Chapter 1

 

    I always wanted to be someone else, be somewhere else.

    My hometown of New Hope, Texas was small, even by small-town standards. There were less than a thousand residents living there at any given time. A slow trickle of new arrivals; the ones unlucky enough to be born there; and the old folks who died as they lived, poor and wanting. No one knew exactly how the town came to be. No one living anyway. A birth come to term in secret, so forgettable and unimportant that it didn’t deserve a history. If asked, most people would shake their heads and say, the town just sprung up overnight. Appeared, out of nowhere, like something you stumble into or step on in the dark.

 

    As unremarkable as it began, the town only got worse over the years. Needier, demanding constant care to keep it from being wiped from the face of the earth or swallowed whole. Gone, like it never existed. New Hope had earned its nickname, No Hope, with empty pockets and shallow city coffers, getting by any way it could, on thoughts and prayers.

Everyone was friendly enough. Always said good morning or waved at passers-by. Constant, predictable, and too poor to afford modern comforts and conveniences like air conditioning or washers and dryers. Not when an open window, a wash basin, and a clothesline could do the same. So set in their ways, and distrustful of the outside world, that they preferred being disconnected, and remote, rather than endure the contaminated looks and uppity, pinched noses of folks who thought they were better off. Called us Dirts. The lowest rung of poor. Didn’t matter. All we needed was our love of God and each other.

 

    During the languid summer months, most Hopeans spent their days outdoors. Ladies sipped lemonade or iced tea, fanning themselves on front porches, mopping the sweat from their necks and underarms with wet wipes or moist hankies. The men, regardless of their physique, reclined bare-chested on lawn chairs, chugging canned beer from coolers, moving slow or not at all, conserving whatever energy they could, like lizards sunning themselves on rocks.

    Kids mostly escaped the heat at a quarry-sized sinkhole we called the Pit. Fed by a system of storm drains and culverts, the Pit was a dumping ground for any old cast-off thing, dragged there by torrents of run-off from the heavy thundershowers that swept through the lowlands every spring. Abandoned furniture, shopping carts, bicycles, refrigerators, and even old Christmas trees all littered the waist-deep slough, making it the perfect place for a child’s imagination to run wild. Some days, I’d pretend to be stranded on an uncharted island, searching for the shipwrecked remains of anything I could build into a raft to escape my island prison. Other times, I’d play soldier, storming the beachhead at Normandy, just how I imagined my grandfather had, dodging machine gun fire, low crawling through barbed wire, to blow some enemy bunker. I often went there with my older brother Gunner, who had other interests. Less adventurous or heroic, but no less…creative. He liked to capture bullfrogs and toss them straight up in the air, watching them spin like pizza dough, arms and legs akimbo. Only he didn’t catch them on the way down. He let them spalt on the rocky bank, leaving their flattened carcasses to bake in the hot sun until their leathery hides could be peeled off, taken home, and nailed along our backyard fence. I often wondered who Gunner might’ve grown up to be, had he lived. A famous artist, butcher, or serial killer, perhaps.

    As far as brothers go, Gunner was likable enough. As sons go, he was more than my father could’ve hoped for. Popular, handsome, athletic. Good at lifting, kicking, and throwing things­—like my father when he was young. Surrounded by girls who wanted to be near him and boys who wanted to be him. My father had plans for Gunner. Dreams of him playing college ball, maybe even going pro—a horse that could go the distance, as he used to say. Not the fragile, awkward disappointment that I was.

    During the hottest parts of the day, I’d nap on a warm concrete slab in the middle of the quarry while Gunner collected minnows in a mason jar to sell at the bait shop. I’d seen my share of snakes in the Pit—Copperheads, Cottonmouths, and Rattlers mostly—always unexpected, peripheral. But on that day, my last time in the Pit, a sprinkle of raindrops woke me from my nap only to find that the largest Water Moccasin I’d ever come across was stretched out, only inches away. I froze, watching its body expand and contract as it breathed, wondering how long it had been lying there. It seemed to be asleep, but like me, had been stirred awake by the sound of an approaching storm.  I took my time, eased away to a safe distance, then stood up and screamed at the snake for scaring me.

     "What the fuck is wrong with you,” I yelled, stomping my feet hard enough to vibrate the slab. The snake yawned, flashing me its fangs, and I ran, tripping on some exposed rebar and falling face-first in the shallows. I felt a dull thud against my scalp followed by a deep numbness, then searing pain. Stood up and saw Gunner on the bank laughing hysterically. He could be a real dick sometimes.

    “What’s so funny?” I yelled.

    “Your head,” he said, finally catching his breath.

I felt a warm sting of blood flow from my forehead and soak my right eye. A dizziness I couldn’t control took hold, and I blacked out. When I came to, I was on the shore, my head wrapped in Gunner’s t-shirt, soaked from head to toe with rainwater that was coming down in sheets. He’d carried me there, dressed my wound, and was on his way back to the slab to retrieve my shoes. That’s when the wave from a flash flood hit.

    There are few moments in real life that happen just like they do in the movies. Gunner’s death was one of them. We both heard the roar, then everything slowed except the rushing water. I had time enough to think, get inside the refrigerator, dummy, but not enough to yell it out loud. Gunner smiled at me one last time, and like someone yelled action, he was gone. 

The search lasted days. On foot, along the creek bed that emptied the quarry into White Rock Lake. Miles of it. Then by boat. A fleet of outboards, rafts, and canoes, all searching for Gunner.

    It was a fisherman who found what remained of Gunner, hung up in a cluster of rocks along the marshy shore. No pictures were taken. Too gruesome for print, they said, and no headlines. Just a back-page obit, my father clipped out of The Roundup, that I found years later, stashed at the bottom of an old steamer trunk filled with forget-me-nots ¾ a carousel of angles that hung above Gunner’s crib when he was a baby and played “Jesus loves me, yes I know”; the talking stuffed giraffe that taught him A is for Apple; some dusty championship trophies and a game-winning basketball, signed by his entire team, that had since lost its bounce. All untouched since his death.

    The usual obit fluff for a child so young. Remembrances and condolences from friends and neighbors, and a quote from my father that started, “Our hearts are…Continued on page 9.” The rest was missing. The dry, brittle newsprint, lost to time, crumbled away and turned to dust. I’ve spent a good portion of my life trying to finish that sentence, fill in the blanks, and complete my brother’s story. But the way I heard it, Gunner’s body had turned ash grey, bloated, almost translucent, and wedged into the child’s seat of an abandoned shopping cart as if he were being wheeled around at the grocery store. A string of Christmas lights was wrapped around his neck, and most of his toes were nibbled down to the bone by greedy crawdads. 

    It was probably bullshit, but the story stuck. Got more horrifying with each telling. Parents trying to keep their kids out of harm’s way told bedtime stories about Gunner. Boys, getting high around campfires, trying to get girls scared enough to sleep with them, told tall tales of child-sized footprints found in the woods with the toes missing and blinking colored lights that wandered through the trees at night. Made for a pretty screwed-up ghost story, but every small town has one.