Seven Mile Bridge. Michael M. Biehl

I thought he might be hurt badly enough that it would end the fight right there.

      “Son of a bitch,” said Ray. He shook his head like he was clearing cobwebs. “Nice takedown, son. Here, help an old man up.”

      Ray reached out a hand. The elbow of his shirt was soaked with blood. Jamie gripped Ray’s wrist and pulled him to his feet. Ray spun around and dropped to the floor immediately, taking Jamie down with a fireman’s carry and putting a hammerlock on him in one smooth movement. It was obvious Ray knew what he was doing. He grimaced, and veins bulged in his neck and forehead as he strained to press Jamie’s shoulders to the floor.

      Jamie went absolutely berserk. He kicked out furiously with his legs and thrashed his arms wildly. One of his kicks caught a bough of the Christmas tree, and sundry glass ornaments fell to the floor, one of them breaking, a couple of them rolling into the field of battle. In desperation, Jamie went for Ray’s face with his hands, clawing at Ray’s eyes. A cut opened up on Ray’s temple.

      That seemed to make Ray even more resolute. He spread his legs out for leverage and twisted his body such that his forearm slid across the front of Jamie’s throat in a ruthless chokehold.

      My mother appeared in the room, a look of horror on her face.

      “What on earth?” She looked at me. “For heaven’s sake! Jonathan, stop them!”

      Fat chance I was getting anywhere near those two. “It’s almost over, Mom,” I said. And it was. With the chokehold applied, Jamie would either be pinned or unconscious in a matter of seconds. Ray hooked an elbow under Jamie’s knee and rolled his shoulders flat against the floor.

      “One . . . two . . . three,” grunted Ray. He released his hold and wiped a hand across his sweaty forehead. “Whew! That’s a strong boy you got there, honeybunch.”

      “He’s not moving, Ray.” Click, click, click.

      Ray got up and straddled Jamie, whose face was as purple as a plum. Ray grabbed Jamie’s belt and lifted it a foot off the floor. Jamie sucked in a breath of air and coughed.

      “He’s all right,” said Ray. “Little rasslin’ won’t do a boy like him any harm.”

      My mother put her fists on her hips. “No more roughhousing around here. It’s Christmas Eve, for heaven’s sake. Oh, dear . . .”

      She walked over to the Christmas tree and looked down at a shattered ornament, distress in her eyes. “That was one of my grandmother’s ornaments, from Poland. Those are irreplaceable, and they’re worth a fortune.”

      Jamie got up on all fours and looked at Ray with fierce hatred. For a second, I thought Jamie was going to attack. Instead, he sprang toward the front door and bolted out of the house. My mother yelled, “Not without a jacket! Jonathan, take your brother his jacket.”

      I fetched both of our jackets and stepped out onto the front porch. Ray called after me, “Tell your brother he owes me ten bucks!”

      I heard my mother say to him, “You can’t get Jamie so excited, Ray. He’s on medication.” I had not known about that. Maybe it explained why Jamie seemed so different to me.

      Across the street, Tom and Agnes Atkins’ house was lit up like a tavern, with colored lights strung along the roof line and around the windows, same as every year. My brother’s footprints in the fresh snow led down the street and around the corner, but he was nowhere in sight. I put on my jacket and followed the footprints, even though I knew there was no possibility I could catch up to him. I had just started smoking regularly, and I took a pack of Marlboros from my shirt pocket, tapped one out, and lit it. It was a frigid night, and I couldn’t tell when I exhaled what was smoke and what was my breath. The sublime lightheadedness achieved by combining alcohol with nicotine was still new to me at that point and still an effective treatment for short-term anguish.

      As I strolled the quiet, snow-covered streets, I wondered: Why was Jamie on medication? Would he run all the way to the quarry for solitude? Why had Ray picked a fight with Jamie instead of me? How soon could I get the hell out of here and go back to Madison? Did Lori, to whom I had not spoken in over two months, have a date for New Year’s Eve?

      Mostly, I wondered how a woman who had married a man as gentle and thoughtful as my father could stand to be around that asshole.

      * *

      Little did I know then that six months later my mother and Ray would be having their picture taken shoving cake into each other’s mouths. As I set the wedding album aside, I realize it is so cold in the house that I must do something about the furnace. It takes me two hours to figure out that the problem is with the thermostat. Somebody, probably Ray, has installed a cheap, do-it-yourself automatic setback thermostat that uses a nine-volt battery. The battery from the smoke detector in the kitchen fits, and the furnace comes to life like an awakening giant.

      It occurs to me that I will not have to scrape frost off my windshield in the morning if I put my car in the garage overnight. I get the opener out of my mother’s old Chevy, which has not been driven in so long that it is covered with dust and all four tires are flat. The opener doesn’t work, but the hard-wired button on the wall does. The garage door sticks a couple of times on the way up.

      There is room for my Dodge next to my mother’s car. When I pull in, I am in the exact spot where I found my father on that warm evening in October thirty-six years ago.

7

      October, 1971

      Somebody accidentally left the engine running. That was what I thought as I walked around to the access door on the side of the garage. I had no premonition that I might find anyone in there. Or if I did, I have erased it from my memory.

      The access door was locked, which was odd, because we all knew it was pointless. The door was so warped that only about a quarter inch of the latch bolt penetrated the hole in the strikeplate, and a good push popped it open. I held my breath as I found my way through the clouds of exhaust to the button that opened the overhead door. Then I went outside to let the air clear a little before I went back in to turn off the engine.

      My father was in the driver’s seat, pitched over on his side. His face was flaccid and cherry-red. The passenger compartment reeked of alcohol and an unpleasant, ethereal odor I had never smelled before but assumed was from some kind of liquor. I remember feeling a clutch of shock in my face and chest, but I don’t remember feeling anything else except the urgent desire to get my dad out of there. I knelt down on the garage floor, got one arm under his knees and the other under his back, and carried him out of the garage in the same position a groom carries a bride over the threshold.

      I lowered him to the lawn next to the driveway as gently as I could. An hour later I would feel the pain from the muscle I pulled in my back, but I did not feel it at the time.

      His body was limp and his skin was stone cold. I had no training in CPR, but I had once seen it illustrated in a medical pamphlet. Could I remember how it went?

      Just do your best.

      Tilt head back, listen for breathing. Pinch nose and cover mouth completely with yours. Blow until you see the chest rise. Repeat. If he doesn’t start breathing, do chest compressions. How many? I forget. Try five. No, try ten. Repeat mouth-to-mouth and chest compressions. This time, try fifteen. Continue until help arrives.

      Realize you’ve fucked up already, help is not going to arrive because you stupidly started CPR before calling for it. Run to the kitchen, dial the operator (there was no 911 in Sheboygan back then), say you need an ambulance, it’s an emergency. Get to the brink of screaming with frustration at the ambulance dispatcher.

      Run back outside. Rip your shirt on the door handle. Continue CPR until you hear a siren on your block, then use your torn shirtsleeve to wipe your tears and snot off of your father’s red, lifeless face, collapse on the lawn and sob like a baby.

      Sad to say, that, apparently, was my best. One of the paramedics was nice enough to tell me that, from the looks of things, my delay in calling and poor CPR technique