Three Weeks With My Brother

  Because my sister was the youngest, she tended to stay inside with my mom while my brother and I gradually began to discover the outside world. My parents seemed to believe--rather naively, I now think--that we'd be safe together no matter how dangerous the streets were, and allowed us to freely explore the neighborhood on our own before I reached the age of five. Our only requirement was to be home in time for dinner. Neither my mother nor father ever bothered setting limits on how far we could travel, as long as we upheld our end of the bargain, and we took this freedom to extremes. Wherever my brother went, I'd tag along behind him with a rapidly growing sense of hero worship. We'd spend our afternoons exploring run-down apartments, or visit with our adult female neighbors as they stood along the boulevard soliciting customers. We could endlessly watch teenagers doing car repairs in the parking lot, and sometimes sat on the steps with various gangs as they drank beer and made out with their girlfriends. It was great fun--there was always something to see and do--and even when occasional gunshots sounded in the distance, I don't remember Micah or I ever being overly frightened by them.

  For whatever reason, we were safe there. I suppose it's because everyone, even gang members, knew that not only weren't we a threat, we were probably poorer than they were. We were desperately poor. As kids, we were raised on powdered milk, potatoes, and oatmeal--I didn't know milk came in liquid form until I headed off to school. We never went out to eat, visited museums, went to a ball game or even a movie. The car my dad had purchased to get to work and the university had cost less than a hundred dollars. Once we started school, we'd get one pair of shoes and one pair of pants a year; if they ripped, my mother would iron on patches and keep ironing more on until our jeans looked as if they'd been originally designed with knee pads. Our few toys--primarily Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs, and the aforementioned Johnny West figures--had all been Christmas or birthday gifts; we gave up asking for anything we saw when we went to the store with my mom.

  It's only now that I realize that we were probably living well below the poverty line. We certainly didn't know it at the time, nor, to be honest, did we care. And my mom wouldn't have put up with our complaints, even if we did. My mom was a big believer in toughness. She hated whining, she hated moping, she hated excuses, and she was intent on eradicating these traits in her children. If we ever said something along the lines of, "But I want it," her response was always the same. She'd shrug and reply evenly, "Tough toenails, tiger. What you want and what you get are usually two entirely different things."

  Her views on "toughness" would make most contemporary parents shudder. When Micah started school, for instance, school busing was being used to force greater integration of the inner-city schools. As a result, the school down the street wasn't open to him; instead, he had to walk nearly a mile to the bus stop--along busy avenues, through rough neighborhoods, with a shortcut through a junkyard. On the first day of kindergarten, she walked with him to the bus stop; the day after that, he walked by himself. Within a week, he told my mom that some older girls, seventh grade or thereabouts, but huge to a kindergartener, had cornered him in the junkyard and taken his milk money. Then they threatened him; they said that if he didn't bring them a nickel every day, they were going to hurt him.

  "They said they're going to beat me up bad," Micah cried.

  There are a number of ways a parent could handle such a situation. My mom could have started walking him to school regularly, for instance, or walked with him one day, confronted the girls, and threatened to call the police if another incident occurred. Perhaps my mom could have found out who their parents were and talked to them, or found someone to carpool with. Maybe she could have even talked to someone at the school.

  Not my mom. Instead, after Micah told his story, she rose from the table and left the room for a few minutes. When she returned, she was carrying an old Roy Rogers lunchbox; rusty and dented, it had been her younger brother's years before. "We'll put your lunch in this tomorrow, instead of a brown bag," she said, "and if they try to take your money, just wind up and hit 'em with it. Like this . . ."

  Cocking her arm like a lion tamer, she began swinging the lunchbox in wide arcs, demonstrating while my brother sat at the table watching.

  The next day, my six-year-old brother marched off to school with his hand-me-down lunchbox. And just as they'd threatened, the girls surrounded him when he wouldn't give them his nickel. When the first one charged, he did exactly as my mom had told him.

  In our bedroom that night, Micah related to me what happened.

