“How did it happen?” Was the first question that came out of Marie’s mouth rationally. The denying and the bargaining part of the equation didn’t come out quite as coherently. She felt every part of her sink about an inch when she first heard the news. The first thing she asked in a panicked state of affairs was whether or not the phone call was a prank. The next thing she asked was if the coroner, a man who has put his entire career into identifying dead things, was sure that her father was really in such a condition. Eventually, she broke down, still holding the phone and banging it lightly upon her head. Through this episode of tears and yelling, Jones was finally able to get enough sense into Marie that she was able to inquire about the cause of death.

Carl Joyce died in the ghastly dark of a Friday night, slipping in the shower and bleeding out from the crack on his head. His neighbor was the one who found him. She was an old woman who would take walks with Carl and help him remember his medications. She let herself into the house and the rest is history.

Using bereavement pay from Daedalus Incorporated, Marie booted up to what used to be Delaware for the funeral. Most of the people around were those that Marie was never really aware of except for in the passing senile ramblings of her father. All the old farts spoke of Carl as a fair and just man, somebody who would help another when they fell down. All of them also mentioned how young he was when he passed. When Marie saw his body for the first time, she noticed that his hunch wasn’t as obvious when he was laying down.

She was the only child that Carl ever had. With no siblings to speak of, she was the sole heir to Carl’s very small savings account, as well as all of square footage within the rusty old shack that Carl had once called his home. She went up to the rusty old shack and let herself in. There was still a brownish stain across a good amount of the bathtub where Carl had his last waking thoughts. Marie found an old stash of cigarettes that her mother had behind the refrigerator and lit up on the back porch, looking out into the ocean.

The Atlantic was alive, a sludge monster trying desperately to claw at the remaining living and breathing folk who had not come under its spell. Marie observed this monster in zoological interest and puffed away at the stale, decades old cigarettes that were currently in her hand. She was procrastinating. Being the last living heir to Carl’s possessions, Marie was burdened with the task of going through all of said possessions and finding which ones to keep, donate, or simply throw in a landfill as snacks for buzzards.

She spent the next hour or so procrastinating. She brought a big, hinky radio out onto the porch from the living room and played muzak, the kind of thing that you would hear in elevators before the elevators too went silent. She sat on the porch, watching the primordial ooze of the Atlantic ocean, smoking decades old cigarettes and listening to muzak until the sun set. By Marie’s best recollection, she now only had two days to sort through all of Carl Joyce’s worldly possessions before having to return to work at Daedalus Incorporated on Wednesday morning.

She slept on the couch that night, feeling as though she had no claim to any of the beds within the house. She was simply a drifting stranger, the thing her father had become to her in his final days of senility. Every couple of hours she would wake up, eventually drifting back off to sleep after realizing that nothing tangible had woken her.

When the sun came in through the pulled-down blinds, marking her eyes like bright yellow warpaint, she finally stood up to face Monday. She made herself a pot of coffee and lit up a cigarette and waited for the mail. One of the tasks she was assigned was to inform the post office that the man who lives in this address is dead, and that they should forward all of Carl’s mail to Marie’s address in Greater Columbia.

So, she waited and waited and waited, all the while drinking cheap, bitter coffee and smoking stale cigarettes. When the postman finally arrived, she got up to meet him at the door. Carl’s house was one of the few left in existence that still had a mail slot on the front door. The postman seemed confused. The strapping young lad was surprised to see someone who wasn’t Carl standing in the house, smoking cigarettes of all things. When Marie broke the news, he seemed more upset than she was when first hearing of Carl’s passing. The postman also described him as a fair and just man, a man you could count on, so long as he took his medications. Marie informed the postman of the address that all the mail should be forwarded to and the postman explained that he would need the address, as well as proof that Carl had actually died, in writing. Marie shuffled about the living room, trying to remember in her caffeine and nicotine phased mind where she had put the documents. The place seemed even more scrambled than when she had first arrived. Eventually, she found the documents and gave them to the postman, who had a last batch of letters to deliver to the house.

The first few things in the stack were nothing of interest, simply bills that have yet to be paid and coupons for local grocers. Then there was a letter from one Stephen Lawrence Jr. This stuck out to Marie because she had actually met Stephen right before she had gone off to college.

Stephen Lawrence Jr. (and he insisted that the Jr. stay on the end of his name, even after his father’s passing) was somebody that Carl Joyce had met during Carl’s brief stay overseas at the end of the war. There was a running gag between the two old men that Stephen had beaten Carl as far as numbers of battles they had seen during the war. The current and final score was Stephen:1-Carl:0.

Carl was something of a society bred type, and only ever went to war because he had been drafted when what was known as Canada was looking to lose. That great nation had decided on Carl because he had been through boot camp at a time of peace in order to pay for his own collegiate endeavors. Stephen was another story, he went to boot camp to avoid college and eventually went AWOL and moved up north in order to avoid the scorn of what was once known as America. Stephen had also been drafted, though his enrollment in what was known as Canada’s armed forces was more of a clerical mistake than anything else. Clerical mistakes were very common among the nations that would eventually be consolidated into five megastates.

The letter from Stephen read like this:

Dear Carl Joyce’s Extended Family,

The Joyces, If You Will.

I was so sorry to hear of Carl’s passing. I immediately penned this letter because I wasn’t sure if I could make it out to the funeral, seeing as that I live considerably far away from Carl now. We have been pen-pals for a good long time, and talked on the phone every single day. Carl stuck to his convictions, even in his final days when his head was turning into a viscous soup. I always knew him as a real stand up guy, even if this might contrast with the view that you, as his family, had of him.

I’d like to remind anybody reading this that Carl isn’t really gone. At the very least, he won’t be really gone for a good long while. As long as you keep the memory of his dopish smile and his unnerving stubbornness in your heart, he will still be with us.

I, on the other hand, will be dead and gone after my last breath, as there is nobody left to remember me. I do not give this as a prayer for pity, because I do not deserve any pity. I was a lazy, belligerent drunk who alienated his two wives and five children and will most likely die with no-one able to make it out to my funeral, for one excuse or the other. I treated life as a right, something that I was entitled to. Carl, on the other hand, treated it as the privilege that it is.

I would like to address the next part to Carl, specifically, though you are welcome to read if you would like:

How’s it going, motherfucker? It’s your old pal Steve. I wanted to tell you some things that I never got to say when you were alive. I figured I might have to wait a comic amount of time to let you know in person, so I’ll tell you them now:

I always appreciated your phone calls. Having someone to talk to when I was making dinner or walking the dog was something I never got to know during my younger years. You were the kindest man I have ever known, and anybody who had the privilege to know you were the luckiest people in the world. I loved you. As much as I could love anybody, I suppose. I can’t wait to see you again, you old fart.

If you’d like to know anything more about the man you knew as Carl Joyce, please feel

free to give me a phone call. The number is listed on the return address of this envelope.

Best wishes,

Stephen Lawrence Jr.