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You’re sure days without Johnny existed, you just don’t remember any of them.
Childhood was a gooey mess—a twinkling, dissonant carousel of memories wrapped in gauze. Sounds muffled, like the drone of a television in the next room. But it was all him. To separate him from the moments would be like pulling a tooth - leave you running your tongue over the empty socket, just gum and iron and absence.
All your memories were his, too.
The earliest ones were caramelized, reduced down in the melting pot of youth until they were only feelings and blurry images. When you tried to grasp them, substantiate them, they tumbled through your fingers like oil. Like trying to bottle the light after a camera flash.
Some clawed through the haze, though:
Make-believe on the matted, yellow carpet. Plastic figurines in the hallway. Crumbs on his chin. His little hand in yours, nails small and delicate, tugging you across the summer pavement.
When you were old enough to wonder after his near-constant presence in your home, you were still too young to understand. You weren’t related, and your mother didn’t seem to like his very much. He used to take your toys and pinch your side as you smiled next to him in polaroids. He spoke too loudly and too quickly. Would never sit still. Misbehaving came to him like breathing, and came to you like jumping from a tall, tall building.
But weekends, birthdays, holidays, summers - there he’d be. Scribbling under your kitchen table, nabbing the baking that was still cooling on the counter. He was a weed in the backyard dirt, always pulling you into trouble. You hated him the way kids could.
Your first solid memory comes from when you were six and a storm came knocking on your roof. Sheets of pelting rain bombarded the windows alongside the howling wind. Lightning flashed and thunder roared. It sounded like a monster - a great big mud-monster come to take the walls down with its heavy, sticky fists. You remember trembling under the covers in the dark, wincing at every booming clap from the angry sky, but also that Johnny wasn’t frightened. He was angry.
You remember him leaving the safety of your blanket cocoon to peek under the bed. Search the closets and cabinets, lift the lids from copper pots. Swing open the back door to level the garden with one beady, accusatory eye.
He was hunting for the thunder. Stalking its path through the house to tell it to stop.
To tell it that it was scaring you, and that it wasn’t allowed to scare you. He would have fought it with his hands if he could’ve found it.
And so, you were nine the first time you two came home with blood in your mouths and welts on your knuckles. You won them in a playground fight - a thing that always seemed to find Johnny wherever he stepped. Meat-handed bullies didn’t like Johnny, and he didn’t like them. You were a little way away, swinging on the monkey bars, when you had heard the chanting.
Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!
The bullies started it. Your mother didn’t seem to care, though.
What is wrong with you? How could you? I raised you better than this. If Johnny jumped off a bridge, would you do it too? Go and think about what you’ve done!
And you did.
You sat on the stairs where you were told to and thought for a long while. But no matter how hard you tried to make the pieces fit, you couldn’t wrap your mind around anything, anything, other than joining in. That’s just what loyalty was:
matching bruised fists, hand in hand in a freefall.
From between the chipped and peeling banister, Johnny waved at you in his kitchen corner - little palm covered in scratches and grass stains, smiling a gap-toothed grin.
You and he were sewn together, sutured like a wound. He was every part of you that was good and brave, and you knew this even then.
You hated him. He was your best friend.
He was you. You loved him.
What else mattered, really?
Johnny’s parents used to pack his sisters in a van when school was done and roll out to the countryside without him. They said he didn’t do well in the car and that it was simpler for everyone if he stayed with your family.
He’d stay with you for weeks over the summer - fold his clothes neatly into the drawers of your dresser and tuck himself into your bed with you.
He was a notorious cover hog. He snored. He woke with the dawn and shook you up with him. The two of you would slip out the screen door and into the dewy morning while your parents slept, and you wouldn’t return until sunset. You drank from water spouts and hid cereal by the front steps, just so you wouldn't be caught and kept inside.
Sometimes you would play hopscotch with the other latchkeys. Or pick dandelions from the sidewalks to hold them under your chins, see the yellow glow. Or chase the ice cream trucks that lumbered down the winding streets, lungs chugging, sneakers smacking on the cobblestones. Neither of you ever had any coins in your pocket; you just wanted to be the first to touch the colorful box. Feel the warm aluminum rumbling under your hands like a caught and breathing metal beast.
