Burial of the Dead

SERENITY - VIII.

VIII.

Word spreads like bacillus on the backs of rats, and when Levon’s summoned he’s in the long, low cabin reserved for crafts, his hands in clay, listening to the Allman Brothers on one of the boom-boxes Molly smuggled inside, while Stella and Virginia throw beads at one another.

Sammy calls from outside: “Levon, the Doc wants to see you.”

Levon withdraws his hands, holds them in front of his face and then dips them in a pot of water on the shelf by the open window.

Sammy shouts again: “Levon, you hear me?”

Levon dries his hands, comes to the doorway.

“What is it, Sammy?”

“Doc Ley sent me over. He wants to see you.”

“About what?” Levon asks, and Stella joins Levon in the doorway.

“Make him wait,” she says. “Patience is a virtue too.”

“He’s all excited ‘bout somethin’,” Sammy says. “Will you just come, so I don’t get my ass in a sling.”

“Don’t go,” Stella says.

“He better go,” Virginia says, standing behind Levon.

“I’ll go,” Levon says, “I just like a little reconnaissance before this sort of thing.”

“You and that freakin’ Renaissance you always talkin’ about,” Sammy says.

“Ain’t it awful,” Levon says, leaving the crafts cabin, stepping down the stairs, joining Sammy, patting him on the back. “C’mon now, Sammy? You see everything around here, what’s going on with the Doc?”

“Truth?” Sammy says.

“Truth,” Levon says.

“You’re brother’s here.”

Levon stops and stands there. The color drains from his face, white as marble, and the sun strikes with a force that could put him down. He stops and starts again, his legs unsteady, his feet seeking some purchase on pressed gravel.

“You okay, Levon?”

“I’m okay, Sammy,” and they cross the field to the doctor’s office.

Sammy leaves Levon at the foot of the steps. Levon ascends the steps like King Charles I. He reaches the porch with the door and looks about for his brother’s car and can’t find it parked among the fancy cars in the lot. He looks again, shrugs his shoulders, enters the office.

The first thing he sees is what he always sees when he enters the office – Doctor Ley standing behind his glass top desk, a German Tank Commander, a Rommel toady, despised by his men, as gay as Rohm, Herr Ley, half German matron with teats like Wagner’s grand-kid.

And the second thing he sees is the back of the head of the man in the visitor’s seat - smaller, more narrow than his brother’s head.

“Here he is, then.” Doctor Ley says. “Matthew, your brother,” introducing Levon to someone who’s not his brother.

The man in the chair stands and turns: “Hello, Matt,” Bobby Sullivan says, extending his hand for a brotherly handshake.

Doctor Ley leaves the two “brothers” to talk in private, suggesting they walk around the camp and enjoy the fresh air, the cool winds off the water. Bobby Sullivan steps from behind a birch tree and skips a flat stone down the bank towards the lake.

“So, Matthew,” he says, not certain what to say after that.

“I expected you to show up sooner or later,” Matthew says as they walk through the wooded area on the land-side of the lodge. “And call me Levon.”