S-Town - Chapter III
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Has anybody call you?

Um no, not that.

I know I have few most calls, but don't think they're anybody down there.

Why from.

Cereal and this american life, i'm brian read, this is shit down.

Well, we have some bad news to tell you.

Okay.

john, they killed itself monday out.

Are you kidding me?

no. Oh my gosh, where the everything that happened, we was unable to call yesterday. His body was failed yesterday morning and IT happened yesterday morning and IT happened between last monday night and tuesday morning.

Oh my god.

yeah.

So right .

now his mother .

is OK.

We're just trying to get hard taking care of and make sure SHE don't go to a nurse ent home.

Oh my gosh. And the way .

he killed the self P I drank so on add.

我靠。 I'm so sorry. I.

And we're just we're just IT hard, but we're just mindless trying to focus on his mom right now. They took her to the hospital for evaluation to make sure that mean to make sure that john had and tried to give her any of IT but her system was clear. She's been helped and everything SHE SHE knows what's gone on SHE understands to a certain point and SHE just basically wants to go home. And i'm sorry.

i'm still trying to take all this and i'm trying to follow what you're saying, but it's just so shocking the hearing you but it's not all registering and art, you know, he emailed me the other night .

like how do you I can not working out how quit.

John sitting in the studio in a days on the phone with skylar. I search my inbox for the last message from her root ngugi the sun im john used for his email address. I mean, the last thing he wrote me. I mean, I have didn't even get a chance to totally read all this. He sent IT on sunday, father's day eight fifty five pm.

And IT happened monday.

It's wednesday now, early evening. Just three days ago, john was alive, standing at the computer in his bedroom, emAiling me, thinking of me, sending me a graph of the increasing gold reserves of the russian central bank, saying, what do the risky know that we don't? I don't know why we do this. Mom told that someone has died. Hold of our last interaction with them in point to the nearness of in time to explain our disbelief as if time gets a shit .

then and the best you're feeling, the time starting that i'm feeling you did. You probably did a message back.

You were busy. I just .

roll back today like a couple hours ago.

I understand how you're feeling. We're all fAiling. IT, I talked him friday. Not me. John, stay on the phone for four hours.

No, ah, you know how you can get this up to him and like, not though we set on phone for four hours and he was fun. I knew he had issues, but he was fun. He talked about how bad this world was, like the mind that we talked about.

The other was how bad this world was and what is coming to in everything and how main jet should bring any more kids, and nobody else should bring any more kids into this world because of how bad is going to end up get. And like, but he and he was fun. He was just like a casual conversation about.

He was a joint conversation. John talked about committing suicide. He talked about IT to me, and I knew that he talked about IT to others.

He never called me the verge of IT or anything like that. When he came up, IT was usually very matter of fact, like, of course, this is my plan. I'm going to do this someday.

The way someone might talk about the plans to retire or move. John actually wrote me several emails that sunday father's day, the night before he committed suicide. The one about the russian gold reserves was the very last, but there was a string of messages just before that.

I'd recently sent on a series I produced for the american life about the fraid relationship between cops and african americans. While I was working on IT months ago, I hadn't been so good about keeping in touch wood, john. So when I was finished, I wanted to share IT with them so we could hear what to kept me so busy.

On sunday night, he wrote me as he was listening, telling me how disgusted he was with the police abuses I was reporting about how our country was not worth defending, how he would let his mother lay over and die before he called his local police. And then he sent me an email title collapsed, which is the email that I saw comment, but didn't get a chance to fully read, because that is very long. John professed by saying that he was inspired to spend IT after listening to our cop episodes.

And then the bullet point start. Ninety nine percent of linos gone since nineteen fourteen. Ninety percent of biotin fish gone since one thousand fifty.

Fifty percent of grapery ef gone in nineteen eighty five. Ocean plank in declines of one percent per year means fifty percent gone in seventy years. Ocean acidification doubles by twenty fifty, triples by twenty one hundred.

One million humans. Net are added to the earth every four and a half days. We must produce more food in the next fifty years than we have in the past ten thousand years combined.

Earth has only sixty years of farming left at current world soil degradation rates on and on. IT goes like this, like his letter of expenses and that's after a disclaim er from john saying, note that I do not include energy or economic issues with this list. It's tumming.

