Sunday, October 26, 2008

31. journey home (houston) 1993

(reference 26.)

tom collins dies in the fire at the branch davidian compound while dying women and children around him sing hymns. he floats toward heaven but descends back to earth, to houston, to the home he ran away from when his son was sixteen and his daughter was thirteen. august is gone now, but his former friend paul bozich is living there now as dar's lover. they have had a baby born with down's syndrome, and june -- august's sister, who has asperger's -- is the caretaker for the baby when dar is out of the house. paul is in charge of cooking meals but spends most of his time sitting in front of the tv, drunk and chain-smoking. dar arrives home late from work and is upstairs with the girls when tom arrives at the house quoting scriptures from the book of revelation, much to the annoyance of drunk paul. tom goes upstairs and into the room with dar and the girls. paul knocks on the door but dar won't let him in. dar tells paul he has to move out on her way to bed. paul stews about this new development and begins to think tom is going to hurt june or his own daughter, so he pours lighter fluid on the girls' bedroom door and catches the house on fire. in the meantime, august and his partner lorax have arrived in houston having learned from june that dar and paul had a baby and that she is in charge of raising it. they go to the house to confront dar and paul and instead find the house burned down and the two of them in separate cop cars. dar seems to have gone crazy; august approaches paul, and he is repeating nonsensical things like the fact that tom came and took the girls away. there is no sign of tom or the girls, and the house is a black, smoldering pile of bricks.

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