by Joe Clifford
Chris gazed over expressionless, like he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.
“Tonight. At the station. Where I was dragged down after a long day of work.”
Chris dismissively waved a hand.
“Turley said you’ve been getting in fights—making threats. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Fuck Rob Turley. I remember catching that tub of lard huffing paint thinner behind the Community Center. Now he wants to act like a big dick-swinging cop.”
I swiped the Marlboro Lights off the arm of the couch. “I think there’s some beer under the sink. Grab me one too.”
My brother brushed the wisps of peroxide blond back into that cockamamie homemade haircut and bounced up gleefully.
“Stick the rest in the fridge,” I called out.
I felt the money Tom had given me in my pocket. I ran through the math in my head. The envelope, plus what I’d managed to save these past few weeks, minus rent, bills, gas, food, I had enough to catch up with what I owed Jenny. Wouldn’t leave me much afterward. But Tom always had work for me, sooner or later. Question was, if it wasn’t soon, would I be able to hold out till later? It was a bad habit of mine. Whenever I got stressed, I insisted on making matters worse by mulling over finances. Working for Tom, I knew I wouldn’t starve or be homeless, but I sure as shit wasn’t getting ahead either. I’d never own my own house or be able to afford a vehicle that wasn’t used. I’d never have enough to squirrel away something for Aiden’s college fund, and even though that last one was a long ways off, the day would come eventually.
Chris handed me a beer, smiling. “Like ol’ times, eh?” He flashed his country yellow teeth.
“You look like shit,” I said. “When was the last time you saw a dentist?”
Chris peeled back his lips with grubby fingers. You could see black rot eating into the roots.
“It isn’t funny,” I said. “You’re going to need a root canal. Make an appointment with Dr. Johnson. Get a goddamn cleaning, at least. Have him send me the bill.”
My brother grunted that he would, though I knew he had no intention of seeing our old family dentist ever again. He tipped back the beer and sat on the arm of the couch, arcing his core forward like some yoga pose I once saw Jenny do when she was trying to lose the baby weight, not that she was ever bigger than a peanut.
Chris stared intently at the TV, as if despite its being turned off he could still see some riveting narrative unfold beyond the black glass.
“Turley says you’ve gone into business with a partner. You opened, what, a computer removal company?”
“Electronic waste,” Chris said. “E-recycling. You know how good Pete is with computers.”
“Sure,” I said, even though I didn’t know who the hell Pete was. Might’ve been this skateboarder dude with kinky hair and glasses I’d met once. Maybe not. What difference would it have made? All these losers he ran with were the same to me. Some were shorter, fatter, darker; some had longer hair, better teeth. Didn’t faze me. I glossed over their existence the way you do the boring parts of a book.
“Aw, you don’t give a shit,” Chris said.
“No, not really.” I sucked at the warm suds. “But I do want to know why I had to go down to the station and bail your ass out. You fucked up my entire evening.”
“You didn’t have to put up bail.”
“I meant figuratively. I was supposed to see Aiden tonight.”
“Yeah? How is my nephew?”
“I wouldn’t know, Chris. I didn’t get to see him. I was stuck listening to Turley do his impression of a big city cop, rehashing shit that happened a hundred years ago because, apparently, you’ve been running off at the mouth and threatening to kill people. Now, do you know where this Pete is? Where he hangs out? There’s my phone. Make some calls to your buddies because his mother is worried.”
“You remember that summer we spent at the shore in Rhode Island?” Chris asked.
“Huh?”
“We went with Aunt Dee Dee and Uncle Chip, Mom, Dad. You were real little. Four, five. You remember that?” The fat, unnamed cat lay curled next to my brother, who stroked her absentmindedly, tufts of fluffy white fur coming off by the fistfuls.
“I don’t know. Maybe. We went more than once.” I had vague recollections of the ocean, gathering shells on a beach, filling buckets with wet sand to make castles. Early childhood, fuzzy memories. I knew my folks rented a cottage down there with my aunt and uncle a couple summers. I had pictures in an album somewhere. We stopped making the long trek a few years before the accident.