I found out later the john and actually write this list made its way around apocalyptic websites and common threats. So you'd expect this kind of thing to be wildly inaccurate. But after checking some of the statistics, IT doesn't seem to be when I look at this right now, in the shadow of john suicide, I guess it's clear this was a fixation of a person in a deeply depressed mental state.

But when I read IT just three days before, I didn't see that hell. I didn't see, as I was looking at IT again today, just a few hours before skylar called when I finally set down to reply to IT and told him, quote, this is fascinating. I just saw that as the Normal, cynical, jumped e mclaurin become used to. I saw as a glasses full of piece, all the world was a ship town to john, and he bought every disGrace of that world as heart.

Skylar tells me that as we speak, Tyler, her brother in law, is at the hospital with john mom working to get power of turney. They can bring her home and care for her in her own house. Sky is john called a message.

Several people, the ninety killed himself, and that Tyler was one of them. IT also appears that Taylor was the last person besides danny mother to see him alive. I ask if there will be a funeral.

They're working on that scale, says, but yes, there will likely be a service in a few days. Skylar says. It'll probably be small, just the goods and family.

And john mom, I mean, I want to I would like to. Calm down and see you guy. I do not know. I like, you know, I don't know what's appropriate given.

I mean, you know, I was doing, I was slowly doing a story that involved john and I got to know women care about him and know you guys. And i'm not sure where that leaves me. Like who am I to this this situation? You know.

it's like if if he wasn't anything to this, I won't got.

Before johna I ever spoke, he warned me in an email quote, I must tell you, I will take a long time for me to just impress on you what a crowd fuck town and count y this is with john was alive. I had trouble seeing the shit town the john was seeing. I saw parts of IT, but not the full and glorious relief in which he saw IT.

But in the aftermath of his death, a whole other story unfurl LED in front of me, peace by peace, a story I could picture john laying out for me with outrage and humor and sadness. Maybe even written by one of his favorite short story writers, I could see john handing IT to the next visitor. He cooks down a bit county as their bedtime reading, saying, read this.

It'll help you understand this place. I've lived nearly every one of my days. It'll help you understand me.

John brought me a bit county to search for a body of the man he believed wrongly had been killed by Kevin bert. John hoped if we could expose that murder, uncover the body, so to speak. Finally, everyone would see shit town .

for what IT was.

But that dude in the fight with k. Bram, his, wasn't the body that would expose the town. Jones was.

The day after I learned of john suicide, I called Tyler to give my condolences, and also because he was seemingly the last person to be with john, besides john's mother, to see if something that happened that are prompted john to do this. Now I tell him, mom, sorry, ask him how he's holding up. And immediately he starts telling me the story of the days. In moments leading up to the suicide, I called them from my own phone, but I interrupt and ask if he mind me calling him back from the studio. Haman, i'm to see okay.

well, i'm going out from the beginning. Yeah from father's day course, he wanted spend father's die with me and weight and plan something cause, you know, I I never had no daddy working down. He's just beat on a daddy of cat.

They planned to spend fathers stay together, but in the end they didn't, because john went and did something a couple days before they may tell her mad.

I was pissed off, adam, because I brought my Young and 我 了 么？ Yg, 你在不在 playing in the， sorry, you know, and genes had me give mehra he want to make to see, said, not you and a mother girl said, was a kind of poking adam said, john, need to get a hair like my day ha, and he said, well, you have enough at Julia tt, war, not a woman's prison in in that case me all you know my little girl did not understand but they made, I .

don't .

know in, I should know, well, will get a sure where we going we going going over to the earth and I calmly, is that there but that he say, at peace mouth and you know I didn't show up the next morning and didn't talk to my day it's come satay not he called me and I have been ignored him but I finally actually not that them and how about broke down plan and whenever I tell him because he was wash on as the job, I just don't understand why you say you do the shit that you say in front of me.

I can can a handle but when you say the shit in front of my irl, I said, I just don't know how to take you but I said, I just figured you was going to run me out and he said, no, that 一个 one a day was run you off and what held the outside to make you mine？ He didn't have not worn clue what he said. That pissed me all oh.

really i'm sure he meant IT IT as a joke that went wrong. You know, like.

I guess .

yeah like .

