"Carrie Richerson - The Quick And The Dead" - читать интересную книгу автора (Richardson Carrie)

CARRIE RICHERSON

THE QUICK AND THE DEAD

Carrie Richerson's last appearance in these pages was with "The Harrowing" last
Decem bet. Here she offers a tale not for the faint of heart, but then how often
does the truth honor faint hearts? And how often do the dead honor the wishes of
faint-hearted people--or anyone's?

My brother Frank came home tonight. Mother and I were just sitting down to
Thanksgiving dinner, my first at home in years, when the doorbell rang. I
flipped on the porch light, threw open the door and saw him standing there.

Seven years in the grave had not been kind. A whiff of rot crept in under the
formaldehyde; the skin that had looked like shiny plastic under the tasteful
lighting of the funeral home now showed small cracks and flakes like badly
glazed pottery. His wild red hair had become stringy and colorless, and the blue
suit we'd buried him in, the one that he had so outgrown that his wrists stuck
way out the cuffs and the undertaker had had to slit the back to get it to fit
over his wide-receiver shoulders, hung loosely on his shrunken frame.

"Hello, Jenny," he said.

"You sorry son-of-a-bitch," I said, and slammed the door in his face. As an
afterthought, I turned off the porch light.

Mother was lighting the candles when I returned to the dining room. Losing first
her husband, then her son, had spurred her to cling to the comforts of
tradition. I understood her little rituals, but had no desire to share them.
College had allowed me to escape, but this year, my first in med school, some
charitable impulse had moved me to give in to the hopeful, lonely note in her
voice when she called and asked if I were planning to come home to Gulfport for
the holiday. Now the trappings of a traditional turkey dinner, bowls and
platters of too much food, littered the table, absurd for just the two of us. At
least she had cooked a small bird instead of an eighteen-pound behemoth.

"Wrong address," I announced, breezing past her into the kitchen. I found the
bourbon right where I expected, and returned to the dining table with the bottle
and two glasses. Mother declined, I ignored her frown of disapproval and buried
my nose in my tumbler. The bouquet was almost sweet enough to take the smell of
Frank out of my nostrils.

I drank and watched Mother carve the turkey. It shocked me to see how old she
looked. I remembered a younger woman, laugh wrinkles at the corners of her eyes,
playing ball in the backyard with Dad, Frank, and me. Before Dad died when I was
six, Frank nine. Before Frank died at eighteen, seven years ago. Now the
candlelight highlighted those wrinkles, spreading their seams over her whole
face, and picked out more gray than red in her curls. She was one of those women
who had grown thinner, more intense, more brittle with age. I was probably
looking at my own face, a quarter-century down the line. I shivered. Maybe Frank
was walking on my grave.

At the thought, as if on cue, the doorbell went off again. "I'll get it," I
said, popping up. Damn that brother of mine.

He stood on the step with a patience he'd never displayed in life. Frank had
hurtled through the world, and into death, lingering just long enough after the
accident for Mother to make the agonizing decision to donate his perfect blue
eyes (her own blue eyes) to the Lions Club Eye Bank. Morbidly curious, I had
asked the funeral director at the viewing why the closed eyes didn't look
sunken; he had explained gently about glass eyeballs used to provide a natural
contour to the face. What he hadn't explained was that, since there was no need,
the glass hadn't been painted to resemble a real eye. Blank white bails stared
back at me from Frank's sockets. How did he see? I wondered.

"What do you want, Frank? Can't you just leave us alone? You're going to upset
Mother."

"Let me in, Jenny. I have to come in."

Not "I want" but "I have to." No one knows what cosmic injunction the dead are
following by getting up out of their graves and returning to their families, but
everyone knows by now that it's not a matter subject to negotiation. I raised my
hand to an uncaring Heaven. "C'mon, God. How about a lightning bolt--just a
little one--to incinerate this maggoty lump that used to be my brother?" But God
is asleep at the switch, or maybe dead Himself. No help there.

The dead have no sense of humor. Frank waited just long enough to see if my
prayer would be answered, then stepped forward over the threshold. I put out a
hand to block him. His broken chest felt spongy under the suit. "I don't want
you here, Frank. Stay away from me. If you come near me, I'll...."

"You'll what, Jenny? What can you do to me?" He wasn't defiant, or angry, or
contemptuous. The dead don't need to be any of those things. They are just
indestructibly persistent, and they always get their way, whatever it is, sooner
or later.

Mother looked up, a slice of breast meat pinned unmercifully between knifeblade
and fork, and froze, the color draining from her face to leave her as ashen as
Frank. I took the serving utensils out of her hands before she could drop them,
and pressed her into the chair. I grabbed the liquor bottle and poured, then put
her trembling hands around the glass. She drank. She never took her eyes off
Frank's face.

"Hello, Mother," he said from the doorway.

She stopped shaking, as though a switch had been flipped somewhere. She pushed
the whiskey away, walked to Frank and embraced him. "My darling baby boy. I'm so
glad you're home. Come sit down," she said, leading him to the chair on her
right and pulling it out for him. "You, too, Jenny," she ordered, indicating the
chair across from Frank's.

She began briskly serving up dressing, gravy, vegetables. Frank and I stared at
each other over the mounting piles on our plates. The smell of hot roast meat
clashed with the odor of preservatives and decay. Bile rushed into my mouth.

"I'm afraid I'm not very hungry, Mom," I said brightly, folding my napkin beside
my plate. "I'm sure you two have lots to talk about. See you in the morning." I
scooped up the bourbon and my glass and fled upstairs. Mother sent a vague "Good
night, dear" after me; she was already digging into her dinner with gusto and
briefing Frank on seven years' worth of neighborhood gossip.

Mother had changed nothing about my old room except to keep it cleaner than I
ever had. I settled onto the bed with a full tumbler at my elbow and my beloved
copy of Little Women, but this night the cheery optimism of the March girls
couldn't captivate me. After a while I gave up the pretense and set the book
aside. Then I got up and did something I hadn't done in years: I locked the
door.

The level in the bottle dropped slowly and steadily. When I felt I had achieved
the perfect state of pleasant numbness, I switched off the light and tried to
spin myself down into dreamless dark.

It didn't work. I was almost there when some reflex twitched and I was wide
awake, panting, my eyes straining up into the darkness. Not a nightmare, no--a
knowledge, a conviction. The certainty that Frank lay in the bed next to me,
that his hollow head depressed the pillow next to my cheek, that if I had but
the courage to turn my head, I would meet his white stare eyeball to eyeball.

I listened to my heart hammer and I couldn't do it. And then suddenly I did: my
head whipped around and I looked. Nothing. Not even a dent in the pillow or a
raffle in the sheets.

