Like You'd Understand, Anyway

“Not like me,” he said.

And I could have told him that I did. I could have told him how weird I was. I could've given him a hundred examples. Instead I just sat there with him.

“You're a good brother,” he told me before he went back to his room.

“I wish,” I told him.

“Are you guys still up?” my father called from downstairs.

Because I was up all night, I got to the sign-up board late and all the good things were taken. All that was left was Trail Policing and the Craft Hut.

“What's Trail Policing?” I asked the kid whose shoulder I was looking over. He didn't answer. He took the pencil hanging on the string and wrote his name under Craft Hut and left.

“What's Trail Policing?” I asked the fat kid. He was sitting in the dirt of the truck turnaround, trying to get something out of the bottom of his foot. The area behind the main dining hall was messed up from all the traffic.

“Picking up garbage,” he said.

I wrote my name under Craft Hut. “You know where the Craft Hut is?” I asked him.

“You any good at getting splinters out?” he asked back.

It turned out that the fat kid was there for the entire summer. BJ told us at lunch. It was the talk of the camp. We were there for two weeks, most of us, one kid for three. But this kid was there for the whole summer. His parents were in Europe or Paris or something and had dumped him there. He'd told his tentmates. He'd even had to get there a day early and sleep on the Camp Director's couch.

His parents were probably like, Oh, I'm sure he'll like it okay. Once he makes some friends …

It ended up that he was in the Craft Hut too. There was one other kid in there who wore an eye patch under his glasses. The kid who'd signed up in front of me wasn't even there. Maybe he was dead.

“You're in my light,” the kid with the eye patch said when I sat down.

“Aye-aye,” I told him, but I don't think he got it.

He was making an ashtray with clay. The fat kid spent the time scraping at the bottom of his foot with his fingernail. I made one of those lanyards for a keychain.

The other subject at lunch was how much fun everybody else had had. Swimming off the float, doing cannonballs, playing Killer Handbreaker Tetherball.

“I made a lanyard,” I told them. People talked about the signups for the Mile Swim. Joyce put his hands on the outside of his arms, like he was already cold. BJ said that he heard that the counselors did a Bunk Attack with the fat kid even though he'd been trying to get up in time. Joyce said he'd heard the same thing. It turned out that Bunk Attack was when they came into your tent and pitched you off the bed so that you fell between the edge of the platform and the canvas wall. “It's so gross in there, too,” someone said.

My brother's name was Georgie and one of the things he really hated was when I called him Puddin' n' Pie. We'd be riding in the backseat and out of nowhere I'd say it so only he could hear it and he'd go Stop it! and scare the shit out of my father and then get yelled at. I hated it as much as he did but I couldn't stop. Don't do it, I'd say to myself when it came to pushing him. And then I'd do it. It was like when I did stuff like that at least I had the satisfaction of seeing myself like I really was. He always got mad but he never told them what I was doing.

“How come you never tell on me?” I used to ask him. He told me to stop asking him that.

“You tease your brother?” my mother asked me once. It was after my brother and I had had a huge fight. I'd thrown his record player against his headboard. We'd all gotten calmed down at like midnight. My brother was still making noise in his room. My father had closed all the windows.

I don't know, I said. Sometimes I teased him a little, I thought.

More than that I didn't let him play my record collection. It was the thing he liked to do most but he always scratched everything. We took the bus into Bridgeport with my mother when she went to the bank so we could go to Korvette's afterwards for 45s. We listened to WICC and WMCA. We always asked if we could get two of everything so he could have his own copy and she always said we were lucky to get one. And he'd always like what I got better than what he got. So he'd sit in my room when I was trying to do something and go, “Can we play ‘Elusive Butterfly’?” And I'd go, “No.” And he'd sit there and hum the music while I tried to keep doing what I was doing. And I'd go, “I'm still not gonna play it.” And he'd shrug and keep humming, like that would have to do. Sometimes if he went out in the yard I'd play the song. Before I left for camp he got “98.6” by Keith and I got “Green Tambourine” by the Lemon Pipers. He got a new record player but he wasn't supposed to touch any of my records until I got back. I hid them in the storage space before I left.

“Can I play your records when you're gone?” he asked the morning I was leaving. It was still almost dark but he'd gotten up to see me go.