A few nights later she sat on the nubby brown couch at Lou’s apartment. They had eaten a mediocre pizza and watched a movie to match, set in a future containing a wooden Keanu Reeves. Margaret slid the DVD back into its case and yawned.
“You know, Joe loved science fiction.”
At the sound of the twin’s name Margaret suddenly resembled a house pet, a cat or dog with ears perking up. Lou hadn’t mentioned him again since that Saturday afternoon in the coffee shop, and she’d been trying to think of a way to reintroduce the subject.
“Is that how you ended up watching so much Star Trek?”
Lou nodded and crammed the last piece of pizza into his mouth. She held her breath and waited. Then, in a posthumous portrait of words as his surviving brother spoke, Joey began to take form.
Sickly children either become television addicts or they are voracious readers; Joey was both. Joey read the Dune series over and over and over, loving the complex mythology and the idea of using will power to rule others, and oneself. His favorite quote was how fear is the little death. Despite his fragility, Joey’s whole existence was a total lack of fear of death.
He hated his disabilities, and avoided mirrors. But he loved anything to do with Star Trek. What he found so inspiring was the idea of a future society where beings with all sorts of handicaps or differences still had their places and their strengths.
When the boys were still little, Joey became a connoisseur of serial television. The amount of time Joey could go out and play was limited. Sometimes Lou watched old series on television with him during the afternoons. Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, Star Trek and Lost in Space were their particular favorites. Margaret had been a closet fan of most of those shows all her life. Hearing how Joey cajoled his twin Lou into watching the shows, and then turned him into a follower of them, was fun.
One afternoon, Lou told her, the television show credits had begun rolling down the screen. In the green glow of the darkened cellar room Joey looked over to where his brother slouched and methodically cracked peanut shells.
“Sometimes I get this feeling,” Joey said quietly.
“What’s that?” his brother mumbled, his mouth full of peanuts.
“Like I have a hit and run life.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“A couple different things.” Joey kept looking at Lou until he was convinced he had his brother’s full attention. “I get born into this cool world, but I can’t run, or play ball, or even walk right. My life is a hit and run accident. First the accident happened (my birth) and afterwards life left me behind at the scene of the crash to deal with it.
“Or maybe the whole point of it is, it’s like I was always meant to deal with it. That I have to get up and run, even after being hit. Make the best of things.”
Lou swallowed the last of the nuts. “Maybe there’s a third option,” he objected. “Do you ever stop to think that maybe it’s the same for everyone? All of us live in a random universe, where every day totally random stuff happens. Good or bad, it’s always a surprise.” Lou sat up and leaned over the messy, scarred table to emphasize his words. “Maybe,” he went on slowly as he thought it through, “maybe it can be positive. Good stuff happening. Hits like hit songs or movies, runs like home runs and a player’s lucky streak.”
“Maybe,” Joey said. “But not for most of us. And not me, that’s for sure. My hit and run life is the version that occurred on the back road in the middle of the night. The next morning there I was, lying by the side of the road.
“But I know what you’re saying.” Generously Joey added, “I guess I’ve been trying ever since to turn it into the hit and run version you mean.”
NOTES: ©Jadi Campbell 2012. “Hit and Run” is the first chapter of my book Broken In: A Novel in Stories. This story will run all month. Broken In and my other novels are available at Amazon as paperbacks and eBooks.
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