Travel Bug (19 page)

“How long do you think we have?” asked Robert.

“Sorry brother, I just don’t know,” answered Alfred.

The whole damn depressing affair had almost ruined their social and academic life. They were relying more and more on each other and shutting out the rest of the outside world entirely. Robert and Alfred knew that this wasn’t a healthy situation for recovery. Neither one of them smoked, drank or did drugs. They were clean living folk for sure. Still, they loved to sleep with lovely young women and they lived for practical jokes. That’s all they had.

“We should do it,” said Alfred.

“I’m not ready yet,” said Robert.

Both men were trim and muscular and close to six feet in height. They kept in good shape because they loved life. They loved to help the young people grow in knowledge. It was frequently said that it was quite difficult to determine whether or not Alfred loved history or Robert loved literature more.

“I’m going to miss teaching,” Alfred said. “I know,” Robert said.

“You love it as much as I do. Don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“The great thing is that I love this college itself.”

“So do I…”

“I mean I know they spend too much money on sports and not enough for my literature department but it’s still a great school.”

“Undeniably, it is.”

“Sure.”

“One of the finest institutions around, I think.”

“The kids actually love to read Shakespeare and Dickens. Winter is symbolic of death in great literature.”

“I know, brother.”

The two brothers stared at each other. They were in one of the many fancy coffee shops that surrounded their fine college. Alfred and Robert both ordered a lot of fattening coffees and soufflés these days. It kept them from losing too much weight and arousing suspicions of their mutual fatal illness.

“What fools they must be,” said Sebastian the mortician. Not just any mortician but the most crooked one in five counties.

“Yes,” said Robert. The students and the faculty had a great phobia of anything at all to do with the subject of death or dying. They didn’t like it when characters died in famous plays or novels. Both young and old faculty members also shuttered at the thought of people dying in any of the famous historical wars that were taught superbly by Alfred. One day they visited their friend Sebastian who had seen death quite a bit in his life.

“Memento Mori,” said Sebastian.

“Indeed,” said Robert.

“It’s time to get your students and colleagues more personal with our old friend, the reaper,” said Sebastian.

“No better time than now,” said Robert.

“Agreed,” Alfred said.

The plan was formed and they swore an oath never, ever to reveal the secret before the time finally came. Prior to that inevitable time, the two brothers enjoyed themselves immensely. This was the spring semester after all and more significantly the last spring the brothers would ever see again. They spent their money foolishly on several last trips. They went to Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Egypt, Italy and Greece. The brothers had always had a bit of the old travel bug but this time it was serious business to see these beloved and splendid foreign lands.

The weeks flew by quite fast for the two dying Grant brothers. It soon came time for them to teach their final classes. Robert taught Shakespeare’s Hamlet. He gave the traditional “to be or not to be” speech to the kids. The young students were so squeamish and sheltered that they were upset he used a real human skeleton as a prop. They were truly a bunch of elitist crybabies. Still, he found some genuine writing talent in the college’s fiction magazine “The Chestnut.” The Civil War and its bloody historical fighting was the final topic of Alfred Grant. He was a liberal but he had an old fashioned sense of patriotism. How hard he tried to express to them that their forefathers made unspeakable sacrifices. This to a bunch of spoiled brats worried about going to grad school or making a six figure income after graduation. Alfred also sought to inform the students about the great sacrifices.

“There are so many ways to die,” said Robert.

“Yes, many ways,” answered Alfred.

There were so many ways to die. They had to choose the exact method of their diabolical pact. There was drowning, hanging, a shotgun to the head or jumping off a tall building. These were all viable options for a good suicide. Alfred couldn’t help but to think of the great suicides of world history. Particularly Socrates as a heroic example, he was thinking. Hemlock was a fine poison. They didn’t know where the hell to get some hemlock, it wasn’t like it was as easy as buying a gun.

“I’m thinking poison,” said Robert.

“Yes, of course,” said Alfred.