I don't disciple my kids know so hey, thanks. I want you up in first version so .

did he say was sorry what did he say when told him.

yeah, i'm. He told me, love me, I told my love and and I think that might have been sunday, because the next morning I went over there and this .

was monday to and twenty second, two thousand and fifteen, the day john died, tell us, says they called that their father's day.

I suppose, know, do yard worker something? And we decided that was going to fish on the cob risk. Lot of everybody told her, everybody, that I was over.

Country is serious, but we are really at fishing that day. We had a great day. We had a great day, except for the few spare ahead.

tell you. So he bought on a small bottle of whisky, and john was sipping IT as they drove to the copper river. John was getting nostalgic and blue as they rode along old back roads where he used to drive with his dad, who died years ago.

They went by his aner trude's old house, his old girlfriend's house. Everybody's dead and gone. John told Tyler.

and he canna get up set on the right down there. Once we get to the river he was on. We had a good time and .

and would you just .

talk about so you just want to just stop, take time for yourself and just enjoy law is this is the most important your life talking about being after doing that river here here, you know, jack one. I mean, here we went in no deep water than about why step. And he went to go over without, 没有 那 男朋友， like kid.

And we went up and down river, and staff and I slip, no rock funds and crops held much. And 15呢？ And he never does stuff, looked that before. So IT is low to him.

Did IT seem my kids .

saying goodyer?

He whisper panel download from the .

downstream. really?

no. Yeah.

Tyler, i'm really sorry, man. I'm really sorry. That's .

really hard.

At the end of the day, tell the drop john off his house.

When I brought home, he was just about that. They had a pat, a wild party when I in the panel, while turk, you have anybody gobin, i'm and I shouldn't left that drone, but I I then get tired from being out all day, and that I had get back home to compete. But he would take me to come back over there.

back in his trailer with his girlfriend and two of his Young daughters. Tell a cap, getting messages from john. He says john was impLoring him to come back, come back, put your kids to bed and come back. And he also started brightening .

to kill himself. He takes to make couple times, tell me, he said, I got all the messages he said they saw can do to keep both muscle brings out here and drive.

You I update the hallways and our place, just worried about them I was pretty down concerned but you know, he he can said this stuff so many times and my lady was sitting here on pt women because i'm look, i'm about to just go over and SHE said, taller if you keep run over over every time he says you can kill us self, you gonna go .

from the shit.

Just keep down there and you can just, you live your whole laugh around john, cause us what is got and he didn't just getting so he don't want me to leave. You know, i've been down there all he wants me stayed on there. Ala, and i've got close.

I've got a bed in the down and room. So, oh my, i'm just pretty much reside there anyway. I got that tight care, mom, take care and taking care. The dogs, the world, everything it's update the pain on me. So after a year, you dry red now winter and light my last down and witnesses .

the next morning, Tyler says when he got the news, he went to john immediately. There was police tape up. IT was a crime scene. John's body had already been taken away, but Taylor noticed something on the porch floor and stoop to look, there were john's glasses twisted up with some kind of blood bombs on the lens. Is that where john died on the porch?

I had been sleep. I had been eight. 就是说。 这些 i felt for Tyler .

not only was john， as john put IT himself a kind of ursa s father for Tyler, he was the person Tyler in almost every day with. He was also his employer, his source of income and of stability. Tell you, tell me about something else that happened right after john died the next day with the house empty, he made sure all the dogs were fed.

locked up all the doors. He means .

john's mother, mary Grace.

our mom. So well, on my way up to the house bal, I got a focal.

He was from a married couple. Toor didn't know the woman was johnna cousin. China husband said they just driven in from florida where they live, and that they were at john's place right now with a local police officer trying to get into the house, which was locked. The police officer had told him Taylor probably had the keys and the cousin's wanted .

him to come back and let them min, time to go check check on mom to hospital. I said you had been to the hospital yet I said, no. Um we was. We was trying to get some close out the house. And, you know, IT IT was sound and crazy from the story.

Had you ever heard about them before?

No, never, don't always told me that he had some distant cousins are keen. And he said they want nothing. But well, I turned around and went to the house.

We went back to john's house in while I come on driveway. I called the hospital room and I get mom on the phone, you know, john mamo, I tell us in mama, you couse are down from Flora. I said, have i've been bothered to see you? SHE said, will lower now after.

