galoshes blog

A Short Story

By Gavin Murphy

Cara O’Grady prayed. She prayed for God to watch over her eldest son Brian.

Things were going so well with the wedding. Father Marino had recited the matrimonial vows at the church in his gravelly baritone. Charlotte, the bride, was radiant. She was a beautiful girl – woman – her daughter was. Jim, even though he was quite a bit older than Charlotte – middle-aged in fact – would make a good husband. He had his own business, auto body repair, and seemed successful enough. Children were not likely at this point, given that Charlotte herself was not so young, in her late thirties.

Charlotte’s brothers, Brian and Kenny, were so handsome in their tuxedos. Both had flown in for the wedding, Brian all the way from Hawaii, Kenny from Seattle. Brian had just turned 42. Unmarried himself, but in a serious relationship. No children. He looked older, his face ruddy and slightly swollen, with dark pillows under the hazel eyes. Kenny was about to turn 40. Divorced, but no children. He was lean, more like his father than her, with glasses that magnified a wide-eyed expression. And, of course, he wore his hair shorter than Brian’s. 

Charlotte was a middle school teacher, having attained a master’s in public education after years of part-time study. Kenny, good with the numbers, had a master’s degree in accounting. Brian at one point majored in English, then psychology, but had never achieved a degree.

If only Bill were still alive to see the boys and their little sister on this day. 

“Bill, if you can hear me, help Brian if you can. He’s weaker than Kenny, you know that.”

The reception was now fully underway. Cara’s eyes, like pale blue sapphires glistening in a clear Celtic stream, gazed at the crowd of friends and relatives dancing, talking and getting drunk. This had cost more than she could really afford, even if the groom had paid for half. Brian had offered to help her with money, but she didn’t want his money.

The band slowed the pace of the music. Cara watched as Charlotte embraced Kenny. They danced like lovers on a date. It was hard to believe these were the same two who had fought so much as kids. Maybe they had been in cahoots all along. Poor Kenny had been the proverbial middle child. Book ended by the superior strength and first born charisma of his older brother and by the self centered narcissism of a spoiled younger sister. Yes, she had spoiled Charlotte, which wasn’t good and, she now realized, had caused a lot of the problems.

Kenny had both loved and resented his older brother. Maybe that was why he had worked so hard in school, why he was such an achiever as an adult. In her heart of hearts, Cara had to admit to herself, only to herself, that Brian, despite everything, was her favorite. She felt guilty about having a favorite, because she dearly loved them all.

The dance ended. Kenny and Charlotte hugged one another. Cara saw Charlotte sobbing tears of sibling affection. Her own eyes flooded as she looked again at the side door Brian had used to flee.

***

Brian O’Grady balanced a glass of champagne in his hand as he skipped down the steps to the waiting taxi.

“Where to?” the cab driver asked.

“Keg and Bottle. You know the place?”

“Yeah,” the driver said. His small head rotated to look at Brian. “I know the place.” He eyed the champagne glass in Brian’s hand. “But I ain’t got time to fool around with drunks.”

Brian felt his scrotum tighten, but he contained his temper. He reached into his pocket and drew out a fifty. He tossed the bill over the front seat.

“Drive on,” Brian said, settling back to finish his champagne.

The cab rolled away from the reception hall, turning onto Old Hollow Road. Tall maple trees lined the curved blacktop. The giant trees crowded the narrow lane and blocked out the sunlight with their great old limbs and myriad branches coursing like veins in the chill blue sky. Brian noticed the leaves already were turning color. Splashes of scarlet and fluttering gold. He remembered climbing these trees.  

“Do kids climb trees nowadays?”

“I don’t think so…” said the driver, the back of his skull sullen in its stillness.

Brian liked to climb all the way to the top, where the branches were thin and rubbery compared to the fat limbs closer to the ground. Sometimes he would sit way up and spit at the cars passing below. It was quiet and peaceful high in the trees.

For a while Brian had enjoyed the wedding reception. There were only a couple of people he knew from the old days there. One was a high school girlfriend of Charlotte’s who was now a good twenty pounds heavier and more attractive for it. She had been flirty as a teen and gushed appropriately when Charlie said ‘of course you remember Brian.’ They didn’t dance though and she didn’t give him another glance. The whole thing sometimes seemed like a scene from a screenplay by Woody Allen, with a lot of jabbering. No, maybe more like something out of Dubliners. The last story in the book, the really long short story, the one with the maiden aunts and the drunk nephew and the realization that the wife had a lover who died and then the snow falling on the living and the dead. But this was New England – it was still called that – in 2000 – not Dublin a hundred years ago and besides, invoking Joyce might just be too much.

