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26 King He was the third brother, the stammering one drowned under Pirtle’s brash one-leggedness and Emmitt’s Alaska sojourning. I remember him as youngest— which should suggest a connection with me, also youngest of three sons. Instead, this connects nothing. King’s wife Nell made rolled peanut butter candy and gave the three of us—me and my brothers— a new two-dollar bill each Christmas, the one occasion we sometimes saw them except for unfortunate accidents. I say unfortunate because, despite their congeniality, I was young, a baby, and they scared me. King remains shadowy. Their house underlit and undistinguished—a narrow, yardless, peeled siding job with small porch, sagging between identical cousins. King squeaked when he spoke. He was gaunt and stubbled and rambled the streets of Highland Park— the neighborhood of my parents and their parents— twenty years before the airport bought and razed it all. King was dead by then, Nell in a home. Really, I know almost nothing about either of them and am embarrassed by a child’s memories and lack of charity. My mother recently retold the story of, when she was young, King visiting them as he often did. This day, he left and returned flustered, to explain, to apologize, convinced he had caused the cracks in their sidewalk by stepping on it. He was alarmed. He was adamant. He was probably crazy. My grandmother told him he was a fool and to go home. Thus it was the pot called the kettle black. What the hell. I didn’t know him, we weren’t significant in each other’s lives. When we buried Grace two years ago, I saw his stone and was surprised at years gone. 27 My suit was tight and I faced a long drive home. They’re all dead now, the brothers, the family in a row except for Emmitt, whom nobody brought back. Highland Park is ghosts and trees and tall grass. When my father drove me through last year during a visit, at first I didn’t recognize the place. To me, it had never looked better. Anyway, King was the forgotten brother and now I’ve chiseled his name on the wind, too. ...

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