September 21st, 1998
Jerry –
Kid, I am sorry. Really, I am. I hope you can give me that. I shouldn’t have acted the way I did over that burial. I know I shouldn’t have, but there was a lot of history there and you know the trouble I have with the bottle, and how I go spouting off, acting out. I wish I’d done it different. It was complicated. I hope you can understand.
If you’re reading this, I must be dead. I wonder how I went. For the longest time I couldn’t wait to be gone, was desperate for it really, but I didn’t have the courage to make it happen. If what it takes is courage.
I assume it was the drinking that got me. It doesn’t matter. Somehow, I figure my death might be the only reason you come home. I saw the stubborn determination in your walk when you left for college a couple of weeks ago – yeah, I was watching out the window when your Ma got you in the car to go – and I could tell you wouldn’t be coming home again. You’re stubborn. It runs in the family.
I’m a prophet though, right? How many times did I tell you we all end up back in the earth, so we might as well do what we want while we’re above ground? If only I’d followed my own advice…No, I have no regrets. It all happened the way it was supposed to. But I was right in what I said, so now you have to believe all the stories I used to tell you.
There are a lot of things I should have told you. I know you wouldn’t have believe them at the time, but they still would have been true. I’ll try now, though I’m not going to be emotional or sappy about it. It’s not in me.
Will you look at this bullshit? I’ve written five paragraphs and haven’t said a word about it. I guess I’d been lying to myself for so long, I didn’t think a few more lines would matter. It’s time to stop hiding, to face down the truth.
Brother, I am sorry for how I acted. It was my own weakness, my own anger driving me to do it. I can blame it on the bottle all I want, but it wasn’t the bottle’s fault. I was the one who couldn’t face this town or myself and fell into the bottle in the first place.
I had a complex relationship with Billy Braithwaite. No one knows about it except for your Pap. Maybe someday have a chance to tell you, though I doubt it. Just know, he deserved what he got in this life and whatever sort of torment he may get in the next. What makes me angry is how he drove us apart.
I shouldn’t have let it happen. I should have been bigger about it, but I was caught up in my own rage at life.
I had seen it in your face so many times, just how much like the old man you looked and I’d always denied it could be possible. I thought he was too upright, too good, too much a creature of habit to have strayed from his normal path. I thought he was too pure. I idolized him.
And for years I took the abuse of this damn town, these inconsiderate, short-sighted, ungrateful slobs as I fought for his name. It was a ridiculous burden. One I should never have taken up. I was jealous of you not having to carry the weight, carry his name and it came out as we buried that asshole Billy.
Maybe it would have been better if Pap hadn’t confirmed it for me – I wouldn’t have carried the jealousy – but I think he knew his ticket was about to be punched. He loved you and your mother and wanted you looked after. He made me swear to never say a word about my knowing to either of you. Said he’d come back from the grave and haunt me the rest of my life if I did. If anyone was going to come back from the dead to exact revenge, it would be Pap. He was more stubborn and hard-headed than any mule.
So you see, you come by it rightly, from both sides of your family.
Yes, I’m still beating around the bush. We are family. We are brothers. Even now, having known for over a year, it feels strange to write the word familyto you. Thinking of you as a brother has never been a problem. I think that’s always how I’ve treated you, or at least how I’ve tried to anyway. I couldn’t get angry with you like I do the rest of the town, your family’d been too good to me, and you were such a sweet kid.
Now I sit and really think about it, you are a lot like Dad, a kind, good soul.
The soul. I know I come off hard, but I have to protect my soul. Every barb from these people, it’s like a knife in the stomach the way it cuts into me, taking the wind from my lugs, stabbing deep inside me. This town has worn me down in such a short time. I’ve had to build up these walls of callousness to keep the shreds of my soul from escaping through the cuts of their words.
And I know they’re just words, but they make me so angry. The anger doesn’t solve anything though. I’ve hated this town hard for almost 20 years and it hasn’t done anything except left me feeling alone. And when you recognize that at the end all you’ve got coming is a dirt nap, you want something more than solitude. You want someone, or some few people with you, to provide some sort of comfort as you head out on your way. I don’t know how much longer I have to go before my light goes out, but I do know it’s too late for me to find someone. I’ve hardened off my heart.
Don’t you do the same thing. Don’t be alone at the end. Bring people in close. It’s the one thing Dad wasn’t ever good at. He could sell someone on just about anything, but he couldn’t bring anyone in close. I won’t say it’s what drove my mother away. I don’t think she cared for him. I think she much preferred his money and prestige of the name Holmes. But he cared more for Berwick than he did for her, but he didn’t have anyone in the town he was close to. I knew he loved me, but he still kept me at arm’s length.
His love for the town above people left him alone at his end too. I can only imagine what he felt. I don’t know it for a fact, but I have no doubt he let himself burn up in that fire. The only thing he really loved didn’t love him back, where else could he turn? What else could he do? It’s not how I would have wanted to go, but I’m sure whatever gets me will have it’s own form of intolerable pain.
You have a chance Jerry. You have a real chance to have a great life. You have his goodness in you, and you don’t have the burden of this town’s hate for the name Holmes. If you keep at life with the work ethic of Pap and your Ma, you will go far and you will do great things.
I’m proud as hell of you for getting out of this town and into that great school in the city. It’s a great accomplishment. I know you’ll learn a lot, and do good work. And then you’ll have to bring what you’ve learned back to Berwick. This town needs a good kick in the pants by a young blood such as yourself.
It was jealousy made me behave the way I did. I could have just been angry, but I was jealous of you too. I was jealous and hurt. I was headed on the same course as you and then Dad died, Mother left, and the town let me lie under the weight of their expectations and blame. I had no chance to get out. I was bitter, because I felt how unfair life was.
It’s been 20 years since I lost my opportunity – some of it was my own doing as well. I can’t believe I held it all inside up until that moment with you. I let my jealousy and my hurt over my father’s actions spill out on to you. I thought he was so good and so pure, and to find he was cheating on my mother, it hurt. In particular because it was your mother, who I loved from afar, and have loved from up close since I came to work for Pap.
I don’t hold any of this against her. I assume my father talked her into it. He was a great, great salesman. It just stung, admitting to myself that you were his son and he wasn’t quite the man I’d put on the pedestal.
Or maybe he was? We all have flaws. It’s unfair to expect perfection. Maybe our good works can outweigh our bad? I don’t know. I’m not one to judge, nor worry about the tipping of that scale, given how I’ve chosen to live my life.
I don’t have any regrets. I can’t change anything that’s passed anyway. All I can do is apologize to you once again. I should have been better. Not being better, that I do regret.
If I’d had more courage, I would have talked to your mother about my father, and about you and me, because I noticed. Long before Pap said anything, I noticed. But I chose to keep the truth from myself, and became comfortable with the lie. It was easier.
If I’d had more courage, I could have been the older brother you should have had.
If I had more courage, I would ask your mother for your address, and put this letter in the mail to you. But I don’t. I’m sure I’ll burn it up or destroy it later tonight once I’ve had a few.
Your father was a good man Jerry. Your older brother wasn’t as good. Life won’t be fair. You’re gonna end up in the dirt someday, there’s no way to outrun it, so live now.
Good luck Junior,
sh
So now I’m trying to live. To take a few more chances. Maybe it will all go belly up. Maybe it will all work out. The end result matters, but I’m not going to let it consume me. I’ll be dead someday no matter what.
