Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:40:21 -0400
From: J Bark <jbark217@gmail.com>
Subject: Stranger

       I didn't ever get letters, and I wasn't sure I wanted this one. I
had been living in New York City for several years, and had moved here
right after I turned eighteen. I wanted to be out of the country and live
somewhere, where I at least had a chance at making something of
myself. Life in the country scared me sometimes, it was very monotonous and
boring, so I tended to try and make it more fun. Well when I turned
eighteen I made the decision to make something of myself, in a big city,
THE big city.
	Before I had left, I had a friend, more like a brother. We had been
raised practically together, and did everything together. We had gone
through everything together and shared more experiences than any two other
friends dare discover. It had angered me that he didn't want to leave with
me, we were meant to stay together, and when he didn't leave it angered me.
	So, now that I found myself on a midnight plane out of New York, I
was surprised. I hadn't been home in three years and didn't want to go home
for this type of a reunion. I missed him it was true, and I owed it to him
to show up at least one more time if could. Sitting on the plane waiting
for it to take off was a completely new experience to me, I had never
flown. Sitting in the middle of a three seat row, I didn't fill like being
brave enough to take the window seat, but wanted to sit away from the
majority of the traffic. The plane was about to take off, when there was a
gentle hand on my shoulder and I turned to look up into an elderly ladies
face. She was smiling and asked me if she could slide by me to sit in the
window seat. I graciously twisted my body to let her slide into her seat.
	"Thank you sweetie." She said gently. Her hair was a dark grey and
pulled back into a tight bun on her head. Her skin was dark, and
ridged. Her hands were smooth but wrinkled and she moved them with an ease
that most elderly didn't have. However her eyes betrayed her age, they were
gray and rimmed with a smoky haze. I could imagine them having been
penetrating silver at one point in her life but now they showed marks of
seeing a long life.
	The plane took off and it wasn't as bad I thought it would be. I
did let a good deep breath go when we settled from the steady climb. I was
nervous but not as bad as I thought as I would be. It was only a few hours
from New York to my home town, by plane so it would all be over in no time
anyway.
	"So tell me baby, how did you end up on this plane?" Her voice had
a slight age to it, with an accent I could exactly pick up. It was country,
maybe a southern woman.
	"Well, I'm going home." I said not knowing exactly how much to tell
this woman.
	"That is a good thing, always a good thing. What is it that brings
you back?" She asked.
	"I got a letter from an old friend."
	"Old? You can't even be shaving yet, you're still a youngin'" She
laughed.
	"Yea, I guess. I'm twenty one, but when you grow up with someone
and live your lives practically inseparable, three years seems like a long
time."
	"Well, any time apart from a true friend, is no good time. How
close were you boys?" She smiled, relentlessly.
	I laughed at the thought and pulled a colored photograph out of my
shirt pocket. It was about ten years old and rather beat up. I passed it to
her and she smiled as she looked down at it.
	I remembered as I told her.

	We were eleven and standing in front of my house. My mother had
insisted on taking this picture. We were laughing and I had my arm across
his shoulder, I was taller. He was only a few inches shorter and his blonde
hair was spiked up so that it came to the top of my head. My own brown hair
hung shaggily across my face, not to long but long enough that my mother
constantly hounded me to get a haircut.
	His smiled played wonderfully against his blue eyes, and my own
green eyes focused intently on the camera. My mother had called us her
angel twins, because our eyes were so bright and colorful. As we were
standing waiting for her to take the picture, we stopped and looked over
her shoulder and asked her to stop.
	"Hey Eric! Come take the picture with us!" I had seen his little
brother and wanted him to join us; he was part of our gang and did
everything we did. At that time we treated him just like another friend.
	"You sure, Jackie?" He asked tentatively. I nodded and looked to my
left. "You don't mind do you Brian?"
	"No! Come on bro!" He smiled the most genial smile. His
relationship with his brother was only rivaled with his relationship with
me and even then we all three fit together like Macaroni and Cheese.
	So we took that picture with me, one arm around Brian, and the
other hand placed on Eric's shoulder.
	"Cheese!" We were all in unison and broke into giggle fits before
the picture was finished. The three of us ran off after that, heading
toward the Slick Rock Holler, which we usually played at. It was back in
the woods between our houses and was a gorge filled with moss covered rocks
that could end you up in a pool of the coldest mountain water that you ever
felt. We usually had plenty of fun pretending in that area, playing our own
versions of Cops and Robbers or what not. On the hottest summer days we
didn't half mind ending up in that pool.
	When we were that young we didn't ever think twice about hanging
out, just the three of us. It changed as we got older, regrettably.  Eric
was only a few years younger than us nine, to our eleven. But when we hit
eighth grade and turned into teenagers, we decided boldly that he couldn't
hang out with us anymore. We tried our best to keep our relationship with
him a happy one, but we moved on to bigger and better friends. We soon
became the leaders of our own little gang.

