Sour Notes, page 8
After bursting through the wall of corn and into the yard, the ATV skidded to a stop at the porch. The roar of the engine ceased. Dean jumped off the seat, scooped me up in his arms. He carried me up the porch steps as if I weighed no more than a bag of groceries.
The screen door slammed shut, then Dean’s and Russ’s boots clumped up the steps to the second floor. Mom’s voice came from the kitchen, asking what was wrong.
Dean dropped me onto the bed, ripped open my top drawer, and extracted my inhaler—the one that was supposed to always be in my pocket when I left the house. He held it steady while I sucked in the relief.
Later that evening, as the sky outside my window purpled, I rested in bed, listening to the voices floating up the steps. In the back parlor, Dad asked Dean how he could have been so irresponsible. He demanded to know why Dean hadn’t made sure I had my inhaler with me. Dean knew the dangers. Knew how I was always forgetful. How he was expected to look after me.
Dean didn’t throw it back on me, though. He didn’t argue that we were the same age. He didn’t protest about the unfairness of being responsible for me.
No, I heard his voice clearly all these years later, saying the whole adventure was all his idea and that he was the one who’d forgotten to put the inhaler in the ATV’s saddlebags.
Later still, I woke to find Dean sitting on the edge of my bed. It was pitch-black outside. When he saw I was awake, he asked if I’d had fun.
“Yes,” I said. “Sorry you got into trouble.”
He shrugged. “It was worth it.”
My stomach rumbled. The sandwiches I’d eaten on this porch seemed farther in the past than just a few hours. I should have grabbed some food while in town, maybe fast food at one of the places out by the interstate. I doubted anything else had opened during my absence.
We’d rarely eaten at those places while growing up. Meals were Mom’s cooking eaten around the kitchen table. Dean and I had shared clean-up duties.
I guessed Mom was still cooking for Dad, but what was she using? I’d already noted the decrepit state of the small garden behind the house. Had she canned enough fruits and vegetables the previous year? Or was she getting most of her food from the grocery store? When I was a kid, she’d prided herself in how little food she’d had to buy.
With all her focus on him, was she eating? In all my childhood memories, she was cooking, cleaning, or helping in the fields. She probably hadn’t taken care of herself during Dad’s illness. I should have offered to bring food home for her.
Opening the screen door, I called out for her, but I heard nothing in return. The sunlight filtering through the windows chased shadows, but she hadn’t turned on any other lights. The kitchen was as dark as the front parlor.
I moved toward the rear parlor with a sense of dread, remembering not just the old memories of punishments being meted out but also the more recent scent of dying.
I slid open the pocket door and looked into the gloom. He lay on his back, head on a pillow and mouth sagging open. His face was pale, and his hands were crossed over his body. I was too late. He was gone. I licked my lips nervously and whispered, “Dad?”
“Come in.” The voice startled me. Mom sat in the chair in the shadows of the corner, a light blanket draped over her lap. “He probably won’t answer you. Evenings are hardest. He doesn’t remember much then, barely recognizes me. You should come sit in the morning and talk with him.”
“So he’s…”
“Is he okay? No, but alive. For now.” She folded closed a book she’d been reading with the help of the fading sunlight coming through the window. “I worry every night that he’ll slip away while I’m asleep. I come in every couple of hours to check on him.”
I looked over my shoulder at the steep steps to the second floor. Dean and I had slid down that banister more times than I could remember. “You’re climbing up and down at night?”
She pointed toward the front parlor. “I sleep on the couch out there. Or in this chair. I don’t want to be more than a few steps away in case he needs me. And I sure don’t want him slipping away without me here.”
I leaned against the doorframe, watching the sheets rise and fall gently with his breaths. “Have you had dinner?”
She shook her head.
“You want me to go into town and get you something?”
