A Brilliant Death

A Brilliant Death Read Free Page A

Book: A Brilliant Death Read Free
Author: Robin Yocum
Tags: USA
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the 1920s, three decades before Tarr’s Dome was stripped. Now, however, the old stone church had the misfortune of resting on a small plateau between the steepest part of the hill and the floodplain, square in the middle of the water flows. The heavy spring rains annually flooded the basements of the parsonage and church and made a lake of the parking lot.
    Such was the case on the Saturday afternoon of the memorial service for Travis Franklin Baron. The gravel parking lot was under six inches of water. Those attending the memorial service were forced to park down the street or in the Miners and Mechanics Bank lot. As the mourners tiptoed across the squishy turf at the back of the property, or danced from one exposed rock to another in the church driveway, three shoeless, bare-chested boys of about ten frolicked in the temporary sea surrounding the church, throwing mud balls at each other, blithely oblivious to the somber mood of those around them. I wanted desperately to join them. I was consumed by the desire to strip off my shirt and shoes and do a running belly flop in the puddles. What a wonderful diversion it would be compared to the simple, yet painful task to which I was duty-bound—attending the memorial service for my best friend. Sitting on the stone wall that sloped downhill from the parsonage toward the bank parking lot, I stared alternately from the playing boys to the water that flowed through the ditch along Campbell Avenue. My world smelled of dead night crawlers and fetid mud. The humidity being pulled from the earth dampened my shirt and salted my upper lip. Unrelenting static filled my ears, and a headache that pounded with each beat of my heart had settled in behind my right eye. I wanted to vomit, hoping that the violent expulsion of the acid and bile that had settled in my throat would somehow cleanse me of the overwhelming sadness and pain that had engulfed me for seven days.
    I sat on the uphill end of the wall, nearest the church, with my friends Snookie McGruder, Urb Keltenecker, and Brad Nantz, and my cousin Nick Ducheski, whom everyone called Duke. He wasn’t one of the Brilliant gang. He lived in Mingo Junction, our rival community to the north, but Duke, Travis, and I had spent hours together in our youth, and he came to support me.
    None of us wanted to go inside, but as the organ began to play, low and soft, we all stood as though controlled by the same puppeteer and started toward the sanctuary.
    After three days, the torrential rains had finally quit the morning of the service, though low, slate-colored clouds stretched across the valley, clinging to the hilltops to the west, as though merely granting us a brief respite, a subtle reminder to the valley below that their work was not yet complete.
    The doors to the church were brass and every bit of ten feet high. They had been propped open to allow for some circulation in the muggy church, and Mr. Janowicz was ready to close them when he saw us walking up the steps, our shoes all damp from the dance across the gravel drive. He smiled a faint smile and waited until we had passed to pull the doors shut.
    Frank Baron was taking up a generous portion of the second pew, sitting next to his brother, Leonard. Big Frank was hunched forward, his elbows resting on his knees, an ill-fitting olive sports coat stretched tight across his back. His pants were black and too short, revealing a pair of white socks and worn black dress shoes. His face was ashen and drawn, battered by nearly a week of little sleep. My natural cynicism made me feel certain he was more distraught over the loss of his beloved Chevy than that of his son. Between his teeth he rolled a toothpick, while nervously twisting a pinkie ring on his left hand. We walked across the back of the church and slipped into one of the last remaining seats, about halfway up and against the wall. But I could not do so without being seen by Big Frank, who had turned to scan the sanctuary.
    “Is that

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