  "I swung with everything I had," he said.

  "Weren't you scared?"

  With his lips pressed together, he nodded. "But I kept swinging and hitting them until they ran away crying."

  The girls, I might add, never bothered him again.

  In 1971, we moved again, this time to Playa del Rey--another section of Los Angeles. For obvious reasons (the nightly gunshots began sounding awfully close) our parents believed it was safer for us than Inglewood.

  I'd started kindergarten by then, but given the year separating us and the fact that Los Angeles continued to bus my brother, Micah and I found ourselves in different schools. While the students in my class resembled students that might be found in an Iowa suburb, Micah was bused to one of the schools in the inner city, and was the only white child in his class.

  Still, in the afternoons, we were together, and we spent our time as we had in Inglewood, a couple of little kids with no fear of the world. We'd leave our apartment complex and spend hours going anywhere we wanted--we'd walk a couple miles down to the marina where we'd look at the boats docked in their slips or climb up the underside of highway bridges or utility poles looking for bird eggs, or explore vacant, decaying, or burned-out homes in search of something interesting that might have been left behind. Other times, we'd head behind our apartment complex, cross a few avenues, and hop a few fences to visit the high school. In the late afternoons, it was usually empty, and we used to love the wide-open fields, which were much larger than the ones at our elementary schools. We'd race or hide, or simply walk the hallways, looking into the classrooms. One day, we spotted a raven in the trees, and were instantly captivated. We began following it as it moved from tree to tree. After that, whenever we went to the school, we'd look for the raven, and suprisingly, we'd almost always find it. After calling to it for a while, we'd head off to do something else. Yet, soon enough, we'd see the raven again, in one of the trees near where we were playing. Pretty soon, we weren't able to go anywhere near the school without seeing the raven. It was always around. The raven, we soon realized, was following us.

  We began to feed it. We'd toss some bread on the ground; the raven would swoop down and eat it, then fly away. Gradually, it stayed long enough for us to approach. From there, we moved to feeding it plums, and the raven grew more comfortable with us. We got to the point where we could hold the plum outstretched on the ground and the raven wouldn't hesitate to fly close and begin to eat. It struck us that it was becoming something of a pet, and we began to refer to it that way. Borrowing the camera from mom, we were even able to take up-close pictures of it, and we proudly showed them off when the photos were developed. We named the raven Blackie. Blackie was great. Blackie was cool. Blackie, we eventually discovered, was a monster.

  As interested as we were in the bird, we found out that the bird had become far more interested in us. Particularly our hair. Because we were blond, our hair gleamed in the sunlight, and ravens, we came to discover, love shiny things. Ravens also build nests. Put one together with the other, and you can imagine what happened next.

  We were at the school one afternoon when Blackie suddenly came swooping toward us, diving at our heads over and over, like a fighter plane attacking a ship. It was cawing at us, and we scrambled away. Blackie followed. His wingspan seemed to have grown exponentially overnight--and soon we were running and screaming for our lives as Blackie buzzed over our heads. We hid for a while near some Dumpsters
, trying to figure out how to get back home, and finally ventured out again. With the coast clear, we took off running.

  Keeping up with Micah was impossible, and gradually I slowed. In that instant, Blackie swooped down and landed on my head, which was quite simply the most terrifying thing ever to happen to me in my young life. I panicked, unable to breathe, unable to move a muscle. I could feel Blackie's claws digging into my head, and--as if to amplify the horror--Blackie began to peck hard, its head bobbing up and down like the oil pumps in Oklahoma. I screamed. Blackie pecked harder. And that's how it went. Peck, scream. Peck, scream. Peck, scream. Peck, scream. It felt as if the raven was doing his best to drill a hole into my skull in order to suck my brains out.

  I vaguely remember my brother receding into the distance--he was oblivious to Blackie's return--until the first scream. Wheeling around, Micah ran back toward me, shouting at me to push the bird off. My mind, however, was blank, and I was frozen. All I could do was stand there while Blackie killed me, one peck at a time.

