Winter

It was November, the trees barren and the night air crisply cobalt, edged in the slightest bite. I was coming out of years of anorexia. I was starting college. I was happy.

You had started seeing things.

​

Before, you’d claimed to have seen young boys crossing in and out of our backyard, climbing the fence. At the time we’d thought, sure, our backyard was an acre-large — it dove down almost like a ravine, into a creek that marked the border between the properties on our street and the backs’ of the adjoining properties. Our fence was touched on every side. Easily climbable. There were families with teens.

​

Later, we’d assumed the rowdy young boys were a fabricated excuse for petty cash you stole from our cars. But now, there was a certain franticness about it. Your Harley shirt stuck to your sternum with a dark bloom of sweat, those pale eyes roving. You begged our mom to come look.

​

“I’m not crazy,” you said, pleading, sweating.

​

You saw boys in the trees. Young men. Climbing them, climbing between them with ropes.

You and momma stood on the back porch in the glow of the single sodium bulb. The wood creaked underfoot. Your breaths puffed with cold like smoke. You had the binoculars that daddy kept in the middle of the kitchen table (no matter how many times we put them away) for bird watching. You pointed, tried to get momma to see.

​

My minuscule mother shivered in her purple pajamas. She crossed her arms over her chest, pulled my bother’s highschool sweatshirt tight across her, and said in her twang, “You’re fucking kookoo, Tim.”

You argued for a second and then broke into a sort of regretful laugh. She laughed too.

​

“Ah,” you said. “Goddamnit.” 

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* * *​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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A few weeks later my mom had gotten you a birthday present. Tickets to see Garth Brooks at Neyland Stadium. You’d always loved music, old country especially, and had once partied on Phil Vassar’s tour bus with him. It was your fiftieth on December 14, so she got you something special even though it was early.

​

My youngest bother, his girlfriend, daddy and I were going too.

I dressed nice — brown cords and a tight golden sweater. I put

makeup on. We went to the food court at UT to eat before, and

somehow you and I got left alone at a sticky circular table near

the Chick-Fil-A. There was a strange pain in your eyes as you

said, “Well don’t you look pretty.”  

​

I either muttered a thank you or preened or flipped you off, I

don’t remember. We walked to the stadium and sat down on

the cold bleachers and pulled on hats as we waited for the show

to start. It was dim but abuzz, crowded. Down towards the

railing there was a ruckus. An older woman, trying to get up

the stairs. You were at the edge of our row. I blinked and you

were gone. 

​

A second later we saw you coming back up, slowly, walking

with her arm in your hand, speaking in low encouraging words. 

You didn’t say anything when you returned. You were shy

like that. We were talking amongst ourselves when a distinctly

female, raspy caw broke the winter air.

​

You best friend, Sherry Jo, was there. She’d caught sight of you.

​

You smiled and laughed with your white chiclet teeth and stood up to greet her. She fell into your arms a bit tipsily. You went off together, and my mom gave a secretive smile. This was years in the making.

​

​​​​

​

You went back on the road again, after that. Working, trucking.

​

Thanksgiving rolled around. The same as usual — the heat of bodies pressed into the warm dim living room of Gigi and Grampy’s house, the dark red wallpaper patterned with autumnal vegetables, the kitchen island covered in trays of dips and snacks. Canberry, sweet potato casserole with marshmallows, Grampy’s puppy chow, the like. Incandescence, the background hum of so many voices. Like cicadas in the summertime. 

​

You didn’t show up, even though you’d said you would. No one was surprised — you famously hated family events. At times we shared a glance about this. Once, when we were younger, the other kids had made fun of you for dipping tobacco — a chorus of “eww” and “that’s so gross.” They were too young to even know what it was. Out of impulse I’d said, “Leave him alone.” You were always softer than you let on. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

​​​​

Gigi and mom breathed soft worries over you as we left. My parents and I piled into the car and I leaned my head against the cold window, a ring of damp condensation spreading around the heat of my skin. The stars were bright, the night velvet blue, the sodium streetlamps softly orange. I knew you had died. I was full and safe and all the memories of years passed, a childhood of days like this, rested like honey on my lips. But mom said, “I’m worried about Tim,” and I thought, “He’s dead.”

​

That night I dreamt of you. The next morning, when I woke up, my first thought was how awful it would be to lose a loved one during the holidays. I knew. Not in a panicky way, just that gentle settled knowing, like a stone dropped in a pond.

​

I got out of bed. I heard my mom first, in the kitchen, on the phone. I padded out towards her. She stood on the creaking linoleum with the phone to one ear and bent, clawed fingers against the opposite cheek. Outside were the low-hung, dove-gray clouds of winter.