Uncle Gil had asked: “So, what do you do in Hawaii, anyway? Does anyone really work there? I can’t imagine getting anything done living in a place like that.” 

Brian knew he didn’t get home often enough and the relatives knew too. Charlene hadn’t made it to the wedding because she had to stay and close a real estate transaction they had brokered on a large parcel of land. They were a real estate agent “team.” They needed a big commission because they were in fact a couple of payments behind on one of their several mortgages.

Brian liked being a real estate agent in Hawaii. No one seemed to care when you showed up for a closing in an Aloha shirt and flip flops. When people like his uncle asked about his professional background he simply said “Real Estate.” This seemed to satisfy them. In fact, he had been a “real estate agent” on and off for a long time. He and his smuggling cohorts at one time all got their licenses and opened their own agency in a strip mall not far from Port Dorchester. Between drug runs they competed for listings, held ‘open houses’ and occasionally actually sold something. Meanwhile they had legitimate bank accounts. When the cash really started pouring in they invested some of it in real estate. In fact, he still owned a lot in Port Dorchester that he needed to remember to pay the now increasingly exorbitant property taxes for. 

Brian’s neck throbbed with a dull pain. He didn’t really like champagne and it wasn’t really taking the edge off. He needed something stronger and, suddenly, he wanted to visit his father.

The cab turned onto Main Street, where traffic slowed to a crawl. The white clapboard storefronts stood side by side, only occasionally interrupted by red and brown brick, They housed attorneys and doctors’ offices and clothing boutiques. Hand painted signs evoked old New England. The bank, a confused combination of Doric columns and Georgian arches was still there but the name had changed again since his last visit. 

“Port Dorchester sure has changed,” Brian said.

“Goddamned yuppies,” the driver muttered as he double parked in front of the liquor store. It was a small shop, dingier than the other storefronts, with cardboard bathing beauties positioned in the display windows brandishing rum drinks and bottles of beer.

The driver agreed to wait and Brian stepped out of the cab. He tossed the empty champagne glass into a trash receptacle and entered the shop through a door that announced arrivals and departures with a bell that sounded like a small gong.

Behind the counter was an old man. He was the same guy who had been there since Brian was a kid using fake I.D. to buy beer.

“Jameson,” Brian said.

The old man reached up and grabbed a bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey from the shelf. He shuffled to the cash register and punched the appropriate keys to ring up the sale. 

Flashback time. Brian suddenly remembered Marty Dolan, who died in a motorcycle accident while they were still in high school. And Ben Cramer, who became an actuary, or something like that, with a wife and a couple of kids. He was killed when he fell, or jumped, in front of a commuter train. And there was Sharon. She was like one of the guys, except she wasn’t a guy. It was a small town and when it was his turn to be with Sharon he had recoiled from the perfunctory consummation.  

The old man bagged the bottle and handed it to Brian, who cradled it with one arm against his chest as he left. He got back into the waiting cab. The driver turned and his chin was barely above the seat.

“Back to the reception hall?”

“Go up Harbor Road,” Brian said.

The driver shrugged and pulled the cab away from the curb. He detoured through a narrow alley originally designed for horse drawn carts. Then he turned onto Harbor Road, heading away from the harbor. For a mile or so Harbor Road flanked the inlet, a narrow body of brown salt water, then it swerved away from the shoreline and climbed the wooded hills just west of town. Here and there, long driveways led to stately old homes hidden behind acres of tall trees. There was little traffic on the road. A deer, startled by the cab, bounded off into the brush. A gate of black wrought iron, supported by two gray stone columns, appeared on the side of the road.

“Stop here,” Brian said.

“Here?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s a cemetery. And it’s closed now.”

“I have to pay someone a visit.”

The cab driver handed Brian change from the fifty and Brian tossed him back a ten dollar bill.

“Come back in half an hour.”

Brian stood for a moment by the side of the road in the deepening shadows. Then he turned toward the great locked gate. There was no fence so he simply walked around the entry gate and into the cemetery. His dress shoes squished across the soggy ground as he walked past rows of headstones, new granite tombstones intermingled with crooked tablets, some with worn inscriptions dating from the 1700s. He followed a row of graves that crested atop a bulge of earth near the middle of the cemetery. Here the ground was blown dry by the cool breezes. The late afternoon sunlight silhouetted the tall trees that surrounded the cemetery to the west. The headstones, gilded in a purple glow, cast long shadows across the sheared grass. Brian pulled the collar of his tuxedo jacket up around his neck. Soon it would snow here and he would be glad to be back in Hawaii.

