My brother, Bobby

 


 

To me, my brother, Bobby, is the biggest hero in the world, no matter what other people say.

            He’s got medals to prove it.

            Not that anybody in this tick of a town would bother to even look.

            Everybody is always against him, saying he was born bad, or mean, or that he doesn’t have a kind bone in his body.

            You can catch their chatter down at Phil’s Tavern any time of day or night, telling all the old stories from when Bobby was a kid, about how he brought a gun to school in the third grade, how he threatened to kill the teacher for giving him home work.

            Some people even claim Bobby was the biggest bully in the regional high school, beating up anybody who looked at him wrong and a lot of people who didn’t.

            But that talk is full of hot hair because none of them ever saw him at home with me and momma.

            He never beat on either one of us unless he had good reason.

            And he always got us to the doctor quick if he thought he hurt us real bad.

            No bully would have done that.

            So Bobby had some good in him, despite what people claim.

            And no matter how much I tell people this stuff, they just harp on how some claim Bobby raped a girl – forgetting how quick the girl changed her story when Bobby and the police showed up to ask her about it.

            Some say Bobby scared her so much that she was afraid to repeat the charge in front of him.

            I think she was just afraid to repeat the lie.

            Bobby didn’t need to rape her. He had plenty of girls hanging on him all the time, driving around town with him and he made them all feel like they were important.

            And he didn’t hit them at all if they listened to what he said.

            Then some people like to bring up the story about how Bobby got tossed out of the army.

            They say he was just too mean even for the military.

            If so, why did the army give him all those medal?

            He could shoot better than anybody else, fight with his fists better, and use a knife better.

            I think it was that officer’s fault for trying to boss Bobby around all the time.

            And I think Bobby did the army when he punched that officer’s face in, showing what a coward the man was.

            But people at Phil’s never stop talking about the bar fight, and how Bobby killed that kid right before all their eyes.

            Bobby didn’t mean to break the kid’s neck.

            And maybe that kid would still be alive if he didn’t try to steal the girl Bobby was with.

            What else could Bobby do, him being a war hero and all?

            Was he supposed to let that kid rub mud in his face?

            Bobby’s my hero. And as soon as he gets out of prison, I’m going to tell him that.

 

 

Email to Al Sullivan

 

 

Main Menu

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Crystal clear

Image
    I clean the windows once a week, squeaky clean so I can see the whole street, as there is no glass at all, and I see every detail of every tree and house the smudges blind me to sometimes. I have no acute fascination with what goes out there or in the houses of my neighbors; I just don’t like not knowing things, half the reason I troll news websites knowing I won’t like or agree what I get yet determined to know what it is I disagree with. My neighbors think I’m nosy because they see me when I see them, and they snarl at me when I come out to collect the newspaper from my doorstep, saying untrue things perhaps to get me angry. I mostly don’t talk with them when I don’t have to, and I listen to them only when they complain about my dog being off his leach and leaving not-so-friendly calling cards on their manicured lawns. Sometimes I see too much, the domestic disputes through their unguarded windows, shades down as husband-and-wife shout things I cannot hear, kno...
Read more

Oh what a strange trip it’s been

Image
  They’re all gone. The people and the visions. Though the living room looks like Kansas after Dorothy left it. Food strewn across the carpet, revealed in the orange wedge of sunlight as I throw open the porch curtain to let in fresh air. The place smells of pot and hormones -- ashtrays overflowing with the endless parade of more ordinary cigarettes. Butts even float in the bottoms of almost empty wine bottles. I smell him, the stranger who stalked my girlfriend all night, giving us both hits of LSD as if the each tiny tablet was key for his getting between her legs. His heavy cologne stains me with the outraged I was too stoned to stop. She slumbers in the other room alone as I stand naked, bathed in sunlight. I am changed. A chemical reaction running me in a way I can’t describe, as if I was the rape victim, as if my virgin thoughts have been violated by the light show and the hallucinations, s if I am some new person craving to get back to what I once was. I’m too scared to wake...
Read more

Am I in hell?

Image
The wind blows across the Texas Panhandle like sandpaper across my face, a harsh sun making this dip south feel like a trip through hell. I think of LA and how much I miss its dismal streets and how I ache to get back to a place where rain takes a whole season to wash the world away, rather than this place which dumps it all on you at once after months of slow scalding torture. I keep thinking I’m already dead, despite the doctors’ claims – they asking me again and again if I’ve ever used a dirty needle or made love to another man. They make assumptions about me because my driver’s license says I live in LA. They ask me for a list of lovers, then shake their heads when I give them one, trying hard to make out the boy’s names from the girl’s, and wondering how on earth they will manage to contact them all, eyeing me as if they suspected me of deliberately spreading a plague. The car radio naturally stopped working in St. Louis. So I feel again in the glove compartment for the box of bat...
Read more