Episode 1: Dead and gone and God’s probably ok with that

I’m too old to be worrying about him. I’m his brother not his fucking dog-sitter.

It’s late and Harlan wonders if he said that out loud. When you live alone long enough, you sometimes talk to yourself. And he feels guilty for the thought whether he said it or not. Especially about the dog.

Worrying was easier when he didn’t give a shit. He feels the pulses in his head.

Like when bread in a toaster is just some thing you’re thinking about and then you can smell it and it’s a real smell and you know it’s there but you don’t need to do anything about it. And then it’s burning and holy shit you got a fire in the kitchen. That’s what it’s like being the brother to him.

Wally. It angers him that there’s no cure for what Wally does to him when he’s off fucking up again.

He should have been back hours ago. They don’t hunt at night.

Forcing himself awake in front of the TV with the sound off, Harlan blinks hard to make the floaters stop. He’s can’t get the eye drops in without spilling them all over his face.

The all-day headache that’s been hiding behind his ears throbs to the rhythm of his breathing. He reaches for the roll of paper towel beside his chair and blows his nose. The effort wakes up the bee crawling around inside his eye looking for a good place to sting.

Fuck Wally. Last week he waltzes in with his fucking hey Harlan is it you cooking tonight?

Gone for a year without a word if he’s dead or alive and now he walks in like it was a fucking joke.

Except it’s not a joke. You don’t have the common decency to tell your brother you’re not dead when you disappear for a year? He’s thirty-nine. We’re not kids anymore.

That speech in his head he’s practiced a million times. About what it means to be a family even if was just the two of them. He’s done it so many times it’s worn a track in his brain. He’d caught himself muttering parts of it out loud so often that sometimes in a store people look over thinking he’s talking to them.

Sorry, just crazy Harlan and they’d laugh and he’d smile and laugh back to show he wasn’t dangerous. And some folks would nod sympathy because they heard about Wally and because they know there’s times when family gives you so much shit you could bite your own ass you’re so mad.

And that was for the first three months. Then Christmas came and no Wally and people stop asking. And not a word from him. Even if he was in prison you’d know.

Once August comes around it’s a year. Harlan figures now he’s probably travelling somewhere like he always wanted to.

Or maybe he’s finally realized how irritating he is to everyone else in the world and he’s decided to do the rest of us a big favour and walk off the face of the earth somewhere. Or he’s pissed off the wrong dog and someone gave him a little help with that.

Harlan talked to the pastor once about all this. He’d didn’t exactly say it in those words but he basically told Harlan if he needed to think Wally was dead and gone in order to stop worrying about him, then God was probably ok with that.

And then Wally walks in. Making jokes about whose turn it is to cook tonight. Harlan didn’t say anything in case it’s a fucking night walker. Wally looked pretty good for a zombie so Harlan told him to fuck himself and went back to pretending his brother was dead.

Episode 2: Hunting

He’d been back a week. They didn’t talk much about anything. Harlan’s not going to give him the satisfaction of asking shit about what he said about where he’d been. Last night Wally said deer hunting opened tomorrow. That’s today. Harlan heard him drive off in the morning while it was still dark.

Anderson Cooper’s on the TV with an umbrella. It’s on mute. Harlan smells the sweat under his arms. He’s soaked through his shirt again.

His heels hurt because he’s been sleeping with his feet up on the coffee table. He thinks he’ll give Patti the guard poodle snoring in his lap a few more minutes because she looks so peaceful. He’s too tired to move anyway.

He’ll wait until Anderson’s done before getting up to go to bed.

Between his socks, there’s a street in Waynesboro, Mississippi. What’s so important that Anderson’s standing there clutching a mic and yelling at the camera and pointing at the sky behind him? He’s getting rained on, his jacket flapping in the wind and he’s wearing a blue helmet that says press. An industrial trash container skips along behind him rolling end over end. Yeah, like you want to have a plastic hat on your head when you get hit with a five-tonne dumpster.

He studies Anderson’s mouth, guessing at what he’s saying. Probably that Mississippi gets tornadoes. Now that’s a scoop worth risking your life for.