Of course he couldn't get in. I had locked the door, hadn't I? I got up and
checked it, then lay back down, this time on my side facing the empty half of
the bed. Now I had only to open my eyes to reassure myself that he wasn't there,
to avoid that terrifying paralysis of will.

An itch grew between my shoulder blades. He had come into the room silently,
behind my back, past the faithless lock, and he was staring at me. I could feel
his gaze on me like a touch -- a slow, persistent, insistent touch.

I rolled over, thrashing out from under the covers. No Frank. Door still locked.
But no way was I going to get to sleep. I sat up with my back to the headboard,
bottle locked between my shins, the glass my first line of defense. I drank
until gray light started to creep through the window, then dozed off with my
head on my knees.

I woke stiff, hung-over, and with an urgent need to pee. I almost twisted the
doorknob off the door before I remembered that it was locked, and why. A shower,
mouthwash, and clean clothes made me feel marginally functional again. I headed
downstairs with a swollen head and a bad attitude.

Frank and Mother were just finishing breakfast. Or rather, Mother was. Frank's
scrambled eggs and bacon were untouched. He was sitting in my chair, the one on
Mother's right, wearing some of Dad's old clothes. They fit him a little better
than the blue suit.

"Good morning, dear," Mother said. "I hope you slept well."

Frank got up silently and walked around the table to the place on Mother's left.
"You can have that chair, Jenny. I know it's your favorite. And the food. I
don't need to eat," he said.

I looked at the chair and shuddered. The cadavers I had worked on in anatomy lab
always felt greasy, their leathery skins coated with a thin film of fat
dissolved by the formaldehyde. I imagined an oil slick on the chair seat. That,
and the smell of Frank and the food almost completed the job on my stomach.

Dry toast, I thought. I can handle dry toast. I fixed myself a hangover special
in the kitchen and chose a chair at the far end of the table from Mother and
Frank. Mother looked hurt, but said nothing.

"So tell us, Frank," I said around a mouthful of crumbs, "why'd you come back? I
heard it was only murder victims that were returning from the dead. But nobody
killed you, Frank -- you wrapped your car around that light pole all by
yourself, right?"

"It was an accident," he said. I contemplated his hands, resting passively on
the tablecloth. I had dissected hands. I thought about muscles, tendons, nerves,
vessels, phalanges. Did he feel pain? I wondered. If I dissected his hands here,
on the dining table, would he feel anything? Would I?

"You were drunk, weren't you, Frank?" I pressed.

"Yes, I was drunk."

"And it's just a miracle that you didn't kill someone else that night, isn't
it?" I was beginning to enjoy this.

"I should not have been driving," he agreed.

Mother's distress with the turn the conversation was taking was apparent.
"Jenny, we don't need to dwell on the past."

But I refused to back off. "So, Frank -- you weren't murdered, nobody ran you
off the road -- why are you here?"

He aimed those white bails straight at me. "For justice, Jenny. So justice can
be done."

"What justice, Frank? Whose version of justice?"

"That's enough!" Mother's voice was shrill. I held my breath, waiting for her to
break, but she regained control and continued in a brighter tone, "Why don't the
three of us do something special today? We could go to a movie -- Oh, it's so
nice to have the family together again!"

Family? This? I choked down the last of my juice and hoped it wouldn't come
right back up. "Sorry, More," I lied, "I promised some friends I'd drop by
today. Gotta run."

I spun my car out of the driveway without bothering to look and picked a
direction at random. The driving calmed me quickly. I've always felt safe in my
car: late at night, drunk, high, driving through the worst neighborhoods or the
ass-end of nowhere. I've taken some awful chances behind the wheel, but nothing
can touch me. No one can touch me.

I meandered north through town and up U.S. 49 as far as DeSoto National Forest,
then followed county roads and bayous past faux antebellum homes and live oaks
heavy with moss, southeastward to Back Bay. Across the causeway into historic
Biloxi, then a slow cruise along the beach on Highway 90 back to Gulfport. I
drove past the cemetery, but I didn't go in to check Frank's spot in the family
vault. I'd never visited it since the funeral; why start now?

By mid-afternoon I felt I could handle real food. I bought a shrimp po'boy and a
six-pack at a dell, parked my car at the end of the airport runway, and watched
the National Guard fighter pilots practice touch-and-go's while I ate. Frank had
wanted to be a pilot; he had the eyesight and the steady nerves for it. The
NROTC scholarship to Ole Miss had come through the week before he died.

The sandwich stayed down, thanks to the beers. When one of the pop tabs broke
off in my fingers, I used the Swiss Army knife I keep in the car to open the
can. Soon I had a pleasant buzz on.

Mild air and late autumn sun flooded in the open car window. My eyes felt
sandpapered. I'll just rest them for a minute, I thought as I leaned back in the
seat. Even the scream of the jets couldn't keep me awake.

Screaming. Someone was screaming. I was screaming. It was dark, I was
frightened, and I was screaming my outrage and fear at the top of my lungs.
Please. Don't.

Frank and I had been playing Monopoly in the basement while Mom visited the
Truetts next door for Sunday afternoon coffee. Some petty squabble over real
estate had mushroomed into name-calling and shouting, and suddenly Frank had
dashed up the steps and slammed the door behind him. The lock snicked, then the
lights went out.

Seven-year-old logic was no match for the monsters my imagination could create
to populate the darkness. Things were watching me, breathing on me, touching me.
Panic burst from me in full-throated screams. Then suddenly there was light, and
Frank hugging me hard. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry -- Oh god, Jenny, I'm so sorry!
It's all right, now -- stop crying -please don't tell Mom -- it's okay, now --
stop crying." Over and over, until my screams died away and I realized I was
safe.

"That's right -- quiet now -- you're okay -- look, I've got something to show
you."

"Show me again," I demanded. An earlier memory now. Christmas afternoon, Frank
and I on the back steps, Mom and Dad and the Truetts watching football games on
TV. I was -- what? Five?

I adored my big brother. As far as I was concerned, Frank had hung the moon and
set all the stars in the sky, just for me. Now I crowded close, shoulder to
shoulder with him in the watery December light, and oohed and ahhed as he showed
off the Swiss Army knife Dad had given him.

The knife blossomed under Frank's fingers like a steel flower. Two blades, a
bottle opener with screwdriver, a hooked thing Frank said was a can opener. A
corkscrew and a magnifier. From the other side, an awl, fishscaler, nail file,
and, incredibly, tiny scissors. Stuck into a clever slot in the end, a toothpick
and a tweezer.

Everything open, displayed. The knife bristled, armed for bear. One by one,
Frank closed, settled, inserted, until the miraculous package lay quiescent on
his palm. It was my first experience with folded space. A fat bar of metal and
red plastic, a white cross. How could all that fit in there?

"Again," I urged.

