Watches and Warnings Read online

  RETURN

  Two nights after the storm, the doorbell rang. We are still without power, but the bell doesn’t seem to need it. Dad greeted Victor like the prodigal son in the Book of Luke. Unlike the Bible story, we couldn’t throw a feast. We’d already cooked our meat on a gas grill. Otherwise, it would’ve spoiled. Victor is unable to hold down food anyhow. He wouldn’t enjoy our dry cereal. The few apples that stayed fresh. Victor is the opposite of fresh. The dead skin on his lips blends into the rest of his bloodless face. When he stepped into our hallway for the first time in over a year, Mom kissed his clammy cheek. Dad rubbed his shoulders. They said a prayer of thanks. Angeline was sitting nearby in a playpen. She stared with her curious child-eyes at the stranger who had entered. Put a plush cube in her mouth and drooled. Victor looked back at her. Tried to make a face he must have thought was cute. It was painful. As if the muscles in his face were rusted and worn. Mom and Dad spilled smiles everywhere. Acted like their house wasn’t missing a room. Like their oldest son wasn’t actually a junkie they’d kicked out themselves. Like Victor was coming home from college in another state. Instead of from a dump a mile across town. I should share this happiness. But I feel my face turning into Victor’s just by looking at him. I’ve wanted to cross the country with him. Live out the adventures he promised in a brighter world that isn’t here. But we are here. In this home. Where we were children. And Victor can never be a child again.

  VICTOR SAYS

  Victor is drained, all weak and wispy. Hard to imagine he ever played football in high school. He still likes to talk though, pacing as he speaks. Sometimes he sits down, gagging and gasping, then stands back up. Paces again. He chews on his lips. Scratches the back of his neck. Tells us “the whole awful everything.” It’s like he wants his secrets to be spun into gold that might buy his family’s favor. Victor says he heated, then shot up, the last of his supply during the tornado. His roommates joined in. They sat in the dark. Heard the storm flow around their walls. Victor thought it was a good moment to dissolve. He wanted to drift off into the wind. But within hours, he was sober. The storm had turned to a cloudless dawn. He felt a ticking in his muscles. Tasted the sharp bite of acid coming up from his stomach. His friends were ready to score their next hit. After looking out at the parking lot, they realized what the storm thought of their plans. They’d been driving to Tulsa. Picking up quarter-sized balloons of black paste called “Tar.” Only Big Gabe, the tallest of Victor’s roommates, had a vehicle. It was an old Dodge Tradesman van his father gave him. The Tradesman was upside- down. Engine plucked from the vehicle. Sprinkled in pieces around the property. Seeing this, the entire apartment erupted. Closets were searched. Drawers thrown into walls. No traces of leftover Tar were found. After almost 24 hours without a hit, Victor was turning to sweat. The sweat was hot-cold cold-hot. Left him seasick from the shifting. Soon he was vomiting all over the bedroom. Throwing up before he could reach the toilet. He puked until there was no acid left in his stomach. His friends were similar messes of sweat and vomit. They called for a pill patrol. Everyone went outside, into dizzy air that smelled of sawdust and gasoline. There were people in the streets. Moving debris. Looking for things they had lost. It was hard to find a house to break into without being seen. Even if the homes were already half-broken by the storm. When they did crawl through a few smashed windows, there was nothing stronger than Tylenol in the medicine cabinets. They took extra doses of it. Didn’t fix the ache. In one home, they were nearly caught. A little girl in blue pajamas walked into the bathroom, rubbing her eyes. Tiny cuts from what looked like glass surrounded her eyebrows. She started screaming just as Victor jumped out of the window and onto an uprooted shrub. Between break-ins, he and his friends called everyone they knew. Perhaps there was a connection willing to drive out from Tulsa. Meet them at the edge of town. Their phones died before they even landed a maybe. Victor sat down at a bench in what was once a mobile home’s backyard. The home itself was on its side across the street. While his friends swore and smoked cigarettes, he shut his eyes. When he awoke from a sleep he wasn’t sure was sleep at all, they were gone. A dark-haired, mud-spotted dog was licking his chin. The mutt was chubby and well-fed, but limped from a gash in his leg. There was no sign of an owner. Victor didn’t care to read the collar. He wanted to kick the creature away. Didn’t let himself fall that far. He felt a drive to move forward. An odd energy turning within his hollow gut. He’d go home now. Beg forgiveness. Kiss the carpet of the house he grew up in. If he was going to detox, if he was going to get clean, he wanted to do it this way. At home, with the people who gave him life. Who probably loved him. In some sense, at least.