He found the grave, marked by a pink slab of marble. 

                    William T. O’Grady  

       1923-1997

In accordance with his father’s wishes, that was all it said.

“The man without an epitaph.”

Brian reached into the paper bag and withdrew the bottle. He opened it with a crackling snap and lifted it above his father’s grave in ceremonial salute.

“Got one of your favorites here Dad,” he said. “Let’s have a drink.” 

Brian poured a small amount of the amber liquor onto the grave, then hoisted the whiskey to his own lips and took a long swig. He let out a satisfied gasp and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Well Dad,” Brian said, “Charlie’s finally married. But then again you probably know that. I suppose the dead know everything.”

He took another lengthy draw on the bottle. The musty odor of earth and damp leaves mixed with the spicy scent of the whiskey.

“Or is it that you don’t know…  Don’t even care.”

Brian stared at the grave as if he expected an answer. When there was none he carried on the one-sided conversation.

“Mom’s holding up well,” he said. “She only cried once, when Charlie came up the aisle bedecked in her full bridal regalia. I must say she looked beautiful, and almost innocent. Now, now dad… Just go with me here. The handkerchiefs were out and Aunt Ellen was honking like a gander. Jim, the lucky groom, he was waiting at the altar, looking like he’s been through this all before, because he has. Excuse me…”

Brian tilted the bottle against his face with one hand, clutching the tuxedo jacket around his now shivering chest with the other.

“Your old drinking buddy, Father Marino, he officiated through the whole thing. Of course he had to pull me aside and tell me what a great guy you were and how he misses you and all.”

Something caught in Brian’s throat. He coughed and took a deep breath. He scanned the other graves, some with names he recognized. He looked up at the ruby sunset, then stared at the pitiless trees bordering the manicured acres of planted caskets. He lifted the bottle again and heard the hollow chugging sound as he gulped. His face tilted in the direction of his father’s final resting place.

“Kenny’s good. Successful and all. Bean counting. Hasn’t got a steady girlfriend I don’t think. I talk to him. Not a lot. We’re not kids anymore dad. We’re just different, you know… Still.”

Brian watched the last rays of sunlight slip away behind the trees. 

“Hawaii’s great,” he said. “Charlene’s fine. I wish you could have met her… I know. I wasn’t around much…” Brian stared at the ground. The grass beneath his feet bristled dark blue blades. “How was I supposed to know? I thought you’d be around at least ‘til the liver gave out.” 

Brian’s face became flushed, a shade of pink and purple, as if all his capillaries were about to erupt. He again raised the bottle to his lips. The whiskey seemed to suck the air from his lungs.

“I should really get back… Mom seems kinda lost without you…” 

Brian slumped down on the chilly ground in front of the grave. He stared at the tombstone but could no longer make out the inscription in the dark. His numb fingers gripped the bottle. His chest heaved, and the hot tears came.

***

Kenny finished dancing with a gaggle of young cousins who hopped and twisted their way across the dance floor as the music thumped. He sat down on the chair beside his mother and loosened his tie.

“Whew, those kids can wear you out,” he said loud enough for her to hear.

Kenny looked at his mother. He noticed her cheeks stretched tautly around her pursed lips and pinched nostrils. An untouched slice of wedding cake sat on the table before her. 

“What’s the matter mom?”

She shook her head and kneaded her hands in her lap.

“Come on mom, what is it?” 

Cara sighed. “Your brother. I saw him leave. I’m worried.”

“He probably just went to get some fresh air,” Kenny said. 

Brian was such a self-centered jerk. He was probably on a street corner this very minute, copping dope, or worse. But Kenny wasn’t going to let Brian ruin the day for his mother.

“Come on,” Kenny said, “let’s dance.”

***

Sergeant Walker pulled his cruiser up alongside the cab parked in front of the cemetery. He lowered the passenger window and shouted to the cabbie.

“Everything O.K.?” 

The cabbie turned toward him and shrugged. “I dropped a fare here an hour or so ago. The guy told me to come back, but I don’t see him.”

“Kind of late to be visiting the cemetery don’t you think?”

The cabbie made a motion as if he were taking a drink. “I think he’d had a few. Said he wanted to visit someone.”

“Where did you pick him up,” the cop asked.

“At the reception hall. There was a wedding going on. He was wearing a tux. Guess he walked back.”

