The one that has worked too hard to succeed often ends up with the wrong perception about himself. He feels he worked his way to invulnerability and not to success. Truth is, nothing is invulnerable because everything dies, all the time. They just don't die at the same pace. When you're aware of this, you can always be prepared the way the buddhists are. When you're not attached to earthly pleasures, burying them is just a way to give back what you've taken. The act of burying, in the greater scheme of things, is a thankful celebration. The universe doesn't care if it's your dreams that you put six feet underground.
I thought I was above everything. I had a good thing going, me, the little brainy kid from Queens, after busting my balls for ten years as an accountant, I finally fulfilled my dream and opened a book store. Some people will tell you that Queens is not exactly the best place to open such a business, but when the competition is almost unexistant, you just need to offer a quality product to build a faithful clientele. I had this huge rack of magazines, these books on politics, weekly conferences, I was educating my people. I had opened ¨Whitmore Books¨ a bit more than two years ago and since then, my life had been an everyday rewarding challenge. Novels were not selling as much as I would've liked, but people were reading. W.E.B Dubois was one of my best sellers.
When my baby brother Clifford lost his wife in that terrible accident, I thought I was above it too. I mean, I mourned Evie almost as much as he did, but I wasn't humble. I was proud to be able to offer help and shelter to my brother in need. Clifford did so much for me all my life, when I got intimidated by bullies or by over-ambtious co-workers, Cliff and his construction buddies were there. He was the one who introduced me to my wife Teena. She was the sister of one of his friend. All of my life I needed my brother and he never really needed me. He was the strong, self-made man and I was the one who always did what I was told, going through all the channels, waiting in line, being nice. I envied the life Cliff was living.
When I opened ¨Whitmore Books¨, it helped me to stop feeling like that, but some things just lodge themselves in the back of your mind. When you're born sad, it's impossible to be completely happy. I had everything: a loving wife, two daughters and a big loft where we all lived on top of my commerce. Things were going well enough with the business that within three years, I expcted to be able to buy the building and give Cliff and Evie the top loft. They would have loved it. Mommy would have been finally proud of my for taking good care of my baby brother. I was finally starting to feel like the caring big brother I should always have been.
Then, Evie died and I was happy. I was happy to be of assistance. I was vainly happy to be the best shoulder a brother could ever cry on. I offered him to come stay with the family, I called his boss, explained the situation to him and handed Cliff his resignation from the current construction he was working on. When I told him, I explained him that contracts come and go, but he needed to get his head straight first. Construction was a dangerous career, if he wanted to have a long one, he needed to be there a hundred percent mentally. He needed, more than everything, to mourn Evie properly, so he could move on. He nodded and said : ¨Thanks Marcus¨ and went back to bed.
For three weeks, Cliff stayed locked in his room without talking much. He was eating, sleeping and living in his room. He barely got out twice a week to wash himself. He ended up getting on my nerves. After three weeks he should've been able to get a hold of himself. When dad died, he was the first back to school, back to a normal life, leaving the sorrow to mommy and I. I could understand how much he loved Evie, but he was getting to be an awkward presence in the house.
I should`ve respected his grief. I shouldn't have went off on him the way I did, I wasn't humble. I tried to shake him back up, to make him understand that earth didn't stop turning, that there was still people loving him and needing him around. I was lying at the time because I was convinced I didn't need him anymore and I wanted him to go out and meet new people. I couldn`t understand why suddenly he wasn't so strong. He got over death before.
Now I know. I know Evie was the sun of his universe. The polar star in his sky. Cliff was lost and had nowhere to go. When your reason to live gets horribly cut in half in a car accidents, you fall in a bottomless pit. I had to lose everything too and go back to square one to understand that, because I was too weak to be empathic to his pain. I was so stubborn and full of my own success that the world had to slide from under my feet for me to understand where my brother was.
Even today, no one is really sure of what happened. Was it a technical malfunction? A human error? A terrorist attack? A sign from God? I don't know, but one day, the people of New York started to drop like flies. It started in the subway, within five hours, everyone in New York's subway died and its exits started to exhale toxic fumes. The incredible amount of the substance made it spread on to the streets, into nearby cars, on the clothes of bystanders, death was a frequent flyer, it loved the airwaves. Then it got in the water system and New York as we used to know it, was history.
In my progressist, pseudo-philosophical intellectual ways, I valued the metro as a way to save the environnement. Like a blind man, I sent my wife and my two baby girls to their death by sending them to the movies by subway. I don't know when they died, if they suffered, or where they exactly are, the only thing I know is that like everyone who was in the subwayat that time, they never got back to the surface. The people of New York was so busy dying that the subway system got sealed and became one gigantic tomb.
Clifford and I were at the bookstore when it happened. I convinced him to go downstairs and to do a bit of reading. He was in the backstore reading a sports magazine when we heard the voice of Joey Holloway. Good old Joey was walking a dead street holding his gut and yelling: ¨THE SUBWAY, DON'T GO IN THE SUBWAY.¨ He walked towards the store to seek for some help, he was visibly in pain. It was not his style to yell paranoid warnings in the street like this. Joey was the quiet type, so I took for granted he needed help. As I got to open the door, Cliff ran and yanked it back closed
¨WHAT ARE YOU DOING, WE NEED TO HELP A BROTHER IN PAIN!¨ I yelled, convinced my brother had lost it.
Once again, despite being younger, Cliff was wiser than me: ¨LOOK AT HIM MARCUS.¨
Joey was bleeding from his mouth, badly. His eyes were popping out of his skull as if he had seen the dephts of hell. Cliff continued: ¨In construction, when there is a toxic gas leak, your lungs are swelling and they fill up with blood. I've seen this shit before Marcus, Joey has been poisonned with gas.¨
I didn't contradict him as Joey crumbled and entered convulsions just a few seconds after. Joey Holloway died on my porch so that Cliff and I could survive the apocalypse.
¨But Teena and the girls? They're in the subway at this time!I got to get them¨.
¨I'm sorry brother...I don't think they're alive anymore.¨
I should've slapped him, I shouldve tried to kick his construction worker ass for being right. But I was convinced too, he was right. The next days proved him right. The subway got sealed, people started dying and Cliff and I, we only had each other anymore. I sunk as fast as he did in the bottomless pit of my own sorrow.
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