Brother Dionysus

By Sean Brendan-Brown

In BROTHER DIONYSUS, veteran Sean Brendan-Brown explores military life and its aftermath through characters as strangely wrought as those peopling Sherwood Anderson’s fiction and as real as those portrayed in Raymond Barthes’ collection of cultural essays, Mythologies. Brendan-Brown’s characters navigate the quagmire of life after military service, never failing to make a strong statement about the state of the culture, never failing to find humor in the most mind-boggling situations, and never failing to disappoint readers’ desires to know what it’s really like to live after going to war. Not since Raymond Carver has a writer more clearly shared the vagaries, joys, and comedy of human existence, while revealing the salvation in it for us all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MilSpeak Books
• Release date: Oct 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301549214

Sean Brendan-Brown

SEAN BRENDAN-BROWN is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and currently resides in Olympia, WA. A medically retired Marine, he is the author of three poetry chapbooks (No Stopping Anytime; King Of Wounds; West Is A Golden Paradise) and a fiction chapbook, Monarch Of Hatred. He has published with the Notre Dame Review, Wisconsin Review, Indiana Review, Texas Review, Southampton Review, and his work is included in the University of Iowa Press anthologies American Diaspora and Like Thunder. He is the recipient of a 1997 NEA Poetry Fellowship and a 2010 NEA Fiction Fellowship.

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Brother Dionysus

Sean Brendan-Brown

Smashwords Edition

Published by MilSpeak Books

A Division of MilSpeak Foundation, Inc. (501c3)

http://www.milspeak.org

Copyright 2012 Sean Brendan-Brown

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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Cover Design by Rustynne Dalton

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Previous Publication

Anyone Is Possible: New American Short Fiction, "Monarch Of Hatred"

Fourteen Hills, Mr. Common’s Dog Pot Pie

Greensboro Review, A Fine Day For Lobster Liberation

Main Street Rag, A Tale From Anger Rapids and Relámpago

Rainbow Curve, 777

Short Story, Beauty; The Finger Monkey; The Man Who Knew Big Words; Ourselves, Not War; Making Sense Of Shalimar; Nowhere When It Burns

MilSpeak Memo, Nowhere When It Burns; Beat It To Fit It, Paint It To Match

War Stories: Veterans’ Short Stories (MilSpeak Books 2012) Ourselves, Not War

Images and quotes within this book that are excerpted in brief form are used in accordance with fair use interpretation of U.S. Copyright Law and the Digital Millennial Copyright Act. Every attempt has been made to attribute and credit excerpted material correctly. Any errors or omissions should be brought to the attention of the publisher and will be corrected in future editions of the book. This creative work of fiction represents only the writer’s opinions, ideas, and imagination, and not those of any other organization, institution, or persons. The U.S. Department of Defense, its subsidiaries and/or adjutants, does not endorse this book, nor does this book in any way represent the views of DOD or of the U.S. Government.

MilSpeak Foundation, Inc., a 501c3 nonprofit organization, exists to raise awareness about creative works by military people to a more visible and influential position in American culture and seeks to be a leader in shaping a receptive climate for creative works by military people by developing new audiences, creating new avenues for delivery, and encouraging creativity among military people.

Acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the NEA for a 2010 Fiction Fellowship, and to the editors of the following publications in which these stories originally appeared:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Brother Dionysus

Nowhere When It Burns

Monarch Of Hatred

Relámpago

Garden Of The Poets

Mr. Common’s Dog Pot Pie

777

The Man Who Knew Big Words

Ourselves, Not War

The Finger Monkey

A Fine Day For Lobster Liberation

Making Sense Of Shalimar

A Tale From Anger Rapids

Porn

Beauty

Beat It To Fit, Paint It To Match

Tokkotai White Guy

About the Author

About MilSpeak Books

About Sied Books

Brother Dionysus

Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God… Do not marvel that I say to you, You must be born again.

