It was the summer of 1970. My older brother’s blue 1970 Dodge Challenger sat in the driveway. Dust had well begun to settle upon the seats and float around the car, permeating its interior. I remember when the letter arrived just a few weeks ago. My brother had died, over 8,000 miles from his home. He was tasked with being a rifleman. His body hadn’t been recovered. One can reasonably imagine what had befallen him.
I was glad he was dead. I remember when he had forced me to watch him rape his girlfriend. He was 18, and she 16. He guilted her into it by saying that if she were to let him die a virgin, God would look unkindly upon her when it was too her turn to face him. Not to mention, it would be unpatriotic, according to him, for her to abstain from his sexual whims.
He said I should watch because I needed to see what a man looked like performing his ultimate purpose for God with a woman. She was a bit taller than him and blonde. Unfortunately for her, she had developed early, and my brother had noticed back when they both went to high school together. I watched her struggle against him, pleading and saying that it was unholy to do this before marriage. They looked awkward; her body squirming and struggling against the weight of his until it just stopped and surrendered, lying motionless as he thrust against it. He took away her humanity, her soul, and now the world had taken his.
My brother’s name was Joseph, but it didn’t matter now. Now he was just a corpse in the ground. Now he was just a war story.
My mother wept insufferably loud at the funeral. I stood next to her in my little black suit and tie, tailored perfectly and freshly dry-cleaned. My father had ensured it be presentable. I attempted to coax myself into crying. I tried, I really did, but nothing would come. I just stood with a thousand-yard stare as my face grew red while I struggled. My mother had later that day called me brave for not shedding a tear. She said I was strong, just like my brother. She was just attempting to fill the empty void with empty words, per usual. I pitied her until I didn’t. At the end of the day, it was her fault for even letting my brother go.
He had a doctor who was willing to write him off as ineligible for the draft if you will. But he wanted to prove to our father that he was strong, and spite him at the same time. My mother had protested him shipping off, of course, but not for very long. His misguided enthusiasm knew no bounds, and my mother would eventually resign herself to her upstairs study, staring blankly at the 19-inch colorless television in its corner. She was a pushover, and that’s why my father loved her so much.
My father. I remember after my older brother’s funeral he forced me to read the bible with him. Some chapter in Revelation, I think it was. My finger guided me across the page, shaking as it moved from line to line. “Why don’t you read faster, retard,” he vainly inquired in an unnecessarily loud fashion. I tried, I really did, but I couldn’t manage to. Tears began to swell out from my eyes, and drop down onto the page, like little airborne paratroopers to the battlefield.
My mouth ran dry as a desert, and the tears clouded my vision. I couldn’t see the page anymore. My father continued to yell at me. “You’re crying because the devil is in you,” he insisted. “I’m just trying to free you of it.” He grabbed the heavy bible off my lap and used it to whack me against the head, then paused for a moment, breathing heavily from his nostrils. He held the bible in his shoulder and leaned in close to my ear. “You know, your brother never had much intelligence, but at least he had the moxie to die like a man, with honor. At least he was worth something.” He walked proudly out of my room, and into the hallway. I watched him walk away while I cowered on the floor, my left ear ringing loudly. I laid there and hoped he’d move on to my mother or something, and spare me the bruises, the dread, and the nose ornamented with dark red blood.
My father had a master’s degree but didn’t seem to make much use of it. He taught at the nearby middle school; the same one I had the misfortune of attending. On the outside, he seemed well-liked, and a respectable member of the community. He attended church every Sunday morning, devoting more time to Christ than most folks would be privy to. He taught English, a subject for which he had a great passion for. The only thing he liked more than Christ, perhaps, was appearing highly educated, and his well-versed knowledge of the English language afforded him the ability to present himself as an academic.
He never let himself get too close to people, however. He must have been too afraid. If they got too close, they’d probably start asking questions. Maybe ask him why I came to school with bruises. After the first time he left bruises on me, I came to school in a short sleeve shirt, but my father has refined his strategy since then. He limits the beating, avoids bruising, and when bruising does occur, he ensures my outfit for school the next day includes a long sleeve shirt, a jacket, or something to cover me up and hide away what was there. Most nights, he came home, drank, graded papers while attempting to simultaneously watch Jeopardy, drank more, and then proceeded to pass out on the couch. Surprisingly, he’d get most of the questions and categories right. He and my mother never slept together anymore. Maybe he looked too much like my dead brother.
I sat outside on the front porch, staring at my brother’s car. Its exterior glistened in the afternoon sun. It still seemed like any minute he could walk back up to the house, with his ruck on in his army combat uniform, a smile on his face. I remember, before he shipped off; before he made me watch him forcibly posit himself upon his girlfriend, and before he was dead in a hole in Vietnam, he was the only one who could stand up to my dad. In a strange way, I did miss him. I miss when he called my dad out on his missteps, on his acts against God, and put him in his place. I miss when he drove me to school in his shiny car. But I was glad he was dead. He no longer had to suffer here, at least. He no longer had to be subjected to my intolerable, dull, enabler mother and my abusive, prideful father. As the sun’s afternoon light cascaded from the sky down to the car, I asked God if he would take me too.