	"Well that does sound like a lot of fun. Too bad for little, Eric
was it?" The old black woman had listened to my story intently, and smiled
when I took the picture from her and slid it back into my pocket after
stealing one more glance at it.
	"Yea, Eric. I think I regret that more and more as I got older. He
was such the perfect younger brother, and they both had grown up with me so
they were brothers."
	"I'm glad you see it like that." She chuckled. I didn't understand
her comment, but I felt like telling her more if she would listen. "So what
was this little gang about? Terrorizing the local playgrounds were you?"
	I laughed as she answered my silent prayer to speak.

	Gang may have not been the most adequate term for what we were. We
were four in number and we hung out when we could, doing what we could. It
was an interesting experience to have more people to hang out with and we
last as friend all the way through our junior year. We all started driving
and began dating. Well they did, I didn't, and I had no interest. Emily and
James were two that joined Brian and me. Emily was shorter than me too, but
smart. She could outwit the best of us at any given moment. James was a
jock who never seemed to fit in with the other sporty type guys, so we
gained him. We also lost him.
	He was driving home from Prom, and had already dropped off
Emily. They weren't together but they wanted to go together, so they
did. Well he was driving home, and was about a mile from his place when he
was T-boned by another drunken student. It was the worst tragedy that had
happened to my town in the over twenty years. His death marked the
beginning of a strange depression around town. Everything changed, kids
weren't allowed to play like we were and they didn't go and just do the way
we did. It all became dangerous and parents didn't want to lose another
precious child. I couldn't take it, Emily, Brian and I had become closer
than ever, and I brought up moving away. I thought for awhile Emily might
have wanted to, but Brian just didn't. I never understood why, but he
didn't. So I left. Emily Stayed, and Brian and I didn't talk again.

	"And you're jumping on a plane to go down there to see him after
three years because you miss him." She smiled.
	"Not really. I told you I got a letter from a very good friend. It
wasn't from Brian; it was from his brother Eric. We were really good
friends, when I said I wasn't interested in dating it wasn't because I
didn't want to, it's because I knew who I wanted to date. Eric and I had
talked about sexuality once, is this uncomfortable for you?" I said
nervously.
	"No sir, you talk all you need to, baby. I am here to listen." She
gave that honest smile again and tension melted from my shoulders.
	"Well I thought that when we talked about it, we were about to have
some perfect storybook ending relationship where we would just admit how we
felt. But he was too anxious about talking about it and I didn't want to
press him into say something he would regret."
	"That was mighty strong of you!" She said.
	"Well yea, but that's part of the reason I wanted to leave, I never
told anyone my feelings and I wanted to get away, somewhere I could be
myself."
	"That's always a good thing, but not at the expense of your
truths." She said.
	I smiled, she was right. I had moved away for my own sake and
risked lying to everyone that mattered to me. I would have to try and fix
that while I was here.
	"And you don't know why Brian didn't want to move with you?" She
smiled as the question sank in. I did know, or at least I thought I did.
	"Well, as we were growing up we were close, and we did stay close
but never the same way after our sophomore summer."

