CAST OUT AND THIRSTY

Can we talk about Frank? No, not the dog. Though he’s been a wonderful reminder of your absence. Maybe you should send him a Christmas card. No, I want to talk about Frank the man. The always angry, word-slurring fuck-up you call a brother. Can we talk about the fact that I’m here telling you something you should know about, and God-willing, wouldn’t have kept to yourself if you even cared? 

            Frank is dead. 

            You’ve heard me correctly, I can tell by the camouflaged smirk. Frank is dead, and what’s more appalling than the shit storm he’s left behind are the ways in which he’s come under an eternal cure for his drunken inertia. 

            Yes, I said ways. 

            It seems Frank had gone off the deep end in his last few days here. Pun intentionally fucking used because Frank, the wonderful husband that he is, dared take his immaculate record of failure to the realm of Fatherhood; and instead of a nice Baseball game or a round of starving Rhinos, Frank – your estranged relative of little left kin – took my six year old niece on a deep sea fishing trip. The details of said trip will be of no use to you, but I record them in your name because I’d like you to properly review these details when the possibility of a happy future for you ever slams right smack – dead fucking smack – in the middle of your happy ignorant life. 

            A deep-sea fishing trip usually costs no less than $25.00 a person. Frank paid $8… For the two of them. A sea trip starts before the dawn, it pushes itself and its merry crew through tides of a calm or abusive sea, it parks far from salvation and a deep-sea fishing trip does not provide its guests with any alcohol. Rules, as you know, are a motto away from being forgotten. 

            My niece, though she be in a state of rest, was witness enough to explain Frank’s fall, but it is the rest of his merry crew for whose story I rely. 

            With anchors down, Frank found himself awake and casting out. His heart’s tea-pot tipped and my niece began to receive a helping of regret and forgotten sin. Words she’ll never forget came pouring out of your brother – words like cunt, back-stabbing cunt, heartless harpee with a fat stinking cunt and your name in all its incarnations before each new stinking cunt. 

            This was not a good day for Frank to be bonding with a six-year-old sweetheart. It was his first attempt at sobriety. And in the long run, a successful one. In my life and my sister’s, a glorious victory it was to have him gone, but this isn’t about our failed herculean efforts to squeeze your black sheep out of our lives – it’s about the fact that Frank had to be held down by four men before he went overboard. It’s about the three deceased members of yours and Frank’s family that attacked him from the moment he set his cast out to bait. This is not the scornful letter it started as, nor the one you imagined it would finish like. This is me, humbled by the fears of my family, asking you to explain just how it was you and Frank had become so far apart. 

            In those moments for which my niece found a new education, Frank explained more than she or I or my sister would’ve imagined of his past. 

            Your brother, confidently referred to by most as an alcoholic, admitted to being responsible for those three ghosts who chased him overboard. Frank, the fuck-up, poured more than eight bottles of whiskey into the ocean before they set sail that morning; by the time their anchor fell, that brown elixir had followed Frank like a demon beckoned from hell. 

            Mandy – my niece, your niece – is safe. She’s found rest and sanity again in her books – for the time being. Your mind, though I wish it pain, can rest. Because what I need from you is a way in which my mind may now rest. 

            Mandy’s stubborn in telling me that not only have the three whiskey demons followed her from the sea, but you – yes you, Frank’s sister, her aunt, a stranger to our family – has been terrorizing my sister’s daughter at any mention of water, the sea, a faucet tap, or a simple box of juice. It’s your name she screams at in fear until her heart is worked over and she’s fallen breathless to the floor. She will not drink, will not bathe, and scratches at her eyes when she cries.

            The details, I hope, will be of use to you, but I ask that you come to the home of my sister’s haunting and explain yourself for the sake of Mandy’s life.