Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraph
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Acknowledgements
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
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Published simultaneously in Canada
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Loehfelm, Bill.
Bloodroot / Bill Loehfelm.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-14022-2
1. Brothers—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3612.036B
813’.6—dc22
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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For my brothers
I taste like the dreams of mad children.
—ANONYMOUS GRAFFITI ON AN ABANDONED STATEN ISLAND HOSPITAL
ONE
MY KID BROTHER SWORE TO ME THAT HE COULD STOP HIS HEART.
The morning he said it we sat in my room, cross-legged and face-to-face, practicing for a first-aid test. We were Cub Scouts, me a Bear and Danny, only a year younger than me, was a Wolf at my heels. I was teaching him how to find the jugular, teaching him about arteries and veins and taking someone’s pulse.
As I reached for his throat, Danny’s heart pounded so hard that I could watch his pulse throb in his neck, could count his heartbeats without touching him. More out of wonder than instruction, I pressed my fingertips to his throat, marveling at the power surging beneath his skin. It comforted me that something so strong and steady lived inside my brother. My heart didn’t beat like that. Mine beat quiet, like it didn’t want to be found.
He’d learned to still his heart, Danny said, his voice humming against my fingertips, in another life. Special doctors had taught him. He made me swear I believed him and I told him I did. This happened a lot between us. Danny was always telling me things I had to swear I believed. Usually dark things, odd things. Secretly, I blamed his nightmares, the terrible dreams that he woke from screaming. I was never quite sure if playing along helped or hurt but showing faith in him always seemed the right thing to do. He was my brother, my only brother, after all.
I just accepted whatever Danny gave me, whether it was truth, lies, or some combination. Letting Danny be who and whatever he wanted was the best way to hang on to him. That’s what I told myself for a long time.
We were inseparable as boys, even as teenagers. Both of us always on the lookout for trouble, though for different reasons. Danny wanted to get into it. I wanted to stay out of it. Danny had a lot more success than I did. Seeing trouble coming never did me a lick of good if Danny was involved. Nothing was worth letting him feel alone. Because that’s what he always was in his dreams. Alone.
Then in our twenties the worst trouble we’d ever faced came hurtling down the tracks at us like a freight train. In the end, it broke us apart. It was my fault. I stepped aside only to watch from a safe distance as the Heroin Express blew Danny away.
PEOPLE TELL ME letting Danny go was the right decision and I pretend to believe them. I play along with the idea that I let him go when, in reality, he left me. In my heart, I know I should’ve dragged him from the tracks, or if I couldn’t do that, stepped in front of the train. Would it have changed how things turned out? Would it have kept us together? Probably not, but I’ll never know because I didn’t try hard enough. True, he ran from me. But I could’ve done a better job of chasing him. I’m his older brother. It was my job to catch him. I know in my head that chasing him onto the tracks would’ve only destroyed the both of us, but my heart tells me different.
My heart, when it comes to regret, beats as strong as my brother’s.
The pieces of him only got smaller over time. My phone calls went unreturned. When I could pin him down, we’d set up meetings somewhere in the city but most of the time he wouldn’t show. He refused to tell me where he lived. His cell phone got lost or disconnected and so I lingered at any bar he had named during our brief, stammering conversations. I left messages for him with bartenders and waitresses all across Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Manhattan. They got sick of talking to me and I never got any closer.
TWO
THREE YEARS AGO, I AWOKE ON MY THIRTIETH BIRTHDAY WITH NO idea where Danny was, if he was alive or dead. I hadn’t seen or heard from him in weeks. Hitting a new decade felt like having a door slam closed behind me, leaving Danny on one side and me on the other, neither of us with a key.
Late that afternoon, I sat alone in the dim kitchen of my Staten Island apartment, twirling limp spaghetti on my fork and curling my toes into the dirty linoleum of the kitchen floor. A hot meal at the kitchen table without the television on, with napkins and silverware and liquid from a glass, was my latest attempt to feel civilized. After five years as a college history instructor, I had a career, not just a job. I was now in my thirties and an adult. I wanted to give myself something private to look forward to, other than reading and masturbation.
My evenings had started following the same pattern: from work to couch to mattress, the final two-thirds of the journey strobe-lit by five hundred flickering TV channels. My birthday was shaping up no different. I had done cake and candles with my folks the night before, afraid to tell them I didn’t
have big plans for the day itself with friends or a girl. But I didn’t have any of that: plans, friends, or a girl. Still, there had to be something I hadn’t done a billion times. Drinking beer wasn’t it. Neither was TV. I’d graded all my students’ essays and done my lesson plans. I wanted to do something different, something fun, but I had no ideas.
