NaFloScribMo 1

God bless Monda for giving me a reason to write. Here I was thinking of shutting the ol' bookspaz down in pursuit of lower, more pysically harmful endeavors. Let's do this.

Last time Jeffrey called, he sounded better, told me he put in for a transfer to Tupelo. "I'll be just right there," he said, of the town a hundred miles east of where we grew up. He has lived off for a while--first Lexington, now Pensacola--away from the steep bluffs of our hometown overlooking the Mississippi Delta, for five years now. He hasn't adjusted well.

I left home before he did, by 34 days. My exodus was different, though. I am always doing it differently from him. He left to drive an in-town courier van for FedEx; I left for college, with its mid-semester reprieves, fall break, spring break, not to mention Christmas and summer when I've had all the time in the world to do go back home as much as I want. As much as he wants to but can't with these gas prices and those 12-hour days. I adjusted to life away better than he did.

But was I ever really away? Not longer than a couple months. Not gone a full year before I got back to DeSoto County's sweetest water, Muffy's cocksure golden rooster. I keep trying to grow up, to say each August, "No, I will not go back until Christmas." But I can't stop going, especially when I really want to. I've never been any good at not doing what I want precisely when I want to do it. My brother has.

Jeffrey is stoic and brave--at least logical. Him with his work-a-day common sense, too much like our father, sacrificing himself for his job because if it doesn't give him purpose at least hard work makes him a man. I do not know what makes me a man, or if anything can besides biology. I like to hear my brother's voice deepening as he talks to me on the phone, as if he has just cleared phlegm from his throat. As if low tones are merit badges of self-sacrifice