"Naw, you've seen enough." I reached for it, but he pulled his hand away. "No,
you're too young to play with a knife like this. You'd hurt yourself, and Dad
would have my hide."

"Would not!" But Frank wasn't listening. His eyes had gone remote at the thought
of Dad's temper. He rolled the knife back and forth across his palm, then closed
his fingers around it in a fist. The winter air was suddenly chill, I tried not
to move or breathe or make a sound. Please. Don't.

Frank took a deep breath and a door opened somewhere behind his eyes. Tucking
the knife away in his jacket pocket, he gave me a sunny smile. "You can play
with things like this when you're older."

"You're old enough to know about things like this now, Jenny. Bet you and your
girlfriends talk about it all the time."

I was scared and fascinated at the same time. Of course I knew I shouldn't be
doing this, Mom would have a shit fit if she found us under the basement stairs
like this -- but the lure of forbidden knowledge was stronger than prohibition.
And it couldn't hurt to just look, could it?

Frank wanted me to look. And when I had looked, he encouraged me to touch it.
Hesitantly I reached out a finger. The soft texture surprised and repelled me at
first, but then it got harder and larger. I wasn't sure I liked this lesson in
folded space. I pulled my hand away and edged back toward the closet door.

"Don't stop. It's okay, it won't bite." He took my hand and put it back around
his erection. "Like this -- and this," he guided me.

He was my brother. What could it hurt? And I was full of an eleven-year-old's
natural curiosity. I did what he asked, until he grunted and wetness filled my
palm.

"Gross!" But I remembered to whisper.

"No, it's not. It's normal. Just wait a few years -- you won't be able to get
enough of it." He wiped my hand and himself with a handkerchief, then buttoned
himself back up. I doubted his prognostication. Who would want to have that
sticky stuff on them all the time? Were grown-ups weird, or what?

"Now show me yours," he said.

I was suddenly reluctant. I didn't know that would be the deal when he had
called me into the dark space under the stairs and offered to show me something
special.

"I don't want to," I said.

His hand closed like a trap around my wrist. "Do it, Jenny." He began to
squeeze. "I showed you mine."

"Okay, darn it!" I rubbed the wrist he'd released, then pulled down my shorts
and underpants. He lifted my shirtfront, touched the swells of my growing
breasts, then lower. I was still unsure about the changes my body was beginning
to undertake, very self-conscious about the seemingly huge growths on my chest
and the sprouting forest of hair between my thighs. I expected taunts, but
instead he said, "You're going to be a beautiful woman, Jenny."

His touch was gentle, pleasurable. As if reading my mind, he said, "You touch
yourself at night, don't you, Jenny?"

I blushed in the dimness. "It's okay," he said, stroking lower. "Everyone does
it. Show me how you do it."

He was my brother. It wasn't like he was some grotty pervert hanging around the
school playground, trying to get me into his car. I guided his fingers. I was
still developing this skill, and he was clumsy, but after a few minutes, a tiny
spasm throbbed through my groin. I must have breathed funny, because Frank knew.
He stopped rubbing, then let his fingers explore further back in my slickness.
He found the opening of my vagina and tried to press his finger inside.

"Ow! No!" I slapped his hand away. "Don't do that!" I didn't think what we'd
done so far was all that bad (though Mom would undoubtedly disagree if she found
out -- mothers were like that), but I knew that opening had to do with making
babies. And that, I knew, was Trouble.

Frank withdrew his hand and let me go. That time. Later, other times, times he
broadened his sexual experimentations, he wasn't so accommodating. Please,
don't, I lay in the dark and begged him. But he always did, anyway.

* * *

I lay in the dark and held my breath, listening to the bedroom door's bolt
strain against the frame. I could imagine Frank's large, strong hand twisting
the knob, twisting it as he sometimes twisted my wrists when I wouldn't
cooperate. Fifteen years old, and putting all my trust in a fragile piece of
metal. I lay in the dark and waited for the faithless lock to snap, as I
sometimes waited for my wrists to snap. But the lock held. After a few moments I
heard Frank release the knob, then his soft steps padding away down the hall.

All the air left me with a whoosh, and I started to shiver violently, freezing
and sweating by turns, all the bedclothes pulled tight around me. When my body
was exhausted, I fell into the deepest, soundest, most restful sleep I'd had in
years.

I slept so late the next morning that I had to skip breakfast to get to school
on time. Frank had already left; I was glad I didn't have to face him. I bought
a banana at the Kwik-Pik to hold me until lunch and peeled it as I headed round
the corner at a trot. I never saw what hit me.

Purple clouds in a pink sky. Green clouds in an orange sky. Then Frank's face
swam into view; he grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet. My mouth felt funny;
I thought I had mashed banana all over it, but when I touched it, my fingers
came away red.

I blinked at the blood as if I had never seen the color before. Frank shook me,
hard. My head snapped up and down as I tried to focus on his face. "Don't you
ever do that again, you hear me?" I tried tO remember what I had done, but all I
could think about was how much Frank's voice sounded like Dad's. Frank shook me
again. "If you ever lock your door again--I'll kill you, Jenny. Understand?"

He let me go. My rubbery legs folded up beneath me and I sat down hard. "Clean
yourself up," he said, throwing his handkerchief into my lap. I heard his boots
crunching across the gravel as I stared stupidly at the dark drops falling onto
my skirt.

I don't remember what excuse I gave the school office for my split lip and my
stained clothing, but I remember that I was very late.

The telephone call came very late on a Friday night. At the hospital the doctors
told us the impact had crashed Frank's chest and ruptured most of his organs.
They pumped sixty-eight units of blood into him, and it all ran right back out.
He died on the table, while the surgeons worked frantically to restore the
proper configurations of his folded spaces.

His face -- his handsome, charming face -- was unscathed. Mother kissed him one
last time, and told the doctors to take his eyes. Then she finally surrendered
herself to a terrible grief.

What did I feel?

I felt like I'd had all the wind knocked out of me.

I felt scared.

I felt relieved.

I felt guilty.

I felt all alone.

I felt nothing at all.

I'll tell you how I felt: I felt free. And safe. Safe.

I woke so suddenly that I banged my head against the car roof. The sun had set
while I napped and the warm afternoon had turned into a chilly evening, but I
was shivering from more than the cold as I rolled up the window and started the
engine.

I had never buried the memory of Frank's abuses the way some people do to
survive, but I didn't like to remember them. The pain ran too deep. The
afternoon's dreams had been as sharp, as vivid, as hurtful as the original
experiences; I felt more exhausted than when I nodded off.

The house was dark and deserted when I returned. Maybe Mother and Frank were
still at the movies. With a pair of dark glasses, Frank probably looked no worse
than any other hung-over holiday reveler. In the darkened theater who would know
that there was a dead man in the next seat? Maybe many of the risen dead and
their families had gone to the movies today. I pictured rows of impassive faces
glowing a spectral blue in the light reflected from the screen. Which is the
living here and which the dead?

