Brandon (part one)

I was asleep on the floor in our living room, on a pile of blankets I was calling a bed and the living room was dark and I sat up and Brandon was sitting on the couch near my head. He was black. All black and wrong and he tried to smile at me and I sat up and I knew he didn't want to smile and he said "it's okay James." He had his leg crossed over the other and he kept trying to smile and I knew he didn't want to. He was all black. Like ashes and not shadows. His eyes dimmed and he was gone and I woke up.

I was sweating and upright. I was on the floor, on a pile of blankets, in the dark living room. I looked at the couch and Brandon was not there and I stared at the couch.

Brandon and I shared an apartment outside of town. It had one bedroom and since I was the newer roommate, I had taken the living room floor and he slept in the bedroom, although he was not there tonight. It was March and Wednesday, and every Wednesday Brandon drove forty-five minutes away to Springer and line-danced in a country and western club called "Margarets!" He would be there all night and he was young, but older than me. He wore his western shirt with lasso's and a cowboy hat and cowboy boots and he would tip his hat to me as he left each Wednesday and then he would be back late and happy.

It was 11:45 when the dream woke me up. I stared at the clock and something was wrong and I knew something was wrong. Something was wrong with Brandon but I laid back down on the pile of blankets and tried to close my eyes and go to sleep and shake the feeling. 

The phone rang and I looked at the clock on top of the television and fifteen minutes had passed. The phone rang again and it was in the adjoined kitchen. I got out of bed and went into the kitchen and answered it.

"Hello?"

"James Martin?"

"Yes?"

I had met Brandon nearly a year before. He was a shift manager at a restaurant I had been hired at as a breakfast cook. He had just moved upstate and had lucked into the position, but was living in his car. I was between girlfriends and was sleeping wherever I could. Laundromats. Bus stops. My mother's couch when the nights were too cold and my pride gave way. He had dyed his hair red white and blue for the fourth of July and he was twenty one then and I was nineteen and we talked about patriotism versus blind American following. He was a patriot and believed in revolution, but no more than occasionally talking about it with me. He dyed his hair because he had an excuse to dye it. He gave me free meals when I couldn't afford them and we drank in the parking lot after work and we became friends and people at work began to refer to us as a single entity, BrandonandJames. 

"You're listed as Brandon Steven's emergency contact," the voice at the other end of the line said.

"Maybe," I said, "I'm not sure."

Brandon got the apartment. It was cheap and he got what he paid for, but it wasn't the back of an '88 Camry and it was his. I helped him move in and after work we would go there and drink and laugh and talk and when Brandon was ten years old he and his mother lived under an overpass in Albany and for his birthday she gave him a bag of stolen medical supplies, syringes and whatnot, and he lived on stolen Doritos and his family had disappeared and he had no one. He had escaped his mother, but she had stolen him from life and he had become a refugee of sorts and somehow, I understood him. We understood each other. He got an old black and white television and a VCR and only one tape. It was Evil Dead II and we would watch it each night. Sometimes watching it, sometimes just letting it play as we shot the shit and drank and dreaded the following days work. After the first month Brandon came to me at the grill at work and said "Hey man, listen, I was thinking, you need a place to stay?" I did. "Why don't you move in with me? We'll split the bills. We should both be able to handle it fine." I agreed. I moved in the next day. It didn't take long. I only had a few boxes of shit. Brandon had the bedroom, and I put my boxes in the closet and laid blankets on the floor and it was far better than a laundromat.

"Brandon's been in an accident. We'll need you to come to the Albany Medical Center."

"What kind of accident?" I asked.

"We can't say just yet. Please come as soon as possible."

I didn't have a car and Brandon and I would drive to work together. We tried to schedule our shifts simultaneously but sometimes one of us would have to hang out in the break room for a few hours on either side of the others shift. It didn't matter. We had no where to be and there was cable in the break room and we would steal onion rings and we ate better than at home.Winter came and snow piled up and the air became thin and unbearable and at work we unloaded trucks of food together and at home we shoveled the driveway and ran to the car and smoked pot on the back porch and laughed at the cold and drank to keep warm. We rarely turned the heater on because heat is expensive and we wore coats and boots inside a lot. 

I called my mother. The only other person I knew with a car. 

After a few rings she answered. "Hello?"

"Mom?"

"James. What?"

"I need a ride."

"Can't it wait? It's quarter after twelve for Christ's sake."

"I don't think so. The hospital just called me. They said Brandon's been in an accident. I need to go to Albany Med." I noticed I was rushing my sentences. I was slurring a little. 

"Wait, slow down. What happened?"

"Mom! I don't know! Please, can you get me?"

There was silence for a moment. "Yes bud, I'm on my way. Hang on." She hung up and I put clothes on and I kept thinking about my dream and I kept thinking about Black Brandon and I kept thinking about Brandon. She was driving from Halcyon, nearly forty five minutes away from our apartment and when I was dressed I sat in the cold on the front porch and waited for her. Decades seemed to pass. There was snow in the air and on the ground and rain fell between the snow and it all barely registered.

It's okay James.