Fred had hardly ever come to town, not that Jim could remember. When he wasn’t in school, he’d been at Uncle Owen’s farm doing chores. Soon as Fred got his driver’s license, Uncle Owen had hired him as a hand, and Fred’s dinner-table talk was always full of birthing calves and curing tobacco and whether or not Uncle Owen ought to trade his team of horses in for a tractor.
But now Jim felt almost positive that he saw Fred talking to a man outside of McKinley’s Drug. Only this Fred looked old. Not old-man old, but grown-up old. Jim tried to remember the last time he’d seen his brother. Could’ve been years, he supposed. Had it been long enough for Fred to finish growing up? Jim didn’t like the thought of that—that Fred had kept getting older while Jim had just stopped.
Fred, he called, but his voice came out the way it always did these days, like a thin rope of wind curling around the branches of a tree. No sound to it at all. Jim wondered if there was something he could do to bring his voice back. He’d read an article once about a baseball umpire who did special exercises to make his voice carry farther. Something about breathing in deep down to your stomach, then exhaling like there was a tube running from your insides to your outsides. Problem was, Jim didn’t exactly breathe anymore. Or if he did, he couldn’t figure out how he was doing it.
Maybe if he walked right up to Fred and stood next to him. If anybody would know him, it would be Fred, Jim figured. Who was closer to you than your own brother?
“Elizabeth’s set on us going to Louisville for the weekend,” Fred was telling the man beside him. “Says we won’t have time to go anywhere when the tobacco comes in.”
“She’s right about that, I reckon,” the man said, and then he clapped Fred on the shoulder. “Course, you take her to Louisville, you might spend your tobacco crop before you get it to market.”
Fred laughed, and Jim was surprised by how much it was a grown man’s laugh, full and hearty. “You got that right, son. And she says she just needs one new dress, but I’ve heard that before, and every time she comes home with three.”
Jim stood as close to Fred as he could without touching him. He wished he could still smell things instead of just remembering how they smelled. Fred had always smelled like cedar pencils and the dry autumn leaves, with a sweet little tang of cow manure right around the edges.
“Well, I reckon I ought to pick up Elizabeth’s prescription, then head over to the feed store. I got a lot of working waiting for me when I get back.”
The two men shook hands, and Fred turned to go into the drugstore. Jim stayed close behind him, so he could walk through the open door. Oh, he could walk through a closed door—he’d discovered that early on—but he didn’t like to. He didn’t feel like he should be able to.
“Hey there, Mr. Trebble,” the girl behind the counter called out. “What can we do you for today?”
Mr. Trebble? Jim about bust out laughing. Mr. Trebble was his daddy, and almost nobody called him that, because he always said, “Let’s forget about this Mr. Trebble business; you just call me Harold.”
Jim waited for Fred to say the same thing, to say go ahead and call him Fred. But Fred just nodded at the girl and said, “Hey, Prissie, I need to pick up that refill of Elizabeth’s prescription.”
“She having trouble with her eyes again?”
“’Fraid so. Doctor’s still not sure what it is.”
Jim wondered if Elizabeth was Fred’s wife. If she was, she sounded like a lot of trouble, spending all of his money on dresses and sending him to town to pick up medicine all the time. He wondered what had happened to Mary Lloyd, the girl Fred had taken to the Harvest Dance his junior year. She’d had jet-black hair and blue eyes, and whenever Jim had seen her, his words had gotten all jumbled up in his throat, which made Mary Lloyd laugh in a way he thought sounded nice, almost like singing.
“Your mama doing okay?” the girl asked Fred when she returned from the back of the store with a small paper bag in her hand. “I haven’t seen her around much.”
“She’s middling,” Fred told her, taking out his wallet. “It’s only been six months, and they were married almost thirty years.”
The girl rang up Fred’s purchase. “She’s had more than her fair share of trials, that’s the truth. Your total is two dollars and forty-nine cents.”
“At least with Daddy we knew it was coming.” Fred handed the girl a ten-dollar bill. “Jim—well, he was gone just like that. And then never finding him, just knowing he’d never come back—well—” Fred stopped, swallowed hard, took the bag from the girl.
Jim felt his mind grow hazy, the way it did when he started to think about going down to the river. What was Fred saying about Daddy? He was making it sound like Daddy had—
Jim’s mind clouded over.
“Well, I thank you,” Fred told the girl, giving her a tip of an imaginary hat. “Tell your daddy I say hey.”
Jim tried to follow him out of the store, but he couldn’t make his feet go. Move, he told himself. Fred’s getting away and you don’t know where he’s going or how to find him again. But Jim couldn’t move. He couldn’t even remember where he was or what he was doing there.
After a minute Jim made his way over to a chair near the door and sat down. Funny, he could almost feel the chair’s hard bottom beneath him. Made him think of all those hours sitting at his desk at school, his whole body aching to get outside. Not that he’d hated school. In fact, he wished he were at school right now, copying over his spelling list, the smells from the cafeteria kitchen—sloppy joes and chicken cutlets with gravy—spilling down the hall into Mrs. Porter’s classroom and making his stomach growl in anticipation.
He felt a hand on his shoulder, and he twisted around. Daddy?
Ain’t your daddy, the boy said. He was small and colored and see-through. Jim knew him. Knew his voice, anyway. He closed his eyes.
You got to come back now, the boy said. He reached down and took Jim’s hand. You fading.
Without opening his eyes, Jim said, How’d you find me here?
Followed you. Something told me I better. Now let’s go on back. You fading away in here.
Jim nodded and slowly stood. He let the boy lead him toward the door. As they were going out, a woman was coming in, and Jim had a sick feeling as he crossed through her body.
“Oh, my goodness, Prissie, I got a chill walking in here!” the woman exclaimed. “I believe somebody just walked over my grave!”
Come on now, the boy said to Jim. I’ll get you back to where it’s safe.