That’s Where We Killed Joe
By: Reagan Kirby
Tags: Short Story, Short Fiction, Short Read, Written Tales, Prose

Strange that our minds do that.. When you drove past their house you didn’t think, “That’s where Henry and Joe live.” Instead you thought, “That’s where those gay rednecks live.” In a community where everyone could be described with any number of pejorative satire commonly associated with the rural population of East Texas, that word doesn’t exist in social circles the way it does everywhere else. And somehow a slur that could be used to marginalize any one person within a 100 mile radius of that little town, it stands out with them. Not because they were different than anyone else, but because they loved each other.

If he had never decided he wanted to finally be happy, to be honest with himself, to live as himself around each and every one of us regardless of what anyone thought, if he had never packed up that little house his family had been in as long as anyone can remember, and with childlike hopeful naivete hauled his things all the way “over yonder” to Bluehill road, settling in to the long overdue victory of his new life with Henry, he would be here today. And you would have never given him a second thought. You’d be out at the bar with him like you used to, drinking, fishing, like you would with any of the other blue collar guys that have been dug into this shithole for what feels like longer than time. But you didn’t, and he did.

No one wanted to be seen, associated with those two gay rednecks. But that’s really been the problem all along hasn’t it? We shouldn’t think, “ those Two Gay Rednecks,” when we drive by that house. We shouldn’t gossip amongst ourselves, “That’s where that gay redneck got his head bashed in with a lead pipe”, found with the word Fag smeared in blood like the voice of Tex Watson echoing “Helter Skeltar” somewhere far from space and time. We should be horrified when we drive by that house. A stain on our community of bigotted ritual sacrifice. I hope it’s hurtful memory decays our minds until there is nothing left but our own shame. In fact, it should be declared a landmark just so that it can remain there long past our immemorable histories have been snuffed by the futile dementia of time, etching the truth of Mankind’s primal failure forever in place of our “It might have been” legacies.

How miserable the unending fate of love to be. Do all our stories of romance end in similar tragedy? Or just for those that looked themselves head on, unafraid to reflect our shared human experience, with all it’s stammering desperate hope and need. We should think to ourselves, “That’s where joe was killed.” Because he was just a person like anyone else. Maybe only one person was there with him the night he died. But we all killed him. Hate is a seed that grows slowly over time and is watered by the fear and shame in our hearts. It is a collective omnipotent force driven by a labored spiteful energy, and conjured by the malevolence of all men. A vengeful orchestra thundering in our minds, bellowed and quivered by many instruments in discordant harmony.

In the hushed conversations and repugnant stares from the other side of the bar. In the quiet prejudice, whispering inside the empty space that almost seemed to stretch for miles along his favorite Sunday morning seat. In the hearts of every man and woman that wouldn’t be caught dead shedding a tear for him at his own funeral. Every time we drive past that house we should think, “That’s where we killed joe.”