“You lack faith.”

“Have you ever wondered why your God requires faith? Is it that heaven has a limited seating capacity and the necessity of faith is God’s way of keeping the numbers down?”

Ned looked at him with pity, shook his head, and said nothing.

“Dad, give it a rest.”

I gave him another couple of painkillers. After swallowing, he gasped and fell unconscious. Ten minutes later he began ranting deliriously.

“Hundreds…millions…Christians salivating…heaven a fancy hotel where…won’t be bumping into Muslims and Jews at the ice machine…Muslims and the Jews…no better…no budging…modern man…good teeth…short attention span…supposed to be…turmoil of alienation…no religious worldview…neurosis…insanity…not true…always religion among creatures…who…die.”

“Save your energy,” Ned said. He could have said “Shut up” and I wouldn’t have held it against him.

Dad’s head fell back into my lap. He couldn’t have had more than a couple of minutes left and he still couldn’t believe it.

“This is really incredible,” he said, and took a deep breath. I could tell by his face that the painkillers were kicking in.

“I know.”

“But really! Death! My death!”

He slipped into sleep for a few minutes, then his eyes sprang open with a blank expression behind them, as bland as a bureaucrat’s. I think he was trying to convince himself that the day he died was not the worst day of his life but just an average so-so day. He couldn’t keep it up, though, and groaned once more through clenched teeth.

“Jasper.”

“I’m here.”

“Chekhov believed that man will become better when you show him what he is like. I don’t think that’s turned out to be true. It’s just made him sadder and lonelier.”

“Look, Dad- don’t feel pressured to be profound with your dying words. Just take it easy.”

“I’ve said a lot of drivel in my life, haven’t I?”

“It wasn’t all drivel.”

Dad took a few wheezing breaths while his eyes rolled around in his head as if they were searching for something in the corner of his skull.

“Jasper,” he croaked, “I have to admit something.”

“What?”

“I heard you,” he said.

“You heard what?”

“In the jungle. When they came. I heard your voice warning me.”

“You heard me?” I shouted. I couldn’t believe it. “You heard that? Why didn’t you do anything? You could have saved Caroline’s life!”

“I didn’t believe it was real.”

We didn’t say anything for a long while. We both gazed silently into the moving waters of the sea.

Then the pain started up again. He howled in agony. I felt afraid. Then fear grew into panic. I thought: Don’t die. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave us. You’re breaking up a partnership. Can’t you see it? Please, Dad. I’m absolutely dependent on you, even as your opposite, especially as your opposite- because if you’re dead, what does that make me? Is the opposite of nothing everything? Or is it nothing?

And I don’t want to be mad at a ghost, either. That’ll never end.

“Dad, I forgive you.”

“What for?”

“For everything.”

“What everything? What did I ever do to you?”

Who is this irritating man? “It doesn’t matter.”

“OK.”

“Dad, I love you.”

“I love you too.”

There. We said it. Good.

Or not so good- strangely unsatisfying. We’d just said “I love you.” Father and son, at the deathbed of the former, saying we love each other. Why didn’t that feel good? This is why: because I knew something that nobody knew or would ever know- what a strange and wonderful man he was. And that’s what I really wanted to say.

“Dad.”

“I should have killed myself,” he said between clenched teeth; then he repeated it, as if it were his private mantra. He would never forgive himself for not committing suicide. In my mind, that was appropriate. I think all people on their deathbeds should not forgive themselves for not committing suicide, even one day earlier. To let yourself be murdered by Nature’s hand is the only real apathy there is.

His actual death was quick- sudden, even. His body trembled a little, then spasmed in fear, he gasped, his teeth snapped shut as if trying to bite death, the lights of his eyes flickered and went out.

That was it.

Dad was dead.

Dad was dead!

Unbelievable!

And I never said I liked him. Why hadn’t I said it? I love you- blah. How hard is it to say “I love you”? It’s a fucking song lyric. Dad knew I loved him. He never knew I liked him. Even respected him.

Saliva was left unswallowed on his lips. His eyes, devoid of soul or consciousness, still managed to look dissatisfied. His face, deformed by death, damned the rest of humanity with a twist of his mouth. It was impossible to believe that the long, inglorious tumult in his head was over.

A couple of the Runaways came forward to help me throw him off the side.

“Don’t touch him!” I screamed.

I was determined to perform the burial at sea by myself, without assistance. It was a worthless idea, but I was stubborn about it. I knelt down beside his body, cupped my arms underneath him. He went all sinewy in my hands. His long, loose limbs dangled over my shoulders. The waves swelled up, as if licking their lips. All the passive, sunken faces of the Runaways looked respectfully on. The wordless ceremony roused them from their own languid dying.

I put my shoulder into it, flung his body over the edge and buried him in the roar of waves. He floated momentarily on the surface, bobbing up and down a little like a carrot thrown whole into a boiling stew. Then he went under, as if taken by invisible hands, and went off hurrying to greet himself in strange corners of the sea.

That was it.

Goodbye, Dad. I hope you knew how I felt.

Ned put his hand on my shoulder. “He’s with God now.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say.”

“Your father never understood what it’s like to be part of something bigger than himself.”

That shit me. People always say, “It’s good to be a part of a something bigger than yourself,” but you already are. You’re part of a huge thing. The whole of humanity. That’s enormous. But you couldn’t see it, so you pick, what? An organization? A culture? A religion? That’s not bigger than you. It’s much, much smaller!

The moon and the sun had just begun to share the sky when the boat approached the shoreline. I made eye contact with Ned and waved my arms around majestically, motioning to the bushland that surrounded the cove. Ned stared blankly at me, not understanding that I was suddenly overcome with the irrational feeling that I was his host and, almost bursting with pride, wanted to show him around.

The captain stepped out of the darkness and urged everyone to return below deck. Before I disappeared, I paused at the top of the steps. There were silhouettes on the shoreline. They stood frozen in clusters along the beach, dark figures wedged like poles in the wet sand. Ned joined me at the railing and clutched my arm.

“They might be fishermen,” I said.

We watched silently. The human statues grew in size. There were too many of them to be fishermen. They had spotlights too, and were shining them right in our faces. The boat had made it to land, but we were sunk.