—Jesus to Nicodemus (John 3:3-7)

To answer an old question, I keep seeing my brother Paul because I like the ancient, syrupy scent of grapes and the rotting tons of pressings, the distant booming of skeet guns from the country club and the screech of hawks overhead diving onto a rabbit, mole or field mouse. I enjoy the greenstone well-shaft, lustrous as a gemstone and the hand-pumped water, slightly bitter with iron that Paul mixes with Maker’s Mark and ice. I listen respectfully to his war-stories because dad, a medically-retired Lieutenant (3-star, wanted 4) General, said they were true. I return each pleasant smile Marisol, the tasting-room receptionist, gives me because I am stupidly in love with her. Everyone is in love with Marisol; that is her way, and the way of idiots such as myself.

I’ve never asked Marisol out. I’m married – not in love with my wife Susan anymore – just married. I love my kids and spend all my hours home from work improving my house, a modest rancher outside Fall City, semi-close to Seattle; I’ve spent a fortune updating this suburban paradise. If I divorce my house on three acres is worth nearly a million. I bought it all for two hundred thousand; Revised Code of Washington says Susan and the kids get everything, and rightfully so, if I do something so stupid as have an affair with Marisol and get caught: you always get caught, always.

I keep coming to see Paul because the smell of burnt grapes is intoxicating. I drive one hundred sixty miles into eastern Washington because Paul is my only brother. He’s fifteen years older and we are nothing alike – having different mothers has nothing to do with our differences – I hate the father Paul apotheosizes, but I am faithful, as he is, to nostalgia of nuclear family, a group blown to pieces years ago and irreparable. Paul is all alone as I once was (Susan and I separated for six months) and I can’t stand to think of those times his divorce brings to mind, so I return. I shred his invitations then come alone: I couldn’t, for a million dollars, get my wife and daughters to accompany me on these excursions to see Paul.

The drive east, past the breathtaking peak of Snoqualmie Pass, is beautiful; my worries about work and money fall away like dead leaves. Miles of old potholed two-lane asphalt bisects the apple orchards and asparagus fields of Desert Aire and Prosser through King City and into Richland— a road originally created by the Army of Lewis following the Whitman massacre, dynamited and tramped out so battalions of howitzer could decimate the Chopunnish, Indians who chose to die instead of surrendering. A road whose summer beauty becomes treacherous in winter – black ice obscured by side-blasting whiteouts – the death toll escalates as motorists begin the Christmas through New Year drinking. I admit I drink on these drives: four cans of fruit punch flavored 4-Loko and a sixer of Red Hook iced in an Igloo Playmate as my passenger; I’m usually down half the Coppers and two Lokos before I see the Tri-Cities.

It was late summer when I drove to Paul’s estate, turned my ‘04 Ford Ranger onto a half mile of gravel, thrust my face out the window and inhaled the vineyard odors thrown around by wind, tractor and sprinkler. I braked in front of the bottling sheds alongside a gleaming blue 2009 Corvette ZR1 and waved to Sid and Larry, Paul’s groundskeepers. Ingo Sotelino, the master bottler, stood alone brooding, puffing a filterless Camel from a six inch jade holder. Ingo, I said. Charmed, he replied. We hate each other. I think he’s a creepy fraud and I’ve told Paul so. When Ingo was hired, he claimed to have apprenticed at Schloss Staufenberg but I made inquiries to Durbach and they’d never heard of him.

Paul stood by his beloved Charbroil; he’s always cooking something, or soaking some choice cut in spices and sauces prior to grilling. His diligence and fervor is priestly and I’ve told him, earning his scorn for such talk. We hullo, shake hands, hug quickly – pat-pat then break away; as our General-father never hugged, this is a huge step – and I sip my cocktail of bourbon and well-water, sit and watch him move meat through flames. Paul talked and with him it’s always the same and one reason among many his wife left him. His laughter’s forced; he makes great strides, for your benefit, to demonstrate humor: always insisting that in the end everything makes sense whether an error in balancing the checkbook, a disastrous love affair, or expected death with unexpected results like a legacy or promotion to CEO in a family business like Boeing, Weyerhaeuser or Ford where once you were black sheep— the son with the lowest IQ who collected stamps or coins or comics, very valuable stamps, coins and comics it turned out bought on eBay for nothing but worth thousands or millions or billions in the end.

