Landslide

by Jenn Cooksey

  It was fun. I felt almost vindicated in a private way.

  Erica had a different outlook when we finally unlocked the door to our room though and saw the four poster bed judging us from its position in front of the French doors that led to a small veranda-type balcony:

  “We’re so going to Hell…”

  Against my good judgment, I went ahead and met her eyes. Then I walked out onto the balcony and sighed. “Yep.”

  That was the one and only time since the parking lot of Walmart we ever acknowledged in any way our joint sins out loud. However, the brother and sister lie stuck. Maybe because we’ve grown tired of correcting the inhabitants of quaint country towns where it’s commonplace to verbally recognize such things by commenting on what a good looking couple we are, only to then receive raised eyebrows and disapproving pursed lips when we explain we’re not married or even together, or we’re just done with the interested looks and being questioned altogether. Whatever our reasons, we’ve continued the charade for the eyes of the public from that point forward, simply introducing ourselves as siblings or using terms of boldfaced lying endearment for each other like “Sis” and “Brother, mine.”

  Although we don’t discuss it as an unspoken rule, or even mention it, ever, our behavior sometimes behind closed doors or when no one’s around is anything but familial. She’s still grieving Holden’s loss—I am too in my own way; I’m still mad at him for what his dying did to put me in such a particularly unenviable position where Erica is involved, but I miss him and can acknowledge that now. Even knowing that allowing her to occasionally use me like she does isn’t healthy for either of us, and it’s even sometimes excruciating for me because it should be Holden, I’m starting to realize that being with her like this isn’t remotely what I want…that I’m probably only hurting myself by giving in and that having the kind of relationship I want is impossible while I’m in this dysfunctional one with her. Meaning, I’m starting to understand that what I’m doing is putting myself aside, and what I’m beginning to acknowledge that I want deep down is being shoved away and ignored in the process but…sometimes, it’s just flat-out easier to man up and give her what she needs from me at the time.

  And it’s not like she’s the only one doing the taking. I might be more conflicted than not about what Holden is prodding Erica and me to keep doing, but I could just as easily stop participating and enabling her. I could also just clue her in to my struggle and tell her why even holding her hand isn’t always easy for me. I’ve considered once or twice now doing just that; however, I haven’t yet actually managed to do it. You’d think I’d get points or be let off the hook a little or something for at least thinking about it but, no such luck.

  We don’t ever go nearly as far as the night of his funeral, and she doesn’t push me to like she did that once when her heartache was hardcore and crippling to the both of us but, there have been more than a few times deep in the lonely hours of some nights when we’ve shared a level of intimacy; one that siblings ought not share. To be perfectly honest though, that stuff isn’t too terrible to get through; it’s the simple or seemingly innocent kiss under the stars in the evening when we’re sitting alone together, staring up at the sky, and I look at her to see she’s getting that telltale look on her face and I know she’s about to cry…or when she already is and I lift my blanket in invitation for her to climb into my bed and snuggle up next to me so I can just hold her while she tries to go back to sleep. Those are the harder of intimate moments we share. I’m guessing that’s probably because that’s when we’re both thinking about him, and I have a feeling that with the other times, one of us is and the other isn’t.

  There’s now a proverbial elephant along for the ride with us on our journey that seems to be larger than life to me at times and is starting to go noticed by others, I think, however Holden's presence—the invisible essence of who and what he was to us respectively—overshadows the uncomfortable, awkward pachyderm so that Erica can’t see it for herself. Or if she does recognize it, it’s not disturbing or whispering to her like it does me. Although I know she’s not as happy on the inside as she outwardly appears to be and I’d probably sell a kidney if it would make any of what she’s going through better, I don’t know how to reconcile for her the desolation she’s got going on inside with the smile she openly shares with the world. And I can feel myself pulling away because of that and the knowledge that I’m essentially spinning my wheels. There’s no forward progress being made by either of us, unless I count my dawning realization…and I don’t because acknowledging any of these things to myself or even who I’m finding myself out to be, or rather, who I want to be, only makes me pedal nowhere that much faster.

  “Hey, man, don’t pay attention to him,” Wyatt tells me, jogging up with two cans of Dr. Pepper in his hands that are dripping with ice water, “Once he found out she’s barely legal, he decided she’s not nearly as hot as he first thought. Besides, he’d kick a mother fucker’s ass for going after his little sister and she’s a year older than yours. So, you got nothin’ to be concerned about there.”

  Chuckling a bit, I accept the soda he offers me. “Yeah, I’m not really worried about it, but just so we’re clear, I’ll have to get my knuckles bloody on his face if he posts it on Facebook or some shit and tags himself with her ass.”

  Wyatt laughs and clapping me on the shoulder he says, “Cole, man, trust me, you’d have to wait in line behind Brian and me if he even thought of pulling something like that.”