Sergeant Walker knew about the wedding. Bill O’Grady’s daughter. He had stopped by earlier to say congratulations to Bill’s widow, Cara. He hadn’t seen anybody wearing a tuxedo walking along the road.

“I’ll take a look,” the sergeant told the cabbie.

The cabbie saluted and pulled away. Sergeant Walker put the cruiser in reverse and turned the steering wheel sharply. He shifted gears. The vehicle moved forward and dipped into a shallow ditch. The sergeant piloted around the closed gate and pulled onto the gravel road inside the cemetery. He switched on the cruiser’s spotlight and the rows of tombstones seemed to jump to attention. Usually all he found here were kids smoking dope or drinking beer, or using the place to grab a quick piece of ass. Minor stuff. Except for that devil worshiping dipshit a few years back who stabbed another kid to death and left his body under the trees. For three days he took his friends to see the corpse before one of them finally got spooked and told his parents.

The spotlight banked across a row of headstones as the cruiser moved slowly along the gravel road that crunched beneath the car’s tires. Nobody here but us dead folks. Then the beam revealed the figure of a man slumped against a headstone. The man had long hair and wore a tuxedo. A liquor bottle rested on the ground beside him, blazing in the spotlight.

***

Cara stood in the hallway of her home. She removed her coat slowly, the arthritis in her joints flaring with the effort. Kenny entered through the front door behind her and placed his mother’s car keys on the end table where he knew she kept them. He helped her with the coat, then stuffed it into the hallway closet.

The phone rang. Cara answered in a tired voice. 

“Yes? Oh, hello sergeant. What’s that? Oh no! Is he O.K.?

Cara glanced anxiously at Kenny, who was removing his own coat. A scowl came over his face.

“My other son and I just got back from the reception. Do you remember Kenny? Yes, yes, I know you remember Brian. Oh, it went fine… yes thanks. What should I do? Oh, uh huh. Oh, that’s so good of you sergeant. I’ll send Kenny down right away. Thank you again.”

Cara put the phone receiver down and turned to Kenny.

“O.K., where is he this time?” Kenny said.

“The police station,” she said. “They picked him up at the cemetery.”

“The cemetery? Jesus Christ… what the hell was he doing there?

“Sergeant Walker wants you to come down and get him right away… before he has to charge him.”

“Why don’t we just leave him there, where he can’t get into any more trouble.”

“Now, we can’t do that, the sergeant said Brian’s drunk…” Cara’s voice turned to a whimper. She clenched her hands together nervously, kneading them with bony fingers.

“Alright ma,” Kenny said. He wrenched his coat back over his shoulders, sighing in disgust.

“You’re a good boy Kenny,” his mother said.

***

Brian sat beside his brother in the front seat of their mother’s car. His mouth was parched. His tongue felt dry and shriveled. He wanted another drink.

“Jesus Brian,” his brother said. “You have to pull a stunt like this today.”

Brian rolled his eyes. He looked out the window and saw a raccoon freeze near the side of the road, its masked eyes reflecting red in the headlights.

“You’re lucky Sergeant Walker and dad were in the lodge together. That’s the only reason he didn’t bust your ass. You would have been in the local rag and everything. Mom would have been embarrassed to tears.” 

Brian stared at his younger brother.

“The lodge?” he said. “It was A.A. Kenny.”

“I know that. Jesus Christ! What’s that got to do with you wandering around drunk in a graveyard? They all were in Alcoholics Anonymous. Father Marino too. It was the biggest club in town… You know, I think you should get help.”

“Maybe… if it makes you feel better.”

“Got nothing to do with me man.”

They stopped for a red light at a dark intersection. Kenny sighed.

“Someone should just kick your ass Brian.”

“What?”

“Kick your fucking self-centered ass, that’s what!”

“Oh really?”

Brian threw open his door and stumbled out, weaving his way to the front of the car. Kenny lowered his window and stuck his head out.

“Get back in the car you moron!”

Brian banged the car hood with the palms of his hands. “Go ahead,” he shouted. “Kick my ass!”

Kenny blew the horn. The sudden sound startled Brian for an instant, then he straightened himself and circled to Kenny’s side of the car. He yanked at the car door handle, but his fingers lost their grip. He stumbled backwards several steps before managing to regain his balance. He lurched forward and pulled the car door open. He grabbed Kenny by the lapels of his tuxedo and dragged him from behind the wheel.

“Have you gone insane?” Kenny sputtered. He grabbed Brian’s tuxedo jacket. They staggered in a circle. “You’re a fucking idiot!”

