A Rush of Quiet Birds*

1.

When Justin calls, Nohe answers. Gus was arguing with yet another bureaucrat about yet another denial of yet another permit for the water purification so desperately needed by the citizens in this village. Nohe falls to his knees, his free arm clutching at the collar of his shirt. By the time Gus reaches him and reluctantly takes the phone, he somehow already knows.   

They hadn't seen each other in months and now Gus hates those fucking lost months as much as he loves the reason for them. "Don't come," Justin says. "Your dad wants you to honor him by continuing to do your work. Just... just name an aqueduct for him." Gus hears the anguish in his step-dad's voice and thinks "Fuck that," through his own grief. Nohe is already purchasing tickets home online.

2.

On the plane, Gus reminisces about the summer he was 15, of how his dad unknowingly set Gus' feet on his life's path.  He tells Nohe of watching as child-like wonder overtook his unflappable father once. How his dad's eyes widened in awe as they watched a cloud layer hovering just a few feet above Lake Cumberland when the frigid air of water released over Wolf Creek Dam collided with the oppressive heat of a Kentucky August morning. How the veil slipped in that singular moment and let him glimpse into the soul of a man who had never really been a child.

3.

Justin is characteristically stoic throughout. "Thank you for coming - Yes, he loved you all so much - Yes, I'll call if I need anything - The flowers are beautiful, thank you." But Gus can hear the cracking of the shell Justin has pulled around him, see the slipping of a mask bequeathed and borrowed from its previous owner. Can taste the loss emanating from him and knows that it is exponentially greater than his own. Gus loved his father, but Justin LOVES his husband. He wants to make it better, to help ease this transition for him, from husband to widower, from together to alone, from two-as-one to something less. He wants to have the right words when none exist. He selfishly wants to scream his own grief, but it is shouted down by the enormity of another's louder, silent screams.

4.

The flight home is quiet, less filled with spoken reminiscence a father and more filled with unspoken memories of two fathers. Because he knows. Again, he somehow knows.

5.

Gus sits now in the shade of a spreading acacia tree, his back to the bark, feeling it etch its pattern into the skin beneath his white shirt, and watches the sun lower itself gracefully below the horizon. The chants of children playing in the distance tether him, keep him from lifting away on the wings of the birds pushing through the air above him. A breath of mint and coffee brushes his shoulder as Nohe rests against him, holding the phone loosely in one hand, his other gripping Gus' tightly. They are only slightly older than they were, only a month or so away from another, similar call.

6.

They wear their finest shirts, snow white, topped with colorfully embroidered gabis as they stand together watching another day end and their life truly beginning. They each hold a length of colorful rope, wrapping them around joined hands, speaking vows instead of eulogies. Gus doesn't go home for the funeral this time. He chooses to mourn by choosing to love. Because he learned to love from them. In the distance, the wizened acacia tree they grieved and cried beneath yesterday blesses their union, the sun smiles orange against the edge of the world, and a rush of quiet birds paint the sky.