The Sound of Silence

By Amanda Hays

Ray couldn’t decide which of the oozing, bleeding bags of meat would most please his brother. The overhead lights in the meat section of the Piggy Wiggly were dim, the air cool. After much deliberation, he tossed one of the packages into his basket, not bothering to be careful with the plastic wrap safeguarding the bovine juices.

He dreaded going to his parents’ house that evening in honor of Oscar’s successful return home. Two promotions in just three short years and Ray’s younger brother was already making more money than Ray ever had.

Ray trudged over to the self-checkout line in hopes of avoiding contact with the optimistic o-mouthed employees, but as he arrived at station four the light dimmed on the sign over his head and the screen flickered to “out of service.”

“I can get you over here, Ray!” Millie announced, waving her varicose-veined arms over her enormous head. Her glasses were fishbowls snapped over her runny blue eyes.

“How is Oscar?” Millie asked, as everyone did. After Ray answered, she followed up with the second question everyone asked: How is the baby?

“The baby” made it sound like his own. Elijah was his older sister Katrina’s child, but the townspeople acted as if he belonged to the whole family.

Millie’s friendliness unnerved him, made him angry, partly because he knew he couldn’t be angry back. This town was his home. If he was rude, word would get around.

Ray took the scenic route home despite the coagulating beef in the passenger seat. Ray’s air conditioner had flubbed again and he didn’t have the money to fix it. He hoped the warmth would act as a magnet for bacteria and diseases; he hoped the meat became parasitic.

Gulls squawked overhead and dipped, coasting the warm breeze above the road. The trees, high and wet, dispersed air like the humidifier that had breathed every night in his and Oscar’s childhood bedroom.

Katrina’s silver coupe was already parked in the driveway, and Ray, feeling put out by this detail, created a thin black scud on the curb in front of his parents’ house. The meat felt like gloppy sand in his hand; he pushed open the front door and walked into the kitchen. His mother’s dog Rupe scuttled and sneezed at his feet.

“Ray!” his mother said, wrapping him in a hug that smelled, and did it taste? Like cinnamon sticks. The kind his grandmother used to leave out in a small ceramic bowl.

“When’s Oscar getting here?” Ray asked. His mother began to chop thin slices of tomato on the cutting board. The knife never made contact with the board. Ray kept expecting to hear the noise, the gentle thwump, but it never came.

“Your father’s already gone to get him. They should be here any moment,” she said. “Will you fix some drinks? You know how your father feels about driving.”

Ray wandered out of the kitchen and into the living room, where his older sister Katrina sat on her haunches on a pastel yellow blanket. She cooed at Elijah in some artificial language.

“Kat,” he said.

“Are you going to be nice to him?” she asked, skipping pleasantries. She wore an orange bikini and jean shorts. She dangled a plastic set of keys over the baby’s head; he struggled to swat at them.

“Shouldn’t you be asking him that?” Ray said. He wondered what Oscar would be wearing when he arrived. He wouldn’t be surprised if his brother wore a suit and a Rolex. Being a financial analyst paid well, after all.

Although he could hear his mother in the kitchen, shifting plastic produce bags around on the kitchen counter, and the baby’s keys making a gentle hollow noise when they collided—the scene felt silent to Ray. He could almost plant himself on the tattered green couch in his apartment and convince himself he was watching all this on the 28-inch screen across the room. Maybe the sound was on mute, maybe it wasn’t; Ray wasn’t a part of the action.

“Just keep an open mind,” Katrina said. Her lips looked like a sunburn, red and flaking. Her hair, which used to be glossy, now looked like the kind of hair he found scattered on his mother’s bathroom counter.

***

Ray’s head was thick with unease. He nursed his Jack and Coke, stabbing at the bottom of the glass with his toothpick straw. The moments before Oscar’s arrival were heavy with expectation. Ray’s mother didn’t bother to create conversation; he imagined she was too invested in her thoughts.

Ray heard the car pull into the driveway—he could hear the energy, the thrum, from inside the house. A car door slapped shut. Footsteps neared the front door. There was a pause, as if Oscar was collecting his thoughts, and then the doorbell reverberated across the house.

His mother sprinted to the front door, thrusting it open and enveloping her son in an anxious embrace. She was mumbling how much she’d missed him, how much she loved him, and didn’t he know he didn’t have to ring the doorbell?