Most of the time, though, you were in your forest.
It was just a tiny, suburban thing. Your house backed onto it. Sparse trees and a small creek on the other side of your fence.
But Johnny was absolutely determined to tame it. Map it. Said it was begging to be explored. You would venture out into the crisp sunrise when everything was quiet save for the birds chirping their good mornings, two bright-eyed cartographers with markers and notebooks. Butter knives in your back pockets in case you came across lions. You’d stomp through the underbrush beneath the grey sky and note the paths and the trees. Pick flowers and lay them where you stepped, in case you lost your way. Sing stupid songs when you got bored:
French-fried eyeballs,
Greasy grimy gopher guts,
Marmaladed monkey meat,
Dirty little birdy feet!
French-fried eyeballs, greasy grimy gopher guts,
And me without a spoon!
Johnny would stop often to draw in his map - squat down to the dirt and balance his book on his knobby knee. He sketched the trails and the squirrels, and you gave them silly names. Sitting by the creek one day, skipping stones, he drew the two of you: lopsided, crayon stick figures with swirly eyes and gangly arms.
Tha’s me, he had pointed. Tha’s you.
Why did you draw me all funny?
‘Cause yer funny lookin’.
You kept the map pinned up with colorful tacks on your bedroom wall. Every few days, when a new section was completed, you’d add to it.
At night, when you were supposed to be asleep, Johnny would point to the mottled papers like a stuffy professor and whisper. Whisper about where you would scout the next day, theorize about what you might discover. He dreamt of caves with hoards of shining gold, dragons covered in glittery scales that shot fire from their nostrils. Beasts he could defeat without ever taking a scratch.
If you were going to be explorers, adventurers, you were going to be the best.
Johnny always wanted to be the best.
Your forest was somewhere you could hide when your parents’ voices got loud and mean. Somewhere you could build forts - Castle MacTavish! - or play swords with sticks - You’re not playing fair, Johnny! - or chase each other with worms you found in the wet dirt. Somewhere you could learn the world on your own terms.
When you got older and grew far too cool for these things, your forest became a place where you could talk. Preteens spilling secrets between the poplars. You could say anything there, loud or ugly, mean or sad. You’d talk about movies, crushes, the trouble he was having at school. Bullies and teachers who didn’t see him. Who you were and things you promised you would never be.
Ah’m gonna have th’coolest car. And ah’m gonna kill all these bad guys and win a bunch o’medals. And ah’m gonna have a whole mess o’kids, and ah’ll never make ‘em feel small.
You were even older when Johnny would sneak out on school nights. Walk to your house and shine a flashlight through your window. One night, he begged you, begged you, to steal your dad’s clippers and meet him in the dim woods. Convinced you to shave that awful hawk onto him.
You buzzed him, lopsided and crude, right there under the moon. Let the birds take the fallen locks for their nests.
The two of you spent so much time in those woods - if one could even call them that - that you convinced your mom to let you camp out there one night. You were fifteen, now! Practically adults! Come on. Please?
All you packed was a tent and a handful of granola bars. Great adventurers once again. So young and already in a tug of war: youth versus adulthood, safety versus freedom. Pulling on both ends at the same time and only getting your shoulders wrenched from their sockets.
The creek that ran through the woods was not a river by any means. Then, it only came up to Johnny’s knees, your thighs. And it was just freezing, so cold it knocked the wind from your lungs. For all your lives up to that point, you had been taller than Johnny. You were able to stand up right in front of him and look down. Smirk. Stick your tongue out. Back then, you could wrestle him to the bed of rocks below the water, hold his shoulders under as he kicked and laughed.
The year you camped was the first time you had to tilt your neck to see his eyes.
So you sat, wary, on the bank as he tried to catch dinner. Skipped pebbles and lay back to let the sun warm your skin with his shirt discarded beside you. You weren’t interested in getting your clothes wet, and you certainly were not interested in the mischief that was swimming in his eyes. There aren’t any fish, Johnny, you had said.
Sure, there are, ah jus’ saw one!
You’re such a liar.