“What do you mean, Robert?”

“Well, I mean what else would you do? We’re not going to light ourselves on fire or commit Hera-Kari at the next faculty meeting.”

“Alfred, we could jump off…”

“A tall building is tempting but that’s a little too dramatic, I think. Robert, we’re running out of time. We need to think of something you know how to do.”

“Sure thing, Alfred…”

The two gentlemen enjoyed the status quo for a while. They looked down at their gourmet coffee and muffins and mutually smiled. Alfred remembered how long he had been a professor at the school. He had helped to write so many conscientious objection letters to try to save students from Vietnam, he had lost count. They were far from death in those days but not too far. Both scholars maintained their agnosticism at all times. They defended it even. Religious and atheistic colleagues had attempted to make them sway to no avail. When it came to metaphysics, the two brothers were as neutral as Switzerland.

“Robert, do you think… ?”

“That there is a God?”

“Yes.”

“We’ve been through this already. Countless times even, I’m afraid.”

“That’s for sure.”

“There is no way for us to know. Not even now when we would like to know the most.”

This was a terrible time to lack faith. It was however, no crime to disbelieve in something that lacked any empirical evidence whatsoever. They were good men in a general sense. They obeyed the golden rule and had never done any act that was truly evil by the strictest definition.

“We’ve solved a lot of problems. Have we not?” asked Robert.

“Yes,” said Alfred.

“Well, this problem isn’t going to go away. We need to face it and confront it soon. It’s logical, you know.”

Both men were popular despite being such an odd pair. They were honest and that meant a great deal, especially to affluent students who were not used to being treated with scrutiny. They were moral men. That meant that they truly struggled with issues of ethics and questions of right and wrong. They were quiet men but when they did speak, their students definitely needed to listen to what they had to say. Pathos and drama and comedy! Abortion, divorce, extra marital affairs, homosexuality, assisted suicide, euthanasia, capital punishment, war, peace, capitalism, socialism and religion were all serious issues that the Grants spent a lifetime contemplating. They were brilliant academics with good hearts.

The wonders of cyanide were particularly beautiful on the first of April. They simply went to a cheap motel room and took the deadly poison. It was that simple. Passion and death were nothing to toy with. There were no famous last words. There was simply a feeling of great minds that think alike sticking together. That was all.

The coffin of Robert Grant was open for all to see. His body had been burned from the neck down. Only a skeleton remained where once his flesh was attached. His head was still there, intact in fact. To show his love of The Marx Brothers, Robert had the mortician put a pair of Groucho Marx’s big nose and glasses on his deceased face. Several people walked out. One or two vomited outside and two or three kids took cell phone pictures.

“This is ghastly,” said the assistant dean.

“What a foul thing to do to us,” said a psychology professor.

No one could their eyes off this freak show. It was funny but in the most terrible sense of the word. Sebastian started to laugh to himself and before he knew it, a crowd gathered around him. Maybe the party hadn’t even started yet. No one could resist the opportunity to see what the mortician had done to Alfred’s body. They were not disappointed.

“Good Lord,” said the director of security.

“That’s just awful,” said a sociology professor.

Alfred’s body was completely intact from the waist down. Alfred’s face had some professional clown make up all over it and he was almost unrecognizable. His face was made up and his head was on a tray. Alfred had the mortician decapitate him so his arms could be holding up his own severed clown head… on a tray. All of these fools who denied their mortality would never forget Alfred or his brother Robert.

“This is wrong,” said a freshman.

“No, this is evil,” said the dean.

No one stuck around to hear any thoughts or prayers. No one but the mortician actually attended the entire funeral. It was quite a way to celebrate the first day in April. Sebastian could not help but to keep laughing out loud at the whole thing. The Grants gave him the opportunity to do his best work ever. Sebastian noticed the dean slowly walking up behind him, perhaps to pay some final respects.

“Memento Mori,” said Sebastian.

“What does that mean?” the dean asked.

