A Short Story About A Very Long Love

A Short Story About a Very Long Love

Curtis didn’t die alone. He died exactly the way he wanted to. Eddie made sure of that. He promised Curtis he would. Curtis lay in the big wood-framed bed that Eddie had made for them. Eddie pulled the blankets up snugly under Curtis’ chin. He thought maybe it would do some good. Hopefully he won’t get too cold too fast. Curtis always complained that he got too cold too fast. He put Curtis’ slippers on and covered him with the first quilt his mother Ellie, had made for him. It was the only one he ever used. Greens and blues, reds and yellows, all mixed together in different designs and patterns. He never could remember the name of the pattern she used even though she had told him many times. Eddie also carefully and gently put on him one of the many sweaters she knitted for Curtis, as well. It was dark red – Indian Red, she called it. Curtis always said the color made him think warm when he wore it and so he felt warm. Like a magic spell, he said. That’s the way he felt about the way Eddie loved him – like a magic spell. He said that Eddie caught him that way – with a magic spell. He swore that Eddie’s been using it on him ever since. But a smile creased the corners of his mouth every time he said it.

Eddie put Curtis’ USS Indianapolis survivor ball cap on, too. Rarely took it off. He hadn’t been on that tragic ship when it was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine just before the end of the war, but his older brother Robert had been. The survivors were almost four days in the water. Robert told Curtis how he watched his friends disappear on every side of him, taken by sharks or going insane from drinking in the salty and oil-slicked water or from the sun baking their heads. His brother, Robert also said some of the men believed there was fresh water in the sunken ship below them and would dive under and never come back up. Robert gave it to him before he died telling Curtis to not let them bury it with him. Curtis never forgot and always wore it. He also did not want to be buried with it so Eddie left a note saying he same.

They had no children to pass things on to. They didn’t have much to pass on anyway. They didn’t want kids to pass things to. They had talked about it but Curtis said every bit of love he had was for Eddie and didn’t want to share it with anyone, even children. But even if they had wanted kids they couldn’t. Just the way things were back then. Curtis had grown up with eight siblings and, even though he knew he and every one of his brothers and sisters were loved deeply by his mother and father, for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out how they did it. So, he decided he wasn’t even going to try. Anyway, when he met Edward, he knew right away he was a gift from the Good Lord just for him. Curtis couldn’t stand not being around him. His four years in the army were pure hell. He cried himself to sleep almost every night and he blackened a few eyes and broke a few noses of men who ribbed him for it. He was homesick but not the immature man homesick. His was the deep pining over the absence of his soul mate kind of homesick. Made it hard to breathe sometimes. Freddie, his best friend, understood. He felt it, too, for the man he loved, but they could never talk about it to anyone when other men talked about their wives or girlfriends. They would have been thrown out of the army and God knows what else this men would have done even before they got around to that. The only other time he was away from Eddie was when he went to Cincinnati for Freddie’s funeral. Eddie told him to go, and he would be there with him in his heart the whole time – and he was. More magic, Curtis said and tried not to smile.

The mantle over the bedroom fireplace Eddie had made for him out of a perfectly straight section of white birch tree - Curtis’ favorite kind. He found it in the woods up in the back forty. He carefully split the tree trunk then planed the surface flat and sanded until it was smooth and perfect. On it they had set his grandmother’s Lincoln drape oil lamp, a few framed photos of his and Eddie’s families, and his favorite picture of Eddie when he was just 19, the year they met. There were also a few assorted treasures that they had collected together over the years including the conch shell Eddie was so excited to find on their only trip to the ocean so many years ago.

On Curtis’ chest was the Bible that his parents got him on his confirmation day. It was the only thing that remained important to him after he left the church. No man, especially one that made the promised not to marry, was going to tell him how or who he could love and the day a priest tried was the day that Curtis went home and vowed to never go back. Eddie remained faithful to church, but it never came between them.

Eddie took a last look to see if everything was just as Curtis wanted it. He double-checked the note he had written and laid it back on the kitchen table. He climbed into bed and slipped under the homemade quilt and laid next to Curtis, his lover of nearly 60 years. He gathered him into the spooning position Curtis loved so much. He leaned over Curtis’ head and gave him a gentle kiss on the side of his forehead and his cheek. He took Curtis’ hand in his and interlocked their fingers. “Just go on. I’ll be along in just a bit,” he whispered and laid his head back down, snuggling his face into the back of Ernie’s neck then closed his eyes.

When Curtis quietly slipped away, Eddie was right behind him. Just as he promised he would.