He’d gotten used to it being just the two of them, him and Wally. When the brothers turned thirty-eight, he figured they were probably all the family either of them would ever have. Neither of them had to say it. It was just something they knew.

A moth flies out of the darkness behind the TV and crashes into Anderson’s blue helmet, bouncing off the screen and landing on his ankle. It lays flat against his white sock, its wings an iridescent swatch of green with streaks of orange. It pretends to be dead. He can’t flick it off without waking Patti.

Outside, a coyote howls. He listens for Willard and Izola’s German shepherd at the farm across the road to sound the alarm. Nothing. Then another coyote, a rising riff of yips. The female from the pair that had staked out the bush around the toolshed back of the house. Just passing by on their way to Izola’s chickens.

He combs his fingers along Patti’s back, roughing the fur at her shoulders and then flattening his hand over the back of her head. Since Wally’s back, he’s got to worry about her too. She’s the only one in the world who can tell the brothers apart and she’s always had her favourite.

She’s content to be fed and pampered by Harlan, but it’s Wally she’s been waiting for. A year’s a long time in a dog’s life. She heard his truck come up the driveway and started barking and whimpering and throwing herself at the back door. And then he just steps in and she does zoomies around the kitchen so hard Wally has to grab her and hold her down so she doesn’t hurt herself. One belly rub and it’s like he never left.

Harlan is terrified that she’ll follow him out at night. A poodle doesn’t have the sense not to chase coyotes into the woods.

Harlan knows it’s a myth that identical twins can read each other’s minds. But the brothers were always thinking the same stuff. He sometimes thought of something funny that made him laugh and then he’d look over to see Wally looking at him and grinning like he heard the joke too. Maybe that’s just because they were close. Maybe that’s how it is with other kids the same age who grow up doing everything together.

It’s like border collies when they’re raised in a pack. When one finds a rat hole and starts digging, suddenly there’s seven asses in the air and your lawn’s getting ripped up. That one dog doesn’t call the others. He just goes after that rat and the others know to join in.

Everyone in Enosburg Falls who knew them as kids would joke they had telepathic superpowers, and the brothers went along with it because it didn’t hurt anyone and it was fun.

As two electricians working together in Dad’s business in a small town, sometimes they even did the routine in front of a customer. Harlan would look at Wally and say so the customer could hear, you know what tool I’m thinking of right now? And Wally would say, yeah, the 10-inch channel lock.

And then Wally would pull the right pliers from behind his back because he could see the pipe Harlan was working on and he’d need the 10-inch channel lock to grab it.

After Dad died, they just continued the family act because that’s what Harlan thought they should do. Identical twins. The Waller brothers, electricians who live in their father’s house six miles north of Enosburg Falls.

No one in the county can tell them apart unless it’s by their trucks. Wally’s a pickup man. Harlan drives the van. They tell people Harlan’s the older brother on account of him being born first by a few minutes, another joke they make whenever Wally’s late or behind on a job.

He can’t remember a time when he wasn’t the older brother. Of course, Wally’s free to do whatever he wants. It’s Wally’s life, not his.

He cradles Patti in his hands, rocking her to wake her up and lowers her to the floor. What would Wally do if it was the reverse? What if he just ran off from Wally and then showed up after a year to say he’s been shacking up in Burlington with a woman and there’s a baby?

Taking care of everyone else isn’t in his job description anymore. The moth has crawled to his leg above the sock. He picks up a Reader’s Digest and edges it close. Then his other hand shoots out and nails it. Trapped between his palm and the magazine, the wings beat frantic rhythms against his fingers. What does Wally want from him anyway? He steps out the back door. He opens his hands and waits until the moth flies away.

Episode 3: Hunting part 2

He looks down the lane at the garage. The dark shape of his van, no pickup. Maybe he’s run away again.

A cloud slides over the moon and it’s like God just turned the lights off.

Thanks, you’re not making this any easier God.

So now he’s talking out loud to God too about this? Fuck it. What ya gonna do. He knows where he’s gone and he’s not going to sleep so might as well go after him.

He boots the starter twice on the Yamaha before the motorcycle roars to life. That’ll clear out the coyotes. He rumbles down the drive in first gear.