“It means remember you are mortal.”

“Did you like my tale of mortality?” Andrew asked.

“It was too close to the truth to be pleasant but it was quite witty and funny, honestly.”

“You know, Harold, I put a lot of thought into some of this subconscious nonsense that comes into my head when the trip is over, so to speak. They might be revelations,” I said.

“Or perhaps just hallucinations,” he answered me.

“Either way one feels utterly compelled to write them down.”

“Yes, Andrew, after one feels compelled to scream and curse like a raving lunatic as the blood slowly returns to one’s throbbing head.”

“I can’t argue with that, Harold.”

His eyes sort of told a story themselves, albeit a very sad one. The story of a man who would leave the only family he ever had after helping him save the day. Harold would then return to die.

“Listen, Harold, somebody got the right idea by inventing the written word. That’s not just to communicate realistic goals and scientific observations. It was to answer questions that have no answer, like the big ones.”

“Is there a God?”

“Yes, Harold.”

“Is there life after death?”

“Yes, old man.”

“I’m not sure you get my point.”

“Sure, I do, son. Fiction sells well and all organized religion might just in fact turn out to be fiction.”

“My God, poor Jezebel. She was so disappointed in Jesus, Andrew. He was the man behind the curtain to her.”

If the rapture won’t come to Tennessee (or the rest of the world) then perhaps Jezebel could introduce it to all known life. Then it would sort of come true and, at least, part of her faith could be true. She could never disprove evolution, prove all Bible stories were historical event or even give her savior a haircut and make him a teetotaler. She was a loser. So were we, losers. I lost my parents and Harold lost a grandson.

There would be another last supper and this one would be serving death instead of bread and blood instead of wine.

“Harold?”

No answer at all, he was staring into the terrible red eyes of the unnamed species.

“Harold!”

“Oh, yes, sorry……”

“How did this obscene thing come to be in our even more obscenely wealth family, do you know?”

Legends are passed down all the time from one generation to the next one. Somebody got it the hell down here and accidentally choked on a piece of one of its legs. That much might actually be true. Other than that, we were apparently chosen by God to possess this nature cheating gift. We’ve discussed this before.”

“Honest answers are what I need, not more delusions that sound just like you know who.”

“Fine,” he answered.

“You were saving this great tale for later, I believe.

“Yes, Andrew.”

“Well?”

“Hell, if you really want to know why the hell don’t you just take a bite of the bug…”

“The last time I did that for research of the old family tree I was either begging my parents not to die, watching you as an infant or looking at little green men.”

“They might have been little but they sure as hell weren’t green.”

“You’re not funny,” I said, laughing.

My great grandfather smiled at me.

“Harold, let’s use this stupid ugly monster to go someplace pleasant for a while. You know, before……”

“Sure.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I had this terrible vision one time. I had a story about parallel universes but I never wrote it down. It just freaked me out too damn much!”

“What freaked you out, Harold?”

“The other Harold in this story…”

“You had a story revelation or hallucination about yourself? That would freak me out right there.”

“No, this was really me. Instead of growing up with a silver spoon in my mouth, I was dirt poor, rejected by my father.”

“Your mother was the same?”

“No, she was wealthy but died at the same appallingly young age.”

“I see.”

“I grew up as an orphan during the great depression, passed around from relative to relative who never wanted me. I felt rejected and alone, funny…”

“What?”

“I felt that way as a wealthy fat cat, too. I could never tell if anyone really liked me for me or if it was just for my money. That was also a kind of rejection and truthfully, I’m really not sure which is worse. Sometimes we rich folk love to feel sorry for ourselves.”

“My parents were murdered, that’s why I’m angry but I’m not asking anyone to feel bad for me in the big picture.”

“Okay, Andrew. You’re my own flesh and blood. We’re too good for self-pity.”

“Still, I don’t want to know anything else about myself in one of these stories we are so compelled to write. Look, Harold, let’s go on a little bug trip.”