  Walking further into camp, my eyes travel to Brian sitting in the shade of his RV’s awning, brushing out Cooper’s shaggy and almost already dry coat, a pint of clear liquor open at his feet. “How’s he doin’?”

  Wyatt’s eyes follow mine and he shrugs. “Eh…he’s seen better days, that’s for sure. But, he’ll be okay. He’s got Amanda and Cody here to remind him that his life is worth living, just like he knows it is the other 364 days of the year. Don’t be surprised though if rounds get fired tonight. Sort of a tradition with him and Alex. You should probably give uh, your sister a heads up too, just so the noise doesn’t freak her out or anything.”

  I get his meaning and nod before pounding back the Dr. Pepper, wishing it had a different kind of biting aftertaste. Great. At least I know ahead of time what I’ll be doing at some point tonight. Taking care of business and not being who I want to be.

  “Hey, you wanna go fishing? I guess that spot we were looking at how to get to the other day has a back trail that goes from the bait shack right down to the water…heard someone caught an eight-pounder there yesterday,” he informs me, watching a father and his preteen son walking down the lane with their fishing gear, heading towards the part of the river that opens up into the smallish lake the campground is adjacent to. “I figure my entertainment choices are either that or tubing again, and I don’t know about you, but my back is still fried from the other day.”

  Squinting up my face in consideration, a glance at the sun just beginning its slow descent from the sky has me checking the time to realize I probably only have another hour, hour and a half maybe to take a nap before the girls and Cody get back. And it’s not that I don’t get a kick out the mini hooligan that Cody is, but, he kind of has a habit of shouting every word he tries speaking and in general, being really loud. Like, all the time, unless of course he’s sleeping himself or getting into trouble, because then, he’s quiet as a church mouse.

  “Nah, I think I’m gonna go relax a little and see if I can grab a couple winks before…um, you know, before the gir—”

  “Before Cody gets back?” Wyatt interrupts. I nod and chuckle in confirmation. “Dude, you don’t gotta tell me, my place is right next to theirs. And now that you mention it, I think you got the right idea…gonna see if I can’t catch some zzz’s myself instead of catfish.”

  “Hey, I’ll take catfish any day of the week over those bluegill we keep hookin’,” I tell him over my shoulder as I step up into the camper.

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nbsp; “This is true, my friend, this is true… Have a good one!” Wyatt’s response floats through the screen door as he walks away and I head straight for the fridge to pull out the last two Bud Lights.

  Popping the top of one, I then reach up to my bed for the laptop and set it on the table before sliding into one of the bench seats, my lips making a motor boat sound as I blow out a bored breath. On the desktop taunting me is the shortcut for that damned solitaire game. Narrowing my eyes at it, the urge to give in to temptation yet again is almost compelling; although a look of consideration given to the folder icon in the upper most corner labeled “Dear Mac,” has me, almost petulantly, sticking my tongue out at the king and queen of spades and clicking on…I’m not even sure what.

  I’ve been through some of Holden’s pictures and all of his music library, and after reading the last text messages between him and Erica that iMessage had so very unhelpfully synced with every Apple product they possess, I deleted the thread and wiped out all of Holden’s contact information from the app and replaced it with mine. Like sending any of it to the cold abyss of the ether could eradicate the texted words once they’d been read. I haven’t, however, gone traipsing into Holden’s digital life aside from that. Until now.

  Curiosity piqued, my eyes narrow in speculation as a word processing program bounces in the tray at the bottom of the screen. Sitting back and sipping my beer, I wait for it to open. Once it does, I’m staring at what looks like it might be a letter; a seriously long-ass letter too, judging from the word count indicator rocketing higher and higher as it tallies the characters and words. My eyes float over the beginning and it becomes clear that it’s not an actual letter; it’s a diary, or a journal rather, posing as a school assignment of sorts.

  Dear Mac,

  This is dumb as fuck. Oops. Probably shouldn’t swear in an English assignment, but oh well. What’s typed is typed and none of this is ever going to be read anyway, thus my opening dumb as fuck statement. Supposedly keeping a journal will help us be better writers, but seriously, I’m a football player. I don’t want to be a writer and honestly, I don’t even like reading. Unless it’s Penthouse Forum. That shit cracks me up.

  Chuckling and nodding to myself in agreement, I toast my dead best friend before skimming the rest of his first two or three entries. Most of what I’m reading as I scroll down further is just stuff about his classes and what he had to eat on any given day. There’s of course some mention of football scores and stats, along with a few commentaries and choice words he had in regard to a couple of his teammates too. I keep scrolling down, looking for words that jump out at me that could signify something important, and I keep my eyes peeled for names of either myself or people I know. Erica’s name is peppered throughout a handful of entries, and in one of them, he congratulates himself on buying her that absurd engagement ring.

  I can’t wait to see Erica’s face when she sees I went to Jared.

