The Dogs: Not Exactly Night - Episode IV
The Sun was in the last throes of setting, throwing ancient, sacred fire onto the horizon in vermillion exquisiteness - Andrew and Bligh stood watch outside the gas station to see it, the same place where Andrew had met Cody, in almost the same circumstance. Bligh was by the pickup, leaning against it with his arms folded, cigarette aflame but unsmoked as he watched in amazement - Andrew was by the store entrance, crumpling the receipt for the gas in his hand before tossing it away.
"Beautiful, huh?" Andrew said to Bligh as he moved closer to the pickup.
"Ya don't see that in the mountains," Bligh said, nodding at his own remark.
"No you do not. And it's like this every evening on a good clear day." He smiled at Bligh. "You don't want anything else? No candy bar or--?"
"Naw man." He flung his cigarette away, letting his hands fall into his pockets. "I ain't do chocolate."
"Dude, what? You used to love chocolate!"
Bligh shook his head briskly, an enigmatic smirk forming on his face. "Naw, ain't - ain't fer me n'more. Think I developed an allergy or sumthin."
"That can happen when you get older - ah, least that's what I heard. Anyway - alright then. Onward."
They got back in the truck - for two people who often talked on the phone and in another life would practically never let a moment of silence pass, they were oddly and, for Andrew, uncomfortably quiet. Some elephant in the room had been present virtually from the moment that Bligh had arrived, and it bothered Andrew to the extent it was ruining the whole evening. And yet, Andrew wondered to himself as he started the truck and made for a public beach he had promised Bligh was an excellent place to chill, what choice did he have, but to wait for Bligh to open up?
And so he waited.
Eventually, after five minutes or so of continuous awkwardness, Bligh spoke first: "So you really like all this, huh? All this Florida stuff?"
Andrew chose to answer carefully. "Well - do you?"
"S'pretty nice, I s'pose. Hotter 'an Tempest, that's fer damn sure."
"I ain't the one wearing jeans - you do know it gets right warm down here?"
"Aight, don't judge, now..." Bligh murmured gamely. He seemed to try and laugh it off this way, but a pained expression came to his face after a fractional length, and he stuck his hand into his Ravens cap, scratching underneath.
"You alright?"
They came to a red light as Bligh jerked his hand away, looking as though he was trying to feign a smile. "Y-yeah. Sorry, jest kinda out of it. Been drivin since the crack o'dawn."
"No - something's wrong. Long as we've known each other pretty sure I can tell - when you go quiet something's really fucking off."
Bligh frowned, looking down at the floorboard beneath him. "Not now, man. Not here."
"Why the Hell not? Ain't nobody but--"
"Would you please drive?"
Andrew sighed irritably. "First off, we're stopped, and second off, I ain't heard from you in a week, and now--"
Bligh cut him off with a sudden and unexpectedly sincere gesture - a hand on Andrew's shoulder. Their eyes met, and in the earnestness that radiated from Bligh's diamond-dust gaze, Andrew knew he had hit a wall.
"I jest - ain't - ready."
Andrew's heart sank - whatever it was, it had to be dire. He nodded and, putting on a brave smile, answered: "Alright, Bligh. I'm sorry." He glanced back to the road, starting with mild embarrassment as he realized he was still fully stopped at what had become a green light.
Bligh withdrew his hand, staring out the window, hesitating. "It ain't - don't - don't say yer sorry." A minute of silence passed before he spoke again, turning to Andrew with a new, sly expression.
"So how's she run?"
Andrew looked back at Bligh in something like surprise. "Ah - well, like the last time I drove her, senior year."
Bligh smiled back, seeming pleased. "Damn straight. Boys down at the mine told me I could fix anythin." Andrew chuckled. "If this truck runs as good now as she did back then - you probably can."
Down the highway they sped, passing, sporadically, that eternal symbol of Florida, celestial land of American vacations, the palm tree - first one, then a pair, at last a cluster, until the road turned into a causeway that was verdant with tropical vegetation on either side, cutting through the black-mirror spectre of Tampa Bay.
They parked amongst a pleasant grove of palms off an exit from the causeway, and, hopping out of the pickup - still in silence, both of them - Andrew, gave in to the instinctual Floridian geomancer-love of sand and grass beneath bare feet that had long overtaken the novelty that the sight of a beach gives the mountaineer, and kicked off his shoes. Bligh kept his on.
The beach was largely empty - here and there was a lone stranger still packing up their belongings, but not a soul was in the water, which roiled, inky and oily, illumed only by a waning moon which shone, broken, in the waves. Bligh and Andrew sat down together, a foot of space and an oppressive emotional distance between them - though hard to tell in the dark, Andrew, tanned and relaxed and barefoot, was every inch the Florida native he emphatically he was not, while Bligh looked very much out of place amongst these raw and primal elements of shore, beach, and palm, transplanted from the severe and unforgiving majesty of the mountains.
