The Parents

The Parents Part IV

The Henleys packed up and left for the railway station. They got their tickets and aboarded the train. It was a long journey back home. Not long like their journey from home to Memphis. This elongation was something else. It was as if waiting for death. But sometimes dying is for the lucky. Some people in the train were reading an old local Memphil newspaper. They were social workers or activists of some kind. They were sitting right beside the Henleys. "This newspaper was blacklisted all over Memphil and efforts were made by almost all the residents of this place so that the news did not spread out. Did you read this anywhere?" "Nowhere! I read 3 newspapers, a news like that would not miss my eye." The headlines said, "Homosexual Couple Burned in Memphil". Inset it had the photos of Walter and another man. The news read as follows - 'Two men living together in Memphil, suspected to be homosexual by the community were lynched and burned. These men were allegedly carriers of the newly discovered HTLV-III(or LAV) virus which is considered the etiological agent of Aquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS. According to one of the senior residences of Memphil, Mary Winslow, AIDS is known as GRID or Gay Related Immune Deficiency for a good reason. In her own words, "men are not supposed to indulge in sexual activities with other men. It is against the will of God and against nature. And if you go against nature, nature will punish you by giving you this incurable disease. But it is upto us, the senior members of the society, to control the spread of this disease." The county Sheriff said that, "it was all done for the greater good. We had heard rumors that one of the two men were bi-sexual or involved sexually with both the sexes. We have never had a person infected with HIV in our community before. The religious authorities were furious and wanted them dead. We could not take the chance of a large scale riot. Our town was always peaceful and we strive to keep it that way. So we handed them over to the Christian mob." Two members of the mob, Nathan Andreas and Cornel Depisto, who were intially detained by the authorities but let go on bail, were known to have been co-workers of Walter Henley and Jonathan Tremler in the Finley-West Lumber Mill. According to the two men, "They were queers. They were queer and they were lovers. We don't want queers in our workplace. It's just not safe." This tragic incident took place, Wednesday, the 24th of July in the Balsam Woods of Memphil past midnight. According to the post-mortem reports, the two men had been physically tortured before they were lynched and burned. Not much information has been found about either men except their workplace. They're said to have moved in to the town of Memphil about 15 months ago and were living together in a rented room in Mary Winslow's house.'

Walter and his partner had been in hiding for months as the citizens of Memphil town were on a witch hunt for gay people. There were 7-8 gay men who were marked. They had to hide in the forest nearby, the Earnest Sanctuary. The deep forest and a few nearby cave and caverns saved them from the humans. But some were killed by wild animals. Some were not strong enough to make it, completely detached from civilization and well cooked food. Walter and his partner Jonathan survived the cold and the animals, but were caught offguard by the town mob and were lynched and burned on a pile of fagots. Then the entire forest was surrounded and locked across the perimeter with heavy rocks, electrocuted barbed wire fencing and then finally it was burned down, to ensure none of them survived. "Who are we to decide what is natural and what is not? The same nature that created me also created that which I consider unnatural! Who are we to decide who remains a part of this nature and who not? Society? Yes, we have a say there. Wr created it. But the jungle I did not. I don't decide sin and virtue. I am but a part of the whole process. I don't create. I complete. When someone takes refuge in the forests, because we've already removed them from society, and we surround them up and burn them down - there's something horribly wrong about it." They all agreed. A reverberating humming sound of people agreeing was heard over the train's sound. The grief stricken Henleys were completely cut out from the outside world. Their loss made them retreat inside a coccoon. Their pain made them unreceiving of any outside stimulus. They could not pay any heed to the news being discussed about. As the passengers prayed for his son, Mr.Henley's blank eyes stared outside. It reflected the blue sky and the ice covered meadows outside... Mrs.Henley had cried herself to sleep on his shoulders. It was hard to tell if they were alive.