	It was one summer when Emily and James had gone off to some summer
camp, and Brian and I were left once again to our own devices. We played so
much, going to the ball park and other fields where we would just kick a
soccer ball around or something. Neither of us ever cared for sports that
much but we did like to play around with various athletic things. We also
loved biking, and hiking, keeping mostly to the trails and woods that led
through our back yards.
	One rather warm summer day we were hanging out at the Slick Rock
Holler and baking as we just sat and talked. That was something we both had
in common, we loved to talk, especially to each other. The sun was
beginning to beat us down so we decided to stick our feet into the cold
pool that we so loved. It felt glorious but it wasn't enough to counter the
heat. Before I knew it Brian was standing and stripping his shirt off. I
know that I was staring in shock and my face couldn't contort much more,
but then he slowly undid his pants and dropped them by his shirt. Turning
his slid his underwear down to and placed them there. He stood with his
back to me and I gaped, my best friend, my brother had undressed himself so
easily in front of me. Of course we had seen each other naked several times
but not so much since we had both hit puberty. We had both grown taller and
lost every bit of baby fat.
	He had a firm tan rear, which made me think that he had to tan
naked a lot. Questions rose to my head, things that I didn't know about him
seemed to present themselves in abundance. He walked swiftly to the pool
and jumped into one of the few places that he wouldn't hit bottom. I was
still gapping as his blond hair broke the surface, and he stared at me in
defiance.
	"Not going to join me?" My head spun as his question entered my
thoughts. I wanted to, but it was a boundary that I thought we had set up
long ago, and never even thought of crossing. I stood and robotically
pulled my shirt over my head and dropped my shorts. It never even
registered to me to be ashamed of our nudity, or to turn around to conceal
mine. I wasn't embarrassed by anything I had and only kept my thoughts at
bay by my pure shock of what we were doing.
        I waded out into the pool and dove under so that the coldness
wasn't utter pain any longer. As I surfaced I lost sight of Brian, he had
dove under and I was floating to deep to be able to see him. I felt him and
kicked harshly as he dragged me under. My foot collided with him and pushed
him as he dragged me down. We were both submerged and tussling rolling
through the water in a mock fight. The water was blissfully refreshing and
I forgot the strangeness of our naked bodies being so close. As the fight
ended I floated to the other end of the pool and rested in one of the seat
like rocks that lined the shallow end. The light glinted off the water as
it became still, and Brian rested on the other end of the pool.
       "What do you think about love?" The most bizarre question, and yet I
will never forgot the conversation or the events that followed.
       "Well, I think that there is no such thing as `true love' but there
are soul mates, people that follow you because your souls are tied
together." I had said to him.
       "Yea, that's a good way to put it. What about brotherly love? Can it
become something different?" I thought that I knew where he was going in
that moment, but I decided to entertain the question.
       "Same thing I suppose. It can if it's between the right people." My
eyes were closed and I never heard him as he crossed the pool in
silence. So it surprised me as he spoke so close to me.
       "Can we be the right people?" He asked gently.
       "Huh?" It was the only thing that I could think to say. And speech
left me even quicker when he swam up in front of me, between my legs so
that he was perfectly above me floating in the water. He leaned forward and
kissed me, my first and most powerful kiss. One of love that was pure and
yet, not true.

       I wiped a tear away from my eye as I finished the story. Remember
had never been so painful and yet I had began to realize so many things
since this woman had first asked me questions. She smiled at me and placed
a hand on mine, as she let the story sink in, not only for her but for me
too.
       "Is that all you did was kiss?" She asked slyly.
       "Do you want those details too?" I chuckled.
       "No, you can keep those to yourself." She smiled. "Well why is that
a reason not to come with you?" She asked.
       "Well, that was the beginning of a whirl wind semi relationship, the
times we got together after that were spent exploring the amount of `love'
we could have for each other. It was when Emily came back from the summer
that his expression changed. He became distant, but still hung out with
me. It was an awkward situation." I said thoughtfully.
       "What did Emily have to do with it?" The old black woman looked
stunned.
       "She had been crushing on Brian for awhile and he never showed any
interest in her. When she came back however, he told me that he didn't want
to `sin' anymore and started hanging out with her the way we used to. He
didn't ignore me or anything but he didn't treat me with the same love...or
lust." I said.
       "Ahh, I see. Well let me tell you God ain't never going to hate you
for lovin' no one, man or woman." She said with a smile and another pat.
       "Well he didn't see it like that. I think that is the reason he
didn't want to move with me. He still saw me as a `sin' both by myself and
for him." I said
       "So why is he want to meet up with you again after three years?" She
asked.
       "He doesn't." I said as I pulled an envelope from my pocket. A tear
hit it as I passed it to her. "You can read this."

Dear Jack,

	I pray that this letter finds you in time. I want you to be here, I
think that you need to be here. I have written to tell you that Brian has,
how do I saw this, passed away. I must have started this letter three or
four times and it comes no better any time. I know that you were his best
friend once and you have a place here that needs to be filled. You meant
something to him, and since the day you left, he regretted never talking to
you.
	We were friends and I use this in the hope that you will at least
think about coming home. I beg you and want you to be here, for me, for
him. I can only tell you that the funeral is in four days from the day that
this letter is postmarked, so if you can make it please do. I know that
that is a small hope, seeing as it will probably take that long to get this
letter to you.
	If you want to come home regardless you would be welcomed, I have
missed you. Your parents, I know you have talked to, but would love to have
you home. So much has changed, and I miss the old days, any amount of that
I could have back would be a comfort. I know that you may not want to come
back just for me, but there are others here that could use your help as
well. Emily for one misses you as well, none of us blames you for leaving
and we are happy that you have done so well. Please.

								Yours
Truly,

									Eric

	"Yes, this is certainly a good reason to go home. I am glad that
you still have time." She said softly.
	"Yea, I'm still not sure why I am going home, it scares me. There
is something about this letter that pulled at me. I must still have the
brotherly love for Eric, like I want to be there for him." I said staring
at my hands. She passed me back the letter and I put it in the same pocket
as the picture.
	"He will appreciate it and you may also find that which you lost."
She smiled, and her aged black face lined with wrinkles, showed what pure
happiness could be.