The shoulder he broke in high school football creaks as he stretches his back and shivers off the cold. He eases forward, watching the front wheel find a path through the gravel. A minute later, he banks north onto the highway, leans in under the wind and lets the bike chase after the flickering light painting trees against the darkness.

Their father taught them to hunt whitetails. They’d try to match his strides along the trail but not so as to crack something underfoot and wake a bear. After a few hundred feet, he’d stop and decipher something on a blackberry thicket and point to a spot beside a wall of ragged cedars.

See that, that’s where we go. A hidden door in the forest just opens and they slip in.

They’d go through, disappearing from the world beyond the forest to a place where sound became mostly leaves and insects and animals humming and buzzing and scratching. It smelled of dark green and woody brown and scat black and splashes of yellow and pink with live things dying, decaying and growing. And when they got to where they were going, they’d sit for hours, still, waiting in a heavy silence that was slow and immense, listening until they heard the sound of a buck’s breathing.

Harlan thinks if there ever was a time they could read each other’s thoughts, it was then. They’d choke off giggles so their father wouldn’t hear.

When they were twelve and the three of them were deer hunting, their mother walked out. On all of them. Their father put the guns away and said that was the end of hunting.

After high school, Wally wanted them to ride out on their motorcycles to visit places. Harlan said they couldn’t both leave because Dad would be alone. He was signing up to take a course in Montpelier to be an electrician.

Wally left the next day but came back the same night to say he’d take the course too. When they graduated, their father bought them a van. Wally traced the letters Waller and Sons Electricians on the sides and Harlan painted them in.

A year later was when Dad died. He was pulling cable at a new hotel in St. Albans and he just sat down and stopped working. They buried him in Berkshire Cemetery up Reservoir Road. On the way home from the funeral, Wally asked if they could get a new truck because Dad’s was shot. An F-150 would be good because they needed room for hauling stuff.

Wally’s truck’s on the shoulder right where Harlan knew he’d be. He turns off the engine and guides the motorcycle in behind.

Probably sleeping in the cab. Not comfortable but good enough for going back into the woods as soon as the sun comes up. Harlan picks his way along the ditch up the passenger side.

“Hey Wally,” he says tapping the window. He pulls the door open. Empty.

He wouldn’t be hunting in the dark. Maybe taking a pee.

The wind turns the leaves upside down where the trail starts.

“Wally! You here? It’s Harlan.”

His shoulder aches with the cold. He listens. Something crackles in the bush. He braces himself against the freezing air coming from the north.

“Wally, where the hell are ya?” he says.

He climbs in the truck and blows on his hands. A little tree air freshener hangs from the mirror. It would be mean to tear it off. He leans on the horn and watches the edge of the forest. His fingers are stiff and numb.

Episode 4: Found

He reaches for the flashlight under the seat, gets out and starts down the trail. Ten yards in, he finds Wally sitting on the ground in a spot of moonlight, his legs sticking straight out. Around him is fresh dirt, like a newly dug garden, where the massive roots of a fallen pine had ripped themselves from the ground when it went over. His rifle lay across his lap.

“Jesus Wally, you scared the crap out of me,” Harlan says.

Wally doesn’t answer. Harlan steps over a root strung like a trip wire from the bottom of the upended tree. He kneels down and points the flashlight in Wally’s face. There’s a spray of dirt on his lips. His eyelids flutter.

Harlan hooks his arms under him and pulls him to his feet. He has him up and then draped limp over his shoulders. He’s moving quickly but it feels too slow. He’s crabwalking sideways to get past the sharp stakes that jab up from the roots. Something grabs at his leg.

Wally’s breath is damp against his neck as he buckles him in. Harlan smells the forest clinging to him, moist and earthy and cool, remembering the smell of Wally starting to laugh when a fox glided by their hiding place years ago. Harlan had almost knocked him out clapping his hand over his mouth. He presses back on Wally’s chest, easing him upright in the seat. Part of a leaf falls from his forehead. Harlan brushes it away. One side of his mouth is loosely open.

“Wally” he says. He hears a response. Or maybe it’s just in his thoughts.

