I should have driven away from that apartment building as quick as I pulled up to it. That’s what I think as I whip around a curve, gas pedal creaking as I stomp on it. There’s some new noise in my engine. Sounds like a bunch of dice rattling around in there. This truck is twenty years old and too worn out to be going this fast. This might be the end of it finally, but it’s got to get me away from this guy who ran out of my little brother Kenny’s apartment building and started chasing me in his truck. I’m gripping the wheel hard enough to feel it in my stomach. Good thing I know this road so well I could navigate it while sleep-driving.
The guy behind me has a better truck, that’s for sure. That’s the thing saving me right now, as we wind through the twists and turns of these ten miles of Route 19 before you get to town. One thing about having such a fancy truck–V8 engine, light panel above the cab, spinning rims that flash like a gold smile–is that he doesn’t want to mess it up. It’s his baby, anyone can see that. And the thing sure can go. But he’s not going to butt me from the back or try a PIT maneuver, I know that.
In the rearview the man’s face is a red blur above the giant steering wheel. He’s got some kind of bone or knife or something dangling from his mirror; I can see it swaying back and forth. I guess he figures he’ll tail me long enough and I’ll give up and pull over. And then what? I guess I’ll give him back the guitar that I’ve got knocking around on the bench seat. That’s what he’s after, and it’s not really the thing I’d wanted to take from that apartment anyway.
I’d broken into my brother’s apartment to get the stuff back that had been stolen from my truck–my checkbook and my gun. I’d already canceled the checks and I figure the gun has long since been pawned, but that shit was mine. I’d had a bad feeling about it, driving up to the apartment building with a crowbar and towel on the passenger seat. The complex was two one-story buildings squatting perpendicular to the road across from one another; looked like a long ranch house repeating itself over and over. Torn paint on the railings; air conditioning units rattling in the backs. I knew that I wasn’t going to come out of this looking good, especially if I got caught by someone as I punched in the bedroom window in the back of the building. They’d think I was foraging for something valuable. They’d assume I was after drugs.
Kenny had moved into that apartment after he got out of rehab. This isn’t the first time he’s had to get back on his feet. Every time, I help him out somehow–give him money, give him rides if his license has been suspended. I usually end up getting burned eventually, get something stolen or have him at my door, wild-eyed and asking for money. But newly clean Kenny is hard to say no to: always earnest and apologetic and eager to please. Always talking about how this time it’s for good, how he’s never going back.
I think I also help him out of guilt. I’m the older brother by six years. Once I hit age 13 or so and noticed my kid brother had no interest in sports, I would rag on him all the time. Kenny likes other men; let’s just put that on the table. He didn’t come out in the open with it until a few years back, when he was 23, but I guess as a kid I sniffed it out and gave him hell, calling him all kinds of ugly things. I’ve half suspected that’s part of the reason he turned into an addict, although the rational part of me knows I couldn’t have caused that.
So the week before, Kenny had mentioned he needed furniture. I’d found a couch and a couple tables at Goodwill and driven them over to his new apartment. He’d seemed clean; I can tell by now when he’s not. But there was some kid there prowling around helping us carry things–Kenny’s neighbor–who didn’t look older than twenty or so, and this kid didn’t look clean. I got a bad sense from him was all. Kid wasn’t any good, just seemed like a plain fact. And sure enough, two days ago I found out my checking account was overdrawn, and the checkbook I keep in my glove compartment for emergencies was gone. So was the gun, an old .22 an ex-girlfriend’s dad had given her but that she didn’t take with her.
I didn’t even like that gun, which was why I’d relegated it as the truck gun. Didn’t like the girlfriend that much either by the time she and I went our separate ways; I wasn’t keeping it for sentimental reasons. But someone picking through your stuff, taking it for their own, creates a particular kind of scuzzy feeling. It ignites some animal sense, some snarling thing. And that snarling thing wanted to snap that kid’s neck in two.
Kenny and I got in a fight about it over the phone. There was no way to know for sure it was the kid, Kenny said. Could have been anyone between then and now. He had a point there, I guess. But I usually lock the truck door, and I hadn’t that day. I knew it hadn’t been Kenny, because he wasn’t out of my sight the whole 45 minutes I was there. Besides, like I said, he seemed clean. It’s not like I think he’s above stealing; he’s lifted lots of stuff off me. It’s the drugs that make him do things like that. But I don’t even know this freckle-faced little rat kid who had been slinking in and out of the apartment dressed like a gangster. Shifty little eyes.
