My Side of Damascus
by CG Fewston

We were freshmen in high school when Samantha drank her milk with bleach. About the fourth trip back to the kitchen for a fresh glass my twin sister collapsed. I didn’t hear her scream or anything. Just heard a thud in the hall. When I found her, she was curled up holding her stomach. Her legs kicked a little. In the hall’s low light, her cardinal red hair was a real mess. Looking at Sam, I could see my own brown eyes pleading for mercy and my own freckled face turning pale. She grimaced and moaned my name. ‘Jack,’ Sam said. Her eyes squeezed tighter as I placed a hand on her shoulder. I asked her what was wrong. Mom was at the grocer buying more milk. I never thought that part was ironic, or funny. But it was true. Sam had drunk all the milk. 

Three years later I visited my sister Sam for the first time. I was a senior in high school and we had to bury my Grandmommy alongside Wright’s Chapel in Sunset Memorial Park. I walked up the hill and turned to see the afternoon sun over the Blue Ridge Mountains I had known since we moved there ten years back. Dad had left Texas and brought us to Virginia and to the Friendliest Town on the Appalachian Trail. To Sam and me it was anything but. After Sam died, things fell apart and we hadn’t heard from Dad since. Mom said he was back working the oil rigs near Lubbock.  

Down below near the red-bricked chapel with its white steeple, I could see Grandmommy’s funeral letting out into the parking lot. All the black suits and black dresses were too grim for me that day. Mom held a hand to her forehead and scanned the hillside looking and I wasn’t sure she saw me. I held a hand up but didn’t wave. Some young boys and girls about my age got in their cars and trucks and headed back to Damascus with their stereos loud and cigarettes ashing out the side windows. I turned and continued up the hill to Sam’s grave.

Sam was buried up near Susan G. Edmondson who was born on Dec. 2, 1856, Sam’s birthday, as well as mine. Susan died on Dec. 10, 1937. I always found it odd how most people died near their birthdays. Except for Sam. She died on May 23. Strange. Not even close. I thought about when I would die and if I would know it was coming like a train slowing into the station. The way Sam must have known. 

You can spot Sam’s grave easy enough because Mom didn’t buy the usual tombstone. She went ahead and emptied my college savings, which wasn’t much anyway. Mom bought Sam a stone angel that sat on its knees with its head bowed, hands folded in its lap. I fell to the ground and began ripping out the weeds with my bare hands and cleaning an outline around the foundation. I remembered my pocket knife Dad had given me for my eleventh birthday and started using that instead of my fingers. The statue didn’t look anything like Sam. For a time I sat there thinking of Sam’s red hair and freckles and how they were similar to mine. The stone angel seemed to be smiling but I knew it wasn’t. It was a trick of the sun. That was all it was.

I heard Mom’s voice calling me to come over. To throw dirt on the coffin. I didn’t look. I had had enough saying good-bye. After a while Mom came and put a hand on my head. It was then I knew they were finished burying my Grandmommy, the one who had read bedtime stories to me when I was a kid. I felt a bit guilty about not wanting to see her put in the ground proper. When Mom said something I had to wipe my face and clear my nose to hear what she was saying.

‘Coming for supper, Jack?’

I disliked my name and didn’t know why my parents had named me that.

‘Honey?’ Mom said. 

I couldn’t bring myself to answer and I didn’t feel like eating anything. My eyes stayed on the object all blurry in front of me. I curled my arms around my knees, pulled myself in a ball the way Sam did that night she died. Leaves were burning off in the woods somewhere. The smoke smelled nice. Like when I would rake the yard with Sam teasing me. She would laugh as she dropped the match onto the pile of leaves. Right then, though, I hated the smoke for smelling so good. 

‘If you get hungry,’ Mom said, ‘we’ll be at Old Mill.’ Mom said it as though it were another Sunday after church. How could she? I imagined her in less than an hour standing on the deck outside Old Mill Restaurant and Inn. She’d be listening to Mock’s Mill Falls and watching the geese swim Laurel Creek. That wasn’t something I was in the mood for right then.

‘Samantha was a happy child, wasn’t she?’ Mom asked. But she didn’t stay to hear my answer. She headed down the hill, wiping her face with the back of her hand. She wasn’t wearing her wedding ring. I couldn’t remember when she had taken it off.

I let the parking lot empty before I went down. I stood up, wiped the back of my pants, and leaned over and touched the angel’s head. There were words wanting to come out of me but none sounded good and I kept quiet. It seemed more proper than anything I could have said at the time.