I recognized the edge of hysteria in my muddled thoughts. I needed sleep,
dreamless sleep--something alcohol couldn't give me. But it's not very difficult
for a medical student to get what she needs. I locked the bedroom door and dug
into the bottom of my overnight bag. The pill went down with a slug of whiskey
and, a few minutes later, I went down the rabbit hole after it.

I slept the clock around to the next afternoon and woke rested and ravenous.
Again I was alone in the house. Where could Mother and Frank be now?

There was enough of the turkey left to make a decent-sized sandwich, and a fresh
pan of Mother's famous brownies sat on the back of the stove. I took my dinner
into the living room and settled into a comfortable chair with the bourbon at my
elbow. Some perverse impulse made me pick up the family picture album and leaf
through it as I ate.

Here was Dad, grinning and holding up a large Spanish mackerel after a
successful Gulf fishing trip, and I, scarcely taller than the fish, struggling
to lift its tail. A picture of me as a three-year-old, toddling after Dad with
an armload of grass runners to plant in the bare earth of our new back yard when
we had first moved to this house. Frank helping Mom and Dad plant azaleas while
I operated the hose, watering bushes and workers indiscriminately. Frank at
eight and me at five, dressed in our new Easter outfits, my hair in long braids
tied off with silly little bows, Frank's carefully slicked-down hair starting to
escape into his usual cowlick. His arm was thrown companionably around my
shoulder; my arms were wrapped around an enormous bunch of Easter lilies he had
given me. We looked happy, carefree -- alive.

Tears threatened to start, and I blinked them away. After Dad had died I had
transferred all my love and worship to Frank. Where had my beloved brother and
protector gone? I had trusted him, and he had betrayed me. No justice could make
up for that. None.

I was a third of the way through the bottle, half-way through the pan of
brownies, and two-thirds through the album when Mother and Frank returned.
Mother was rosy-cheeked and laughing from the cold as she shed a cheerful
blizzard of hat, coat, scarf, and gloves; Frank followed her stolidly with a
pile of packages.

"Jenny, darling--I'm so glad you're up at last! You should have come with us --
the after-Thanksgiving sales were wonderful! We had a great time, didn't we,
Frank? Oh, just put them over there on the couch, dear."

A new use for the dead, I thought: pack mules. Frank placed the boxes as ordered
and settled into a chair across the room. I turned away from his white gaze.

"Would you like a drink, More?" I asked, just tO be polite.

"Why, I think I will have a little--just to warm up!" She giggled and patted at
her hair. She looked so much younger today than when we had sat down to dinner
-- was it only the day before yesterday?

While I found a glass, Mother pounced on the photo album. It was opened to a
picture of Frank in his high school football uniform, the day he'd been elected
team captain. Tall, tanned, handsome, laughing into the camera, his wild red
hair shining in the sun like a halo: a cheerleader's dream, a mother's joy.

"Oh, Frank!" She showed him the picture. "I was so proud of you that day. Your
father would have been proud, too. I wish he had lived to see it." She brushed
away what might have been a tear.

The saccharine sentiment was the last straw. I gagged on it and everything else
I had swallowed over the years: Mother's favoritism toward Frank, my pride,
Frank's abuse, his semen, my hate. At last, at long last, I vomited up my rage.

"You know, Frank, there's an old Oriental proverb: Two can keep a secret -- if
one is dead. But you just couldn't stay dead, could you, brother?" I walked
unsteadily across the room to where he sat, leaned over, and sniffed
ostentatiously. "Lord, my brother hath not lain in his grave for three days,
wherefore he stinketh."

"Jennifer! You're drunk!"

Right-o, Mom. For once. Something about the way Dad's old trousers fit on Frank
or the way he was sitting made him look sexless. I grabbed for his crotch,
caught only a fistful of cloth, and laughed. "Poor Frank. What -- are there rats
in the family vault, brother? Have they been chewing?"

Mother grabbed me and spun me around. "Out! Get out of this house this minute!"

I savored the one word I had never dared say as it rolled off my tongue: "No.
No, I don't think I'll do that." I knew she would slap me. I caught her hand in
mid-swing and looked down at Frank, who had sat as blank-eyed and inscrutable as
a buddha throughout. "Tell her, brother -- tell Mom our secret: Tell her what
her perfect son did all those nights in my room."

He shook his head. "You must tell her, Jenny."

"But, Frank-- you know she won't believe me. I tried to tell her, many times,
but she just didn't want to know. Because then she just might have to do
something about her 'darling baby boy,' who was screwing and sodomizing his
sister on a regular basis!"

Mother went white -- with anger? with shock? "It's not true," she whispered,
looking to Frank for confirmation.

He never took his blank gaze off my face. "It is true," he said.

"And you knew it, too." I turned on her. "You had to have heard him, you had to
have heard me crying, you had to have seen the stains on my sheets. Jesus
Christ, Mother! -- sometimes it was blood! You knew every time." She shook her
head No but her panicked eyes said Yes.

"I don't know why I didn't get pregnant," I mused. "He never used any
protection. I used to pray that I would get pregnant; then you'd have to believe
me. But even that wouldn't have made you stop, would it, Frank? You just
wouldn't leave me alone."

I stared into my glass, found it empty, didn't refill it. "That last night I lay
there like some towel you'd used, and I prayed to God that I would die. Then I
prayed that you would die, and God answers prayer: that was the last night you
ever laid a hand on me.

"So, tell me, Frank -- why did you come back?"

"For justice, Jenny. So that justice could be done."

"What justice, Frank! Whose justice?"

Frank looked at Mother, broken and weeping. "Your justice, Jenny." He stood up.
"I will be leaving now."

"Tell me this, first. Did you ever feel even a little bit guilty, Frank? Did you
wrap your car around that pole on purpose?"

He paused with his hand on the door. "It's been a long time, Jenny. I don't
remember. Think that, if it helps."

"Will I be rid of you for good this time, Frank?"

"No, Jenny. I don't think you will ever be rid of me."

"You bastard!" The glass left my hand and slammed into the side of his head with
a dull crunch. A moment later I heard the front door open and close.

I looked at the bottle of bourbon and shuddered. Mother was still crying. I went
over to her and put a hand on her shoulder, but she didn't respond. After a
minute I followed Frank out the front door.

I sat on the step feeling utterly sober, hollow and weightless, and watched him
walk down the street in the direction of the cemetery. The dent my glass had
left in his skull had made his remaining hair stick up like his old cowlick. He
looked so alone. The way I felt.

I remembered another step, another time, a warm shoulder next to mine, a
cowlicked head bent low, with mine, over something marvelous and strange. The
tears started at last.

