Three Weeks With My Brother (13 page)

I rolled my eyes. “That’s just because we’re on the trip. You have to remember—doing something like this has always been more your style than mine. You grew up loving adventure. You used to search it out. I just tagged along, trying to keep you from getting into too much trouble.”

He grinned. “I did get into trouble a lot, didn’t I?”

“Quite a bit, actually. Especially when it came to weapons.”

A look of fond reminiscence crossed his face. “You know, I just don’t understand why that happened. I wasn’t a bad kid. I was just trying to have a good time.”

I smiled, thinking,
good times indeed.

My parents, being the wise and wonderful folks they were, finally realized Micah and I weren’t exactly responsible when it came to BB guns, despite the good times we had had with them. No matter how much we begged, they refused to buy us new ones. Nor would they consider giving us rifles, when we offered that by way of compromise. Instead, they bought us bows and arrows.

We had fun with those bows. Our aim wasn’t too good, but what we lacked in accuracy, we made up for with velocity. We could send those arrows humming, practically burying them into trees. My brother took to it a bit more easily than I did, and eventually got to the point where he could actually hit a fairly large target from thirty feet away at least 5 percent of the time, as opposed to my 3 percent of the time.

“Hey, let’s put an apple on your head and I’ll try to shoot it off,” he finally suggested.

“I have a better idea,” I said, “let’s put the apple on your head.”

“Mmm. Maybe it’s not such a good idea.”

One day, when we were out with our bows and arrows in the woods, one of the arrows went astray, heading toward a group of workers that were framing a house. (In the years since we’d moved there, construction on new homes had begun in earnest.) Now, the arrow hadn’t landed too close to the workers, but it wasn’t too far away either, and one of the carpenters got pretty mad at us, even when we tried to explain that it was an accident. “Don’t even
think
about shooting arrows around here,” he growled, and even worse, he refused to give us the arrow back, no matter how much we pleaded. Since we had only three arrows to begin with, losing one was a big deal.

My brother and I skulked off, heading back up the hill toward our street again, seething. By the time we reached the top of the hill, my brother decided that he wasn’t about to follow some stranger’s orders, especially since he’d kept the arrow.

As he put it: “He can’t tell
me
what to do.”

My brother loaded an arrow and tightened the bow, then leaned back with the intention of shooting the arrow straight up into the sky in a statement of defiance, a sort of “take that!” He launched the arrow and it zoomed skyward, higher and higher, until it was just a speck in the sky.

Of course, he hadn’t taken note of the light breeze that afternoon. Nor did my brother actually shoot straight up, though—as God is my witness—that was his intention. Instead, the arrow had just enough angle to sort of veer in the direction of the house (and workers) at the bottom of the hill, and the wind took over from there. I watched the arrow’s changing trajectory, feeling my chest begin to constrict as I realized where it was heading.

“Micah—is that arrow heading where I think it is?”

“Oh, no . . . no . . . NO . . . NOOO . . . NOOOO-OO!!!!!!”

My brother, turning white like me, was hopping up and down in ardent denial, as if hoping to change the obvious. We watched the arrow as it began arcing downward, toward the worker who’d confiscated the previous arrow. Had Micah aimed, had he purposely been trying, there wasn’t a chance he’d ever launch an arrow two hundred yards with such accuracy.

“NOOOOO . . . NOOOOOO!!!!!” Micah screamed, continuing to hop up and down.

I watched the arrow descending toward doom itself, surer with every passing second that we were actually going to kill the guy. Never had I been so terrified. Time seemed to slow down; everything moved with dreadful determination. I knew we’d end up in Juvenile Hall; maybe even prison.

And then it was over.

The arrow hit the ground, less than a foot from where the man was working with a shovel, landing in a poof of dust. He jumped to the side in shock and horror.

“Oh, thank God,” Micah said with a long sigh. He smiled.

“You got that right,” I agreed. “That was close.”

Of course, at that age—and in that particular moment—we weren’t able to fathom how the worker might view this particular incident. Unlike us, he wasn’t thankful at all. One minute, he’s doing his job, and the next minute, he’s nearly impaled by an arrow, launched by two kids at the top of the hill. No, he wasn’t thankful, not even a little bit. He was ENRAGED! Even from two hundred yards, we saw him raise his eyes toward us, toss his shovel aside, and start racing for his truck.