  My gut twists reading it and I have to rub my hands up and down my face two or three times before the memory of the last time I spoke to him in person is replaced by irritation now that I know exactly how much he got for his truck and therefore spent on what turned out to be the wasted intention of an un-kept promise. An enormously gaudy, eighteen-thousand dollar and change waste…

  I blow out another breath and tip my head back, first draining the can and then running both hands through my hair as I acknowledge to myself how much money I’ve blown through this summer so far. That’s another one of those not so celebrated things about driving all over Hell and back in a vehicle that should’ve received its Last Rites eons ago. You know, everyone hears road trip across the country and they immediately jump to the belief that it must all be wonderful because no one who ever does shit like this comes back and along with their home movies, proudly boasts about all the unglamorous parts. Like practically bleeding green from your ass or wherever you keep your wallet because your bank account is hemorrhaging with the price of gas, food, and auto parts. Not to mention the occasional luxury of Wi-Fi at a ritzier than usual campground that charges twenty-five dollars for every twenty-four hours of service.

  Startled by the shrill gasping for breath made by the screen door’s rusted hinges as it labors to open, guilt stabs me and I hurriedly close the computer, like I’ve just been caught doing something I shouldn’t, or, you know…giving Erica a reason to think about Holden.

  “Hey, sorry for probably coming off as an insensitive douche earlier…I didn’t mean anything by it,” Chad tells me, popping into the camper unannounced and setting down an apologetic Sam Adams in front of me, “We cool?”

  I chuckle and open up the bottle. “Yeah, man. It wasn’t necessary, but I’ll take it just the same,” I tell him and take a sip of his peace offering.

  “Cool,” he nods, “Okay, well, I’ll let you get back to doin’ whatever it is that you’re doin’…just wanted to apologize for being a dick. This day messes with all of us, so…you know. Sorry,” Chad apologizes again and swings the screen door open to step out.

  The screen huffs and puffs, and squeaks itself closed, banging once or twice before finally clicking shut. I take another drink from the bottle in my hand, reopen the laptop, and go back to reading…

  14

  “Outside”

  —Cole—

  Dear Mac,

  I really hate poetry. It doesn’t make any damn sense and I wish we were reading a story instead.

  Shaking my head in exasperation at a dead guy, I mutter aloud to myself, “Poetry is a story, you tool. There just aren’t as many words used to tell it.”

  We’re reading Poe’s Annabel Lee. Booooring.

  Boring? The fuck, dude? “Annabel Lee” is so not boring. It’s tragic. Beautifully tragic.

  I mean, how did it go? Something like,

  ‘It was many a year ago,

  In a kingdom by the sea,

  That a maiden there lived whom you may know

  By the name of Annabel Lee;’

  Yeah, that sounds right. Huh. Look at that, I remember something from high school other than my locker combination. Go figure. By the way, 3-42-16.

  Now if it were The Tell-Tale Heart? That I could maybe get on board with. I mean, I get murder, and that one is almost like a horror movie just without actors, but you can still picture the blood and dismemberment in your head. Plus I think I still have Cole’s notes and essay on it that he let me copy from when we read it junior year.

  Rolling my eyes and giving Holden the finger, I grumble, “I did not let you copy that shit, you douche, you took it out of my locker at lunch and used your phone to take pictures of all of it, including the A circled in red at the top by my name. Jesus, buddy, you were kind of a dick…”

  ‘And this maiden she lived with no other thought

  Than to love and be loved by me.

  I was a child and she was a child,

  In this kingdom by the sea,

  But we loved with a love that was more than love

  I and my Annabel Lee

  With a love that the winged seraphs of Heaven

  Coveted her and me.’

  For a moment I stop mentally reciting the last complete poem Poe wrote before he died and cocking my head, I realize that if Holden had any brains in that blockhead of his at all, he could’ve used his feelings for Erica to help him dissect and understand the story. Well, that is up until the seraphim became so consumed by envy over the narrator’s and Annabel Lee’s undeniably eternal love for one another that, like Holden, they cut her down in her youth. Erica’s still alive so Holden would’ve had to use his imagination to postulate what living without her would be like for him…like, in a nutshell, his universe is wholly centered on her and without her, there's no beauty or meaning in life and without her, what’s the point? Add to that, Annabel Lee and the narrator’s love was so true and strong, it was believed to be eternal and impossible to sever, so even in death the narrator was bound to her and her to him; however, knowing the trut
h of that, the narrator longed for and awaited his own death so that they could be reunited once again. But because Erica’s alive, everywhere Holden looked beauty and blessings abound, and I’m starting to realize that I’m not certain he could’ve ever reached even that minuscule level of deep thinking.

  “Sorry, bro, but…just callin’ ‘em like I see ‘em.”

  ‘And this was the reason that, long ago,

  In this kingdom by the sea,

  A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

  My beautiful Annabel Lee;

  So that her highborn kinsmen came

  And bore her away from me,