How to Be Appeased

How to be Appeased

You want to scream with your brother the lyrics of Don’t Stop Believing, or really any classic rock song on the radio station The Eagle, but instead you are sitting beside his best friend and tapping the steering wheel; possibly even thinking about your brother decomposing tightly within a coffin. You consider nudging Darren and asking if he would belt out some Journey with you, but it wouldn’t be the same. You only want to go back in time, when the car seats were less dusty and there weren’t melted Andes globs stained into the fabric.

“I tried finding your brother’s marble collection, but your parents already moved his stuff to your house,” Darren states. You don’t know whether he’s trying to fill the silence or composing a genuine sentence. “I returned to the dorm from back-to-back classes and then …” He waves his hands in the air. “Poof. All gone.”

“Yeah … well, I haven’t been in his old room yet.” Every time you’ve approached the doorframe, you’ve imagined the smell of pepperoni pizza he used to sneak in and the salty scent of body odor. To break that dream would be to admit he was dead all over again. “Do you want it or something?”

Darren turns slightly, your peripheral vision catching the knitted look of his spindly eyebrows. “I’ll continue the collection, you know. Sort of like he’s living on.” You think this request is more for Darren’s benefit, to feel less guilty.

You wonder why Darren is here, why he asked to join you. You thought that he would have been elbow-up in coding and fancy “college” work that your brother said you would never understand. You thought he was weak enough to hide behind his homework. “Why are you coming with me?” You ask, but only for the desperate attempt at a real conversation.

“Because it’s been a week, and I don’t think your brother would want you to do something stupid.” He shrugs, presses his hand against the passenger side window, leaving a smudge. But it’s the only interesting thing going on, because outside it’s just stupid wind turbines and wheat and rolling fields of nothing. “And, well, in a way you’re my family too,” Darren mumbles. He doesn’t offer any more semantics, and you’re relieved. Darren isn’t your family, he’s your brother's best friend. He’s the person who exists next to you, unaware of the anger that rolls and ebbs as quickly as the cars that fly past you.

You turn the radio on and fill the silence with AC/DC.

Darren starts playing with the car window. “I’ve got to pee.” You watch Darren grab your phone and squint at the time estimation on your GPS. “First sight of a cornfield, see if you can find an access road,” he said, settling back into his seat.

“That means we might be late.” You look for a spot to pull over anyway. Kansas reminds you of the trip you and your brother took one summer ago to a Renaissance Fair. You only went because Darren’s aunt and uncle convinced your family. Even if you hated the food, your brother loved the turkey leg the size of his forearm. Come to think about it, maybe your brother could’ve learned from the two over-stimulated jousters, wobbling back and forth on their steeds despite the blunting objects in their hands.

“Do you remember when we went to that Renaissance Fair? We doubted if we could even make the journey because roads were so flooded,” you ask. You can picture the stagnant rainwater spreading parallel to the road. With the chance of thunderstorms, that’s when your brother really wanted to turn around. But you just wanted to dance in it. “Do you think God made it rain that day on purpose?” You ask, because you didn’t hear Darren’s quip. Or maybe this was the question you wanted to ask all along.

“You’re talking about that day?” You know that both you and Darren can’t even say it was the day your brother died.

You nod.

Darren sighs. “A stupid question.” You don’t give Darren the satisfaction of your tears, and he barrels on like nothing happened. “The worst part about that trip was the stupid knightly quest we had to go on. How did your brother even get out of that?”

You attempt a smile. “He gets out of everything.” You don’t bother correcting yourself, and you hope you never will.

Suddenly, you hear a loud pop, and Darren's hands instinctively clutch the center console and door handle as you lose control of the vehicle. “BLAST!” You shout like a curse, the car bursting off the side of the road, only to decelerate as you bounce up and down through the grassy potholes.

The car halts, and the stench of burned rubber makes you want to gag. “What was that?” You ask, shaken. The few cars a way off behind you merge safely into the left lane.

“I think your tire blew?” Darren asked, opening the door and coming around to crouch by your driver’s side tire. You open your door and look at it, crossing your arms. It was already hissing, the deflated tire melting into grass.

“You have a spare?” Darren asks. He crosses his arms, a light smirk appearing.

You nod, unlocking the trunk. This is the first time you’re glad Darren is with you. And that it’s only in the middle of nowhere, Kansas. You help Darren with the tire and get the lug wrench and jack and stand behind him as he works, trying to appear inconspicuous so you don’t have to awkwardly deal with old men who stop on the side of the road, prepared to be the hero.

“How did you know I was going to his grave?” You ask Darren.

“When you told me you were going to Topeka at Chris’s funeral, I just knew.” When you hear your brother's name, it makes you wince. It still feels like someone had taken a carving knife and skewered your insides.

Darren hoists the new tire into place. “I did research too, you know, about Chris’s accident. I wanted to know who T-Boned him.” He inserts the screws, grease shining on his knuckles. He removes the jack and watches it for leaks. You kick the tire to test it and jump back into the car. You know you can’t miss that bastard’s funeral.

