A Moment With Jim

I never know how to explain it to people when they ask how my brother died. He didn’t die. I just woke up one day and he wasn’t there any more.


“Ten-fucking-fold,” the voice from the papasan insisted. When no one seemed inclined to take this pronouncement seriously, the owner of the voice waved his hand negligently at the whole group. From the depths of the enormous chair, the gesture carried with it the distinctive air of divine dismissal.


“Whatever, man,” the speaker continued, punctuating his words with an elongated drag. Eyes closed tightly, fat lips pulled back in what might’ve been a grimace, he suppressed a cough before exhaling. “But when this crap you’re pulling comes around to bite you in the ass, don’t come crying to me.” From a corner of the room, I watched with glazed eyes as he passed the blunt to his left.


“C’mon, Jim, you know this asshole deserves it,” TJ answered, taking the lit smoke gingerly as it came around. “It’s like the hand of God, or something.” He inhaled, choked, then took a second drag when I waived the blunt away with a gesture that mirrored my brother’s. As if retaining the smoldering joint emboldened him, he continued before passing it over my head to Harley. “This is bullshit – do you really think he should get away with it?”


I leaned back against the wall and surveyed the room, only peripherally aware of the droning sound of my brother’s voice expounding on the laws of karmic retribution. Conversation moved in sync with the marijuana, passing to the left one person at a time. Somewhere in the back of my marijuana blighted mind, I marveled at so simple a form of etiquette as this. “He who holds the weed holds the floor.”


I giggled suddenly at my own cleverness, then shook my head when inquiring heads turned my way, stifling laughter at the impromptu symposium inspired when someone named “T Dog” was rumored to have sold the fruit of his basement garden without the benefit of proper quality control.


“Wednesday,” insisted John earnestly, “this is serious!”


I just shook my head; not knowing how to politely point out that while “T Dog” may indeed deserve his comeuppance, the chances of it coming from this bunch of would be philosophers were slim at best. Maybe they could still quote the Buddha at this point, but I very much doubted that any of them could find the door unaided.


“Look,” Jim said, “Maybe he deserves a beating. Maybe worse. But if you decided to take that into your own hands, I’m telling you it’ll come back around to kick you in the ass. Ten. Fucking. Fold.” He stood up, brushing dried leaves off of his pants. Unfolded from the chair, he towered above the rest of us at a respectable 6 foot 2, enhanced by the fact that everyone else sat Indian-style on the floor. “Now if y’all will excuse me, I need to drain the snake.”


Without another word, he stumped out onto the patio of his second story apartment, scratching unselfconsciously at some blight in the dim nether regions below the waist.