My brother -- o my brother -- was dead.




CARRIE RICHERSON

THE QUICK AND THE DEAD

Carrie Richerson's last appearance in these pages was with "The Harrowing" last
Decem bet. Here she offers a tale not for the faint of heart, but then how often
does the truth honor faint hearts? And how often do the dead honor the wishes of
faint-hearted people--or anyone's?

My brother Frank came home tonight. Mother and I were just sitting down to
Thanksgiving dinner, my first at home in years, when the doorbell rang. I
flipped on the porch light, threw open the door and saw him standing there.

Seven years in the grave had not been kind. A whiff of rot crept in under the
formaldehyde; the skin that had looked like shiny plastic under the tasteful
lighting of the funeral home now showed small cracks and flakes like badly
glazed pottery. His wild red hair had become stringy and colorless, and the blue
suit we'd buried him in, the one that he had so outgrown that his wrists stuck
way out the cuffs and the undertaker had had to slit the back to get it to fit
over his wide-receiver shoulders, hung loosely on his shrunken frame.

"Hello, Jenny," he said.

"You sorry son-of-a-bitch," I said, and slammed the door in his face. As an
afterthought, I turned off the porch light.

Mother was lighting the candles when I returned to the dining room. Losing first
her husband, then her son, had spurred her to cling to the comforts of
tradition. I understood her little rituals, but had no desire to share them.
College had allowed me to escape, but this year, my first in med school, some
charitable impulse had moved me to give in to the hopeful, lonely note in her
voice when she called and asked if I were planning to come home to Gulfport for
the holiday. Now the trappings of a traditional turkey dinner, bowls and
platters of too much food, littered the table, absurd for just the two of us. At
least she had cooked a small bird instead of an eighteen-pound behemoth.

"Wrong address," I announced, breezing past her into the kitchen. I found the
bourbon right where I expected, and returned to the dining table with the bottle
and two glasses. Mother declined, I ignored her frown of disapproval and buried
my nose in my tumbler. The bouquet was almost sweet enough to take the smell of
Frank out of my nostrils.

I drank and watched Mother carve the turkey. It shocked me to see how old she
looked. I remembered a younger woman, laugh wrinkles at the corners of her eyes,
playing ball in the backyard with Dad, Frank, and me. Before Dad died when I was
six, Frank nine. Before Frank died at eighteen, seven years ago. Now the
candlelight highlighted those wrinkles, spreading their seams over her whole
face, and picked out more gray than red in her curls. She was one of those women
who had grown thinner, more intense, more brittle with age. I was probably
looking at my own face, a quarter-century down the line. I shivered. Maybe Frank
was walking on my grave.

At the thought, as if on cue, the doorbell went off again. "I'll get it," I
said, popping up. Damn that brother of mine.

He stood on the step with a patience he'd never displayed in life. Frank had
hurtled through the world, and into death, lingering just long enough after the
accident for Mother to make the agonizing decision to donate his perfect blue
eyes (her own blue eyes) to the Lions Club Eye Bank. Morbidly curious, I had
asked the funeral director at the viewing why the closed eyes didn't look
sunken; he had explained gently about glass eyeballs used to provide a natural
contour to the face. What he hadn't explained was that, since there was no need,
the glass hadn't been painted to resemble a real eye. Blank white bails stared
back at me from Frank's sockets. How did he see? I wondered.

"What do you want, Frank? Can't you just leave us alone? You're going to upset
Mother."

"Let me in, Jenny. I have to come in."

Not "I want" but "I have to." No one knows what cosmic injunction the dead are
following by getting up out of their graves and returning to their families, but
everyone knows by now that it's not a matter subject to negotiation. I raised my
hand to an uncaring Heaven. "C'mon, God. How about a lightning bolt--just a
little one--to incinerate this maggoty lump that used to be my brother?" But God
is asleep at the switch, or maybe dead Himself. No help there.

The dead have no sense of humor. Frank waited just long enough to see if my
prayer would be answered, then stepped forward over the threshold. I put out a
hand to block him. His broken chest felt spongy under the suit. "I don't want
you here, Frank. Stay away from me. If you come near me, I'll...."

"You'll what, Jenny? What can you do to me?" He wasn't defiant, or angry, or
contemptuous. The dead don't need to be any of those things. They are just
indestructibly persistent, and they always get their way, whatever it is, sooner
or later.

Mother looked up, a slice of breast meat pinned unmercifully between knifeblade
and fork, and froze, the color draining from her face to leave her as ashen as
Frank. I took the serving utensils out of her hands before she could drop them,
and pressed her into the chair. I grabbed the liquor bottle and poured, then put
her trembling hands around the glass. She drank. She never took her eyes off
Frank's face.

"Hello, Mother," he said from the doorway.

She stopped shaking, as though a switch had been flipped somewhere. She pushed
the whiskey away, walked to Frank and embraced him. "My darling baby boy. I'm so
glad you're home. Come sit down," she said, leading him to the chair on her
right and pulling it out for him. "You, too, Jenny," she ordered, indicating the
chair across from Frank's.

She began briskly serving up dressing, gravy, vegetables. Frank and I stared at
each other over the mounting piles on our plates. The smell of hot roast meat
clashed with the odor of preservatives and decay. Bile rushed into my mouth.

"I'm afraid I'm not very hungry, Mom," I said brightly, folding my napkin beside
my plate. "I'm sure you two have lots to talk about. See you in the morning." I
scooped up the bourbon and my glass and fled upstairs. Mother sent a vague "Good
night, dear" after me; she was already digging into her dinner with gusto and
briefing Frank on seven years' worth of neighborhood gossip.

Mother had changed nothing about my old room except to keep it cleaner than I
ever had. I settled onto the bed with a full tumbler at my elbow and my beloved
copy of Little Women, but this night the cheery optimism of the March girls
couldn't captivate me. After a while I gave up the pretense and set the book
aside. Then I got up and did something I hadn't done in years: I locked the
door.

The level in the bottle dropped slowly and steadily. When I felt I had achieved
the perfect state of pleasant numbness, I switched off the light and tried to
spin myself down into dreamless dark.

It didn't work. I was almost there when some reflex twitched and I was wide
awake, panting, my eyes straining up into the darkness. Not a nightmare, no--a
knowledge, a conviction. The certainty that Frank lay in the bed next to me,
that his hollow head depressed the pillow next to my cheek, that if I had but
the courage to turn my head, I would meet his white stare eyeball to eyeball.

I listened to my heart hammer and I couldn't do it. And then suddenly I did: my
head whipped around and I looked. Nothing. Not even a dent in the pillow or a
raffle in the sheets.

Of course he couldn't get in. I had locked the door, hadn't I? I got up and
checked it, then lay back down, this time on my side facing the empty half of
the bed. Now I had only to open my eyes to reassure myself that he wasn't there,
to avoid that terrifying paralysis of will.

