But when Jesse came home after his first day of school all he could talk about was all the friends he made. Jesse was always really good at making friends fast. And most of those kids stayed his friend, too. He couldn't wait for the next day, and I think he even had a little crush on his teacher. He had Miss Charlene like I did, but she didn't put his mat in the middle for nap time. Jesse didn't nap much anyway.

I was in third grade when Jesse was in kindergarten, but the big kids didn't have recess at the same time as the kindergartners, because they get scared easy and there are some real bullies at Stowe grade school. After school let out for summer Jesse had a lot of kids to play with all through vacation, and sometimes they let me play too. That was always fun. If we played a game of ball or red rover Jesse usually got to be a captain, even though he was the littlest, and he always picked me if the other guys didn't pick me first. I liked being on Jesse's teams because they usually won.

When Jesse got to first grade his recess was at the same time as the other grades so we got to play together then, too. I had a few friends by then, but they always wanted to play basketball, and my size couldn't quite make up for my natural clumsiness. That's how mom described it, "He's got a natural clumsiness, but he's good inside and that's all we care about." Jesse didn't mind my clumsiness, and since I was so big I didn't have to try too hard to tag back or break the rover or catch the out in kickball. I just liked being around my little brother.

The next summer was the one where dad took us to Disneyland and the Grand Canyon. Jesse didn't like being cooped up in the car much and he acted kind of weird around Mickey and Minnie. He wouldn't hug them for the picture mom wanted to take, so I had to hug twice so their feelings wouldn't be hurt. And Jesse absolutely hated to stand in line. I thought he was going to die, waiting to get into space mountain. And on the ride, after like an hour wait, he actually yawned. After we watched the fireworks, which looked like enormous electric flowers in the sky, we went back to our hotel room, and Jesse asked mom if he could get a coke. "Not before bed, Jes, you'll be up all night." He cocked his head to one side, and leaned against the green striped wallpaper with his hands in his pockets, and looked just like a midget version of dad. "I'll get a root-beer, mom- that doesn't have any caffeine in it." I think she could tell he hadn't enjoyed Disneyland too much, so she said, "Oh allright," and gave him some quarters. "Come on, Tate," he said, and I followed. He walked real casual-like up to the machine, and got two cokes- a root beer for me, and a Pepsi for himself. "Hey Jess, I thought you told mom you was gonna have root beer." He cracked open his can, like uncle Stanley does with a beer, wincing against the spray and letting the first swallow flow down slow. "Naw- I need to the caffeine to sleep." I tried to lean up against the machine like he was doing, but my back got a crick in it, so I just sat down on the cement, Indian-style like I had learned in kindergarten. Jesse stared sort of dreamily over the roof of the motel, looking at the lights on the mountain behind it. Then he said, "Hey Tate, ya wanna see something?" I looked up at him. "Sure." Then he reached into his back pocket like it was no big deal, like he was gonna fish a picture of his girlfriend out of his batman wallet. But that wasn't any batman wallet he produced- it was a real wallet. He looked at it almost wistfully. "You think he knows it's gone yet?" I couldn't believe what I was seeing! "Jeeze, Jess, did you steal dad's billfold?" Jesse looked at me like I was crazy or simple. "No, you goober, I lifted it off a guy in the park." I was speechless. Jesse stole something! Just like it was nothing, like squishing bugs on the sidewalk or ringing doorbells before dusk. I guess he must've seen my jaw hanging down, cause he laughed and said. "C'mon, Tate! It was hanging off the back of his ass about ready to fall out anyway. I couldn't resist." Jesse talked like a grownup all the time, so I was a little bit calmer. "So he woulda just lost it, huh?" Jesse smiled at me like I'd said something smart. "There ya go, Tate- He lost his wallet, and I just happened to find it." I swallowed all of my root-beer and stood up. "Can I see it?" Jesse tossed it to me. "Sure." I was too scared to look at the money, so I fished out the driver's license instead. "Walter Cunningham. Brown eyes, Brown hair, sixty seven, umm..." "Inches, Tate. That means he's five foot seven." Jesse was quick with numbers. "Sixty seven inches. Two-hundred fifty lubs." "Pounds. Lubs means pounds." Jesse took the wallet back and looked at the picture. "Yup, that's him. More like three hundred 'lubs', though." Then he looked at the money. I could see the green by the light of the pop machine as he brushed the bills with his fingertips. Then he pulled the wad out, tucked it into his pants pocket, and grinned at me. He tossed the wallet into a trash can like it was the sort of thing he did everyday in school. "You want anything from the Grand Canyon, just let me know." Then he finished his Pepsi, burped, and walked back to our room. He knew I wouldn't tell mom or dad.