She said, “I don’t understand.”

​

I opened the medicine cabinet, old scratched wood and a handle that left the smell of brass on your fingers. I poured a dropper of CBD down my throat to stave off the feeling. I knew.

​

My dad hovered in the doorway of his office, between us. My mom was growing frantic. She repeated it like a litany, I don’t understand, I don’t understand, I don’t understand. 

​

And then she screamed at my dad, “He’s lying! Make him stop lying!” 

​

My dad murmured low flat words, comforting but honest. He pried the phone from her hands. He spoke in quiet tones to the man on the phone — your friend Darwyn. Somehow together my mom and I ended up going to the back of the house. 

​

She needed to get dressed. She needed to tell Gigi and Grampy. No one told me what Darwyn had found but I knew. With every step she bent and folded a little, a broken sob rolling out of her. In her room she breathed fast, with wails, and held her clawed hands, like dead birds, against her chest. She gasped, “My — heart — hurts.” 

​

I gathered clothes or helped her take them off, one of the two. Struggling to clasp her bra, she turned to me and wept, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

​

I said, maybe too un-gently, “No, we’re not doing that right now. Now isn’t the time for sorry.” 

​

She dressed. She moved back through the house. My dad was off the phone by then. They needed to go, there was nothing else to do. Between the kitchen and the doorway my dad stood half-face, and looked back at me with those coffee-dark eyes so unlike my own. He asked, “Are you gonna be okay?” 

​

I nodded. 

​

When he was gone my cousin texted me. She’s just driven my aunt — her mom, who was crying too hard to drive — to Gigi and Grampy’s house. She wanted to know if I was okay, I wanted to know if she was okay. I told her I hoped you didn’t kill yourself, that I worried that would destroy our mothers, our grandparents. 

​

She asked, “Do you think he did?”

​

My dad was gone a few hours. When he returned home he complimented my composure, my stoicism, my calmness. The warm pools of his eyes searched my own. I wasn’t sure I should be proud of the stillness inside of me, like a stagnant pond, chilled and murky. I cried in the shower that night, and then not again for a long time. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

​

The initial ruling on the autopsy was a heart attack. That’s what

the community was told, what everyone still thinks happened to

you.

​

The truth came out to us a month later — overdose, fentanyl —

and we realized your friend probably removed any evidence.

We weren’t surprised.

​

So you will not be there in the chapel where a Marine plays

“Taps” for you, where the pews are lined with tears. Where I

wish I had snuck in and replaced the communion wine with

Jack Daniels, because you would have gotten a kick out of

that. Where my mom speaks about you with eloquent words

and glistening eyes, where she is still and strong. Where I read

the Gospel with a voice unwavering. Where Darwyn’s wife

weeps in the back pew, loud enough to rattle.

​

After, there is an Irish wake at Gigi and Grampy’s house.

Say what you want about the Catholics, the hillbillies, the Irish,

the rednecks, but we know how to celebrate someone.

There, children skirt underfoot and everyone drinks and

laughs. So very many stories are told about you.

​

All of five-feet and seventeen, I make friends with your towering biker buds in their leather jackets emblazoned with rabbits copulating — in honor of your friend Rabbit, who died too. The Sheriff knows you, I don’t know how. He’s a squat thick bald man and turns red as a tomato with laughter as he recites some wicked story about you. Your trucking friends mill about with beer bellies and paper plates. Your stepchildren and their children are there, missing you more than whatever father is blood kin to them.​ A startling number of those who mourned with us will die of overdose within the next three years, and you will not be there to mourn them either. 

​​​

But you weren't really dead then, at the vibrant Irish wake on your 50th birthday. Not yet. You died about two weeks later, on Christmas day. 

​

I went into the laundry room, following the sounds of a portion of this sprawling, raucous family. One of my brothers, his wife, my mom. They were peering into the bird cage, where Rudy had lived alone since Rumpil died nearly a decade back. He was laying on the floor of the cage, on his back, taloned feet curled into his delicate belly. The minuscule bones of his chest rose and fell fast, dark beady eyes fluttering in their casings of soft flesh.

​

He was dying. Taylor, my brother, reached in and picked him up oh-so-gently. He carried him out the creaking metal door and through the garage, beside the Japanese maple in our front yard. Squatted on the ground, his hands in the shape to accept the Eucharist, he held that little bird and let him look at the sky -- just this once. Light fell softly on his pale chest, the overcast sky gleaming in his black eyes until they fell gently shut. 

​

I thought of the long-ago caterpillar in Taylor's cupped palms. I felt you die then.