Crush

          for my brother

We were dead bored. Some hot brown room
a hundred miles from home, Eagle Butte
or Dupree, I don't remember who was knocked out
behind the doctor's doors all that time, or for
what reason; no comics, no window, no talk,
no going out in the thunderstorm, the receptionist
stern, no dime from Grandma for the pop machine —
for the heck of it you spent the tedium pulling
anyhow on an Orange Crush that wouldn't budge
from its locked-in position, but you always had
some stubborn gift for hope, a way through any
ill-starred episode, though you kept to yourself
about it, so nobody stopped you, and you didn't stop,
twisting, shifting, closing the cool narrow glass door
a while to whisper at it, then trying again, quick yanks,
long breath-held draws, sudden jerks again, again, then
tugging behind your back. Grandma resolutely
reading her magazine. A rest, then more coaxing to
loosen it, one more good straight pull with skinny arms
and damn if you didn't wrench the thing out unbroken
to gasps all round the waiting room — and who
could stop you then from drinking it? But you offered
me — astonished good-example girl, the one so sure
there could be no surprises, knew how to sit like stone
as if expecting whatever strangeness came along —
you gave me anyway a swig, and your little grin, and
then was it Grandma or some stranger finally
breaking down with a dime after all,
a bottle for me too, since I'd been so still, lifted
not a finger, wasted nothing on luck or any effort
to slip from the nowhere that had us fixed? Cream
Soda for me, since orange pop always
recalled the long cartoon spot I'd never be able
to blink or blot out of Mom's wall-to-wall carpet,
even though the blame had wound up with you,
wiggly unpredictable one sent to us to absorb all
guilt, all screaming and shoving around, however
the rake got left beneath the car, or lighter fluid
dripped to the lit grill, or I went for aspirin
and downed instead Mom's sleeping pills — 18 hours
out on the living room floor, Dad stumbling in over
my feet, four a.m., back from his poker game,
and still I slept, myself the long spill that night —
wasn't there a way to blame you for that too, as if I
were a pile of blocks or a truck you'd left
in the doorway, as if you should have known
to rig a chain across the medicine cabinet, or
conjure some rescue from the T.V. you stayed
locked to — the Man with the Million Dollar Check
maybe, or Paladin, The Lone Ranger, the All-
Nighter, Prince Good-Heart Charming, Mr. Gone —
none of us understanding you were him all along,
flipping every channel to undo the spell, whip
the rabbit from the sink or the garbage pail, trying
any trick or potion you happened on to, hands
shaking, fingers snapping, to break us out
of whatever it was pressing in from all around —
why should you have had to scream — wake up,
something's wrong, my eye is black, wake up,
my ear is shot, look, wake up in there, the car's
wrecked, my legs burnt, corn's dried up, tractor
busted, speech slurred, wife gone, hands
cuffed, heart stopped — stone, wake up —
who the hell is in there anyway, asleep?

Debra Nystrom
Crazyhorse
Number 68
Fall 2005

Copyright © 2005 by Crazyhorse
and the College of Charleston
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.

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