“Our place was right on the beach, fifty yards from the water.” He didn’t look at me when he said this, his voice subdued, laid-back, as if the beer was really relaxing him. Except that it had been a while since a single beer had had that kind of effect on my brother.
“You almost drowned,” he said.
“No, I didn’t. When?”
“It was at night,” he continued, still not looking at me. “The Dindas—they rented the place next door—had stopped by. There was a party in the kitchen, everyone drinking, music playing. Mom had gone to bed with a headache. You wandered down to the beach, waded in. An undertow pulled you out, dragging you far, far from the shore.”
“You’re making that up. I don’t remember anything like that. Where was Dad?”
Chris nursed his beer, shrugged.
“How am I still here then? I couldn’t swim when I was five. Why didn’t I drown?”
“I had hooked up with Jody White.” His voiced droned as if in a trance, just another story told to a stranger at closing time. “God, I liked her. She was this tasty blonde-haired doll. Teeny, high voice. Swear if you stuck a finger in her, she’d squeak. Family had a cottage up the road. We were in her room, her parents out somewhere. I had my hand up her shirt. She was one of those pristine Catholic girls, so it was a big deal just getting to second base. Perfect sixteen-year-old tits.” He sighed with fond remembrance. “And I stopped. I knew something was wrong. Felt it right here—” Chris poked a scarecrow finger into his bony sternum. “Didn’t say a word to Jody. Just hopped up and bolted out the door, ran all the way down the beach. I instinctively knew to go to the water. I don’t know how I knew. But I did. It was like I could hear you screaming. In my head. Nobody could hear you a stone’s throw from the cottage. But I could hear you. Half a mile away. I dove in the water and pulled you out.”
It was perfectly still for a moment.
Then Chris took another glug of beer and belched loudly.
“A regular fucking Superman,” I said.
It’s funny when people start talking about things that happened to you before you can really remember them. It’s like their stories worm memories into your brain. I certainly didn’t recall almost drowning, and I’d never heard my parents mention it, but after he said that I started to get pictures in my mind’s eye of swirling black water, felt the shivers of panic and desperation, tasted the thick salt clogging my throat as consciousness slipped away. Then I saw a hand reach down in the murky depths and hoist me up into the clear, clean moonlight.
Suggestion is a powerful thing.
“Did that really happen?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he mumbled. “Maybe.”
Chris got up and went to the window, peering out into the swirling snow as though trying to locate something precious in the abyss.
He stood there a long time, T-shirt draped off his bony frame as if it was a wire coat hanger.
“I tell you something,” he said. “You got to keep it under wraps, okay?”
“Sure.” Who the fuck would I tell?
“Pete and me, well, Pete mostly—he’s a whiz with computers—so we got this business on the side.” He peered over his shoulder. “Electronic recycling.” He enunciated the words clearly, since he knew he was talking a different language. “Disposing of old hard drives, smartphones, anything with digital data, that kind of shit.”
“And people pay you
for this?”
“Fuck, yeah, man. You can’t throw that shit in the garbage.”
“Why not?”
He looked at me as if I was missing half a head.
“Because it’s got, like, all your personal information on there, little brother. Your computer is as personalized as a goddamn fingerprint these days. You’d know this if you joined the rest of the twenty-first century.”
Coming from a homeless junkie, that stung. But I had to admit he was right; I didn’t know jack about computers. I wasn’t big on technology, period. Honestly, if it wasn’t for Jenny pressing me, I probably wouldn’t even have gotten a cell phone, not that it matters up here; half the calls get dropped anyway. I don’t like being plugged in to someone’s beck and call. I didn’t own a computer. Rarely used the Internet for anything. Didn’t even have an email address. At least not one I ever checked. I didn’t have time to sit on my ass playing video games or ogling pictures of naked women. I was too busy busting my ass to keep my head above water.