Defeated, I slid the dead mass of pasta into the trash. I put my face in my hands. Only ninety minutes after getting home from work, on my birthday, I was utterly stupefied with boredom. Then the phone rang.
“It’s Danny. What’re you doin’ tonight?” His voice was hoarse and ragged. He breathed heavily into the phone while he waited for my answer. “Uh, happy birthday, Kevin.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Long time. Where have you been? You okay?”
“I’m in the neighborhood,” Danny said. “I’ll be right over to pick you up. Meet me outside in ten. I’ll just pull up and you can jump in. We’ll go out. For your birthday.”
He hung up before I could say anything.
Staring at the phone, I realized he hadn’t answered my questions. He rarely ever did. This was our relationship as adults: he came and went and I waited until he came back around again, sometimes clean, sometimes high. I never told him no, never said I’d had enough. Our folks had turned their backs on him some time ago. Tough love, they called it. They recommended I try it, for my sake more than Danny’s. I did, but it never stuck. He was my brother. I couldn’t get the love out of the way and get a firm grip on the tough part. And Danny knew it.
I reached into the fridge for that beer, telling myself its context had changed. I had cause for a celebration. I’d reached a new beginning, a new year. And no matter how long he ignored me, Danny’s return always made me forget the old hurts. He’d been gone even longer than usual this time. Maybe he hadn’t been getting high these past few weeks. Maybe this was one of the clean times. Maybe he had changed for good. I could hope, at least. Danny was what I had wished for the night before, as I blew out the candles on my cake.
I carried my beer and a fresh cigarette into the bedroom. I stripped off my wrinkled work clothes and grabbed my new David Wright jersey, a birthday present to myself, and a clean pair of jeans from the closet. Sitting on the edge of the mattress, I tied on my cracked and battered Docs. I needed a new pair, but the old boots fit so well and felt so comfortable I couldn’t bear to part with them. As I buttoned up the jersey in front of the mirror, an invisible finger tapped at my brain, drawing my attention back to Danny’s phone call.
There’d been something missing from Danny’s voice. It had none of the usual embarrassment when he finally called after another disappearing act. None of the sheepishness I always heard when he called to ask me a favor, one that usually involved the last of my cash. There was no shame in him this time. Why was that? Because he was coming to deliver good news? I tried to focus on the fact that he was doing me a favor that night. Figured it made us close enough to even for me to ignore what his voice sounded like over a cheap phone. I waited for him on the stoop.
When Danny’s blue ’84 Escort turned the corner I walked to the curb. He did stop the car, in the middle of the street. Leaning across the front seat, he threw open the passenger door. He pulled hard on the steering wheel to right himself. Bottles clinked at my feet as I stepped into the car. Bottles of Nestea Iced Tea. Half a dozen of them, all empty.
“Thirsty?” I asked.
Danny didn’t answer. He grinned at me, sweeping sweaty clumps of hair off his pimpled forehead. His ocean blue eyes quivered in their sockets beneath his raised black eyebrows, not focused on me but merely pointed at me.
“How about this,” I said. “I got a new Weber. Let’s hit the store around the corner, grab a couple steaks, and fire up the grill. Just take it easy and hang out at my place for the night.”
After a long moment Danny turned away and without saying a word lurched the car back into motion. I pulled on my seat belt. I wished I’d thought of the steaks while we were on the phone. The idea might’ve had a chance if I’d gotten Danny out of the car. I shouldn’t have agreed to meet him out front. Typically, I was having all my best ideas about handling my brother after we were already doing what he wanted. So I did what I always do, I kept my mouth shut and went along for the ride.
We rambled down Richmond Terrace, rolling lazily through stop signs and braking late for red lights. I nestled down in the seat, arms crossed over my chest. While we idled at a crowded traffic light Danny fished a tiny roach out of his ashtray and lit it up, pinching the paper and embers to his lips. It didn’t seem there was enough of anything to even ignite, never mind smoke, but Danny sucked hard. A thin wisp of smoke curled up between his forefinger and thumb. I wouldn’t have minded a hit or two but it looked like an awful lot of effort and so little was left the roach would’ve disintegrated into ashes in the passing. In fact it soon did, Danny absentmindedly wiping the detritus on his jeans.
