Guilt  

 

Daniel G. Snethen

 

           It was a ten-quilt funeral. They hung on the wall, vanguard over the casket, like blazing-stars in their omnipotent manner. Staring at me…accusingly…as Father Ron read scripture. Dan was there. I felt him staring at me too. I was a pallbearer and so too was Dan and somehow Dan knew…yeah Dan knew, of that I was certain…and that unnerved me.

          Her family welcomed me. Her two sons, their wives and her granddaughter…and Dan too…but unlike Dan, they didn’t know and Dan didn’t tell them. That I was a murderer, her murderer.

I didn’t mean to kill her. I didn’t even know I was doing it. She was dead for some time before I even realized I was the catalytic culprit that sent her and her family on a whirlwind-tour of hell-on-earth before death.

         Somehow Dan realized, even before I did. He didn’t say anything. But I could tell…oh he knew alright. Everyone else was confused. “How did Grandma even get HIV?”

          Her daughter and I were great pals. Best of friends. She did not mind my two-spirited nature and we hung around together like no one else mattered. And then when she tragically died, her mom and I became friends, best of friends—drinking buddies.

         I don’t even know how it happened. I don’t think she even knew it happened. But obviously it did. All those years, those memories repressed and treated, with one alcoholic drink after another. Until it never ever happened, but it did.

        And when I found out that her recent diabetes wasn’t only diabetes but was followed up by another bout of dehydration, then diagnosed as a stroke which led to the discovery of HIV and then tuberculosis, I painfully remembered.

        Of course, I agreed to be a pallbearer. I had to. She was my drinking buddy and I loved her and I was going to miss her. And the guilt was heavy…still is. But I can’t tell anyone. How could I ever admit to someone that I killed my best friend’s mother. What would the granddaughter think?

        Here in the darkness of my room, of my life—my world, I sit. I am nothing. I am shit. I am gay…no, I’m homosexual…I’m scared and I’m a fucking faggot—a fucking murderer, and I miss her, oh! how I miss her. I wish we could have a drink together, several drinks together and pass-out in the middle of the night. But instead, here I sit, her obituary in one hand, a Bud Light in the other…and in front of me, on the table, beside a smoking joint…a gun. Inviting me. Begging me to finally be a man, not a chicken-shit coward. “Pull the trigger,” it whispers, “pull the fucking trigger,” and so I pick up the gun—feeling the heft of it in my hand, before finally pulling…

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      Daniel G. Snethen is an educator, naturalist, moviemaker, poet, and short story writer from South Dakota. He teaches on the Pine Ridge Reservation at Little Wound High School in the heart of Indian Country.