As his mother dragged Oscar inside the house, pushing him toward the heart of it, the kitchen, Ray padded down the driveway. Ray saw his father’s face flushed through the windshield, his hands clawing at the steering wheel as he fought to make the car park on the side of the road. Ray didn’t think his father would notice the black marks his own car had made.

“Dad!” Ray said, waving his arms and signaling for his father to pause. The car hitched to a stop.

“It won’t park,” his father muttered.

Ray walked to the side of the car and opened the driver’s door. He could have commented on his father’s less than stellar parking skills, but instead he motioned for his father to get out of the vehicle.

“Let me park it, Dad,” he said.

Ray’s father didn’t say anything, just stepped out of the car and surveyed it, too many feet away from the curb, the steering wheel spun around and tangled. Ray sat and maneuvered the car toward the curb. The car, brand new, responded quickly and lithely, so unlike Ray’s own truck. He had no trouble parking the vehicle. His father walked toward the house, unwilling to watch how easy it was for Ray to handle the car.

Ray stepped inside the house, his body tense, on alert for Oscar. How would his brother greet him? Would they hug or shake hands? Would his brother even speak to him?

He heard his family’s muted laughter. He rounded the corner and saw them crowded around the kitchen island, saw the way that everyone stood around Oscar like he was their sun.

“I was wondering where you’d gone off to,” Ray’s mother said.

A dull thudding clouded all sensation in Ray’s body; he felt the clattering of his own heart. His brother turned toward him, his smile wide, his teeth pulled back from his gums and white, so white, and embraced him. Ray took too long to reciprocate. His brother’s back was slick with sweat.

The conversation thrummed and Ray listened to the gentle lull of his family’s voices, but not their words. The noise halted and Ray realized everyone was looking at him. A bird screeched outside.

“What?” Ray asked.

“What have you been up to?” Oscar asked, his voice deeper and sweeter than Ray had remembered. He hadn’t seen his brother in three years, since Oscar had graduated college. But Oscar had been distant for longer than that.

“I work at Chaney Public Library,” Ray said. Chaney was the library that he and Oscar had frequented in the summers of their childhood. Ray had picked out chapter books, something with a good twist, his fingers grazing the bubbled lettering; Oscar would come down the stairs from the adult section, his hands intertwined beneath a thick stack of books. In the evening, when Oscar was showering or out with friends, Ray would sneak over to his younger brother’s nightstand and look at the books. He stumbled over the thick, unforgiving words on the pages until he gave up, shutting the book.

“Really?” Oscar asked, grinning. To Ray, the smile seemed knowing, as if Oscar too were remembering the kinds of books that Ray read as a child.

Ray busied his hands with Oscar’s bags, which were heavy and made out of thick, still-smelling leather. He clomped up the stairs, his muscles throbbing under the weight. He dropped the bags at the entrance of the guest bedroom. His parents had sold their childhood home several years ago, but the guest room seemed like it belonged to Oscar. He was the only one who ever used it, and rarely at that.

Ray felt a prickle of curiosity. What was in those bags? Did Oscar have any secrets?  Ray backed out of the room. Of course Oscar didn’t have secrets. As children, Oscar had shared everything with everyone. Oscar didn’t have anything to be ashamed of.

Sports, science, math, reading: everything came easily to Oscar. Ray loved to read but reading was an effort, something he stayed up into the early hours of the morning practicing, reading The Hardy Boys under his navy bed sheets with the sputtering reading light he had been given for his birthday.

As Ray descended the stairs, his parents were popping a bottle of champagne, his mother laughing as she covered the top with her hands, holding the bottle away from her as if it were a dangerous thing. Ray had never seen his mother so happy—her face lit with contentment, her hands opening and extending toward Oscar without her even realizing it.

“It feels like Christmas,” his mother said.

Ray could feel the heat inside, could feel fingers of humidity pushing their way underneath the windowsills and filling the room with moisture. His shirt, a khaki polo from Kohl’s, adhered to his skin.

His mother held Oscar’s arm and led him outdoors and onto the screened-in porch. His father gathered the meat into his hands and squished it tightly into the shape of a patty, making a sound like a foot in mud. Katrina picked the baby up from its blanket on the floor and fastened a light blue hat around its head. For a second, Ray couldn’t remember the baby’s name.

Elijah. How could he have forgotten? Katrina wanted to name the baby something biblical, even though neither she nor her husband was religious—she thought the name would protect the child, give him some mythical power to take on the world without getting harmed.

