The Best Brother/ The Worst Brother
“Lit Up — May’s Prompt: Nostalgia”
He stood out as if from another time; square peg in a round hole.
No one went unnoticed from my newsstand at the city square. He would buy a newspaper and sit with his coffee, the old school way.
His parched lips and scaly skin that could not remember what the sun looked like from years of deprivation, yearned to tell something. Like a lost pup, his gaze held on to every face that passed by his table. He sought a friend, for a familiar conversation, a simple greeting. Instead met his eyes, drifting faces; talking faces with wired ears as if spies on some mission. The mobile phone revolution era had completely passed him by.
In between his sips he talked to me. A man of few words but many riddles, Roger had served 25 years in prison; went in, a young fella in 1988 and came out on the salt and pepper side with drooping shoulder and pain that brimmed through his lonely eyes.
“Young blood with anger is a lethal combination”, he had said while collecting himself and his thoughts up from his chair. I had swallowed my visible disquiet. I did not see Roger for the next few days. I was actually relieved. Roger had served his time for second degree murder.
He came by next week; same coffee, newspaper and hopeful looks. People passed by, almost seeing through him. Some youngsters stopped by to take pouty selfies, making that V- sign and he could not contain himself anymore.
“Hey Paul, are these phones ‘smart’ for real? Y’all look blockheads,” he guffawed.
Old generation rants, always! He believed that he had walked out of prison only to enter a dystopia. And yet he was desperate- to fit in, to live, to makeup for the time lost. I wanted to ask him, at times but after his little truth I was rather uncomfortable. Of course he sensed it.
“I like you Paul but y’all are maze that I don’t get”, he said. And you don’t be a chicken kiddo, I was let off on good conduct. He walked away humming ‘I walk the line’ by Johnny Cash.
The next day he seemed taken up. I was busy too, scoring on Tinder while catching up on my friends’ updates simultaneously. We were actively debating that millennials have it in them to face their problems. I typed a quick update: Don’t facebook your problems. Face Them. #coolmillennial #Livenletlive
Just when I was feeling accomplished, he tapped me with his diary. A map fell out of the diary.
“Planning a road trip, are we Roger?” I picked it up and handed it over to him.
As if caught, he quickly folded the map and tucked it in his diary. He always carried this diary around, a leather bound diary with pages that had turned yellow and brittle with age.
“Do you write often Roger?” I wanted him to calm down as he was still a bit shifty.
“Yeh I did in prison. It sorta helped me to calm my thoughts. There were nights when I felt my head would burst like a melon. And then I wrote some to just remember my childhood. My momma, Ronnie and me.”
He smiled, a rare feat. And went in some sort of trans.
“Ronnie and I were identical twins. We always fooled momma. Ronnie liked milk, I didn’t. He always drank my share of milk and made me a milk moustache. Momma always fell for the trap.
We would go out in our garden and roll in the grass, more weed than grass. You see, we neither had a father nor a lawn mower.
We climbed trees and spied on people crossing by and then we created imaginary stories about them and their lives. Sometimes I would hang face down, clasping the branch with my legs and watch the upside down world until I could no longer take the blood rushing into my face. Ronnie teased me while I chased him around the house.
Red Monkey, red monkey
Eats no banana but turkey
Silly Ronnie! But Ronnie was also smart and saved me from bullies on the street. Momma worked hard to fend for us. Our life was sorta beautiful in that little house.”
One day Ronnie called me out in the garden, he had made a great catch. A grasshopper. We tied one of its legs with a thread and made it hop and dance. We were puppeteers!
Another time we found some eggs in the backyard, tiny blue eggs, mostly of a lizard. We obviously smashed it, taking turns and aiming at those eggs. That night I had felt slightly guilty. But Ronnie was ecstatic. He had discovered that his shots were perfect.”
He paused as if he just wanted to stay and savour that memory a bit longer, a bit closer.
“And then we grew up. We still looked the same but Ronnie had changed. His group of friends made me uncomfortable at times. Ronnie bossed me around at times and treated me like the younger one. His logic- I was born a few minutes after him. I too, throughout my childhood had blindly followed him. Once he kept Rhett Butler style moustache and I had laughed uncontrollably while he punched me in my guts. But I had also secretly wished for my facial hair to grow faster to match up to his fashion style. We had also picked up odd jobs by then and our momma had officially retired.
But one day Ronnie did not come back from work. Momma went to the police station and came back shattered. She never got up from the bed after that and died in a few months. Ronnie came out on parole for the last rites. He looked the same. Same as me but a bit rough around the edges.”
“I wrote a couple of lines yesterday”. He was sullen while his hands foraged for the reading glasses in his worn-out flannel coat pockets. After a minute, he surrendered and handed over his diary to me.
“Here, read this Paul while I catch my breath”.
I read those lines aloud and it has stayed with me since then.
We exchanged shirts, I got the better ones
We shared laughter, your jokes cracked me up
You took beatings for me, I never thanked you once
O brother, you didn’t have to do all that
But you did it anyway
And so when my time came, not once did I think
I took it as a game,
A game of hide-n-seek
Only that you never came back
And I stayed caged for something I didn’t commit
I blinked as I finished the last line. “You mean…..” I felt choked.
He gave out a dry laughter. “Eh Paul, you blokes do have emotions, don’t ya?”
“You see, Ronnie and I were identical twins. He was a funny guy with anger issues. When momma died, he was released for a few days. we thought to play a prank and I went inside, instead of him. The deal was that he would come to meet me in prison and then I will wriggle out again. It would have been a cake walk for us. Just a change of clothing.
But Ronnie never came back to swap places, the next week or month…… or for the twenty five years that I was there.”
He went quiet but then quickly collected himself. He spread the map in front of me. There were some places marked. May be he wants to trace Ronnie back.
“Paul, am I a bad brother to think that my brother must have died? But there are days when I sorta think that he might be living his life somewhere.”
He did not wait for my answer, collected his map and diary and walked away humming, ‘On the road again’ by Willie Nelson.
I never saw Roger after that day.
I wish that I could have told him that he is the best brother that I have ever come across.
*
