Brother Far Away

Hiya... I've started a new story, but I'm not sure whether I should continue it. I'm finding it difficult to stay focused on the main idea. Below, I've put up what I've written so far. If you have a little extra time, please take a quick look and give me your opinion as a comment. I appreciate your help and input.

Brother Far Away

“Yea, it’s funky-sounding, I guess, but I don’t know…’The Awful Falafel’ for Christ’s sake? Are you serious? Why not ‘Bummus Hummus’ or ‘Abdullah’s Tabouleh’ or how about if you just blast Arab music all day long from loudspeakers on the street and park a few camels outside the front door? I know… slaughter a couple of sheep beside the front stoop and leave the heads layin’ on the sidewalk. And instead of beer, serve lots of that nasty Turkish coffee so thick that you can stand a spoon up in it. Lester, have you totally lost your mind? Do you honestly think this is the sort of food that will stir the hearts and open the wallets of a couple thousand Baptists in Tonganoxie, Kansas? Honestly, I’d be willing to give you five-to-one that says some Young Republican looking to make a name for himself will blow your shit away before the paint is dry on the sign.”

Lester Purdy contentedly rolled the sleeves up on his cowboy shirt with the mother-of-pearl buttons, trying to appear as though none of his brother’s words had impacted him in the least. “I like falafel…” he muttered, not bothering to flick the inch-long ashes from the cigarette dangling precariously from his lips, evidently feeling as though they might add a bit of flavor to the dough laying in front of him.

Swirling the ice in his glass, Tim Purdy glared at the changeling standing in front of him for a few seconds before downing the remainder of his bourbon and coke. “Well, little brother, I like pussy, too, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to open up a cathouse. You need to stop listening to Grady and Mano… you know they’ll say anything if they think it’ll get a rise out of you. Neither one of those two idiots has a pot to piss in, Lester, don’t you ever stop to think about that? Look what you’ve built here, bro, a nice little corner bar that people like; a place where they can come and enjoy themselves and feel like big shots. Hell’s bells, dude, you like making them pizza and pouring them drinks, don’t you? Do you honestly think that with the way the war in Iraq is going, that people would continue to come in if suddenly everything in here looked and sounded like a bunch of A-rabs just moved in? Think, Lester… why would you want to risk all of it by changing everything?”

Fingers stopped kneading and shoulders slumped forward as Lester stared at his brother, the impact of Tim’s words filtering through his defenses, piece by piece slowly and laboriously finding their way into some deeper niche of his mind, forcing him to give them some form of regard. Thoughts generated in remote recesses flashed before him and just as quickly short-circuited before Lester’s mouth could recognize them and give birth to a cogent sentence. After several attempts at stuttering, eye-rolling, ejaculations of jibberish, he simply stopped, sighed heavily and once again fixed his eyes upon Tim. Ashes from his cigarette fell onto the floor. “I like falafel.”

Pending exasperation forced Tim to turn his back, close his eyes and breathe deeply. Pushing his sleeve back off his wrist enough to expose his watch, Tim glanced down and picked up his jacket. “I need to run, Les, thanks for the drink. Please, don’t say anything more about this to anyone until we run this past Dave. You know how excited he gets when you start thinking a little too much. He ain’t a great lawyer but you know how he watches your money. Remember his promise to Momma.”

Pulling Lester’s head close to him, Tim bussed his brother’s forehead affectionately. “I love you, little brother, don’t worry about this. Make me some of them yummy dumplings you’re so proud of. I’ll be back this evening to help you tend bar.”

“Grady and Mano are my friends, Timmy. You should-n’t talk about them that way.” Lester sucked on a bar towel, the effort of the sentence nearly too much for him to complete. His eyes poured torrents of sadness into the room, filling it with a knee-deep flood of hurt.


“I know…” Tim cooed softly, holding his brother in his arms. “I’m sorry.” Then, pushing away to grab his brother’s arms, Tim moved Lester’s chin up with his fingers, forcing eye contact. “Remember that the next time the two of them ask you to do something you don’t want to do. No more ‘ride the piggy’ or ‘Lester’s really Jesus’, okay? Friends wouldn’t ask you to do that.” Once again, Tim hugged his little brother and patted him on the back. “You hold down the fort for awhile. I need to go see Dave. Remember that we love you.”