An itch grew between my shoulder blades. He had come into the room silently,
behind my back, past the faithless lock, and he was staring at me. I could feel
his gaze on me like a touch -- a slow, persistent, insistent touch.

I rolled over, thrashing out from under the covers. No Frank. Door still locked.
But no way was I going to get to sleep. I sat up with my back to the headboard,
bottle locked between my shins, the glass my first line of defense. I drank
until gray light started to creep through the window, then dozed off with my
head on my knees.

I woke stiff, hung-over, and with an urgent need to pee. I almost twisted the
doorknob off the door before I remembered that it was locked, and why. A shower,
mouthwash, and clean clothes made me feel marginally functional again. I headed
downstairs with a swollen head and a bad attitude.

Frank and Mother were just finishing breakfast. Or rather, Mother was. Frank's
scrambled eggs and bacon were untouched. He was sitting in my chair, the one on
Mother's right, wearing some of Dad's old clothes. They fit him a little better
than the blue suit.

"Good morning, dear," Mother said. "I hope you slept well."

Frank got up silently and walked around the table to the place on Mother's left.
"You can have that chair, Jenny. I know it's your favorite. And the food. I
don't need to eat," he said.

I looked at the chair and shuddered. The cadavers I had worked on in anatomy lab
always felt greasy, their leathery skins coated with a thin film of fat
dissolved by the formaldehyde. I imagined an oil slick on the chair seat. That,
and the smell of Frank and the food almost completed the job on my stomach.

Dry toast, I thought. I can handle dry toast. I fixed myself a hangover special
in the kitchen and chose a chair at the far end of the table from Mother and
Frank. Mother looked hurt, but said nothing.

"So tell us, Frank," I said around a mouthful of crumbs, "why'd you come back? I
heard it was only murder victims that were returning from the dead. But nobody
killed you, Frank -- you wrapped your car around that light pole all by
yourself, right?"

"It was an accident," he said. I contemplated his hands, resting passively on
the tablecloth. I had dissected hands. I thought about muscles, tendons, nerves,
vessels, phalanges. Did he feel pain? I wondered. If I dissected his hands here,
on the dining table, would he feel anything? Would I?

"You were drunk, weren't you, Frank?" I pressed.

"Yes, I was drunk."

"And it's just a miracle that you didn't kill someone else that night, isn't
it?" I was beginning to enjoy this.

"I should not have been driving," he agreed.

Mother's distress with the turn the conversation was taking was apparent.
"Jenny, we don't need to dwell on the past."

But I refused to back off. "So, Frank -- you weren't murdered, nobody ran you
off the road -- why are you here?"

He aimed those white bails straight at me. "For justice, Jenny. So justice can
be done."

"What justice, Frank? Whose version of justice?"

"That's enough!" Mother's voice was shrill. I held my breath, waiting for her to
break, but she regained control and continued in a brighter tone, "Why don't the
three of us do something special today? We could go to a movie -- Oh, it's so
nice to have the family together again!"

Family? This? I choked down the last of my juice and hoped it wouldn't come
right back up. "Sorry, More," I lied, "I promised some friends I'd drop by
today. Gotta run."

I spun my car out of the driveway without bothering to look and picked a
direction at random. The driving calmed me quickly. I've always felt safe in my
car: late at night, drunk, high, driving through the worst neighborhoods or the
ass-end of nowhere. I've taken some awful chances behind the wheel, but nothing
can touch me. No one can touch me.

I meandered north through town and up U.S. 49 as far as DeSoto National Forest,
then followed county roads and bayous past faux antebellum homes and live oaks
heavy with moss, southeastward to Back Bay. Across the causeway into historic
Biloxi, then a slow cruise along the beach on Highway 90 back to Gulfport. I
drove past the cemetery, but I didn't go in to check Frank's spot in the family
vault. I'd never visited it since the funeral; why start now?

By mid-afternoon I felt I could handle real food. I bought a shrimp po'boy and a
six-pack at a dell, parked my car at the end of the airport runway, and watched
the National Guard fighter pilots practice touch-and-go's while I ate. Frank had
wanted to be a pilot; he had the eyesight and the steady nerves for it. The
NROTC scholarship to Ole Miss had come through the week before he died.

The sandwich stayed down, thanks to the beers. When one of the pop tabs broke
off in my fingers, I used the Swiss Army knife I keep in the car to open the
can. Soon I had a pleasant buzz on.

Mild air and late autumn sun flooded in the open car window. My eyes felt
sandpapered. I'll just rest them for a minute, I thought as I leaned back in the
seat. Even the scream of the jets couldn't keep me awake.

Screaming. Someone was screaming. I was screaming. It was dark, I was
frightened, and I was screaming my outrage and fear at the top of my lungs.
Please. Don't.

Frank and I had been playing Monopoly in the basement while Mom visited the
Truetts next door for Sunday afternoon coffee. Some petty squabble over real
estate had mushroomed into name-calling and shouting, and suddenly Frank had
dashed up the steps and slammed the door behind him. The lock snicked, then the
lights went out.

Seven-year-old logic was no match for the monsters my imagination could create
to populate the darkness. Things were watching me, breathing on me, touching me.
Panic burst from me in full-throated screams. Then suddenly there was light, and
Frank hugging me hard. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry -- Oh god, Jenny, I'm so sorry!
It's all right, now -- stop crying -please don't tell Mom -- it's okay, now --
stop crying." Over and over, until my screams died away and I realized I was
safe.

"That's right -- quiet now -- you're okay -- look, I've got something to show
you."

"Show me again," I demanded. An earlier memory now. Christmas afternoon, Frank
and I on the back steps, Mom and Dad and the Truetts watching football games on
TV. I was -- what? Five?

I adored my big brother. As far as I was concerned, Frank had hung the moon and
set all the stars in the sky, just for me. Now I crowded close, shoulder to
shoulder with him in the watery December light, and oohed and ahhed as he showed
off the Swiss Army knife Dad had given him.

The knife blossomed under Frank's fingers like a steel flower. Two blades, a
bottle opener with screwdriver, a hooked thing Frank said was a can opener. A
corkscrew and a magnifier. From the other side, an awl, fishscaler, nail file,
and, incredibly, tiny scissors. Stuck into a clever slot in the end, a toothpick
and a tweezer.

Everything open, displayed. The knife bristled, armed for bear. One by one,
Frank closed, settled, inserted, until the miraculous package lay quiescent on
his palm. It was my first experience with folded space. A fat bar of metal and
red plastic, a white cross. How could all that fit in there?

"Again," I urged.

"Naw, you've seen enough." I reached for it, but he pulled his hand away. "No,
you're too young to play with a knife like this. You'd hurt yourself, and Dad
would have my hide."