The Grand Canyon was cool too, but not as cool as Disneyland. We got there in the middle of the afternoon, and Mom and Jesse were grouchy from napping in the car. Dad was about to bust from the excitement of it all. I don't see how a Dental Instrument salesman could find something like the Grand Canyon so fascinating. We rented some little donkeys to ride to the bottom, which made mom happy, because that meant she could take picture of us on Paco, Jose, Rico, and Juan. I got to ride Juan, who was the biggest after Rico. Jesse road on Paco, and I thought he was gonna fall asleep right there on that donkey's back. We stopped for a rest at a wide spot half way down, and Jesse had to sneak off to take a pee. When he came back, he said, "look at that rock there, Tate." He pointed a little bit off the trail, were it's still flat behind the guard rail before it drops away again. There, almost invisible in the shrub brush, was a rattlesnake. It wasn't waving its tail or flickering its tongue- it was just spread out, soaking up the sun. I wasn't even scared a little bit. "Didja pee on it Jess?" He snorted a laugh at me while he petted Jose. "Noway. Last thing I need is snake bites on my pecker." I laughed all the way to the bottom.

Fifth grade was a lot harder than fourth grade. Jesse was having an easy time in Mrs. Kimbell's class, so he helped me do my homework when he finished his, which was like in about fifteen seconds. We'd sit at the dinner table while either mom or dad cooked dinner and the other one watched TV and drank beers. Jesse was good at math, like I said, and he could already divide fractions and do long division even though they save that till third grade. He helped me with story problems, which I always screw up since I fumble the numbers around. "Tate, how can the man get interest on his savings account that gives him less then what he started with?" I always paid attention to him, even more than I did to Mr. Hanson my teacher. But I flunked anyway. Mr. Hanson told my mom. "He's just not aggressive enough, Mrs. Joiner. He can't just wait for the answers to float into his head. He's got to go after them! He has got to be and aggressive thinker. Maybe another year will let him re-tackle old ground, build up his confidence a little."

Maybe it was all the exposure to fifth grade that he got helping on my math, but Jesse did just the opposite of me: he skipped a grade. The teachers wanted him to spend his summer at a special school, but he begged and pleaded with mom and dad, and I did too. Jesse was my only friend who's idea of a good time didn't include burning ants with an hourglass or hocking girlie magazines from the drugstore. What was I going to do if he spent the summer in school? I was too old to play with Jesse's friends unless he was there to make it okay. But Dad said it was enough to upset his social growth by pushing him forward a grade. He didn't need to lose his summer to boot.

Mom and dad liked to drink beers before dinner, and a few while they eat. I asked for sips on occasion, but I could never figure out why they liked it so much. It tasted awful, like rotten oranges in salty water with bubbles. Jesse asked for sips, too, but they were more like chugs. He even stole one a time or two, but I think he just did it to look grown-up. I don't think he liked the taste either. But even though mom and dad drank beers they weren't drunks. They only drank beer, never any hard liquor, and only had wine on Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years. I only saw my dad drunk once, and think that was an accident. He didn't hit me like Kelly Mano's dad does to her when he gets drunk. He just put me to bed like he always does, gave me a smelly kiss on the forehead, and said goodnight. I could hear him burp in the hallway before I went to sleep.

Once I had to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and I could here mom and dad talking in the the living room. It was the middle of the summer after I flunked. They weren't mad at me. They told me I'd have to try harder, and put in some extra effort. They said it was okay if things were hard, and if they were too hard, they'd give me all the help I needed, and Jesse would too, they said. They knew I wasn't a lazy good for nothing like Bernard Nelson, who flunked like I did and always picked fights with the older kids. But I think it worried them a little, cause that's what they were talking about. I only listened to a little bit of it. I heard my mom say, "One of them's very bright, and one is a little slow. Maybe it's God's way of keeping us balanced."