Paul is an intelligent, sensitive, and attractive man— I worshiped him when I was a boy; I copied his speech, dress, mannerisms, as if he were my father, not an older sibling. But he has maddening quirks of personality, such as lecturing on topics so common as to be cliché, or worse, taking any opportunity during a conversation to prove his tenure as a twenty-year veteran of the University of Washington, a professor of literature— for example, Shakespeare’s all the world’s a stage, and we are merely players. Paul is truly a professor; he can’t stop professing.

I get it, everybody gets it, in fact it’s so gettable that All the world’s a stage are lyrics in Rush’s Superconductor and Limelight as well as the title of their fifth album. But Paul will back you into a corner and explain Elizabethan drama— how actions onstage allegorize the lofty stage of God. To please the church, The Play became a tool for the great chain of being. During performance the actors and audience connected, and upon curtain fall the audience was addressed by the Epilogue Player, much as a priest dismisses his flock with Glory be to thee, O Lord. Then the dead rise and take their bow; the living clap for joy and return to bursaries, gristmills, anvils, shops and fields. It was paramount to balance the unsaid with what is actually known in the world – the trickery and mummery completing not only relief but catharsis – a neck-verse sung for those traumatized by too-abrupt disclosures: the Epilogue satisfied them all was well, whether plague or feast; God’s plan was never questioned. Scrutiny was blasphemy.

Paul sighs explosively, My son drives me crazy! I know I was a selfish father, but does he have to demonstrate it daily with his slovenly, insane behavior?

It’s a beautiful day, I replied. Cheer up, Paul. Bobby’s not insane, just finding himself.

He stroked a thick-bladed knife against a whetstone skree, skree until he was pleased with the edge plied against his thumb. His black eyes locked on mine. I’m not trying to depress you, but yes, I am certainly whining and I hate that lapse in front of my baby brother. I feel I’m entitled to whine a bit, even in front of you, goddamn it. You’ve probably never listened to anyone explain how their life was a linear progression of embarrassment, cuckoldry, and financial convolution. I painted and could never exhibit my works, I wrote novels no publisher would touch, and when I was a professor I was never made Chair or Dean; I just taught.

I thought you loved teaching.

I did but that’s not the point. The point is I’ve never been great at anything, I’ve just been a lifelong dabbler, amateur, dilettante.

My god, Paul, those things are all in the past. Think about the life you’ve made for yourself now. Microsoft, Apple and Google stocks made you rich— even after the economic collapse you’re still rich; none of the rest of us are rich.

"You know Microsoft was an accident. In 1987, I told my broker at Merrill Lynch to invest sixty thousand in junk bonds, that’s what an utter fool I was and thank God he went behind my back and stuck it all in Microsoft. I’ve lost track of how many times my original stock split, and I always reinvest the dividends. I’m embarrassed to admit what that measly initial investment is worth now; I’ve gained back everything I lost following 9/11, and about half of what I’ve lost following the Downturn, so yes I’m rich— I can afford this vineyard and these thieving servants, in fact it’s my duty, as a robber-baron, to feed the poor: noblesse oblige. I am completely frustrated with the present, just as the present was a never-ending insult to Rodin."

I could not resist rolling my eyes. Paul paused to fish a gnat from his glass of wine. He was drunk but performed the extraction expertly – coaxed the struggling insect up the inside of the glass against the ball of his fingertip – preventing with this gentle motion the wings or legs from breaking away to sully the wine. We drank an extraordinary Bordeaux, an ‘80 Chateau Olivier that tasted far better than it should have. Paul flicked the gnat from his finger, hurled the soggy bug over the deck rail to the Merlot arbor below. He looked at me the way friends expecting friends to speak do. I paused before I spoke. I love him as much as I loved my father and I hate him as much as I hated father. I didn’t know you were a painter, I finally said.

