The preacher was saying something. My ears, stuffed by the constant, numbing sound of the rain, didn't listen. I was exhausted by all the apologies, all the gentle pats and red-rimmed eyes that tried to understand or console. There was nothing in this world that could comfort me.
My little brother was gone.
Around me, adults taller than trees sobbed into each others arms. There was no one to even hold my hand. Daniel's death had taken our father away.
He'd been ruined by the tragedy. I'd stumbled on him, stuffed with pills and soaking in his own blood. Dad would have been dead in an hour if I hadn't dialed for an ambulance.
The police had called me a hero for saving him.
I think my dad would disagree.
Turning, I put my fists into my pockets and started to walk. I wouldn't get far, no one would allow a nine-year old to wander off.
In the grey shadows and slippery air, I tried to vanish. Everything had changed for me; I'd lost everyone. With my father in a mental ward, I was being shoved an hour away to stay with my grandmother.
She was sweet, but her one milky eye held as much clarity as the other. The way she kept calling me Bill, my dad's name, made me sure that she belonged in the mental ward with him.
On the brink of the cemetery, I hovered by the grimy bust of an angel. The name on the base was faded, I didn't try to read it.
I wanted to crawl into the ground with Daniel. Living was a burden, I couldn't imagine what was left out there for me.
The tears that welled up were painful. My eyes throbbed, fighting to hold them back. With no one to see me, I crumbled to the ground and sobbed. This wasn't fair. Why had this happened?
There was an empty chunk inside of me.
Once, it had been filled with love.
Sitting there in the mud, I wished for the rain to soak through my skin until I bloated with water. Let me drown here, right here. Put me in that tiny casket instead.
I'd give my life if it would bring Daniel back.
But I didn't drown, and the clouds didn't part to drop my little brother out of the sunlight.
There were no such things as wishes.
****
I moved upstate, as far away from the rest of the world as you could get.
Tiny homes and trailers with too much space between them filled the landscape. Everything was rusted, crawling in that thick, damp kind of moss you could lie down on and sleep. Well, if it weren't for the awful spiders.
Everything about my new home screamed 'forgotten.'
It was fitting. My own personal limbo.
Gram had done very little with me since I'd come to stay with her. She'd given me a room, warned me to keep away from the construction sites, and then she'd sat in her faded chair in front of the TV and never budged. She slept there and ate there. It was her throne.
I'd never been locked away, but I'd also never had so much freedom.
I didn't know what to do with it.
I'd spent so many hours, day in and day out, playing with Daniel. Some brothers didn't get along, but not us. I'd adored him.
With his smiling face in my mind, I left the foundation-sinking house. I learned quickly that in this area, people didn't want to be bothered. I saw almost no other kids.
I wasn't attending the school here; not yet, anyway. The hope was that my father would recover and take me back to my hometown soon.
Wandering past a long stretch of gorge packed with bulldozers, I ignored Gram's instructions. She'd told me not to come here; I got it, she was worried I'd get hurt. But I wasn't about to jump into the mouth of a machine or something.
Standing on the edge of the sloped dirt, I looked down at what was happening. There were men mixed in with the whirring devices, chopping up the ground and churning towards the center of the Earth. They created deep shafts, but for what, I didn't know.
Looking to my left, I spotted the glimmer of water in the distance. Piles of sand bags and other things kept it at bay. Were they making a bridge here?
I stood and watched them work. The construction was white noise, both in sound and sight. The sun was fading when I finally left.
A stiff chill in the air forced me to knuckle my hands down into my pockets. I should have gone back to Gram's, but my legs weren't done yet.
They wanted to escape something I didn't even understand.
I'd been told before that I was smart for my age. Maybe I was. Wondering about Daniel, my father, my future and the point of everything... I would have preferred being a slobbering idiot. Then I could have gone digging in the dirt, pretending to be a bulldozer, and maybe actually been happy.
Kids shouldn't be so morbid. I did know that much.
Pushing up a hill of cracked concrete, patches of it missing, my ears picked up a sound. Climbing to the top of the battered road, I stood over the smallest, most beat up playground I'd ever seen.
And there, fitting the scene so perfectly, was a single, solitary kid.
He sat on a swing, head down and tears rolling down his chin. Other than myself, I'd never seen another boy crying. Daniel didn't count, he'd been a baby. Babies could get away with sloppy tears.