She settled the book on the small table and placed her reading glasses on the cover. Standing, she folded the blanket and placed it in the chair. Once everything was in its place, she motioned me to follow her. In the kitchen, she opened the refrigerator and gestured toward the rows of baking dishes wrapped in plastic wrap or aluminum foil or topped with plastic lids. “People stop by every day and leave more food than I could ever eat. Casseroles. Soups. Fresh eggs.”
She selected a chicken casserole. While she waited for the oven to preheat, she extracted a crown of broccoli florets and two ears of corn. I shucked the corn, the muscle memory of youth helping me to cleanly remove the husks and silk.
With everything cooking, I stood in Dad’s doorway and watched him. When the food was ready, we settled down at the kitchen table and ate while making small talk. Whenever he coughed or shifted in bed, she went into his room, checked on him, and returned.
After her fifth trip, she settled into her chair and held a fork over her half-eaten dinner. “Don’t wait too late, Freddie.”
“I’m here.”
“Not what I meant.” She placed the fork on the plate and leaned back in her chair, fixing me with a stare. “After breakfast, sit with him a spell. He’s better in the mornings. He wants to spend time with you.”
I snorted. “He called me Dean when I went in earlier. He wants him, not me.”
“Of course he wants to see your brother. The other day, he thought I was his grandmother. He wanted her then, even though she’s been gone for thirty years. I told you his mind gets confused.”
“Ma, not just today. He’s always wanted Dean more.”
“Is that what you think?” She drummed her fingers on the table then pushed her chair back. “Wait here.”
She disappeared into the shadows of the back parlor. I heard a cabinet door open, then she reappeared, holding a large scrapbook. She pushed my dinner to the side and slapped the book in front of me. “Open it.”
I had seen it plenty of times growing up. The first pages had our birth certificates. Infant footprints. Our little hospital bracelets.
As I flipped through each sheet, the collage of photos showed us aging. Playing in the yard together. Wading in the creek. Sitting in a pew at church. At the dinner table.
Dean looked more like my older brother in every picture, not my twin. Taller and broader. Always looking at the camera, usually smiling. Exuding confidence while I looked down, my smiles forced when they appeared at all.
Then the pictures became less together and more separate. Dean wore sports uniforms. I sat at a piano. Dean on a tractor. Me on the porch with a book in my hand. Dean playing football. Me with an electric guitar. Separate fuzzy photos of us accepting our high school diplomas on the stage.
When I turned the page, I held my breath. Dean and I stood side-by-side in our graduation robes, holding up our diplomas. His arm was draped over my shoulder, a wide grin on his face. I was looking away from the camera, only the slightest smile on mine.
The memory flooded back to me. Dad holding his old camera and telling us to get closer. Mom beaming with pride. Dean laughing and whooping.
Taped to the opposite page was the church bulletin for Dean’s funeral service, a stark reminder of how fast things had changed in those few days.
Before I turned the page, I asked, “Do you remember when Dean took me out on the ATV and I had an asthma attack?”
She smiled. “Which time?”
The memory that had floated through my mind. Had all the parts been the same day? Were we wearing the same clothes? Was the sun in the same place? Was the corn fully grown in some and already harvested in others? “The time he got into trouble for it and Dad yelled at him?”
She laughed. “Freddie, dear, that doesn’t help much. It happened so many times. Dean took you on so many adventures he wasn’t supposed to.”
Flashes of other days came to mind. Fishing in the creek on cold spring mornings. Climbing the maple tree at the height of summer. Leaping out of the barn loft into a pile of freshly cut hay. “Why would he keep doing it if he was going to get into trouble?”
“We asked him the same question.” She looked toward the back parlor, her head cocked, listening for any sounds that indicated she needed to go back in there. “Skeeter tried to explain that we were worried you’d get sick or hurt or worse. Dean argued you deserved to be a kid and have fun.”
In my memories, we were always kids, no more than early teens. “So why’d he stop?”
She thought for a minute. “I don’t know he ever really did, but life just got busy. School. Sports. Girls. Working here on the farm. There was just less time for either of you to be kids.”
