The day before the wedding the groom picked up his older brother from the airport. It had been raining hard for several days—by then the rain seemed to have exhausted the earth and now hung in fog, complicating the drive through the mountain range to the airport. The weather, too, left the younger brother waiting for his brother's arrival from Fort Worth, as flights were backlogged and planes fell into a holding pattern in the sky.
When the plane finally landed and the passengers passed through the waiting gate, the younger brother didn't recognize his older brother at first. He had anticipated someone from several years before, when the two had last seen each other: Back when his brother had been married and still lived up north. Distance and time had made them unfamiliar to one another, so that only once the older brother strayed from the line and moved with a certain deliberation toward the younger brother did the younger brother recall the walk and the smile, and then those eyes. The older brother's hair had gone white and had thinned considerably. His body too was thinner. It made him look taller to the younger brother.
The brothers embraced, and each immediately felt strange in the force of the embrace—in its enthusiasm—like a gesture that reveals its hollowness too late to do anything about it, but pretend.
The mist and the rain seemed to have deepened against the evergreens and made the drive from the airport feel languid and insulated: as if the car were emptier than the sum of the two men, both of whom fell into a familiar, comfortable silence. A silence they'd known among each other for most of their adult lives. The rhythm of the wipers on the windshield seemed to open and close the view beyond the glass. The younger brother suggested they stop at a roadhouse bar that overlooked the mountain range. He thought the older brother might enjoy the drive's two-lane view along the way, having been confined for some time, he imagined, to the low, flat scrub of Texas and its bleached concrete expressways. His brother's move so far south, to a city like Fort Worth, still surprised him. It was a town he thought of as hopelessly lonely for such a man as his brother, even if both brothers had been lonely most of their lives. But already, with his wedding only a day away, the younger brother was beginning to feel delivered from himself.
It began to rain harder, and the mist blurred the valley and hills spread out around them. An occasional car sprayed past the opposite lane. The road was otherwise empty.
—I forgot how green everything is up here, the older brother finally said, breaking the quiet. The younger brother heard a slight drawl in his voice.
—Dallas International was a hundred-four, he continued. His accent sounded stronger now, as if his brother were putting it on a bit.
—Yeah, it's been a wet summer so far, the younger brother said. We're hoping at least it'll clear for tomorrow.
—Rainy weddings are good luck. Don't they say that?
—Yeah. Well, all the same.
They drove in the quiet for a time and then the older brother reached over and turned on the radio and they listened to other people talk and sing. Soon, the blur of a flare approached at the side of the road spraying a pink phosphorescent light low to the ground, like a star defying the rain. The younger brother thought to pass the flare. Then he saw the marks in the road. He slowed the car, pulled it into the breakdown lane and came to a stop.
The tires had left the road a few feet before where the flair had been set, the tracks disappearing down the slope, plunged into a shallow valley below. There, at the bottom of the hill the two brothers saw the car cocked sideways in the grass, its front doors opened wide. Several feet away a man sat cross-legged in the rain, slowly rocking back and forth. Several feet away from him lay outstretched another figure on the grass, a woman, one of her arms slung over her face as if trying to shield the rain from her eyes.
The brothers descended the slope, pulling at the tall grass on the way down to keep from slipping. Deeper, beyond the man and the reclining woman, the pines bent, as if in lament, beneath the drilling of the rain. The older brother shouted to the couple below, asked if everyone was all right. The man on the grass continued to rock back and forth. The woman lay there, silent and still.
As the brothers came closer, the younger brother saw the woman more clearly: She was pretty, but something was wrong about her eyes. They were open. Even with the rain falling on her face she did not blink. A pale blue laceration ran opened like a fault over her forehead. Rain had washed any blood from it. He glanced over at the car. Its front windshield looked as if all the glass had been punched out.
The younger brother asked the man what happened. The older brother stepped over to the woman laid out on the grass. She seemed to be staring up at him as if they'd known each other a very long time.
—I swerved to miss it. We hit it anyway, the man said, his voice tight. His hand gestured up the hill. He had been sobbing. His eyes set on the older brother, who now leaned down to the woman and placed his ear over her mouth.
The younger brother glanced up at the road where the man had gestured. He now saw on the slope what he hadn't noticed on the way down. A doe, its body twisted up on the hill, lying as if suspended hovering over the grass. Its neck was bent into a broken crook. It appeared to be watching them below, dead.
—How long she been here? the older brother asked.
The stranger scraped his throat and spat.
—I called the police. Up a quarter mile there's a box; there, and then the walk back. However long that was. I don't know.
