This Thing Called Courage by J G Hayes

Author:J G Hayes [Hayes, J G]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 156023380X
Published: 2020-03-05T13:00:00+00:00

And then somebody mentioned doing the other thing. Climbing to the top of the Edison Smokestack.

Little Will didn’t want to, which I thought was weird, he was the smallest and almost always trying to keep up with the rest of us. Not that he said anything. C’mon—you know him, Kev, he’d die before he’d say anything. But he got real quiet, started drinking faster. And you remember what a mournful drunk Little Will was. The twins though—they were psyched, all muscle and bone and blood—Kev, there’s a thing in life that’s tender and healing, and it finds delight in all things that grow. (Here’s a for instance—when the oak leaves push out in May, and they’re the softest green you’ve ever seen, the squirrels have a ceremony—they told me so—and delight and wonder and gratitude shine in their mirror eyes.) But Kev there’s something else that snarls and eats and tears and rips—and whatever that something is, it flowed through the twins like … blood. Sniffing this kind of thing out, they lived for it really. The way I live for the rain now. The rain versus this other thing—it’s the eternal struggle. I should know, Kev, I’m right in the middle of it.

We decided we needed spray paint—not that people wouldn’t’ve believed us, that wasn’t it—the thing was, you take the trouble to do something like this, you got to leave your mark. For the whole world to see. “JUST US,” that was what we wrote all the time growing up when the five of us did something. We’d spray paint JUST US.

“We’ll meet you over there,” I told the other three, me and you, Kev, were going to your father’s garage to nab some spray paint. He’d died three years before and your mother hadn’t had the heart to clean it out, your Da’s garage. Neatest garage in Southie, all kinds of tools and gadgets and wood and shit—like a suburban garage, a Mr. Dennis the Menace garage, all those tools and very little to do with them. Your father. Remember when he died? He’d never said an out-of-place word in his life—then the week before he died he spewed nothing but nonsense. Must have been the medication.

I went with you the last time you saw him alive, the day before he died. Remember? Three years ago. You said I was your brother when the big fat black nurse said Family Only. I felt good about that, Kev, although I felt a little guilty feeling good when your father was dying. Man, what a sight he was. All those tubes sticking up his nose and in his arms, and his eyes big and buggy, like he was a specimen the hospital had captured and they’d pinned him under bright fluorescent lights for the curious to gawk at.

I wanted to hold your hand then, Kev, entering this Cold Zone. I could tell you were close to crying. I guess you know that now, that I wanted to hold your hand.

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