Oh Suzannah, Don't You Cry For Me

Chapter Six: Ain't No Fortunate One

This chapter is a bit shorter than usual, but I've been a bit busy. My online astronomy professor thinks that it's a great idea to assign twenty videos to watch each week and to fill the assignments with math equations that were barely mentioned in the videos. It's weird that the tests are easier than the assignments (and they're open note, so that helps).

Werewolf by Night was an absolute hit and I can't wait to see more of Elsa, Jack, and Ted. I seriously started freaking out when Man-Thing appeared. He's just so precious and I love him. I'm not ready to cry during Black Panther 2, but the new trailer looks stunning.

On the flip side, TRIGGER WARNINGS about funerals, brief mentions of suicide (it's Hydra, what did we expect), and failed patriotism (if that even needs to be a warning, I don't know, I'm just being safe).

Chapter Six: Ain't No Fortunate One

The clouds floated by like giant fluffy, cotton balls rolling in the wind. The leaves crunched under the feet of the attendees as each person walked back to their cars. A gust of wind picked up a few leaves and swirled them around, before it too, left the two Barnes girls standing alone at the edge of the two freshly dug graves.

The smell of tilled dirt and rotting leaves hovered in the air. The occasional breeze lifted Becca's perfume from her shivering body and mixed the sweet smell of vanilla with the earthly scents.

Flowers from the attendees rustled in the breeze - two matching piles rested on overturned dirt. Etched on the same gravestone as her husband, Winnie's name and dates of birth and death stood out compared to George's faded name. Travis had a separate gravestone, the smaller stone resting beside the larger one.

Winnie had barely made it past fifty. They would never hear her pestering Bucky about finding a wife and having kids. Winnie wanted grandchildren before she turned sixty, and every year since Bucky turned twenty, she had asked him if he had found a wife yet.

Once Travis had turned twenty last week, Winnie's pestering about grandkids began. No doubt she would have done the same for Suzie and Becca on their twentieth birthdays.

Travis—dead at age twenty.

His birthday had been a solemn one. Without Bucky and Steve, the house had felt empty. The cake lacked the flourish Winnie usually had when it came to baking. Most of the ingredients had degraded in quality because of the rationing and Winnie only made the cake out of tradition rather than her usual enthusiasm.

Travis had been hungover the entire day, but at least he wasn't dead.

Eight days ago, they had tried to act like a normal, happy family, even if it felt like an act. After lunch, they all went their separate ways—Winnie and Becca to their sewing, Suzie to her bedroom, and Travis to another bar to drink until sundown.

Eight days ago, both Travis and Winnie were alive, not buried in their church's cemetery. Travis rested alongside Winnie, forever buried in the earth with frozen expressions of blankness. Their closed eyes and neutral faces appeared lifelike yet hollow, like wax figures taking a nap.

It unsettled Suzie so much that she had spent most of the ceremony staring off into the middle distance, avoiding the hugs from other attendees and losing herself in her thoughts.

As much as she hated the constant state of drunkenness that Travis had settled himself into after Bucky's death letter, Suzie would give anything to see her brother's stupid, drunken face again. She wanted him to stumble through the door, flash her a lopsided grin, and pull her into one of his bear hugs.