Sledgehammer

Peter moved his feet every now and again, looking down at the puddles he had made with his shoes.  The ground had been softened by the rain, but the day of the funeral the sky was clear, the sun was painfully bright and it was cold enough to snow.  Peter was, as usual, the fattest person in the crowd, obscenely broad, and round and hairless as an egg.  He was sweating hard, even in the cold, mostly from standing, and he knew he would have to throw away his undershirt when he got home.  He would stuff it down to the bottom of the trash bag so it would not look to the garbage man as though he was a fat disgusting fuck, which of course he was.  He hid this from the world by never leaving the house, except once when his mother died, and then when the apartment he had before had caught fire:

the old smoking woman one floor below had fallen asleep with a cigarette in her mouth and when she sucked it in she woke and went blowing and burping fire around her home and died like an excited and ancient dragon this is what the children said


Then his father had died too, but he just sent a card because his father was an asshole-truly an asshole, nearly in the literal sense.  He was a geyser of farts and bad opinions and he stank and his favorite hobby was to raise his son to be just like him.  Peter resisted but ultimately failed.  He also only sent a card because his new apartment was very well lit and he was learning to raise bonsai trees and his little plants needed to have their branches bent and twisted that day.  It had to be done every day of course, but that day they really seemed as though they needed it.
But Peter had ventured out of his house that day because of this: he had killed someone.  No one knew it, but he had killed someone, and his name was Elliot Barns.  He knew a lot about Elliot Barns before he killed him, learned it in a passive sort of way over the past two years-Elliot was engaged to be married two months from now, to a girl name Darcy Barns, no relation.  They had met at an arcade, where Darcy worked.  Elliot had told Peter once:

I looked down at the cue ball and had my stick drawn back ready to strike the ball so hard that the violence of the blow would have annihilated the world around me and left me alone as I wanted to be, standing on a ragged square of green filthy carpet in a world as empty as a broken bottle, but just as I felt it was the right moment to end it all I saw her face framed in locks so black the eight ball turned green and I paused

Or something akin to that.  Elliot also wrote poems but Peter did not like to think about this now, although he had one of Elliot's poems in his front pants pocket.  It was not just a sad thing when a poet died, Peter knew, but a powerfully unfair thing, even if just to the poet.  Poets deserve to live more than the rest of us.  They are better at it.  Just the true poets though, of which there are only about a dozen in the world at the same time.  Elliot was one of these true poets.  It is the false poet who should die early, not Elliot Barns.  Peter did not feel as though he was going to cry, but he was crying all the same.
Yes, Peter thought, I have killed a poet, one of the greats, or at least someone who would have been great, and most definitely one of the true.  I would kill myself if it would bring him back-Peter knew this was a lie, but it dammed the tears for a moment.  Peter began to look for Darcy.  It was Darcy who he would give the poem in his pocket to.  He would make a serious face when he gave it to her and walk away before she could speak.  He wished it was raining-then he could walk away in the rain.  He was looking for her by her hair, which Elliot had said was the blackest of all blacks, as black as the pupils of her eyes.  He did not see her.  He saw Elliot's mother.  He knew she was Elliot's mother because:

she stood closest to the hole and she was quaking when she cried and she was stomping her right foot into the ground in the same spot every time digging a watery pit and trying to kick the world to death and there was a gray vibrating sound coming out of her, a mouthless mother's noise that shook everyone else to the bone and made them feel ashamed and small