I walked down the hill with the sun warming my neck. I thought of how Sam was a happy child. Yes. We were happy for the most part. She got mixed in with the wrong crowd. Rumors had gone around that Sam was a slut and that she was pregnant but Mom denied it as much as I did. Sam never looked pregnant to me. Principal Sinclair couldn’t stop the bullies from gossiping. Hands were tied, that sort of legal excuse for not giving a good goddamn. Even so, I couldn’t blame the principal. Sam had told me most everything. She never said anything like what those jocks were whispering about her in the locker room. As far as I knew she was a virgin. But bullies had a way of making life miserable for Sam. For me too, I reckon.   

I turned the key in the ignition to my truck, pumped the gas a few times to rev the engine and drove out onto Highway 91. I remembered one of Sam’s favorite places to go when she got down, when she felt sad or out of it. I headed there.  

Backbone Rock was in Tennessee and only a ten minute drive from Damascus. No matter how many times Sam and me drove that road through what some claimed the shortest tunnel in the world it put us at ease. I arrived, paid the two dollars to park, and headed up the rock staircase to the lookout point. The woods smelled fresh. Like right after the morning dew settles. 

The trail was narrow and of smooth stone where Sam used to sit at the top edge. She’d dangle her feet and watch cars pass through the tunnel on the paved road beneath. Sometimes she’d try and spit on the cars. Sam and me had some good times when we’d hike the half mile to the falls, but today I didn’t feel like doing it. Instead I stood at the top with my sneakers half off the side. Looking down one could see that my shoes were of two different sizes. I remembered how I was ridiculed growing up and figured no one would really miss me and my club foot.

In a month I’d be graduating high school and I hadn’t even applied to any universities yet. Mom had her full-time job at the Bank of Damascus. I figured she would miss me and I didn’t feel right leaving her all alone. I stepped from the edge and began to walk to my truck when a young man and woman a few years older than me came down the path holding hands. I didn’t look at the couple when they went by but they cheered me up a bit and made me smile a little because they were happy. That meant something. Funny though. Seeing them made me think of Madison. How we would never be more than friends. When Madison practiced cheerleading routines in front of me in her backyard, her hair would be like sunflowers being whipped by the wind. Her waist was so thin it seemed like there were perfect slots on her hips for my hands, if we ever got our first dance. I looked down at my club foot hidden in my shoe. I wished to hell it could’ve been Sam standing there at Backbone Rock instead of me.   

Driving back on the road toward Virginia and to Damascus I thought of how the doctors told my mother I came out happy and screaming but what I can remember about that time was all the pain. Pain like nothing people want to believe could happen to a baby. Sometimes I wake in the night and find the bed sheets tangled around my right foot where the scars pulse even after all that time. My heart would be growing, trying not to burst because of all the pain shooting out my club foot and up my calf, a good size smaller than its mate. The pain ever present. A nail stamped into the ankle bone. A little like that I guess. The doctors told Mom and me that the pain would go away. It never did. It never does. 

Sam came out first by a whole minute and I’m glad she did. She was the strong one. When I came out, the doctors rushed me off to surgery without even weighing me, which my mother said was uncommon. For the next few years I had surgery after surgery. I grew up learning to walk with a cast and small wooden crutches. Hell. I ran faster with those crutches than some kids without. Sill proud of that fact. 

Through it all, Sam was the one to pick me up when I took a misstep and crumbled to the ground. Or when the other boys pointed their fingers, mocking my deformity by limping about. No. Sam had called my foot special. She was the beautiful one. I held her back. So I’m partly to blame for what happened to her. Or that’s the story I told Madison. Madison seemed to believe me despite we were just friends and weren’t going out or anything. I decided I’d go over to Madison’s and see if she was at home. It was worth a shot.

I pulled up and parked in Madison’s drive. I was standing on the front porch knocking when I heard Ben’s voice from next door. He had been one of the jocks that spread rumors about Sam. That was what Madison told me once. I never did anything about it. Just too afraid to believe it was true. 

‘Hey, Jackie!’

I heard Ben slurp his drink. I didn’t want to turn because I knew Madison’s neighbor would be ready to give me some hell. Again I knocked. No answer. No Madison stirring inside. How I wanted her to be there. 

