He had gotten his old job-my old job-back at Bob's, staying at our house, though scaring our mom sometimes with either his nightmares and/or his drinking, and he said he was taking some kind of anti-depressant. Josh was letting his hair grow back out and had a beard going. She had us read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and I started to see that america has always been about rich white men controlling the rest of us, and any and every war is always a business proposition. As one professor put it, History is the study of why. I was hoping it wouldn't just be the memorizing of dates like my high school History classes. I liked to read some stuff, Catcher In The Rye or science-fiction like Dune, or comic books like The Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, but hearing my brother's behind-the-scenes stories of what was really going on, and reading the news and looking for the stuff behind the news and finding out just how much america has fucked with other countries, especially in the mideast, made me wonder if I could do that in college, read about that. I knew I wasn't going to do science or math, and I sure as hell wasn't going to read poetry.
On the application, at that time, you listed choices for a major and that department accepted you in, or not. Even with my grades, I made it into Michigan State University. But I liked more the nights of riding home-or just riding around-with the two of them in my brother's ole Fucking-150-Holly in the middle, her warm thigh against mine, joking with the both of them about schoolmates or neighbors or customers, venting and listening to Johnny Cash or Gillian Welch or John Prine, singing Daddy won't you take me back to Mulenburg County / down by the Green River where Paradise lay! Holly was the drinker-she toned it down under my brother's influence but still sometimes got a little crazy, which he mostly loved, unless he had to break up a fight. My brother never had more than a couple beers, so neither did I. My brother mostly always asked me along-we usually hung out at somebody's house, in somebody's basement, or apartment. But the other favorite nights were when we were with Holly. Some of my favorite saturday nights were working with him at the store, just the two of us, hopped up on Mountain Dew, making fun of the crazies and the regulars (and the crazy regulars) who came in for beer and gas and porn. My brother made my life easy-all I had to do was follow him-through school, through sports, and when he got a part-time job at Bob's Country Store down the road he got me a job there too.