Pink Cloud (210 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 0.66 on 3 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Jack McCallum (View user info) at 2006-11-22 13:13:06 EST
Pink Cloud
I sat on the edge of my brother's bed and watched the videotape to the end. It didn't take long. He must have recorded this himself, long ago, from some TV special. The picture quality was terrible, jumpy and smeared, but I knew what I was looking at.
My brother's name was Marty. He was my older brother. Today he would be described as developmentally disabled, but Marty wasn't afraid to call himself a retard.
"My name is Marty," he would say to complete strangers, in slightly slurred speech. "I am a retard. But I am also a really nice guy."
Some of the people hearing this for the first time laughed or made fun of him. It was inevitable. But most people just smiled. Marty made a hell of a lot of people smile in his day.
I came home for Marty's funeral three days ago. He wasn't supposed to make it past thirty, so the last eight years were a gift. I was busy with work and my own family, but I always came back to the old family home to be with mom and dad and Marty on the holidays.
On this trip home I was filled with guilt, because part of me was relieved Marty had died in his sleep. I often wondered who would take care of him after mom and dad were gone. I loved my brother dearly, but he was like a six year old. He could drive you nuts.
I decided to attend the funeral without my wife and son. I figured he was a bit too young for that just yet. Anna stayed home with him. When he thought of Marty he thought of a funny clown who got down on the floor and played with him. I didn't want to spoil that just yet.
I rode my bike home, just a couple of hundred miles. I wore the battered old steel pot I'd been wearing for twelve years now, the one with the dimple on one side. The helmet was not DOT approved, but I wouldn't wear anything else. When I wore it, I thought of Marty.
Marty had given me the helmet as a birthday gift after I got my first bike. I was living on my own at that time, and had come home for a family birthday party.
I don't know where Marty found the helmet. It was scarred and streaked with rust, the steel shell lined with nylon webbing and old foam which I had replaced a long time ago.
Marty had been having a bad day then, feeling a lot of pain, but as he sat in his wheelchair in the back yard and wished me happy birthday he was nothing but smiles. Aside from my wife and son Marty was the only person I was ever able to openly express my feelings with. I could say, "I love you, big bro," and Marty would grin and give me a slobbery kiss on the cheek. He did that when I was a kid too, and I caught hell for it in school.
Marty had held up his birthday present to me, the wrapping paper torn and held together with about a thousand strips of tape, the ribbon lopsided. I opened the package and took out the helmet.
My brother had pointed upward and said, "For you, Petey. To keep away the pink cloud."
I looked up at a cloudless blue sky. That was Marty for you.
Almost as an afterthought Marty said, "You can wear it on your motorbike too!"
And so I did. I got a lot of weird looks. This was before a lot of the retro bike helmets you see now became stylish. Fuck it. I wore it because my big bro gave it to me. Every so often out on the road I'd look up at the sky and wonder what the hell Marty had been talking about when he mentioned the pink cloud. Marty said a lot of weird shit.
A year ago I was running late on my way home from work. I was on my bike. It was a Friday evening, and I had to stop at a bank machine downtown for some cash to get us through the weekend.
I hopped off the bike and waited in line. When my turn came I pulled out three hundred in cash and turned to see a kid holding a gun on me.
The kid was an idiot. He was standing fifteen feet away and demanding my cash. He was standing on the sidewalk in full view of passing cars, and already I could see people on their cell phones, hopefully calling the cops.
I told the kid to calm down when a police cruiser came roaring around the corner. I turned my head and heard a bang and was rocked off my feet as if I had been hit with a sledgehammer.
The kid had panicked and pulled the trigger.
The bullet had left a dimple in the goofy steel helmet my brother had given me. The cops bagged the kid and made me sit tight until paramedics checked me out. I was fine. One of the cops later told me that if I hadn't been wearing that steel helmet, the gunshot probably would have blown my brains out.
A day later I called my mom and dad and told then what happened. They relayed the story to Marty and I could hear his gurgling laughter in the background through the entire call.
Life went on.
Marty died.
Now I'm in his room, going though his things. Mom and dad didn't ask me to, but they are hurting right now.
Marty and I shared this room, a long, long time ago. On the dresser beside the little TV and VCR is a model plane we built together. The decals are wrinkled and torn. Marty wanted to put them on. Our bunk bed had been replaced by a steel frame job from a medical supply house long ago.
I was going through a box of his things when I found a videotape. The black plastic case was grimy and worn, as if it had been in and out of Marty's VCR a thousand times.
Sitting in Marty's room I said, "What the hell, big bro?"
I put the VCR in his machine and hit play.
There was only about forty seconds of footage on the tape.
I saw a limousine coming down a road. A man in a suit waved to the crowd on one side of the road, a lady in a pink hat waved to the other side. The car passed behind a road sign, and when it reappeared, the man was shot in the head.
A pink cloud of brains and blood hovered over the man's head for just a moment before he slumped and the limousine sped away.
I rewound the tape and watched it again, and again. I had seen that footage before. Who hasn't?
Now I was seeing it through Marty's eyes.
And I wondered. Had he known, over a decade ago, what would happen to me at that bank machine? Or had he given me the steel helmet out of some silly childish fear of a deadly pink cloud that could, in his eyes, strike anyone at any time?
Did it really matter?
I was alive.
I looked around the empty room and said, "Thanks, big bro."
My brother's name was Marty. Marty was a retard. But he was also a really nice guy.
11.22.63
User Reviews
Submitted by ilikesteak (user info) at 2007-10-28 00:13:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This was completely and utterly awesome.
Submitted by steph (user info) at 2007-10-27 23:27:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by haikumikoo (user info) at 2007-10-27 22:53:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
If you notice this I feel sorry for you.