Drawing by Elaine Brown Folgar
Suffering from murmurs of the heart, I first heard of your accomplishments while resting in my childhood bed. Quiver slung across your shoulder, you blazed the world with your prodigious arrows. Forty years later, roles reversed, I stand upright while you rest beneath the winter ground. What's it like down there? If anyone can tell me, it's the other Charles Sutphin, the better version whose fame eclipsed my own moment of notoriety.
Scrawny, bedridden with rheumatic fever, I resembled a mongrel abandoned on a doorstep. One afternoon my mother walked into the bedroom with a clipping from the local paper and read about the other me. She taped the article to the door where the paper browned and curled. That was long ago. The truth is fuzzy now, but I remember what I need to know.
You burst into fame a champion archer, qualifying for the Olympics, representing our city on the world stage while I lay in bed with swollen joints and a fever, watching game shows, gazing out a second-story window at bickering birds and the flutter of leaves.
Since 1928 you've borne my name with dignity and grace. My aim was never true like yours. I missed the mark: you probably read about me. I apologize for any embarrassment the mishap may have caused. (Rest assured—no one ever confused me with you!) After various indiscretions of youth, I slowly curved closer toward center, rehabilitated, straightened my trajectory, while you were master at traveling from A to B in linear fashion—prodigious, in fact, world-class. Eventually we both found a bull's eye: now it's time we get acquainted.
I saw your wife the other day. I drove to the store bearing our name, Sutphin Sporting and Archery, and introduced myself. The guys were skeptical until I displayed a license bearing our name. Your photograph hangs on the wall. Gimlet eye, perfect posture—such beautiful lines—you were a modern-day Adonis: Olympic musculature, calm mien as you held a bow like Orion before the beast. (I read at length during my years of incarceration.)
I learned how to shoot a gun, but it's not the same, and the killing was an accident. The judge conceded as much, though foreseeable and reckless (and therefore criminal). I would've never made an able archer, a toxophilite—too shaky. Someday when I'm down there with you for company, will you watch over me, your namesake, like a guardian angel or the father I never had? I'm hoping to avoid meeting anyone unpleasant (like the man I dispatched), but if I do, I'll apologize and look to you for guidance.
Directions in hand, I rang the doorbell and introduced myself. The old gal, like a parched leaf—your Bernice of 51 years, allowed me to enter. When I told her my name, she knew me from the earlier incident, even as I have known you since elementary school: the man in the clipping, the idealized version of myself mother so adored. Whatever happened to that clipping? Like the tail of a donkey, it was pinned to the door for years until, I don't know, did I snatch it one day and burn it next to the curtains that went up in flames, or beneath the fire in some Homeric offering, homage to your legend like a pyre to my unworthiness—symbolic self-immolation, me burning me. I can't remember.
We chatted amicably for about half-an-hour. I see why you loved her and imagine she held you close and nursed you as you grew ill. She showed me your medal from Mexico City—power to the people—and the trophy case with your awards, mostly from the '60s but also the '70s. Your flame of fame spread locally, regionally, and across the world—spanning the globe—while my renown was parsed and parochial. I hold no ill will for your success.
I explained to Bernice my cockeyed mission—how you were the last name on the list, though I didn't tell the entire story. I'm saving that for you, Charles. Did they ever call you Chuck back in the day? or Sut But? or Buttboy? perhaps the Chuckster? or any number of sobering sobriquets? I like that—sobering sobriquets. I should've been a writer. In my next life, you and I can join forces and write something of value to someone other than ourselves... a suggestion. As for the prevalence of names, I suspect a different standard prevailed in the '30s, before the war to end all wars. You boys of the Greatest Generation comported yourselves differently than my generation. Nicknames were more genteel, I suspect, like Chas or Chuckey Boy—stuff like that.
Anyway, according to the computer, there are three Charles Sutphins buried in Indiana—one interred in Monroe County in a suburban cemetery outside of Bloomington. He passed in 1876 at the age of three. The other us was planted in Boone County in 1922—a few years before you were born—in a place called Oak Hill. He made it to 44, which was probably average back in the day. You're the last on the list and undoubtedly have the most insights to share with a lost soul searching for guidance, for clarity before darkness takes hold.
Bernice provided directions to your grave, so tell me—since it's just us Chucks, What's it like down there? You're the one who never missed and raised three children, lived with the same woman for over 50 years, owned a business, attended church, never killed a man who didn't deserve it. I don't know what happened during WWII, but am confident your hands are clean so—is it cold down there? Do you feel claustrophobic? The worms can't penetrate the casket, though I suspect by now Chuck in Clear Creek is little more than dirt. Are you liquefied? have you deliquesced? puddled in the casket? Or am I engaging in hyperbole to avoid the deeper dilemma, the secret of secrets, held tight by the dead?
Is it hot? Just so? Are there rooms for visitation? Will we meet in person—would you do that for me? If I have a spare moment before that fellow with the hole in his head passes by and pleads his case for my exclusion, will you shake my hand and show me the arms that strung so many bows, shot so many arrows straight and true? I'm sure you've met my mother—she was a huge fan. I fell well short of expectations. Or am I missing the mark again? You're there, I'm here, but we're still together, a few yards away.
With this thing munching me like the bugs surrounding your dark bed, it won't be long before I'm down there, too, you see—safe in the nothing. Getting old is like cancer of the mind—you don't know when it starts, but once it does, not much else matters. Did you feel that way? When did you first realize something was wrong inside where it's dark and warm? It's a creepy thing: you're perfect and strong your entire adult life, then wake up to aching knees, sagging balls. All you can do to combat the obvious is recollect it didn't used to be like this. You can't see clearly. You don't hear for shit. You can't drink like you once did, and it takes forever to take a piss, and now you're dying.
I never had children, so I don't know if kids help or hurt in the process—can you tell me? I suppose spiritually it helps to know your lineage will continue when you're gone. Likewise, I suppose it hurts to observe what you once were and will never be again. You can avoid mirrors, ignore their reflection, but you can't dismiss the back of your hand—the valleys and crevices, ridges and splotches. What must your hands look like now, Mr. Sutphin—are they blackened claws? iodine brown? What does a mixture of formaldehyde and methanol do to skin when there's no one left to grieve?
Someday soon I'm hopeful we'll share the universe as equals. The ethereal will encompass our essence in a particle swirl as the cosmos embraces us in unity. Or if you believe in reincarnation, next time why don't you return as me and I'll come back as you: see how you like it. Until then, I won't desecrate your grave—why would I? I'm going to garland your headstone out of respect for all the other Charles Sutphins of the world—though undoubtedly you are the best, while I remain a murderer and thief, an arsonist and a liar. On second thought, maybe I will piss on your grave. What's another transgression in an avalanche of sin?
