Sea of Signals

By Jeff Keenan, Sandpoint, Idaho, U.S.

The spoils of the good life become painfully apparent when I speak with my brother. His beard down to here; his house a mess; his mind, half what it used to be, half … well, I hardly know. We laugh from time to time, over the phone, when we bring up an old inside joke: "Wesley, engage!" It's impossible to explain or to understand really, but the connection via satellite is bouncing all around us all the time. We can't see it; we can't feel it; it's just there.

"Well, nothing's really changed," he coughs. "I pretty much just hang out at home anyway, so, nothing's different, really." The line goes quiet for a while, while I try not to cleverly quip him or his life. I find myself in a dangerous reflection and can't think of anything real to say. Sometimes if we speak our minds, the words do damage without even relieving us of the pressure building up inside. By now, the words, regarding our lives, have built up so much pressure that I fear what might pop out. There are so many words, with so many sharp edges, that they cut me inside. I don't want to cut my brother.

So I speak on the surface of things. "We finished our chicken coup, and the garden's got tomatoes and carrots and, um …" The guilt of my good life weighs down my words until I feel a thousand pounds pushing down on me. The inequity of western civilization and my role as the unwilling oppressor bear down on me, ruining the fruits of my labor, turning them rotten on vines and in the dirt. I want to say I'm sorry, but I don't, because that would sound ridiculous and embarrassing to both of us. "It's cool growing my own food, you know?"

"Yeah, so …" his ultimate non sequitur, signifying the centered spin within his head, his need to protect himself from shame, "I haven't had a cigarette for two weeks."

"Nice!" All of a sudden, the desire to get high overwhelms me. "That's awesome." My cynical thoughts slice at the edges of me, and subtly sharpen my words. "Keep it up, man!"

"Thanks."

I can feel his humble smile from three hundred fifty miles away. I can feel him sitting alone in the sagging double-wide trailer of our youth, growing his hair, watching and rewatching and falling asleep in front of the TV at any and all hours. I rock in my soft deck chair, watching the blue heron take off from the pond below, my copy of Lonesome Dove laid out on the dusty table. I miss him more than anything and feel like crying. I miss the part of him that is now forever lost to the world of overdoses, the part of him that used to cut through the muck of society, the part of him that loved and lived uncomfortably keen, the part of him that hurt me when I was young, the part of him that built up the little world in which he now resides, forever missing from common society, but which now, in quarantine, seems to protect him in ways that the rest of us dream of. While we, the victims and purveyors of the good life, struggle to find ourselves in this new found life of solitude.

"Well, I better get going," I say, pretending.

"Alright, love you man."

"Love you too."

Our words bounce from the satellites and keep us afloat in the sea of signals.