My dad snorted a laugh like he does. "Yeah, we got us a complete set."

Everything was quite for a while, then mom said softly, "Will, what do you think he would have been like?"

"Who, Kenny?"

"Yea. Do you think he would've been like Jesse?"

I could feel my dad shrugging, like he does whenever a question doesn't need any particular answer. "Maybe he would've been in the middle. Who knows."

I really had to go bad, but I waited until mom replied. "But if Kenny hadn't've died, we wouldn't have had Jesse. Maybe there's a reason for everything."

I wasn't soar at Jesse for being smarter than me. Mom and Dad never said, "Try to be like your brother, Tate." and Jesse never held it over my head. He said I had different gifts. I could chuck a stone into the creek, and make it skip four or five times to his two or three. I knew how to make the best paper airplanes in all of Stowe. And I was pretty good with my watercolors when we made art for open house. Actually, I kind of liked the fact that Jesse and me were closer in grades. One day before the end of summer I was giving him a piggy-back ride down to the grocery to buy mom some eggs. "Maybe if I flunk again or if you go up another grade we can be in the same class." He just laid his head against my shoulder, and stared at the clouds that were marching across the horizon. "Tate, you're a goober" he said in a tired voice.

I managed to get through fifth grade, and Jesse sailed through fourth like he was the one repeating something. For Christmas I took everything out of my savings account and bought him the first three volumes of the encyclopedia set from Safeways. Jesse wasn't a nerd or anything, but I thought he could maybe teach me how to use them after he read them a few times. Mom helped me get the next three for him and by the time his birthday came near the end of school, he had the whole ten-volume set. Sometimes when it rained outside and the TV got too boring we'd sneak some cookies and sit on our beds, flipping through the books and looking at the pictures.

We played soccer in the summer, and since I was so clumsy they made me a fullback. I had to stand in the back of the field, and coach said I was to never cross the mid-field line. Except for the goalie, we fullbacks were the last line of defense. Jesse and I were on different teams because of our different ages, but Jesse and I practiced with the other kids all day long in the park and we had regular practice two nights a week. I got to be a pretty good defender. My natural clumsiness seemed to go away for a while and coach even let me play goalie three or four games. I only got scored on twice, and one of those was a penalty kick. Jesse didn't to so well, though. He wasn't as big as the other kids, and in his third game he got stomped pretty hard and broke his ankle. Mom just about had a fit, and so did Jesse when she wouldn't stop calling him her baby. He got a cast, and everybody in the neighborhood signed it. All our relatives gave him five-dollar bills. At the end of the summer my team won the city championship for our age level, and there was big party for the whole team at our house. Jesse and I ate so much ice-cream we thought we were going to explode. It was a really good summer.

I started Delta middle school at the age of eleven. I was big enough to look like an eighth grader. That and the fact that Jesse was still at Stowe made things kind of hard. I tried out for the different sports, like football and wrestling and soccer, but not basketball. Football was too complicated and wrestling meant I had to eat weird foods but soccer was fun. Mom and Jesse came to every game. He hollered for me at the first few games but by the end of the season I could tell he was pretty bored. But mom made him come with her anyway because it was her best excuse for keeping an eye on him. He was starting to act-up in his fifth grade class. I think he was bored there, too. He had like fifteen different girlfriends and he told me he even skipped school a few times to go out smoking. I about fell over backwards out of the tree we were sitting in when he told me that. "You smoked a CIGARETTE, Jes? A REAL one?" He picked buds off the twigs and threw them on my head from the branch above me. "Hell, Tate, I smoked TWO of them once." I brushed the buds out of my hair. "What was it like? Did it burn your tongue? Did your lungs get all puffy?" I couldn't help it, I started to cry, but only a little. "Jeez, Jes, what if you go and get cancer like Grandpa Wanner?" But he just kept tossing buds in my hair. "You're sucha goober. If you want to know the truth, they tasted like shit and I about coughed up half a lung. You gotta be some kind of weirdo to wanna smoke those things." I sniffed and smiled and tried to dodge the buds. "Where'd you get 'em?" Jesse stopped with the buds and looked out over the top of our house. "I found them in a drawer in mom and dad's room." I had never seen our parent's smoke. "Mom used to do it," he said, like he read my mind, "but she quite before I was born." "You mean she smoked when I was a baby?" Jesse grinned and started to crawl down the tree past me. "Yea, and that's why you got noodles for brains. Let's get some lemonade" I started down after him.

