Chapter Text
The funeral for Griffin James Callenreese is held on May 1, 1973 at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church on US 6–just a few miles down from the restaurant.
Shorter knows this because it’s plastered all over the front page of the local paper for at least a week.
Local Hero to be Buried
Wellfleet’s Own Hero, Returned Home
Remembering a Local Hero
There are more, but Shorter doesn’t remember them. They are all glamorous headlines–the sort with large, chunky black letters so saturated with ink that they almost escape their edges.
Shorter is still relegated to his bed, not yet a week out of the hospital. He’s got healing ribs that were cracked in the attack, a shattered wrist that took surgery to pin back into place, a bruised kidney that’s still making him piss blood, and a face that looks more like a racoon than it does human.
“You’re so lucky,” his mom keeps saying, face crumpling up and eyes filling with tears every time she steps into his room. “Oh thank you, God,” she moans, raising her eyes to the popcorn ceiling and clasping her hands together in prayer. “Thank you, God.”
Overseas, young boys are dying–bleeding dark black into the soil of another world. They are not lucky. They cry “God, God, God,” but their tongues have forgotten the rest.
“You are in no danger,” the doctor said, in a scathingly calm voice that prickled along the edges of Shorter’s skin. “It is unfortunate. But…” he shrugs. “Boys being boys.”
He packs up equipment, nodding to one of the nurses who is on her way back in to check Shorter’s vitals. “You are due for surgery in an hour,” he says last, already half out the door, not looking back.
There’s medical jargon that Shorter desperately tries to grasp as his eyes fight the fogginess of morphine. His father doesn’t understand much, and his mother doesn’t understand at all, so he needs to be able to translate enough so that his parents can sign the treatment papers that are shoved under their noses.
“Poor boy,” the nurses say, voices melancholy with repetition, eyes tired and weary. “Poor boy, poor boy, poor boy.”
There is no write-up in the papers about the attack, but that’s because newspapers are only black and white–there is no room for yellow.
On the first day in the hospital Nadia cries. She walks in with confidence, chatting with the nurse on duty and smiling that big smile of hers–the kind that takes over her face. She hugs their mom, and then their dad, and says “took me ages on the bus, if you’d just buy me a car..” and they all smile and laugh a little bit like she’s so, so funny. She looks at Shorter and says, “Knew it wouldn’t take you long to get in trouble here, you jerk.” Then her mouth does something funny–an almost-smile, an almost frown–crooked and hesitant. She turns around and pretends to look at the sheet of paper on the little table that attaches to the hospital bed. It advertises all of Shorter’s options for lunch:
Meatloaf
Ham sandwich
Roast with carrots
Macaroni and cheese
American
American
American.
Her shoulders start to move. That’s how he knows she cries.
Griffin’s headline is strongest on the first day–angry and furious–so Shorter asks the nurses about Ash, desperate to know that he’s not hurt, desperate to know that he’s okay.
“Who?” they ask. “Ash.” he says. “Who?” they ask. “Ash Callenreese?” “Who?” they ask again. “Aslan,” he corrects. It’s wrong. It swells with pride in each syllable, and it is wrong, it is wrong, it is wrong.” “Oh! Callenreese!” they say, smiles on their faces, each woman fading into the next, each doctor glowering behind them. “Aslan was released yesterday,” they tell him. “He is fine. Poor, poor boy. Poor, poor boy.” Ash receives two where Shorter only receives one, and this makes sense. Ash was always more than the sum of Shorter’s parts.
On the third day in the hospital, Shorter writes a letter to Griffin–full of curled commas that refuse an ending, and apologies that can never be enough. The ball point pen scratches so hard into his notebook that it leaves behind imprints of all the words on the next page–emotion too big to be contained by a single sheet, too invisible to ever be understood again. He crumples it into a ball as soon as he is finished, and tosses it to the little blue trash can that sits by the bathroom door. It lands two feet away. Turns out it’s hard to aim with only one arm.