15
Dean’s old room looked the same as it had the day I left. A dresser rested against one wall, the surface dusted and the drawers closed. A desk was tucked under the window, the chair pushed in tight. His bed was neatly made. If I lifted the mattress, would the Playboy magazines he used to hide still be there?
I opened the closet door and pulled the string to illuminate the overhead bulb. His Millerton High School letter jacket hung beside his football and baseball jerseys. Beside them, his favorite coat, a denim jacket lined with white fleece, stood out. He’d saved his allowance for months to buy it. I dragged my fingers over the coarse fabric, images flashing through my mind of the times I’d seen him wear it.
The rest of the rod held only a cluster of empty hangers. The overhead shelf was bare of baseball caps and winter gloves. No shoes lined the floor.
Most of the dresser drawers were equally empty. The T-shirts, underwear, socks, and shorts had all been taken away. All that remained were carefully folded uniform shirts, his baseball glove, and a cardboard box.
With the box in my hands, I sat on his bed and examined its contents. His old wallet sat on top. Inside it, I found his driver’s license, library card, school ID, and seventeen dollars in cash. Below that was his key ring with a rabbit’s foot attached. We’d always joked it wasn’t lucky for the rabbit. The old white choker he used to like against his tanned neck was in the box, along with the tassel from high school graduation.
Those mementos bothered me more than the trophies. I could picture him so clearly. The denim jacket worn loosely, the fleece collar framing his face. That choker tight against his skin, glistening like his teeth. His hand proudly holding up his truck keys, that rabbit’s foot dangling beside the class ring on his hand.
Mom—maybe Dad, but probably just Mom—had packed all the things that didn’t matter, the nondescript pieces of clothing that any boy might wear. She’d hauled them to the church bazaar or maybe to the Goodwill store so she wouldn’t have to witness their new owners carry them out the door.
What remained was quintessential Dean—things that marked him for who he was. The room wasn’t really his any longer. It was a tribute to his memory. A museum.
Nothing said that more than the homemade shelves mounted on one wall displaying the rows of trophies and ribbons he’d earned over the years. Football. Baseball. Wrestling. The oldest was a small plastic football player from his first year in the Mighty Mites league. Seven years old and already beating kids two years older on the field. Everyone else reached for participation awards. Dean wanted to win.
Dad had cheered him on through every game, applauded at awards banquets, and glowed as he helped Dean build those shelves. Just further proof that Dean was the favored child.
Leaving our doors open, I crossed the hall and stretched out on my bed. From that vantage point, I could see his wall of honor, taunting me even now. The awards flaunted his athletic prowess and reminded me how little I had. Dad had never built me a trophy wall because I’d never earned any trophies.
Back then, my room was messy and disorganized, a chaos I preferred. Today, though, it was as neat and orderly as Dean’s always had been. The closets and drawers were empty because I had taken it all with me. My leather jacket hung alone, my suitcase on the barren shelf.
I rolled off the bed and lifted the mattress. Twelve-year-old me had been lying in bed sick one afternoon when Dean crossed the hall with one of his precious magazines hidden away in his shirt. He was, of course, already well into puberty, while I still waited. He’d given it to me as a gift for me to pass the time and coached me how to hide it so Mom wouldn’t find it. She’d obviously found it in the intervening years, because nothing was there.
I settled into the chair, touching the scrapbook that lay open on my desk to the funeral bulletin. Under the light cast from my old desk lamp, I read the words I couldn’t bring myself to look at so many years ago. The order of the hymns. The schedule of prayers. The recession as I struggled under the weight of that casket.
I flipped the page of the scrapbook to be confronted by a photograph of the graffiti rock in front of the high school, emblazoned with Dean’s name. A clipped article from the local newspaper came next, highlighting his sporting prowess and mourning Millerton’s loss of a young son. More glowing accolades filled the next several sheets.