I told mom and dad I'd keep an eye on Jesse for them when he got to Delta. We were sitting in front of the TV, but no one was watching it. Mom was molding something on her clay table and dad was looking at a catalog. Jesse was at his friend Brian's house, spending the night. That usually meant sneaking into the basement when Brian's folks were asleep to look at his dad's Easy Rider magazines. "And then, when I go to East High, you can bump him up another grade and I'll watch him for you there, too." My dad smiled like he does when he watches the weather on TV. As a Dental Instrument salesman, he drives around all day, and usually the weather reports were wrong. Mom held up a vase with Joiner written around the base. "There. I'll just go fire this down at the center tomorrow, and I can put my anniversary flowers in it every year." She smirked at him while dad tried to hide behind his catalog with a big embarrassed grin on his face. I wish Jesse could've been there to be part of the fun.

I don't think anybody flunks out of middle school. It was tough but I never got lower than a C in any class. I got A's in gym and art and thanks to Jesse I even got a B in math. Jesse got mostly A's himself except for a C in social studies. I got a D when I took it, and dad told me to try harder if I could. But he just frowned at Jesse and said, "I don't think bumping you up again is gonna fix this, Jes. What do you want me to do?" Jesse just hung his head and said he'd do better at Delta. I couldn't wait for him to be in school with me again, since that summer we didn't hang out as much. He and Brian listened to a bunch of that heavy metal music and they even went to an Iron Maiden concert with Brian's dad. Jesse asked me if I wanted to go but I can't understand the words and I don't like that Harvey or Eddie guy or whatever that they have on all their t-shirts. Jesse bought one but he could tell I didn't like it much so he never wore it. I played soccer for most of the summer, as a goalie. We didn't win the city championship like the year before but we did pretty good and I got some neat bruises on my legs.

One day before school started we were walking back from church and I told Jesse about all the teachers to watch out for. "Mr. Bainbridge is really mean and if he catches you in the hallway he'll haul you to the office without even asking for a pass cause he just KNOWS and Mrs. Sutter has a limp but you can laugh at her because she's deaf too and if you get Miss Garner for history you better take good notes cause her tests are HARD and-" Jesse smirked like dad does and said, "They can't be THAT hard, Tate." I shook my head and looked him right in the eye like he told me to do when I was being serious with someone, "No Jess, I mean HARD, so hard even Scott Davis got a D once and he's the smartest kid in the whole sixth grade- I mean in the seventh grade now." Jesse looked up at me, "Smarter than I am, Tate?" "I shook my head even harder. "No way, Jess, but Miss Garner gives test with a HUNDRED QUESTIONS EACH." Jesse shrugged. "That all?"

I played soccer for Delta again and coach let me start most of the games as a fullback. I was getting pretty good. I could kick the ball on a goal-kick all the way past the middle line, even on a windy day. Jesse got on the quiz-bowl team even though that's usually only for the eight graders. We both had practice after school, and after practice we went to the movies with Jesse's friends or down to the river or just hung out at somebody's house. I was a lot older than everyone else but I was also a lot bigger so nobody picked on them at school when I was around and they all thought that was real cool.

In January Jesse got kicked off the quiz-bowl team because he always made fun of the other team's wrong answers. I got to go to one of his meets and he was pretty mean to them. Sometimes he would mess up just to lure them into traps. Like once he rang his buzzer and blurted out "Baroque" before he the judge recognized him. That means his team had to forfeit the question and it was given free to the other team, and their captain smugly answered "Baroque," after being recognized of course. Before the judge could say anything Jesse shouted, "No way butt-head, it's Gregorian! Ha!" Then in the next round he did it again, but this time he shouted "negative two!" The other team discussed it but their time ran out and they said, nervously, "positive two?" Jesse laughed at them again. "Nope, negative two, you losers." I guess that sort of thing went on all the time. Mom and dad grounded him for being kicked off the team.

I told Jesse I would stay home with him while he was grounded but he would have any of that. "Go on, Tate, somebody's got to protect Stacy from her own big mouth." I think the real reason he didn't want me hanging around is so he could finish all his homework for the whole year early. And he did, too. There was talk about sending him to East already, at the age of eleven. But that died down after Jesse broke all the windows on the cafeteria.

