Sometimes You Can Go Home

                On the third day without food it became impossible to ignore the pain.  Instead I could only occupy my attention away from it for a few minutes at most.  But it remained a constant now.

         Growing up hungry my brothers and I had learned to live without regular meals.  We’d developed tricks to tempt the mind away from caring the body was starved, and I was the best at games.  But those years were a testament to an older time.  A time I’d left behind in the shadows of years. 
         
         Since living as the son of my mother I’d grown accustomed to filling my basic needs.  Eating being just one.  Chris and Brian had done the same.  Each of us had moved out, made lives and made sure we never spent a day hungry.  Some kids rebel by marrying spouses their parents dislike.  My brothers and I did it by beating the hand we were dealt.  Yet still there was a part, that undying, smart-assed child sporting scabbed knees and the colorful vocabulary of a trucker, in each of us who knew we’d grown soft.  It was only when we came together now that old suffering and mental endurance became attributes to brag of.  After three full days of nothing to eat and no hope of anything to come we’d all moved past pretend.  Hunger became the uninvited part of our little group.

         What had before been needles, jabbed, and then rotated clockwise throughout the length of my guts, was now a sensation given actual form.  It was made of heat, razors set aglow with a deep fire, bound in clusters and whipped across the soft flesh within me.  The hunger, that pain birthed of no tender coupling, acted with a self-driven consciousness, a passion, to never fade from notice.  To be pain within pain, doubling over itself as if at play.  Any motion I made enraged it.  If I spoke, it bit hard beneath my midsection and tore electric fire in chunks from a sunken chest.  But none of this I could show my brothers.  Weakness just wasn’t something we shared.

         Chris, the sweat from his forehead collected in the pockets created from a furrowed brow then rolled a dirt streaked trail down his face, stood in the crimson sunlight filtered through the tiny, street level window.  He looked out through the assorted planks we’d nailed up when we decided to barricade ourselves in.  Not that anyone could really fit through the window itself.  Not anyone natural, that is.  That spot had become Chris’ place.  Where he’d stand in silence, just staring out at the abandoned road.  The empty row homes across from our own.  Watching, taking in what our street, our city perhaps, had become.  He didn’t speak, but it wouldn’t have been Chris if he spoke too often anyhow.  So he stood there, silent, for hours each day starting since we came to the basement.

         At a count it was six days since we took refuge down here.  Three days before that since the troubles all started.  The sun, or at least what was lighting the sky, hadn’t set since it all began.  Mom died yesterday.

         ~And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men~

         “Adam?  Your racer’s getting off track,” Brian said, reminding me of our game.  I drug an inflated tongue across the canvas of cracked lips before trying a smile.  A few sores reopened like new flowers but refused to bleed.  The gesture reassured my brother.  I felt it.

         “Sorry about that, m’man,”  I coughed out before taking up my cockroach from the shoebox and setting it back at our drawn “starting” line.  After mom died Brian and I started races cockroaches.  It had been his idea.  Brian always approached problems with invention; creativity.  In situations, you came to Brian if you needed a device put together or some different angle to approach a problem.  He’d become our Professor on the Gilligan’s Island of our family.  And I was the Skipper.

         “I think we should make a go at it,” Chris finally spoke while still keeping his watch outside.  Between my grimy fingers the roach beat its legs in a frantic panic to get loose.  I set it in place then let it go to watch the thing scurry across the cardboard.

         “I mean it,” Chris continued.  We had debated our options before deciding on this plan, on the basement.  Since then we’d not revisited it with any real intent.  At least not since before mom died.  The three of us had moved her body to the far corner, besides the furnace, and covered her with an old drop cloth.  A couple hours after that was when Chris had brought up the idea of our next steps.  That made sense.  Chris was always logical, unless, of course, he was drunk. 

