My Funeral Friend(s)

To say nothing of the boy would be remiss, as his role in this story was an integral one. But it is a role that is often overstated. The truth is that he could have been anyone, anywhere, and the end result would have been the same. If anything he was just a consequence of my life. Another left by the wayside in my whirling dervish of a journey. But I didn’t put him there. He was like that when I found him. I swear. Standing over a prostrate form, trying to decipher whether the darkness and rain are simply playing tricks on you, one’s mind wants to dismiss the worst-case scenario. Undoubtedly, I feared for it. But the truth of the matter was that I hardly even considered the notion that the soil on the young boy’s shirt could have been blood. I assumed anything but. I told myself it was mud. When I shook him he did not answer. And this troubled me because I had been hoping he could tell me what to do next. We were all that each other had. Nobody else had bothered to stop. They simply zoomed passed, their headlights lighting my task for a little while before they inevitably faded out, leaving me to decide for my own. I suppose I should have considered that nobody was stopping to help because anybody of sound mind would dial 9-1-1 and wait out the storm inside the comfort of their heated seats and mp3 serenades. Knowing what I know now, I can finally admit that nothing about my mind was sound. But I had pulled over. I had peered down the ravine and seen the body. And I had acted. Whether my actions were right or wrong, I no longer bother myself with. All I can do is remind myself that of all the people who drove by that tragic scene, I was the only who had actually tried. That is my redemption. The boy’s t-shirt could only do so much to hide what had happened to him. Once I realized it had been sliced through, I lifted a corner of the shirt to look underneath. It didn’t require the mind of a surgeon to diagnose that the boy was in awful condition. The wound ran straight from his armpit to his belly button, cutting deep and mercilessly. Unless I acted post haste, he would have bled out at my feet.