The sound of the Tampa Bay waves breaking on the shore - gentler from their pelagic birthplace of the Gulf of Mexico, which swallowed the Sun every dusk - reminded Andrew of the last time the two of them had been to the ocean, when they were ten, and Pappy had taken them to Myrtle Beach. Stephen was sick with the chicken pox that week, and so had to stay home - a fact which he would sometimes bring up as a rueful regret, as though it happened yesterday.
The silence between the two was left unbroken from the time he had shut the door on the pickup to the time they had both sat on the beach. The night was finally cooling, made even cooler by the moderating effect of the seabreeze that blew gently, fluttering the edges of Bligh's long black locks that blended in with the liquescent dark.
Bligh took out a cigarette from his shirt pocket - Andrew turned away to sigh heavily, braving to break the silence:
"Do you remember that time Pappy took us to Myrtle?"
There was a long pause as Bligh fumbled for the Zippo in his pocket and - the light of the flame fleetingly framing his face perfectly in the darkness - he lit his cigarette. As Andrew watched, he inhaled, eyes closed - when he opened them a glaze had overtaken them, glinting faintly by the moonlight. He exhaled, a long plume of smoke escaping into the salty ocean air.
"Thinkin bout that, too?"
"Every time I come here," Andrew affirmed.
Bligh nodded slowly. "Listen, I, uh - I'm sorry I ain't talked to ya in a - what, a week but--"
"It's fine, dude. Really. I've just been worried, and--"
As though not listening, Bligh leaned forward, his expression souring. He swallowed hard. "Drew, Pappy's - Pappy's - he's dead, okay? He - he died in his sleep last Tuesday and the - the service was three days ago..."
Andrew's mouth hung open in frank shock. "Oh Jesus, Bligh - I'm so - oh my God, I'm so sorry!"
Bligh held the cigarette in his fingers for a moment, staring listlessly into Andrew, whose urge to hug his best friend had died with the lifelessness behind the blue eyes - he spat and took another drag. His eyes glimmered, and Andrew held his breath as he expected Bligh to break down...for a moment, for a terrible and wrenching moment, Bligh was not Bligh, his face appearing just like his grandfather's, as though the ghost of Pappy - Gustavus, that was his real name, and Andrew committed it to memory as he felt his connection to what was essentially his second father fade and die with every passing second - had appeared at his very mention. The waves continued to crash before them, the tide pulling back further and further, the passage of time marked by the ocean and the great immemorial flood that takes all it makes wet from birth.
"Why--" Andrew's voice faltered as the full tragedy swelled within him, and he saw his best friend shut his eyes again, this time in obvious emotional pain. "Why - why the fuck didn't you tell me, Bligh? Jesus - Jesus Christ, don't you think I had a right to know--?"
Bligh's eyes opened again slowly, fixing their frosty gaze on Andrew - on him, and into him, stabbing him accusingly as they narrowed slightly, forming a subtle malevolence that made Andrew instantly regret asking it.
"Reckon I had a right to have my best friend not fuckin abandon me." His tone was quiet poison. "I mean yer brother_showed up - guess _he wudn't too good fer me at least."
Andrew, gobsmacked, turned away, plunged into an abyss of guilt and regret. He cursed himself for inviting Bligh down, for thinking that this was anything but a terrible idea - to bring West Virginia to Tampa. This whole thing had been such a laughably colossal mistake.
"...I didn't mean that," he heard Bligh mumble.
"Yes. You did."
"Y'are my best friend, I--"
"I know." It was Andrew's turn to cut him off - he didn't want to say anything else, to spoil and ruin this moment even further, but the questions were gnawing at him. "But what--" He struggled. "What's gonna happen to the house? The one Pappy built?"
Bligh shrugged, coughing, trying to regain his composure."It's in my name now. I can do whatever I want with it."
"But what _are_you gonna--?"
"I don't know," Bligh cut in, taking another drag and turning back to stare into the waves. "Does it fuckin matter? Pappy's gone. Duke's gone. Yer gone. I ain't got nuthin..." He sniffed, flicking the cigarette away, a grimace forming on his face. "I can't fuckin act like this n'more. I ain't happy. I _ain't_been - since yew left." He brought in his legs to hug them against his chest, burrowing his chin between his knees.
Andrew shook his head in frustration. "No - stop. What did you expect me to do, Bligh? Really. We've never talked about this but we might as fucking well." Bligh turned back to face him, the grimace still there...Andrew knew that expression, though he had only seen it a few times throughout their lives, and it meant Bligh had reached an emotional impasse. He would not let Andrew win this one.
