Featherweight

The clash I heard the next morning jolted me awake from my slumber. I figured Andy was making breakfast; he was passing through a "chef" phase this year and had a tendency to make a lot of noise. That usually meant he was working hard at it to achieve professional taste. I think it calmed him through the troubles of my mysterious behavior and he emptiness he felt occupied his life.

The kitchen light was never on; the huge glass windows in the front of the house allowed the sunlight to fall through in blinding abundance, so when I loftily floated into the kitchen, columns of yellow cast over both our bodies, forming this warm relief like everything was okay, and he finally knew the truth. I knew better, though.

This time, when I gazed at his eyes, the unusual blend of green and blue has disappeared, and they were almond brown again. This time, they had flecks of gold in them. They had . . . purity in them. He turned from the cinnamon rolls baking in the oven, and noticed me standing in the middle of the den, my blanket wrapped around my shoulders tightly.

"So," Andy began airily, pulling a pair of blue oven mitts from his hands and pressing them against the marble counter, facing me. "Are you ready to tell me why you just left the other night?" He spoke the word "left" like he was disgusted to pronounce its four letters, falling out of his mouth as he was glad to be rid of them. It made me feel ashamed, and I found myself seated on the barstool in front of him with my head hanging, studying the swirl of navy and forest green etched into the countertop.

"No," I replied sheepishly.

"Well then, just go take a shower and get dress. We have job later today and I can't do it by myself." He stepped back and rotated once again to check on the rolls, completely forgetting about what I had done. I wondered if he even wanted to know. That was what kept me up at night: the constant battle between him already knowing, or not wanted to know at all. That singular notion dawned on me every single day in the last three years.

"What job?" I asked, still amazed by his tolerance of my behavior.

"Mr. and Mrs. Lowery, remember?" We peered at each other through morning eyes, totally lost. In light of recent events, it was obvious I had no idea what he was talking about. I watched his body language go from determined to overwhelmed; he sighed heavily, his chin falling towards his chest, and looked down. Quietly, he spoke, "Last week the Lowery's arranged to have their lawn groomed. You were there with me when they called..." Not once did he look up at me when he said that.

Last week came rushing back, and I remembered the old couple, specifically the Mrs. calling in to have the damage of their four dogs repaired because Mr. Lowery was too old to do it himself. I didn't even think about work until now.

Andy and I had started a small landscaping business last year. The cash flow had begun to run a little dry over the years since the death of our parents. We were independently well off. We weren't rich; we never were. When mom and dad died, they left us everything. I mean everything. It was just us four. We barely had any contact with our relatives for some unknown reason, so naturally they left their life savings, retirement funds and property to us, among other things. Fortunately, they were always good with credit and all that jazz, so they didn't leave us any bills to pay . . . just the double funeral.

They had divided the share in two, giving each of us one half. Andy got the house, the only pride our parents ever had in what they owned. They had worked on it since they were first married. Andy finished it after they died.

When I was about thirteen and Andy was sixteen, they went away on vacation in Aspen. It was the first time they left us alone. Totally alone.

Their plane went down during a snow storm. We had to stay with the neighbors until Andy turned eighteen, and we could be on our own, where he would take care of both of us.

The last thing I remember about my parents were their warmth. Yes, their warmth. They gave off this beautiful, safe light that Andy and I basked in. I was so sure they were different from all the other kids' parents. Their good nature and genuine love for their children were unmatchable to me. Maybe it was my innocence, because as I grew older, and reflected on my childhood, however wonderful it was, the things they said and did made me feel differently from when I was a child.

Despite the fact that the threat of losing everything, their only family, their children, hung in the air, they were still happy and bright and brave enough to enjoy the splendors of the Rocky Mountains. I knew better than to think they had left us; never once did I dislike them, with the exception of childhood tantrums for toys and candy that ended in a spanking.

When they fell, I was lost in a haze . . . a snowstorm. Andy and I found each other in the blur of white, the loss still throbbing within us. Before the crash we were never close, at least when we were teenagers. As kids, we were best friends, but when Andy turned thirteen, he went on what momma called "vacation." She said he'd be back soon, and expectedly, I followed him into the woes of adolescence. It was like we backed into each other in search of what we misplaced: unconditional love.

We both knew our parents still loved us and they would never stop, but the pain of feeling entirely alone in the grasp of a cold world we didn't know caused us to grab hold of each other and never let go. Throughout the rest of the years up until that day in the woods, we had created a world together, a place where we were both safely out of reach from the grip of terrible people and things. The woods had our company so often that it was like a second home. The trees, the mysterious noises, the fresh pine scented air, the flapping of bird wings over the river . . . were the soundtrack to our childhood.