“Why don’t we grab a beer?” I asked. “You talk to anybody else tonight? Anybody going down to the Red Lion?”
Danny’s eyes darted around in the car mirrors. I had made a mistake. I had asked too many questions at once. Didn’t matter that they weren’t very important, or that they were yes or no questions. Or that we’d been drinking at the Red Lion Tavern since we were sixteen.
“What? Where? Okay. No. I don’t know. We could call some people, I guess, maybe. You could. You talk to anybody today? Anybody?” He scratched at the inside of his right elbow. “Anybody call you, like, after I did?”
I looked at him across the car. The random fragments of concentration Danny struggled to string together were focused on navigating. He was concentrating so hard, in fact, I was sure our destination was already lost to him.
“Before we hit the bar,” I said, “do me a favor and stop by a cash machine.”
“Um, okay,” he said, his head bobbing up and down. “Wait, no. I mean, I got money. Hey, it’s your birthday, forget cash.” He wanted to look at me but couldn’t pull his eyes off the road. “I got someplace I gotta go first. Sorry, I forgot to tell you.”
We rolled to a stop at a red light. He was sweating like crazy now, the armpits and collar of his white T-shirt stained and soaked. He laughed suddenly.
“It’ll just take a minute. You won’t mind.” He grabbed me hard by the shoulder. “Yeah! Then we’ll go get that beer.” He dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. “Yeah, then we’ll play some fuckin’ goddamn darts.” The light turned green. “God, I love darts. You’re pretty good, aren’t you? Aren’t you on a team or something?”
“Nah,” I said. “Not anymore. They only play on weeknights.”
He nodded slowly. “School nights. You talk to the ’rents lately?”
“Dad and I went to the Met game a couple weeks ago.” I glanced at Danny. “They won.” I rubbed my hand over the 5 on my chest. “Got myself a new jersey.”
My brother stared straight ahead at nothing. My mouth went dry and I licked my lips. We had the green light but didn’t move. The driver behind us leaned hard on his horn. Danny’s eyelids fluttered.
“Hey, Danny, let’s get going,” I said. “Light’s green.”
“Fuck,” he said, snapping awake. We lurched through the intersection. Without warning, he double-parked outside a deli, the engine running. “I’ll be right back, wait here. Move the car if you have to.”
I smoked a cigarette and watched the traffic in the rearview mirror. One car got stuck behind us, the driver waving his arms wildly till he could slip over into the other lane. I leaned over and hit the horn. I could see Danny in the store, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, stuck at the end of a slow-moving line. I thought about sliding into the driver’s seat and making the block but I couldn’t be sure Danny would figure out where I’d gone. I considered rooting around the car and figuring out what had Danny sweating like a marathon runner. I decided against that, though. I already knew the answer. If I didn’t find any evid
ence, I could continue telling myself that I was wrong.
I could tell myself that we weren’t going to loop around back toward my house and swing through the Park Hill projects for another score, that we weren’t going to end up standing around under the East River Bridge, or sitting on a park bench by some broken-down Sunset Park basketball court in Brooklyn. I could continue to tell myself that Danny’s “errand” didn’t include any of these places, or any of the things that came with them. I wouldn’t have to admit that he’d sounded different on the phone because he’d gotten worse, not better.
Finally, he bounced out of the door with a brown bag in his hands and trotted to the car, turning his head wildly from side to side like a bank robber. He handed me the bag and settled in behind the wheel, muttering to himself. In the bag were four glass bottles of Nestea Iced Tea. We hung a wide right onto Forest Avenue.
“One of those is for you,” he said.
I handed him a bottle and took one for myself. He drained half of his in one gulp, dragging his hand across his mouth and sighing when he finished. He squeezed the bottle between his legs.
“Drink up,” he said. “That’s good shit. The fucking BEST! God, I’m fucking dehydrated lately.”
His eyelids fluttered again and I knew the stop at the deli wasn’t the errand Danny had in mind. We turned onto Victory Boulevard, where the traffic thinned and streetlights sputtered to life above us. I watched the storefronts and houses give way to the trees of Willowbrook Park.
I touched my knuckles to the cold window and squinted, trying to see through the wall of shadowy trees and into the park. “Shit,” I said. “Long time.”
Danny said nothing, his eyes focused on the road.
Twenty years earlier, when Danny’s new first-aid merit badge still gleamed on his belt, our Cub Scout pack took its first “camping trip” in Willowbrook.
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