From Ant to Eagle

by Alex Lyttle

  Mom became more involved; Dad became less. I started thinking of them less as my parents in the plural form and more as separate entities. They probably spoke ten words to each other over those last few months. If it wasn’t for Aleta I might never have made it. Everywhere around me life was falling apart and she remained the only constant.

  At school I wasn’t expected to contribute. No one cared if my homework wasn’t done. No one would have even cared if I didn’t show up. So I just sat there and did what I always did—worried about Sammy. I worried constantly. At night I’d be afraid to close my eyes and if I did I’d wake up shortly after in a cold fit. Sometimes I’d be screaming and Dad would come in to make me feel better. Only there was nothing he could say to make me feel better.

  Then it happened. I feel terrible even writing it down. It was a mistake—an honest to God mistake. I can’t say why I did it. Maybe I was tired? Maybe I was too worried? I’m not sure and I don’t think I’ll ever know. It’s just something I’ll always have to live with.

  When I woke up that morning with a headache I didn’t think much of it. It wasn’t even that bad. It was the kind of thing you notice at first but forget about pretty quickly. Same with the stuffiness in my nose; I didn’t even need to blow it or anything. Just the occasional sniffle here and there.

  So when I went to the hospital that day and they asked me if I was feeling okay, I just nodded and washed my hands like I always did.

  My mistake didn’t even occur to me until four days later when I was sitting in school listening to Ms. Draper discuss something about geography.

  It was a cold March day and a gust of snow and chilled air entered the portable as the door at the back opened. Twenty heads turned around, eager for an excuse to forget their geography textbooks, and there stood my Dad with the principal.

  No words needed to be said. His expression said enough.

  An overwhelming panic overtook me as we walked toward the car. I felt lightheaded. I felt my stomach clench like someone was jumping up and down on it. I felt my heart beating out of my chest and my knees turn to rubber. I fell into the backseat of the car.

  We drove at a dangerous speed to the hospital and left the car in the no-parking area at the front. When we entered Sammy’s room he had a new tube running from his nose to a small canister on the wall. The label above it read ‘oxygen’ in green lettering.

  It wasn’t so much that Sammy looked different as it was that he sounded different. I could hear him breathing all the way from the door. It was like his lungs were trying desperately to suck every drop of oxygen from the wall.

  Dad and I stood frozen in the doorframe. It was me who moved first. I walked up to Sammy and watched. He was exactly how I imagined someone might look after nearly drowning—white, wet, struggling to breathe with lungs that sounded full of water.

  I heard Dr. Parker’s voice from behind me like God narrating.

  “He has pneumonia—an infection of his lungs. Only his body has no way to fight it and his lungs are too weak.”

  In not so many words he was telling us that it was the end.

  I wondered if Dr. Parker knew I had given Sammy the pneumonia. He was a doctor—of course he knew. I didn’t turn around. I imagined his voice in my head, “It’s your fault. It was you who came to the hospital with a cold. It was you who gave Sammy pneumonia.”

  And it was true.

  I was the one who gave Sammy pneumonia.

  I stared at Sammy.

  If this was the end, I thought, why was he so calm? Why wasn’t he scared or fighting or screaming like I’d imagined so many times before? Why was he always so much stronger than I was?

  I couldn’t bear them standing behind me anymore.

  “Mom, Dad,” I asked, “do you think I could have a second alone with Sammy? I want to tell him something.”

  I waited for their footsteps to leave and the door to close, then sat down next to Sammy.

  “Sammy?” I said, but he didn’t move. There was no response.

  I shook his shoulder hard, begging him to wake up.

  “Please, Sammy, wake up, I need to talk to you.”

  I grabbed his hand. It felt like bones and skin, nothing more, and it was cold. I squeezed it hard but there was no reaction.

  His head moved up and down each time he breathed and there was a space right under his neck that seemed to suck all the way back each time.

  I pinched his arm and he moaned a little, pulling away.

  “Sammy,” I said, putting my mouth right next to his ear. “Wake up. Please wake up. I want to give you a Level. Come on, open your eyes, just for a minute.”