“Wait … I’ve still got to pee.” Darren looks around wildly, then points to a cornfield about half a mile away beside a gravel road. “Can we go down this gravel road?” You bite back a retort and nod, veering into the road and off again. Once you stop, Darren jumps out and disappears among the stalks. This gives you too much time to think. Should you be doing this? You look to your left and spot a bloated, rotted piece of corn strewn on the gravel road. And then you think of your brother, who probably laid on the highway asphalt in almost the same position, hands and legs mangled. You never got to see the police photos of the accident, but you remember your mom specifically asking for a covered casket at the viewing.

You see Darren’s mass of brown curls through the corn and watch as he saunters calmly towards you, his expression drawn. “Look what I found,” he says as he slides into the passenger seat. He shoves his hand down his jeans pocket, extracting a white marble.

“It’s filthy,” you comment as you turn the wheel 180 degrees.

“I’m going to clean it up and add it to Chris’s collection.”

“How did you even see it? Don’t tell me you spent time digging it out of the ground.” You look at his fingers. Not only are they greasy, but they’re now muddy. For a second, you think it’s a bronzer version of your brother's hands, hands that dug through clay, mud, and rock to find glass bottles in your childhood creek bed. He would always find the most intact medicine bottles, innocently holding them up and watching the light filter through.

“I knew I just had to get the marble,” Darren replied.

You give a “mm-hmm” and look down at your phone. Twenty minutes. You look at your speedometer. You press down on the gas, ease into the left line, and get into a habit of whizzing past cars. You can’t help but wonder if you would feel one with your brother if you inched too close to the right and collided with a silver Honda.

“Don’t forget you're turning right up here,” Darren says. You didn’t even realize you were approaching Topeka. You take a right at a McDonalds and drive along a strip of low-profile businesses until you see the graveyard coming into view.

“Help me look for a spot,” you command through shaky breaths. You have a hard time breathing, and you slam on the brakes when you see a parking lot in front of a crumbling church. You hear a screeching honk behind you as you turn in. You realize you forgot to turn on your blinker and because of this, you don’t bother parking straight. You flip your key to the left. The ignition turns off, and you immediately feel threatened by the absence of heat. You look at Darren. “We’re just going to pretend we’re going to go on a walk and happen upon them …”

You watch hesitantly nod, although he runs one hand through his hair and draws his legs closer to the seat. “I’m going to ask you one more time. Are you sure you want to go through with this? You’ve already said goodbye to your brother. We’ve already said goodbye.”

“It’s not enough.” You clench the steering wheel and face Darren. “Don’t you want to see that bastard in the ground too? Chris was your best friend.” You watch Darren grimace, watch his imploring eyes sag to the ground. Forget it, you’re not going to wait for him. This was your trip in the first place.

You open the door and walk around to Darren, who stands wearily, one hand still on the door. You enter the sidewalk that winds around through the maze of graves and wait under the rusted sign that reads Topeka’s Public Cemetery. You see, not far off, a simple wooden box under a polished tent.

A small crowd surrounds the casket, with their backs to you. When you walk faster, you start seeing distinctions; weeping people have their backs hunched and the put-on-a-brave-face people have their backs as stiff as dried-out playdough. You can’t help but draw comparisons; during your brother's funeral last week, you were a playdough person amidst the sea of hunchbacks.

“We should stop here,” Darren whispers and stops abruptly. He puts one hand on your shoulder, signaling you to stand down. You’re close enough to hear the preacher’s words, but far enough that nobody notices and turns around.

“His wife now wishes to say a few words,” the preacher said. You are surprised to hear that your brother's murderer had a wife. You look at Darren’s face, watching for some sort of surprise. You are certainly surprised. You only notice his tight fists and the slight working of the marble within those closed hands, so you look back at the funeral procession.

The wife drags a little girl in white stockings, black clogs, and a frilly black dress with her to the front. The little girl leans back on her mom’s legs, arching her back and staring at the ground. She doesn’t even look up when the wind blasts through, moving her dirty-blond hair from one side to the other.

That monster has a wife? An innocent child? You are too stumped to curse the drunk bastard who flattened the front of your brother’s old pickup.

You are staring at the little girl when you notice a slight shift from one of the weepers, allowing a perfect gap to appear. That’s when the little girl looks up and spies the gap. You don’t know what to do, so you hold her gaze. She can’t recognize you, you know that, but you feel guilty for being present, for watching. The little girl’s eyes are reflections of honest sorrow, of grief without revenge, of everything you are not. She then looks down at the freshly churned earth. Her upper lip trembles and her mouth quivers. She is crying, silently, crying for the bastard in the ground although she doesn’t know him by that name.

God, I’m an awful human being. You feel Darren lean into your shoulder, hard. His palm is outstretched, the crusty white marble in the middle. “It’s yours,” he whispers. You take it and squeeze it until you can feel it indenting your own palm, too.

You didn't want to come to the father’s grave and start crying, but for some reason, you become one of the weepers, one of the hunch-backs.