  GO BLUE

  Tonight, I share the living room with my brother. Dad considered walking him to the border of Uktena and calling an ambulance. Emergency services are too busy to worry about junkies, though. Unless they’ve overdosed. There’s a coach bus coming tomorrow to drive people to Tulsa for free. We didn’t tell Victor. If we put him on the bus alone, he’d never make it to rehab. If I were my dad, I’d sit on that bus with him. Make sure Victor checked in wherever he needed to go. Stay until he was released. But my parents say they have a duty to their church and community. There are 18 families staying at Uktena Baptist. They sleep on floors in the recreation hall and in Sunday School classrooms. The church always keeps supplies on hand for times like these. There are water bottles. Snack bags. Canned goods. Gas lines to the church kitchen are unsafe from storm damage. But there are little camping stoves for families to share. Each guest has a sleeping bag and pillow. For children there are toys and coloring books. Even diapers and wet wipes. A small generator powers the church in short stretches. Gives people time to plug in their phones. Call their friends and relatives. My own phone was found in our yard. Chipped at the corner, but still working. The Wagners and the Fischers are both at the church. The Wagners survived by packing their whole family into one bathtub. They have a few scratches, but are grateful and full of praise. The Fischers are less grateful. They moved here from Oklahoma City last year for teaching jobs. Never wanted to be in this town. And never thanked my mom when she set up their sleeping area. My parents keep bouncing between our house and the church. Our home is livable, so we sleep there. My bedroom, of course, is off-limits. The sign from the church is still lodged into my wall. There is a beige sofa and a loveseat in the living room. Though Victor and I are both about the same height, I’ve taken the loveseat. I am responsible for watching my brother. Dad never said as much, but I know this is the case. I angle myself so I can see his face. It’s lit by tall red candles burning over our mantelpiece. My brother has water and saltine crackers on the table beside him. There’s a small trash can in case he throws up. His winter coat is finally off, but his arms are hidden underneath two thick blankets. The top blanket is decorated with cartoon characters from Popeye the Sailor. Victor is still all shivers and sweats. He wants to talk. To stay awake. My parents are asleep upstairs. They’ve said their prayers over Victor. He wasn’t calmed. He keeps chewing at his lips. There’s no dead skin there anymore. Only a pink pulp. “I remember when you were a kid,” he tells me at random. “Instead of throwing a tantrum when you didn’t get your way you’d stop breathing. Your face would go blue. Then right before you were about to pass out, you’d breathe.” “I don’t remember that at all,” I say. This makes Victor smile. As if it gives him power to know I’ve forgotten part of my life. “I do,” he says, “You’ve grown, buddy. You don’t even have one cell in your body that’s the same as when you were a toddler. Weird having the person you were disappear, isn’t it?” I taste death in his words. Try to ignore the flavor. “Remember when you were in middle school and you had a crush on that one cheerleader?” I ask. “Which one?” “You told Mom and Dad she was your girlfriend. They thought you were too young for all that. So they called the girl’s parents. They were confused. You’d made the whole thing up.” “Yeah,” he laughs, gagging on the laugh’s tail. “Had to get
better at lying, didn’t I? Takes practice, for sure.” “Weird making the truth disappear, isn’t it?” I ask with bitterness. The way the Fischers spoke to Mom. “Was that a dig?” Victor asks, head lifting from his pillow. “Because you have the right to talk? I try to be up front when I can. But I don’t know half what you hide.” I won’t respond. Victor makes a choked sound. Starts hacking into his trash bin. I look up at a shadowed ceiling fan. Blades still. Like a model helicopter.

  HELPFUL

  In the morning, Victor is not on the sofa. The trash bin is tipped over. His water bottle is on the floor. It’s early. I must have only slept a few hours. Yet I’m alert. If I am my brother’s keeper, I have not kept him very well. Upstairs, I hear Angeline making her morning cries. I walk toward the front door. Past family photos. Past little signs bearing Bible verses. Through a window, I can see Victor in the driveway next to our family minivan. The van is running. He must have found the keys. He is staring at the branches at our driveway’s end. Maybe wondering if he can plow into them. Make it through the forest. Some of the wreckage was cleared from the road. Nowhere near enough for him to make a clean escape. He begins to run his fingers through his hair and pull at the roots. I hear a thud. Dad comes bounding downstairs. He brushes me aside. Opens the door. Slams it shut. I see him yelling at Victor. The prodigal son fallen from grace once more. Dad takes the keys out of the van. Places them in his pocket. He and Victor stand there. Talking. Arms swooping. Lips moving too fast to read. Victor begins slapping his own face. He balls his hands into fists. Pounds them into his nose. Dad grabs at him to stop the punching. Victor drops his arms. I see blood, leaking red. Dripping down from Victor’s nose. He sits on the grass. Starts sobbing. His bloodied hands go back to pulling at his hair. Dad walks up to the door. “I need to stay in with Victor,” he says. His voice is gavel-firm. “I think it’s time for you to be helpful.”