  His eyelashes fluttered briefly then opened. He looked around the room but it was a vacant stare. Finally, his eyes found mine but I had a feeling like he didn’t know who I was. At least his face didn’t light up like it always used to and there was no knowingness in his eyes. It was a horrible, empty look.

  “Sammy,” I continued, “the committee has decided to award you the highest Level possible.” My vision blurred and my cheeks began to burn with hot tears as I spoke. “Based on months of IVs and pain and nausea and bone needles, all without complaint, and years of being the best brother anyone could ever ask for, I…err…we, the committee, have decided to award you the Level of Dragon.”

  Sammy eyes focused and he stared at me intently. It was the longest he’d kept his eyes open in weeks. His voice was fragile as he spoke. “I thought Eagle was the highest Level?”

  “Eagle was the highest Level,” I replied.

  I wanted to come clean. I wanted to tell Sammy that I didn’t deserve the highest Level. I didn’t deserve any Level. I’d never done a single brave thing in my life. While he had lived every day putting up with the abuse, first from his older brother, then from cancer, I’d lived a life of self-proclaimed greatness. It was time to own up to the fact that Sammy, five years my junior, was ten times my superior, and this was the only way I could think to tell him.

  “Are you a Dragon?” he asked.

  I wiped my eyes on my sleeve. “No, I’m still an Eagle,” I said.

  For a moment he didn’t say anything and I was worried he was slipping off into the emptiness again.

  Finally, he said something but it was so quiet I couldn’t hear. I leaned in really close so that my ear was right next to his mouth.

  “What?”

  “Can I be an Eagle, too?” he whispered again.

  It didn’t matter to me. Sammy could be any Level he wanted to be. If all he wanted was to be an Eagle, he could be an Eagle.

  “Sure,” I said. “You’re an Eagle.”

  His lips formed a smile as he rested his head back on his pillow and closed his eyes. Beneath his arm he clung tightly to his Elligator.

  Later that night as I lay beside him holding his hand, I heard Sammy’s breathing turn from irregular to regular and then stop forever. And my world shattered into a million horrible pieces.

  CHAPTER 36

  FRAGMENTS.

  My memories of the funeral are only fragments. Probably because that is how they came to me.

  Pieces of a church with stained glass windows and white, peeled paint. The church was full of people—more people than could fit inside. They had stood against the walls and in the aisle and outside the doors—they’d had to leave the doors open.

  I remember the smell of burnt candles and pine garlands drowning out the familiar stench of farm animals as we sat waiting for Reverend Ramos to start. But I couldn’t focus on the reverend behind the altar. Instead I kept staring at the small, steel-sheet coffin beside him.

  I kept thinking about Sammy; kept reminding myself that he wasn’t next to me, that he was in that coffin. I thought back to the time we had gone to Mr. Wilson’s funeral and hoped the casket would be open. We had hoped to see a dead body. Sammy’s coffin was closed and I thanked God for that.

  When I couldn’t stand looking at the coffin any longer I turned and started scanning the crowd. I fo
und Aleta sitting four rows behind me, sandwiched between her sister and father. Her eyes met mine and held them. She gave me a slight nod and I nodded back. Beneath her eyes were tiny pools of water. I had seen her cry before; only this time it was different, she wasn’t crying for her mother, she was crying for Sammy—and for me, I think.

  I felt my own eyes begin to well so I looked away, scanning the crowd for more familiar faces. There were lots of kids from school, a few more from London, and near the back was a row of nurses and doctors from the hospital. Dr. Parker was among them. He was wearing a grey suit with a black tie. I’d never seen him wearing a suit before. He’d worn ties in the hospital, but they had always had fun things like dogs or Star Wars or cartoons on them, never just black. He looked old and tired and he was no longer smiling.

  I got the sense that Reverend Ramos was about to start because people began to hush but before I turned around my eye caught someone else I recognized. They were standing along the side of the church—a tall, broad man with two smaller silhouettes in front of him. The man had a hand on each of the boys’ shoulders—Joey and Tom. It might have been my imagination, I didn’t have time to look for very long, but to this day I’m convinced the two meanest boys in our school had tears in their eyes.

