Ranger
SHE COULD HATE me all she wanted. Thought I couldn’t say the same for her anymore. There was a time when I would say I hated her.
Truth was, if my pride wasn’t standing in the way, I could love her all over again.
I’d been in town for two days trying to let both of us cool off. This gap between us was causing nothing but headaches and more time not pursuing our goals.
My phone buzzed but I was in no mood to take any calls.
“What?” That’s the answer people got when I didn’t want to answer the phone. When I had turned it over, I hadn’t recognized the number. Maybe it was the manners police and they had arrested Hero.
“It’s Wallace. You’re not with Hero, are you?”
Apparently, she hadn’t told her brothers about the mud incident.
“No. What’s up?”
“Anyway you can get over here? I’ve got to fix the hog fence before this afternoon.”
I furrowed my eyebrows. “Y’all don’t have hogs.”
“I know. Just can you get over here or not? Bryson is getting the hogs from a guy we know. Never mind. I’ll call someone else.” He cussed while hanging up on me.
Ten minutes later, I was letting myself into the gate. From the front of the farm, I could see Wallace all the way past the barn doing a piss-poor job of putting the pen back together.
“Hey. I’m here to help.”
The look on his face contradicted what he said. “I’m good.”
“I can see that. Here. I’ve got this side. Hold up the other one and we can get the stakes in the ground.”
We worked for the next three hours in silence with the occasional grunt or nod facilitating the job. Maybe she had told him about the mud. It would explain his attitude.
“If you want, there’s some clean clothes in the house.” He nodded down toward my jeans. The rain the day before had made a mess of the whole farm. Good thing hogs like mud. There was plenty of it around the pen.
“Yeah, I’m gonna take you up on that. Where?”
I remembered exactly where Hero’s room was. There were lots of times I’d helped her climb out of that window – and sometimes back in the next morning.
“First one on the left. The one that used to be Mom’s sewing room, then Grammy’s.”
I faintly remembered it. What I did remember was Grammy working on Hero’s prom dress in that room. She wouldn’t let anyone in, not even Hero. She didn’t see the dress until about an hour before I picked her up that night.
“Thanks.”
I took off my boots, stepped into the house and walked toward the long hallway. The door to the first room on the left was closed, so I knocked, waited a second, and then walked in.
It must’ve been Wallace’s room.
No, it smelled sour, with a tinge of plastic. A layer of dust covered the desk in the corner. A camouflage backpack was in the right corner and pictures near the bed. I knew those pictures.
Those pictures were of my family.
Posters around the room and a folded blanket at the foot of the bed confirmed what my heart and stomach had already registered.
My brother had been here.
Maybe this was his and Hero’s room. Maybe they stayed here together. My anger propelled me down the hall a little further to the room I once knew as hers. I flung open the door to find it much the same as when I’d left. Still way too girly for her, but it had stayed the same since her parents had died. There was nothing of my brother’s in there.
Maybe they just switched rooms or were afraid of Grammy so they picked other spots.
I hit my head on the wall next to me and went back into his room. It looked as if nothing had been touched in ages.
The bed comforter and sheets were still pulled down. I didn’t even ask Hero if he had died here. Did he die in this house? Was anyone home? Was he in pain? Was it quick?
I sat on the edge of the bed, knocking over a stack of old paperback sci-fi novels. Those had been his favorite. Some were marked with those little flags he loved to stick in at his favorite places and quotes.
Along with the books were stacks of notebooks, some black and white marbled and some the cheap wide-ruled single subject ones. The pages were warped and fat from the ink that weighed them down. I didn’t have the courage to see what that ink said.
There was another worn-down recliner next to the window. More books gave it an audience on the floor along with more notebooks and a coffee cup full of pens and markers.
“He read everything in the library in town and in Rainesville. People would give us books and notebooks. He ran through them all faster than we could bring them in.”
Her voice was a soft eulogy.
“He always loved to read.”
She pointed to the antiquated set. “The TV only gets a few stations and he didn’t care for it anyway.”
Jealously hung in my throat. Not over Hero and Garrison but over the fact that he gave her the honor of taking care of him over his own family.
It was my fault. I didn’t give him any other option. It was either this or he would’ve died alone.
“Was he in pain? Did he suffer?”
She sat in the chair by the window – his chair – and looked out, taking one of his books and restacking it.
“For the last month or so, he had one of those morphine pumps. It had enough in it to make sure he wasn’t ever in pain. He was pretty thin. The chemo made his stomach sick all the time.”
I looked around again, taking in what my brother had before he died.
“He wasn’t alone.”
“No. We made sure he wasn’t. We took shifts.”
A tear streamed down my face but I caught it before it got too far.
“It was here?”
She waited a while before answering. “No. He knew it was coming. He said he could feel the darkness rolling in. I took him on Donut out to the pond and propped him up against the oak tree. Sang to him when his breathing got labored. He loved “You are My Sunshine.” I felt so silly singing it.”
Between every word was a choke. She had bore a burden that was meant for me.
“He died about an hour later. It was late in the day, about six or seven, I guess. We scattered his ashes in that pond.”
I didn’t know that. I knew that being cremated was in his will but I had been too focused on being a jerk to ask.
“I’m glad someone like you was here for him, someone who loved him.”
She looked over to me, not hiding her tears. “He was loved and well taken care of. I can tell you that.
“His journals are here if you want them. I didn’t have the heart to touch them. I haven’t even been in this room since he passed. But you are welcome to them.”
“Not yet, okay? Maybe one day.”
For what seemed like hours we sat together breathing in what was left of my brother.
“Hey, Ranger? Can we just call a truce? For Garrison? Let’s just be nice and get through this for him.”
I didn’t have to look at her to know what she was saying was sincere. Her voice spoke the truth.
“Yeah, I can do that. Can you?”
“I definitely can.”
She left the room and left me with Garrison’s memory for a few more minutes. I knew he wouldn’t like the mess, so I cleaned it up and made his bed. One day I would get to the journals. One day.