  MARIANA

  Helpful means clearing brush from the road beside our church. Others have done the hardest work with the saws. The street is slowly becoming walkable. Part of it is able to take in a single lane of cars. Mom is inside the church with Angeline. She keeps the families comfortable. Watches over the children of other parents out helping with the cleanup. The church runs the generator more often now, since fans are needed. It’s almost 90 degrees. The sun is relentless. The ground has dried. Mud has turned back to dirt. People are wearing baseball caps and headbands. Some of the men have their shirts off. Their sweat reminds me of Victor. There’s a red truck I don’t recognize, parked by the tree limbs that block off the rest of the street. The flatbed is full of poles and pipes. A man in sunglasses with tanned skin is loading the truck. A black-haired girl passes him metal bits she finds in the waste. The girl looks close to my age. I’ve never seen her in school. I’ve been throwing scraps and sticks into a wheelbarrow belonging to the church. Now I work slower. Study the girl with sideways glances. Her features add up to a beauty that makes me feel weaker. The sleeves on her shirt are light and loose. I follow their movements. There’s a mystery to them. It strikes me as strange. The shape of human bodies. How they move in space. I hold one of my glances too long. Her head darts in my direction. I look down at the gray stick I’m handling. Toss it into the wheelbarrow. When I turn to find another, the girl is beside me. “You got a name?” she asks. Her voice is clipped. The sound of the city. My voice is a pack of pebbles falling. “Philip,” I say. She nods in approval. “Phil?” “No, just Philip. Phil’s an ugly name.” She gives an annoyed shrug. “What’s the difference? If you fill or you fill up?” “I guess...” I turn my head left. Stare at where the church’s sign stood. “What do you do?” she asks. I snap back to her. “What do I do?” “Yeah.” She seems to think this is a reasonable question. “I’m in high school,” I answer, which should be obvious. “But it’s summer vacation,” she says, dissatisfied with my answer. “Then I vacation,” I say. “Some vacation. Cleaning up after tornadoes.” She doesn’t sound like she’s trying to be funny. “Right,” I say. Better words have fallen out of reach. I see a piece of pipe beneath a branch and pick it up. “I better put this pipe into this wheelbarrow,” I say, as if that makes for good conversation. “Why?” she asks with real confusion. “That’s where the heavy trash goes,” I say. “But that pipe isn’t trash.” She points to the red truck. “Okay…” I must be blushing. “Recycle, boy. Put it in my mamá’s truck.” I pause at the order. “What? You hate Mother Nature?” she asks. This time, I have a response. “You got me. Mother Nature isn’t my favorite this week.” “Well, you’re breathing,” is all she says. She pulls the pipe from my hands. I find another pipe near the first one. Snatching it, I follow her over to the flatbed. “You’re really rude, man,” she says, suddenly upset. “Why do you think that?” “You didn’t ask my name.” “Sorry,” I say, meaning it. “What’s your name?” “Mariana,” she says with confidence. As if it is the greatest name ever spoken. We lay our pipes on the flatbed. “So what do you do?” I ask, trying to be clever. “The right thing,” she says, with the same confidence. “Oh,” I say, stomach dropping. “That’s cool.” “I also make necklaces and bracelets out of arrowheads I find in parks.” she says, more brightly. “Got any on you?” I ask. She is about to answer when the man in sunglasses says something to her in Spanish. She responds with words I do not know. “Maybe next time,” she tells me. The man, who must be her relative, closes up the back of the truck. He walks to the driver’s side. As he gets in, I see a rosary dangling from his windshield. Dad says Catholics aren’t real Christians. But this only adds to Mariana’s mystery. “I gotta go,” she says, with a rushed seriousness. “My papá’s in the ICU. You know, at the hospital?” “Oh,” I say, stomach dropping again. “Sorry to hear that.” Mariana hops into the passenger side of the truck. Before she shuts the door, her face twitches. “Tornadoes, man,” she tells me. The truck pulls away. A branch scrapes its side as it putters off in clouds of dust and fumes.