He goes home on day four. They make him ride in a wheelchair down to the lobby and Shorter uses his good hand to try and spin the wheel as fast as he can. The nurse frowns at him. He can tell she wants to say, “Be careful, young man.” Instead, she utters “Poor boy,” lips pressed into a straight line.
“Poor, poor boy,” Shorter repeats, pressing against the wheel so hard that his ribs ache. It steers them just enough off course that she has to tug hard on the handles. “Right,” she says, voice full of wanting-her-shift-to-end. “Poor boy.” He can smile again now at the irony of it, but it pulls at the bruising of his face so he chooses not too.
It’s Wednesday when he is home again. School starts, Nadia brings him homework, Ash is a ghost who tastes like the sort of memory that congeals in your heart. Shorter tries for one day to solve for x with the wrong hand, but boys like him are not meant for success, they are meant for greatness between alleyways of cities too large to remember their names and so he gives up.
It is finally May 1st on Sunday, and Griffen Callenreese is buried, and Shorter forgets because he’s tired, and pain pills do nothing, and it doesn’t really matter in the end because the town mourns all around him and that seems like it should be enough.
***
The Oyster Cove Bed and Breakfast is just off of US 6 (because everything in this fucking town is off US6) and lies down a lovely lane where you can just barely see the glimmer of sunshine reflecting off the ocean.
Shorter walks this lane now, holding his hurt arm close to his chest. The strap of the sling is starting to rub the nape of his neck raw, but it’s holding the weight of the limb just enough that it doesn’t make his ribs burn with pain. He’s fucked no matter what he does, so he grimaces, and forges on ahead.
Shorter hasn't gone back to school.
His parents put up with it for a couple of days, and then they started to get worried, but Shorter just assured them that the doctor told him to take as much time as he needed, and he wasn’t feeling well enough to sit upright at a desk for the grueling length of a school day.
(The doctor said no such thing. The doctor said that he was cleared to go back that very week. The doctor said ‘boys will be boys’ for the umpteenth time, and at that point, Shorter decided that he didn’t particularly give a shit about what the doctor said.”
Nadia narrows her eyes, but even she knows when a battle is not worth fighting.
And so the world goes on.
The Wong’s go back to the restaurant, Nadia goes back to school, and Shorter is left at home with a very large chunk of free time that he is tasked with putting to good use.
The first couple days, he jerks off. It’s something newly discovered–a power over his body that he never knew existed–and so he practices as much as he possibly can. In the shower. Sitting on the toilet. In his bed, in his bed, in his bed. It’s gross, and sticky, and he thinks about Ash kissing him way too much, but it also staves off boredom, so he figures he may as well keep going. Hand pressed against his belly, pushed under the waistband of his All-American Hanes, he grips too hard and too fast and feels something.
Eventually, even this can’t hold his attention.
Wait.
Stop.
Go back to the beginning.
The Oyster Cove Bed and Breakfast is just off of US 6, and Shorter can see the slope of the roof now, his face red from exhaustion, his neck and brow and underarms starting to sweat.
Ash works directly after school on Mondays and on Fridays and sometimes on days in between. Today is a Monday, so...well.
He hears the sound of a car, and shuffles over to the side of the road, further towards the trees that line the drive. It passes him slowly, the dark black so shiny despite the fog of dirt it kicks up. Shorter watches it start to curve just in front of him, pulling into the lot.
The place isn’t enormous. Ash has told him plenty of stories of guests there, rich, and pretentious, and far too wealthy to do much of anything besides gloat, but Shorter knows that they can’t hold more than 5 families at a time during peak season.
They are in a little bubble before that now–those first few weeks of May when people are just starting to hunger for vacation. Even so, once he finally comes around the bend, he can see that the lot holds six different cars. Shorter swallows hard, hoping that he’ll be able to actually pull Ash away for a second. If he can’t, this entire journey has been for nothing, and that would…
Well it would fucking suck.
The shiny black car that had passed him on the road is empty now, and Shorter wastes a few minutes, scuffing his Chucks in the dirt, eyeing himself in the reflection.
It’s oddly warped, making his head look too small and his body look too big, and his feet don’t even exist–there are just two legs that narrow into nothingness.