Johnny had waved you off. Turned to the side and studied the weak current, intense and serious. His pants were rolled to his scraped-up knees. There were tattoo stickers peeling off his forearms: hearts with arrows through them, skulls with flames. Such a tough guy. A skinny, no-care punk just trying to get a laugh out of you.
You remember sitting there, and staring, and feeling suddenly like you were seeing him for the first time.
His body had begun to change, morphing into something you didn’t know. You had known those shoulders, those calves, when they were a boy’s - but he had started carrying muscle and weight on his frame the way that men did. And hair: a fine dusting along his arms and legs, stark and dark against his tan skin. The sun brought out the freckles in him that summer, and you counted them along his back and the flat plane of his stomach as he plunged his hands into the creek.
He had always touched you. Always. It was innocent for children to cling to one another - to hug or poke or tease - but you both felt it when you began hesitating. He didn’t push you anymore; he helped you over rocks and logs. He didn’t tug on your hair; he swept it away when it was getting in your eyes. There was a new weight to it, somehow. His touches grew heavy as his hands did.
And in that creek - turning to you with a large rock in his grip, smiling bright and brilliant, Think w’can cook this up? - something stirred in your chest.
A wanting - for what, you didn’t know.
Later, when the sun set and you had to pick your way to the tent with Zippos, Johnny grew quiet.
He used to do that all the time: get tangled up in all the yarn in his head. He’d fall silent, and be sat right beside you but seem so far away, and you’d know he was caught in a web. Knew the spider was always the same. You sat with him quietly as he pulled the bark off a stick right down to the tendons. Finally, he had looked up and told the starry night sky that he wasn’t dumb.
I know you’re not.
Johnny was smart, so smart. It was only that nobody ever looked for it. He was always left chasing ‘enough.’ Still a kid finding his drawing in the trash can. Still pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes so hard his arms shook.
Ah wish ah could burn tha’ house t’the ground.
Screw them. Okay? They don’t know you.
The only way you could confront it was head-on, and with anger. Batter down his rage with your own. Feel it so big yourself that it smothered his. You would snuff the pain out in those blue eyes so it couldn’t spread to his chest like so much dry timber. But he could never hate his folks like you did.
I know you. You poked your finger into the center of his chest, index pushing into his sternum like it could pop through. Dig in and hook out the pumping heart so you could make him see it.
That night, shivering in your sleeping bags, Johnny had kissed you. Just a silly thing. Fumbling and young and awkward. Juvenile. Tasting like oats and cranberries. Your first.
And then you two laughed.
Laughed and laughed so hard your stomachs hurt, and did not do it again.
Then you were seventeen and it was Christmas Eve and your parents were fighting again.
By the time they’d started up, Johnny had already left - slipped out, winking, from your open window. Sneaking off to paw at some poor girl in the back of his car.
He returned well after midnight, tapping on the window to be let in, and for a moment, you thought about just lying there. Feigning sleep. Not letting him back through reeking of pharmacy perfume. Chemical vanilla and sickly, toasted marshmallow. You could have just let him freeze out there in the sheeting, muffled snow where he couldn’t hear your mom sniffling in the living room. Couldn’t smell the wine soaking into the carpet. You had thought that maybe that would shake some of the cruelty out of your head like water from your ear.
But when he tapped once more, you slid open the glass pane.
You’d known you were kidding yourself. You’d stand up and open your own tomb for him.
He’d known immediately that something was wrong, as if the misery had wafted out with the hot air. Instead of coming in, Johnny had held his hands out for you. Marched you out in your pajamas and bare feet to his still-warm beater parked down the street and sat you in the passenger side.
And he didn’t say a word when you hit the door with a closed fist. Didn’t flinch. Kept his mouth shut. He simply reached into the back footwell and brought out a small box - beautifully wrapped, with clean, sharp lines and sparkling paper.
Everyone thought Johnny was haphazard. Slipshod. But you knew he was meticulous. You knew.
Inside was a Discman, second-hand but well-kept, and a stringy pair of headphones. Merry Christmas, he’d said. Said there was already a CD in there for you.