Well, I said they're at your house trying to get in. I said, what do you want to do? SHE said, do not let him in my house.

SHE said. They even come up through the same day year they are going in my house, SHE said. Do not let me in us at just now when he reached .

the end of the long driveway teller. So I wood stock copy nose and a middle aged couple waiting firm in front of the house.

So I walked after just as polite as can be. I said, i'm sorry, you don't know me, but mom tell me herself to not let anybody in her house, SHE said. We are to come to the hospital in body. They blow up, they start questioning the fell that was rather said, I don't they around in my face I mean, I was furious that I won't learn in the house .

caller was angry, but he says he tried to stay calm.

I said, you haven't even want to check on that poor lighting, said, you have a down about her that looks like and the woman was just, she's person. He said he will not come back to this house.

In the in forty minute slighter they was at the hospital in front of me in their pretending to craw Tyler had not .

let the cousin s in the house. Instead they were now all at merry Graces bedside and Taylor says the cousin s were going on about how heart broken they were, about john Brooks, how glad they were to see mary Grace. They started seeing relatives they had in common, talking about other family members who .

died over the years I was in their trying to squeak the tera. So what you made so sorry, they are just not on act and you could tell you about IT.

Tell says mary Grace explained to the cousins who he was that john loved him to death and that he'd been helping take care of her in the house for several years. He says he told them he wanted to go home and have Tyler keep taking care of her in the dogs that he was planning to go with him to the family lawyer's office tomorrow and get the legal stuff in order to make that happen.

Antler says he and mary Grace also had plans to make funeral arrangements for john. The cousin protested a bit, mary Grace insisted, and eventually the cousin gave in. SHE said, okay, if that's what you both want and they left Tyler and merry Grace together.

But the next day, Tyler says, when he went to take mary Grace home, the hospital ouldn't release her. John t. Said, mary Grace had alzheimer's. I've since learned SHE doesn't, but he does have significant dementia in memory loss.

So even though he was demanding that they let her leave with Tyler, a case worker said he couldn't because they deem her mentally unfit to make decisions for herself. And Tyler isn't next of kin. The cousins .

are folks. Nothing that Tyler .

is sure. The only reason there here is to cash .

in on john's estate. His mom has got perils and dance, and then they got, I know, is ago and he show me ago. I don't know what that now, why not? No, domo wolf, millions. But i'm worried about mom on and purse and that property. And you study the band.

go according to taller. Right now, as he and I speak, mary Grace has technically been released from the hospital, but he still stuck there because her cousin has to come to take out. She's pacing the hallways, he says, frustrated, confused, s crying, missing her puppies, asking tiger White, john abandon them like this, asking him questions. He's also asking himself.

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I'm chef rick Wilson son, and I used made in cocher for full details. Visit made in coquart dot com. That's M A D E I N coquart dot com. I've been told by skylar that john funeral would be small, probably just the goods and family and his mother, mary Grace.

But when I arrive a Green pon prepare italian church on this sweltering monday morning, a week after john died, june twenty nine, two thousand and fifteen, far more people have showed up than I expected. There thirty may be forty people here. And I know who.

Very few of the mr. We're gathered in the cemetery behind the church, where small tent and some chairs are set up for a graveside service. John's coffin is suspended above an open grave next to the headstone for his father, tom mclaren.

There is no headstone for john. People filter among small clusters, shaking their heads, talking lowly modern, certain words that I overhear again and again, in particular, the words so smart and genius. Tyler is wearing a black t shirt for the occasion, along with dark jeans and boots.

He's Carrying a frame picture of john as a boy to give to john's mother. And one of john told children's books from when he was a kid. The taller says he'd recently been reading to his daughters.

I came to the function with the goods and family. Tyler let our procession here on his motorcycle, but it's clear now that we arrived that they are not the ones running this event. A cat lake pulls up close to the cemetery gate and out of the back sea climbed ry. Grace with her cane, escorted by a middle aged couple that I assumed to be the cousins, everyone, hutches, as they walk very Grace to a chair directly in front of the coffin. We all move in close to the grave.

We are gather today by the right down rose.

An older man introduced his brother. Ben was in a wheelchair with a fedora. His lap begins to speak. I record on my cell phone.