I could picture this business of his. A gang of pasty dope fiends gacking over circuit boards and Legend of Zelda, or whatever nerds played these days. I supposed I should’ve applauded his initiative, told him I was proud of him for at least trying, provided positive feedback, but I couldn’t muster the enthusiasm. It was too late in the game, especially when I knew feeding the habit comes first, and that its appetite is insatiable. So what did it matter? Whatever ambition my brother had shown wouldn’t last long; it’d be up with the smoke he inhaled to get high. You can’t have a life when you are on drugs. Because being on drugs is your life.
A truck outside backfired, and my brother practically jumped out of his ragged old kicks.
He caught me laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m glad you’ve started a company, a business, whatever you and Pete are doing. Really. It’s terrific.”
He turned around and faced me, eyes glassed over as he tongued a scab on the corner of his blistered lips.
“But you didn’t help your cause with Turley down at the station. Guy’s just trying to help out some old woman who’s worried about her son. You should know you’re only going to make it worse by carrying on like a lunatic. Everyone knows you around here. Just being high is against the law. Turley and Pat Sumner can lock you up for that. All they need to do is draw your blood. How long you think you’d last in a real prison?”
“We found something, Jay.”
“What do you mean, ‘you found something’?”
“Someone dropped off a computer. We were cleaning the hard drive. That’s what we do. Erase the hard drive, remove old files, data, pictures. We—found something.”
“Erase?” I started to get it. “You mean you go rooting around for personal information you can use.” I might not have known a lot about computers, but I wasn’t stupid. Phony credit cards were a billion dollar industry.
Chris smirked.
“Jesus Christ,” I said, pushing myself up.
“Sure, sometimes we have a look around. What’s the big deal? They’re throwing the things away. What are you getting all pissed off for?”
“Because people are trusting you to do a job. I know that word doesn’t mean anything to you. But it’s how the rest of the world operates. And you are taking advantage of them. Identity theft? That’s what you’re into these days, Chris?”
You’d have to be an idiot to drop off a computer to my brother and his junkie pals.
He wet his lips, bobbing like a madman, crazy eyes bugging again. “You’re missing my point. We uncovered something. It’s big, man.”
“What? Someone’s bank statement?”
“Ain’t no bank statement, little brother. I mean, big. Really big. What we found is going to rock this town. I’m talking shake this fucker to the core!” He pointed frantically at his pigeon chest. “Gonna see I was right all along. Gonna see—”
I’d had enough. Given my brother’s refusal to appreciate the gravity of his situation, I didn’t see the point in humoring his persecution fantasies or delusions of grandeur any longer. If he wasn’t going to take his life seriously, why should I?
I patted him on the back. “Okay, Sam Spade. Blankets are in the closet there. Take the couch. Get some sleep. There’s nothing here worth stealing, and if I find something missing in the morning, I swear to fucking God, Chris, it’ll be the last time I ever let you inside.”
My brother grabbed my wrist.
The soft light of the room yellowed his flesh like greasy chicken skin.
“What?”
He dropped his voice to a whisper. “You need to hear what I have to say.”
“I’m listening.”
“You sure you can keep a secret?”
“Yeah, Chris. I can keep a secret. But I don’t have time to play make-believe. I’m a grown-ass man with grown-up shit to do. So either tell me what that bullshit at the station was really about or—”
“It’s big, little brother. Real big.”
“Jesus Christ! Tell me, already.”
Chris looked out the corners of his eyes, held a finger to his lips, and beckoned me nearer.
I leaned in, my ear right next to his mouth, so close I could feel his hot breath.
“I shot the sheriff,” he whispered. “But I did not shoot the deputy.”
Chris let go my wrist and hurled himself back onto the sofa, howling. About knocked himself out with that one. “But I swear it was in self-defense!” He was barely able to get the words out through the guffawing.
“You’re an asshole.”
“Come back, little brother. I was kidding. Where you going?”
“To bed. See you in the morning.”