You sat all night in that car. Shared the headphones and listened to the same eight songs over and over until you could see your breath. White blood cells pouring into your ears through the cheap wires. When light came, you had slipped back into your room the way you left. Wet socks sliding on the brickwork, Johnny snorting as he had to push you over the windowsill.
Nimble as a sack o’ flour, he’d called you.
By that year, your mom had begun making nest-beds for Johnny on the floor of your room. Suddenly, it hadn’t been appropriate for him to sleep with you - as if you hadn’t been sharing covers for over a decade. But he never used them.
The two of you tucked into your twin mattress and shook the warmth back into your fingers. Dozed. Listened to each other's lungs until you smelled bacon from the kitchen and found your mom with a wobbly smile, hunched over a skillet. You ate and opened presents you had already peeked at. Slept the rest of the day mashed together on the couch as some holiday cartoon burbled on the fuzzy TV.
Your mom snapped a polaroid of you two like that. Drooling, snoring. A tangle of limbs on the loveseat.
Johnny had snatched it from your hands and slipped it into his chain wallet. Promised he would never show another soul, but that he needed somethin’ to remember yer ugly mug by.
Then you were eighteen.
Then Johnny was gone.
After graduation, you had went right back to school. Holed up in a residence hall and put your head down. Began the marathon towards becoming a contributing member of society.
Johnny had joined up like he always said he would.
It was what you both had wanted for as long as you could want things: to grow up and start a life for yourself. Get out of your houses and not have to listen to your parents anymore. But it was odd, being apart. You would meet other people, new people, and they would ask what your favorite color was, or what kind of music you liked, and you would be irritated.
You thought building things from the ground up would be exciting. All it felt was lonely.
No more summers with Johnny. Hardly holidays. He wasn’t allowed his phone yet, so every so often, a letter would show up in his cramped handwriting. Nothing long, a couple of lines about what he had been learning. One time, a photo came with: Johnny in a line of people, surrounded by other scrawny recruits but standing tall and proud with a rifle in hand. Smile lines on his cheeks, blue eyes shining. Inscribed on the back in red pen: The lads at Catterick!
He’d finished Phase One Training with a large, silver trophy. Was deemed a top performer, an outstanding recruit.
You’d sat in the stands at the graduation ceremony, mashed between your family and his under the balmy sun, and watched him get passed the baton. Almost unrecognizable in his smart uniform. Watched him tuck the wooden rod under his arm and lead the parade off the square.
You were so proud your eyes hurt, but to you, it was no surprise he’d excelled.
After his first tour, which you spent drowning in schoolwork and fretting with your mother, he wasn’t really any different. Larger, certainly. It had seemed like he’d gained about a foot in both height and width. But he was still Johnny. A little more serious, perhaps - sure and steady.
He’d turned up in your parents' kitchen on Easter morning like he’d spent three days in a cave. Looked like it, too. Unshaven and dirty. You hadn't wanted to make a big deal out of it. You leaned against the doorframe and made some sarcastic comment to hide behind as your mother snatched him into her embrace. You weren’t sure why. You were happy to see him, so happy. It had been over a year since he was standing within arm's length. But there was something ugly in you, too.
As he’d sat at the table in the buttery morning light, regaling his time away, the things he’d seen and done, you’d felt like your leg had walked away from you. Came back with its own story to tell, but you couldn't feel the dirt on your boot. The feeling remained all through Easter Mass. Johnny had to shower and shave - shave, you couldn’t fathom it - and borrow one of your dad’s suits because the one he kept there didn’t fit him anymore. You were angry in the pew next to him, angry as he bent his head and closed his eyes, whispered prayers of thanks and rebirth.
The Easter meal afterward, as it always did, rolled into the evening and late into the night. Picking at cold, leftover roast as the sun set. Family friends cheating at cards in the front room.
The twisted, intense feelings of teenhood had tempered by then like cheap chocolate. All that was left was missing the warmth of a home-cooked meal, the sound of your mother humming in the garden. And Johnny was the star of the show, but that was always him. Charismatic. Charming. He passed dishes of food across the table and washed the pots. Joked with your father as they sipped beer in front of the sink. Johnny was taller than him, too, then - strong shoulders towering close to the top of the fridge and making everyone, everything, around him seem tiny. Like a bull had shown up for Sunday Lunch.
