Chapter 1

If it’s any consolation to those who showed face at his mother’s funeral mass, he didn’t want to be there either. With no added disrespect to the woman who carried his wretched fetus uncomfortably in her belly for forty weeks, and when the time came to be delivered he acted the way he behaved toward her for most of his miserable life, which was cruel and obdurate. Hamish felt sorry for that, for that childish bitterness he harnessed, for what Hazel had gone through and certainly he was not privy to the whole story which he could presume was sickening. Hamish offered apologies to everyone who showed up to the church and itched and perspired in their Sunday best early on a sweltering Friday morning. Although grateful for the outpouring of love and support, it was the last place on earth he wanted to be. No one wants to bury their mother. No matter how estranged. No matter how much anger and resentment divided them. No matter how strained the relationship had become. No matter how complicated it all was. Nobody wants to bury their mom. Nobody. 

The men adjusted their ties and flapped their coats to try and cool off. The women dabbed their noses and upper lips with crumpled napkins. The clothes adhered to the flesh. There was a heatwave. Of course there was a fucking heatwave. Why wouldn’t there be? What could make something that was already horrible, that was already this uncomfortable to endure even more fucking unenjoyable? Infernal temperatures. Desert climates unsuitable for human life. An atmosphere akin to that of Venus. Uninhabitable. Unreasonable. Tea time inside of a furnace in overcoats. And if anyone saw the holy water boiling in the stoup near the entrance it was purely coincidental and not due to Hamish’s presence inside of a holy structure. Hamish nor any heavy metal t-shirt in his closet would have had anything to do with it. If our dearly departed Hazel had a choice between bringing forth hell or comet, she must not have been able to make a decision because Hamish’s mother seemed to be bringing both in her wake.

Before the oppressive silence settled in, sounds were amplified in these old large buildings, there was a crescendo of rustling clothes and friction between skin as people hugged and shook hands, followed by a wave of shushes and whispers as the bodies took their seats in the polished pews of St. Luke’s Church. The way the lights shone made everything look gilded as if touched by the hand of God himself, though for Hamish he was nowhere to be found. 

Hamish stood before the lectern while the hush of the cathedral cut out his tongue. The whiskey and his nerves made his stomach grunt and gargle. Hamish Crook absolutely fucking hated public speaking. Hamish may have appeared to be outgoing and confident to some people but that was inaccurate, as almost everything is, wrong, incorrect, those people didn’t know him well. He was what you would call an extroverted introvert. Hamish fared better in smaller groups and alcohol helped, sometimes, and sometimes it made it worse, way worse. He only felt truly comfortable with a few human beings, what’s the math on that?

The mere thought of public speaking alone was enough to elicit a debilitating anxiety attack and to trigger his entire body to become slick with sweat. He knew it was a mistake the minute he accepted the job. The fear paralyzed his brain, rendering him a fumbling idiot. Ever a dreadful undertaking, during the handful of speeches he was forced to deliver, seemingly at gunpoint, time appeared to be lost as if he entered some kind of void. A non-alcoholic black out. He was not one for the limelight, never wanting to be the center of attention. Leave that for all the others who needed their egos milked. He would rather toss rocks at the spotlights. Raze all the pedestals to the ground. Set it all ablaze. No matter the amount of preparation Hamish would never be ready to deliver. Not for this. Not for most things life imposed on him, but sometimes we surprise ourselves. Even if just one of those awful speeches turned out well, his mother’s eulogy to be specific, the task still came with a hefty bit of embarrassment, panic, sleeplessness and teeth grinding. 

Apart from the usual worries that weighed on his mind daily, and everyone still breathing and above ground had their own set of problems of varying degrees of importance, it wasn’t a competition. The worries that troubled him but never verbalized were still always there with him, tugging at him, pulling him down, roaming inside his skull. Those problems, significant or not, actual or imagined, were always there loitering on the sidewalks of his conscience. A purveyor of catastrophizing. His mother’s death was constantly on the precipice of his mind. He waited for the day by eating his cuticles bloody, and then sure enough, that day came, and crushed him into tiny pieces. So many things in life caused him dread. He dreaded social gatherings of this magnitude. He dreaded flights and small talk. He dreaded the phone call. 

You know the one. The one where your world ends. Though it wasn’t a phone call, was it? It was a tap on the shoulder. 

Hamish sat beside Hazel as a child, looking up in awe of a carefree pretty woman unaware of her surroundings, time and circumstance would disassemble his heart but early on he knew Hazel had not long for this world. Perhaps she was always meant for somewhere else.

The pulpit was rickety; an insult to true craftsmanship, a stain on the artistry of the church. It seemed to bow and buckle under the weight of Hamish’s eulogy. Hamish could build a better one himself and if the world didn’t end later that day, though he prayed it would, he would do so as gratitude for the kindness the priest had shown him during his time of grief. The speech he wrote and rewrote dozens of times, wasting sheets of paper and creating a volcano of crumpled pages towering out of his wastebasket was approved by Father Rota personally. 

Father Rota, a fixture in the Archdiocese. Though initially there was a concern about potential blasphemies infecting the speech; in the end only a sentence or two were edited at the holy man’s suggestion. Aunt Hester, Hazel’s sister, was the concerned party who introduced her nephew to the priest, and lit candles and repeated novenas for the boy’s soul. 