"I wasn’t. I’m not."

I don’t understand.

It just would have been nice if someone would have recognized what I was up to. That’s all. No one ever gave one fucking sign of recognition. Would have saved me a hell of a lot of soul searching even to be told I was wasting my time, that I had no talent.

I poured more wine, waved the bottle. "Well, you’ve certainly done well in this business. Two silver medals in one season is impressive."

Paul shot me a jaded look and rang the bell for Marisol. I hate that sort of pretense; I despise bells, and summons, and servitude. I don’t like to be waited on, not even in a restaurant where it’s expected; I prefer chain-restaurants such as Applebee’s, Olive Garden, or the Outback Steakhouse (when I eat out at all) because I abhor being hovered over or embarrassed; in franchises they spit in your food if you condescend to them. I’m tongue-tied and intensely uncomfortable in the presence of waiters and waitresses; I despise all servitude. The reason is our father; his great grisly joy was baiting, cajoling and chiseling waiters. His performances were legendary. I was certain, as a boy of nine or twelve, or fifteen, that we would all be poisoned by the soup, entrée, or dessert (brought back to table the third time), or shot later walking to our car leaving a table of six, eight, or even twelve without a tip.

Paul rang again. He is too intelligent to act like a slaver; I hoped Marisol would ignore his summons but instead she brought a wagon-wheel sized platter of finger-foods. Where are the other dozen guests? I laughed. Marisol smiled. She’d drenched herself in Ysatis, my favorite perfume, and she caught me staring at her breasts.

Ah, buffalo wings! For such an elegant man, Paul devoured his chicken like a savage – tearing, ripping, stripping – Marisol left, and his slimy fingers halted their destruction over a pile of bones, skin, gristle and wadded-up paper napkins crowning the plate. He wiped his hands and mouth, the spot on his white cuff, the sauce splotch on his leg, and he panted like a dog. He wiped his little mouth, dried his delicate mustache yet it gleamed with meat grease. Then Paul palmed several wing-bones and dropped them like dice in front of his plate. If only Fate would intervene, he sighed. If these bones would only tell me what to do.

I played along. The Babylonians used sheep’s innards for divination; sheep’s guts in demon–bowls, I’ve read. African shamans cast bones, I believe, and the sorcerers make their diagnosis based on such witchery.

No, I’m serious. I have no idea what to do.

You mean about Marisol? I asked.

"Marisol this, Marisol that; damn Marisol! No, I mean I’m broke," cried Paul.

"Bull. No one could run through so much money. You just told me you’re rich."

I lied; that is I wasn’t ready to tell the whole truth. I mean it, I’m broke.

What happened?

"9/11 hurt worse than I admitted, way worse than this Downturn, and I never told you how much I had in Enron because that loss really made me feel like a fool. Then my broker at Goldman Sachs ripped me off; he put about half of my money with Madoff. He was fired but I still haven’t recouped any cash and probably never will. The under-assistant-deputy-to-nobody at the SEC told me to get an attorney. I asked that idiot what the fuck the SEC’s good for if I have to hire my own law enforcement, and now they won’t take my calls. I thought I could set myself up pretty again with a stellar bottling, but my first musts went sour and so did the prime interest rate. Hell of a year. Tell Susan I’m floundering, that I’m busted. That should make her day."

I wouldn’t say that, I said. But it was true: my wife despised my brother. I stared into the rich red liquid in my hand; a delicious wine but Paul’s ruin.

I’m sorry, said Paul. That was lousy of me. I invited you here to eat.

It’s good to see you. You know I like seeing you. I almost said you know I love you but I couldn’t— our father tore the love you habit of speech and hugging, even token hugging, completely out of us. And we’d had our one hug for the day.

