Survival
My brother has many afflictions and addictions, too many to count, really. There are just these corruptible things, just like other things, and they’re all around us. I don’t know where they stem from, it could be a lot of things, and I don’t think he really knows, either. People always say that you can’t blame anybody but yourself, but that’s just total bullshit, really, when someone comes out and says that. Truth is: you can blame everybody but yourself. It’s the world that did this to you. You are the one killing yourself to cope, not them, and that’s why they believe they can get away with saying stupid shit. They think they’re stronger than you.
Mental
I always figured I’d end up in the nuthouse like my grandma did. I don’t really know why, but that’s what I always felt. I never met her, but in my mind she’s a pretty idea. She died in an asylum, long before I was born, down in Oklahoma, because she refused to eat. She called it fasting, and she starved to death, an act of sacrifice, her final act. Before she died, she suffered intense visitations from angels, telling her of the final days, revealing the truth behind the renewals and damnations of souls, and there was no telling where or when they would pop up to see her. She’d transcribe everything the angels said on a typewriter, hundreds of sheets of the stuff, and conceal them in a tattered brown box beneath her bed. A few years ago, my mom received the box from her aunt. I don’t know if she ever read the stuff, she probably doesn’t want to, but I know that it’s there for her to ponder if she ever accepts the challenge, tucked away now beneath her bed, because that is where the angels sleep, the only place that keeps them quiet at night. Sometimes I wonder if there’s even a god. Other times I feel this hand that lifts me to a level where I am allowed to hear my dead grandmother’s voice.
Vietnam
My dad’s a Vietnam War veteran who smokes two packs a day and works for the United States Postal Service. He works third shift, his secrets seem numerous, and when he’s at home he’s just a soft squishy surface in front of the television. He watches the news and talks excessively about the “incompetent” leadership in America. He’s patriotic, but not grossly so like some dudes. He’s never flown the flag all over the front yard, never gotten a license plate made special for Vets, never claimed to be anybody’s hero. He is though, a hero, I’ll tell you that right now. He used to be an alcoholic, too, before he married my mom and had the idea of creating children. Grandpa was both verbally and physically abusive. The story my mom tells us is that my dad bore the brunt of it, being the oldest of three children. Maybe that’s why he’s always been so cold and distant. Or was it mostly the war that did that to him? It’s really hard to tell sometimes, I know that much. Or maybe it was a combination of everything in his life to a point. My dad caught a bullet in the leg, I think the left one, when he was over in the jungle, and now he has a funny way about him when he walks. He retired from bowling and golf in his mid-twenties. Sometimes when you wake him up for dinner he’ll wake with a start and stare at you as though you were never there at all. And if you ask him about the war, he’ll tell you all the things you weren’t really asking for. He’ll tell you about the time a new guy in the lab did a botch job on a VD test. Apparently how these tests work is, you take a scalpel and heat it red-hot under a flame, then you dip it into sterile water to cool it. After it has sufficiently cooled, you scrape the infected area, put the scrapings under a microscope and look for signs of gonorrhea or herpes or whatever. Well, the new guy forgot the step with the water, the scrapings never made it to the microscope and one good soldier went back to his wife with VD cauterized into his penis under a scalpel-shaped scar. These are the stories he tells us. He doesn’t tell us about all the death and destruction he witnessed, the horror and misery, but goes for the lighter stuff, the goofy and reasonable, the stuff that could put a smile on any old face. There’s another one, about a guy who caught shrapnel in the ass while shitting in the jungle, and you sit there when the story is done and over (and then? and then?) just hoping this will be the day he comes out and says it, comes out with all of it, the more serious stuff, the things the movies are made of, the Rambo shit. But he never does. If you ask my dad about the bullet in his leg, most likely he’ll delve into another one of his hilarious VD stories and nothing more. But if you ask him at just the right moment, in the right kind of light, he’ll steady his shaky gaze to greet you, head hung like a dusty trophy between his shoulders, and tell you all about the magic bullet that brought him home.
Just Rain
He picks me up in the alley in his rusty old pickup. He just sort of grunts when I get in and goes for the gas. I take the hint and stare through the window at the trees. Pretty soon they’re little more than a wide green strip pressed against the greying sky.
I say: Cindy says you’ve been hanging around with Scott.
I say: Looks like maybe some rain.
I say: Why’d you want me to come if you aren’t even going to talk to me?
He says: Last night, I saw two fat momma raccoons with seven little babies. I watched them awhile, scavenging around for food. But I got cinder blocks on the garbage cans with bungees strapped across the tops, so they weren’t getting anything there.
He laughs, spitting tobacco juice in a Bud Light bottle, one hand on the steering wheel, digging the curves of his crotch with the other.
He says: I saw they were about to give up, so I went inside and dug some scraps of meat out of the trash. And you know what — you know what they did?
I say: What’d they do.
He says: I’ll tell you what they did. They tore each other fucking apart.
He spits again, a big ole glob of amber, and turns the radio up a notch — a bunch of fuzz with a preacher’s voice bleeding through it.
He says: Those fucking animals.
I say: Always up to something, aren’t they?
He says nothing. He’s all eyes thrust against a wet windshield and alcohol in his veins.