“What are you waiting for?” she asked, jerking her head toward the patio. Katrina, who was seven years older than Ray, hadn’t been a part of all those games he and Oscar had played. She watched them from her chaise longue, applying suntan lotion to her already bronzed body, never paying close attention to her brothers’ activities.

We’re building a float, Ray. Go get some big sticks from around back, will you? I’m going to work on the design. Oscar drew up the plans and supervised as Ray, the mule, assembled the pieces and gathered supplies, sweat dripping from every part of his body. He was the elder brother but the dumber of the two—no one had ever said this to him but he knew it nonetheless.

Ray let himself out onto the patio, feeling abandoned. He kicked himself for feeling this way. Bugs thrummed from all sides, batting their bodies against the screen. His parents’ house didn’t back up to a view, just that of a house on a patch of grass in front of them. The air smelled of heat and the beginnings of ash from the grill in the corner.

Ray slipped into a chair that had giant mosquitos printed all over the cushion. His mother asked him if he wanted any champagne, but he shook his head. Oscar declined as well.

“Is our champagne not good enough for you? You probably drink this stuff like water,” Ray’s mother said. She took a tiny sip, so small that Ray wasn’t sure if the beverage touched her lips.

“In a little while. I already have this,” Oscar said, holding up a small plastic cup with his initials printed on in Sharpie. Ray wondered what his brother was drinking. Ray had the strangest desire to challenge his brother to a drinking competition, because he knew he could win at that at least, but it was childish, and Oscar was far too sophisticated to engage in that kind of behavior.

“Have they redone Chaney?” Oscar asked.

“No,” Ray said. “The children’s section really needs it, though.” The children’s section, the smallest section of the library, was filled with old books and shabby tables and chairs. Water damage stained the plastic covers and cloth spines of most of the books and the walls were discolored from the humidity.

“Hmm,” Oscar said. Ray wondered if Oscar had forgotten what the children’s section looked like; he’d stepped foot in it only to collect Ray from the small green beanbag chair next to the window. Perhaps Oscar thought it reflected poorly on him, Ray, not to have pushed for the remodel.

Katrina stepped onto the patio and settled into a chair. She closed her eyes, then opened them again, bobbing the child up and down on her knee. The baby’s face was mottled from the heat and Ray found himself staring at the pale, chunky body as if it were a foreign creature. He’d never found Elijah cute. Did that make him a shitty uncle?

“Are you seeing anyone?” Oscar asked, staring downward at his cup. Oscar had a special skill of sucking in all the attention from a room and feeding it back to one person in particular. Everyone else had to watch, wait their turn for his affections.

“No,” Ray said. He hadn’t seen anyone for months, and the last woman he’d been with was the assistant librarian at Chaney, who had let him fuck her on one of the big wooden tables. The table creaked and groaned under their weight, but other than that, it was silent. Neither of them came. After, Ray sat alone in his truck and smoked an entire pack of cigarettes. He’d left the cigarettes in the parking lot in a muddled ashy heap.

“Are you?” Ray asked. “Seeing anyone I mean?”

Oscar looked taken aback. He clearly hadn’t expected the question to be reversed to himself. Ray was pleased. He glanced over at their father, who had come outside to grill the patties. He stood in front of the grill, which spat hamburger juice. His father’s shirt was off and the gray hairs on his chest were knotted together with sweat.

“No,” Oscar said, biting his lower lip. Ray had never seen his brother do this before, and found himself wondering if it was a new habit and when precisely he had developed it.

Ray’s legs were slippery with sweat, and he could feel droplets of the stuff sliding down his back like it was a waterslide. The heat wasn’t oppressive; in some way, it was almost pleasant sitting there sweating his ass off with his family. His mother’s hair stuck to the sides of her face. The baby made noises from its spot on Katrina’s lap. Katrina was the only one wearing a bathing suit, and she kept glancing into the distance as if searching for the ocean, but the bug screens were too crisscrossed and blackened to admit much of the outside world.

As a child, Ray had wandered out the back door and through the fields of thick grass behind their property, never worrying about what might lie in between the strands, and down to the beach, where his feet found respite from the walk. Sand sucked the tough soles of his feet. He often took his backpack down to the water and read, his butt planted firmly on a cool patch of sand. His mother chastised him for muddying every single pair of pants. Ray liked the coolness underneath him, the way the earth rose up to meet his body but realized it couldn’t ever grab him when he stood up, brushing sand off the seat of his shorts.