         Without mom we could cover more ground.  That was true.  But we hadn’t eaten.  Hadn’t had anything to really drink.  Plus, and most importantly, none of us had any clue what was happening outside.  No.  It made the most sense to stay put.  Stick to the plan, I thought.

         “Nah,” I said with a slight shake of the head.  My roach had come to box’s end where it scrambled to scale its way out.  “Best plan is to stay put.  Help’ll come.  We head out there and we’ve no idea what’s up.  Let’s stick with the plan,” I added.  But Chris bristled at that.  His wide shoulders rose then dropped sharply before turning away from the barricaded window to face Brian and me.

         “That was before,” Chris started.  The strain was set across his face.  Eyes direct.  Body language rigid.  He spoke more with what he didn’t say than with words.  It was he who stayed behind when I, and then Brian, moved out to the other side of the country.  Chris stayed back for mom.  He remained in contact with all those aunts, uncles and cousins.  Doing the part as a member of a real family.  By action alone he was mom’s chosen successor to head the household.  But he hadn’t endured what I had to.  What he felt earned was mine by right.  I bled for it.

         ~Behold, I will slay thy son, thy first-born.~

         “Chris,” the roaches now crawled atop one another.  I looked up from the box to meet his eyes.  “Let’s just get to it.  Getting out of this basement aint gonna solve shit.”  Chris was action.  He was dependable.  The golden son.  But I knew that losing control of the topic meant losing the conversation.  With age came wisdom, in some way.  Action may lead but wisdom ended up leading to failure less often. 

         “What we need is to eat.”

         “Exactly!” Chris responded with excitement in his voice as though he’d snapped back control.  “There aint shit here except that bottle and that won’t do us shit,” he said referring to the half bottle of vodka we still had.  “We get outta here and we can get food.”

         I remembered sitting in a principle’s office.  Besides me was a social worker while my mother sat in the corner and we all waited for the principle to show up.  When he finally showed the talk was short.  The principle, with his bad JC Penny suit and fifteen dollar haircut, asked me to not come back to school.  The social worker argued that I had a right to return.  That they had no reason to bar me from coming back.  But my mom, my mother, she said nothing.  Not a word.  Just sat there.  At the end I told the principle to “fuck himself” before getting up to leave.  Afterwards at home mom said, “I really expected you to stand up for yourself in there.”  I was fifteen.

         “I understand where you’re coming from, Chris,” I responded with a softer touch to my tone.  My younger brother was a fighter.  In him existed a world of frustrated confusion that led all it was that he did.  When he argued, he did so out of confusion.  From a standpoint of morals he never truly put much stock in.  Which made him more violent than necessary.  Strength, when applied generously, shuts up more discussions than being correct.  Still, it was that unwavering dedication to what he felt that made Chris loyal above all else.  Even if those convictions were founded on poor soil.  “But we need to be honest.  With each other and our situation.  One: we’re not going to survive without food.”

         “No shit,” Chris spat.  Brian adjusted his glasses while listening to me continue.

         “Two: we’ve no idea just what’s going on out there.  It’s been what?  A week?  Since we last heard any sort of news.  It could be anything.  Radiation.  Maybe biological weapons gone haywire.  I mean that would explain some of the stories we were getting before it went dead.  The diseases and hallucinations.”  My voice was even toned despite the pain in pushing the words over the mess of my lips.  I didn’t curse or inject emotion into what I said.  The three of us stood before a darkened path.  And I was set on taking my place as our guide.

         “But there’s no need to focus on all that again, alright?”  I added.  “What’s important is there’s no sure bet that if we head outside we won’t be killed.  The sun hasn’t gone down since this all started.  And we’re dehydrating from the heat.  It’s December.  Whatever has gone wrong is outside.  So, like we said before, the longer we can hold out down here the better our chances of getting help.  We just need to hold on.”

         That summary hung in the air between us without comment.  It sunk in through the irritation of dirt caked sweat and muggy heat.  It was Brian, the thoughtful one, the youngest, who broke the silence.