The older brother pressed his hands onto the woman's chest. One two three four five....
—However long it was, the man repeated.
The older brother leaned down, pulled the woman's mouth open and began breathing into her, pinching her nostrils gently shut with his fingers. The stranger, sitting with his legs crossed, continued to rock back and forth.
—They should be here soon, he said.
*
The deer lay on the hill, her neck and back broken, but alive for one last moment. She observed the others below: the powerful shape that sought her out and threw itself into her, that demanded her death; the other creatures scattered around, animal abstractions she couldn't identify, her fractured back having denied her a sense of smell. She blinked and recalled the astringency of eucalyptus leaves running along her tongue, and the taste of the water from a brook swollen after a storm. A muscle spasm gripped her neck and her vision fell red and she recalled the birth of a fawn, the similarly extraordinary pain produced deep inside her lower back. Then she recalled the other pain, of watching her fawn grow into a life of its own until eventually it no longer needed her. For this last moment she wondered where it had gone to. Her vision darkened, and then went black, but behind it her brain saw a last image: a blaze of light coming from a morning sun.
And as the doe watched the blind sun in her brain, the man below sat cross-legged on the ground, rocking back and forth like an idiot. He knew this. He watched the two men who came down the hill. Who seemed intent on staying, on sticking around his girl. He was suspicious of them. He suspected they wanted to kill and embarrass him. They wanted, like the deer, to strip him down and break him up. They wanted to shame him in front of her. They wanted to steal his girl from him. He was very angry at her. He would hit her just now if he had had a chance. He would beat her with his hands. If they had just been given one more moment's peace. It was a thought that hadn't, until just now, ever crossed his mind—violence toward her. Not in practice. He needed to just clear out all of the noise. He wished the rain would stop. He wished the trees would stop hissing at him. He was so angry at the rain and the two other men and the doe on the hill. But mostly he directed his rage at the girl. He watched her body coax one of the men nearby to lay there beside her. He watched her body do nothing to stop this man from lowering himself onto her. And he saw their mouths. He saw the last bar fight he'd gotten into over her. The last that had happened, and the last he swore to her he'd ever get into. Her flirting, his own drinking had made him bold and masculine that night. Felt bold and then felt shame when it was over. He'd threatened to leave her, and then he threatened to kill her, but he never would have. The sight of his girlfriend under this stranger twisted the jet of his rage, the valve in his ear, in the bones of his heart and stomach. He'd never been angrier with her than just now. He saw his mother's new boyfriend standing in the doorway. He felt ten years old again. He wanted to apologize to somebody, to the world. He couldn't think clearly sitting here on the grass, rocking. He wanted to rise from the ground. He saw his mother's new boyfriend. He was ten. He watched this stranger kiss her at the door. Heard his mother laugh.
The older brother hovered above, watching himself below praying into the woman on the grass. He hovered a while, then reentered himself, rose again, hovering, then reentered himself below again. He was on top of her. He entered the woman. Then she hovered above him, that mouth, that ambivalent mouth. They traded places and he hovered above while she lay on the ground, and he descended praying, pumping his flat joined hands into her chest. One two three four five six.... The rain drilling down, her ambivalence. His fingers pinched her nose closed. His fingerprints prayed into the pores of her perfect skin, he brought his mouth down in prayer and his mouth prayed into her wet lips, his saliva, his breath—she, mostly of a piece with the rain. Still, he gave her everything, all the words and glyphs inside his head. For a moment he considered letting his tongue enter her, just to taste what something impossible tasted like. He reached down and pumped the palm of his hand gently into her chest, felt the lower crest of her brassiere beneath the cloth of her wet blouse, his wet fingers, and he recalled the first time he kissed his wife and for the first time here in the valley he feels shame. One two three four five six.... Here and now he recalled that kiss as if the kiss were all of his youth. As if this memory of the kiss fell into a sum of everything that once made him young, everything that had left. He pinched the woman's nose, held it shut. He recalled a CPR chart. He breathed into her mouth. He pressed the woman's chest, breathed again into her. He recalled the first time he prayed, when all the prayer began. He'd never admitted the habit to anyone, had never told his brother. He felt a little more shame. It began, this praying, shortly after he saw his wife for the last time. The prayer served the absence, made the absence of his wife feel rich and silent. It occupied him like a room and silenced his grief for a time. He returned to the grass and the rain. He tasted her soft mouth and felt nothing come back from her, as if the nothing were something. He felt like a failure, felt the shame. He opened his eyes and saw her open eyes. And for a moment he felt alive. And then the prayer closed around him and the prayer felt as dead as she did beneath him and the sound of the rain returned to his ears and he saw the man, presumably once hers, the man rocking back and forth on the grass, saw him rise and come toward him.