“Do you miss being close to the ocean?” Ray asked his mother. No one had said anything in quite some time, or maybe they had and Ray hadn’t noticed.

“Sometimes,” his mother said. “But I like the change.” She leaned over and touched a lighter to a citronella candle, which quickly let off dark smoke.

“You have the screen,” Katrina said, pointing to it as if her mother were unaware of it. She dabbed some water from her glass onto the baby’s face. Elijah made a face and began crying.

Ray knew that his mother loved the smell of citronella candles. How could Katrina not know something so basic about their mother? Ray debated asking Oscar whether he too had forgotten this important detail about their mother. Ray breathed in the scent, which reminded him of nights spent camping outside in the dense grass, far away from the house, what felt like miles, but miles to a child, because even now Ray could see the upstairs light on, his mother’s figure walking back and forth in front of the glass, probably singing some Woody Guthrie tune to herself and running their father a honey-scented bath. Katrina never participated in these late-night excursions. Ray and Oscar would pack a small suitcase full of snacks and juice boxes and lug it out to the grass behind the house where they set up the tent. Oscar scattered the food around the area, under rocks, behind rotting stumps, near anthills—nothing was off-limits—and Ray would forage for the Ziploc bags of Ritz and Goldfish, bringing them back to Oscar and saying, “This is what’s for dinner tonight,” and Oscar would nod and say, “Of course, I realize that is all there is,” and they would eat in silence, filling the space beneath them with fine crumbs. They fell asleep listening to the frogs and insects, which created a dense curtain of sound. Their faces only inches apart, they’d whisper to each other; sometimes, if it began to storm and rain pummeled the tent and shook it violently, Oscar would inch his sleeping bag near Ray’s and hold his hand, just the fingertips, but enough so that it counted.

“I wake up and I’m not sure if I remember what the ocean sounds like anymore,” Oscar said now. He put his finger into his cup and moved it around, like calling a dog to the water bowl.

“In that moment, it is imperative that I see the ocean, at all costs,” he continued, his face inscrutable.

“Why don’t you come home?” Ray asked, surprising himself. Their father glanced up from the grill, his face flushed but the first hints of hope at the corners of his lips, his eyes.

“Yes, come home,” their mother said. Her eyes filled with tears, but she didn’t let them fall. Katrina got out of her chair and took the baby inside.

“A computer can play the sounds of waves, now,” Oscar said. “Did you know that?”

A moment of despair circulated the patio, trapped inside the enclosed space, unable to parse through the miniature holes in the screen; crushing and weighty, the feeling managed to escape, leaving behind a whisper, a fragment of what it once held.

***

On the way home, Ray longed to speak to someone, but his passenger seat was empty. If he gave the truck some gas he could create some of his own noise with the whipping wind from the unrolled window. That way his thoughts weren’t so loud. The dash lit up. Even the late night radio announcer sounded lonely, his disembodied voice drifting out of the speakers of the truck and floating around its interior.

Oscar is unhappy, Ray thought. Even after three years apart, his brother’s movements, the way he spoke and yet gave nothing away, was familiar. When Ray graduated high school, he went to community college and lived at home but when Oscar graduated high school, he shocked them all by attending a school five hours away. Ray saw him at family gatherings and dinners, but Oscar often wouldn’t look up from his plate. Ray left messages on Oscar’s cell phone that grew increasingly desperate: please call me back. That was when the loneliness first set in for Ray, when Oscar stopped responding, stopped contact with Ray altogether. There had been no fight, no signs, just a crunching feeling in Ray’s stomach when his brother became distant. One night Ray drove all the way to campus and knocked hard on the door, saying, “It’s me, Oscar, just me!” but Oscar never answered. Ray hoped he was out, but he spotted his brother’s banged up blue Acura in the parking lot around back.

Ray unlocked his apartment door and draped himself on the couch. The apartment smelled of the pizza he forgot to put in the fridge last night. The air conditioning unit was making strange squawking noises but he didn’t get up to check on it.

Ray felt the familiar glove of loneliness. He invited girls over sometimes, from bars mostly, just to listen to someone else’s heartbeat in his apartment. He could still hear the animal noise outside, pulsing and gyrating, pattering on his windows and walls.