“I’m serious. We really did find something. Don’t you want to know what it is?”
“No. I don’t.” I slammed shut my bedroom door.
When I woke in the morning, he was gone.
CHAPTER FOUR
I let my truck idle while I scraped the ice from my windshield. The bright morning sun rose over the crest of Lamentation Mountain, splashing orange splotches through snow-covered birches, halos ringing between tall evergreen trees. The news put the damage at over a foot, considerably worse than the original forecast. They were calling for an even bigger storm to roll in next week, a real Nor’easter. Trace flurries drifted down, floating aimlessly, catching the glint of the sun’s rays. I watched my breath crystalize in front of me.
I pulled around the front of Hank’s to fill up. Would run me close to sixty-five dollars, thing sucked so much gas. The floor of my cab was littered with crinkled receipts and stiff papers, empty coffee cups and crushed cigarette packs, Gatorade bottles, fast food bags; the inside of my ride looked like a refugee camp. Waiting for the pump to stop, I gathered all the junk and threw it away. Doesn’t seem like much, but I felt like I accomplished something. Jenny was always complaining about what a slob I was.
Went inside to grab a coffee and a copy of the Herald, even though I seldom read the damn thing these days. I used to be up on the latest news; now I bought the paper mostly out of habit. A high school kid took my money. He was wearing an Ashton Redcoats varsity wrestling jacket, so we shot the shit about that for a few. He said they were leaving for Regionals tomorrow. I told him about the year my brother and Adam Lombardi won the State Championship. He said, “Cool,” but to him I was probably just an old guy reliving his glory days. And not even my glory days, but my piece-of-shit junkie brother’s. I couldn’t fathom thirty when I was seventeen.
Back on the road, I was able to dial in the classic rock station, 105, The Bone. The Outfield’s “Your Love” came on. Always made me smile. We never settled on an official song, but I used to tease Jenny that was it, and I’d belt it out when I wanted to mess with her. Used to piss her off since the song is about the singer’s girlfriend, “Jenny,” being on a vacation far away, and him screwing around with another, younger girl. Jenny wouldn’t really get ma
d, though, more like fake mad. She knew I only teased her when I was in a good mood.
I blasted the tune, which crackled in and out through the static, as I fired up the day’s first cigarette and the caffeine started to kick in, sunbeams smacking the snow and ice that coated my hometown. I rolled down the window and let the cold, brisk mountain air wash over me. Pulled down the visor and strapped on my sunglasses, let the cigarette dangle from my lips, and cranked the radio up louder. You take your small victories wherever you can find them.
Jenny’s place was past the trestles in the center of town, above the same bar and grill where she worked nights, The Landover. A dumpy two-bedroom, it wasn’t much nicer than mine. The proximity to her job was convenient, since Aiden was just upstairs and she could pop in and check on him during breaks. Her boyfriend, Brody, worked second shift at the die shop, so it’s not like Aiden was alone long.
Early Saturday morning, most people still in bed following the storm, the streets empty, nothing open yet besides the Dunkin’ Do-nuts and gas stations, the town perfectly peaceful, I tooled freshly plowed streets, tapping out a beat on the dash and feeling pretty damn all right. I didn’t give my brother another thought. Which was how I’d managed to deal with him all these years. Out of sight, out of mind.
On weekends when I was a kid, my dad would go into town for his morning paper and bring us back a dozen donuts. A time-honored tradition. It was time I started building memories like that for Aiden. I flipped a bitch and circled back to the Dunkin’ Donuts.
“You know I don’t want him eating sugar,” Jenny said, snatching the box from me.
“One donut won’t kill him.”
“No, it won’t. But refined sugar is not good for his development. It’s been linked to depression.”
“Depression? He’s not even two yet. Where’d you hear that?”
“In the baby books. You should try reading one sometime.”
“Enough shit hasn’t gone wrong for him to be depressed yet.”
“Fine. But I still don’t want to have to deal with a hyperactive child all day.”