Then I flipped a page and came upon a yellowed sheet of paper with a newspaper article from the San Antonio Express-News reviewing a band’s performance at a local club. My name was highlighted. It wasn’t the original article from the newspaper but printed on a sheet of paper, cut out, and taped to the page with a handwritten note beside it. Freddie’s band.
I knew that scrawl well. I’d grown up seeing it in the ledger downstairs in the office. Or on lists of supplies scribbled on a pad in the barn. The handwriting was Dad’s, not Mom’s.
Other articles followed. Nashville. Dallas. Denver. Los Angeles. Chicago. Interviews and mentions I’d never read. Shows I didn’t even remember.
The scrapbook didn’t capture every show I’d ever done, of course. Most weren’t newsworthy enough to be mentioned in any newspaper, much less ones that he would have had access to through the local library. Some articles wouldn’t have even mentioned me, just the name of the band.
I stared at the ceiling, trying to recall all of the band names. Some of the stints had been very brief. The band had broken up, or I’d left before it could. If I couldn’t think of them all, there was no way anyone else would know them.
But Dad had collected dozens of articles. For a man who didn’t relish leaving the farm, that was lots of local library time before the internet came to the farm.
One interview mentioned me earning my nickname in a bar fight. The words Mad Maverick were written in the margin. It was underlined with a note that read, That’s what he calls himself now. After that were pages mentioning Mad Maverick, including some written before that interview. He had apparently searched for the name and found other articles.
Then came Exploding Oatmeal. Article after article about the band. Most of the ones I knew of were focused on the lead singer, but Dad had left those out. He’d kept only the ones that mentioned me or had a photo of me—in the background, of course.
When I reached the end of the book, I found a map taped to the inside cover. I unfolded it and stared at the highlights. He had taken the tour dates mentioned in the articles and noted the cities I had been in with the year scribbled beside them. My finger traced the highways and paused over the cities he’d noted, mostly obscure places I couldn’t even recall. A mall, a small stage, a festival—they all blurred together in my memory.
Then my finger froze over one note. Asheville. 2019. So close.
We had played the Orange Peel in downtown. A grand show with a raucous crowd. We’d needed to be in Atlanta the next night, and I’d told myself I didn’t have time to rent a car and drive the half hour over to Millerton.
I closed the book and stared out the window.
16
The smell of biscuits baking and coffee percolating wafted up the steps and gently nudged me from my sleep. The hint of sunrise poked through the open window. A crow in a nearby tree cawed and was answered by a chorus of his mates.
Sleep had come slowly. I’d lain in bed with the lights out, listening to the lonely hoot of an owl in the rafters of the barn. A creak in the house had brought back memories of Dean sneaking in late at night, tiptoeing across the porch roof, and opening his bedroom window. I listened in vain for the clump of his shoes as he dropped into his room.
When I couldn’t stand another minute, I’d turned on the lamp on my bedside table, pulled on my jeans and sweatshirt, and retrieved the scrapbook from my desk. I’d stretched across the bed, going through it again and again. I’d fallen asleep, still dressed, on top of the covers while flipping through the pages. Now it lay open beside me.
After a quick shower, I dressed in clean clothes—another pair of black jeans and a T-shirt—and opened the window blinds. The sun peeked over the horizon. The yard below still rested in shadows.
I rubbed my eyes and reached for my phone. It wasn’t quite six o’clock. I was more accustomed to going to bed at such a time, not waking up. The old early-morning habits of farm life were foreign to me now.
I leaned against the window frame and yawned. A few high wisps of clouds danced across the clear blue sky. The leaves of the maple flipped in the morning breeze. I shivered and reached for the sweatshirt I’d bought the day before.
Following my nose, I stumbled down the steps and entered the kitchen. I found a mug in a cabinet—where they’d been for as long as I could remember—and poured myself a cup of coffee. As I leaned against the counter and sipped the magic elixir, Mom bustled into the room. “Good morning, sleepyhead.”
“Let me guess. You’ve been up for at least an hour.”