—Too late, you're too late, the man on the grass said. The light had fallen and behind him the pines had thickened into a dark smear. The older brother ignored the man coming to him. He pushed into the woman's chest with his flattened palms. He pressed his mouth onto hers. He was breathing.
The younger brother heard sirens.
—I called the police, the stranger said, as if he had forgotten he'd already said this. The older brother paused, looked up at him, then lowered his ear to the woman's mouth.
—She won't get up, the stranger said: I'm just so angry right now.
He sounded like a child. The younger brother turned away from him, tried to pretend he wasn't there. Then the younger brother saw a figure appear, a police officer, at the top of the hill beside where his car was parked. The cop began, as the two brothers had done, half-sliding along the descent, grabbing at grass. The younger brother could hear the faint exchange of static and voices dispatch from a two-way radio, punctuating the rain. The trees thundered once.
The older brother lowered his ear to the woman's mouth. She lay beneath him like a mannequin. He was pressing himself against her.
—She's dead, the stranger said. He was close now to the older brother.
—You get your mouth off her.
The older brother didn't hear him. He pressed his hands into the woman's chest. One two three four five six.... He leaned down and breathed into her mouth.
The younger brother watched the arc of the man's leg, the blonde work boot as it hit his brother in the ribs, saw his brother suddenly twist and roll off the woman onto the grass beside her. And the younger brother lunged at the man, his forehead landing against the man's chest, knocking them both down. The younger brother fell onto the outstretched arm of the dead woman on the grass. It felt like anything.
*
The brothers drove past the bar with the view of the mountains. The younger brother didn't bother to point out that this was where he'd hoped to spend a little time with his brother. They drove on, and went instead to the hotel where the older brother would spend the night. The older brother checked in, and the younger left him there after a few words in the room. They had described to the police how they saw everything by the road, the flare, and then the car, the sitting man, the woman. They left their telephone numbers and addresses with the police. One of the officers who arrived later had said someone might be in touch, though most likely not.
*
The following day the younger brother was married. The brothers hadn't discussed the previous evening, not to each other or to anyone else. After the reception, the older brother wished his brother and his new sister-in-law all the best. He invited them to visit him sometime down in Texas, knowing this would likely never happen. A car service returned him to the airport. The weather had cleared, in fact, for the wedding. Still, it saddened him to place the marriage in relief against the previous day.
When his flight landed in Dallas the older brother drove immediately to a hospital where his chest was x-rayed—his fractured ribs were wrapped with linen and tape and several thin nylon braces were set against his back. He had tried his best to hide the agony during the wedding, and probably succeeded. He was prescribed painkillers and told there wasn't much else to do but take it easy for a few weeks.
*
Naturally, the younger brother's marriage had its highs and lows. At the low moments, the younger brother's loneliness often prompted him to telephone his older brother (though he rarely actually did). These lows reminded him, with some sadness, of an old prior comfort, from when he and his brother had been young and still spent much of their time together. When they had had things to say to each other because they hadn't yet learned all that comes untethered with age.
Sometimes at night the younger brother watches the sleeping face of his wife and sees in her moonlit pallor the woman he'd watched his older brother attempt to bring back to life. It's just the light coming through the window, nothing more. But it troubles him to no end. Until years later—the marriage having worried and attenuated through moments rescued by grace of the largest and smallest gestures—the younger brother notes with relief that he can no longer see the dead woman lying there beside him. The dead woman is by then unrecognizable to his life.
Sometimes the older brother feels around his ribs where the man had kicked him that day. Though the bones had eventually been set correctly and healed in time, he senses something from the day remains. Maybe because he'd waited until he'd returned home to see a doctor: as if in that gap between placing his mouth on the woman and his return home he'd allowed something else to set. A bone slightly misshapen, undetectable but for a slight dip, a calcified ridge where the break had fused unevenly; a kind of elongate bone-scar that accompanies something still alive there, a small raw nerve, a consciousness of its own—the life of the woman, what little energy he managed to take from her—as he runs his finger along it and presses.
And so he prays with her now. They pray together, though without much faith. They hear his voice, the trance of the quietly rubbing consonants. He finds himself pressing into the bone, pulsing. And then, when all other thought has been subdued, the prayer brings him moments of peace, and in this peace he finds, if not complete obliteration, at least this small talent for silence.
© 2013 David Ryan