  Reverend Ramos started talking—something about God and heaven and Sammy. He said that Sammy was up above with people that loved him and that God would make a special place for him there. It made me sad to think of Sammy so far away. I liked Oliver’s version of heaven better. Sammy wasn’t going to God’s heaven, Sammy was going to be buried in the ground and stay with me. He would be in the clouds and rain and grass—just like Oliver said. Sammy wasn’t going anywhere.

  When the reverend started reading something from the Bible my mind completely left the church. I don’t remember what I was thinking, only that I snapped back out of it when he said something with an ‘R’ in it. I leaned over, ready to repeat it to Sammy in my funny pirate voice, only to find Dad sitting where Sammy should have been. It wasn’t the last time I’d forget my brother was gone.

  I looked up at Dad. His face was bright red like he’d just run to the Secret Spot and two steady streams of tears were running down his cheeks. In his lap was a pile of tissues as high as his stomach and every so often he’d make a horrible noise as if he were coming up for air.

  I leaned over and whispered, “It’s okay, Dad, Sammy’s not in heaven.”

  Dad looked down at me but he didn’t seem to understand. He looked confused. I wanted to explain but couldn’t—churches aren’t for talking; they’re for being quiet.

  I looked over at Mom. She was sitting on the other side of me and was crying too. Only she wasn’t so obvious about it. Instead she was sitting rigidly watching the reverend and moved quickly to dab her eyes with the balled up Kleenex every few seconds. She must have felt me watching her because she looked down at me with a sad look, then reached over and grabbed my hand. She squeezed it tightly. It hurt but I didn’t mind. It felt nice to be held that tightly.

  I was glad when Reverend Ramos stopped talking and closed the Bible. I thought we would be able to leave. I thought I could finally stop looking at that horrible coffin. Instead he looked to the back of the church.

  “We have one more person who has asked to say something,” he said. “Oliver, if you want to come up.”

  Oliver? I thought for sure it was a different Oliver than I knew but when I turned around, sure enough, there was Oliver from the hospital making his way through the crowd. He must have been near the back because I hadn’t seen him.

  He looked different—very different. He wasn’t wearing a hospital gown but real clothes. He had on black dress pants with suspenders over a white button shirt and in his hands he carried a black, wide-brimmed hat held tightly to his chest. He was moving slowly, having to push through all the people in the aisle to get to the front.

  When he got to the altar he pulled out a piece of crinkled, yellow paper from his shirt pocket and took his time flattening it out on the podium. When he was satisfied he looked up—except he didn’t look up at everyone, he looked up at me.

  “This is a poem,” he said, “by Mary Elizabeth Frye:

  Do not stand at my grave and weep

  I am not there; I do not sleep.

  I am the thousand winds that blow,

  I am the diamond glints on snow,

  I am the sunlight on ripened grain,

  I am the gentle autumn rain.

  When you awaken in the mornings hush,

  I am the swift uplifting rush

  Of quiet birds in circled flight.

  I am the soft stars that shine at night.

  Do not stand at my grave and cry,

  I am not there; I did not die.”

  CHAPTER 37

  ON THE TOP OF A HILL, IN A CEMETERY IN LONDON, WE BURIED Sammy beneath a leafless poplar tree. A small patch of ground was cleared of snow and in the centre a hole the size of a child’s coffin was dug. To this day I’m not sure how they dug a hole in the frozen earth, but there it was, as if the ground had just opened up to swallow my brother.

  Afterwards people came up to me and Mom and Dad to say how sorry they were. They kept talking about how bravely Sammy had fought. They kept referring to “Sammy’s fight with cancer.” To me it didn’t seem like much of a fight—more like a bully beating up a little kid who sat with his arms tied behind his back. I thought about telling them this but decided not to—the less I said, the sooner people would leave.

