BLACK MARKET LIT
About Joseph Cleary.
Friends to the End
JOSEPH B. CLEARY is a graduate of Susquehanna University with a degree in business and a minor in English. He is employed as a substitute teacher. He lives in Westfield, NJ where he also grew up. Currently he is writing short stories while he tries to sell his first novel. His work has been accepted for publication in Talking River Review, Children, Churches, and Daddies magazine, Tortured Souls Vol. l, Frame Lines Magazine, Oracle Stories and Letters, as well as other publications. His short story, “Mick Rifkin,” received honorable mention in Short Story America’s short story contest. He likes to read, write, travel, and spend time at his beach house.
While some might think of his piece, “Friends to the End,” as a horror story, because it is character based he feels it is literary fiction.
Now if you had asked Mike Lonagen about me you would have probably come away with the impression that he didn’t know me very well, that he wasn’t an important part of my life. I always thought he was just being modest. After all, he was the type of guy who would never take credit for anything. But eventually I came to believe that there might have been other reasons for it.
You see we went way back. From what I hear out our mothers used to walk around the park together when they were pregnant with us. So you could say that we were friends from before we were born, which I did. I never understood why as time went on his list of friends grew while mine shrank to practically nonexistent. But I found it amazing that a guy who had so many friends still had time for me.
I think it might have been because we were so much alike. Okay, I had red hair and freckles while he had black hair and brown eyes, and by the time we got to high school at 5’11" he had five inches on me. But those differences were superficial. It didn’t even matter that my left leg was two inches shorter than my right one which caused me to walk with a limp while he was a top athlete. To me we were two sides of the same sandwich. At times it seemed like I knew more about him than he did.
I have to admit that I was a little upset when we got to Junior High and he started to distance himself from me. It was worse when he pretended he didn’t like to do things we used to do together, like writing songs and reading. At first I thought it was because he was ashamed he enjoyed those things. That he needed to be popular more than he needed to be true to himself. But then I realized that he was interested in so many things that some things had to fall by the wayside. Then he could pursue what he was supposed pursue. What he was best at.
As we got older it became apparent that we excelled at different things, which is one of the reasons I’m writing this and he isn’t. Now I don’t mean that as a reflection on his abilities. If he wanted to be a writer he could have become one just as easily as he became an athlete or the class president. But that wasn’t the case with me. I doubted I could be elected to anything, and because of my limp I couldn’t play sports. But those types of activities didn’t interest me anyway. Still, I beamed with pride when he made a speech in front of the school. It was like I was making it.
As time went on he acknowledged our friendship less and less, but I still felt a connection to him. Our growing distance didn’t bother me, even though people seemed to think it should. We knew we were friends, we knew we had history, and that’s all that mattered.
Besides, it was around this time that I began to figure out how things were going to end up. It wasn’t a premonition or anything weird like that, it was just that as a writer I had a sense about the way things were going to go. It’s like when you create characters and put them into a situation. After that you don’t have any control over what happens.
What I’m saying is that I realized things were the way they were supposed to be and as someone who was trying to become a responsible adult I had to accept it. I understood what I had to do and I did it. That was one of the ways Mike helped me. He never stopped on his path and I wasn’t going to stop on mine.
Now some people might think what happened was a bit drastic, but they’re the people who never went for the brass ring, the ones who were afraid to try anything. They just looked straight ahead, plodding through life, not knowing or caring what was going on. Even if it’s obvious that something needed to be done they wouldn’t do it.
But I have to admit, and I’m kind ashamed of this, that when things started to happen I had doubts I was doing the right thing. But that was normal. It’s how you react to your doubt that’s important. There were certain things you had to do in life and if you didn’t do them then things can get thrown off. That’s one of the reasons why the world is on such a strange course. People are not stepping up and doing what they are supposed to do. Society has been pushed away from where it should be and no one seems to care. But I’ll keep doing my share which is all I can do.
So when the people began to scream I was able to find enough faith to know that I had done the right thing. Shrieks of terror abounded as people ran amok, trying to save themselves and their families. But that just illustrates my point. These people didn’t want to do their jobs. If they had a friend like Mike Lonagen it would have been harder for them to shun their duty than to do it. But that was the reason I was chosen to be his friend. It was important that I was prepared for what I needed to do.
But there were other reasons we were friends. One was that someone had to take the blame for what I had done so that I could continue to do the work I was born to do. Because of all those years I spent being friends with Mike I knew his cell phone number and I also knew he hated Jimmy Mulholand. Well actually everyone knew he hated Jimmy for accusing him of cheating on a test. Mike had gotten so mad at the accusation he punched Jimmy in front of three teachers. While Jimmy was exonerated on the cheating charge, he had to sit out a football game that had college scouts in attendance. It wasn’t hard to figure out that he would show up anywhere he thought he could beat the shit out of Jimmy without getting into trouble at school.
It was easy for me to plant the flares, gun powder, and detonation devices in his car. Like I said, no one ever noticed me. It was just as easy for me to go to the field where I had lured Mike and send out a traceable detonation signal. The only explanation the cops had as to why Mike stayed in the field after he detonated the bombs was that he wanted to look down on the neighborhood and watch the destruction. He was so enthralled by what he had done that he couldn’t bring himself to leave.
At first I felt guilty about him going to prison, but like everything else it was meant to be. I realized how right he was for the part from the way he protested as they were putting him in the police car. He made it look like he really didn’t want to get caught, like he was really angry. But I knew that wasn’t true. I could tell that by the look he gave me as they put him in the car. He was just playing his role. He always excelled at what he did and nothing had changed.
Besides, it was just business as usual. He got all the attention while I stayed in the background. Like I said, our individual traits enabled us to do the jobs we were supposed to do. In time I came to understand that his other friends were just for cover. When they investigated Mike’s associates they didn’t even consider me. He had done such a great job of ignoring me that I was not connected to him.
But as well as I knew Mike Lonagen I was still surprised at the grand gesture he made at the end of his life. When he hung himself in his jail cell some people said it was because of the guilt he suffered for what he had done, while others said it was because he could not take being repeatedly gang raped. But I knew it was because he wanted to make sure he got the blame. He wanted to make sure I could go on doing my work. He was a friend to the end.