My Brother, Who's Home From College
A short story
My brother who’s home from college sent me this photo of me from a bar. He had told me to come down to the garage before he and his friends went out. At night the garage is intensely creepy. This then bleeds over into the day and infects other parts of the house.
Here, hold this, he said.
I don’t like that the antlers still have fur. It’s like the deer is still alive, in a sad half-way.
Rooms can become scary after being normal. Places in the house where you grew up can turn bad on you.
My brother who’s home from college told me to appreciate the antlers. That means he skinned the deer good.
He comes home and hunts with night vision goggles. The deer think no one can see them because he hunts on pitch-black nights, but with the goggles my brother can see the white glow of their hearts.
It’s good. It’s good, I said. Hare Krishna. Good job. Krishna, Krishna.
Hare Krishna makes him insane. My brother who’s home from college talked one time about maybe joining them. He said, good job patronizing me.
I don’t know patronizing, but I know that it means I don’t want to hear it. Still, I don’t let up.
Krishna, Krishna. I pretend not to see his camera, so his camera won’t see me.
At night, him and his friends stand in closed garages like ours, drink Coors, smoke joints, toss it all into a garbage bag they dump in a neighbor’s trash can. Then they go out into the night to find the older women. He goes to all the bars he couldn’t enter when he was in high school. They can card me all they want, he says. He’s happy now.
Why would you want to leave the house so late? This is what it’s about, living around here, he says, as if maybe to warn me not to become like the older women in the bars, or a deer in the dark. He’s so jaded. I think that means you’ve got no idea how to live.
I can’t tag along anymore, but I have my own bedroom now, and it’s still safe.
I want to delete this picture, but I won’t. My brother, who’s home from college, took it. I want to be like him a little. He’s not afraid of any place.