It gets so quiet, all alone these days. No one seems interested, no one really cares anymore. Sometimes I wonder if he's doing all right, wherever he is. I wonder if I should go and look for him some more, but he must have been far gone now. I put up flyers, I didn't know what else to do, but now no one tries to help. They never liked him, but I couldn't help bragging about my brother, I thought he could do no wrong, being the hard- core southern cracker that he was. I guess people didn't like him because of that, no matter how much I'm proud of him in his way, I know he always heard them calling him a fag.
We were livin' way down south in what they called a "depression." I didn't know what that meant exactly, but I understood that it was the reason that my brother had to do a lot of things to make sure we didn't starve, although we was always hurting for money. He started out by selling to the town markets, our crops being corn mainly, though we had a little garden for our own food, we ate the corn too. This didn't work out too well, him having to buy fancy crop-dusting machines with the money we managed to keep from when Mom and Pop up and died the summer before; even after he'd dusted the fields in his plane the locusts just kept coming, and no body bought our corn, they said it was rotten and covered in toxins. Still, we had to eat it ourselves to keep from going hungry. We couldn't even buy real plates, my brother had to carve them from wood, which was how my brother got his trench mouth, on account of the worms in the wood getting into our food and under his gums. It stank real bad, and his teeth soon were rotted up, but it didn't stop him from trying to find work.
Brother spent a little time playin' professional football, and did some acting on the side. Peoples said he was a lousy actor, but in truth I think they just didn't like his rotten mouth. He didn't keep a job long before the boss decided them sick gums were too much and fired him. I did the best I can, I worked in the fields and did my part around the house, though Lord knows I was always so hungry.
Then one day a man came by sayin' he were from the FDA and that he'd heard complaints about our produce, and we couldn't do nothing but take him into the fields to see the corn-me being skinny and yellow and sick from the food, and my brother just was skinny, he didn't each much in those days, his mouth reeking and his gums rotted and black, and the last of his teeth spongy like bread. We both were dirty an' tired, and all around us the corn was wrigglin' with fat worms.
Well, that man told us he'd be closing down our business, and left. That night my brother and I had a terrible argument about the situation, and all I can remember was that it got pretty ugly, if you catch what I mean. Well, it don't make much sense now, but I do remember waking up the next morning in the fields covered with mud and soaked. I've no idea how I got there, but when I washed it all off under the hose my fingers were all a raw and bloody, and I got dirt stuck up way far under my nails, like I were diggin' in the ground for hours.
Going back inside the house, I couldn't find my brother anywhere. His station wagon was still in the driveway, so I figured he must've gone for a walk to find me, after I must've sleep walked into the field. I waited at the house for him to find me, but he just never came back. I waited and waited for weeks, without leavin' the house. Finally I asked around in town, but no one had seen him. I would have gone to the police, but something told me that things weren't quite right, and he police would just make more trouble. So I went back, and waited some more.
I'm still waiting, and it's been close to fifty years now that I've been waiting on the edge of nowhere for him to come back to me. I'm on welfare these days, and I can only just manage. I sit here on the porch all day long a waiting, and think about what I could've done to make my brother stay, if I should have known that he would have left. I try to imagine him as I remember him, because I was ever so proud of him. And sometimes I'll sit facing the fields, and I'll smell a faint reeking smell, as if my brother was nearby.