by bc woods"He's going to offer me a tangerine, Brandon. I know it. I just know it." My brother put his hands to his hips and breathed, bending over as if the air had been knocked out of him. He was on the verge of a panic attack. We were already half an hour late to help my father put on his friend Marco's roof.

"Bryan, you don't know that for sure... for all you know he might be completely out of tangerines," I said, not sure exactly how to comfort someone with a chronic fear of being offered fruit. I had been up in his room for ten minutes, trying to talk him down enough so that we could leave. So far, my attempts to calm him had only resulted in his imagining more and more vivid depictions of the ways in which Marco might try to offer him a tangerine.

"No. You don't know how Marco is. He always has tangerines. If he sees me picking up shingles he'll offer me one, I just know it. I can feel it." My brother suddenly turned around, and in a Mexican accent said, "Hey Bryan! Want a tangerine!

"That's how he is, you don't even know. He always says, 'Hey Bryan, my friend! Want a tangerine?' Then he touches me. Who does that?'" Bryan put his fingernails in his mouth, started chewing nervously, and exasperatedly huffed on his knuckles. "Fuck!" he shouted suddenly, stomping on the floor in frustration.

My brother has a lot of problems in social situations. Some people fear wild animals, cancer, or being run over by trains. My brother fears shaking hands, having a conversation... and apparently being offered tangerines. Even as little as a year ago the only way he felt comfortable talking to someone was if it happened over the Internet. Digging out a stump with a pocket knife is easier than trying to get him to go to a public place other than school.

"Bryan, it's okay. Just say 'no.' He'll leave you alone. It's no big deal."

"Brandon, you don't understand! He'll look sad if I say no. But what am I supposed to do with a tangerine? My hands are all dirty. I know it has a peel, but I can't peel it with my gloves on. I could take my gloves off, but then what? Then I get juice all over my hands and they'll be sticky all day long, that's what. I could just be picking up crap all day long with dried juice crap all over my fingers and.... FUCK!" Bryan fell back into his plush computer chair, utterly exhausted from having imagined the tortures of eating a juicy fruit, and having to take his gloves off.

Bryan turned on his computer, looked at his Evanescence screensaver and said "Brother, why can't everyone be like Amy Lee? She's so beautiful." For some reason my brother uses Evanescence as the contrast by which every evil in the world is magnified.

"Can we go help Dad now?" I had given up on trying to reason with him.

Bryan looked at the gothic features of Amy Lee for another few seconds, sighed, turned off his monitor, stood up and shouted "FUCK!" before putting on his shoes.

As we walked to the car, my brother shuffled his feet while muttering without fail about tangerines: "God damn it, why does he always say 'my friend'" and "no one has a soul in this whole God damn house." Finally, we got to his car where he pulled out his keys, bound together on a clear plastic key chain, molded into a pregnant woman's abdomen, complete with a fetus suspended in water. I stared at it for a moment, not believing such an object could possibly exist. I was only visiting for a week, on break from college, and I had never seen the item before.

"Bryan, where did you get that key chain?"

"Rachel gave it to me. I was tired of being the only person at school without a baby."

"Bryan, Harbor High isn't that bad. I'm sure lots of people there don't have children." He had been going to the town's "Special Needs" high school ever since his social problems had made it impossible for him to attend regular high school.

My brother looked at me from the corner of his eyes. "Remember that day you came to pick me up and I didn't come out for fifteen minutes after everyone else?"

"Yeah," I acknowledged, climbing into the passenger seat.

"That's because the students with babies get out fifteen minutes early so they can pick their children up from day care."

"Jesus Christ, Bryan." In response, my brother put his key in the ignition, put in an Evanescence CD, nodded at nothing in particular, and shouted "FUCK!"

"You really ought to stop shouting 'fuck' all the time, Bryan."

"And everyone at Harbor High should stop not having souls." To further help me understand the degree to which he is not able to function normally, my brother made a wookie sound, and backed out of the driveway.

We got to the roof just in time for my father to announce that yes, he had indeed forgotten something again. "You guys can just start without me, I'll be back in about ten minutes." My father has been "forgetting" essential items at the start of every roof job I have ever done with him for the past five years.

"Dad, if you want to go have breakfast, just say you want to go have breakfast." I sighed.

"I'll be back in ten minutes, Brandon." My father got in his truck, and drove away, leaving my brother and I with a pair of shovels to start tearing off the old roof.

As my brother is afraid of heights as well as being offered tangerines, I climbed onto the roof by myself and began the long, tedious job of ripping off the old shingles. My brother stayed on the ground beneath me, so that he could pick them up and throw them into the back of a truck trailer to be hauled away. I would occasionally watch him from up on the roof, to laugh at the way in which he would twist his entire body all the way around and shot put the shingles into the trailer bed. Somehow the motion reminded me of a dog chasing its own tail.

On numerous occasions, my brother has explained to me that he enjoys pretending he's an ancient medieval warrior when he's working or just going to school. Usually, he's hauling away the corpses of the dead from the battle field. Sometimes, he's throwing stones at ogres. Needless to say, this kind of role play tends to get him very worked up.

"Brother!" he shouted "Behold! I am Shingle-Thrower the Splendid!" before pounding his chest and making wookie noises. His lanky frame was covered with wood and shingle dust.

Too late he realized his mistake. He had made too much noise... had announced his presence to the demon he was afraid to face. From the roof ridge I could feel the vibrations of the front door opening on its stiff frame. Two footsteps echoed off of wet concrete, like dragon talons on the floor of a cave.

The way in which my brother's body went rigid, as his fingers dropped the shingles he had been carrying let me know without seeing who had exited the house. Even from the distance of the roof I could see my brother's eyes widen in terror.

It was my father's overly-friendly Mexican friend Marco.

"Bryan, my friend! How are you doing, buddy!" I tracked the bald pate of Marco's tiny head as he made his way to my brother. Somehow, though I would have thought it could have become no more taut, my brother's back stiffened as Marco hugged him and thanked him for coming to help put on his roof.

"I was just inside of my house, little buddy. And I was doing my dishes, and suddenly I heard my little friend Bryan..." Marco looked up at the looming figure of my tall and stone silent brother before he continued, "oh, Bryan I guess you're not so little anymore! You sure are getting big, my friend...." For another three minutes Marco rattled on about how much my brother had grown since he had seen him yesterday, as my brother stood before him like a man being read his death sentence. Bryan closed his eyes, as the reality of the situation had become more than he could bear.

Marco continued, not noticing the discomfort of my younger sibling. "I was just doing the dishes and I heard you out here, and I was thinking about how cold it was, you know? So I thought to myself 'I sure bet he's hungry out here.' Then I looked right next to the sink and I found you a little snack, Bryan."

Marco's hand extended. The blood drained from my brother's face.

"Hey Bryan! Do you want a tangerine?"

Like a warrior king, looking to the skies and coming to terms with his imminent death, my brother took a deep breath. Slowly, as though the air around him had become viscous and unproductive to motion, Bryan craned his neck until he was looking at me.

The profanity my brother shouted caused birds to fly from their perches on nearby trees.

Posted by BC Woods at 12:00 AM

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