Matt hauled the vat of cranberry sauce out of the refrigerator, just making it to the counter before the bright red syrup splashed over the side. “Sheesh, Mom! You’ve got enough to feed an army!”
Army.
He said it without thinking. That was the only way he ever brought up Jon in conversations, without a conscious thought. Someone would talk about crazy things they’d done as a kid, and Matt would say, “That’s nothing! My brother once hooked a lawn-mower motor to his skateboard.” Or another person would talk about eating some huge amount of food, and Matt would say, “My brother once ordered twenty Taco Bell tacos and ate them all himself.” Or one of the guys would say, “Man, we used to get shit-faced,” and Matt would say, “Jon and a buddy once decided it was Hundred Beer Day. Took them from dawn to midnight, but they did it.”
Usually, no one noticed. Matt felt the pressure, felt the need to explain away his stories, to excuse himself for talking about his brother. But a lot of people didn’t even know Jon was dead. And those who did just thought Matt was keeping Jon’s memory alive.
Of course Mom noticed. She froze with the potato masher in one hand and a carton of heavy cream in the other. She looked around the kitchen as if she’d never seen the room before, as if mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes and dressing and green bean casserole and creamed onions and green salad and fruit salad and cornbread and yeast rolls and cranberry sauce and turkey—he couldn’t forget the turkey, still roasting in the oven—were something delivered to their kitchen by aliens.
“Sorry, Mom,” Matt said.
And that snapped her out of it. “Don’t be sorry, dear.” She shook her head and set the cream on the counter. “It’s just an expression, feeding an army. It’s not like Jon ever got leave for the holidays.”
Matt nodded, determined to get them past this rough spot. “The three off us are going to feast like kings!”
His mother’s face clouded. “Two,” she said.
“What?”
“I didn’t tell you, because I didn’t want you to get angry.”
“Angry about what, Mom?” But he already knew. He’d probably known since he’d pulled up in front of the house, since he’d seen his father’s car wasn’t in the driveway.
“Your father volunteered to take another emergency shift at the factory. He said he should do it, so the people with kids could be together as a family.”
It shouldn’t hurt. He was thirty-five fucking years old. He already retired from a career more lucrative, more satisfying than ninety-nine percent of the people on earth would ever have. But he barely kept from speaking his first thought out loud: Dad has a kid too.
But he wouldn’t say that. Because it wasn’t Mom’s fault his father hated his guts. And he didn’t want to hear her defend the guy. Not tonight.
The silence was getting uncomfortable, though, so he said, “Well, at least I know we won’t run out of my favorites.”
His mother’s smile was too tight. Too tired. But her voice was determined as she said, “Thanks, dear. Could you do me a favor? Go get the green tablecloth out of the linen closet?”
He brushed a kiss against her cheek as he walked past, using the duck-and-shuffle technique he’d perfected as a teen-age boy, too ashamed to let anyone see he actually loved his mother. She laughed and turned back to the potatoes.
He passed his old bedroom, long since converted into a sewing room for his mother. Across the hall was the bathroom, still sporting the wallpaper he’d steamed up every day of his childhood. Just past it was the linen closet.
He paused with his hand on the knob. A doorway gaped behind him, shadowy as the gates of hell in the late-afternoon gloom. Steeling himself, he turned around to face Jon’s room.
His palm found the light switch without hesitation. The room leaped into focus.
A twin bed, covered by an army-green quilt, with two flat pillows by the headboard. A desk, suspiciously bare of any papers, not even a pencil holder or stapler in sight. A mirror, with ticket stubs tucked into the edge—AC/DC and the Stones and Springsteen. There were tickets from baseball games too—Orioles and Nationals. Something winched tight in Matt’s chest when he saw the familiar Rockets logo from Raleigh.
A chest of drawers hulked beside the closet, the paint nicked on the corners, with one drawer pull hanging askew. On top of the dresser were sports trophies for football and basketball and lacrosse. No first places, but plenty for team participation.
And there was a photo.
Jon, at twelve years old, holding up a fish at the Harmony Springs Bass Rally. His smile split his face almost in two. His narrow chest thrust forward like he was waiting for a general to pin on a medal. His fishing rod was cradled in the crook of his arm, balanced against a ragged white cast.
Matt blinked, and he was back in the barn at Old Man Marshall’s place.
The property was strictly off limits, with No Trespassing signs posted all along the perimeter. Older boys said they’d been chased off with shotguns and dogs, but when anyone challenged them, they were hard-pressed to say exactly who’d been there, exactly who’d run down to the creek to escape.
A panel had come loose on the back of the barn. It squeaked when it swung to the side. If you weren’t careful, you could scrape your shin against a rusty nail at the bottom and then you’d have to go to the hospital for a shot with a needle that was seven inches long.
Inside, the barn was dark, dusty with old hay and the memory of horses. They found a rope in one of the stalls and they each took a turn at throwing it around the pump handle, but none of them was any good with the lasso. One kid found an old horse shoe, worn thin at the top. Another dug up a pair of rusty buckles.
“Hey!”
They all turned at the high voice. It came from above them, almost in the darkness near the rafters.
“Shit, man!”
“Get down from there!”
“Jesus, what are you doing?”
But it was Jon. And Matt knew what Jon was doing. He squinted into the shadows as his brother jeered at all of them on the ground. “Bet you’re not brave enough to climb up here with me!”
It was Matt’s job to respond. “We’re brave enough, shithead. Just not stupid enough.” The other guys hooted their agreement. Only an idiot would climb up to the hayloft.
“How much’ll you give me if I jump down from here?”
