Finale	Finale

 by MR

  

 Author's website: http://unhinged.kixxster.org

 Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be, but it seems a shame to just let
them sit around collecting dust when they could be doing more interesting
things.

 Author's Notes: This was written for the DS Flashfiction Curtain
Challenge. A ringing down of the final curtain, as it were.

 Story Notes: 

 

 

 Finale
 MR 

 It's a fuckin' cold day for a funeral, and in a way, I guess that sort've
makes it easier to bear. 

 Not that any day you've gotta go to a funeral is good, but it seems
appropriate that we're all standing out here freezing our asses off
waiting for the service to start. God knows, he spent enough time outside
in weather like this; he probably feels right at home. 

 Ben told me last night, when we were laying our clothes out, that back
before they came up with diggers that could shovel down through the
permafrost, anyone who died during the winter had to wait till spring to
get buried. Thought at first he was pulling my leg. 

 "What'd they do? Stick the body in the woodshed?" 

 "If they were lucky enough to have one, yes." He was holding his dress
uniform up to the light, checking to make sure everything was in place and
securely sewn on. "The winter I was nine, a friend of my grandfather died
rather unexpectedly. He was head of one of those sprawling families the
territories seemed to breed back then; there were at least two of his
children, their spouses, and assorted grandchildren and
great-grandchildren living with him. Something like 13 people in a three
room cabin." I winced at the thought. "My grandfather ended up agreeing to
keep the body in his workshop till the thaw came. It rather bothered me at
the time, even though the body was wrapped in a shroud and placed in the
coffin. I was quite relieved when the snow finally melted enough to allow
him a proper burial." 

 "I can see where you would be." 

 He re-hung the uniform and turned to me, eyes suspiciously shiny. "It's
difficult to believe he's actually gone, Ray." 

 "Hey." I pulled him into a hug and let him lean against me, petting his
hair. "He wasn't a young man anymore, Ben. You, of all people, should know
that." 

 "Eighty-three." He answered softly, his voice choked. "A year older than
my father would've been if he'd lived." He drew in a shaky breath. "It's
just...he'd been there my entire life. I can't recall a time he wasn't
there. You know, after my mother died...for the space of two or three
years, I saw him more often than I saw my own dad." He drew back and
looked at me, wiping his eyes and laughing slightly. "I used to wish he
was my father, sometimes." 

 I don't say anything, just pull him over to the bed so we can sit down.
And we stay there a long time, me holding him close while he, once again,
cries tears for yet another piece of his past gone missing. 

 "Ray." 

 I look up and realize the minister's arrived. "Get up there." I say,
shooing him forward. He hangs back a minute, then takes hold of my hand,
squeezes it, and quickly makes his way to the front to join the rest of
the Honor Guard. 

 Cold but clear, and don't they look fine in those bright red "shoot me"
coats? I shove my hands into the pockets of my parka, not really listening
to what the reverend's saying. 

 When I told mom about Ben and me, how I was coming up here to live with
him, she just looked at me and shook her head. "Just remember, Stanley;
love isn't all bluebirds and happiness." 

 She was right. Love is watching the person you love grow older and get
grayer. Love is learning when to compromise, and when not to. Love, like
life, changes and grows. It pretty much has to, I figure. 

 "I feel like a curtain's come down," he told me earlier in the day at the
funeral dinner, as we sat picking at our food. "My father, Gerard,
Muldoon, and now Buck. It's the end of an era, Ray." 

 "And there are still Mounties," I said, pointing my fork at his chest.
"There are freakishly clean-cut young men and women graduating from the
Academy, dedicated to upholding truth, justice and the Canadian right to
say 'Thank you kindly.'" He smiled. "You know that better than anyone,
Benton. You're one of the ones teaching them." 

 The minister's finished, and now the Honor Guard steps forward. And for
just a minute it hits me that Buck Frobisher's really gone. No more
Gorgonzola, moose hocks and howling at the moon. As much as they loved
him, I bet his family's gonna breath a little easier at night. 

 And I remember that morning he saw Ben and me off on our adventure long
ago; how he stood up so straight and tall and saluted us, and how Ben
saluted him back. We never found Franklin or his hand, but we did find
something just important. Each other. 

 And even though I'm not a Mountie and don't have on a bright-red coat, I
find myself saluting with the rest of them as they lower the coffin into
the ground. 

 An era has ended. But our life goes on. 

 FIN 

End Finale by MR: psykaos42@yahoo.com

Author and story notes above.