  Micah, of course, knew what to do. Screaming and waving his hands wildly, he was able to dislodge the evil demon bird from my scalp. Then, as Blackie continued to swoop at us, Micah took off his shirt and waved it around like a flag. Finally, Blackie retreated to the safety of the trees.

  On our way home, I was embarrassed by how frightened I'd been. Micah hadn't been frightened. Micah had taken on Blackie while I'd panicked. Micah fought while I froze. I came to believe that Micah, unlike me, could do anything. And as I struggled to keep up with him, I wanted more than anything to be just like him.

  CHAPTER 3

  After confirming and reserving our places on the trip around the world, Micah and I began to make the necessary preparations. Among other things, we needed to obtain a number of vaccinations, including yellow fever and Hepatitis A and B, as well as send off our passports for the visas for India, Ethiopia, and Cambodia.

  As spring turned to summer, my brother and I talked about the trip frequently, but strangely, the more we talked, the more our responses to the upcoming adventure diverged. While Micah grew more excited about the places we would see, I grew anxious at the thought of leaving; when he called wanting to talk about the trip, I found myself avoiding the subject.

  Call it buyer's remorse, but I gradually began to feel as if the decision to go had been a mistake. As exciting as the idea was, as much as I wanted to visit all those places, I couldn't imagine taking weeks to do it. Between work and family, time was the one thing that I hadn't had enough of in what seemed like ages. If my home life was chaotic, my career was even busier, and the thought of traveling for pleasure not only increased my anxiety, but left me feeling guilt-ridden. If I had a month to spare, shouldn't I spend the time with the kids? Or with my wife? If I barely had time to do everything now, how on earth could I even think of taking a month off to travel for fun?

  Everything about the trip felt wrong. But then, if you knew where I was in 2002, you would understand why.

  I like to think of life in terms of a stream, rapids, and waterfall. There are periods in everyone's life when things just seem to float along. You're in your canoe, paddling leisurely, enjoying the view. One day flows into the next, everything gets done, and somehow there's still time to relax. Then, ever so slowly, the stream starts to move faster; it's still possible to manage everything, but it takes a little more effort. Next come the rapids, and all of a sudden, everything is more challenging. Maybe there's a new project at work, maybe someone in the family gets sick, maybe you move or get laid off. Whatever the reason, you spend those periods steering the canoe, struggling to stay afloat. You wake up in the mornings feeling you're already behind, and each day becomes a frantic race against the clock in order to get everything done. And then the rapids begin to roil even faster, and you go right along with them. You "have to," you "need to," you "have no other choice." You go, go, go. And in the distance, you hear the roar of the waterfall, and you convince yourself that your only option is to paddle even harder. You've got to steer through those rapids and somehow get to safety. Otherwise, the waterfall's going to take you.

  That's where I was throughout 2002: in the middle of the rapids, steering frantically, with the waterfall growing louder. Mentally. Physically. Emotionally. And I'd been there for the previous three years.

  I'm not proud of this. It's not a sign of success. It's a life without any sort of balance, and in the long run the waterfall will eventually take you. I know that now. The problem was that I didn't know that then.

  My wife, however, understood this. Cat is one of those rare people who find it easy to keep everything in perspective. She's not only an attentive mother, but has dozens of friends she talks to regularly. She is close to her family, and yet, as busy as she was (five children, with three under two, will keep any mom busy), she spent her days with none of the frantic urgency that I couldn't seem to escape. She, more than anyone, knew I needed an escape; she also knew that my natural inclination was to deny that I needed one and to suddenly think of an excuse not to go on the trip. Or worse, refuse to enjoy it and relax, even if I did.

  Lying in bed one night, she asked me about the trip and I mumbled again that I was having second thoughts.

  She rolled over and faced me.

  "You'll have fun," she urged. "And you need to go. You've never done something like this."

  "I know. But it's not really a good time."

