“Because it’s what we must do.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I don’t have a choice.”
“Why?” I asked.
That was the day I learned even my father could cry.
IT WENT LIKE THIS:
“Gordo?”
He looked at me. He wasn’t like he was before. He didn’t talk. He didn’t smile. I stuck my tongue out at him because it always made him laugh.
He didn’t.
He said, “You can’t forget me.”
I said, “Forget?”
He said, “You can’t.”
I didn’t understand.
IT WENT LIKE THIS:
I was watching through the window.
Uncle Mark and Gordo were on the porch.
“Please,” Mark said.
“Fuck you,” Gordo said.
“I don’t want this.”
“Yet here you are.”
“I’ll come back for you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
That was the day I learned I could taste what I smelled.
It was like the entire forest was on fire.
IT WENT LIKE THIS:
There were skips and jumps. Holes in memory, the edges frayed and ragged. I was two and three and then I was six, six, six, and Kelly said, “Carter!”
We were sitting in the grass in front of a house. There was a lake behind us. Mom said we couldn’t go to the lake without her because we could drown. She was on the porch, her hand on her stomach. Mom and Dad told me there was another baby in there. I didn’t know why. They already had me and Kelly.
Mark was gone, hiding in the woods. He was always in the woods. Dad said he was brooding. Mom said they made Mark that way. My father never said he was brooding again after that.
I didn’t know what brooding meant, but it didn’t sound good.
“Carter,” Kelly said again, and I looked up at him.