My Brother

We weren’t bosom buddies, my brother David and I; that would be him and my sister Lisa. I’m not sure if it was because they were in the middle of the fve of my siblings or if it had to do with them having the same birthday exactly one year apart. I tell this birthday detail to anyone who will listen, as I think it’s miraculous. But nobody in my family or otherwise seems to think it’s a big deal. I can see Lisa and David now, heads bent together walking up the drive to catch the school bus as they discussed whatever they didn’t want the rest of us to hear. No matter how cold it was David would have on his blue jean jacket and Lisa may not have had on a jacket at all. Lisa never liked and still does not like long sleeves of any kind. Lisa is particular about fabrics in general. She was forever saying “that itches!” about all clothing. David’s mission in life, or so it seemed to me, was to make mine miserable. It probably had something to do with the fact that I was scared of my own shadow and a tattle-tail. If I was standing in the hay loft of our grandmother’s barn, deciding if I could jump onto the hay below like all my cousins, David would be the one to push me. He was the one who held my sister Lynn up in front of the bull in the pasture because she had on red tennis shoes. He hid my stuff just to watch me cry. He’d close all the bedroom doors so the hallway in our house was pitch black and he’d drag me in there kicking and screaming to tell me “The Vandiver Man” was after me. In other words, if there was a line, David was going to cross it. If there was a way to make me cry, he was all for it. I admit though, he was always remorseful and his antics were more playful than harmful. I can see his lopsided grin now as he’d say “don’t be mad at me Ponkey.” Ponkey, a nickname my Dad gave me when he couldn’t remember which daughter he was talking to - Lisa, Lynn or Liz. It was a name that stuck, especially from David. When David turned sixteen and I was ten, I did all I could to never ride in a car with him. David had one speed and that was wide open. One summer afternoon in June, I was at my friend Judy’s house when Mama called to say it was time to come home. I held the phone tight in my hand and whispered to my mother with all the ferceness of the desperate, “whatever you do, don’t let David pick me up.” Outside Judy’s house, we turned cartwheels in the yard while we waited for my mom. Finally, our old station wagon pulled into the drive. I opened the door and who did I fnd behind the wheel grinning from ear to ear but David! He patted the passenger seat beside him and said, “get in Ponkey.” “Mother” I thought to myself “was a traitor!” David backed up cautiously and drove slowly down the road to the stop sign. He put his blinker on in a mock show of consideration and turned left onto the highway. He placed his arm out the window and drove to Tiger at an average speed. As on most hot days, David was shirtless and wore cut off blue jeans which raveled in spidery webs on his legs. His feet were bare, his arm and leg muscles defned and tanned from working at the saw mill. He winked at me and patted my knee assuringly. I relaxed a little and thought “everything is just fne.” We sailed by the community pool and the Green Shutter Tea Room with the late afternoon sun peeking out from behind the mountains in what felt like a game of hide and seek. As soon as we went through the four way in Tiger, David stepped on the gas with crushing force and we bolted down the highway like lightening! I have no idea how fast our station wagon would go but whatever it was, we were doing it. He never slowed or glanced in the direction of our house as we neared it, just blew by in a blur. The engine whined at the ferocity of speed as we headed to what we called “the stretch” on old 441, by the county graveyard. He slung the car into Rabun Metal Products parking lot and with the skill of a race car driver he laid three perfect donuts with the tires squealing in protest. Finally, in what seemed to be the longest few minutes of my life, the station wagon came to a screeching halt, rocking slightly from side to side as the smoke from the tires bellowed around us. At this point I was in the foorboard. Seatbelts were optional back then and I’m not even sure our station wagon had them. I gazed up at David with fury while he calmly lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out the window. With a raised eyebrow and a mischievous grin he said “how’d you like that Ponkey Pinky?” I climbed slowly back into my seat listing all the things that I was going to tell on him for and how he was going to be in so much trouble! He waited patiently for me to regain my composure, then drove to Grover’s to get me a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup in order to buy my silence. Neither of us could know then of course, that he would die at age 31 or that my children would not know him, that he would not be around with his lopsided grin to laugh at all the memories of brothers and sisters. Most times when I leave Rabun County, I go down old 441. I grin a little when I get to Rabun Metal Products, I nod a little when I pass the family graveyard and, sometimes, I pull in and visit his grave. I allow all the memories of my childhood to replay as I pass houses of people I knew and spent the night with, the old Lakemont school building and Alley’s Grocery. I note the creek my sister Lynn got baptized in, but mainly, that stretch of road always makes me think of David and how much I loved him. Liz Alley was born and raised in Rabun County in the city of Tiger. She loves to write. She is an Interior Designer specializing in repurposing the broken, tarnished, chipped, faded, worn and weathered into pieces that are precious again. She is the mother of two daughters and one granddaughter. She divides her time between her home in Newnan and Rabun County.