Father Rota stood off to the side, an annotated prayer book in his ancient freakish hands, nodding his reassurance to reinforce his support for his new acquaintance. The vaulted ceilings loomed overhead, making Hamish feel small, smaller than usual. People die everyday. Why did it feel like the absolute end of the world when so many other people have to bury their own parents too? Why did it feel so specific to Hamish as if only he knew this pain? 

The apostles portrayed in the stained glass windows countered Father Rota’s demeanor and openly displayed their disapproval for the entire service. They scoffed at the bastard kid who had no right speaking on behalf of the woman he abandoned and shit talked. He was the one who walked away. He was the one who made a bad situation worse. Hamish agreed with the apostles though he never faltered because in his mind, it was never difficult to find criticism, to find fault in himself. They had no business being there, and you could take that anyway you wanted. They weren’t good Catholics, except for Aunt Hester, and he wasn’t convinced they were even good people at all. 

The 100 year old church had a nauseating mixture of cologne and perfume wafting through it, combined with dank sweat, and the off putting incense from the thurible, but Hamish wouldn’t make it long enough to see any liturgical censing. Not a religious man but always moved to tears witnessing these rituals in the past regardless of the text. Don’t even mention the word bagpipes, let alone strike a note on the chanter. 

Gemma was the first to arrive, always punctual unless it was to return home at the end of a long work day, but this was not the place to air out grievances. What was done was done. In his soon to be ex-wife’s defense, which begrudged him to give her any credit, if the roles were reversed, under the same exact circumstances he wouldn’t have shown up at all. He was a spiteful adolescent. No denying that. Hamish was always suspicious of people’s motives, especially Gemma’s. If he couldn’t figure her out when they were together, then there was absolutely no use in trying to understand this woman after the fact. She called him, “babe,” and it felt accidental and phony. He thanked her for attending, after a quick exchange he excused himself and kept it moving. 

In all black, she looked decadent in a low cut dress that seemed a bit inappropriate for such an occasion but the sport coat reeled it in. Hamish was cordial, they exchanged kisses on the cheek, a new custom, and he intentionally averted the spell of her supple tits. A highly ranked tactical weapon in her arsenal. Her blonde hair pulled back tight, with a few unrestrained wisps trailing off. Her blue eyes were beautiful little ponds frozen over during a harsh winter. The type of pond little boys like himself always seem to fall through. Ponds, natural or manmade, don’t weep for the fools who drown in them. Hamish wanted to ask her, “if she had signed?” but he kept the encounter brief and devoid of spite. No easy feat. He was thinking bad, bad thoughts. 

He chose passive aggression instead. What was the purpose of prolonging their divorce? Reconciliation was off the table. There was no way to work through this. Just sign the document and be on your merry way. Sort it out. Finish it. Get on with it. Is a clean break too much to ask for? For fuck’s sake.

Gemma showed compassion for his loss, which he appreciated but she barely knew the woman he mourned, Hamish having been estranged the entire duration of their courtship and subsequent nuptials. But neither did he. Then again no one really knew Hazel. The only thing that should be said for most of the people who we become attached to in this short ride is that we knew of them as we rarely really know each other. Never completely. We barely know ourselves. Hamish kept his distance only wondering once or twice during the funeral mass if Gemma suspected that he knew anything. He knew everything; more than he’d like to know. 

And knowing is the battle. 

Five days drunk, stinking of Irish whiskey in a cheap black suit. Hamish needed a haircut and a shave but got neither, reading words he wrote but couldn’t memorize no matter how many times he recited them to himself in his badly lit, mostly empty basement apartment. 

The stations of the cross behind him, floral arrangements at his sides, disembodied vocals, and organ music starting and stopping on cue filled the church. He looked at Aunt Hester, a pintsize pistol, who was always reliable no matter how much of a pain in the ass she could be. He looked at Colton Eusini and Lucio Pernetti, two of his oldest friends, and all of the faces of the other people in attendance. Friends and family alike, and a handful of people he despised were all looking back at him with glossed over eyes. Colton made eye contact and quickly averted his eyes, redirecting them to his shoes. He seemed to be listening intently, and Hamish felt a momentary pang of fire in his stomach. It passed and he continued reading on. His voice gravelly, it crackled and he stammered a bit, but he got through it. One of the toughest things he ever had to do in his life, and there was never a shortage of hardships in life. He never, not once, ever gave himself any credit for having the strength to persevere through any of it. He never gave himself credit for anything. He saw himself as weak, frail, broken. 

Hamish rubbed away something that wasn’t there on his left brow and said, “I hope you have discovered peace and that your heart is finally mended. I love you, Mom.” Hamish almost said that he wished he had gotten to know her better, that was one of the lines he omitted during the grueling editorial process. “Maybe one day you’ll get to read it again.” Hazel knew what that meant. 

Hamish turned his back to everyone and that was when the tears came flooding through the dam. He preferred to cry in private, as he found it utterly embarrassing to display such a frail emotional state despite having cried in front of the majority of the people in attendance, on more than one occasion no less. Such pathetic breakdowns. He was always an emotional boy. He hated that about himself. He could never hide how he felt, and he felt deeply, and much too often in plain sight. 

Father Rota, a nice tiny wrinkled old man, took Hamish’s hand and said, “Beautifully done, son. Beautifully done. The next round is on you.” It was the hottest day on record in ages and a good day as any for it to all go to hell. If anyone was ready for a drink or an apocalypse, it was Hamish Crook. 

“Thank you, Father. Fair play. Now please get me the fuck out of here.” 

You can purchase a copy of Goodnight Nobody at http://www.21pk.shop

Limited supply available. Thank you for your support!