It started out as a fight between him and Henry Stubbins. Henry was a big fat oaf with greasy hair and a fake tattoo which he kept by never washing. Usually for lunch I sit with Stacy, Tom, David, Ginna, Dustin, Kelly and Jesse who are all in the same grade but we seventh graders were on a field trip to the dairy farm that day. What happened was that Jesse made a joke about Henry's tattoo, and then Henry told him to take it back. So Jesse crowed, "Sorry, Henreeeeee, so sooooreee, Meeester Henreeeee..." That got the whole cafeteria laughing, mostly because Henry HATED being called Henry, he wants everyone to call him Hank, and everyone does except his mom and the teachers. And Jesse. So Henry picked Jesse up out of his chair and pushed his butt into his lunch tray. Jesse tried to hit him but he missed and Mr. Jeffries came running up and stopped the fight. He grabbed Jesse and held onto him, and in front of the whole school told him to quite acting like a little sissie. I don't understand that at all. Here Jesse was trying to take on a guy four times his size and Mr. Jeffries called him a sissie just because he was hollering and crying and swearing to God he was gonna get Henry. They went to the principles office, and Jesse got suspended for three days. Henry only got one. He wouldn't say anything to mom or dad or me about it. He just stewed in his juices until the last night of his suspension and then snuck out of the house and got caught by the police just as he smashed the last window in the cafeteria.

Mom was ready to tear Jess a new one, in between picking bits of glass out of his hair. But dad was more understanding when he finally got Jesse's side of the story, about how Mr. Jeffries called him a sissie and made him pick up the tray off the floor from where he'd kicked it before hauling him off to the office. Dad always stuck up for us. The school board decided that it would be best if Jesse just quite school for the rest of the year, since it wouldn't hurt his studies anyway. Dad had to take some money out of savings to pay for the windows.

Jesse just moped around the house after that. He wouldn't hang out with us anymore, mostly because he was so embarrassed. That made me madder than anything at Henry, since he made my brother not want to hang out with his friends. I told everyone at school I was looking for "Hank" until I'm sure he was shitting his drawers. Then I cornered him between fourth and fifth hour by the drinking fountain. He said, "Leave me alone, Joiner" and I said "Listen here, Henry. You ever touch my brother again and I'll rip your head right off your stinking neck." I wanted to say something cool and mean but that was all I could think of. Then I leaned in real close and looked him straight in the eye. "And wash that damn tattoo off your arm, stinky." Stacy had a few of the same classes as Henry and she said a week later that tattoo was gone. I told Jesse about it and he cheered up a little but he didn't hang out with us until summer started.

I asked dad why he didn't ground Jesse for breaking the windows. He told me, "When we punish you kids it's so you can learn the difference between right and wrong, and just how wrong wrong is. But your brother knew what he was doing was wrong. That's why he broke those windows in the first place. Grounding Jesse would have been kind of like rewarding him for doing wrong the right way. You know what I mean." I did, I think. It didn't make much sense, but I think I understood.

I played soccer again in the summer and Jesse read books and got the high score on just about every video game in town. Everything was pretty normal for a while. Mom started making bigger and bigger pottery pieces until she had to move her table out to the garage. Dad got a heavy order in June so he bought mom her very own kiln for their anniversary. Jesse and I got to make a few pieces- for the first time ever, I did something better than he did. We traded the bowls we made after we fired them and every Saturday we watched the Saturday night movie on ABC and ate popcorn out of our home-made bowls.

School started again and Jesse was like a different person. He didn't get any A's at all, just B's and C's. Mom and Dad tried to convince him to do better, but he just shrugged. We didn't have recess the same way at Delta, so I didn't get to hang out with Jesse and his friends as much, but we still went and did stuff after school. Mom and Dad said it was the final straw, though, when the police brought us home.

We were at the Sport Barn, and Jesse and me and Tom were looking at some canvas wallets, while Stacy and the new kids from Ohio Brent and 'Felia were farting around with the putters. Jesse said, "watch this, Tom," and looked right at the clerk as he put the wallet in his back pocket. "Are you testing it out, Jess?" I said. he shrugged. "Sure. Go tell Stacy and everyone we're goin' to the Orange Julius." Then he walked out of the store. I was so scared. I didn't know what to do. So I picked up a wallet and put it in my pocket too, then I went over to Stacy and Brent and 'Felia.