As he lay there, his back supported by two uncomfortable Wal-Mart pillows, he closed his eyes. He listened to the bugs outside, breathed in the heat, which made his head pulse. He tried to picture Oscar beside him, side by side on their easy-to-wipe-off sleeping bags, smelling like the great outdoors and Dove shampoo. Ray couldn’t picture Oscar with him, not in that tent and not in this apartment, which was so many levels beneath Oscar. Oscar was brilliant, with an acerbic wit and a love for hiding in small spaces and jumping out and scaring people shitless—yeah, Oscar was good at that, Ray thought, at least eighteen-year-old Oscar was.

Ray felt an incredible rage toward his brother, so biting that sometimes Ray wished Oscar would get into a car crash and die. Ray would bring flowers to the funeral and wear a nicely pressed suit and stand over the casket shouting, “He’s not the better brother!” And when he felt like this, he drank until he could direct that anger toward himself.

***

“I want to see the old house,” Oscar said.

The whole family was gathered in the kitchen of his parents’ house. Their mother was dicing onions and tomatoes for a casserole. Katrina was reading the recipe book and gathering all the ingredients into a giant cache on the island. The baby bobbed up and down in his bouncy chair, a gift from Oscar last Christmas. He hadn’t shown up for any festivities, but he’d sent gifts. He sent a brand new stereo system, top of the line, to Ray’s apartment, but there hadn’t been a note, not even a return address. Ray had called the company asking about a mix up in a speaker delivery and had been told that the stereo system was “a gift from an Oscar Loyent to a Raymond Loyent.” And then, “Are you Mr. Raymond?”

“Why, honey?” their mother asked, gesturing for Katrina to pass the recipe book to her. Ray and Oscar’s parents had sold the house after Oscar had graduated high school; it was too expensive for them to afford.

“I just want to see who lives there, now,” Oscar said.

“Well there’s time if you want to go see it. Your brother can drive you,” their mother said. Her eyes were watering from the onions.

Oscar stepped from foot to foot. He seemed to be considering this proposition. His blond hair was overly jelled. He wore a purple V-neck and slacks although it was steaming hot outside.

“All right,” he said finally.

The two of them walked down the driveway. Ray stopped. His heart was pounding like he was on a first date.

“Do you want to drive?” Ray asked. He said it abashedly, as if the question might make Oscar change his mind and go back inside.

“No, I want you to drive,” Oscar said. They walked carefully down the driveway and climbed into the truck. Ray didn’t look at Oscar’s face; he didn’t want to see the look of distaste. Ray remembered the air conditioner was broken. Oh shit, he thought.

“A.C’s out,” he said, rolling down the windows. Oscar looked out the window and didn’t respond. Ray wondered if Oscar remembered how to get to the house. Why the sudden change of heart? he wanted to ask. Why are you talking to me now? After all these years?

The drive was short, and the breeze made the time bearable. Ray didn’t feel like talking, didn’t know what there was to say, or maybe it was that there was too much to say, and his throat was clogged up with all those lost syllables.

The house was two stories and pink. Pink lemonade, Katrina used to say. Flowerbeds containing leafy red plants lined the front of the house. A small plastic tricycle lay on its side in the grass.

“Do you remember those matching bikes we had?” Ray asked.

“Yeah,” Oscar said, talking out the window. Ray thought he could smell him but he wasn’t sure. He smelled something foreign, something not quite Dove.

Ray killed the engine and exited the truck. Oscar scrambled to get out of the truck but he was protesting now, asking some question about what did Ray think he was doing? but getting out nonetheless.

Ray made his way up the walkway where he had once drawn tiny illustrations of monsters and dinosaurs in sidewalk chalk. After he was done he would spray water on them and watch the colors grow brighter for a second before disappearing completely.

“What are we doing?” Oscar asked.

Ray rang the doorbell. The noise was different than when he’d lived here, but Ray couldn’t describe how it was different.

A small child answered the door. He had to reach up to grab the doorknob.

“Hi, I’m Matthew,” the boy said. He looked about four years old.

“Hi, Matthew. Are your parents home?” Ray asked. He could feel his brother’s eyes on the side of his face.

Matthew disappeared inside the house, leaving the door wide open. The new family had added hardwood floors and new carpet to the stairs, and of course the furniture was different, but there were the giant windows that Ray had tried to plaster himself to and reach all four corners of, and the wall that Katrina had whacked her head on. Ray wondered if there was still blood on the wall, underneath the fresh coat of olive green paint.