Matt’s belly turned over, slow and oily. Jon was crazy enough to do it on a dare. So the only thing to do was act bored, like Matt couldn’t care less if Jon jumped or not. “I don’t know,” he shouted up. “A dime, maybe?”
“A dime! This has to be twenty feet!”
Matt pretended he’d just noticed the height for the first time. “Naw,” he said. “It’s only twelve. Fifteen at the most.”
He was playing a dangerous game. If he pretended the jump was too easy, Jon would do it because it was a cinch. If he made it seem too hard, Jon would have to prove himself, because he was twelve years old and he didn’t have the sense a one-eyed mole rat was born with. That’s what Gran always said.
“I bet you’re all too chickenshit to try!” Jon called down. “You’re too chickenshit to climb up here in the first place!”
They weren’t chickenshit. They were just too smart.
That’s why Keith Vernon started to whine. “This isn’t a good idea, guys.”
“Shut your mouth,” Matt snapped. The last thing he needed was for Jon to prove he was braver than Bedwetter Vernon.
“I don’t want to stay here,” Keith moaned.
“Fine. Then go.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Keith said, like maybe Matt hadn’t understood.
“Shut your fucking face or I’ll shut it for you.” Matt whispered that last threat, so soft that maybe the Bedwetter couldn’t even hear him. Whatever. Keith edged over to the swinging panel, but he didn’t leave the barn.
Matt pretended he saw something in one of the far horse stalls. “Hey!” he said, making sure he looked shocked as he turned around. “Is that a… No. It couldn’t be.”
But he ran to the last stall on the right.
“What?” Simon McCall asked. “What did you see?”
It couldn’t be anything good. Anything worth jumping down for. He kicked at the loose hay that had fallen out of the manger. “Nope,” he said. “I thought it was a snake.”
And that should have done it. The Bedwetter had used the diversion to slip outside, to save face before he started to cry. The other guys had forgotten about the hayloft. All Matt had to do was keep them busy for a few more minutes, keep them distracted, and Jon would get bored and climb down himself.
But Jon wasn’t getting bored.
“Look at me!” he called. “It’s a bird! It’s a plane!”
And he leaped from the loft.
It should have been too dark to see him fall. There wasn’t any daylight, no window, no shaft of sunshine. But Matt swore he could see Jon’s mouth stretched into a gigantic O, his eyes as big as baseballs, his arms stretched out like he was trying to fly all the way to Mars.
He landed in a pile of hay. That was probably the only thing that kept him from breaking his neck. That, and the fact that God watched over fools. At least that was another thing Gran said.
For a second, a minute, a lifetime, nobody moved. Then all the boys leaped onto the pile of hay.
“Oh my God!”
“He broke his neck!”
“He’s dead. He’s totally fucking dead!”
Matt clawed through the pile, pushing them away. “Get back! Leave him the fuck alone!”
He was the one who knelt beside his brother. He was the one who looked for blood on the hay. He was the one who heard the first ragged, gasping breath, who thought Jon was having some sort of seizure, like Rex had done, when the old Lab got into the rat poison.
And then, miraculously, Jon opened his eyes. He blinked hard and fought to sit up, but Matt pushed back on his chest and told him to lay the fuck back down. Jon listened, which meant he really was hurt, or at least too stunned to protest.
But after a minute, he started breathing like normal again. He opened his eyes and asked, “Did everyone see me fly?”
They cheered. They cheered like he’d done something wonderful, something incredibly brave. And Matt finally let him sit up, then climb down the slippery haystack. They ducked out the back of the barn, and Jon led the group all the way home.
Two days later, Jon came to Matt and admitted his arm hurt. Hurt bad. Bad enough to go the doctor, but Matt would have to tell Dad. “You’re his favorite,” Jon said. “He won’t hate you.”
Matt hadn’t been sure about that. But he was the older brother. So he did what had to be done, and he told Dad about breaking into the barn. Dad was furious, just like they’d known he would be. He yelled at both of them but he took Jon down to the emergency room.
Jon’s arm was broken in two places. It had to be reset, because it was starting to heal up wrong. Jon took it like a man, and he got Ravens colors for his cast, which all his friends signed. Mom cried every time she thought about what could have happened to her baby. And then Dad did beat the crap out of Matt with his belt, all the time saying Matt was supposed to be the smart brother, Matt was the older brother, Matt was the one Mom and Dad trusted and relied on. He was the one with good sense. He was supposed to do what was right.
“Matt!”
The way Mom said his name, Matt knew she’d already called him a few times. He blinked hard and shut off the light to Jon’s room. He turned toward the linen closet, but not before Mom came down the hall.
“Sorry, Mom,” he said. “I lost track of time.”
She smiled sadly. “We all do.”
He couldn’t talk about Jon. So instead he said, “I can’t believe Dad isn’t here. On Thanksgiving.”
“You’ve got to give him time, dear. It hasn’t even been a year.”
“It’s not right—”
“We all grieve in different ways.” She waited until Matt nodded his acceptance. Then she brightened her voice. “Go ahead and grab the tablecloth. And then I need your help in the kitchen. It’s time to take the turkey out of the oven.”
He made a point of smiling when he came back down the hall. Mom asked him how things were going at the store, whether he was already seeing sales tick up for Christmas. They started talking about decorations, and how he’d really believed Santa came down the chimney when he was a kid, how he’d cried and cried when they traveled to Disney World one Christmas because he’d thought Santa couldn’t bring him and Jon any gifts.
When he went back for seconds, he said to his mother, “Let’s put together a plate for Dad. I’ll drop it off at the factory on the way home.”
He didn’t much feel like doing it. He was pretty sure his father would be too far gone with his flask to care. But the smile on his mother’s face made the sacrifice worthwhile.