Harlan takes the keys from the sun visor and swings the truck around. Wally slumps forward against the seatbelt. The headlights hit the road. He stretches his arm across to keep Wally back. Thirty miles to St. Albans but no one on the road. He drives in total darkness, his eyes searching for asphalt. Five miles gone, he risks a sideways glance.

“You should go for them. You can all live here. I’ll move into the basement and you and her take Dad’s bedroom. We put the baby right beside in your old room.”

Wally’s head nods. Harlan’s not sure if he’s answering or rocking with the road.

“You bring Jordan home. The house is big. It would be good to have a boy growing up here again. You can take him hunting.”

Wally says something he can’t hear. Harlan feels the effort in his mind.

A blue light flashes up in the mirror and then lights the cab. The siren yells once and then stops. Harlan swerves onto the shoulder and presses Wally back.

He leaves the truck running as he jumps out and walks quickly towards the blinking headlights of the cruiser, his hands palms up where they can be seen.

“Hello, Wally Waller! Haven’t seen you around here in forever.” The cop appears in the light and passes his flashlight over Harlan’s face.

“We saw Harlan at the legion. He said he hadn’t heard from you in a year. So why you driving my roads like Richard Petty?”

“Francis, my brother’s in the truck. He’s hurt bad.”

Francis flicks the light at the cab’s rear window. He turns away, barking orders. “St. Albans. I’ll let them know. Keep up with me.”

Harlan slides in behind the wheel as the cruiser skids up beside him with the window open. Wally’s sleeping with his chin on his chest.

“Wally, you take it down the road right behind me, ya hear.”

The trees beside the road appear closer in blinking blue. He rubs his palms against the steering wheel and focuses on the red tail lights. He keeps them between his hands not needing the road. He closes the distance to the cruiser.

The red lights between his hands. And then the hospital is there.

The emergency parking’s empty. The cruiser pulls into the first bay, Harlan right beside. Francis rips the door open, unsnaps Wally’s seatbelt. Hands reach in and take him away on a stretcher. Harlan realizes his eye is a screaming brush fire again. He squeezes his eye shut. And then the pain goes away. Harlan watches Francis talking to a nurse and hears his name.

He’s not needed now. He wants a few minutes. He backs Wally’s truck out and parks in a spot marked “Visitor.” He ticks off in his head what he should do. Wally’s wallet would be in the glove compartment even though Harlan was always telling him that’s just giving the thief your identity along with your truck.

With the wallet is an unmailed letter. Addressed to him in Wally’s handwriting. From an address in Burlington. He looks inside.

Dear Harlan.

That’s all. A single sheet of paper. He opens the wallet and finds a picture of a baby. A woman’s arms hold the child up for the camera. The baby’s smiling at the person taking the picture. Harlan turns it over. On the back, in a woman’s writing it says Jordan Emily Waller at six months.

Jordan Emily.

He stares at the baby’s face. Wally’s eyes. His eyes.

Girls can hunt.

Francis taps on the window.

“Wally, you should come now.”

They walk into a room. Plastic chairs and a coffee machine. No one else is there. Francis gestures to a chair at the end of a row and they sit down.

A doctor comes in from behind a curtain. “Mr. Waller? You’re the brother?”

“He’s the brother,” Francis says.

The doctor coughs and brings another chair close but doesn’t sit down.

“Your brother had a stroke. He died. I’m sorry.”

Harlan doesn’t want to look at him. He notices the doctor’s shoes need shining. The shoes move away. Then the nurse’s shoes. She sits down.

“I’m very sorry about your brother, Mr. Waller. We’ll need to get some information for the forms.”

He heard her papers.

“Your brother’s name is Harlan Waller?”

Francis puts his hand on his arm. “It’s gonna be ok, Wally.”

He can’t talk because he’s hearing him now.

It will be better if she knows a father. It would be easier. The rest is all just paperwork and the lawyers. You can do this Harlan. Like you’ve always done.

Harlan puts his hand up to the nurse to signal he needs time. He looks around the room, half expecting him to bounce in and ask who’s cooking dinner.

And then he hears him again.

It’s why I came back.

He nods and sits up.

The nurse thinks it’s for her.

She hands him some papers and he sees his own name at the top.

THE END

---

Directed by
SpookyB

Screenplay by
SpookyB

Produced by 
SpookyB