—LEAVE A LIGHT ON FOR YOURSELF

 

1841

 

He would call me after a sparrow flew into the window, though he never knew about the dead birds, how could he, drunk as he always he was, his voice slurpy-sounding as if he was sipping on some kind of stone soup, and I’d be at work when he’d call so they’d have to page me through the store’s speakers, using the special code I’d given them, Len Kuntz 1841, sometimes it was for Mariners tickets, sometimes to tell me what a shit brother I’d become for living in a stucco mansion like a rich prick, but he could also be inventive, even fucked up by noon, like once my brother claimed he’d killed a guy and laughed about it, though as I said, he was a perpetual and spectacular drunk, a 13 year-old kid when he ran away, ten years older than me, so I never knew him until these calls started, and then before he died, I learned things I didn’t want to know about him, though his son needed to tell someone, so I listened and nodded and said I’m sorry because I meant it, although what I wanted to say was I’m disgusted, and then a few days later at the burial site while the pastor expressed false gibberish, I looked over my nephew’s shoulder into the guts of some nearby trees expecting to see dead sparrows hanging from their limbs, but instead it was two crows, black as migraine spots, and these birds they were just dawdling, shooting the shit you might say, or maybe they were mere strangers, with nothing else to do, just getting to know each other, stooped there on that crooked branch, on that humid August afternoon as we buried my brother.