The Dead Would Wait

Farid looked up at the soft swath of the Milky Way. He pulled down his mask to better breathe in the cool, black night. The rural life had its cultural and economic drawbacks, but the stars so visible above countered them all. He stood for another minute, breathing in and out slowly, his shoulders dropping as he felt himself shrink back to scale. He was a human. A speck of star stuff that would be extinguished, in a flash of fever, most likely, forgotten by the Universe. What a relief it would be, he thought, what a God damned relief.

Farid's hands were trained to save lives and now they were hired to bring out the dead. War and human conflict had led to his change of country and a subsequent shift in social status and employment. Peace and job were good things to have. Even if the job was one no one else wanted. Over the past three months since serving in this role, Farid was struck more than once at how odd that he and the doctors in the hospitals wore the same uniform. Uniformly garbed, standing at opposite ends of the supply chain of life. The stars were so far from all of this tension pulled tight within him. His eyes found them again, those glinting points peaceful overhead. He felt his feet on the warm, dusty pavement, still holding the heat of the long-set sun as his eyes swiveled upwards.

After some time passed, Farid turned and opened the Jeep's door with a creak. That hinge had needed oiling for weeks. It was one of the practical details sidelined of late. The shifts were back-to-back. The funds in his account actually mounted, given all he had time and opportunity to purchase was food and drink. He bent his blue PPE-clad self over the back seat, unzipped the lunch cooler and pulled out a Barrio Blonde. The can's cold felt good on his palm. The sensation of anything but the plastic glove hugging his skin was welcome. He had taken the latex layer off as soon as he had left the building, dropped the gloves into he trash can that sat yawning open, ever full, ever silent. His skin tingled. The crisp snap of the beer opening made him smile before taking the first sip. The initial taste, chilly and frothed, was sharp pleasure on his tongue. He walked to the front of his mud-splattered vehicle, put the can on the hood, and hoisted himself up. He was breaking half a dozen of the health complexes' rules with this nightly stargazing happy hour in the parking lot. But, when there was so much death, no one paid attention to the living's smaller pleasures, many of which these days were infractions if well-meaning protections. He had parked where he always did on the back edge of the lot facing the mountains to the east. The range's jagged and gentle curves hunched under an amber slice of moon.

The night had been frenetic. Unpredictably, this novel pace at a once sleepy hospital and surrounding buildings buoyed Farid and the other staff up. The air crackled with an electricity that seemed to run through all of them and those they treated or moved. They all were drawing from a newly-found energy. It might have been panic. It might have been survival. It might have been a pool of relief they were draining. The waiting was over; the virus had come. Everyone had a part. Farid and Sal would be the ones to stack the bodies high in the morgue before they were transferred onto the refrigerated trucks and then into the graves.

The life. The piles of life. The growing piles of what once was life. The growing piles of what once was life were now being returned to the source of all life. On this planet anyway. There were stellar nurseries that birthed other planets, the source of life in other galaxies. But in this solar system, this was the life source. The life was being returned, perhaps to be regenerated. As Farid drank, looking up at the star-gauzed darkness once again, these thoughts drifted through his mind, He turned as footsteps approached.

Sal opened the back door of the Jeep, unzipped the cooler and helped himself to a beer. He walked to the front and lifted himself up next to Farid, a three-quarter model to Farid's fuller, taller frame. Sal looked over at him and then himself, also in the light, protective blue. "We look like a couple of beached jellyfish."

"Cyanea lamarckii. In the desert." Farid held his can upand said, "That explains the smell."

"Sal tapped it with his can, laughing. "Of course you know the proper name, Far," he said and leaned in to bump shoulders.

This humor, this ease of relating, made Farid smile. Farid would have put Sal high in the plus column of any accounting list. In their discussions, Farid and Sal found they had pasts that were full of dark years simmering with change and challenge. Perhaps that was why they both were able to go to distracting topics, a shared beer, and a laugh so readily. Neither confided the depth of the tragedies or the import o the other in so many words, but they both had the sense the other understood the importance of their camaraderie. So, moments like these, as simple and plutonic as they were, seemed deeply satisfying, a true refuge of friendship. They pulled apart slowly, leaving their hands just slightly touching. The luxury of skin on skin was great during this time of endless protection, distance, and uncertainty. They drank. As they tilted their heads back, their eyes came to the sky once again. Their black eyes blinked, and opened again, and again, again and again, freshly bathed and focused above.

"The Jellyfish Nebulae is in the constellation Gemini," Farid said, smiling teasingly, pointing to the southwest. "Everyone knows that."

"Exactly. In the heart of the twins, Castor and Pollux," Sal's finger moved to the South.

"One mortal, one immortal."

"The immortal one begs to join his brother in death," Sal said. "Would you do such a thing?" His eyes stayed on Farid and then swung skyward again.

Farid bowed his head. Then he looked toward the star twins, The question bounced around inside him and he considered it. He pictured moving the corpses alone. Impossible. Then he envisioned someone else at the feet other than Sal. Unbearable. "Yes."

"Even if the brother was a silly, good-for-nothing, goat?"

"Especially then."

Some time passed.

A siren sounded. Their eyes remained on the heavens. The dead would wait.