The sling holding his arm is in is the biggest thing there, and Shorter wrinkles his nose, watching as the flat blue of the canvas eats him alive.
Finally, with a grunt of disgust and an obligatory kick of dust towards the car, he turns and walks to the front entrance of the building.
The steps are worn with use, but the porch wraps around the entire structure–white Adirondack rocking chairs lining it, moving with the push of the wind instead of bodies. He watches these a second, noting how they all seem to rock at the same pace–back and forth, back and forth. Then he opens the door, wincing at the tiny tinkle of bell that rings from the other side.
“Welcome to the–”
The voice cuts off quick, and Shorter forces himself forward, looking face to face with Jim Callenreese for the first time since he’s arrived in Cape Cod. “Uh…” he starts, eyeing the small foyer.
There’s a small living room to his right–a grandfather clock tick, tock, tick, tock, filling the space with time. There are also couches, a few more of those Adirondack chairs, and a giant bear’s head adorning the fireplace–jaws open, teeth sharp and glistening–an attack aborted, forever frozen.
“I’m lookin’ for Ash?” Shorter says, not turning back to the counter.
There’s silence then–the kind that’s so frigid cold your neck starts to prickle.
Shorter puts a hand on the back of the couch, feeling the softness of the fabric–red and blue flowers stitched into a white background. Patriotism hidden in gentle curves. “Ash?” he says again, finally looking back at Jim.
“He’s working,” Jim says. His mouth is set in a stern line, his forearms rest against the dark wood of the welcome desk, but his eyes are sunken–desperate, and tragic, and sad, and dark, and Shorter has to look away before he’s lost.
“I know,” he says quietly, finally walking up to the desk. The lip of it is at his shoulders–dwarfing him in a way that feels patronizing. He’s overwhelmed by the sudden urge to dash his hand across the surface, to send the pens flying, to cause destruction, to cause rage. “Could you tell him Shorter Wong is here?”
The line of Jim’s mouth draws tighter, permanently etched into his face. “He’s working,” he says again, firmer this time.
There’s a twinge of pain from his arm, and Shorter winces, reaching up to readjust the sling. “I know.” He can repeat himself too, over and over as needed. The colors here are too saturated without his sunglasses, and for just a second he thinks that’s a better lead in. “I need my glasses back,” sounds more sterile than “Is Ash here…”
Jim draws up suddenly, turns to the crook of the desk where his face is slightly hidden. He reaches for what looks like a check register–opens it and starts scribbling. “My boy killed so many of you fuckers before he died,” he says.
It’s not sharp, like Shorter would expect, but soft, and terribly, terribly sad.
I’m Chinese, Shorter thinks, wants to say, opens his mouth and lets the sentence sit for a moment. It doesn’t seem enough though. It’s never enough. “I know,” he finally says, parroting Jim’s response from before.
“Killed so many,” Jim says again.
Shorter can see the tension building up in his back, he watches the way Jim starts to tap his pencil furiously against the desk.
The bear is watching them, its eyes boring into the back of Shorter’s neck.
“Ash!” Jim calls out. Once. Not loud, but loud enough, because there’s a scuffle in the back office.
“Yes, Dad?” Ash answers, poking his head around the corner and sounding so formal it hurts.
“15 minute break starts now,” Jim says.
He doesn’t look up again, just keeps writing, pen moving furiously against the page.
Ash wipes his hands against the apron he’s wearing, and nods. “Yes sir,” he answers. Then he walks around the desk, nods at Shorter quietly, and heads for the door.
Shorter’s only too happy to follow.
It’s only been a few minutes, but the bright blue of the sky has been overtaken by clouds, swollen with rain. Ash walks stiffly to one of the rocking chairs, pressing his palms into the arm rests before sitting.
“Hey?” Shorter offers. He leans back against the rail, not certain he trusts himself to sit down and then get up again with the way his ribs are aching.
“Hey,” Ash says, so quiet it dissolves with the wind.
“I...uh...you okay?”
