Bloodroot

Table of Contents

 

 

 

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Published simultaneously in Canada

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Loehfelm, Bill.
Bloodroot / Bill Loehfelm.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-14022-2

1. Brothers—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3612.036B
813’.6—dc22

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

I taste like the dreams of mad children
.

—ANONYMOUS GRAFFITI ON AN ABANDONED STATEN ISLAND HOSPITAL

The morning he said it we sat in my room, cross-legged and face-to-face, practicing for a first-aid test. We were Cub Scouts, me a Bear and Danny, only a year younger than me, was a Wolf at my heels. I was teaching him how to find the jugular, teaching him about arteries and veins and taking someone’s pulse.

As I reached for his throat, Danny’s heart pounded so hard that I could watch his pulse throb in his neck, could count his heartbeats without touching him. More out of wonder than instruction, I pressed my fingertips to his throat, marveling at the power surging beneath his skin. It comforted me that something so strong and steady lived inside my brother. My heart didn’t beat like that. Mine beat quiet, like it didn’t want to be found.

He’d learned to still his heart, Danny said, his voice humming against my fingertips, in another life. Special doctors had taught him. He made me swear I believed him and I told him I did. This happened a lot between us. Danny was always telling me things I had to swear I believed. Usually dark things, odd things. Secretly, I blamed his nightmares, the terrible dreams that he woke from screaming. I was never quite sure if playing along helped or hurt but showing faith in him always seemed the right thing to do. He was my brother, my only brother, after all.

I just accepted whatever Danny gave me, whether it was truth, lies, or some combination. Letting Danny be who and whatever he wanted was the best way to hang on to him. That’s what I told myself for a long time.

We were inseparable as boys, even as teenagers. Both of us always on the lookout for trouble, though for different reasons. Danny wanted to get into it. I wanted to stay out of it. Danny had a lot more success than I did. Seeing trouble coming never did me a lick of good if Danny was involved. Nothing was worth letting him feel alone. Because that’s what he always was in his dreams. Alone.

Then in our twenties the worst trouble we’d ever faced came hurtling down the tracks at us like a freight train. In the end, it broke us apart. It was my fault. I stepped aside only to watch from a safe distance as the Heroin Express blew Danny away.

 

 

 

PEOPLE TELL ME
letting Danny go was the right decision and I pretend to believe them. I play along with the idea that I let him go when, in reality, he left me. In my heart, I know I should’ve dragged him from the tracks, or if I couldn’t do that, stepped in front of the train. Would it have changed how things turned out? Would it have kept us together? Probably not, but I’ll never know because I didn’t try hard enough. True, he ran from me. But I could’ve done a better job of chasing him. I’m his older brother. It was my job to catch him. I know in my head that chasing him onto the tracks would’ve only destroyed the both of us, but my heart tells me different.

My heart, when it comes to regret, beats as strong as my brother’s.

The pieces of him only got smaller over time. My phone calls went unreturned. When I could pin him down, we’d set up meetings somewhere in the city but most of the time he wouldn’t show. He refused to tell me where he lived. His cell phone got lost or disconnected and so I lingered at any bar he had named during our brief, stammering conversations. I left messages for him with bartenders and waitresses all across Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Manhattan. They got sick of talking to me and I never got any closer.

THREE YEARS AGO, I AWOKE ON MY THIRTIETH BIRTHDAY WITH NO
idea where Danny was, if he was alive or dead. I hadn’t seen or heard from him in weeks. Hitting a new decade felt like having a door slam closed behind me, leaving Danny on one side and me on the other, neither of us with a key.

Late that afternoon, I sat alone in the dim kitchen of my Staten Island apartment, twirling limp spaghetti on my fork and curling my toes into the dirty linoleum of the kitchen floor. A hot meal at the kitchen table without the television on, with napkins and silverware and liquid from a glass, was my latest attempt to feel civilized. After five years as a college history instructor, I had a career, not just a job. I was now in my thirties and an adult. I wanted to give myself something private to look forward to, other than reading and masturbation.

My evenings had started following the same pattern: from work to couch to mattress, the final two-thirds of the journey strobe-lit by five hundred flickering TV channels. My birthday was shaping up no different. I had done cake and candles with my folks the night before, afraid to tell them I didn’t have big plans for the day itself with friends or a girl. But I didn’t have any of that: plans, friends, or a girl. Still, there had to be
something
I hadn’t done a billion times. Drinking beer wasn’t it. Neither was TV. I’d graded all my students’ essays and done my lesson plans. I wanted to do something different, something fun, but I had no ideas.

Defeated, I slid the dead mass of pasta into the trash. I put my face in my hands. Only ninety minutes after getting home from work, on my birthday, I was utterly stupefied with boredom. Then the phone rang.

“It’s Danny. What’re you doin’ tonight?” His voice was hoarse and ragged. He breathed heavily into the phone while he waited for my answer. “Uh, happy birthday, Kevin.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Long time. Where have you been? You okay?”

“I’m in the neighborhood,” Danny said. “I’ll be right over to pick you up. Meet me outside in ten. I’ll just pull up and you can jump in. We’ll go out. For your birthday.”

He hung up before I could say anything.

Staring at the phone, I realized he hadn’t answered my questions. He rarely ever did. This was our relationship as adults: he came and went and I waited until he came back around again, sometimes clean, sometimes high. I never told him no, never said I’d had enough. Our folks had turned their backs on him some time ago. Tough love, they called it. They recommended I try it, for my sake more than Danny’s. I did, but it never stuck. He was my brother. I couldn’t get the love out of the way and get a firm grip on the tough part. And Danny knew it.

I reached into the fridge for that beer, telling myself its context had changed. I had cause for a celebration. I’d reached a new beginning, a new year. And no matter how long he ignored me, Danny’s return always made me forget the old hurts. He’d been gone even longer than usual this time. Maybe he hadn’t been getting high these past few weeks. Maybe this was one of the clean times. Maybe he had changed for good. I could hope, at least. Danny was what I had wished for the night before, as I blew out the candles on my cake.