Kenny and I hung up cursing each other and then I got to thinking. My wheels started going, just like that guy’s spinner rims behind me. I’d started to wonder if maybe this kid was shacked up with Kenny. Problem with that scenario was, this kid seemed nothing like Kenny’s type, not that I’ve ever exactly sat down with Kenny and discussed what it is he looks for in a man. The men I’ve seen him around–probably three total over the years–they’ve all been older than Kenny, a little more rugged. Like the guy behind me, from what I can see.
So maybe he and the kid were just friends, I’d decided. But being so mad, I decided maybe Kenny wasn’t as clean as I’d thought, that he and this kid had conspired to get my checks and my gun. A classic distraction scenario: one keeps the victim busy with the heavy end of a couch while the other sees what they can steal. Kenny’s pulled similar shit when he was using.
Long story short, I left the place a mess—sock drawer turned upside down, couch cushions off. No gun in sight and no checkbook either, not that that mattered by now. On the way out, by the couch, I saw the acoustic guitar. I had brought it over for Kenny as a special gift the day I helped him move in the couch. The guitar was mine, but I’d left it at home all those years back when I left for boot camp with the National Guard. Kenny had loved that guitar in high school; taught himself to play and was actually pretty good. I guess he lost interest after he became an addict and it ended up back with me. I rarely play it; it’s just stood leaned against my bedroom wall for years. I figured he’d just as well have it, especially now that he’s clean and it won’t end up down at Cashland Pawn—for now, anyway. He’d been real excited to get it; that day I could hear him playing some chords of “Blackbird” by the Beatles as I’d left.
I decided I was going to take it back. I guess I just felt like standing up for what’s mine. Every day it seems I have less than I did and there’s never anyone specific to be pissed off with. Kenny and that kid were specific. The guitar was something tangible I could take back. And this guy behind me, chasing me: he’s specific too. As I was slithering out the back window with the guitar he had barged in–home from work, maybe–and caught me. As I’d fired up my truck and peeled out, he’d been running out to his own, and now here we are.
I could pull over right now and let him have it, provided he doesn’t shoot or stab me right off the bat. I could punch him; I could even take the initiative and go at him first with my pocketknife. Not saying I would–just saying I could. He’s accessible. It’s not like he’s some bank sending me an impersonal message about some charge that overdrafted my account. He’s not behind a paywall. He’s not a ghost or a regret. He’s here, and real, and in fact that apartment stinks to high heaven with that cheap damn cologne I know isn’t Kenny’s. You can’t fake that kind of here and real.
Come to think of it, this is the guy I’d noticed in the photo tucked into the bedroom mirror. He and Kenny had been hugging in front of some building, maybe the rehabilitation center, both wearing big wraparound sunglasses. They’d looked happy.
I’ve started to go a little slower. After all, this guy has made it clear he’s not going to hit me. He looks pretty pissed back there, jaw snapping real quick up and down like he’s cursing his head off. He’s flashing the lights on the cab too.
I come around a curve and guess what–there’s a big boat of a slow car in front of me. One of those cars you’re afraid to pass since it’s weaving all over the road like a drunken racoon. This is the part of 19 where there are hardly any dotted lines. Two solid yellows for miles. You get stuck behind a brake stomper here, you might as well relax and get comfortable. The trunk of the car in front of me is open like a pair of jaws with two or three mattresses clutched in it. The whole setup looks pretty precarious, which I guess is why the driver’s skittering around the road, not necessarily because they’re drunk. Or they could be drunk too I guess. I’ve got to admit I’ve taken these curves when I’ve had a few too many myself. Difference between me and this guy is I’m good at it. Like I said, I could drive this road asleep.
I check the rearview mirror to see what my guy’s up to back there. That’s the way I’m starting to think of him, “my guy.” He’s throwing both his hands up and shaking them, like you do at a piss poor driver such as this one. I mirror him, throw my own hands up, raise my eyebrows in the rearview. I’m probably going to be dead as soon as I stop this thing, so I might as well play around a little with the last person I’m going to interact with on this earth.
I can see his face a little better now. He’s got one of those trailing funnel-shaped goatees I’d like to just rip off a guy’s face every time I see one. And I’m making out more details about the whole set up inside that truck. Looks like he’s got some kind of leather seat cover. Fancy. And that thing he’s got bobbing around on his rearview is actually a cross, like the one Kenny got from rehab with some kind of saying on it. Maybe Kenny even gave it to this guy.
