Lady Whiteadder: Edmund,
explain yourself!
Edmund: I can’t — not
just like that. I’m a complicated person, you see, Aunty… Sometimes
I’m nice, and sometimes I’m nasty,
…and sometimes I just like to sing little songs about goblins.
Today would have been my brother Mike’s 62nd birthday. Whenever I set out to describe Mike in written words, I am stymied. There is no easy way to sum him up, and I get the feeling he would be angry with me if I even tried. There is no way of getting all of him into one portrait; the subject is just too tremendous, too complicated. Mike was a man of big ambitions, great strength and great weaknesses, big loves, big appetites, big temper, giant humor, giant sorrows, great tenderness, and great talent. I have heard him described as the soul of Lord Byron in the body of John Belushi. I recently asked one of my siblings if they thought Mike might have actually been insane, and they replied, “You’re only wondering that now?”
If you went through this blog and picked out every instance where Mike is mentioned, you might get the impression that Mike was a bully or a guy with an anger problem, and that is a certain aspect of his personality. But he was stronger and smarter than most of his peers, and that made him impatient with physical cowardice or submissive conformity. He was our Imperious Leader, going boldly where no Babel had gone before, and our guide and icebreaker whether it was into a new school or a new job. I know he was most angry with me when my oddity threatened whatever social progress he might have made.
He was a strong man, and
nothing breaks harder than a strong man. He had hopes that his writing talents
(editor of the school newspaper) and physical prowess (member of the football
team) might overcome what he saw as his lack of good looks and social standing and win him the
object of his affections (‘I love—and who? ’Tis Fate’s decree I love the
fairest—how otherwise?’). Her final rejection after she toyed around with his
heart was the first great break. There were other breaks to follow, and
desperate measures to patch them up, but it was an uphill climb that wandered
into many dead ends and byways. I think he was finally finding a measure of
peace and accomplishment (he had recently finished writing a philosophical murder
mystery that had helped him untangle some moral and metaphysical knots) when he
passed away.
An anecdote: John and I got
into Mike’s car soon after his passing and started it up to move it away. To our
surprise the tape player was on, and it began to play one of Tom Petty’s
latest songs, Wake Up Time. We listened with indescribable feelings, not
moving an inch, to what seemed an eerily applicable final eulogy and call for
our brother. “You spend your life dreaming, running 'round in a trance, you
hang out forever and still miss the dance … Yeah, you were so cool back in high
school, what happened? …You're just a poor boy, alone in this world … You’re
just a poor boy, a long way from home … And it’s wake up time. Time for you to open
up your eyes. And rise. And shine.” It may have been just a coincidence,
but it shook me to the core.
Have I come any closer to
explaining the enigma of my brother Mike? Hardly. In its incompleteness, this
essay might well count for my Friday Fiction. I show a few pictures of me and
Mike because the Mike I am describing is part of my Mike: I’m sure
anyone else who knew him could tell many a different tale. His boundless love for his nieces, his deep
affection for his dogs, his complicated relationships with our parents, his
uncanny marksmanship, his bizarre and sporadic talent for drawing, his
occasional threats of suicide, his weird bid to be an internet cult leader …
these are all aspects that would require infinite nuancing and are certainly
beyond my power to adequately analyze. What can I say? I love the guy, and I
don’t think I’ll ever get to the bottom of him.
Here I offer one of his earliest published works from our school magazine, The Arena. It represents the innocent halcyon days of his craft, and of our lives. The younger brother here could well be any of the other of us Babel boys.
"Hurry up, darn
it," the boy yelled. He stood against the wet concrete embankment next to
the dam. He was sixteen, tall and broad-shouldered.
"I'm not coming,"
his little brother said, shifting from foot to foot. The fishing pole in his
hand was twice as long as he was.
"Look, you wanted to
come, and now you're coming," the older boy said. His foot slipped against
the wet pavement and he nearly fell. Twenty feet below him was the slow, muddy
drainage pond with its tiny whirlpools and darkly-swirling water. Larry, the
little boy, looked down at the pond.
"What if I fall,
Jim?"
"Oh brother," Jim
said. "You're not going to fall. You're nearly nine years old. Papa had me
going across this thing when I was five."
"But it looks
slippery."
"It's not slippery up
here where you walk, just where the water comes up to when they open the
floodgate."
Larry looked down at the
dark water. Jim sighed and inched his way back to where his brother stood. On
his back was the seine they used for netting bait, and his bamboo fishing pole.