"Would not!" But Frank wasn't listening. His eyes had gone remote at the thought
of Dad's temper. He rolled the knife back and forth across his palm, then closed
his fingers around it in a fist. The winter air was suddenly chill, I tried not
to move or breathe or make a sound. Please. Don't.

Frank took a deep breath and a door opened somewhere behind his eyes. Tucking
the knife away in his jacket pocket, he gave me a sunny smile. "You can play
with things like this when you're older."

"You're old enough to know about things like this now, Jenny. Bet you and your
girlfriends talk about it all the time."

I was scared and fascinated at the same time. Of course I knew I shouldn't be
doing this, Mom would have a shit fit if she found us under the basement stairs
like this -- but the lure of forbidden knowledge was stronger than prohibition.
And it couldn't hurt to just look, could it?

Frank wanted me to look. And when I had looked, he encouraged me to touch it.
Hesitantly I reached out a finger. The soft texture surprised and repelled me at
first, but then it got harder and larger. I wasn't sure I liked this lesson in
folded space. I pulled my hand away and edged back toward the closet door.

"Don't stop. It's okay, it won't bite." He took my hand and put it back around
his erection. "Like this -- and this," he guided me.

He was my brother. What could it hurt? And I was full of an eleven-year-old's
natural curiosity. I did what he asked, until he grunted and wetness filled my
palm.

"Gross!" But I remembered to whisper.

"No, it's not. It's normal. Just wait a few years -- you won't be able to get
enough of it." He wiped my hand and himself with a handkerchief, then buttoned
himself back up. I doubted his prognostication. Who would want to have that
sticky stuff on them all the time? Were grown-ups weird, or what?

"Now show me yours," he said.

I was suddenly reluctant. I didn't know that would be the deal when he had
called me into the dark space under the stairs and offered to show me something
special.

"I don't want to," I said.

His hand closed like a trap around my wrist. "Do it, Jenny." He began to
squeeze. "I showed you mine."

"Okay, darn it!" I rubbed the wrist he'd released, then pulled down my shorts
and underpants. He lifted my shirtfront, touched the swells of my growing
breasts, then lower. I was still unsure about the changes my body was beginning
to undertake, very self-conscious about the seemingly huge growths on my chest
and the sprouting forest of hair between my thighs. I expected taunts, but
instead he said, "You're going to be a beautiful woman, Jenny."

His touch was gentle, pleasurable. As if reading my mind, he said, "You touch
yourself at night, don't you, Jenny?"

I blushed in the dimness. "It's okay," he said, stroking lower. "Everyone does
it. Show me how you do it."

He was my brother. It wasn't like he was some grotty pervert hanging around the
school playground, trying to get me into his car. I guided his fingers. I was
still developing this skill, and he was clumsy, but after a few minutes, a tiny
spasm throbbed through my groin. I must have breathed funny, because Frank knew.
He stopped rubbing, then let his fingers explore further back in my slickness.
He found the opening of my vagina and tried to press his finger inside.

"Ow! No!" I slapped his hand away. "Don't do that!" I didn't think what we'd
done so far was all that bad (though Mom would undoubtedly disagree if she found
out -- mothers were like that), but I knew that opening had to do with making
babies. And that, I knew, was Trouble.

Frank withdrew his hand and let me go. That time. Later, other times, times he
broadened his sexual experimentations, he wasn't so accommodating. Please,
don't, I lay in the dark and begged him. But he always did, anyway.

* * *

I lay in the dark and held my breath, listening to the bedroom door's bolt
strain against the frame. I could imagine Frank's large, strong hand twisting
the knob, twisting it as he sometimes twisted my wrists when I wouldn't
cooperate. Fifteen years old, and putting all my trust in a fragile piece of
metal. I lay in the dark and waited for the faithless lock to snap, as I
sometimes waited for my wrists to snap. But the lock held. After a few moments I
heard Frank release the knob, then his soft steps padding away down the hall.

All the air left me with a whoosh, and I started to shiver violently, freezing
and sweating by turns, all the bedclothes pulled tight around me. When my body
was exhausted, I fell into the deepest, soundest, most restful sleep I'd had in
years.

I slept so late the next morning that I had to skip breakfast to get to school
on time. Frank had already left; I was glad I didn't have to face him. I bought
a banana at the Kwik-Pik to hold me until lunch and peeled it as I headed round
the corner at a trot. I never saw what hit me.

Purple clouds in a pink sky. Green clouds in an orange sky. Then Frank's face
swam into view; he grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet. My mouth felt funny;
I thought I had mashed banana all over it, but when I touched it, my fingers
came away red.

I blinked at the blood as if I had never seen the color before. Frank shook me,
hard. My head snapped up and down as I tried to focus on his face. "Don't you
ever do that again, you hear me?" I tried tO remember what I had done, but all I
could think about was how much Frank's voice sounded like Dad's. Frank shook me
again. "If you ever lock your door again--I'll kill you, Jenny. Understand?"

He let me go. My rubbery legs folded up beneath me and I sat down hard. "Clean
yourself up," he said, throwing his handkerchief into my lap. I heard his boots
crunching across the gravel as I stared stupidly at the dark drops falling onto
my skirt.

I don't remember what excuse I gave the school office for my split lip and my
stained clothing, but I remember that I was very late.

The telephone call came very late on a Friday night. At the hospital the doctors
told us the impact had crashed Frank's chest and ruptured most of his organs.
They pumped sixty-eight units of blood into him, and it all ran right back out.
He died on the table, while the surgeons worked frantically to restore the
proper configurations of his folded spaces.

His face -- his handsome, charming face -- was unscathed. Mother kissed him one
last time, and told the doctors to take his eyes. Then she finally surrendered
herself to a terrible grief.

What did I feel?

I felt like I'd had all the wind knocked out of me.

I felt scared.

I felt relieved.

I felt guilty.

I felt all alone.

I felt nothing at all.

I'll tell you how I felt: I felt free. And safe. Safe.

I woke so suddenly that I banged my head against the car roof. The sun had set
while I napped and the warm afternoon had turned into a chilly evening, but I
was shivering from more than the cold as I rolled up the window and started the
engine.

I had never buried the memory of Frank's abuses the way some people do to
survive, but I didn't like to remember them. The pain ran too deep. The
afternoon's dreams had been as sharp, as vivid, as hurtful as the original
experiences; I felt more exhausted than when I nodded off.

The house was dark and deserted when I returned. Maybe Mother and Frank were
still at the movies. With a pair of dark glasses, Frank probably looked no worse
than any other hung-over holiday reveler. In the darkened theater who would know
that there was a dead man in the next seat? Maybe many of the risen dead and
their families had gone to the movies today. I pictured rows of impassive faces
glowing a spectral blue in the light reflected from the screen. Which is the
living here and which the dead?

