Jacob smells now like the outhouse. Momma is taking the blanket off and Daddy picks him up and they take him away. Momma comes back in and turns over the mattress and Daddy comes in with Jacob in his arms and lays him back down and they both look at him and Daddy wipes his forehead with his sleeve. Momma has her hand over her mouth and they stand there. Lookin’ at Jacob.

Momma and Daddy take off after watchin’ him for a while and leaves me here with Jacob. He’s staring off into space and after a while of looking at him, I whisper “Jacob” but his eyes look like they’re covered in plastic wrap and he don’t do nothin’. I get up and start to tidy my bed up and Jacob is staring at the wall above my bed. I look where he’s looking and all I see is the wall and maybe a hard booger I put there when I didn’t want to get up and blow my nose in the night.

I look back at Jacob but he still ain’t doin’ much of nothing so I give him a pat and put a stuffed gorilla next to his head and I walk out of there. I shuffle around outside and Daddy is working on banging on something off in the woodshed and I don’t want to get too close, so I wander around and pick up an old squirt gun I left out a while ago since it leaked all over your hand and you were likely to get more wet than the other guy if you held it wrong. I pick it up and there’s still a little water in the handle what covers the little squirt gun straw that sips it out and sprays it at things.

I take a few sneezy shots at some flying carpenter ants buzzing around and I think I hit one, but then the gun runs out of water all the way and I drop it again into the driveway dust. I think about climbing the tree at the end of the driveway to check out an old watch I wrapped around the trunk way up there, like the tree was wearing it, but those branches never were no good and I always ended up with sticky sap on my fingers that wouldn’t go away. I give it up and wonder what Jacob is doing now.

I go back inside and Momma is there, doing something in the kitchen what looks like maybe putting some rice into a jar to keep off the mice. We had a problem with them on account of how we lived out in their woods and it was free food for them if they were sneaky enough. She’s looking away so I walk on past to me and Jacob’s room so I don’t have to do dishes or wipe something off and I peek in our room and Jacob is still in the bed and the gorilla is still there and it ain’t moved.

I try to tell Jacob a joke to get him to do something, but it’s like tapping on the glass of an aquarium to get the fish to buzz around. On the floor next to Jacob’s mattress is a cup of tea Momma brought him. It’s the light blue one with a chip on it, but the chip is on the back side so it doesn’t touch your lips if you drink right. We all know how to drink out of that cup and all our lips have been on it about a hundred times. It’s still full and the string with the paper on it is wet and stuck to the side of the cup and Jacob ain’t touched it even though I see it’s the red zingberry like he likes with about eight spoons of sugar in it.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Hey butthead, you might drink that or the ants’ll come for it.” Jacob is still looking at that spot above my bed. I grab up the tea and chug it down just to get a rise out of him. He’s acting like a dummy and I’m bored and I want Jacob up, but he doesn’t move even as I drink and I put the cup down and heave a big sigh like it was the best thing I ever tasted. “Ahhhhh, nothing like a nice cup of tea.” I watch him for movement and when he ain’t moved I say again “I said nothing like a good cup of tea!”

He still ain’t move, and I start shouting and shaking him by the shirt collar, “nothing like it! Nothing at all! Pretty much the best goddamn tea I ever drank!” The stuffed gorilla slumps over and Jacob slumps over and Jacob is a stuffed animal too. Momma comes in then, carrying an empty jar like she got interrupted half way through doing something and she says Jacob needs some rest and why don’t I just head on outside for a bit and let him do that. I say “he’s just being lazy and he ain’t want to play with me, that’s all and he’s probably still sore from me tearing up his stupid bat picture.”

Momma touches my arm “Gabe, Jacob ain’t playing around with you. He done had him filled up to the brim with water and I ain’t sure how it works, but that stopped his head from working for too long and now we ain’t sure if he’s going to come all the way back. We ain’t even sure he’s going to keep on living. If we hadn’t come back the way we did early last night, Jacob wouldn’t be in this bed right now. He’d be buried.”

I disbelieve her for I ain’t never hear of no one dying from getting too much water in them and I say as much to Momma. She sighs and says “You ain’t protect him like a brother should and I can’t help but think you could have stopped him. Why you let him get so close to the river? Why you let him go in, Gabe?” Momma’s voice is rising and I shake my head “I ain’t, we was playing boats, and he went in after my boat and, and, and Jacob wanted to break a bottle and I done stopped him from doing that! I done stopped that!”

Momma looks at me, not unkindly and says “if this boy dies, my boy, your brother, it’s you who is the one responsible. Do you understand that?” I shake my head “that ain’t so! I ain’t the one killed him! It was the water and I ain’t even thought up the idea of going to the river. I wanted to just look at a picture stuck to the T.V. instead, but Jacob wanted to go! He wanted to!” I grab Jacob by the shoulders and shake him and yell “I ain’t want to go to the river! I ain’t want my boat back! Why you go in and get my boat for!?” Jacob don’t respond and Momma pulls me away and says it’s time for me to go now, for we ain’t want Jacob hurt even more than I already done to him.