"It's bad enough that I
have to carry everything, but now you're too chicken to come across the
apron."
"Momma said not to hit
me," the little boy said.
"I'm not going to hit
you," Jim said.
He set the tackle box down
and looked at his brother. Larry had torn his T-shirt crawling under the rusty
barbed-wire fence they had come in through, and the flap of the ripped cloth
blew in the light breeze, making him look small and thin. Still looking at him,
he sat down and began picking grass burrs from his shoe laces. "You're a
baby, you know that?" he said.
Larry sat down and began
pulling burrs off his shoes too. "I ain't no baby," he said.
"Why do you have to do
every blessed thing I do?"
"They stick my feet
too. You think they don't stick my feet? They stick my feet as much as they do
yours."
"Just shut up."
Across from them on the
other shore, Jim could see several broken flood-damaged trees. The river had
killed most of them and the dead ones were broken and dead looking. Jim didn't
like the way they looked, and he wondered why no one had ever cut them down. He
stood up.
"Come on. We're going
across. This time you're going first."
"I don't want to."
"Then go home."
"No," the little
boy said.
Jim grabbed his brother by
the shirt collar. "Get over there," he said, pulling him toward the
walkway.
The cement walkway between
the shore and the spillway of the dam was narrow and slippery and it had scared
the older boy the first time he had gone across it. It was the only way to get
to the apron and that's where the fish were. Jim lifted his brother up onto the
pathway and crawled up next to him, holding the fishing gear. Larry stood
firmly planted a foot away from where he had been put, staring at the muddy
water below him.
"Let's go back,"
Larry said.
"Either you go across
or I'll throw you in!"
Slowly Larry edged his way
over the wet pavement. When they got to the other side and jumped onto the cool
wetness of the apron, he sighed loudly
"That wasn't so bad,
was it?" Jim asked.
Larry didn't say anything,
but wiped the seat from his forehead against the sleeve of his t-shirt. Jim
unrolled the seine and thrust one pole into Larry's hands. He took the other
himself. "Come on," he said.
They walked over to one of
the troughs next to the dam. It was only about three feet deep, but it caught
all the trash and algae that ran over the spillway.
As they waded in, Larry's
nose wrinkled at the smell. "Yuck," he said, careful of where he put
his feet.
"Oh shut up." Jim
began picking his way through the trash. "I'm going up alongside the dam.
You stay here. And remember, keep the net low or the minnows will swim through
the bottom."
Larry nodded obediently,
although he knew he could not keep up with his brother. Jim leaned against the
side of the dam and lowered his end of the net.
"Ready?" he asked.
The little boy lowered his end and nodded. "Go," Jim said, dragging
the net quickly across the bottom, Larry stumbling along behind him. Both boys
felt the squish of unknown objects on the bottom of the trough.
"What if there's a
turtle in here?" the little boy asked.
"I hope there is,"
answered Jim. "My biology teacher will give me five points extra credit
for a big one."
"What if it bites our
toes?"
"Just shut up and
pull."
Up ahead of the net Larry
could see tiny glimmers of silver shooting past him. "What's that?"
he asked.
"Minnows, stupid. Hold
down the net."
"I'm holding it!"
In the water ahead of them,
a large gray-green head suddenly popped out of the water, blinking its eyes
sleepily. It opened its mouth and hissed a dry, angry hiss. Behind the head the
boys could make out the outline of a large shell.
"A turtle!" the
big boy said. "All right!" The little boy nearly dropped the
net. "Let's get him," Jim said.
Larry scooped ahead with the
net, careful to stay clear of the turtle. As they neared the end of the trough,
Jim sped up even more. Larry stumbled on as best as he could, but when they got
near the end, he slipped in the moss. Larry screamed and went under for a
second, then came up gasping and spitting.
"Grab your end,"
Jim shouted, lunging for the edge. The turtle quickly climbed out of the
trough, fell onto the apron, and dived into the water. Jim scrambled up to the
edge just in time to see its stumpy tail disappear into the murky waters of the
drainage pond.
"He must have been two
feet across," Jim said, staring at the water. He turned to Larry who was
still rubbing his eyes.
"You dunce," he
said. "You let him get away! If I flunk biology, it's your
fault."
"I didn't mean
to," Larry sniffed.
"I didn't mean
to," his brother mocked him. He punched Larry on the arm once, hard.
