—TAKE ME DOWN EASY

 

                            Six Minutes and Twelve Seconds

 

       He said, I’m older, so you’ll listen.

       He was older by six minutes and twelve seconds, my twin, but he meant it different now.

       I want you to see this, he said. You need to. But once I toss, you get your glimpse, and then you run like buckshot. Got it?

       Okay.

       Everything I knew at age nine stood before me, our haunted trailer home with its hollow, faulty bones. The living room smelled like a perfume bottle spilling out gasoline, the empty can still in my brother’s left hand. 

       On the squat sofa was a mass of blankets, or something else, I couldn’t tell—but I was sure about the massive blood stain that seemed to resemble a foreign country.

       The match sounded like a sharp back scratch with a gasp behind it, something I was acquainted with. 

       I watched the flame butterfly-stagger and float before landing in the tawny liquid river on the floor, igniting every linoleum square below it.

       Now, he said. 

       Now, he said again, as urgent as panic itself, yet entirely controlled.

 

       Miles later we sat under a maple. Even at night, with a lingering breeze, fall pinched off leaves every twenty seconds or so. One landed on my eyelid like a crusty kiss, making me shiver.  

       It wasn’t supposed to end like this, my brother said. It wasn’t supposed to be this way at all.

       I know, I said, hating how stupid and limited my words sounded.

       They’ll come soon. They’ll find us.

       I scooted across a root that bulged out of the damp ground and forced myself into a nest in my brother’s shoulder, trying desperately not to weep.

       You did the right thing, I said, though I wasn’t sure what right meant.

       He kissed me on the crown of my head like I’d seen the pope do on TV. It felt as if it would have been okay to die after that, but then he said, I’m sorry I wasn’t there to stop him.

       By my foot was a broken beer bottle, a large chunk of amber glass hooded above the dirt. When I reached for it, my brother grabbed my wrist and squeezed.

       This might be the end of us, for a while, but it isn’t the end of you, he said. You know that, right?

       And when he released his grip, it felt as if his hand was still on mine, measuring my pulse, tapping a message there, one I would need years to decode, and still haven’t entirely.