A father god, we can say, with a small, I had think I have been over here. Yes, I had believed to see the good in the land.

Immediately we're praying and immediately undescended. Because john was an atheist st. And not a casual atheist or an atheist st. By default, he was a fervent a critic of religion as the move less of Angels for IT.

In the very first time I talked to john, he made clear how ya critical he thought religion was, how vacuous and damaging he could be straight of mean about IT. He created video mash PS of footage of warship speaking in tongues, dancing around and rolling on the ground, such a songs like this. He once mentioned to me in passing that his favorite bible verse was a eko twenty three, twenty.

He didn't recite the verse, but i've since read IT. The choice is line is, quote, there SHE lusted after her lovers whose generals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. Watch their gear drop when they read that sweet little bit .

of information johna told .

me in his twenty minute service, brother ben only talks briefly about john himself. One thing I knew about john, he says, and all of you would probably echo this.

应该 是 做 very， very small, very little.

Brother ben says there's a story someone told on the other day from when john was a boy. My Grace went to a local garage and asked if they had any extra .

motors or sun can taker with mother and IT. All right, he took IT down and couldn't back together just for.

He put IT back together just perfectly, he says, and that's a story. John had a brilliant mind. Brother ben says mechanics will call him for help with pescia motors. And then we're back to script. Sure to me, IT was sad to see the life of someone with such personality remembered with so little to see john honored with a service so utterly devoid of him but for the person here who matters most, mary Grace IT does seem to serve its purpose near the end, as brothers band is beginning the final prayer, SHE thanked him for helping lay her son arrest.

Good IT makes me feel good that you .

thought so much of them. He says enough to put my peace.

Mary Grace begins weeping, Taylor's mother, who I met for the first time right before the funeral, standing next to me, SHE has tears in her eyes. And as mary Grace speaks, totherhouse m clutches my ARM. It'll always be with me in my heart and my mind.

Mary Grace cries. I just cannot bear the thought of not having him the cause and puts her hand. And mary Grace, brother van, is going to say a prayer now.

He told her, thank you again. Remind that he can. But do things not.

When the service is over, there's a melling about people give their condolences to marry Grace. Then the cousins helper told the car Tyler is there, and for a few moments I see him and mary Grace talking. Then I see the female cousin intervene guide mary Grace, away from him.

Later, Tyler will tell me that he was just telling mary Grace that he loves her, that he hopes he gets to see again, and that SHE thanked him for being by her side and said he was welcome to go back to her house anytime he wanted and then, according to Tyler, the cousin jumped in and said, no merry Grace, that would be trust passing. Even without being able to fully hear this interaction myself, I can still sense that it's a tense moment. And as the cousin's Walker Grace to the car, I can hear Tyler's mother half shot to them. I hope you do the right thing. Then mary Grace gets in the catalog and is driven away.

One script, her brother been referenced to john funeral with luke, twelve, fifteen. Brother then told us, take he, beware of covert ously. For a man, a person's life consists not in the abundance of things which we possessed.

Life is not stuff. Brother ben told us death, though death can leave a lot of stuff behind, he can go very quickly from the spiritual to the material. The way Tyler understood IT.

John wanted to leave him and his brother something when he died, which was my understanding too. John told me as much on several occasions, and minutes before he committed suicide, john texted Tyler saying, quote, anything you want in this house, you can have unquote. Obviously, those communications don't mean much legally without a will.

And that seems to be the situation Tyler and skylar told me. After john died, they heard that he didn't have a will, which was shocking to them seeing what's happening to Taylor. Watching the cousin freeze amount of john's affairs, IT doesn't seem like what john would have wanted.

In fact, that strikes me as exactly the kind of scenario that would have tormented him, someone who's vulnerable like Tyler, trying to stand up and take responsibility for making things Better and still getting screwed. Taylor has been a consistent part of john's life in recent years. Meanwhile, Taylor says the cousins haven't been around for decades. I don't think this was the clock makers intention.

I find IT hard to believe that I am want to taking his life without having a well. This is the same guy who get detailed track of every expenditure he made, blocked every shot as dogs got for him to leave none of his affairs in order, no arrangements for his mother's care. It's weird. But I visit his lawyer, the memorably named boozer downs, and he confirms .

that he didn't do anything that would help the situation really?

no. Will john never finish IT?