“Yep,” Ash answers. He’s not really looking at Shorter, he’s doing that thing where he looks just past–probably out towards the small parking lot where the shiny black Fiat stands still.
“Oh.” Shorter bites the bottom of his lip, suddenly very aware of how much distance stands between them. “I–”
“Are you okay?” Ash asks, interrupting him. His ears are pink around the edges and he’s doing that thing where his eyes flash from green to brighter green with every breath he takes. “I tried...I tried to see you once but they were only letting family in and I wasn’t family so…” he drifts off.
“Yeah,” Shorter answers. He wishes he had his sunglasses more than anything because suddenly Ash is looking right at him and it burns. “I’m okay. Are you?”
Ash blinks once and that bright green suddenly fades again. “Yep,” he says again, frighteningly small.
“Ash…” Shorter doesn’t know how to voice grief. How to tell someone that it’s going to be okay. How to impart the sort of comfort that seems incredibly necessary. His stomach is turning flips, and his mouth turns to charcoal, and he can’t think of a single word.
“I’m sorry,” Ash says, rubbing his hands against the apron tied around his waist.
He doesn’t look sorry. He doesn’t look much of anything at all but a fragmentary idea of what a human is supposed to be.
“I’m fine,” Shorter assures him. “I’m really fine. I wanted to...I guess...I didn’t know Griffin. But I–”
“Don’t,” Ash says, mouth tightening as his eyes press closed.
“Okay.”
“Sorry, I just...It’s fine. I need to go back to work?”
The watch on Ash’s wrist is turned enough and Shorter can see that it’s over 2 hours off. “Can I wait for you until you’re done? I can’t throw a football but we can hang out at the tree, or–”
Ash visibly flinches.
The clouds are dispersing again, going as though they’ve never come in the first place, and Shorter can smell the sea more than ever before–salt, and blue, and sadness. “It’s okay if you don’t. I get it.”
“No, it’s cool. I’ll be done in an hour. Dad only keeps me till four on school days.” Ash says this with a smile, so natural Shorter can almost believe it isn’t an act.
“Yeah?”
“Totally. Just…” Ash looks down at the watch, studying it for longer than seems necessary. “Give me another 45. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Cool.” Standing up so fast the rocking chair bumps it’s feet against the floor, he manages to smile at Shorter. “See you soon!”
Then he’s gone,and Shorter hasn’t moved, and “see you soon,” disappears on the wind just as quickly as everything else.
***
Shorter waits for over an hour. He wanders the parking lot, strays to the edge of the lane that leads in from the interstate, loops around pine tree after pine tree. Ash doesn’t appear, and somehow, this doesn’t come as a surprise.
Eventually, the birds start to fly in from over the sea, and they ‘caw, caw, caw’ with such ferocity that it sends shards of glass flying from the sky. Shorter ducks his head, runs underneath the branch of the nearest pine, and watches as the tiny slivers hit the dirt road with only the smallest ‘tink’ of sound. It sounds like hail, almost, but sharper and more insistent.
After a minute, it fades, and the glass melts into sand, and the sand blows away with the every breath the wind takes, and later that night, Shorter forgets it ever happened at all.
But now, Shorter walks back home. Missing something. Missing everything. Missing nothing at all.
***
“I want you to make a wish” Shorter whispers, his tongue brushing the back of his teeth, his throat barely moving.
The leaves of the tree start to move.
“I want you to make a wish,” Shorter murmurs, the lapping of waves carried in on the breeze, the sound of gulls screeching over head.
“I don’t know how,” Ash says, face contorted in some sort of desperate contemplation.
“I want you to make a wish,” the tree asks, Latin tangling in its branches, words only a distant memory.
“I wish to stay.” Shorter can taste the syllables, but they never emerges from his mouth.
I want you to make a wish, he dreams, but the elk never reappears.
***
It’s the end of May and there are sirens that scream in his sleep. School has ended, Shorter has failed, he will have to repeat the eighth grade and there is nothing tangible within himself that seems to care.
His mother watches him with sadness, his father with disappointment, but it’s Shorter, it’s KEVIN WONG - F, it’s the only ending to his story.