Kenny managed to knock his still inebriated older brother to the ground. He turned and spotted his mother’s car rolling forward, into the deserted intersection. “Oh shit!” Kenny shouted. 

The car slowly veered to the side of the road. Like a ghost ship coming to the edge of the earth it crested the embankment and disappeared. 

Brian pulled himself to his feet. 

“Look what you’ve done you colossal asshole!” Kenny screamed. 

He leapt on his brother, but Brian quickly had him in a headlock. They lurched to the side of the road, stumbled together over a curb and tumbled down the embankment.

***

Sergeant Walker noticed the red glow of automobile taillights in the ditch by the side of the road. He stopped the patrol car, grabbed his flashlight and jumped out. He skipped sideways down the slope to where the car rested in the ditch. The engine was running. He put his flashlight into the car. No one.

The sergeant turned and trotted along the embankment.

The flashlight beam found two men dressed in tuxedos, side by side in the dirt, gasping for air. The light illuminated their faces. It was the O’Grady boys. Again.

***

Cara answered the doorbell, her tired face wrinkled with worry. 

“Hello Cara,” Sergeant Walker said.

“Oh sarge, what’s the matter now?”

“Got your boys in the patrol car outside. Seems they had a disagreement on their way home from the station and decided to settle it like men. They ended up wrestling in a ditch, where I found ‘em. Unfortunately your car ended up in the ditch too.” The sergeant handed Cara the keys. “You can have it towed out tomorrow. I don’t think there was any serious damage.”

The cop looked at Cara.

“Now Cara,” he said. “If I see these two again tonight, they’re going straight to jail. No passing go. You understand?”

“Yes sergeant. I won’t let it happen again.”

The sergeant gave her a somber look, then winked his eye. “Just like old times eh?”

“Goodnight sergeant.”

“Goodnight Cara.”

Brain and Kenny shuffled through the doorway, embarrassed expressions on their bruised faces. Kenny’s tuxedo was soiled and the wire rims of his glasses were bent so that they listed to one side of his face. Brian’s tuxedo was in tatters, covered with mud and green grass stains. His shirt was ripped and spotted with blood.

“Oh my Lord,” Cara said, “look at the two of you.”

Kenny blurted,  “He’s out of his mind.”

Brian muttered. “I’m sorry mom.”

Cara held her hands over her ears.

“Shut up, both of you,” she shouted. “Get cleaned up and get to bed..”

***

The brothers lay in the familiar darkness of their childhood room, in their old beds, side by side.

 “I screwed up again man,” Brian said. “Now mom’s pissed.”

Kenny kept his back to Brian. “I guess some things never change.”

They were quiet for a moment.

“I love you Kenny,” Brian said.

“Go to sleep Brian, you’re still drunk. And try not to snore too loud if you don’t mind.”

Soon Brian could hear his brother’s deep breathing. He listened. How many nights as a kid had he heard that sound? Back when a year seemed to last forever. 

He thought of Charlene back in the Islands. Their little house beneath the volcano. Years of work had bought him that life. Starting out selling ounces back in high school. Then the long runs across the country, back and forth, the car trunk stuffed with pot or cash or both. For a long time he was just a mule, making a few thousand a trip, maybe more when he took a van. A life fueled by adrenaline and paranoia. That’s when his neck first started to bother him. Back then he made sure to keep his hair short. He had been lucky. He came close a couple times, but never was caught, like some of his partners were. They found one guy’s body in a rest stop in Illinois or Indiana. His van – and its cargo – had been taken. That shipment had involved cocaine and with that things got way sketchier. There was a windfall payday when he negotiated a transaction between two big players who were very territorial. But not long after that he was ripped off at gunpoint and he realized it was time to retire, while he still could. He was lucky to get out alive, with a few bucks stashed and some real estate too. He traveled awhile, met Charlene, and finally settled on the Big Island as the place he wanted to live. A place far away from Port Dorchester. Far away from his old friends, dead and alive.   

He tried to give mom some money to help her with the costs of the wedding. But she wouldn’t take it. He knew why. She didn’t know exactly how he had gotten his money. But she knew.

He needed to sleep. But he felt stone cold sober now. And he was in pain. His lip was swollen where Kenny had socked him. His cheek hurt. The back of his neck pulsated, a deep ingrained refrain of tension from contracted muscle. He had to deaden the pain. He thought of the tiny packet in his suitcase. He had stopped in the city and bought some heroin from somebody he knew from the old days.

