The Devil on Kazoo

25: The Gibbs

Sebastian Gibbs had never been a leaver before; not when his parents died and his brother needed him, not when times were hard on the wharf, not when the Crumbs were fearing for their livelihood.

But now he had nowhere else to turn. He had nothing else to offer to his friends. It was the first time he felt utterly alone in the world, like nobody, including himself, was there to save him one more time.

Maybe the Crumbs hated him for walking away after losing the station. Maybe that was a good thing.

He walked the length of London, past Big Ben, past Buckingham Palace, and even as late afternoon began to settle in the sky he had no intentions of stopping anytime soon.

As long as he was walking, he was going somewhere. And that was a good feeling for someone who had just lost everything.

Bash did not put it upon himself to understand the inner workings of the universe. He had never even tried. But to put so much work, so much effort into the radio; to have a shockingly successful concert that pulled the Crumbs from the dregs and placed them at the top, only to have the BBC make their own pop station could only beg one question: why?

It was almost too coincidental. Laughable, even.

Bash could take some small comfort in knowing that it took something cosmically out of their control to bring down Crumb Radio. Because as long as there was something, a mere finger hold, to have on that station, the Crumbs would have hung on forever.

As he walked, Bash's steps took him somewhere he hadn't been in five years.

The whites of his Keds stood in contrast to the dark green grass at the edge of the gate. Golden sunshine bathed the cemetery in a shimmering hue, cascading up and down the rolling hills and making the wildflowers shiver with a subtle breeze.

This was not an old, barren cemetery where Edwardian vicars and mournful widows were buried. It wasn't ugly or haunted or ancient, but beautiful in a way that honored the people beneath the soil.

That was why Bash and Smiley had picked it.

They hadn't wanted their parents to have to deal with wailing ghosts and dying trees. Instead, they had wanted their parents buried under an oak tree, where they could sit together and watch Big Ben chime on the hour. Where they could still hear music playing from the pub down the street. Where they could dance and sing.

Bash's heart began to pound as he stepped closer and closer to that exact tree. When he'd buried his parents, he'd sworn to visit them every day. He had promised them he wouldn't forget and that he'd bring a new record every time for them to listen to.

He'd never done any of those things. He hadn't visited, not once.

Maybe it was because it was too painful. Maybe he'd been too scared.

But now, as he crested the hill, he saw their names as bright and as clear as the day he'd left their grave sight.

Anne Marie Gibbs: Born September 5, 1936 - Died June 15, 1962

Markham Jude Gibbs: Born February 26, 1933 - Died June 15, 1962

It was strange that that was all anybody who was passing by knew about his parents. To a stranger, it was just another gravesite implicating a tragedy. Did anybody know that Anne Marie Gibbs could sing like Mahalia Jackson while baking the best blueberry torte the world had ever seen? Or that Markham Jude Gibbs played the meanest fiddle this side of the pond?

That was the problem with graves, Bash thought. Life could never survive on stone.

He knelt on the grass, desperately wishing Smiley was here with him, but knowing that it was his own fault that he wasn't.