Felia was Jesse's age but she was really really pretty. She had this way of bitting her lip when she was thinking about stuff, and I just wanted to give her stuff. I almost forgot that I was a stealer, and I whispered, "C'mon, lets go, lets get out of here." Brent was holding a putter upside down, inspecting it like he was some kind of golf expert. "Where?" I looked around for the clerk, but he was talking on the phone. "Jesse 'n Tom went to the Orange Julius, let's go, okay?"

So they all shrugged and dropped the putters and we walked out. I used to go to the library sometime with Jesse and one time they forgot to rub his book on the magnetic thing so when he went through the door the alarm went off, and it made my skin feel prickly, even though the lady was super nice and apologized for about the whole time she re-rubbed Jesse's book. Every time after that, though, whenever I walk through those things I always get a weird feeling in my stomach, so scared that it's gonna go off. That's what it was like walking towards the mall out of the Sports Barn. I didn't even realize it, but I took 'Felia's hand, since Jesse wasn't there. She giggled when I took it, but I didn't remember that until later.

And then the very second I stepped out of the door, I saw this cop walk right up to me, and put his hand on my shoulder. The first thing I noticed was he had a wrinkly face, and then I noticed he had a real big belly. "Okay, son, let's have the wallet." Everything went all white and then all black and I started to blubber. "I'msorryIdidn'tmeanitwasanaccident" And then Jesse came running up. I just knew he was gonna say that I forgot, that I meant to pay for it, that I was just trying it out but that I I got distracted, that I'm just a noodle brain and I flunked a grade and sometimes I didn't think so good. But what he said was "Hey, cop, I stole one too, you big fat idiot!" waving the wallet he had around. Then he knocked over a book stand at the Waldenbooks and took off running. The cop gripped my shoulder tighter, and said "don't move." and took off after Jesse.

Mom and dad wanted us to do community service for the mall, like picking up garbage in the parking lot, even though Sports Barn didn't press charges. But Jesse knocked down a bunch of stuff and pushed people as he ran away from the cop, whooping and hollering. "Do you know what happens to boys who act like this, Jesse?" my dad yelled. "Do you know what happens? They refuse to control themselves, and they end up running away from home. Is that what you're gonna do Jesse? Run away from home and become a male prostitute? Are you?" Dad just seemed to get madder and madder as he yelled, and even mom stopped glaring at Jesse and looked at my dad. "You think the fucking world was built to make you happy, Jesse? You think because you skipped a grade and can do math in your head that you're better than other people? "Dad was almost screaming, his face all red and blotchy. "Well I've got news for you mister. You're just like everyone else. Do you hear me? Everyone in this world is bored and thinks everyone else is stupid, too. And if everyone acted like you act, you'd be the first one they'd crush." Then he turned around and hit the wall, punching a big hole in it. That's when Jesse started to pay attention. Dad sat down in his chair, and even though we couldn't see his face, I knew he was crying.

I don't know what happened after that, because I went to my room and lay down for a while. Mom brought me some soup on a tray a little bit later, and asked me why I took the wallet. I was going to say I don't know, but I didn't want her to sigh at me the way she sighed at Jesse when he said that. So I said, "I was trying to impress 'Felia." She looked at me for a while. "Was she impressed, Tate?" Then I said I didn't know.

Later at night I snuck into Jesse's room and looked at him for a while. He was just sleeping, and didn't look like he much cared about what had happened. I wasn't mad at him, so I had to wake him up. "Jesse, wake up." He rolled over. "I'm awake. I was just faking. What do you want?" I kneeled down at his bed. "I need to borrow your money, Jesse, I need to do something." And what I miss most about Jesse is that he didn't ask me what for. He just gave it to me.

I miss mom and dad too, and sometimes I think about 'Felia, and Tom and Stacy and Brent and my art teacher Mr. Carilion. But I got a job, cause I look old, and after a few weeks the other workers started to talk to me. They're teaching me Spanish, which is really tough, but I bet Jesse could pick it up real quick. Maybe someday when we're all older and he's settled down I'll teach it to him.