TK's Story

To me, older brothers grant the rarest, most perfect form of love to their younger brothers. This love includes an unspoken responsibility to share their purest knowledge of life, both good and bad. I have one older brother by six years. His name is Tom and we share the same father, but not the same mother. When I was fifteen he got me into a bar. We sat in the outside patio with all his fraternity brothers. They didn't call him Tom though, they called him TK, for his initials. They called me AK. We drank whisky and howled at the moon. For the first time, I felt like a man.

Tom was strong, tall, and good looking. He had emerald green eyes and fierce curly brown hair. Whenever he talked on the phone, he held the receiver to his face with his shoulder and said things like, "No doubt" and "Later on". I had never seen him cry, not once. He put a blanket over the window in his room so he could get that extra hour or two of sleep every morning. Every fiber of my being wanted to be like him. People would always tell us how we looked so much alike. I could never hear that enough.

One time, Tom offered to take me to a party with his fraternity brothers. Upon arriving, I soaked in this whole new world. A wonderfully rebellious haze hung in the air. The laughter of youth rang loud in that crowded room and I loved every moment of it. As the night wore on, Tom passed me a joint and said as only an older brother can,

"AK, you ever smoke before?"
"Um, sure. A couple times."

It would be a fate worse than death if I was exposed for the fraud I was, so I clenched my teeth and took it from him. All eyes in the room seemed glued to me at that instant. I inhaled just like Tom had before me. I remember coughing and everyone laughed, slapped hands and went back to their conversations. Tom had a big prideful grin on his face and I felt good.


****

"Hey Al, wake up. I've got some news."

My father's voice quivered in a way it never had before.

"It looks like Tom took a bad fall last night at college. He might not walk again. Your mother and I are going to leave for the airport in ten minutes, we'll call you when we get there."

Both of us looked at each other and threw up our macho faces.

"Ok, Dad."
"Ok, Al."

A couple days later I found out that Tom got drunk and fell down the stairs of his fraternity house. He would be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. I remember sleeping with a picture of him under my pillow for months after the accident. I remember the white halls of the rehab clinic and how they smelled of disinfectant. I remember looking into his eyes as nurses massaged his lifeless body. I remember the way he pretended he cared about who won the Final Four as he watched it from his bed. I remembered wishing that I was in that wheelchair instead of him. I remember that he never cried. Not once.

That was ten years ago.

Today, Tom lives in San Francisco by himself working long hours at a decent job. When wheeling himself up some of the larger hills, he takes breaks to smoke a Camel Light. I went to his college and I joined his fraternity. When climbing those black, cold stairs that he fell down all that time ago I see his emerald eyes for a moment and he whispers to me,

"Do it better than me, AK"