* * *

       As I was getting off the plane I couldn't see the black woman
through the crowd, and I realized that she had left a small bag in the seat
from which she was sitting. I grabbed it and tracked down a stewardess,
asking if she had seen the black woman that I was sitting with. She smiled
and shook her head, telling me that there was no black woman in my row.
       "No one? That's not right." I said slowly. She checked a piece of
paper that she had marked which seats were taken and which were not.
       "Yes sir, there was no one in your row." She said slowly, looking at
me nervously.
       "Right. I must be thinking about the row in front of me I'm sorry."
I smiled trying not to sound crazy. I left the plane and the airport
opening the bag as I was driving my rental down the road that ran through
fields and trees. A silver chain fell into my hand with a semi-ornate cross
hanging from it, and a piece of folded paper.
       "I hope you find what you lost, suga'. Yours forever." That was all
that the note said and I folded it, dangling the chain in front of me. It
was a very nice necklace and I put it on, as I was driving down the road.
I did not know who she was and had a feeling that I would meet her again in
one way or another. The cross hung lightly on my chest and eased a
nervousness that had settled there earlier.
       The funeral was the next day and I went dressed in a long sleeved
black shirt and a pair of slacks. Fancier then I would have ever dared
dress in my youth, but I had changed. My facial hair which made me look
several years older I had almost shaved, but decided just to trim it. The
line was long and I arrived to be about half way through it. I left it and
began to mingle not sure I wanted to go to the front of it yet. Eventually
I did, and I saw his face so quiet and peaceful. He looked happy at least.
       "Jackie?" I looked around as my name came across the room. A young
man, possibly `boy', came striding toward me, gleaming. His hair was a dark
dirty blonde, but his eyes were a dark crystal blue. I would have thought
that he had stolen them from the man lying forever sleeping, only a few
feet away. Had I not known him in the past, I would have said he was his
brother. In reality, only in miniature, he had the same sweet smile and
sparkle in his eye that had always entertained me growing up.
       "It is you!" He leapt up and wrapped his arms around my neck. After
our embrace broke he drug me over to the consoling line and pushed me up to
a woman that I was not sure that I recognized. Her hair was long and dark
but her smile was unforgettable.
       "Emily!" I said joyously.
       "That's right I forgot that you knew Brian's wife."
       "Wife?!" I said in surprise.
       "Yea, we got married shortly after you left." She said sweetly,
tears in her eyes.
       I talked to her for a few minutes before I was shuffled out of the
way by the rest of the town and went off with Eric. We talked for so long
that the crowd had died and left before we realized what time it was. We
left together, our conversation never ceasing, and I didn't want to leave
him. He had talked like he hadn't told anyone anything in so long. It was
dark when we ended up at the Slick Rock Holler.
       We sat on the rocks by the moonlight talking, and he had begun to
talk about his brother's death and the things that he had known about his
brother.
       "It was painful, he had an irregular heartbeat, they said it really
shouldn't have killed him, the doctors tried to explain it like his heart
had split in two directions. Forcing it to pump to hard and trying to over
compensate. He died with his heart split in two."
       "Wow, I've never even heard that." I said as he sat next to me. I
pulled him close to me and placed my arm around his shoulder.
       "You know he never talked about this place to me. But I know what it
was like for him to come here." I jumped as he said this, what exactly did
he know.
       "Really, and what was it like for him?"
       "His journals...they were always pure bliss when he talked about
this place and the two of you here. I think he loved this place as much as
he loved you." He said.
       "What did it say about me in there?" I asked wearily, unsure if I
wanted the answer.
       "Everything, I guess. He talked about...well...everything." There
was something in his voice that made me think that he knew, and there was
enough of Brian in him that I didn't care. It was something I had wrestled
with in the past, he was the perfect combination of the passion in Brian
and the strength that made him Eric, and I wanted to be his love. I didn't
understand it but being here with him after years, felt right. I was meant
to be here, and she had helped me. I owed one to her...whoever it was. I
chuckled out loud as this thought crossed through my head. Eric looked at
me in surprise and I smiled back at him with such a grin that I hoped he
would pick up on what I was feeling.
       "Jackie..." I hadn't heard that name in so long, and coming from his
lips it felt like a warm beam of sunlight.
       "Eric..." I returned his gaze and his smooth name.
       The most picture perfect cinematic moment flowed over us as we
leaned forward and kissed each other gently on the lips. It was that moment
that an owl hooted loudly from nearby and we both jumped laughing.
       "I've waited so long..." He began. I put a finger to his lips and
pulled him into a tight hug, kissing his forehead.



Thanks for reading my story I hope you enjoyed it. Please feel free to
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Jbark217@Gmail.com

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