Oscar was beside him instead of behind him now. He looked into the house, scanning everything. Their eyes met for a second and Oscar briefly smiled. Ray’s heart felt different, dare he say fluttered, but no that wasn’t exactly the way to describe it, but was there a word to describe this feeling?

A young woman appeared, her hair in a high ponytail. She wore a short cotton dress and her toenails were painted yellow.

“What can I do for you?” she asked. Ray could hear Matthew playing in the background, running his cars along the hardwood floors.

“My brother and I used to live here, and he’s visiting from out of town. I know it’s a lot to ask, but would you mind if we looked around out back for a few minutes?” Ray asked.

The woman eyed Ray’s truck, a piece of tin on the side of the road, and puckered her lips.

“Okay, but just a few minutes,” she said, then closed the door.

Ray and Oscar walked around the side of the house.

“Whoa,” Oscar said.

The giant expanse of grass was gone. Not just a house, but houses, stretched in front of them. A tiny garden was being cultivated in the corner of the yard—Ray couldn’t believe it; the house had an enclosed yard now—and tiny purple and red flowers were scattered on the limbs of the plants.

Ray used to be able to walk to the beach from their house, had made the trek hundreds of times. Had his parents found out about the development? No, they had probably moved just before.

Ray led his brother to the beach but instead of taking Ray’s familiar route, they walked between houses and padded down paved residential streets. Gravel was still visible in the front yards where grass had yet to grow. Sweat coated Ray’s body. He didn’t remember ever being hot on this walk and he didn’t know if it was all the concrete or the age he’d put on like a couple of pounds.

“Ray, what are we doing?” Oscar asked, pulling on Ray’s arm. They were in between two houses but the ocean was out there, Ray could see it, could feel it beckoning him. He wanted to bathe himself in its waters.

“You said you wanted to see the ocean,” Ray said. He shook his brother off and trotted through the grass. He pulled off his shoes and walked the last couple of feet to the sand.

“I never said that,” Oscar said.

“The water feels great out here,” Ray said, his feet sinking deep into the hot sand.

Oscar paused. He closed his eyes; he appeared to be listening to something, but Ray wasn’t sure what. Birds and insects alike thrummed, filling the air with their noise, their being. Oscar kicked off his loafers and joined Ray.

“You shouldn’t have brought me here,” Oscar said.

“Why not?” Ray asked.

Oscar didn’t respond, but he followed Ray as Ray led them down to the beach. Plenty of houses backed up to the water, but no one was outside. An abandoned table, home to a tabletop umbrella, fluttered its canvas wings at them.

Ray began undressing. He felt giddy.

“Ray, what the fuck! Why are you doing this?” Oscar asked. His voice sounded smaller, pleading, like when they were kids.

Ray felt very big. He had led his brother to this place, this familiar place, without even realizing it. And Oscar had followed. Ray waded into the water, which felt colder than he had remembered. Temperature has no effect on a child. How long had it been since he’d been in the ocean, even seen it?

Ray stood in waist-high water, feeling lightweight in just his boxers. It was the middle of the day, what if people saw them? Ray laughed. People would think he was crazy.

“Come on!” Ray yelled.

“Why?” Oscar asked, his voice loud.

“Don’t you miss it?” Ray asked.

Oscar didn’t say anything at first, but Ray heard him mumble, “Yes.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” Ray asked.

“Ray, there’s something I haven’t told you,” Oscar began.

“What is it?” Ray said. He didn’t know why this moment was so important. Could one swim in the ocean save a man? He remembered reading The Awakening in school and never knowing whether the woman had drowned herself or not. But Oscar wouldn’t be able to swim into the horizon because Ray was here, Ray the older brother, the protector. He needed to do a little more of the leading.

Oscar began to grin, to really smile. Seagulls crowed above their heads. Oscar chucked off his shirt and pants and held his arms wide, like he was trying to capture all the water in the ocean. He ran into the waves, fell laughing into them. The water embraced him, holding him in its grasp until he stood up and rejected it.

Ray waded through the water to his brother and wrapped him in a slippery embrace. They both fell laughing into the water; saltwater flooded Ray’s ears and his eyes stung with it when they resurfaced. Oscar was crying but he was smiling too.

***

Amanda Hays is from Allen, Texas, but currently lives and writes in Oklahoma City. Her work has appeared in Cheat River Review, Lost Balloon, Little Patuxent Review, mojo, and The Indianapolis Review.