Ash doesn’t have to worry about anything, does it? It doesn’t have to worry about a sick brother. It doesn’t have to worry about what it all means. Ash just turns gray and blows away. That’s what I wanted. I just wanted to blow away.
As I watched the paper burn, I remembered the day me and Grand made his shoestrings red. It was a couple years back. We were sitting in the tree house. Grand’s shoes were brand new, having just come from the factory.
“Always white shoelaces.” He stretched the untied laces out to the sides like bleached worms. “Why you think this is, Fielding?”
“You’ve got a tongue of the shoe right there, and the laces are the teeth. Teeth are white.”
“Bad design, ain’t it? Puttin’ the tongue so close to the teeth. I’m always bitin’ my tongue. You’d think if God was so smart, He’d have come up with a better design.”
He took his pocket knife and studied each finger on his left hand like he was determining their value. Deciding that his ring finger was the least valuable, he took the knife and cut deep into his finger tip.
“Whatcha doin’?” I sat up on my heels but didn’t try to stop him.
“Since I’m always bitin’ my tongue and gettin’ blood on my teeth, I reckon it’s only right for my shoes to bite their tongue and get blood on their teeth.”
“That’s the craziest thing I ever heard.”
“What is it they say? You’ve got to be crazy once in a while, or you’ll go insane.”
He reached the knife to me. “Go crazy with me, Fielding.”
I took the knife and looked carefully at each of my fingers like I still had a choice to make. Really it was the left ring finger all along, making for a strange wedding of us brothers and our blood. The initial tear of the knife is what makes you cringe, but the coming blood makes it worth it. That red river, too well ourselves, too well each other.
After the shoelaces were our blood, we made the handprints on the wall of the tree house. It was a moment shared between us when blood wasn’t dangerous, it was just the color of us. That was long before Ryker. Long before the blade followed the shine.
It never occurred to me at that time there was even the slightest possibility Grand had not contracted the virus, as I’m sure it did not occur to him. In those early years of the disease, some feared a kiss was enough. Fear is ignorance’s first shadow.
After the newspaper burned, I doused the fire and went upstairs, finding Sal in the hall. He looked like something returned to shape after having been pulled this way and that way and almost in two.
“What were you and Grand doin’, Sal?”
“Just talking.” He seemed to be gnawed at, as if of himself only a sliver remained.
“About what?”
“Comic books.” He frowned, not at me but at something bigger than the two of us.
As he went downstairs, he held tight to the banister, his feet careful with the stairs, lest he go to them, lest they fester the breaks.
He’d left Grand’s door open, so I looked into his room. I thought at first Grand was gone. But then I saw him, standing woodenlike, with his back straight against the wall, like a grandfather clock off its time.
“Hey, Grand.”
He just stood there and I thought for a moment he really had turned into a clock and the only thing he could ever say again was a minute upon minute.
Finally, he spoke as quick as a glance, “Hey.”
“Whatcha doin’?”
“Nothin’.” He kept against the wall. There must’ve been comfort in that.
“Wanna play catch, Grand? Like we used to?”
“I’m through playin’ catch, little man.”
I cracked my knuckles. I didn’t know what else to do. “You know the Reds are gonna be playin’ the Braves later?”
He looked at me, and it was like something lost looking to be found. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. It’ll be some game, they say. You wanna watch with me?”
“I don’t much care for baseball no more.”
“But you’re gonna be a Major Leaguer someday.”
“Am I?”
“Sure. Everyone says it.”
“Funny, no one ever asked me.”
“Don’t you wanna be a great baseball player?”
He sighed back into the wall. “I want to be a great man, Fielding.”
And so we stand, proved of our existence by those who see us. And how did I see Grand, how did any of us, but as the one who would be great at this and that, as long as it was baseball and girls. He always had to be what we wanted him to be first. He existed only by proxy to our dreams of him.
“Grand? Are you okay?” I took a step toward him, but he held up his arm.
“Don’t come any closer, little man.”
“Why?”
“I’m gettin’ a cold. Don’t want you to get it.” His arm stayed out. I wondered if he forgot about it.
“I won’t get it, Grand. I won’t breathe in real deep. Just surface breaths.”
“Naw, I like ya too much to take the chance.”
I emptied of a long-held breath. “You still like me, Grand?”
“Sure I do. I might even love ya.” His lowering arm was good-bye falling, and I too stupid to realize.
“Grand—”
“It’s time. You’re gonna miss the game, little man.”
“Ain’tcha gonna watch with me?”
A quiet came and dripped, making the room something drowned, us drowning with it.
Finally, three words rose above the gasping line, “I’m sorry, Fielding.”
“About not watchin’ the game?”
He looked at me like I was a boy, stinking of stupid.
“Naw, not about the game, Fielding. About hittin’ you that day. I know now you were only tryin’ to protect me.”
“I’m sorry too, Grand. I shouldn’t have called you that … that word. And I love you no matter what. And it’s okay if you’re sick, because I’ll be here for you. We’ll all be here for you, and everything will be okay.”
That’s what I wish I would’ve said. Why didn’t I? Maybe it would’ve changed things. Maybe if I would’ve said I’m sorry and I love you and I don’t care that you’re gay, then maybe, maybe he’d be living right next door to me now and I could go over there and sit with him and we could watch the game on TV. Or not watch it. Maybe we’d read Walt Whitman or Langston Hughes or something like that.
Maybe there’d be someone in the kitchen making noise and this someone would come out with the food to set the table and Grand would call him his husband and make love to him after sending me back off next door until next time, until the next day I could see him again. Maybe it could’ve happened that way, but it never will, because I just stood there and he did a half chuckle into his chest and seemed to say, stupid brother. And I was. God burn me for it, I was.
“I’m goin’ for a walk, Fielding. Tell Mom and Dad in case they ask, would ya?”
He drifted and I wish I would’ve reached for him. He stopped by my side, giving me the chance. I didn’t take it, though. Stupid boy I was. I let my brother leave without a hug. That has never been an easy thing to let go of.
Just before he left I blurted out, “I took your Eddie Plank card. And I lost it. That was my secret I buried.”
“I know.” He kept his back to me, but I could still see his smile, too small to ever be real. “I know you did, little man. And it’s all right. I forgive ya.”
“How’d you know? You dig my secret up?”
“I didn’t need to. The card was missin’ and you looked guilty.”
“I know your secret too.”