MY BROTHER


My brother sits in a barber chair
with Grandmother's hawk of a nose,
his eye as sharp as an eagle's.
"Vacant," my sister says.

His wild cockscomb of hair
is shorn gently
in wisps by the long-hair barber
wearing jeans
and compassion.

Con, my brother, is heavy
and whiskery.
I personally know his pants are pooped-in,
for all day they kept falling down --
he's too fat and flat rumped
to have a place to tie them tight enough
to stay --
and I had pulled them up often enough
to reveal their secret late in the day.

"Let them take care of it,"
my sister says of the pleasant
proprietors of his home
to which we will return him
after his hair cut.
Certain things it is better not to know.

We've had fun today,
the first day of fun,
it seems to me,
with my brother and sister,
since we were toe-heads
(meaning bright and beautiful and blond)
maybe 60 years ago
at 4, 5 and 6

returning, say, from an excursion to Moss
Hill,
with Bootsy, the cat
and Tinkerbell, my stuffed grey kitten
(who I later lost in a stream).
Today we are returning from Cedarholme Hill,
where we scattered the remaining ashes
of my other Grandmother's
eldest son -- our father --
on her grave,

with a few flakes for his father,
lying next to his daughter:
Lars Morton,
Mary Blanche Morton,
and now,
Phillip Morton Smith

in the high wind
and the rain,
the ashes blew,
my brother dumped a few from
the uncap jar,
He was first because he was the eldest,
my sister said,
then she dumped more of the jar:
a great white swath like a
necklace around Mary Blanche's
headstone,
and the wind roared and the rain rained
and there was nothing but an empty
jar when it got to me.

"That's all right," I said
and leaned over to even out the
lie of the necklace. Then
thinking we'd been a little chary
to share none of Phillip
with his grandfather,
who was, as we all new,
not much of a father or a grandfather,

I hustled a few fragments
against the wind toward Lars' engraved stone,
sharing Phillip just a little with him.
It wasn't easy.

Who I wonder, later in the barber shop, had had the grave plates made of
metal to identify the stones?
Probably Florence, Father's only sister,
surely none of his other four brothers,
three of whom were dead,
two just this year,
before him.
The only sister and the youngest brother
were the only ones left now
from the six kids of whom
my father said when Mary Blanche died:
"She raised six kids."

And he would repeat it from time to time,
almost as a benediction,
as if other women might scale mountains,
discover stars,
tease out the knowledge of germs,
but Mary Blanche had raised six kids.

In poverty.
With a raging husband.
With no hope of advancement
in a world where
her eight brothers and sisters,
like she, were born in a
sod house
in
Nebraska
where her mother died
when she was young,
and Lars,
the Father farmed out the kids,
gave them away
as people did in those days,
unable to cope.
Left them.
Came west.
To Stanwood.

Where the children followed one by one.
To the rain and the wind and the meager life
on or around Cedarholme Hill.

But we did better,
We toeheads had fun as children,
loved each other,
formed our own little clique,
didn't know that Con was strange
-- even then.

Remembered, but didn't know if I had seen or been told:
about his sitting alone in the back seat of the car on the way
home from the carnival
holding two cones of spun sugar
watching them melt to nothing,
not saying a word.
And when we looked there were only
the two white cones braced upon his knees.

And he unsmiling,
blond,
his eyes no doubt also sharp or vacant then,
most likely aware the sugar was gone.

I watched the wisps of hair fall to the floor
and wondered there and then
if in those eyes sharp or vacant
if he had forseen at
66
that only his two sisters would be left,
and that we would giggle in the wind and rain
after sprinkling the ashes,
and run for the car.
But he couldn't run (so we slowed down) his cane was small and he
was big,
huge, but not so huge as he once was,
before he had -- his 300 pound body had -- a
stroke in the grocery store,
and he began to meow,

in the middle of sentences.
Years later, he now said almost nothing but
"Yep" and "Nope"

Had he ever thought he would sit
being shorn
before being returned to
his "home"
-- that little toe-headed kid with the cones?

Certain things it may be better not to know.

At the home the tv said and showed a hurricane
drowning the coast of Mexico,
Acapulco,
Porta Vallerta,
the tourists were soaked
and their legs wet up to their knees
sloshing around in the wind and the rain

terrified, no doubt.
While we had sat tidy and warm, in the friendly
barber shop with a feeling of
fun inspite of soiled pants
and a sprinkling of father.except eat a hamburger,
which we all did
with lots of catsup on our fries,
and buy him a case of 7-up,

O he had money enough now
with father gone,
for all the 7-up he wanted
and both he and me
and probably sister Sue
seemed to want less and less,

"Very little sugar, thank you,
just the cones,"
in a warm car

going
some place.
By Jan Haag