"I didn't mean to do that either.
Tears were welling up in the
little boy's eyes, and he rubbed the place on his arm. "I'm telling
Mama," he said.
"Go ahead and tell. I'm
never bringing you along again."
They hauled the net up and
dumped it onto the cement, picking up the silver and brown minnows from its
bottom and putting them into a can, Underneath a pile of moss, Larry found a
crawfish. It was red and brown and held its pincers toward him like boxer's
mitts.
"A crawdad, Jim,"
he said. "Catch him for me."
"I'll catch him all
right," Jim said, grabbing it by the shell. "He'll make good
bait."
"I'm keeping him for a
pet," Larry said.
They put him in the can and
sat down on the edge of the apron. Jim put a minnow on his hook and threw it
into the water, watching the current suck it under.
"Remember," he
said. "The minnows are yours. The shad are mine."
"But the shad are
better."
"That's why they're
mine."
Jim fished for a while and
Larry played with the crawfish. It felt good to lay there in the sun feeling
the sun dry his shorts. For a moment he almost dozed. Then he heard the wet
plop of his cork being pulled under and he sat up quickly. His pole was jerking
wildly, half of it already under the water.
"You got a fish,
Jim," Larry shouted, jumping up and down.
"I know it,
dummy." Jim grabbed the pole and gave it a jerk that made his side muscles
ache. The fish jerked back and headed straight for the bottom.
"What is it, Jim? What
you got?" Larry asked, leaning out over the edge of the apron to catch a
look.
"I don't know. If you'd
get back maybe I could get it up and see."
Larry stepped back
obediently, eyes wide, torn shirt flapping in the light breeze. Just as Jim's
hands began to sweat from holding the pole, the fish broke the surface riding
on its tail, its blood-red gills open and flapping wildly.
"It's a big one,"
Larry yelled. "Oh boy!"
"Get the net and hurry
it up," Jim said, never taking his eyes off the point where the line
disappeared in the water.
The little boy grabbed the
aluminum net from where it lay next to the seine, and tried to maneuver it
under the fish. He splashed it in the water clumsily and once hit himself on
the chi with the handle.
"Hurry up!" Jim
said.
"I'll get him,"
Larry said, finally getting the net under the fish which was churning the water
near the edge of the apron. He started to lift it out of the water, but leaned
over the edge too far, lost his balance, and slipped off into the swift
current.
"Larry!" Jim
shouted, reaching instinctively for his brother and forgetting about the fish
and the pole. Larry was out of sight except for the top of his head bobbing
near the surface. In a moment he came up, gasping for breath, his arms flailing
wildly.
The current was strong
against the side of his apron, and already the little boy was being swept away.
Jim jumped in after him. The water was swift and dark with a power that
reminded him of being hit in football practice. It swirled around his head and into
his mouth and ears as he tried to swim. Up ahead of him his brother came up
again, water pouring out of his mouth. The current sucked him under again, and
Jim knew this time he wouldn't come up. Jim reached for him blindly under the
water and felt his hand close on Larry's neck. Pulling Larry to his chest, he
began swimming for the apron, his breath coming in ragged, choking sobs. The
little boy clung to him tightly, his nails digging into Jim's chest.
His arms aching, Jim reached
out for the slippery cement and began to pull himself up. He fell back twice,
his eyes and nose stinging. He thought that his brother was crying, but his
face was so wet he couldn't be sure. The third time he succeeded in getting up
out of the water, his brother still clinging to him.
They sat there on the rough
cement, staring at each other, the sun burning against their wet skin. Both of
them were breathing hard, and Larry was spitting up water and the sandwiches
they had had for lunch.
"You okay?"
Larry nodded and wiped his
mouth on his t-shirt. "You lost your fish," he said.
Jim laughed and looked down
at his wet clothes. "Mama's going to kill us for getting wet."
After a while Jim stood up
and went over to the seine and began rolling it up.
"Aren't we going to
fish anymore?" Larry asked.
"Naw. We're going
home."
They walked slowly up the
hill next to the dam, heading towards the highway.
"Hey, what about my
crawdad?" the little boy remembered. He ran back to the apron and
collected the can with the crawfish in it. Then he turned and ran back up the
hill to where Jim was waiting.
"Maybe you can put him
in the fishbowl I won at the fair," Jim said.
"Yeah, thanks."
They both smiled. The sun
dried their clothes as they walked home.
--Mike
Babel, ARENA 1979
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