As Tim inserted his key into the ignition, he thought about his brother’s disability. Calling to mind his own responsibility for Lester’s accident, he wondered how others dealt with the sort of guilt that never went away, never slipped further into the past than a shot of Jack Daniels could instantaneously revive. Once, the kid could run like the wind, stop on a dime and be back at full speed in half a second, talent that earned him All-Conference honors in high school as starting running back for Tonganoxie High School. If only Tim hadn’t allowed Lester to drink beer at his house on his eighteenth birthday, he’d have likely been a star at KU. Now, Lester could count change, pour drinks, bake pizza and little else. Knowing that Lester would, in all likelihood, outlive him, Dave wondered who would take care of him after he was gone. Their brother Dave watched Lester’s trust fund like a hawk, even if he was a judgmental asshole. That’s why he’s a lawyer. Dave made no secret of the fact that he blamed Tim for Lester’s problems, either, even though he’d publicly deny it until the cows came home. This one unstated supposition had opened a communal sore upon the psyches of the brothers and no treatment worked to close the breech. Every time Dave applied a topical dose of self-serving judgmental advice to the wound, Tim topped it with an ill-timed liberal poultice of alcohol, and the patients got no better. The Awful Falafel… popping a Clapton CD into the slot, Tim made a mental note to cancel his subscription to National Geographic before Lester decided that he really should become a card-carrying member of Al Queda.

******

If he makes me wait, I’m out of there. Tim got out of his Mazda, pushed the remote control lock with his thumb, slipped his keys into his jacket pocket and walked up the weather-scarred concrete sidewalk linking building and parking lot. Dave’s office, located in the garden level of a refurbished apartment complex adjoining a seedy strip mall filled with dollar stores and payday loan franchises, was nearly void of pretense. The understated sign on the door proclaimed neither contact numbers nor any surreptitious information other than David M. Purdy, Attorney-at-Law. Once, Tim had asked Dave why he didn’t have any of those fancy letters or degrees after his name on the door and Dave had condescendingly explained to him that anyone who needed to see the letters would probably have already called someone else to do their legal work in the first place. Tim couldn’t argue with his logic. Deep down he understood that his brother would probably never make Law Review, not that he really knew what Law Review was, other than some grand honor he’d heard David speak of occasionally.

Tim opened the office door and flashed a smile and perfunctory ‘toodle-oo’ finger wave to Karen, Dave’s secretary/part-time squeeze. The two shared a delight in provoking Dave at every possible turn. Knowing how much Dave hated to be barged-in upon and hearing him talking on the phone, Karen motioned for him to go right in. Tim sauntered into the office and sat down, immediately putting his feet on Dave’s desk.

Looking up and seeing his brother, Dave frowned and muttered, “Listen, Tony, someone who obviously doesn’t understand the concept of privacy just walked into my office uninvited, so can I call you back in a few minutes? It won’t take me long to take care of this, I promise you.” Quickly closing the flip-cover on his cell phone, he stood and straightened his tie, readying himself for the weekly confrontation with his younger brother.

“Would it kill you to knock… just once, so that I could die happy knowing that your thirteen years of Catholic education wasn’t a total fucking waste of your time and our parents’ hard-earned tuition money?”

“My, my… we seem to be a bit testy today… I’m sorry, David, I didn’t mean to barge in when you’re talking to your bookie. But relax, my brother, I’m sure he’ll give you another week to pay up before he sends Guido to snap your knee caps.”

“What do you want?” Papers began shuffling on Dave’s desk, the result of his nervous attempts to avoid feeding his brother’s wit. “You called me David, so I’m assuming you need cash.”

“I’m fine, thanks so much for almost asking… and you?” Now Tim put his hands behind his head and stretched his body, causing it to push the chair onto two legs. For a few seconds he held the pose, luxuriating in his brother’s obvious discomfort before yawning and sighing audibly. Then, the grin returned.

“Tim, I’m a little busy today, and cute as your antics may be to anyone with an IQ approaching Mike Tyson’s, could we possibly get to the point of your visit? I’m sure that you aren’t aware of it, but some of us try to plan our daily activities within a reasonable time frame and you’re coming perilously close to upsetting my applecart. Now, what the fuck do you want?”

“Oh, it’s nothing really… Luther just wants to rename the bar and turn it into a Middle Eastern bodega.”

Again, papers flew from Dave’s hands back onto the desk, accompanied by unintelligible mutterings as he covered his face with both hands and shook his head violently. Once composed, he asked, “And what did you tell him?”

“What could I tell him? I just told him to talk to his brother, David. Of course, I may have let it slip that I know a guy who might be willing to part with a few camels pretty cheap.”

Dave The Lawyer slumped into his over-stuffed chair, suddenly depressed and not a little queasy. “Please tell me you didn’t say that to him, Tim. Honest to God, I need to hear that before any other words come out of your pie hole. Throw me a bone, here, little brother.”

