Don't Grab 'Hold of Nothin' You Cain't Let Go Of

 All this happened...let me think, twenty-two years ago, to the best of my memory. So don't be too mad if I don't manage the details perfectly. Memory changes everything and everyone remembers everything differently. The way I recall it is this. 

It must have been two or three months after Daddy died. I think that's right. I remember that Mama was with us and she really didn't stick around long after. Me and my baby brother left with my grandmother, having lost a father and our mother having lost her mind. I really felt like I had nowhere to belong. Don't guess I really think I have since. 

I clearly recall the look on his face when I told him what had happened only moments before he arrived home from school. I was the only one they had collected. I knew why. The last time I'd seen his eyes was three days before. I'd looked down and told him I loved him and kissed his forehead before I left for school. He looked at me, but there was no one there. Reminds me of the little souls in Ursula's garden. Big, lost, blank eyes and nothing behind them.

So when they called me up to the office, I knew. What a cannonball. I went home and I stood by my father's right knee as he died. I wanted his hand, but his best friend was knelt there, holding on. One of the times I didn't assert my place. You don't know fear until you hear real agonal breathing. Before I knew the words, I knew what that was. And what it sounds like. And what it means. It's the sound of death. And you'll never mistake it for anything else, no matter if you don't know the first thing about it.

When the others came home, I was left to tell them. I don't know why. I felt like I had to. Like I was to be the ambassador of death for this one. I've learned the best way to do it is to just say they're dead. I learned later in life that it's the same way officials will notify. Beating around the bush saves no one. It just twists the knife in. So there in the basement with my baby brother looking at me, I told him. And for a moment, it was that same soulless look. And then he just dissolved. His face just sort of melted kind of like that painting "The Scream." Only no hands to hold it. 

And in true form, as I am myself guilty of this, the kid imploded inward, rather slowly, like a dead star. I guess you don't really know what to do when you get pulled inside out at thirteen. He found himself a girl. She was questionable at best, even to my eyes, not much older than his. And as boys will do, he had to show off.

We're all out at Little River, just over the Alabama line. We got there and were fortunate enough to find a picnic table in the shade, right beside the gate meant to keep out cars, that led to the path out over the rocks to the best diving spot and the best place to swim the breadth of the whole river if you dared. I always dared. Mostly teenagers and young men out there. Come to think of it, not too many girls. With a brother on either side of me in the birth order, I rarely noticed that sort of thing back then. I just wanted to be where the diving rock and the swing and the whole deep river to swim across was. The path narrow and dirt, that sort of color of cocoa powder, only a little more orange, a little overgrown, roots reaching out patiently, waiting for a misstep.

We'd all traipsed down the path together, our sandals and towels, maybe some jean shorts with the tiny blue and white embroidered flowers that had grown too short over the summer for me to wear to school, legs up to my eyeballs, even at fifteen. We'd all been all over that river, the bank steep and slick in that place. You wouldn't want it any other way if you were planning to dive or swing out over and let go. Unless you were desirous of a broken neck. We'd climbed the giant boulders and performed our very best trick dives, no small feat in a bikini top. You'd hit the water and spend the whole float to the surface making sure everything was covered back up.

I'd gotten hungry and my internal clock told me it was about lunch time. Cell phones weren't really broadly used then and even today, I bet you don't get a single bar out there. So back up the path I went, clutching my towel around me, dripping water the whole way, certainly squishing in my shoes.

I'd had time to eat and sit for a few minutes, you know, all that about drowning from muscle cramps and all that. Here comes baby brother walking down the path with the girl. Calm as you please. He walks up and puts his palms flat on the short side of the concrete table and states flatly "I think I need to go to the hospital." We're all looking him over and there's nothing. No cracked head bleeding down his neck or bones sticking out of his arms or legs, or guts hanging out. So I asked him why. And he says "I got bit by a snake" and just slips off a slide to show us two tiny, perfect little punctures on the instep of his right foot.

We begin to ask what happened and how does he know if it's venomous. Well, the stupid hot dog had stepped on a danger noodle on purpose to impress the girl. And as anyone would, the poor thing bit the shit out of him. By this time, the foot had started to swell. He said he tried to stay calm because he knew he didn't want that venom to circulate into his heart too fast. I'd have lost all of my shit simultaneously under the circumstances. He got that calm spirit from Daddy.

I don't remember how we got the ambulance out there. Someone must have called. Was there a payphone or maybe a park employee went to a phone. I don't remember much. I remember that it seemed like a long time before the ambulance arrived. We were out in the farthest flung reaches of the earth. Pass nowhere twice and go two more miles.

By this time, his foot was about huge. And turning a strange shade of purplish red. And he was hurting bad. But still calm. They loaded him up and we drove behind the ambulance, that seemed in no real hurry to the hospital. An unfamiliar one. Must have been Dekalb. I never remember any sense of panic from anyone. I felt it on the inside.

So they took him back and questioned him. They called all over the damn state looking for antivenom, but you have to know what kind of snake. And of course the dumbass didn't look too hard at the shit scared thing he stepped on. And they couldn't find any anyhow. Did I mention on purpose like he was fucking tetched in the head? So they decided not to give him any antivenom. He's young and strong. 

They just gave him a whopping dose of morphine for the pain and ice for the swelling. Well, the morphine apparently didn't play well with the venom, because he had an epic seizure. He wasn't allowed any morphine after that. You just have to sit with the pain of being a dumbass, an affliction most of us probably wish were more common. Stupid ought to hurt, and this time it did. 

I remember once as kids, we were out by the swing set and I heard him scream. Fear. I knew a fear scream before I would have been able to tell you what it was too. I ran to him over by the central AC that we truly had not had the comfort of for long. There he stood between the lattice of the raised screen porch and the AC, white as a sheet. 

I walked up to him slow and he was frozen in fear. Of a copperhead. Curled in the cool by the AC. I remember slipping my arm around him and pulling him behind me before telling him to run. I stood while he ran. Was the snake in any mood to bite, I'll never know. It didn't matter. It could happen. And it could happen to my baby brother. But not if I could help it. Then just a few years later, that instinctive fear obviously completely vacated, snake bit. What the hell had I saved him for if he was just going to be a colossal turnip brain?

He turned out fine. Several days in the hospital and he came home. A little humbler, perhaps. And y'all, his whole foot was blackish purple. It looked like it might fall off any second for weeks. Huge and bloated and colors I didn't know live human flesh could be. 

He was set up with a pillow and treated like a little king, Which was frankly nothing new. The boys in homes like ours are treated like little kings from birth. Those are the ones who grow up to blow away children in school when the whole world doesn't put their feet up on a pillow and wait hand and foot.

He turned out fine, I suppose. I never knew if it was the high fever from chicken pox, the snake bite, the undiagnosed and untreated stuff going on in his little noggin from all the cigarette smoke and likely other kinds of smoke my mother inhaled pregnant with all of us, or if he was just destined to be a little light in the brain pan. Or maybe it was the whole thing about being waited on that failed to teach him empathy and kindness. Stupid and mean. It's not a good combination. 

I still hate to say he's getting it all coming back around though. He's still my baby brother. Stubborn and refusing to let me try to help all these years. I guess the expectation was that I was doing it for some reason of my own. I just wanted him to do better for himself and there were things I could do. But he never did let me. He's hoeing a mighty hard row these days. And still won't ask for help. I aim to do better than that. So y'all buckle up.