And then I get a better look at his face, sunburnt and puckered with rage, and I realize I know this man. Well, maybe I don’t know him, exactly. But I had saved him from killing himself one night, maybe three years back. I’d talked him down from a bridge at three in the morning. You don’t forget a face after that.
There are times when the smallness of the world we all inhabit socks you upside the head, and this moment, creeping along behind the slow car, in front of my guy in the flashy truck, was one of them. I’d saved this man’s ass one night as he stared down into the blackness of the Eastern Fork River, and now he’s acting like he’s going to have mine. I’d helped save him, only so that he could kill me. It’s kind of like a snake eating itself, if you think about it long enough.
To be honest, my first instinct had been to keep driving by when I came up on him standing there on that ledge. It was three a.m. and I was drunk. I’d taken a wrong turn somewhere south of the town and had to backtrack, which was why I ended up driving over that bridge again. Someone back at that bar should have taken my keys from me, but no one had. The radio blazed out static and I was too far gone to take my hand off the wheel to change it.
But then, in the slice my headlights carved out of the darkness, there was that man standing on the ledge. My foot hesitated on the brake. This was a situation a cop would be interested in if one came along.
But I did stop. In the daylight, maybe I would have started off talking to the guy, ask him what the matter was, tell him there was a reason to live, like I was an authority on that. In the daylight we can play like we don’t have anything in common with someone standing on the edge of a bridge. But at three in the morning, some guy standing toes level with the edge of the bridge–I remember that detail as my headlights splashed over him, how level his toes were with the concrete– it seems like not just his problem, but all of ours.
I killed the headlights, walked over and hoisted myself up onto the ledge. I sat there next to the guy’s feet. He was breathing heavy and shaking, a big piece of feeling, living human there in the dark. He was telling me to stay back. Cursing at me real good too. But I just sat there and gazed down at the blackness. Only the faint hint of white reflection off the surface would tell you there was water down there. I told him I just wanted to look down at the water too and if he wanted to talk, well, I didn’t have anywhere pressing to go. I didn’t say much else to him. I did say, “You might not even die, at least not right away.” I said, “It’s something I’ve thought about myself.”
After a couple minutes the guy sat down next to me on the ledge. His jaw jerked around like he meant to say something, but he stayed silent. We must have sat there for about half an hour. A sense of calmness seemed to come over him. Clouds had moved and I could see his face in the moonlight now. I think just the warmth of someone next to him, not trying to tell him anything, must have helped. I know it would have helped me.
Before we went our separate ways we hugged. Just a one-armed awkward hug, sitting there on the ledge. I said, “You ever find yourself looking down again, remember how cold that water would be, man.” Then we got in our vehicles and drove away. I don’t remember what he was driving. I don’t remember it being a pimped-out truck like the one he’s driving now.
I’ve always wondered about that guy, wondered if he ever found himself looking back down at that cold water. I read in the newspaper about someone who jumped off that bridge last year, but the person didn’t fit this guy’s description.
There’s a growing line of cars behind us so all I can see in the rearview is a line of shimmering glass and metal, disappearing around the last curve. My guy seems to have calmed down a little. He’s started to lag back and I even see that he’s crooked his tan elbow out the window. We go around that last curve before you get to town, and that’s when my truck decides to give out on me. The dice rattle turns into a shuddering cacophony, then the engine comes to a jolting stop. The smell of burnt oil sears my nose as I roll over to the shoulder, smoke billowing out from under the hood. The guy rolls in behind me.
We both just sit there, him looking at me and me looking at him in the rearview. Then he hops down from the cab. He’s a shorter man; I’d noticed that when I’d seen him run out of the apartment. I hadn’t noticed it that night, but we’d been sitting down.
I get out of the truck, left hand raised, right hand holding onto the neck of the guitar, which I hold up above my head like some kind of guitar hero. My guy’s got his hand on his right front pocket like he’s ready to pull something out at any minute. He’s wearing a red work shirt tucked into jeans and he’s breathing hard, like the drive had exerted him. His forearms are muscular, and so tense I can see tendons straining.
A few thoughts come to me in rapid succession. I think: Maybe it wasn’t that kid who stole my stuff. I might have forgotten to lock the truck at some point that week. I feel my face getting kind of hot at the thought. Far as this guy knows I’m some random guy who trashed the apartment and lifted Kenny’s guitar. He wouldn’t recognize me as Kenny’s brother. It’s not like Kenny keeps framed pictures of me around his place or anything.