  "It'll never be a good time to go. You'll always be busy. It's part of your nature."

  "No it isn't."

  "Of course it is. In fact, you never let yourself not be busy."

  "Just for the last couple of years."

  Cathy shook her head. "No, sweetheart. You've been busy since I've known you. You can't not be busy."

  "Really?"

  "Really."

  I thought about that. "For the next couple of years, I'll be really busy. But after that, it'll slow down. In a couple of years, I'm sure I'll have time for something like this."

  "You said the same thing a couple of years ago."

  "Did I?"

  "Yes."

  I paused. "I guess I was wrong then. But I'm sure I'm right this time."

  Beside me, I heard my wife sigh.

  Despite her words, my feelings of anxiety about the trip only grew stronger as autumn approached. My brother, like my wife, sensed my ambivalence on the phone, and began to call more frequently, doing his best to bolster my interest.

  "Hey Nicky," Micah said into the receiver. "Did you get the package TCS sent us?"

  TCS was the company in charge of the tour. I was at my desk in the office working on my new novel, The Guardian; stacked in the corner were two large boxes, still sealed, that had remained untouched for two weeks.

  "Yeah, I got 'em, but I haven't opened them yet."

  "Why not?"

  "I haven't had the time."

  "Well open them," he said. "They sent us a bunch of cool stuff. They sent us a jacket, backpack, and suitcase--and other gizmos, too. There's also an itinerary . . ."

  "I'll get to it this weekend."

  "You should open it now," he insisted. "In fact, I think you were supposed to send in one of the health forms already. And, you're supposed to make a decision about which site you want to see in Guatemala. It's either the ruins or the market downtown. You have to send that by the end of the week."

  I closed my eyes, fretting that something else had just been added to my plate.

  "Okay," I said. "I'll get to it tonight if I get the chance."

  There was a long pause on the other end.

  "What's wrong with you?" he asked.

  "Nothing," I answered.

  "You don't sound like you're too excited about this."

  "I will be. When it's time to go, I mean. Right now, I've got so much work that I haven't had time to think about it much. I'll get more excited the closer we get. Right now, I'm swamped."

  He took a deep breath. "You're making a mistake," he said. r />
  "What do you mean?"

  "Haven't you learned yet?" he asked. "The anticipation is an essential part of this whole trip. The excitement of going, the places we'll see, the people we'll meet. That's part of the joy of this whole thing."

  "I know. But--"

  He cut me off.

  "You're not listening to me, little brother. Never forget that anticipation is an important part of life. Work's important, family's important, but without excitement, you have nothing. You're cheating yourself if you refuse to enjoy what's coming."

  I closed my eyes, knowing he was right, but still lost in all that I had to do. "It's just that right now, I've got different priorities."

  "That's part of your problem," he said, his voice steady. "You've always had different priorities."

  Whereas suspension came to be a regular aspect of Micah's early school life, I found that I loved school. Everything about my first year was easy--my teacher was sweet, the kids were nice, and nothing we learned seemed difficult. Still, because he was a year older, Micah was nonetheless more advanced in most subjects than I. Or, so I assumed.

  Our parents had us join the Cub Scouts, and one of our projects was to carve a wooden rocket, powered by a CO2 cartridge and held in place by a wire, which we later raced against other rockets made by other Cub Scouts. Micah and I walked the couple of miles to the recreation hall alone, both of us nervous about how we would do. My rocket lost in the first round. Micah's won, however, and continued to win. In the end, Micah's rocket ended up placing second overall, and I was both proud of him and jealous at the same time. It was the first time I'd ever experienced the feeling of jealousy toward my brother, and the feeling only grew stronger when he received a red ribbon amidst applause. He could not only do everything, I realized, but do everything better than I. Meanwhile, the ribbon I received--which was given to everyone who, like me, hadn't placed, soon made me feel even worse. I was just learning letters and sounds--I could read small words, but longer words were often incomprehensible. I had no idea what the ribbon said; all I knew was that it was given to people who didn't do well.