“You think we oughta run?” I asked, turning to Micah.

But Micah was already gone, racing back toward our street, his legs moving as fast as I’d ever seen them.

I ran after him; thirty seconds later, as I was chugging across neighbors’ lawns, I glanced over my shoulder and saw the truck come to a screeching halt at the edge of the woods, saw the man jump from the truck and start chasing us the rest of the way on foot.

Oh, he caught us all right, and he was even madder up close than he was far away. When my dad learned what happened, he was mad, too, and we were grounded for a couple of weeks. Even worse, later that afternoon, the sheriff came and confiscated our bows and arrows.

With the exception of the one trip to the Grand Canyon, our vacations would be spent with relatives in San Diego.

For whatever reason, the majority of both my mother’s and father’s family had moved there, and consequently, we were able to visit them and enjoy the beach without having to spend much money. A good thing, I might add, for a family that didn’t have any to spare.

We would always drive the ten hours it took to get there, the three of us crammed into the back of the Volkswagen van, along with Brandy (our Doberman) and assorted luggage. Though we would stop for gas twice in those ten hours, we never bought food or drinks; instead, our meals consisted of ham sandwiches, Fritos, and pink lemonade that my mom had brought from home.

Those were grand times. Our parents never required us to wear seat belts (are you really surprised by that revelation?), and we’d read, play games, or wrestle in the back as we zipped down Highway 5, heading for grandma Sparks’s house. I don’t mean the kind of wrestling where we’d poke each other and whine; I mean
real
wrestling complete with headlocks, punches, twisted arms and legs, and punctuated with screams and tears. Usually, my parents would ignore it for a while, but sometimes it got to the point that dad would finally look over his shoulder and scream at us to “Stop shaking the G-D-N van!” thereby initiating the inevitable DEFCON countdown, which we never seemed able to avoid. And, of course, we’d stare at our father as if he had cornstalks growing out of his ears, wondering what on earth could have possibly upset him.

“It was your fault,” Micah would hiss. “You shouldn’t have cried.”

“But you were hurting me,” I’d say.

“You need to learn to be tougher.”

“You were twisting my ear! I thought you were ripping it off!”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“You’re an idiot.”

His eyes narrowed. “What’d you call me?”

“He called you an idiot,” Dana would helpfully add.

Micah would glower. “I’ll show you who the idiot is . . .”

At which point, the wrestling would begin again. I often tell people that we never actually
drove
to San Diego; for the most part, the van sort of
hopped
there.

We were also “country comes to town” when it came to visiting with our cousins. Their families tended to be better off financially than we were, and as soon as we arrived we’d go blasting through the door toward the cousins’ bedroom. Beyond the door, we knew, was Nirvana itself and we’d simply stare for a moment in wonder, little tears welling in the corners of our eyes. They had more toys than we’d ever seen, and we quickly made good use of them.

“Hey what’s this?” we’d ask, grabbing something. Soon we’d be wiggling pieces, trying to figure it out.

“It’s the new, battery-operated construction crane,” my cousin would proudly exclaim. “It can assemble entire houses from scratch—”

Snap
.

The cousin would freeze in horror at the sight of the toy in two pieces.

“What happened?” we’d ask.

“You . . . you . . . broke it,” he’d whimper.

“Oh, sorry about that. Hey . . . what’s this one do?”

“It’s the new electronically enhanced remote control car, complete with—”

Snap
.

“Oh, sorry,” we’d say again. “Hey, what’s this . . .”

Once the toys were broken (we always wondered how so many accidents could happen in such a short time), we’d try to play with our cousins. Not that they viewed it as playing. We did nothing with them that we didn’t do back home—to us, it was regular fun—but to them, it bordered on merciless torture. None of them, it seemed, had lived a childhood like ours, i.e., one without real rules. We thought it great fun, for instance, rolling the little ones up in area rugs until they were pinned and suffocated, unable to move. Then my brother and I would take turns launching ourselves from the couch onto the soft bulge where their bodies were and screaming, “Bingo!” whenever we really crunched them. Or, we might dunk them in the pool—really dunk them, for a long, long time—until they nearly passed out. Sometimes, we’d try to teach our cousins how to punch hard, demonstrating on their little arms.