"G'on then."
"I can't go back to that town, Bligh - not to Tempest. Not to West Virginia. My life is here." He spread out his arms as though to encompass the whole of the Gulf of Mexico. "Here! Not that town, not anymore - my parents disowned me, you know that, and Stephen ain't gonna be around for much longer neither--"
"They disowned ya fer bein a queer. I didn't."
"You didn't know--"
"I should have!"
Andrew scoffed. "Cody was right, it _did_upset you."
"We shared everythin, Drew. Ya named my dawg. Why would I care about - ya bein gay? Me...?"
Andrew hesitated, his jaw moving in an angry, futile action as he tried to formulate a response - taking advantage of his inability to defend himself, Bligh pressed on:
"But ya weren't there when Dan killed himself. Or when that dog - when Duke - when Duke died. And when Pappy died - y'weren't there, neither. When I _needed_ya, Drew."
At this, Andrew was outraged. "Well how could I have done anything?! Maybe if ya told me I coulda flown--"
"Ya wudn't," Bligh dismissed him.
"How do you know?!" Andrew was yelling.
"Because ya hate it there. Y'always did. And ya got what ya wanted and ya never looked back."
"That--" Andrew nodded defiantly. "Yes. Yes. That town--"
He had to stop. The sudden, unwelcome memory of his father's final tirade the week after he and Cody finally got together hit him like a suckerpunching blow to the heart. He had buried it all, suppressed it all - thrown himself into everything school, everything Cody, in order to forget that his mother too, at his father's direction, had disowned him for one solitary aspect of his world. It was his father, standing there, waving goodbye to the geese, who had destroyed Tempest for him, who had orphaned him, who had made him weep - it was his father, indirectly but still insidiously, who was set to jeopardize his friendship to Bligh...higher than everything except Cody. His father was Tempest, the town, the myth, the symbol - his father was the pit and the abomination he had climbed out of, into the Florida sunlight.
"No--" he breathed. "No! That town - that town is dead to me."
"That town is yer home."
"That town is nothing!" Andrew shouted - he rose, looking down at Bligh with a wounded glare. "It's nowhere, it was always nowhere! That's why Dan-motherfucking-Dorsey blew himself sky-fucking-high, because he couldn't stand the fucking mess those people up there wallow in!" A horrified look came on Bligh's face. "Drew that ain't at all--" "I don't care!" Andrew burst back. "This is - _that's_why you came here! To torture me! Make a fool outta me, wanna bring me back--!" He stopped as he saw Bligh's expression dissolve to a kind of helplessness, as though he had been completely disarmed - a tidal wave of regret shook Andrew, and he sighed harshly, shaking his head. "Bligh...Bligh, please...c'mon..."
"It wudn't...s'posed ta be like this..."
"Bligh don't - don't do this--"
Without warning, Bligh leapt at him, striking him across the jaw with a quickly clenched fist - Andrew yelped in surprise and, losing his footing, fell backward onto the sand. Bligh followed him, pinning him down. Andrew struggled under him, and as he tried to protest, he was silenced - by Bligh's invading tongue. His best friend of nearly two decades had trapped him in a kiss that he never - not yesterday, not years ago, not tomorrow and the days after, had nothing else changed - would have expected.
Bligh stopped to look down at the stunned Andrew and, gritting his teeth, allowed the latter to see how odd his canine teeth looked - overly sharpened, as though he had fangs.
"It wudn't s'posed ta be like this, Drew," Bligh hissed, his voice barely above the sound of the waves. "It was s'posed ta be yew - n'me."
Andrew, breathing heavy, looked back up at Bligh with absolute shock, but had only spare seconds for his mind to race before Bligh, digging into his pocket, procured an old-looking knife coated in a greenish film, and, in a swift and solitary motion - Andrew feeling a surge of panic that Bligh might now murder him - sliced the skin on Andrew's forearm. He leaned back to look down at Andrew in what looked like a mixture of regret - and determination.
Andrew, freed, sat back up, still stunned speechless. As his eyes moved to the cut on his forearm, which had produced only a slight upwelling of blood, a crushing, debilitating lassitude overtook him - he blinked, and saw the world grow distorted, as though some great unseen hand had cranked up the contrast filter on his eyes. Everything grew blurry - to no avail, he shook his head, trying to clear it.
"Wha - ahh - wha...?"
"Why'd ya have ta do this, Drew? Why cudn't ya jest stayed with me? We coulda had it - we coulda had forever..."
Andrew heard Bligh say it, but his voice seemed distant, as though echoing from a vast, unseen mountainside.
"Wha...? Ah..."
"It was s'posed ta be us, Drew. Me - n'yew."
This was the last thing Andrew heard, before the world went black, and he could hear and see no more.