  I found Aleta standing off to the side after the service was over. We stood for a moment looking at each other, she in her pea coat, hair tied back in a black bow; me in a black suit Mom had bought me the day before. I didn’t know what to say to her. I didn’t know what to say to anyone. Which is why I was happy when she took two steps toward me and wrapped her arms around my neck.

  I broke down. All the tears I’d held back in that stuffy church came rolling out like waterfalls. My body began to convulse like a car sputtering fumes.

  We must have stood like that for a long time because when we finally stopped and looked around most of the crowd had disappeared. A few people in huddled groups stood around talking—Mr. Alvarado with my dad, Mom with a group of ladies from her fundraising group, Reverend Ramos and Dr. Parker—but for the most part, everyone was gone.

  I hadn’t noticed anyone behind me and was startled by a tap on my shoulder. When I turned around I found Oliver. He was wearing the wide-brimmed hat he was carrying in church and I’m not sure I would have recognized him out of context. He must have been waiting for us to stop crying.

  “Hey, Cal,” he said.

  “Hi, Oliver.”

  He fidgeted with his hands as he spoke. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry. Sammy deserved better. It’s not fair.”

  I nodded unenthusiastically.

  He stopped fidgeting and stood staring at me for a while. Finally, he let out a long sigh, then turned around to see if anyone was listening. He turned back and said, “Look, I know there’s nothing I can say that will make you feel any better so I won’t pretend to. Sammy is gone and that’s the worst thing I can imagine. Dying is as bad as it gets. I could tell you that he’s not suffering anymore, and there’s something to that, take it from someone who’s been suffering for years, but even that won’t make you feel any better. So I just wanted to let you know that I’m thinking of him and of you. I’ll be praying that your family is okay.”

  I nodded. I knew what he was talking about—the cancer crumble. It almost seemed inevitable but I didn’t want to think about that right then.

  “And here, I wanted to give you this.”

  He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the yellow, crinkled paper.

  “Your version of heaven?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Don’t you want to keep it?”

  “Nah, I’ve already got it up here,” he said, pointing to his head.

  I took the piece of pa
per between my fingers.

  Oliver glanced over his shoulder and I followed his eyes. At the bottom of the hill was a small woman standing alone—Oliver’s mom.

  “Back to the hospital?” I asked.

  Oliver turned back around and smiled. He waved his hand up and down, gesturing at his clothes. “No,” he said, “I’m going home.”

  I smiled. “Good.”

  Aleta and Oliver hugged, then he stood in front of me awkwardly for a moment. I put out my hand to shake his but instead he pulled me in for a hug too. His shirt smelled musty and his body was still a birch tree with branches.

  “Thanks,” he said, “for everything.”

  I watched him walk down the hill to his mom and that was the last I ever saw him. I don’t know how long he lived, or if he’s still alive somewhere, but I hope that one day we’ll meet again in a drop of rain somewhere—just like he said.

  When everyone had said all there was to say, and all the tears that would come had come, Mom, Dad and I were left standing alone with Sammy. Mom hugged me tightly from behind as we stared at the little mound of dirt. I wasn’t ready to leave but the silence was killing me so I pulled out the copy of Cuckoo Clock of Doom from my jacket pocket and looked up at Mom and Dad. They nodded and I opened it to the last chapter—Sammy’s favourite.

  I read.

  CHAPTER 38

  WHEN THE FUNERAL WAS OVER AND THE HOSPITAL VISITS BEcame a thing of the past, all that was left was a broken family in a yellow-bricked farmhouse on the outskirts of nowhere.

  Dad started a rebellion against the world and spent most days in his upstairs office. Sometimes I’d forget he was even there. Mom took a different approach—she became so overbearing it was suffocating. When Sammy was sick I had complained that I’d felt forgotten, suddenly I had the opposite problem.

  “Where are you going? When will you be home? Are you meeting Aleta? Do you want me to pack you snacks? Promise me you’ll be back before it gets dark?”

  She wanted me to see a grief counsellor, and talk to Reverend Ramos, and join a soccer league, but all I wanted was to be left alone.