I recognized the edge of hysteria in my muddled thoughts. I needed sleep,
dreamless sleep--something alcohol couldn't give me. But it's not very difficult
for a medical student to get what she needs. I locked the bedroom door and dug
into the bottom of my overnight bag. The pill went down with a slug of whiskey
and, a few minutes later, I went down the rabbit hole after it.

I slept the clock around to the next afternoon and woke rested and ravenous.
Again I was alone in the house. Where could Mother and Frank be now?

There was enough of the turkey left to make a decent-sized sandwich, and a fresh
pan of Mother's famous brownies sat on the back of the stove. I took my dinner
into the living room and settled into a comfortable chair with the bourbon at my
elbow. Some perverse impulse made me pick up the family picture album and leaf
through it as I ate.

Here was Dad, grinning and holding up a large Spanish mackerel after a
successful Gulf fishing trip, and I, scarcely taller than the fish, struggling
to lift its tail. A picture of me as a three-year-old, toddling after Dad with
an armload of grass runners to plant in the bare earth of our new back yard when
we had first moved to this house. Frank helping Mom and Dad plant azaleas while
I operated the hose, watering bushes and workers indiscriminately. Frank at
eight and me at five, dressed in our new Easter outfits, my hair in long braids
tied off with silly little bows, Frank's carefully slicked-down hair starting to
escape into his usual cowlick. His arm was thrown companionably around my
shoulder; my arms were wrapped around an enormous bunch of Easter lilies he had
given me. We looked happy, carefree -- alive.

Tears threatened to start, and I blinked them away. After Dad had died I had
transferred all my love and worship to Frank. Where had my beloved brother and
protector gone? I had trusted him, and he had betrayed me. No justice could make
up for that. None.

I was a third of the way through the bottle, half-way through the pan of
brownies, and two-thirds through the album when Mother and Frank returned.
Mother was rosy-cheeked and laughing from the cold as she shed a cheerful
blizzard of hat, coat, scarf, and gloves; Frank followed her stolidly with a
pile of packages.

"Jenny, darling--I'm so glad you're up at last! You should have come with us --
the after-Thanksgiving sales were wonderful! We had a great time, didn't we,
Frank? Oh, just put them over there on the couch, dear."

A new use for the dead, I thought: pack mules. Frank placed the boxes as ordered
and settled into a chair across the room. I turned away from his white gaze.

"Would you like a drink, More?" I asked, just tO be polite.

"Why, I think I will have a little--just to warm up!" She giggled and patted at
her hair. She looked so much younger today than when we had sat down to dinner
-- was it only the day before yesterday?

While I found a glass, Mother pounced on the photo album. It was opened to a
picture of Frank in his high school football uniform, the day he'd been elected
team captain. Tall, tanned, handsome, laughing into the camera, his wild red
hair shining in the sun like a halo: a cheerleader's dream, a mother's joy.

"Oh, Frank!" She showed him the picture. "I was so proud of you that day. Your
father would have been proud, too. I wish he had lived to see it." She brushed
away what might have been a tear.

The saccharine sentiment was the last straw. I gagged on it and everything else
I had swallowed over the years: Mother's favoritism toward Frank, my pride,
Frank's abuse, his semen, my hate. At last, at long last, I vomited up my rage.

"You know, Frank, there's an old Oriental proverb: Two can keep a secret -- if
one is dead. But you just couldn't stay dead, could you, brother?" I walked
unsteadily across the room to where he sat, leaned over, and sniffed
ostentatiously. "Lord, my brother hath not lain in his grave for three days,
wherefore he stinketh."

"Jennifer! You're drunk!"

Right-o, Mom. For once. Something about the way Dad's old trousers fit on Frank
or the way he was sitting made him look sexless. I grabbed for his crotch,
caught only a fistful of cloth, and laughed. "Poor Frank. What -- are there rats
in the family vault, brother? Have they been chewing?"

Mother grabbed me and spun me around. "Out! Get out of this house this minute!"

I savored the one word I had never dared say as it rolled off my tongue: "No.
No, I don't think I'll do that." I knew she would slap me. I caught her hand in
mid-swing and looked down at Frank, who had sat as blank-eyed and inscrutable as
a buddha throughout. "Tell her, brother -- tell Mom our secret: Tell her what
her perfect son did all those nights in my room."

He shook his head. "You must tell her, Jenny."

"But, Frank-- you know she won't believe me. I tried to tell her, many times,
but she just didn't want to know. Because then she just might have to do
something about her 'darling baby boy,' who was screwing and sodomizing his
sister on a regular basis!"

Mother went white -- with anger? with shock? "It's not true," she whispered,
looking to Frank for confirmation.

He never took his blank gaze off my face. "It is true," he said.

"And you knew it, too." I turned on her. "You had to have heard him, you had to
have heard me crying, you had to have seen the stains on my sheets. Jesus
Christ, Mother! -- sometimes it was blood! You knew every time." She shook her
head No but her panicked eyes said Yes.

"I don't know why I didn't get pregnant," I mused. "He never used any
protection. I used to pray that I would get pregnant; then you'd have to believe
me. But even that wouldn't have made you stop, would it, Frank? You just
wouldn't leave me alone."

I stared into my glass, found it empty, didn't refill it. "That last night I lay
there like some towel you'd used, and I prayed to God that I would die. Then I
prayed that you would die, and God answers prayer: that was the last night you
ever laid a hand on me.

"So, tell me, Frank -- why did you come back?"

"For justice, Jenny. So that justice could be done."

"What justice, Frank! Whose justice?"

Frank looked at Mother, broken and weeping. "Your justice, Jenny." He stood up.
"I will be leaving now."

"Tell me this, first. Did you ever feel even a little bit guilty, Frank? Did you
wrap your car around that pole on purpose?"

He paused with his hand on the door. "It's been a long time, Jenny. I don't
remember. Think that, if it helps."

"Will I be rid of you for good this time, Frank?"

"No, Jenny. I don't think you will ever be rid of me."

"You bastard!" The glass left my hand and slammed into the side of his head with
a dull crunch. A moment later I heard the front door open and close.

I looked at the bottle of bourbon and shuddered. Mother was still crying. I went
over to her and put a hand on her shoulder, but she didn't respond. After a
minute I followed Frank out the front door.

I sat on the step feeling utterly sober, hollow and weightless, and watched him
walk down the street in the direction of the cemetery. The dent my glass had
left in his skull had made his remaining hair stick up like his old cowlick. He
looked so alone. The way I felt.

I remembered another step, another time, a warm shoulder next to mine, a
cowlicked head bent low, with mine, over something marvelous and strange. The
tears started at last.

My brother -- o my brother -- was dead.