It was now the Fall of 1975. My father had shown me mercy, which he did occasionally. He was letting me take my brother’s car to school. It had been sitting for a couple of years now. Every now and then, my mother would take it to run an errand and ensure the car still ran and wasn’t stationary for too long. Yesterday, I had been a typical junior, riding the bus to school and back home. Tomorrow, I’d insert a led zeppelin 8 track into the player and drive to school with the windows down. I had completed driver’s ed over the summer and was ready to drive on my own.
During my bus-to-school era, I had been picked on by this bully named Jeremy. He was overweight and had a face only his mother and his girlfriend could love, but he was on the football team so naturally, his entire circle just went along with or at the least ignored his antics. He would call me “loser,” that was my only name on most bus rides home from school. I was a skinny, short kid with straggly brown hair, so bullying was written in the stars for me, but it had escalated this year, and I no longer held any patience for it. My mother would parrot, “The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him.” But sometimes God doesn’t listen, and a man must take matters into his own hands.
Of course, I could never engage in fisticuffs with Jeremy. Man-on-man would be a surefire way to get myself seriously injured and forsake my name for the rest of my high school career. So, on this night before school, I hid a sock packed with a couple of rocks at the bottom of my green, army camo backpack. I even double-layered the sock, that is I encased the initial sock with another sock, in hopes that that would aid against the weapon potentially tearing open at any point. I also, the morning of, taped a pocketknife to the side of my boot and let the end of my pant leg naturally conceal it.
All I had to do was lure my tormentor into a low-visibility area, as far away from any prying eyes as possible. I had done it with animals before, but never one this large. I pulled into the student lot that morning with a freshness that had alluded me since before my brother’s passing. The sky seemed brighter than usual, the 8-track stereo sounded phenomenal, and I couldn’t stop smiling. I had secured a small baggie of pot from a kid who lived a few blocks away from me a couple of days prior. This would be my means of convincing Jeremy to follow me through the back doors of the school and into the woods a few hundred meters west of the campus. Jeremy, of course, was a stoner.
I was barely able to stay in my seat throughout the day, due to sheer excitement and anticipation. After this, Jeremy would leave me alone, and I could stop telling myself my incessant praying would be anything but fruitless. Jeremy was stuck in study hall after most of the student body had left the school, as was per usual due to his inability to take anything seriously. He was one of those people who thought high school would go on forever, that he would be relevant and cool and catered to until the end of time. It’s like he didn’t know he was just some rich footballer kid. It’s like he didn’t know one day the world would indiscriminately relieve him of his mortal duties, like he’d be young and popular forever.
“Hey, Jeremy,” I whispered whilst holding the study hall classroom door ajar and peeking my head into the room. Mr. Booker sat slumped over at his desk, likely in an alcohol-induced slumber, judging by the suspect silver thermos perched on his desk, that which he was clutching tightly upon despite his daze. “What the… “Jeremy exclaimed as he noticed my intrusion. I held out the little baggie of marijuana and shook it around, like a pet owner shaking a bag of treats to draw their pet to them. Jeremy’s eyebrows raised as his eyes lit up with a remarkable glow. “Follow me,” I spoke into the room in a quiet but direct voice. Jeremy sprung from the desk he had just been occupying, approached me with quickness, and launched me into the hallway with the extension of a singular arm. He huffed “what’ve you got there, loser.”
I jammed the baggie into my jean pocket. “If you’ve got something we can smoke this with, I’m up for making amends,” I stated with a certain hesitance. I wanted to appear as unintimidating as possible. He could not know that I was planning something. He could not know I had a sock stuffed with rocks in my jacket pocket. Jeremy stared directly at me with intrigue, his eyes darting from my head to my toes. He was analyzing me. “Fine,” he uttered with a concluding huff. His eyes fell to each of the opposite ends of the hallway and back toward me. “Follow me,” I said and began to advance toward the rear double doors of the school. “let’s just make it quick,” he said briskly as we both range walked toward the back doors. “I have plans with Violet this evening, so don’t waste my time.” I nodded to acknowledge this as I held my arm out and opened one of the doors.
We walked a few hundred meters to the wood line. “You’re lucky I brought my bowl with me today,” said Jeremy as we stood next to the trees. A certain silence perfused the air surrounding us as the trees swayed lightly in the wind, adorned with a setting sun. Fear crawled up my spine and latched onto my forebrain. What if I am to fail? What if Jeremy gains the upper hand? I pushed these thoughts aside and motioned for Jeremy to follow me into the forest. Jeremy’s footsteps fell into cadence with mine, we were walking so long. It was like we were soldiers marching into south Vietnam, attempting to mentally prepare for the unknown that lie ahead of us.