The sirens are still screaming, and he wonders if they are yelling at him.
Later, much later, he will wake up to his mother sobbing.
“There’s nothing we can do,” someone says on the phone.
Shorter can hear this, his mother is holding the phone far enough from her ear that it broadcasts throughout the small kitchen. “Hello? Hello?”
Shorter takes the phone from her, mind still in dream state, desperately wishing, wishing, wishing. “Hello” he murmurs, tongue thick with dream.
“Hello? Son? Is your mother home? Can you put your mother back on the phone?”
“She doesn’t speak English,” Shorter replies, blinking as his voice sucks into the receiver.
“She…” it fades, the mumbles of men not enough to be picked up by the landline.
Shorter turns to his mother who has sunk down against the wall, knees pulled to her chest, attempting to become fetal once more, become loved, become nurtured.
“Son, the building can’t be saved.”
“What?” Shorter says, words still dream, but tongue lashing out. “What are you talking about?”
“Chang Dai? Is this the Wong residence?”
The dream starts to fizzle, ends burning with need, but Shorter swallows them down. “Yes, sir. Chang Dai. This is Mr. Wong.”
“The building has burned. We need you to come to the police station. Are you able to do that, Mr. Wong?”
“Yes, sir,” Shorter repeats. His mom is crying quietly, her cheeks wet with tears. Somewhere above him, his Dad is rumbling, getting ready for a war he cannot translate. “Yes. We will be there as soon as we can.”
Nadia steps into view, her eyes red with sleep, her nightgown clinging to her straight, un-American body. “Restaurant?” she whispers, swallowing, swallowing, swallowing.
“We had it coming,” is all Shorter can think of to say.
***
They say goodbye on the steps of Ash’s parents yellow bungalow. Ash stands on the first step, Shorter stands on the dirt, and Ash is only the smallest bit taller.
He won’t go near the tree.
“Poison,” he says. “Not real,” he says. “Magic doesn’t exist,” he says.
Shorter never sees him cry, but that doesn’t surprise him. Ash has always been able to shut himself off from the world.
“I’m sorry,” Shorter says, over and over. “My parents have given up,” he tries. “New York is better,” he tries again. Nothing will ever be the same.
“New York sounds beautiful,” Ash tells him on that last day, arms wrapped around his chest, blond hair brushing across his forehead.
He reaches out for just a second, grabs Shorter and pulls him close in a hug, and for just a second, Shorter imagines he can feel damp as eyelashes flutter against his neck.
Then it’s over before it began.
“You should come visit,” Shorter says.
They are words that were murmured in the fall, at the beginning of something that was meant to die, and Ash knows this, and Shorter knows this, yet they feel obligated to speak.
“I will.”
He won’t.
“Please,” Shorter begs.
“I will.”
***
Tallest Tree, the sign reads–a tiny placard planted into the earth right outside the twisting fall of the old European beech tree’s branches. It’s unobtrusive, something so dwarfed by the tree, that it may as well not even be there at all.
Beneath the leaves, it is always summer, never changing–just hot enough that boys begin to sweat, just heavy enough that the weight of words means just a little more.
From just outside the fall of branches, a boy stands. His hair is lit gold by the Autumn sun, tousled every which way by the wind, and he tucks it incessantly behind his ears, a thing that is practiced so often, it no longer holds any meaning.
“Griff believed in you,” he says. It has momentum, the sort of sentence that begins a war.
There’s only a slight rustle of leaves in response.
“I tried to. I promise I tried. But magic isn’t real,” the boy says. His eyes glint green for just a moment, so bright they are blinding, lit by the enormity of his words.
He scuffs his feet in the dirt for a moment, kicking up dust, carving out a niche in the small space he occupies. There’s a bump of tree root here, and a worm wriggles up, nervous, and moist, quickly burrowing back into the earth to escape the burn of the sun.
The boy doesn’t see. He isn’t looking at anything but the horizon. He kicks again, sneaker hitting root, then he turns around, and walks back to the small yellow cottage that sits at the end of the lane.
Somewhere far above, a seagull begins to cry.