16
MOST people think that Stephen Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage about war. But he didn’t. He based his battle descriptions on his experiences on the football field in school. Crane was somewhat of a pussy in his youth, perpetually sick and not a jock. He’d never been to war; he’d only been sacked by the early American equivalent of Clay Fucking Matthews. You should have seen Benji’s face when I told him this, Beck. He knew the book inside and out but he knew nothing about Crane, had no idea that Crane was full of self-loathing over the fact that veterans bought his bullshit. He pretty much spent the rest of his days killing himself slowly, enlisting in war after war and trying to make up for the fact that he’d been young, clever, and lucky.
“That’s unreal,” Benji marveled, shaking his head.
“What’s unreal is that you love the book so much but never learned about him.”
THIS much is true: Benji wasn’t lying; he is, was, allergic to peanuts. He died educated. He died with new confidence and new pride and who says a life has to take eighty years to be lived? He learned, you know? How many people get to go out feeling like they’re just hitting their stride? Most people die old, full of pain and regret. Or young and full of drugs and self-indulgence—or sheer bad luck. But Benji had the ultimate privilege; he died with an opening heart, an improving mind. Benji wasn’t any good at being Benji, Beck. You know that, above all people. Look at the way he treated you and look at the way he treated his body. The trap I set for him was a relief from the trap he was born into. I created a world where he couldn’t steal, where his counterfeit words didn’t count. I took his drugs away.
I look out over the water at IKEA on the horizon. It’s the craziest thing, Beck. The storage locker Benji told me about, the one with the key card? It’s right near IKEA. You gotta get a kick out of the little things and I wonder what Paul Thomas Anderson would make of this “coincidence.”
It’s easier to make sense of things at sea, in a river that could kick your ass if it wanted to. You remember that we really are nothing compared to the elements, ashes to ashes, Beck, dust to dust. Benji’s ashes are in an IKEA box, one leftover from our trip. I tell a deckhand that there were parts missing, that the product looks nothing like the picture. In truth, this box contains Benji’s ashes. And you wouldn’t believe what I had to go through; a person doesn’t just disintegrate to dust.
Two days ago, you started stressing about Halloween. You were going to be Princess Leia (you really are a flirt), and you were taking pictures of yourself and your friends and getting drunk a lot. You did not ask me to be Luke Skywalker, and going forward, we are gonna have some fun fights about how to celebrate Halloween.
And two days ago I started stressing about what do with Benji’s body. I had to get Curtis to work crazy hours during Halloween and I had to learn to cremate a corpse. Curtis was amenable; potheads need to buy pot and respond well to overtime. And I figured out what to do with Benji thanks to the instructions on fiscally practical backyard cremation readily available online. It wasn’t something I could do in the city so I took Mr. Mooney’s car out by Jones Beach and found a good hiding spot. Cremation takes time. You have to keep that fire going for ages and it’s not a perfect job. Benji’s ashes are definitely bony so you wouldn’t want to go pouring them into a colander! A proper cremation requires time and chemicals, but I think I did well, given the circumstances. And I care enough to box him up and bring him home, and most people in my position would leave him out on the island. I crack a smile because when you think about it, you’re not really Princess Leia (your buns were much smaller), and I’m not really an undertaker. There’s a symmetry of some kind, and I like it.
“How much was it?” says the friendly deckhand.
“Eighty bucks, if you can believe that.”
He shakes his head and hoists the box of Benji into the hold. “They rip people off. But the girls love it.”
“That’s how I got into this mess,” I quip, and we laugh and I tip him ten bucks and he is genuinely happy to get that kind of a tip and you know nobody ever tips him.
We’re easing into the slip and he’s got a cigarette tucked behind his ear and he’s holding the line and gathering it and preparing to toss it and he tells me he’ll help me lug the Benji box to IKEA but I tell him I got it.
“Enjoy your smoke, guy.” I say. “You only go around once.”
“Or back and forth six times a day.” He laughs.
THE key card works. Benji was right. The storage locker is where he said it would be and there was no trouble getting in because nobody wants to employ humans anymore. Back in the day, there would have been a security guard and a pit bull and there would have been questions.
Who are you?
What’s in the box?
Who authorized your access to this locker?
Where is your authorization?
Can you get Mr. Crane on the phone?
Can you get him to come down here?
And my answers wouldn’t have been good enough and I wouldn’t have known what to do with the box of Benji. But he was generous toward the end of his time on earth. He knew I’d get in here no problem and I think he wanted to rest here. I think he wanted to be reunited with the stolen Rolexes and suits and silver, the stuff he was trained to respect and the stuff that he didn’t have the balls to break away from. He was always gonna be an unhappy materialist. I spared him years of pain.
I pop open two bottles of Home Soda, one for me and one for Benji, and I set his bottle by the box. Tell you this, Beck, the shit tastes like heaven once in a while, if you catch the right batch. I glove up and clean up and listen to the carbonation fade. I notice a Mount Gay Rum Figawi Sailing hat from 2006 with the name Spencer Hewitt stitched under the lid. Rich kids have their names stitched into their clothes, because of rooming with klepto brats like Benji and nannies who need help remembering names. I try on the hat. It fits and I decide to keep it. I need it, Beck. It’s Nantucket red, faded to a dusty rose hue, sensitive to the elements, regal somehow in spite of being damaged, just like you.