         “But how do we last down here?”

         It was the question we’d collectively waited for.  Chris, despite his vigil into the light, knew that leaving was worse than staying.  Brian had not debated what we’d done but grew ever more concerned when rescue was late to arrive.  So did I, but rescue came in many forms.

         “We do what needs to be done to survive.  We eat,” I said.  It wasn’t long before my brothers realized that the discussion amongst the three of us had grown to include a fourth.

         “No fucking way!”  Chris bellowed.  His hands balling as black finger nails bit deep into palms.  He repeated, “no fucking way!”

         “There’s no other way Chris!” I yelled back.  Use his name, I thought.  Remind him of who we are.  “We have to survive this.  Dying aint gonna do anybody a fuck of good!”

         But Chris’ temper was alight.  What pain that tore at him from hunger, from thirst, from the fear of what was happening, from the death of our mother.  All of that welled up within the anger.  He tore from the half window in a circle, arms flying up, cursing as he went.

         “All this, all this!  And now you want me to eat my own fucking mom?” He almost screamed.  The edge of each word cracked like bent glass.  I let him vent without interruption.  It was necessary.

         “Brian,” I turned to look on the youngest.  Across those features I read shock but, past that, a touch of consideration.  “You know as well as I do that if we don’t eat something we’ll be dead in what?  Three days?  More, maybe, but can you imagine this pain getting worse?  We have got to live through this.  Any way we can.”

         Brian gave a slight nod to that.  Not a full agreement but more of an affirmation to what was said.  That was enough though.  The lever had been moved forward.  Gears threaded their teeth in mounting speed.  The machine of his mind was in motion.  Let the clockwork mechanism do what it did best. 

         “No fucking way!”  Chris barked with emphasis on each word.  Driving each one deep to mark the point.

         “Chris,” began Brian, “we should think about this.  What would she want us to do?”  That statement stood there a moment before he pushed on.  “Mom would want her kids to survive.”

         Brian, the youngest, the one who had always been the baby regardless of how old he got, and, by default, the one who held both Chris and I by the hearts, softened the idea to a point of acceptance.  For me there was little hope in convincing Chris.  Knowing my place was a trait I’d learned early on.  But Brian could talk to Chris in a way I couldn’t. 

         I saw Chris waiver, with the pain of his thoughts pooling beneath dark ringed eyes.  But he reacted before breaking.  With only a few strides the blow thundered solid against my temple.  The second screamed for my side but I threw myself towards the rush; the punch bounced off me instead of collapsing a lung.  The eruption of this new pain chased back the hunger.  Both my arms flew out to catch my brother.  Then wrapped themselves across both his shoulders.  He struggled under me.  My grip held.  The warmth of his tears slithered down along my neck.  His body heaved with sobs beneath me and, in time, his firsts uncurled.  He returned the embrace.

         “I know,” I whispered.  “I know.”

         Under Chris’ hug I was eleven.  The air was still and frigid in that way after a fall storm.  The road we walked was slick from the rain.  I remember the steam lightly rising from the heated asphalt.  My arms, my eleven year old arms, were wet as they held Chris in them, but they were slicked with blood not water.  Chris had fallen into a pile of unsecured construction trash where a steel rod had punctured his side.  Unable to walk I carried my brother home.  The blood, his blood, pooled in the crook of my arms before dripping a steady shower behind our steps.  Chris spent the next month in the hospital and the next several years in physical therapy.  My mom had demanded to know why I’d taken my brother to a construction site.  I was eleven.

         “I’ll do it,” I said as we moved apart.  No one protested as I took up the bottle of vodka before moving back towards the make-shift curtain of a bed sheet we’d put up to separate her body from us.  The swift click of the pocket knife sprung the blade in place.  I stopped before moving beyond and steeled myself with a deep breath.  Then took the final step towards my mother.

          ~Unless You Eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and Drink His Blood You Have No Life In You~