Tim allowed a smirk to escape from the corner of his mouth. “Well, I may be overstating it just a tad. But I do think he’s feeling a little…what? Trapped, maybe? Think about it… he goes from home to the bar every day, day in and day out, where he puts up with the bullshit of the same drunks. He lives in a group home, or have you forgotten? That’s depressing to me, Dave, and I’m only in and out of the place. I think he just wants a change of scenery.”

“Ha! Well, who doesn’t, for Christ’s sake? We live in Tonganoxie Kansas, Tim, not Honolulu! However, that doesn’t change the reality of the situation. You know as well as I do that the bar is just barely squeaking by. I’m surprised that cash flow allows us to keep the doors open, honestly. Unless I take it out of his trust fund, I don’t see how I can afford to even paint the place, much less send him anywhere for vacation.”

“Dave, how come it’s always ‘when I do this, or I do that’ when you’re speaking about Lester? Everyone knows you control the purse strings, you make all the decisions, you make sure he’s financially secure… but when it comes time to actually go down there and spend some time with him, you always seem to be somewhere else. Could it be that we’re really below your station in life, that you’re merely making good on some ages-old, deathbed promise to Mother?”

The words sucked the air from the room and neither man said anything further for a while. Dave turned his head and looked out the window as though eye contact with his brother would kill both of them instantly. Nervously clicking a pen in his hand, Dave said nothing.

Tim waited for a time, hoping for a response. Then, receiving none, pushed down on the arms of the chair, stood and faced his brother. “Thank you for your time, Counselor, I’ll expect your bill for services rendered in tomorrow’s mail. You can continue to plead poverty all you want, but I gotta tell you, our brother isn’t a child. Les has needs and aspirations just like you and me. Just think about that when you hire your damned painters…”

Before he could respond, Dave watched his brother walk out of the office. An extended pinkie finger pressed the intercom button. “Karen, I need to go out for a while. Would you call Mrs. Fitch and ask if she has time to see me? Call me on my cell and let me know what you find out.”

***

“I call him… Mofo.”

Irene looked up from their checkerboard. She’d expected to hear Lester say ‘Smiley’ or ‘Happy’ or some goddamn thing, but ‘Mofo’? Where in the world had he heard that?

“Mofo, eh? What does that mean, Les, can you tell me?” She’d left two of her pieces uncovered hoping that he’d jump her and hasten the end of the game, but Lester’s concentration remained fixed upon the contents of the glass jar bedded with grass and containing one rather large white slug currently choosing to attach itself to the glass wall. Suddenly, although fascinated, Irene was sorry she’d asked.

For his part, Lester rested his head on his forearm atop the bar and turned the jar over and over slowly, apparently fascinated by the slug’s ability to retain its grip on the glass. Then, setting the jar down, Lester inserted his index finger into his nostril and stared at Irene, oblivious to any social mores against such activities. “I think it’s a horse.”

“A horse?”

“Yea… it’s either a horse or you, I think.”

“Me? Why would you think it’s me, if you don’t mind telling me.”

“I heard Charley Washington tell Terry that last night he put that Mofo on her knees and rode her like a brood mare.”

Irene Sylvester recoiled as though she’d been shot. Fighting to stay calm, she turned away and closed her eyes, rubbing her scalp with both hands. After a few seconds she turned back to Lester and put her hand on his arm. “Sweetie, make Auntie Irene a promise, will you? Promise me that you won’t say that to anyone else, okay?” Now, she had to wipe tears from her eyes and her nose began to leak a little snot. Grabbing a napkin from the dispenser, she walked into the back room.

Lester heard glass breaking and sounds that sounded like muffled screams. He put his arms onto the bar and started to rise, but Old Man Cleese put his arm on Lester’s and frowned. “Let her be, Les… it’ll be okay.”

“But, I need to find out if she’s o—“

Quickly, Old Man stood up and put his hands on Les’s shoulders. “No, I said she’s okay. Now, we’re friends, ain’t we, Les? I’ve never lied to you, have I? You just sit right there for a minute. She’ll be fine, I promise. She just needs a chance to…” Old Man paused, looking toward the back room, “Well, I guess she just needs a minute to be by herself. Why don’t you see if you can think of another name for your slug… something a little more common, maybe?”

No protests emanated as Lester sat back down. Perhaps Mofo wasn’t such a good name after all… “Okay, I will.” Lester surveyed the checkerboard quickly before jumping over three of Irene’s men en route to King’s Row. Plucking Irene’s vanquished checkers from the board, Lester grinned at Old Man as he placed them onto the bar. Whispering into his hand, he said, “She’s not very good at this game.”

******