toward us again with a puzzled look on her face. She stares at me a while before shaking her head and pulling her kid to a seat farther away from me.

“Remember how we used to pretend to be superheroes, seeing how long we could keep our balance on one leg and shit?”

I’m certain that he’s smiling at that, though I’m not looking at him, keeping my eye on the wooden cane instead and wishing I could take some miracle cure and cast it aside. I try to remember the feeling of a strong

spine without pain or tension. But I’ve already been slapped with the reality that things can never be as they once were. Still, I imagine going back to before the car accident, before turning on the ignition and before I tried drinking away the memories of our childhood because they were just too painful to hold onto.

“Yesterday,” I continue. “I was struggling on one leg just to get my damned pants on. Felt like a hero, too, when I got the second leg in without falling. Funny how we take the little things for granted.”

The bus drops us off a few blocks away, but it’s a short walk to the cemetery. I’m content in staying silent, but the closer we get, the more I feel that if I don’t get something off my chest, I never will.

“I had a dream last night,” I say. And we stop just outside the cemetery gates. I can see Tony’s home just beyond the entrance, solemn and small and packed down tight.

“In the dream, I’m at a diner in Clifton, and all our friends are there. I’m sitting at this booth and we’re all mourning. How could he be dead? I’m saying. This doesn’t make any sense. And then you walk in and everyone is smiling at me. You say it was all just one big joke, a prank. You say you all fooled me good.”

We walk through the open gates and up the trail. I stare at him now, river water steadily running down his face. He hovers his hand on my shoulder, the first time he’s tried to connect since he’d shown up at my apartment. His face is blue and fading, more transparent than I’d like. He looks happy and sad and…I don’t know.

“And I say to dream-you, How could you do that to me? I’m glad you’re okay, but what kind of asshole does something like this? And I walk out of the diner. And then I woke up, and it was like you died all over again.”

But by now, I’m talking to the wind and kneeling on the soil.