Besides, I have plenty of ideas. I might just make this place a dude ranch or bed and breakfast or fat camp or yoga retreat or god knows what. Let’s check the meat.

We lurched up from our chairs— intoxicated and dreary, stepping through six bright bands of sunlight under six oblong skylights to the far end of the Trex deck. Paul moved with the elaborate decorum he affects when drunk – shoulders squared like a bodybuilder – hitched his shorts and pushed his right hand into the asbestos mitt, checking the fit with the seriousness of a fireman. I licked my thumb and rubbed a spot of wine on my white shirt into a larger pink stain. Paul lifted the Char-Broil’s blackened lid. Thick coils of greasy smoke momentarily obscured his bald head, then a gust of wind blew smoke and gnats westerly. He removed the mitt to grasp the salt shaker, hunched over and turned hissing, snapping Kobe steaks, or as Paul described with pride Wagyu long-bone ribeyes. Ultra-expensive, yet he had wrapped them in bacon.

Paul burned his hand. Goddamn it all! he roared, rubbing butter into the grill marks seared across his knuckles. I’ve told him before it’s wrong to grease a burn. He squirted the coals with water, winched up the grill and stacked the firebox with dampened hickory chips before closing the Char-Broil’s lid. There. About five more minutes. The meat’s actually done but I like to really kill the germs, though some eat Kobe raw. Cowshimi! You get worms but a least you don’t have to worry about Mad Cow. Let’s finish the wine.

Let’s open a bottle of your Cab, I said, hoping to broach a subject that would cheer Paul. His pride in wine making is consummate, as is his skill, regardless of his recent bad luck. I want to try a bottle of your 2004, if any is left.

A few, but I’ve decided to never again drink my wine, Paul muttered. Never, ever.

That’s silly. Just like dad, everything with you is always about money! Whether or not you lose this place, since you began you’ve made the best Cab in the state, even the snottiest wine-snobs say so. You are a success as a vintner, Paul, and to insist otherwise is ridiculous.

I’m often ridiculous. Do you know how high-tech the wine business has become? I feel more like a record producer than a vintner— spin the wrong disks, misjudge current vogues, and bottom line profits are off. And then, even if you have a hit, people don’t properly pay for it like they once had to, they’ll just steal it online. It’s a bigger responsibility than I care for— I got into grapes because I hate vicissitudes but to survive in this business you have to mutate, and worse, you have to pander.

But it’s still just basically farming, I said. You’re a highbrow horticulturist. And how do you know so much about the music biz?

"I don’t really know anything, just what I pick up from Bobby and his friends. His band Mopani Quenelle is making another album. Well, they aren’t really albums anymore: everything’s done with computers and downloaded online now, there’s no cassette or record or CD like I’m used to. I gave him the money to turn the old conservatory into a studio. It’s still more a greenhouse if you know what I mean. I don’t like him growing pot but I guess it’s better than smoking crack— and his grass is exceptional, I toke now and then. Want some? I’ll ring Marisol to bring a lid. But he’s not even trying to audition for an established label. Bobby told me that’s an old-fashioned hegemonic idea, that the artists have the power now and the record companies are all going broke. I blame it on Napster and YouTube but to Bobby and his friends YouTube is heroic. He gives away all the band’s songs at their websites. When I asked him about that he said it doesn’t matter anyway, it’s wrong to own anything, it’s all corporate greed."

Maybe he has a point, Paul.

Maybe he’s full of shit and I’m sick of his mooching. Those websites make millions and millions off the free content those rubes send them! Oh, I love my son, but everything is going to pieces, I just don’t understand this world, these kids who want nothing, and do nothing.

It’s no different than when we were kids, Paul. They just have better gadgets, just like we had better gadgets than our parents.