“Let’s hurry this up, man,” insisted Jeremy. His patience was beginning to wane, but I wanted to go just a bit further. We had to be 1000 meters or so deep already. We eventually approached a small stream, and I sat down, reaching into my jean pocket for the baggie. The sun was beginning to lower itself onto the horizon’s line now. I pulled out the baggie, and Jeremy snatched it from me whilst kneeling and holding out his pipe in his other hand. “I’m assuming your fairy ass probably doesn’t know how to pack this,” he insisted boldly while looking over at me with a smirk. He smirked at me as if we were close friends catching up over a beer. Who did he think he was?
He opened the baggie and held it to his nose as if to revel in the scent of the marijuana. His smirk quickly turned into a look of pure rage. “This… is definitely not weed,” he said with disgust as he pulled his face from the bag. He held the bag up to his eyes and made a decree that it must be oregano, or something similar. My stomach fell ten stories within me, and my heart started to pound quicker than ever before. I wanted to get him good and high, and instead, all I managed to do was anger him. That kid who sold it to me had made me into a fool. Even worse, I was stuck with a raging footballer in the middle of the woods.
Before I knew it, my face was shoved into the ground. “I admire the effort, but this is just pathetic.” Adrenaline began to fill my body. My breathing intensified as my face was shoved into the dirt and pushed around in it. I remembered how my father used to smack the side of my head with a bible. I remembered how my ears rang as he’d left my room. Jeremy had reacted to my fumbling faster than I could have ever accounted for. He got up as my head was still on the ground and kicked me in the abdomen, twice. I recoiled and assumed a fetal position. “Get up, loser,” he snarked as he grabbed my arm and then brought me to my feet. “How about, for once, you fight back? Like a real man,” he suggested with a tone of vigor.
I realized that what stood before me was a kid who had most definitely been in fights before, not only that, but he likely celebrated fighting. He had made his name, after all, by smashing into other kids, running past them, and launching them into the ground. I backed up into a tree and gasped as my back collided with its stern bark. It’s as if it was pushing me back into the fight. I then realized, to my horror, that a few feet in front of me lie my rock-filled sock, on the ground, covered partly by the orange visage of a few fallen leaves. I scrambled to unsheathe the knife that I had taped to the side of my boot, which fortunately was exactly where I’d expected it to be. I brandished the blade and held it out in front of me. Jeremy paused for a moment in genuine surprise, but quickly gathered himself and charged at me. I waved the knife around like an unthinking drunkard before it was swiftly slapped from my hand and thrown into the ground.
Jeremy looked down at the knife for a moment. “I don’t need it,” he muttered coldly. It was as if killing me was beneath him. As if he saw it as some laborious chore like I was a basket of clean laundry he still had to pick up and put away. He grabbed me by the collar and flung me into the leaves on the ground. A symphony of orange and yellow leaves took flight from the forest floor as they were projected into the air around me. I struggled to get oxygen to my lungs, it felt like I couldn’t breathe. I forced myself to get back up and face the beast before me. I stumbled back into a fighting stance and noticed the rock-filled sock now directly below my feet. I picked it up and swung it with the most strength I could summon, and it made direct contact with the side of Jeremy’s head. I swung it once more, striking his torso.
He let out a guttural scream of pain. His eyes widened and blood spilled out from the side of his head as he staggered to distance himself from me. He clasped his wound with his hand and again charged straight for me. I stepped out of the way, letting him trip over himself and fall over into the dirt. My heart was pounding now. I could hardly breathe. I guess it makes sense. A few pounds of rock, concentrated in the end of a sock had made direct contact with his temple.
He rose from the leaves and brushed himself off with astonishing resilience, and gritted his teeth, growling at me like an ugly dog. “yo- you,” he stuttered, “you won’t get away with this shit, man. My dad owns the Walker Suites hotel in town, man. There’s no way…” he trailed off. He shook his head back and forth as if to cut himself off and re-establish his focus. I sprang into action, and my legs gave out from under me as I ran into him and knocked him down into the brook. Was it the lack of oxygen? Had I simply tripped? I couldn’t be entirely sure, but either way, I was now on top of Jeremy, as we both lie in the water. He clambered to knock me off him, but I held myself sturdily above him, digging my feet into the riverbed’s dirt and placing my hands around his neck. I squeezed tight as I watched Jeremy wriggle around, splashing me with dirty river water in the process. He gripped the fabric of my jacket to throw me, but alas. He was too weak and had lost too much blood now. It reminded me of how my brother’s girlfriend had struggled helplessly years before.
I winced as I held my hands around his throat. His breath smelled like old lunch meat and his face strained into an unpleasant red and purple contortion. I punched him in his crooked nose. He spat his blood into my face, but I held my position. He attempted to scream-gurgle at me, and still I held my position. I was my brother in that moment, snuffing the life of a Viet-Kong in the jungle as bullets darted around him. I would bring this boy back into the nothingness from which he came. I would show him what his daddy’s money meant after it was all said and done. It meant nothing. Just like my mother’s empty biblical affirmations. Just like the generic slogan embroidered on the back of Jeremy’s team-issued jacket. Empty, just like me.
Who can stand before His indignation?
And who can endure the fierceness of His anger?
His fury is poured out like fire,
And the rocks are thrown down by Him.
(END…)