I looked over the shrubs. Saw he was drinking a coke. He wore a Metallica t-shirt. I never cared much for rock music. Madison liked Christian rock as crazy as that sounds. She liked it more than I did, which wasn’t saying much. With Madison I felt anything could happen. But usually nothing special ever did.

‘Madison’s not home, Jack-ass!’ Ben called out. ‘She’s at the hospital helping real cripples.’

I raised my hand. Ben flinched and grew a bit angry as if he were expecting me to give him the middle finger. I didn’t. I kept my hand there the way I had done with Mom. For that instant I thought of my pocket knife. How I wanted to pull it out and show Ben. How my name was Jack and not Jackie. Nor Jack-shit. Not even Jack-ass. Jack. Plain and simple. And yes I was—

‘Freak!’ Ben shouted.

My hand was still in the air and I had to make myself bring it down. It was like my hand hadn’t belonged to me for that moment and it refused to obey.

‘At least Samantha,’ Ben said, grabbing his crotch, ‘was my kind of —’

I hopped off Madison’s porch and as I jumped the dividing hedge I saw the look in Ben’s eyes grow wild. I caught him by the shoulder as he turned to go. My knife was out. I stuck the blade right up under Ben’s chin. Blood trickled down across my thumb gripping the handle. My heart was beating mad. Felt damn good to hear it so loud and strong.

Ben wetted himself. His hips and legs shook, like he couldn’t control his bodily functions. His coke splashed to the concrete steps.

‘Say it,’ I said. I didn’t know what I wanted him to say but he needed to say something. ‘Say it,’ I said.

He started to speak. Apologize perhaps. But Madison’s voice called out to me.

‘Jack!’ she screamed. ‘Don’t!’

I turned. Saw Madison in her cheerleader’s outfit. Her fists clinched at her side. Her eyes wet. Standing behind her was her dad, Brian. He looked a bit shocked, reserved. I lowered my knife and walked by Madison. When I shifted out of reverse and into drive, Madison and her dad were still staring at me from their front yard. Ben was no longer on his porch. 

At the Country Corner I got some gas for my truck and tossed my knife in the trash between the pumps. I drove up Damascus Drive. I turned left on East Laurel because I wanted to see all the churches there. I imagined Sam next to me in my truck with her feet up in the seat like she used to do when Dad was driving. I wanted to talk to her, the way we could begin and end each other’s sentences or knew what the other person was going to say next. But I hadn’t known Sam would kill herself. And now I knew she wasn’t there beside me in the truck when I pointed to one of the churches and said that was where we had her service. I imagined Sam nodding as if she hadn’t been the one we buried. Made me feel good to be talking to my sister again.  

I turned right on North Reynolds. Headed straight to parking near Laurel Creek. Wanted to get out, walk around a bit. I reckoned Mom and Uncle Jim and the rest would still be down the street at Old Mill. Though I wasn’t hungry, I figured it would feel good to be near my family.

I sat on a bench facing the water, where Madison and me would come and talk about what it was like to be picked on at school. She would gossip, though I never cared much for it. Her voice soothed me. Reminded me of Sam at times.   

Sam would come out here alone in the months leading up to her death. She’d sit until the sun went down. I’d pull up on my bicycle and find her still sitting in the dark. My sister told me time after time she was fine. Nothing was bothering her. I believed her. Why wouldn’t I?

I had been doing the same thing for the past few weeks, coming out here and sitting. Thinking of the taunts at high school. How I didn’t want any more of it.

I leaned back on the bench, the smell of creek in my nose, the ducks and geese somewhere having a grand time out there on the water. I felt like I wasn’t me any more. I didn’t know who I was supposed to be.

The sun started down. Shadows getting darker and longer. The air colder and heavier. I kept thinking of Sam holding her stomach and telling me that she was sorry, so very sorry. How she didn’t want to die. How I held her hair away from her face. Told her she wasn’t going to. How she would be all right. How I would get her to the hospital and this would pass. And Sam nodded along to each of my lies.

She had groaned then vomited on the carpet by my knees. I hated myself for thinking that she was not my sister. That some stranger was sick in our house. All I wanted was Sam back. My Sam. The one who had poured barbecue sauce in my bed and put peanut butter in my hair as I slept. My sister who had carried me when I couldn’t walk across the snow. I wanted that Sam. But it was Sam.

Now I was the one. The one to sit and see Old Mill’s lights hitting the ducks floating over the dark water. I couldn’t forget Sam. No matter how hard I tried. There would always be people to remind me that the pain was mine alone. That was fine. All so very fine.