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Johnny Ray

The rifle belonged to my Uncle Brother. It was a Springfield .30 caliber with a nickel finish and a walnut handle. I remember once when Uncle Brother was napping Paul and Velvet stole it from under the bed and took it out to the woods. They played with the rifle, aiming it at a dangling boot intertwined in kudzu vines, and then they asked me if I wanted to hold it. I was kind of scared at first, but Paul showed me how. I was only a little boy then, and the rifle was almost as big as I was. It sat hard and heavy on my shoulder, the stock like a cool hand against my cheek. Velvet tried to lift it away from me but I held on tight.

“C’mon Johnny,” she said, “give it back.”

“No.”

“Johnny Ray, you give it back right now!” Velvet scolded.

“No!”

“Give it!” Paul swatted me on the back of the head and I let go. I always did what Paul said because he was the toughest and the oldest. Uncle Brother took Paul out hunting every once in a while and let him use the rifle to shoot possums. Uncle Brother’s real name was Bobby, but Grandma had given both her sons the same name, so everyone referred to the younger as Brother. One of Uncle Brother's legs was shorter than the other because he’d had polio as a child. He wore thick suspenders emblazoned with the Stars and Stripes, and his teeth reminded me of kernels of unripened corn.

The story was, after I was born, just when I was learning to talk, Dad walked out of the house one day and never came back. He took a change of clean clothing with him and some cans of baked beans Momma said, but she changed the details a little every time so no one was ever quite sure of what had happened. After Dad left, we moved from Lullwater to Summerville to live with a guy Momma had met while she was working at Rusty’s Diner. I don’t remember too much about the guy except that he was a skinny redhead with long hair and tattoos all over his arms. He got Momma pregnant with Sandy and Glory, and then he took to drinking a whole lot, Momma said, so she had to kick him out. Then Momma got fat – really fat – and we moved back to Lullwater.

Most vividly I remember the dilapidated house at the edge of the woods: the sagging porch, the rotting steps, how water dripped on us sometimes while we slept – and that there was no man around to fix the roof. Every once in a while, my Uncle Brother would come over and unclog the toilet in our ramshackle outhouse. And then I remember the smell of dogs and mildew, heat rising from the basement door into the greasy-walled kitchen. The high slope of the roof, the rafters chewed up by termites, flakes of paint sticking in our hair like dandruff. We spent most of our time outside.

The woods were full of gnarled old trees and clouds of mosquitoes hung over the river in the summer. All of five of us spent hours wading and splashing in the water and there was a swimming hole further down-river that only Sandy and I knew about. We caught crawdads there and I remember still, the grin on Sandy’s face whenever he snatched one up, his damp broom-colored hair sticking straight out from his forehead. Sandy had eyes like Christmas - dark and glittering, and at breakfast he would always give you some of his bacon if you ate yours too fast.

Out in the woods near our house, where Uncle Brother taught Paul to shoot, I would tag along a little way behind them so I could watch. I was so quiet that sometimes they seemed to forget I was there, and crouching down among the vines in the Georgia mud I would watch Paul standing with his legs apart, sweat beading his mustache, his cheeks and neck reddening as he fired again and again, his teeth clenched, his finger tight and tense on the trigger. Paul almost never missed.

About a week after Paul had left home to drive trucks, I found Uncle Brother’s rifle lying on the kitchen table. I remember every detail of that afternoon: the quality of the light filtering through the trees, the chickens picking at the duck feed, the ducks picking at the chicken feed, the squealing pump in the backyard, the way the plates piled up in the sink, the lingering smell of bacon. The rifle was there, but Uncle Brother was not. For once there was absolutely no one around.

The rifle was so shiny and smooth, so invitingly silver in the sun. The walnut handle seemed to fit into my palm just right, and almost involuntarily, I felt my grubby teenage fingers tighten around it – an instrument of irrevocable power. I turned back, listening carefully for the sound of voices, of footsteps, but I heard nothing save the twittering of birds in the attic window. With a thrumming, thumping heart, I lifted the gun, raising it to the screen door.

Most vividly of all, of course, I remember Sandy’s face when he rushed toward me, all flushed and rapt. He had caught a big brown toad with golden eyes – a big brown toad that he just had to show me. And when Sandy burst into the kitchen I started in surprise, the gun jerked back and I let out a yelp. The shot itself seemed to come a split second later in a gut-wrenching burst, and its sound seemed so cruel, so final, that to this day I still hear it ringing in my head. Sandy’ s eyes widened with astonishment, and he stumbled back, hitting his head against the door-frame. Clutching his chest he asked: “What happened Johnny? What…?”