“No, not like that. Cock your arm waaay back, and
really
use the knuckle. Like this . . .”

POW!

If there was one thing wrong with visiting my cousins—and it pains me to admit it, since they’re family—it’s that they were whiners. They cried all the time when we were around. It’s a wonder how their parents ever dealt with it.

Anyway, the visit would eventually come to an end and it would be time to leave. We’d head to the van, and we’d turn around to see our cousins ghost-white and trembling as they waved good-bye to us, their little arms covered in bruises.

“See you next year!” we’d call out.

Later, on the way back to grandma’s, my brother would ask, “What were they doing with their faces when we left?”

“You mean the way they were blinking, and squinching, and tilting suddenly to the side?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know. Must be a facial tic of some sort.”

Micah would shake his head. “Those poor kids. They weren’t like that when we got there. Must have come on suddenly.”

The trips themselves were always an adventure, too. Once, when we took off for San Diego, my father had $21 in his wallet. That was it—the entire sum he’d brought for the family for an entire week’s vacation. As fate would have it, the van broke down in the Tehachapi Mountains, about an hour north of Los Angeles. We were towed to the only service station nearby, where we learned that the van had an oil leak. The part would take at least a week to arrive, but the mechanic thought he could weld something together overnight that might allow us to reach our destination. Of course, it would cost money, something my dad didn’t have.

My dad had a funny, almost contradictory, relationship with money. Oh, I suppose that he wanted more of it, but when push came to shove, he had no idea about how to go about earning more. At the same time, he never wanted to think about money, but, because of our family’s situation, was always forced to do so. Everything had to be budgeted, and this breakdown was not in the budget. To say he was angry was an understatement; he was downright scary: He totally bypassed the DEFCON countdown and went straight to Nuclear Launch. He called his mom in San Diego, who promised to wire him the money needed for repairs, but the repairs wouldn’t be completed until the following day. He spent the day pacing back and forth, whistling the tune of the dead, his tongue curled out of his mouth.

Later that afternoon, we ate the last of the ham sandwiches and Fritos and finished the lemonade, further enraging my father. Without money to buy food, or even stay in a hotel, we ended up sleeping in the back of the van with the dog that night. When we woke, there was no money for breakfast either; we wouldn’t eat until we reached San Diego the following afternoon.

Still, that wasn’t the worst part about our stay. Nor was it our dad’s anger. When I think about that particular trip, my memories always drift back to the first day, an hour or so after we’d arrived at the garage.

As I said, my father was beyond furious at that time, and we’d learned to keep our distance in moments like those. With nothing else to do, my brother, sister, and I decided to see what the town had to offer, but quickly learned that there wasn’t much. The place was more a run-down rest stop than an actual town. It was hot as blazes with only a handful of decrepit buildings lining the highway in either direction, and not a stitch of shade. There wasn’t even a coffee shop or diner with a television perched in the corner that might help pass the time.

It was one of the first times we’d actually been bored. Thankfully, we soon came across a dog who seemed to enjoy our attention. We spent a few minutes petting him—he was incredibly friendly, bouncy, and happy—and we took to calling him Sparky (after us, of course). In time he scrambled to his feet and we watched him begin to trot away, tongue hanging out, looking pleased as punch. He glanced back at us, almost smiling, I still believe, and headed toward the road, where he was instantly struck by a car going sixty miles an hour.

We witnessed every detail. We heard the thump and watched the dog twist unnaturally before careening toward us, blood flying from his mouth, and skidding to a stop less than a couple of feet away. The car simply slowed; it didn’t stop. The family in the car looked as horrified as we were. A moment later, after whining and whimpering and heaving a final breath, Sparky died at our feet. With my dad in such a foul mood, and my mom trying to keep him calm, all we could do was handle the latest horror the way we always had: with each other, as siblings. Just three little kids on the side of a highway, holding each other and crying, trying to understand why terrible things happened.