I think: This guy is doing this out of love for Kenny. Wants to get his guitar back. I imagine him and Kenny together. Holding hands walking through the fair, maybe. For some reason I imagine them doing that, maybe because the fair is in town this week. Enduring hostile stares and shouted slurs, maybe. It occurs to me that this man might have told my brother he loved him, whereas I never have. And I can’t remember ever hugging Kenny either, not all the years we’ve been brothers. Not even a stupid one armed hug, like the one with this guy that night.
And then another thought: Maybe this isn’t the guy from the bridge. It was dark that night, and I was drunk. He has the same slightly crooked nose and deep-set eyes, but it looks like his face has filled out a little. I don’t remember him having that goatee for sure, but that doesn’t mean anything; some guys can grow one of those in a couple months.
The guy doesn’t say anything. He just stands there, brings his left hand up and gestures like “Give it here.”
I toss it at him. But my aim is off, so the guitar misses his hand and bangs into the open passenger side door of his truck with a twang.
My guy looks down at the guitar, looks at me. He reaches down into his right pocket and I prepare to duck behind the door, not that it would shield much from whatever this guy is packing. What he brings out is a hefty pocket knife, one with a curved steel handle. He flips out the blade and steps forward, but not toward me. He goes over to the back of my truck, squats down.
Then he goes about relieving my tires of their air. He’s really methodical and matter of fact about it. He means to pierce all four, I can tell. He can see my truck isn’t going anywhere, but he wants to make damn sure of it.
He starts with the rear driver’s side. I watch as he stabs the knife in, holds the handle with both hands, drives it home using pressure from his knee. Looks up at me with a little smirk on his face as he wrenches it back out. He seems like maybe he’s done this before.
I hear the whoosh of air gasping out. That’s when I start talking. I tell him about my gun and my checkbook, and how Kenny and his friends have lifted off me before. To be honest I’m kind of babbling and I’m not sure how much of it this guy is catching.
Now he’s starting on the next one, muscles jumping around in his arms as he takes care of the back passenger side tire. I don’t swing that way, but I can kind of see what Kenny sees in this guy. It takes a lot of strength to stab a truck tire, and he makes it look like nothing.
I keep talking. I tell him about how I used to tease Kenny and now I feel bad about it. For some reason I’m defending myself. “I mean, it’d almost be weird if I hadn’t ragged on him a little. If I’d been all ‘Hey, Kenneth, how’s middle school going?’ Brothers rag on each other, it’s what they do.”
I stop for breath. Whoosh, I hear from the side of the truck as the tire gives out.
“Although I guess maybe I was a little harder on Kenny than most,” I continue. I hear him moving up to the front passenger side. I keep talking. By now I can’t stop. I tell him how our old man refuses to talk to Kenny, how I want to be different from that. I tell him Kenny and I don’t talk about him being gay or anything like that, but he knows I know. I try to show him I accept him.
“I used to be a real ignorant jerk,” I say.
There’s silence for a minute. Then he pulls the knife out. Whooosh.
Then he comes over to the front driver side. The door is still open, so I can’t see him–just the crease in his work boots underneath the door as he kneels down. I figure this is my chance to say something about the bridge. If I don’t say anything now I never will. Maybe he means to gut me after he’s done.
I say, “Hey man, you ever find yourself up there on that bridge looking down again? Remember how cold that water would be.”
He’s still for a minute. Then he stands up and pushes the truck door shut, leaving the knife in the tire. His eyes are bright with something like recognition. I think for a minute he’ll punch me, and then I think his eyes are welling up. Finally he leans down, pulls the knife out of the tire. It only makes a slight sigh. He folds it up, puts it back in his pocket.
The sun is starting to set, nudging down into the tree line. The cars swooping by have turned on their headlights and they play patterns across the man’s face as he stands and stares at me, his jaw working back and forth like it had that night.
“C’mon, man, I’ll give you a ride into town,” he finally says.
–
Beth Meko lives in Knoxville, Tennessee. She is an alum of the 2022 Tin House Summer Workshop, and received a Nancy Zafris Honorary Residency Fellowship at Porches Writing Retreat in 2023. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Bayou Magazine, Longleaf Review, Still: the Journal, The Militant Grammarian, and others.
© 2024, Beth Meko
Halfway Down the Stairs 