That night, when the parents had gone home or to bed, Johnny snuck into your room with a contraband bottle in his hand and beckoned for you to follow him outside. It was an old tradition: to steal some wine and sneak into your forest. Share a wet, crumpled cigarette and cough and choke and pretend that you weren’t. Pretend that you were so grown. A midnight, dreary drizzle fell through the poplar leaves as you had hiked the familiar path. You followed it all the way to a rickety lean-to that sat between two trees off the trail. Its twigs lashed together with string and Silly Bandz. Rock-men stacked up around the entrance like guardians. Your fort.
Cannae believe it's still standin’!
You had laughed with Johnny. Didn’t tell him you fixed it up whenever you came home to do laundry on the weekends. Didn’t know why.
Maybe for the same reason you didn’t tell your mom the washing machine at residence wasn’t really broken.
Johnny had to duck his head to even sit in the thing. Tuck his limbs close to his torso so you wouldn’t be left out in the rain. You were shoved beneath the dripping sticks like two rabbits in a warren, leeching heat from the soft line of his body pressed up against your side. Smelling petrichor, and cotton, and the damp on the back of his neck.
The wine was tart. The cigarette burned.
Can ah show ye somethin’? Johnny asked and lifted his hips to pull something from his back pocket.
It was a journal, leatherbound and weathered, strapped closed with a fraying, black cord. He’d set it between your tucked knees and opened it to the first page, but you could hardly see anything in the dark. The canopy was too thick to let the stars, the moon, through.
Johnny had scratched the back of his neck and laughed. Shit. Ah didnae … didnae bring a light.
Just tell me.
You could smell the sweat soaked into the pages. The tang of iron and copper. Johnny squinted one eye and traced his finger along the pen marks, explaining in a low voice what each of the drawings was, the stories that accompanied them. A snarling, fang-toothed dog - either a German Shepherd or Cerberus. White caps on a sea that stretched out to the horizon. Squat, funny little buildings with monsters hiding in the windows. Feet dangling from the open side of a helicopter. Maps of streets, of houses, of entire compounds in his delicate, precise lines. Tables of times, shaving down milliseconds with rows and rows to go. Hunting perfection, hunting excellence.
The journal felt as if it were spilling over the brim, but it was only half full. He had pages, yet. Things to see and do. People to meet and tell you about afterward. When he was finished, he tucked the journal back into his pocket and tipped the dregs of the wine into his waiting mouth.
There was a new scar on his chin. You didn’t know how it got there.
I think I’m mad at you, you’d told him.
Johnny’s smile fell for only a moment before he rubbed his knuckles into your scalp. Jostled you into the hook of his arm and turned his head to tuck a smacking kiss against your temple. You remember how cold and soft his lips were on your skin.
You had shoved him away as best you could in the small space, but only managed to win a couple of inches. Ugh! Get off of me, you mutt.
He’d only snorted. Held his hand out, palm up, on his folded knee and waited. Ah miss ye, too.
Whatever.
You held hands until your knuckles had locked together with the cold, remembering how little his used to be in yours, how chubby and soft.
Wondering when you’d stopped being those kids,
and what you were now.
You were twenty-three the next time you saw Johnny.
You’d graduated from university. Landed a decent job and was the proud renter of a terrible apartment in the city. Had boyfriends that came and went, each of them hating how you would check the post every morning and night. Because the letters would always come, and reading them was the only thing that untangled the awful knot that sat always just underneath your ribs.
The rare and cherished phone call. His voice deeper, harsher every time. You’d shut your eyes just to listen, just to picture him wherever he was. When he called, he didn’t want to talk about himself. He wanted to know what you’d eaten for lunch and what shows you were watching. Your trips to the grocery store. What was annoying you at work.
Just wanted a sip of normalcy, of the mundane.
One night, there’d been a knock at your door, and there he was - dripping rainwater on your welcome mat like a stray, begging you not to tell mah mum. Leavin’ in th’mornin’. Eyes bruised and sunken. Mouth set in a severe, hard line.
