𝗨𝗚𝗟𝗬 // 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝘃𝗲 𝗛𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘁𝗼𝗻

065

The sound of booing disrupts us after a while, Steve and I turning to see where the sound is coming from. It's a couple of kids, couldn't be more than 14 years old and they're chanting horrible words at a mourning man, Wayne Munson staggering his way through the crowds, a missing poster in hand.

He sticks it to the bulletin board with brave pride and I watch carefully as I fold clothes after clothes as Dustin begins to walk up to him.
"Mr Munson?" He tries to call his name, but Wayne ignores him. Then suddenly, before I even know it myself, I'm standing besides Dustin, begging for his attention too, "Mr Munson please!"

Dustin's barely makes out the words, voice croaking, "can we talk?" The elder man's glare could cut glass, fist clenched but ever so careful not to crush the poster within his finger tips.

"I can't imagine we have anything to talk about. My nephew is innocent."

He picks up his bag, prepared to walk away thinking that another two people thought Eddie was a murderer, a heinous monster amongst men, but I couldn't let that happen, I called out once more, "we know."

He stops and raises a curious brow, sizing us up as Dustin moves towards him, "we were um.. we were with him when the earthquake hit."

"He saved us." I finish for my younger friend, who now has tears dripping from his eyes, like a window on a rainy day, sad and slow.
I can't help but notice the hopeful crease in Mr Munson's brow, the way he looks at us like he's been pleading to hear these words, "he was one of my best friends.. a truly good guy."

And then the hope fades.
A simple mistake in my wording, a past tense I shouldn't have let free yet, but he catches it anyways, "was?" A dirty hand is wiped across his forehead, "and where is Eddie now?"

"He didn't um.." the tween can't get the words out, they're inside a prison in his mind, Wayne winces, "but he never stopped fighting."

Eddie's uncle sits down on a nearby bench, hand out as if he's losing air, maroon in the face as water pricks his lashes. I step towards him, reminiscing, "it's true, you know he never even got mad," I think of large smiles and cheesy jokes between friends, "I would've gotten so angry, thrown a temper tantrum, but he grinned and acted like everything would be ok."

Mr Munson lets a small smile creep onto his face, unwanted, but very needed as he relives memories himself. I wonder if he's thinking of Eddie's youth, of a buzzcut middle schooler begging him to teach him guitar, or maybe younger, of a little kid not yet brave enough to ride a bike, but trying anyways.

"And I think he truly believed that-that it would be," on the ride over, Dustin briefly explained the way Eddie smiled in his death, held in the arms of his good friend as he proclaimed it was finally his year, "even in death, I doubt he thought of malice or vengeance, I bet even then he was content. Happy."

"Happy?" Wayne questions hopefully, finally looking up at us, Dustin nods, "even in the end, he never stopped being Eddie."

"He fought so hard, Mr Munson, he fought to protect this town that hated him, despite the pitch forks and the mobs, he wasn't just innocent," my words are interrupted by Dustin cutting in, seeming unable to stop himself, "he's a hero."

We sit there for a while as he weeps, a large ball of phlegm rising in my throat, threatening to stop my airway as I watch my friend's only family mourn him.
What it must mean to be mourned like that.

After a while, Mr Munson calms and messes up Dustin's hair as he rises from the bench, proclaiming he's a good kid. But as he is about to leave a burning in my pocket distracts me, it's like I can feel the object pulling towards him, a magnetic energy.