Charlene would be angry if she found out. But she wouldn’t. Besides, being home was so stressful. It was like visiting a musty museum, a haunted mausoleum where the main exhibit never changed. The same pictures were on the walls, including Charlie’s paintings of cats from her aspiring artist period. The old furniture was where it had always been and the frayed carpets. There were the two hammered brass plates on the kitchen wall next to the refrigerator, depicting some contrived medieval European scene. The same books in the bookcase. The trophies from when he was a kid playing football. It was all still here, much of it now beneath layers of dust as his mother’s arthritis prevented her from cleaning like she used to.

All the recollections, not all bad, were here to.

Dad was gone, but his pipes were still beside his big easy chair, as if he were going to walk into the house and take his seat in the living room. He would lean over and reach for a pipe. Brian heard the moist sucking sound as dad lit the pipe. He smelled the burning tobacco. He heard the ringing sound as the old man knocked the remnants of tobacco from a pipe into the large green glass ashtray on the end table beside him.

Brian rolled out of bed, quietly, so as not to wake his brother. He opened the suitcase and rummaged in the darkness until he found the packet. He slipped out of the bedroom and into the bathroom at the end of the hall, not turning on the light until he had closed the door. He locked the door then stood on the toilet seat and pushed back a panel in the suspended ceiling, the ceiling he had helped his old man install so many years before. The aging white panels now were a sickly yellow. Brian’s hand found the works he had stashed there, during a previous visit, for just such an emergency.

He sat down on the toilet seat, then carefully cooked the dope in a spoon. When the syringe was prepped, he dug one of his mother’s nylon stockings from out of the laundry hamper, a lime green wicker basket with a vinyl-covered top that had to be as old as him. He strapped the stocking around his bicep and slapped up a vein. Then he injected himself.

His face flushed crimson as heat radiated from his brain like a mushroom cloud. The rush washed over him, pulling him backwards. His eyes rolled in his head and his hands shook. He dropped the needle to the floor as his legs jerked out from under him. He swooned, the swirling interior of the small bathroom the last sight he saw before his body spun off into inky space. He fell sideways. His head bounced off the white porcelain sink with a muted thud.

***

Kenny sat up in bed, not sure what the sound was that woke him. He looked over at Brian’s bed. Even in the dark, he could tell it was empty. Where the hell was he now? Kenny threw off his blanket, got out of bed and stepped across the room, automatically knowing the path to tread. He entered the hallway and saw light illuminating the edges of the closed bathroom door.

He knocked gently, so as not to wake his mother. No reply. 

“Brian,” he rasped in a hoarse whisper. 

No answer. 

He grabbed the door handle and twisted it. It was locked. He went back to the bedroom and reached to the top of the bookshelf where he found the small metal key that opened the bathroom door. It was right where it always had been when he was a kid. When Brian would lock him out of the bathroom and refuse to let him in no matter how much he whined that he was gonna dump in his pants if his brother didn’t open the damned door. 

Kenny put the key in the little hole in the door knob and heard the clicking sound it made when the lock button popped out. He pushed the door open a few inches but something was blocking it. He managed to stick his head through the opening. Brian was crumpled on top of a pink rug in the middle of the floor.

Kenny forced the door wider with his shoulder. He squeezed through and bent over Brian. He shook him but got no response. “Brian,” he rasped. “Brian.” He saw the syringe on the floor. “Oh my god!” he mumbled. Then he thought he heard a faint respiration. Brian was still breathing!

Kenny ran down the hallway. He grabbed the phone on the wall near the kitchen. His finger pressed 9, then 1. His hand froze, hovering motionless over the phone. He slowly replaced the receiver. 

Kenny looked out across the living room. Streaks of grainy light from the streetlamp in front of the house sliced across the furniture. His father’s big easy chair sat in one corner, as it always had. He remembered sitting in this throne as a child, when his dad was not around and Brian didn’t get there first. The chair had seemed to swallow him. For a moment he listened to the ticking of the old clock atop the mantle. The same clock that had measured the minutes and the hours that had marked the long passage of his childhood. He walked across the room and sat down in the great chair. It fit much better now.

***

Kenny woke to the sound of his mother’s screams. He found her in the bathroom standing over Brian’s dead body, the corpse folded into a fetal position at her feet. When she saw Kenny, she threw herself into his arms. Her eyes, soggy and red, searched her surviving son’s face. Her eyes suddenly narrowed, fixing on his. Her lips quivered. She tried to push him away but he held onto her. She pounded on his chest with frail fists.

“No!” she shrieked. “No!”

##

Posted – March 2025