He says, but i'd been gone hundred three years. Twenty get stuff in hour.

and he just won't .

just what we talked to bit, but never would do anything.

buzz says. John discuss suicide with him too. And besides discourage him from doing IT, he at least tried to get him to make proper arrangements. For instance, he suggested they find some nonprofit or other organization to take care, the property and the maize and the dogs.

so we can find some, but we can historic trust. There are lots of things. And he didn't have any faith in that, he said, although some, which is to discuss that, and nobody y's going take care of IT anyway. Enough spent too much money in, they're settle out. Smart is .

thoughtfully.

as he was, about some many things. What can you tell us what you really wanted?

At one point, I asked users what were actually talking about here when IT comes to john, the state, what assets are there? And this, when we get to that, that boozer becomes kind of cryptic.

That is one thing he asked me not to mention to people. He had an idea of what he wanted to do with this assets. Know where he really did IT.

I don't know. So he told you head plans for his assets, yes, so he wanted to keep garrette.

Yes, he didn't tell me where was and how going to do this. He just tell me the form IT was to what he was gona convert test.

Did you talk about being unbanked? Yes, this is something john mentioned me once or twice that I didn't pay much attention to at the time. But now that he's dead, suddenly feel significant.

He said that he was unbanked that intriguingly, he kept his money and assets somewhere other than a traditional bank account. John is probably no surprise, was not a fan of financial institutions. What happens in the case of someone being unbanked?

I've never had that before, I don't know. But I guess if you think somebody has some viability, they've hidden in the walls or in the matter or something, you go looking .

it's literally a treasure hood.

I never i've never had that. I know I would guess. So that's like my best guess, you know.

While limit losers office, he invites someone over to meet me that he thinks I should talk to her. Him is fate gamble. She's wood stocks town clerk and in fact, fee not.

Taylor was the last person to speak to jump before he committed suicide. Now go back to her office at town hall, just down the road from boozers. It's a small building with the mayor's office in IT, in the woodstock police station, and a common room that retirees play cards in.

In the mornings, some game called skip bow, but on one tuesday a month becomes the municipal court room. Fate tells me SHE met john when he first started as clerk ten years ago. He had been friends with the woman who'd been told clerk before her. And once fade took over, he came into her office one day and introduced himself.

IT was funny and reducing step because he his ineradicable was, I guess, you know who I am and I said now certain he said, alan, john, be make 了 more and from that day on， know I ve always john big john was .

swing by town hall n shoot the breeze with fee. They compare how the plum trees were doing. He chat about sacrificin, count with the town building inspector fade, visited johns maze and admire his flowers.

But john would also complain. Phase says about the way the town was run, the economy, the state of the area. He used town hall the same way.

He used toller's t too parler face as he in the building. Inspector tried to get join to put his intellect productive use to pick a project that would help the town and work on IT. The inspector even gave his first computer and old one.

They are lying around to encourage them to do research about local environmental issues for them. But I never ended up happening. And in the meantime, john t started calling fy, talking about suicide once in the last year, even called her at night, sounding as if he was about to go through with that. He had always been able to talk him down. Until last week.

I was a eating dinner after a feral vision, and he called me on the phone and told me, do you want this?

Are you comfortable talking about? yes.

My phone running at nine fifth day and IT was alleged and just like key always answered, he wonder, know if IT was very gamble and to me and he said, this is jumping, momo. I knew who IT was and he said, I just wanted listen to me. I'm going to commit suicide tonight and and I just want you do not call the police, because if you do, I will shoot them.

He was very hiked up, and I was just said, john, john, please just listen to me, listen to me and he would like, this is not going work to not you going taught me out of you. Just listen to me.

John gay fame structure, he told her to utilize his dogs. He told her where to find an envelope with cash to pay for that.

and was telling me about what he was gonna do IT weird. He was telling me, step by stay up about. He was actually mixing something, getting something other refrigeration riter.

And he was going to a drain this, and he tell me what I was, the potential salad, and that I would be quick. So at, listen in a sajan you do not want to do there. I said, he says, i'm doing IT roughly. I am getting IT other refrigeration and the end he started drink the mixture and then he was screaming at me, tell me how burned how he how horrible IT was .

the .

pin and then I heard the screen doors um and then the IT just wait.

totally silent .

except for dog Sparking.