The funeral was held at a simple country church near the local bowling alley. It was as white inside as a hospital and smelled of mothballs and starch. The long candles on the altar were bent, and the flowers, yanked from people’s yards, were a clash of orange and magenta. Everybody glared when I came in because they knew I was the murderer - and they were right, of course, I had killed the boy with Christmas eyes.

I was made to stand separately from my family with the preacher’s wife who pretended to feel sorry for me. The congregation droned and sang and wept, and the preacher blithered about forgiveness and God’s will. It took me a moment to realize that it was I who was to be pardoned, Johnny Ray who must be forgiven, and I had to clutch at the pew in front of me to stay upright. Momma wouldn’t even look at me. It was as if, at the instant of Sandy’s passing, I had ceased to exist.

I tilted back my head when the preacher talked about Heaven where my brother was going. The ceiling was so white and empty that it made me dizzy. It had been two whole days since I’d eaten, and the preacher’s wife had, in the spirit of mercy, tried to make me drink a glass of apple juice before the service. I had refused of course, and every now and again the preacher’s wife would touch me lightly on the shoulder, as if to make sure I was still there.

I gazed at Uncle Brother, but his gaunt face registered no emotion. He chewed patiently on a wad of tobacco and examined the dirt under his fingernails. Grandma’s tears trickled through the creases on her cheeks and ran down her withered neck. Her black polyester dress made her look like a scarecrow, pecked by the birds of regret. A fly landed on Sandy’s coffin, and Grandma slapped at it with her hymnal so viciously that the coffin shook on its stand, making Momma shudder. My sister Glory rested her auburn head against Momma’s freckled arm, and when she saw me staring, she slowly stuck out her tongue. It was bright red, and I knew that she had been eating Kool Aid powder. I looked away feeling a hot weight at the back of my throat, and then I prayed over and over for God to kill me too.

Praying so fervently sent me into a sort of trance during which I thought I saw angel wings flutter overhead, and pale girlish faces reprimanding me from the ceiling. Look at what you’ve done Johnny Ray! Look at what you’ve done! I was used to being crowded in, jostled by my siblings, but now I was surrounded by nothing but space – negative space - and with it came a terrible, sinking feeling, as if I had suddenly been pushed out of a tall tree and was flailing in the air waiting for the sweet annihilating impact of the earth. The mournful singing began again and my stomach dropped when I realized that I was still alive.

When the service was over, one of Grandma’s claw-like hands closed over my shoulder. She propelled me to the casket, which was lined in a green felt that reminded me of the pool table at Uncle Brother’s favorite bar.

“Look at him!” Grandma hissed.

Sandy was dressed up in his best shirt and pants, which actually belonged to Paul, and were too big for him. The shirt had a little ketchup stain on the breast pocket and the pants were pinned together at the waist. When I brought myself to look at Sandy’s face, I found it ghoulishly pale, as if I was looking at him through a veil of cold river water. His eye sockets had turned gray, and I couldn’t make out a single blemish on his skin.

“Touch him,” Grandma said, putting her mouth close to my ear. Her breath smelled like a dog’s and the tears welled up inside me, hot and strong as whiskey. “Touch him,” Grandma said again, in that witchy whisper, but I was too scared. I began to cry, and Grandma dug her jagged fingernails into my palm. The tears and the snot poured down my face and converged in a dripping mass of slime on my chin.

“What do you say, boy?” Grandma insisted. “What do you say?”

“Sandy,” I choked. “Please forgive me.”

But I was certain my brother had already forgiven me - it was I who could not forgive myself.

When they lowered Sandy’s coffin into the ground, I felt sure that he wasn’t really dead. Sandy was somewhere out on the river, chasing after crawdads, and I was the deceased. I heard the scraping sounds of gravel, the soft brownie-batter mud giving way.

And me? What happened to me?

I joined the army. I became Jonathan Raymond and went to college. I learned to say “get” instead of “git.” I learned to say “isn’t” instead of “ain’t.” I’ve got an office job up north and now I speak the way Yankees do. I’ve stopped putting ketchup on my eggs.

Over the years I have managed effectively to put Johnny Ray six feet under where he surely belongs, yet each day, when I come home from work I dread the moment at which I will have to enter my apartment and see the trappings of Jonathan Raymond - his carefully placed lies. When I look in the mirror sometimes, I try to picture myself back in my own green woods. I am missing a few teeth perhaps, hauling water for my poor old Momma, tossing my kids in the river when summer comes, and working long back-breaking hours at the local construction company. I build things, I rip them apart – but in both realities, I grapple with the ever-changing face of knowing, of seeing, of truth itself.

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