The Gangster

Luc Grayard

He was dead. My best friend Robert Smith was dead. I watched as they lowered his coffin into the ground. It was dark, oak wood and there was a little silver cross on the lid. There were only two other people at his funeral. The priest talked quietly as rain pattered down on the casket and into the cemetery.

The priest rambled on about Robert's life and how God was with him now. But all I could do was stare at the wet lid of the wooden box, and think about the body hidden under it. My brain flashed to the shootout, the gunshots, the bullets, Robert screaming in pain as he collapsed to the ground begging me to save him. And his dead face staring up at me, into me, through me. I cried then, grabbing his shirt collar yelling at him, shaking him, pleading that he get up. But he didn’t get up, he never got up.

The water slid down my cheek along with the tears that had welled up in my eyes as I studied the shiny metal cross on the top of the casket.

“Rest in peace Robert Jacob Smith,” the priest finished.

Carl turned to me, his face solemn, his eyes studying mine “Well, he’s dead,” he said.

“I know,” I cried, putting my head in my hands and turning slightly away from him. The third man, Connor Stonsen said “We have to go.” 

There was no emotion in his voice, as if he didn’t care that I’d lost the most important person in the world to me. 

I walked out of the cemetery staring at the gravel road that paved the gated exit of the graveyard. There were two more funerals that I had already attended. Two more deaths from the bank robbery. Yes, sure, I was rich now, a multimillionaire. But I had to live in hiding from the police, and from myself, because I had let them die.