Fair had no idea that that's what happened. That's horrible .

every night. It's a reply and .

steel just .

there's not a net that I don't think about him that I don't have wake up in the in drama about IT or uh, thinking about him. Not a night.

Fate tells me he understands that to someone hearing about this, IT could sound like what june to her was cruel, like he must have been angry at her to submit such a terrifying traumatic phone call. But SHE says IT wasn't like that. Ji didn't get the feeling that he was taking something out on her.

IT isn't know why john chose to contact her. Maybe he just wanted to talk to someone he trusted. Maybe he thought he could handle IT SHE says he did give her other instructions besides to utilize the dogs, but she's vague with me about what some of them were.

SHE says he told her where to find, quote, certain things on, quote, that, quote, he wanted me to know where certain things were, what those certain things are. He leaves to the imagination faces. John also told her that a bunch of tillers belongings would be in the workshop. And well, face says john didn't mention anything that night about a will or leaving assets to Tyler and his brother. He says he had told her previously that he wanted to do that, just like he told me.

Right after the funeral, there's a lunch at the house of someone who works at the local bank, but Tyler and the rest of the goods and don't feel welcome there. So they go to other's grandmother's place instead.

This is their family headquarters pretty much all day and into the night, even go to grandis and expect to find some combination of Tyler family hanging out around the little concrete table under the train back, which is where they are now having their own post funeral gathering. People wondering and now seeming a little lot of IT saying, the things you say in a day like this, things like this, all feels like a bad dream. And I keep thinking, I can just pick up the phone and call me in the gathering includes Taylor's uncle Jimmy, his mom's brother.

One meet up in nineteen ninety, ninety three, was beating on the door of somebody's trailer and got shot in the head as a result, and because I was too risky to take the bullet out, is still lodged his brain twenty two years later. Anyway, IT affects the way Jimmy communicates. He .

understands what's going on around him, death, death, death.

But his vocabulary is limited. So as title tells me, how hurt is that? The cousin stopped from talking to john mother after the service. Jimmy, kind of just chance and affirmatively in .

the background. I don't know what folks think when I look at me, but they don't have a fuck club. They look at my tatoes and scruffy fies. I guess I don't know. They just judge am my names set matter at a funeral thanking none of these folks even knows me really and they have no idea that are paid for the fucking tip that a woman's cane out there, you know, on my simple shit, like there, I don't mind hill banks, but it's just none of them have a clue what are not made to that little woman.

No money.

money, money.

Maybe tethers naive to think that he could add an eighty year old woman with dementia to the roster of people he's responsible for taking care of, but it's sort of sweet that he wants to. IT would be nice if at least he could stay involved in her life and keep some connection to john's life. Maybe take care of the dogs, maintain amazed, take partners funeral.

He didn't get to speak at john service. I ask if he had words in mind that he wish ed, he could have shared in remembrance of this friend. There are something you'd would wanted to say could say that now what would you have wanted to say there?

Well, jam .

by I an.

he had a note. Did I care about his eyes? You know, because I might when I was there. From there, he's say hello of you, mine every time, and I I love you to job.

And sometimes he's so just cause I say I love you don't mean i'm trying to give up you, but anything I said, I know job. I yeah down because I know. I mean, he he might I head a little sugar in his time but hey, no, you know he didn't never try anything with my lock out you know of my that's why .

you would have said.

yeah.

When john introduced themselves to me via email, he began quote me, I am forty seven, unmarried, sort of a ham like A M let's just say I might be a fan of David sadia, or in other words, I might know who audry lord and and bananas, if you get the idea, of course, that could get you killed around here. I took that to mean john was gay, though, when we talked about IT after he told me that he gone both ways in his life.

And whenever he came up, he never called themselves just gay. IT was always semi homosexual or a semi practicing homosexual or sell L A bit homosexual. I haven't been sure of other people around here knew this about john if Tyler knew, but apparently he does and he's fine with that which is not nothing in bp, coley, or at the same moment in the summer of two thousand and fifteen, IT is one of the handful of places in the country defying the supreme court decision declaring same sex marriage of constitutional right by refusing tissue marriage licenses to same sex couples.

I got a queer bone in my body, Tyler says. He used to tell john. But if you do that, your business, I can imagine john appreciated that about Tyler.