  SHEPHERDING

  When I get home, Dad sits silent at the kitchen table. “Everything alright?” I ask. I immediately figure it is not. Our kitchen opens out to the living room. I see Victor asleep on the sofa. His nose is bruised from earlier. It carries his snore. Dad is looking toward him as well. “I think I’ll report those break-ins Victor mentioned,” he whispers. “This isn’t what I wanted for my son. But he needs help.” I pull out a chair. Sit with my father. The man is broken up but doesn’t cry. Never weakens his posture. “I hope you learn from your brother,” he says. “I really do. When I think of my children, I want to be proud. I’m the shepherd. Guiding you until you can guide yourselves. This is a role I chose.” I stare at the wood grain on the table. “Your mom and I helped bring Victor’s light into this world,” Dad continues. “He’s an entire soul. At his age, I was on fire. High on the Spirit of the Lord. That heat didn’t transfer. See how cold he is.” I look at Victor’s pulpy lips. My eyes return to the wood grain. Its flow creates rivers, with currents that run in opposite directions. “I never thought I’d reap what I didn’t sow,” Dad says. “I never drank or smoked. Never hung around anyone who did drugs. I thought the doctors knew what they were doing with those pills.” “He was in pain,” I say, knowing the excuse means little. “They got it wrong, trying to help.” “They replaced a puddle with an ocean,” Dad snarls. “And now we suffer because he suffers.” Victor groans and gags. Flutters his lids. “I am glad he’s here,” Dad insists. “But I don’t know how to shepherd my boy right now.” The groans grow louder. Victor thrashes, flings aside his Popeye blanket, and howls. Then snores: loud-soft, soft-loud, loud-soft, soft-loud.

  HEAVENMAKER

  I watch over Victor while Dad makes his rounds at the church. My phone is charged. I’m supposed to call Dad if Victor tries anything. I’m not sure what “anything” could mean. Victor is weak. But I wouldn’t want to fight him if he went into some junkie rage. When he was thrown out the day after his high school graduation, he had a fit. He didn’t hold his
breath and go blue. He pushed Mom into the refrigerator. Kicked Dad twice in the shin. He grabbed Dad’s wallet. Left it, emptied, in the middle of the driveway. Even before Victor was booted from the household, he was known to steal. Mom was always missing jewelry. Twenty-dollar bills disappeared from her purse. At first, she thought it was just forgetfulness. But then Victor was caught shoplifting. He’d been trading with a girl he knew: stolen goods for Oxycontin. Those pain pills were even stronger than Percocet. While leaving a Walmart, a power drill popped out the bottom of Victor’s coat. It shattered on the pavement. Alerted security. He was ordered to do community service. Join a group for drug abusers trying to get clean. The group met once a week in the back room of Uktena’s only coffee shop. It helped Victor. For a little while. The friends Victor made at his support group would become his roommates. They had connections in Tulsa to dope dealers who didn’t bother with expensive pills. You could snort, smoke, or shoot Tar and be wired for hours. The crew made their rent through pizza delivery and drive-thru jobs. Saved enough to keep their habits up most months. They kept Victor from being homeless after he was kicked out. He didn’t need us. Then one evening last August, I was coming back from Mr. Gregor’s cellar. Victor ran up to me in the street. He was panting. Waving the arms of his winter coat. Uktena is small, but Victor had kept quiet. I hadn’t seen him in months. I was excited he was there. To know he hadn’t killed himself. I heard stories on the news of people in Oklahoma dying from overdoses. Some dope had been mixed with a drug for putting elephants to sleep. “Getting tall, my good man,” Victor said. “Bet the girls are going crazy.” Neither of these things were true. He was trying to warm me up. He went on to talk about how he was kicking his habit. How he knew a program that worked for a friend. He just needed a few dollars to join it. Told me once he was clean, he’d save up. Start looking at jobs out East. Go to one of the “Great American Cities.” After high school ended, he wanted me to leave with him. We’d get an apartment. Stay together. Like when we were kids. We’d pig out on craft beer and junk food. Invite over women we met at clubs and bars. Work out at gyms with rock climbing walls and karate classes. Go to punk shows. See slasher movies on the big screen. We’d do everything. Have all the good things Mom and Dad never understood because they were closed off. They saved all their joys up for a heaven that wasn’t there. Why should anyone expect anything after death? When the brain crackles off, you lose every memory. Every dream of life. We had to make heaven for ourselves. Here. That was the key. I gave him $20. Lied and said it was my entire pay from Mr. Gregor. We agreed to meet behind the gas station on the nights I helped in the cellar. That way, Mom and Dad would never know. Each time we met, Victor was thinner. Paler. His eyes ping-ponged as he spoke, never focusing for long. He made the right promises. He was in a good program. Getting clean. It just took time. It took time. Victor wanted to show his love. He could provide a sip of freedom, if I was down for it. I visited his apartment that autumn. Our parents were in South Korea, adopting Angeline. Victor let me sip my first beer from a warm can. It tasted like sour bread-water. He kept smiling and staring while I drank. Like he was proud. I didn’t feel proud. He didn’t play host long. Victor made me leave when Big Gabe entered, wearing a tomato-stained polo from his pizza gig. They both were getting jittery. Big Gabe went into the bathroom. I knew he was after the needles I found in the drawer. I was waved toward the door. It shut on me while I was saying goodbye. I wanted to punch out the windows of every car in the parking lot. Settled for stomping on a foam cup left by the curb. I puked up the beer I drank into some bushes during my walk home. My yellow-brown vomit stuck like mud on the leaves. The heaven that Victor had made wasn’t worth very much.