“Downright dastardly!”
Rob says this after putting five dollars in the jukebox looping “Yellow Submarine.” He slams fifty onto the bar, buys Coladas for everyone and Cuba Libres for us, the most mismatched brothers in the world.
Again the bartender says to settle down. Rob tips him twenty, calls it bullion. Tonight everything is pirate themed because of Rob’s eye patch, one monster black eye, purplish and raw. I don't ask.
This is days before Christmas, hours before he checks into County. I don't know this, not yet, just that earlier that evening was the family dinner, and Rob wasn't invited. He's forgotten loans, wrecked cars, failed rehabs––but Thanksgiving was the final straw. Dad circled the house with outstretched phone, my brother's disembodied voice calling our nephews. Like hens, our sisters gathered their boys.
“Aint right,” he says, “using the kids against me.”
“They’re not.”
His accent briefly gone: “Don't guilt me.”
I say nothing. Rob winks with his good eye, tells more jokes with peg legs and parrots. Ringo begins round six, In the town, where I was born...and someone pulls the plug. Threats, punches, flying beer and out we're thrown, Rob singing Yo, ho! Yo, ho! right across the street into Tommy's.
“Mai Tais for everyone...and rum shooters for the wenches.”
No Beatles here but there's Zeppelin. He stabs the buttons for “Moby Dick” enough times to close the place. More rum and another joke: “So the crew goes to Captain Fearless and says, 'Two enemy ships, sir. What should we do?’ And Captain Fearless says, 'Bring me me red shirt.' The next month there's five ships and again Captain Fearless says, 'Bring me me red shirt.'“
I'm half listening, half studying his pallid skin, taut face. He's thirty pounds lighter, a coat rack.
“You sick?”
He finishes his drink, orders two more though I've just begun mine. “The crew asks, 'Captain, why you always ask for the red shirt?' Captain Fearless says, 'So when I’m hurt, you won't see me bleed, so you stay brave.’ The next month–”
“Jaundice? Hepatitis?”
A threatening glance. “Naw. Scurvy, mate. Interrupt me ‘gain though and I throw ye overboard.”
“Like hell,” I say, and he’s off his stool and boxing my ears, just like in grammar school when I outed his shoplifting. He chases me around the bar, past the entrance, lotto machines, bathrooms, the entrance again... He improvises a sword and soon pool sticks get broken. Out we go, Rob's curses continuing as we lurch up Blackstone. Rob enters the next bar with a hubcap attached to his belt. No jukebox here, just the stereo and the bartender's pick, Styx's Greatest Hits.
“Libres for everyone!”
People point to the hubcap.
“Aye, it's driving me nuts.”
No one laughs. The regulars look only to see if it's theirs.
“The cash is endless,” I say.
“Tis me slush fund. Sooo, then there’s ten ships, and the crew says, 'Captain, shall we bring your red shirt?' 'Aye,' he says. 'And ye best bring me brown pants too.”
I don't laugh.
“Listen,” he slumps forward. “I tried. Mom, Darcy, Liz. No one talks to me.”
Suddenly, miraculously, returned is my brother. Summer, 1989. Junior high school kids again. He has a girl three towns over, a sheepish grin, imploring tone, begging me to understand what’s beyond him: homework, baseball, lawnmowers.
But the moment passes. Twenty years elapse and soon I'm listening to the rationalizations of my brother.
He orders another round, reaches into his right pocket. Empty. Before he asks, my wallet is out.
“This big spending isn't holiday blues?”
“You always were a dab hand at figuring me out.”
I pause expecting more. His gaze seems harder to hide with half as many eyes. Somehow this surprises me, surprises being rarer. I hand him all I have, about eighty bucks.
“You shipping out?”
In a rush he tells me of the popped UA, a sadistic sheriff, the trip back to County. There's much to ask him, such as how he thinks he can survive a year given everything else. But Rob gulps his drink and stands, stereo blaring I'm sailing away, set an open course for the virgin sea... This boat song is unplanned though. An omen, his curtain cue.
“Don't guilt me, brother. Anything but that.”
He strides to the door quickly. Walking the plank, I think, and what can be said in that short distance other than, “Wait a sec!” and “Where you going?”
He’s thin in the doorway. “To get me brown pants,” he says, winks and is gone.