You’d pulled him past the threshold, into your arms, and felt like you were hugging a stranger, his footsteps heavy on your creaking floor.
You stuffed him full of apricots and sandwiches while the kitchen lights hummed, then you towed a chair to your bathroom and sat him down in front of the mirror. He looked old in the yellowing glass. So many times you’d looked at him and still seen the goofy kid, the scowling teen. You couldn’t find him anymore. Somewhere beneath the grime and toughened skin, the scars and shadows on his cheeks, he’d been eaten.
Johnny hadn’t wanted to shower before you cut his hair.
You’d wrapped a worn rag around his shoulders and run your fingers through the dense mane, trying to ascertain where to start. It was greasy and wild. Dark, thick. Dirt and sweat and what might’ve been blood ran along his scalp and down his neck. He smelled like motor oil. Old diesel and the acrid pang of rusted metal. Shifted in his seat like he was trying to shuffle his joints back into place.
He had closed his eyes when the clippers started. After a few minutes, he said something that got lost in the buzz. Repeated it when you shut them off.
Y’know what ah’ve been thinkin’ about?
What?
When ye broke yer leg.
You were eleven. You’d been climbing trees in your forest, and you fell. Landed right on your one leg and snapped it clean. Johnny had splinted it there and then with a branch and the torn ribbons of his shirt. It had hurt so bad, and it had made the break so much worse.
Why’d ye let me do tha’?
You couldn’t answer. Let him. Why did you let your lungs breathe? Why did you let your legs take you places? Let him.
Don’t be silly.
When you had finished, you leaned down in the mirror. Hooked your chin over his shoulder to place your head right next to his. You pulled your lips back in a smile - the kind that kids gave to the lens back when they never thought about themselves. All molars and gums, but there were lines on your cheeks, then. Johnny did it too.
You looked like two dogs baring their teeth; only a smile because it was a human that was looking at you.
Johnny took a shower and came out smelling like your shampoo. Wrapped in your towel because his clothes were in the wash. He pretended to watch a movie on your couch, you sat on the floor next to his legs and read his latest journal. Read the whole thing, even when you didn’t want to. Even when you wanted to stop.
If he was jumping, you’d jump too.
You sipped warm beer in your living room until your tongue felt heavy, and then you went to bed. Huddled under your thin sheets with the bedside lamp on, let the warm, yellow light shine through fabric. Swapped air until it got heavy and damp and it was the scent of his clean skin filling your lungs, and you didn’t miss oxygen.
How many times were you children doing this? Drawing near to keep the monsters at bay?
But you were old then, too. All grown up - Johnny wasn’t a boy in your bed. He was red-blooded heat. Wide shoulders and heavy limbs. Chest hair that was both coarse and soft under your palms. Johnny had run off and came back a man and it was easy, like slipping into sleep.
We can’t kiss, you’d told him.
Why? Why? He'd set his warm forehead against yours, huffing like a bull resting over you. So heavy. When had he grown so heavy? He had to prop himself up on his elbows. You would have taken the weight, though, if he had needed you too.
You could talk to Johnny about anything, but there was so much you couldn’t say. You couldn’t tell him that you would break apart into a thousand, glittering pieces if you did. You couldn’t kiss him. Couldn’t even open your eyes. That it was both because and in spite of it all.
It all:
Mud pies in the weak summer sun. Cartoons in the mornings. Fighting over pie at Christmas. Your picture in his wallet. His picture in yours. Driving around in his beater. Stealing snap peas from the neighbors garden. Crying over your first heartbreak and him taking you to go slash their tires. Popsicles in the street, dripping red to your elbows and him laughing. The thousand-thousand moments that sutured you together. If you opened your eyes, you’d go blind.
Think ah dinnae know ye? he’d asked, mouth grazing the curve of your collarbone. Ah know ye. And later, Yer hearts beatin’ a mile. One dense hand on the center of your chest, the other between your legs and drawing you up tight as a bowstring.
I’m nervous.
He had laughed. You felt his smile in the crook of your neck. Jus’ me.