"Don’t say that. It is different. This generation should be smart, and happy, all we’ve given them, all the advances in civil rights and equal rights. But they’re vicious, ugly, depraved, and lazy. Bobby mocks what I do to his friends as if I were some ignorant sharecropper, grubbing around in the dirt, spreading manure, haggling over seed prices with a snuff-stuffed lower lip. And what does he do? Nothing. I pay the bills and he gives music away, if you can call that angry noise music. And what do the little bastards have to be angry about? They come from wealthy families and went to the best schools, and lived in the best neighborhoods, and never had to work."

My brother sat and nursed his burn. I looked out across the lush and beautiful terrain of his unhappy demesne. Five hundred acres of volcano-nourished loam, and an eight bedroom Queen Anne, its oriels, turrets, and porticoes refurbished at great cost to resemble, I thought, an altar: a great stone, wood, iron and glass shrine raised up from the dust, ashes and clover. In reality, the ancient shell had been consumed over time by termites and carpenter ants. What I saw was mostly plywood covered with T1-11 siding with painted-foam filigree but it looked, drunk as we were, original and solid.

I stood thinking: give me all my brother’s chances, all the money my brother’s ever held, and no matter the final outcome I’d be satisfied. I enjoyed the view, the green made possible by irrigation from the Herron river, a brown ribbon seven miles to the west under an eye-smiting azure of desert sky, beyond Paul’s land stretched a vastness as dead as Mars— wilderness unaltered, unkempt and beautiful in the yellow blaze of sun. I stared at a glittering, quicksilver cylindrical object I guessed to be a juice vat, its roof a sheet metal dunce cap— the effect of the bright nose-cone glittering above Paul’s shimmering acres of Shiraz was startling. Paul! That looks just like a spaceship or a missile.

"Bobby. I told you he’s insane. It’s his way of feeling productive and creative after I told him his music is worthless. He’s working on a dinosaur in the Muscat and a statue of liberty in the Lemberger."

Isn’t he returning to Colby in the fall?

No. They kicked him out. Just like Yale, just like Stanford. Paul served the charred Kobe steaks and we ate. They kicked him out, he repeated. "He cursed the Provost, Registrar, and President, in that order. Sent them bizarre letters and emails. I don’t know what happened to set him off and I don’t care. Maine’s a cold place. He’s safer here. Happy. No one will mess with his head the way they messed with mine when I was Bobby’s age. Yeah, he pisses me off but I still love him and I don’t really want him to be just like me, though that’s what he thinks and I guess most of the time that’s how I come across. Tingyong-Ga and Inchon and Chosin and Pyongyang made dad tough, psycho I guess, and he mostly took it out on me. What you got later was nothing compared to what I went through. I’ve never abused Bobby the way dad abused me."

Paul, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.

Fathers shouldn’t be too tough on their sons. Boys are weak and girls are strong. Don’t you believe that? Girls mature more quickly and have the moral prerogative. Why else do you think promiscuous women are called sluts and whores and promiscuous men are just… men?

I don’t know, Paul. It depends. People are people. I don’t judge anyone. This isn’t true. I judge people all the time; we all do. The spaceship suddenly lifted, tilted on its axis and rotated three hundred sixty degrees before settling back onto the launch pad.

Hydraulics, Paul said proudly. Bobby can build anything. And he plays guitar, piano, violin and drums equally well. Why the hell torture him in college? What good will it do? He can live here forever. Until the Sheriff’s sale, that is. Ha-ha. He’s a good kid. I have to quit saying there’s anything wrong with him, there isn’t. I hate his friends and his band, that’s true I think he’s the only one with talent and they sponge off him: they’re a bad influence, but Bobby’s basically a good kid. My first impulse was to point out that my nephew wasn’t a kid at all but a man of twenty-seven. He’s certainly a talented sculptor, I said.

You mean that?

Yes, it looks real.

I think so too, said Paul. "But you wouldn’t tell Bobby that, he wouldn’t take it as a compliment. His bunch scorn reality, life and emulation. If you say it