Page 121 of The Man I Hate

We continued along the coast until we reached San Diego, with Anna talking nearly all the way. After stopping at Hap’s house to pick up a box of photographs, we took the freeway back to Los Angeles.

Upon reaching our home, we each fixed a plate of leftover meatloaf and sat at the dinner table.

Hap ate with one hand as he pilfered through the photos with the other. He flipped one across the table.

“Remember that?” he asked.

It was a picture of my brother’s bloody forearm.

I’d caught a four-foot long kingsnake and was teasing Brandon with it. As soon as I released its head, it bit him on the forearm so hard it drew blood. Hap ended up taking him to the doctor, primarily due to my mother’s insistence that the snake was possibly poisonous.

“Mom was madder than hell about that,” I said.

“She sure was.”

“How old was I?”

“Well, I bought you that shirt on the Christmas before your thirteenth birthday, so I’m going to guess you were about thirteen. Give or take.”

“Probably right,” I agreed. “Brian Hudson got me interested in snakes and he moved away at the end of eighth grade.”

“What about this?” he asked, flipping another across the table.

I handed Anna the picture of Brandon’s arm and reached for the other one.

It was a picture of us on Halloween. We couldn’t have been much older than four and five. I was dressed as a cowboy, and Brandon was dressed as an Indian. His face was marked with warpaint. A headband that covered nearly all his forehead was fitted with three turkey feathers.

Still looking at the picture of my brother and I, I laughed. “I kind of remember that. Not really. I remember Halloween with him, though. We’d make you walk so far behind us that no one knew you were with us.”

“It didn’t really matter if I was there or not, nobody in the neighborhood would have let anything happen to you little shits. Everyone knew everyone. Hell, the neighbors used to call us and say, ‘Isn’t it time to eat, Hap? Your two turds are in our back yard looking for horned toads.’”

“Things have sure changed,” I agreed. “Can’t wear an Indian costume these days. Somebody’d call the news and turn you in for race shaming. Times were different back then, no doubt.”

I looked over the photo and handed it to Anna.

“Here,” he flipped another across the table. “What about that?”

The photo was faded so much that gray and yellow were the only prominent colors. It was a photo of my mother, holding a baby.

“Is that Brandon?” I asked.

“It’s you.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “That’s got to be—”

“Turn it over,” Hap said.

I turned over the photo. On the back, it was marked with block lettering, in pen. “Brax, 13 months.”

I grinned. “You called me Brax back then?”

He nodded. “Drove your mother insane. She said it wasn’t your name. That’s why she wanted to name your brother Brandon and not Brayden. She knew if it was Brayden, I’d call you Brax and him Bray. She knew I wouldn’t call your brother Bran, so she picked Brandon.”

“That’s funny,” Anna said.

“I never knew that,” I admitted.

We continued going through photos long into the night. When we finally retired to bed, I’d resurrected many memories from my past.