family? I came into the world the child of two Geritol-chuggers, not to go on and on
about it, and my only brother was playing league baseball in the big kids’ park before I even got out of diapers. In the case of my mom and dad, one gift from God had been
enough. I won’t say they treated me badly, and they sure never beat me, but I was a
hell of a big surprise and I guess when you get into your forties you’re not as partial to surprises as you were in your twenties. After I was born, Mom got that operation her
hen-party friends referred to as ‘the Band-Aid’. I guess she wanted to make a hundred
per cent sure that there wouldn’t be any more gifts from God. When I got to college I
found out I’d beaten long odds just by not being born retarded… although I think my
dad had his doubts when he saw my friend Vern taking ten minutes to puzzle out the
dialogue in Beetle Bailey. This business about being ignored: I could never really pin it down until I did a book report in high school on this novel called Invisible Man.
When I agreed to do the book for Miss Hardy I thought it was going to be the science
fiction story about the guy in bandages and Foster Grants–Claude Rains played him
in the movies. When I found out this was a different story I tried to give the book
back but Miss Hardy wouldn’t let me off the hook. I ended up being real glad. This
Invisible Man is about a Negro. Nobody ever notices him at all unless he fucks up.
People look right through him. When he talks, nobody answers. He’s like a black
ghost. Once I got into it, I ate that book up like it was a John D MacDonald, because
that cat Ralph Ellison was writing about me. At the supper table it was Denny how
many did you strike out and Denny who asked you to the Sadie Hopkins dance and
Denny I want to talk to you man to man about that car we were looking at. I’d say,
‘Pass the butter’, and Dad would say, Denny, are you sure the army is what you want?
I’d say, ‘Pass the butter someone, okay?’ and Mom would ask Denny if he wanted her
to pick him up one of the Pendleton shirts on sale downtown, and I’d end up getting
the butter myself. One night when I was nine, just to see what would happen, I said,
‘Please pass those goddam spuds.’ And my Mom said, Denny, Auntie Grace called
today and she asked after you and Gordon.
The night Dennis graduated with honours from Castle Rock High School I
played sick and stayed home. I got Stevie Darabont’s oldest brother Royce to buy me
a bottle of Wild Irish Rose and I drank half of it and puked in my bed in the middle of
the night. In a family situation like that, you’re supposed to either hate the older brother or idolize him hopelessly–at least that’s what they teach you in college
psychology. Bullshit, right? But so far as I can tell, I didn’t feel either way about
Dennis. We rarely argued and never had a fist-fight. That would have been ridiculous.
Can you see a fourteen-year-old boy finding something to beat up his four-year-old
brother about? And our folks were always a little too impressed with him to burden
him with the care of his kid brother, so he never resented me the way some older kids
come to resent their sibs. When Denny took me with him somewhere, it was of his
own free will, and those were some of the happiest times I can remember.
‘Hey Lachance, who the fuck is that?’
‘My kid brother and you better watch your mouth, Davis. He’ll beat the crap
out of you. Gordie’s tough.’
They gather around me for a moment, huge, impossibly tall, just a moment of
interest like a patch of sun. They are so big, they are so old.
‘Hey kid! This wet end really your big brother?’