Now . . . now it was the thousands of small birds chirping in the elm tree out front, flying off into the sun in great flocks when Andy's truck roared with life. After a painfully silent breakfast, we spent the rest of the morning playing catch--we hardly ever watched tv--and made a call to the Lowery's to inform them that we were on our way.

I had not wanted to revisit the scene of last night; I only wanted to crawl back into bed and die. But I knew I had to carry on like everyone else. I had agreeably climbed into the cool cab of his Chevy, kept comfortably shaded from the afternoon sun as it was parked under the wide branches of the tree.

Rolling down the bumpy road, parallel to the dense spread of the woods--only the edge, the faded line that separated civilization and the depths of wilderness--Andy tried to make conversation with me about the pretty scenery despite the moisture, the remains of last night's light rain. When he said something about a frantic scrambling of birds in the distance, I stopped talking.

* * *

The hot sun beat down on my bare back, its heavy rays carving their way down my spine in little spasms of pinch-like stings. My hands were beginning to blister; I had been pushing around a wheelbarrow back and forth, shoveling in and out piles of soil for the long flower beds, and the wooden handles had begun to attack my palms with blisters. Although there had been rain the night before, and the ground was still heavily populated with puddles and soft mud patches, the sun somehow found a way to torture all of us.

We were at the end of a cul-de-sac on the other side of town, trudging slowly through the day in the Lowery's front yard which was complimented by the scant surrounding of trees. The familiar smell of wildlife comforted me during the early morning--when the sun had not yet reached behind the leaves--as I felt my skin burning, sweating, and most of all, screaming.

The sanity which had left me over the years occurred again only when I threw myself into working; I enjoyed the concentration, the consistent, thumping beat in my chest which withdrew me from the atmosphere.

"Dave, can you hand me those cutters?" I heard a voice, snapping my eyes away and up. Andy pointed to a pair of heavy duty blades by my feet from the other side of the front yard. Standing up straight, with my hands locked together on the top of my head, I breathed a relaxing moment of peace--I had been gazing into the sky to ebb the sting of my hands--and pulled off my bandana in order to brush back my hair.

I bent down and grabbed up the scissors, then slowly trudged through the freshly cut grass and handed them over. Andy turned back to his personal project: the hedge. I suspected that he'd developed a habit for making things absolutely perfect, to the point where they looked like their symmetry was calculated by a ruler. I don't know why, but as I watched him squint at the fine line he began to create, I thought that maybe it was because nothing else was perfect enough. It was as if he was searching for order and perfection, possibly excitement, in inanimate things. These passing fads, I believed, might be his eagerness to fix, or fill a void in the lonely life we shared.

I figured I played a significant role in the cause for his obsession. Maybe he didn't. Although I was younger, I felt like the older brother, the one who kept their younger siblings from danger, from losing innocence. After mom and dad died, he protected me and provided for me. But the summer I was twenty, the little brother syndrome I had suffered so long dissolved into something much worse.

"Dave?" I broke from my daydreams, seeing Andy waving a hand in my face, smiling. "I said how does it look?"

Briefly, I glanced at the precisely cut hedges he didn't actually have to do. "Beautifully done, my daft handed brother."

"S'right," he said mock-egotistically with his arms crossed, "I'm . . . daft handed?" Chuckling, he threw his arms out and reached to the sky. This was one of those beautiful moments in our lives where things really seemed to be okay, and the lighthearted conversations carried into jokes and bonfire stories, even though we hadn't been to one in more than ten years.

"Do you believe in God, Andy?" I blurted, shocked by the sudden question. He turned to me, with a light smile. That killed me. How could he smile at me like that? He must know. He simply must because it began to feel like cruelty, his apparent innocence.

"Of course I do, Dave. Don't you?" He replied. I knew then here was no question in his mind that there was a God, and that he loved him. The simplicity of his answer, how he stung me with an even further distance from him, overwhelmed me. I looked away into the horizon where the silhouette of the woods was backlit with burnt orange and yellow. It felt like forever since I had been asked that, and forever since I had answered it with certainty.

"I don't know," I said quietly, almost embarrassed.

"You'll find him," Andy said in a light voice. The look in his eyes--how piercing they were!--and the smile on his face brought me back all of the rude realization I had cast away during my work

"I think I'll let him find me," I whispered. I doubt he heard me.