And Ah’ve got ye, and S’this alright? and so many things that were only for you. Soft things. Promises, confessions. Johnny held you close when you started to shake, kept you safe in the cocoon of the sheets, his arms. Letting you break but standing by with a needle and thread. Your Johnny, your Johnny holding his groans behind clenched teeth, soothing the tension from between your brows with the calloused pad of his thumb. And when he finally sank into you, crushing you so tight into his chest as if he could fold you into himself, he had asked, Can ah kiss ye now?
His lips were light against yours, like a sip of cool water.
So many years between the first kiss and that one - but you could smell the pine, hear the breeze rustling the many leaves overhead. See, feel, that creek meandering around his scabbed knees, crystal clear and cold as a fall morning. Freckled and smiling in the sun.
You woke up holding hands. His drool cooling in a puddle on your pillow, him snoring like a saw. Beautiful in the morning light. At your door, before he left, Johnny hugged you like he wouldn’t see you for a long, long time.
And then he didn’t.
Life kept hurtling forward.
Johnny would send you trinkets so you could track him across the globe. When he would finish a journal, it would show up in your mailbox and then sit on your shelf with all the others. Letters would come - sometimes none for a month, and then you would get three in one week.
He was so excited about something, some new position in a task force that he thought could be a really good thing - if he could live up to it. Was convinced he just had to work a little harder, push a little more. He liked the men he worked with. Said they were a good group, and you’d like them too. He wondered if next leave you’d like to meet them. They weren’t scary, he promised - just had their own things. Everyone did. Maybe when he came home, you’d all go out to a pub. Have some pints. After, maybe the two of you could go for a walk.
But that never happened.
One day, the phone rang. It was Mrs. MacTavish, and she was crying so hard you could barely understand her. She couldn’t reach your mom. Couldn’t anything. Someone had called her and left a number, and she couldn’t call it herself.
So you did.
It was a man you didn’t know, and he was not happy to speak with you.
He said his name was Captain John Price and that Johnny was alive, but he couldn’t come home just yet. Told you that you weren’t allowed to tell anyone except his mother, and that you couldn’t speak with him.
You didn’t do much for the following months.
Clutched rosaries. Waited by the telephone. Harassed the mailman every time you saw him. One day you took a call from his mother and left the line hanging as you snatched your keys from the hook. Didn’t hear her begging you not to come. When you knocked on her door, his mother told you that his memory wasn’t very good. That he wasn’t well enough for visitors and that she was sorry. Asked if you understood.
You did not, and you told her as such, and Mrs. MacTavish yelled you off her stoop.
So, you moved back home.
Ate breakfast with your parents every morning and watched the door. Kept your bedroom window unalatched. Just waiting. Waiting. Because Johnny wouldn’t be able to find you in the city, that new apartment he had never been to. He had to be able to find you. Because he would come.
He would. He always came.
And you’d be there.
Johnny sneaks out of his house and rides the bus to you. He stands in your doorway on the steps he’s taken a thousand times, and looks confused - like his feet have brought him there and he isn’t quite sure why yet. He’s buzzed to the scalp, and there’s a great, ugly scar that runs along the side of his head.
He tells you that it's all there in his head - all there floating around like pineapple in jello. That its the jumps between that trip him up.
And it’s alright.
You take him inside and sit him down on the sofa to wait while you rummage in the attic. It takes a while, but you find the old duty chest hiding in the corner and bring it down for him. Inside are scrapbooks, home videos, piles of polaroids with dates on the bottom.
Beneath it all, there’s a stack of brown papers taped and folded together, water-stained and wrinkling with time.
All his memories are yours, too.
You set the map on the coffee table and let him trace the lines. You name the locations: your house, your fort, the creek, your campsite. Where you used to stash gum and candy. The paths you’d stomped into the dirt. He takes it all in with a quiet contemplation. There are some things he asks you to repeat, but only the once, then he nods and pulls his brows together like he’s sitting in a classroom.
Finally, you point to the stick figures. Their crooked smiles and bright colors. Holding hands, smushed in the bottom corner of a page like a signature.
Johnny presses the tip of his finger into yours where it rests against the paper. Follows it as you move from one drawing to the next, as if magnetized.
“That’s me,” you say.
“And that’s you.”