Peter was not brave enough to face Elliot's mother, not by a long shot.  He would find the next best thing; if not his mother than his lover.  Also Peter knew that parents were typically only insulted by odd gestures from fat strangers.  Additionally, the poem was not for his mother (usually poets only write one poem for their mother).  It was most obviously for Darcy Barns, wherever she was.  Peter continued to scan the crowd for the girl, but the only black haired woman he saw was at least forty where Elliot was only about twenty-two.  Peter felt a hand cup his elbow and turned around in utter terror.  A small scrawny man stood behind him, his face angular but somehow gentle.
"Excuse me, I apologize, but I don't think I've met you."
"No.  No probably not."
"Were you a friend of Elliot's?" the man asked.
"I knew him.  He was a…good kid." The words sounded like a lie, but for all Peter knew it could have been true.
"I hope so.  He never told me anything."
"And you are?"
"I'm his father.  I…left Elliot.  And Sheila, his mother.  While back.  God, I almost feel like a stranger here.  At my son's funeral."
"You should go to the front of the crowd," Peter said.
"No. No. Do you see Sheila there, the one stomping her foot?  She's not looking for me.  I won't make her find me.  Not today."
Peter felt sick.  "Do you know where Darcy is?"
"Who?"
"Elliot's…fiancé.  You didn't know."
"No.  Of course I didn't.  He never told me anything.  I said that."
"I'm very sorry about him."
Elliot's father smiled, and his face exploded in wrinkles.  "It's not your fault.  You didn't kill him."
Peter did not hesitate.  "No. I didn't. But I'm still sorry," and he thought he could live with half a lie.
Eliot's father began to put his hat on and turn away as the bearers let the straps slide across their palms and Elliot's white casket descended into the grave, slow and lopsided and a little awkward. 
"Oh," Elliot's father said, "There's this girl, up on that knoll there on that bench," he pointed, "she's been looking over here every now and then.  I don't know.  Maybe," and he walked away.
Peter saw her, but he did not move.  It was definitely her.  That hair, it stood out against the clear blue sky like a flag, not billowing but flapping in the wind.  He thought that it must hurt, to have the wind pull your hair like that.  And the hill.  It was short but steep, and Peter knew he would probably die before he could make it to the crest where Darcy sat.  But he would die if it would bring Elliot back, that's what he thought to himself earlier.  But a thought…is a thought as binding as a word?  And he knew it was a lie anyway.  Wasn't it?  He began to walk slowly away from the crowd, which was now crumbling into small black groups, and towards the hill.
He made it to the bottom of the knoll, hiked his foot up on the edge of the mound.  Darcy was staring at him.
"Hey," he said.
"What?" she said.
"Come…come down here a minute."
There was a pause.  "I'm Elliot's girlfriend."
"I know."
"I'm allowed to be here."
"I know.  I have something."
"Come up here."
Peter closed his eyes, sighed, and began walking up the hill.  Somehow, he made it to the top.  He bent over and put his hands on his knees and blew.  His chest hurt and he wanted to unbutton his shirt.  It would be odd to do that, another odd gesture from a fat stranger.  He unbuttoned his shirt because now it was too late to go back.
"Who are you?" she asked.  She didn't sound sad.
"My name is Peter.  Peter Gabriel."
Darcy laughed.  "You're serious.  Peter Gabriel.  Like Sledgehammer."
"Yes."
Peter sat down on the end of the bench.  Darcy was sitting in the middle, but she didn't scoot to the other end.  Peter noticed that their butts, hers small and his humongous, were almost touching.  He would have stood back up but he had a pain in his side that felt like someone was stabbing him with a frozen knitting needle. 
There was a silence.  A still-pond kind of silence and the wind had stopped blowing.  There was only the sound of cars starting, doors slamming, and rubber wheels quietly rolling away on the damp pavement.  Peter took the poem out of his pocket.  It was written on the back of a receipt.  He handed it to her and stood up.
"Where are you going?"
Peter stopped.  "I have to go."
"Where are you going to go Sledgehammer?"
Peter turned, angry.  "You're not sad at all. You didn't even turn the receipt over…there's a poem on there."
"I know: 


What more can they tell you? I am neither good nor bad but a man, and they will then associate the danger of my life, which you know and which with your passion you shared. And good, this danger is the danger of love, of complete love for all life, for all lives, and if this love brings us the death and the prisons, I am sure that your big eyes, as when I kiss them, will then close with pride, into double pride, love, with your pride and my pride.

"It's Pablo Neruda.  Of course Pablo Neruda-that was like his Sledgehammer.  Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto.  That's his real name.  Elliot loved him.  Wanted to be just like him."
"The poem…it was beautiful."
"It still is," Darcy said. "Why are you here?"
"I…I'm here…because I am so fat that I killed your boyfriend."
Darcy stared at Peter, her lips drawn in.  "Elliot died in a car wreck on the way to deliver…oh."
"Yes," Peter said.  "I was hungry."  He began to cry.  "I was hungry…and…I don't leave my apartment.  I was hungry."
Darcy didn't say anything.  She stood up and put the receipt in her pocket book.  Her lip quivered.
"You look at me like that," Peter said.  "You look at me like that, you look at me like you've never been hungry and lazy…you've been hungry!  God damn it!  You've been hungry too!"
Darcy wiped her eyes.  Peter stood, looking at her, still crying, hunched over slightly and thinking that he was going to sink down, down into the cold brown earth.
"I've been hungry.  We all get hungry, Peter.  We all get hungry."
And they went down the hill like this:

together with a little distance between them so the wind could blow through and not looking at one another because they both had to eventually get off that hill and they both decided to do it then and not make an event of it-it was enough to let the wind blow between them and consider Elliot Barns and Pablo Neruda quietly in their own space, intimately with guilt and love forever