Tyler will be the one who makes john tombstone. It'll a couple months before he does that. But as time goes on, no one else will get done.

John love gold cemeteries and grave stones, and it'll start nagging a Tyler that hang in the ground, composing in the worm dirt without so much as a marker taller, won't any money for IT. So he'll find an old piece of great concrete, actually, a leg off one of the benches at the table and back of his granny house. And he'll painted a rich Brown so that IT looks like a carved piece of oak or Cherry, almost.

The cement is curve with a design in IT, like two base clifts. The whole thing, once it's painted, look like the flourish on a fancy pillar. When he finished IT, Tyler will hall the heavy stone into the cemetery in placed at the head of johns grave.

It's shorter in the quarter, the most tombstones, and will look like nothing else in the whole cemetery. On top of the stone, Tyler will inlay a pretty piece of stained wood into which is burned. John b.

Maclaine, one thousand nine hundred and sixty six to two thousand and fifteen with his favorite photo of john sealed into IT with polar urbane a picture of john leaning back in a chair outside, feed up on a table shirt off his chest of tattoos in nipple piercing in its full glory. It's a version of john that was hidden from the everyday world, a version that most of the people is funeral, surely did not know, but Taylor did. What's the name of the book that he brought to his funeral?

Just only join. I got IT there. I read IT to the girl's last is everything I could do to finish IT. And I gave the girls a hole and try to get out the romans face because I just folking cme MaaS out of the dowbly.

But it's .

just a key book in its I know he wanted to be a dog or something like that, some which put his bail on women. If he said he was there, he would be there, but he wouldn't know how to act, be in all, think he wanted to be. He is john.

Yeah, just broke my china read IT to a woman the baby knows is his book and they are theyll talked to tell all the time. I know you must join daily in. We miss some two and we're gone. We're not one color and john's books daily and stuff worked here is just.

还 没事， 风格。

John once said to me, Tyler and bodies, everything I hate about this shutdown in one convenient package, what he meant was that either was the product of everything he hated of violence, abuse, injustice, hopelessness. And john was trying to counteract all that by .

helping Tyler.

As Tyler and I were talking after john's funeral, he tells me, and uncle Jimmy confirms that he and john had recently reached the kind of understanding where he wasn't going to charge him anymore for general upkeep of Jones property.

cutting the grass, printing the maze, because kind responsibility, because lucky was gonna man one day or something.

Thank you. He told he won't .

when labor no bus and cah because he said we won't appreciate that. So he's going labor's go.

And he liked .

that in the property. It's got one hundred forty.

Eight out there of focus and focus the staff.

Toller tells me there's no way he's giving into the cousin so easily. He's already begun fighting back. He's been going over to john's place retrieving things.

He doesn't think john wood have wanted his cousins to have stuff that, as Tyler puts IT didn't need to get into the wrong hands. The police have threatened with tress passing, but he hadn't let that stop him. The cousin put a padlock on the front door, but what they don't know, he says, is that he also has keys to the back.

He says he took john's laptop, and then he gathered up every stitch of paperwork he can find in the entire house, down the birth certificates, indeed, and johns grandfathers, old railroads, stock papers. He also took john two vehicles right now, tower's holding IT all here at his grandmother's house to protect IT from the cousins. He's also meeting with a lawyer. He's going to try and fight the cousins the official way through the courts. But if that doesn't work, he'll take matters into his own hands.

The summer is here, at least the sky is overcast and. 爱茉莉。 SHE watches his flowers good s town is .

produced by Julie snyder and me with editing from iraq lass saracenic and new drumming. We need danger fields as our digital editor. Starting kind is a story fact checking in research by ben fAilin sld's, our director of Operations liar Smith mixes the show and material is our technical director.

The s town staff includes Emily condon, alease bergeson, Julie whittaker and Kimberly henderson. Music for the show is composed by Daniel heart, ila to negro tray powder and magic ini music supervision by Daniel grave. Our website is s town podcast, that org. I love our website, special things to enda m. Morales and Sandy hony as town is a production of cereal and .

this american life, and as three years go by, SHE will go old and die.

No one left for G.

Emily can just see this nothing.

Facing the. Protecting her from pain. And as the years go by, SHE will go and die.

No one left for G.