Dancing the Line

 

Part 1, The Gathering

 

They have nowhere special to go, no larger plan; Dean hangs the Impala’s tires along the West Coast for a while, skirting California. Sam thinks it might mean something in that weird language Dean speaks: his brother’s never managed to communicate in something as tiny as words. Dean would never just ask Sam if he wanted to go back to college; so instead he burns several tanks worth of gas winding along the edges of Cali.

 

Sam knows he’s winning the silent argument when Dean stays out all night in Vegas and ribs him the next morning. “Seriously, Sammy, there’s no way you should ever go out again. Women everywhere would die of shock.”

 

Sam picks onions off his burger, flicking them onto Dean’s plate. “Reverse psychology, Dean, very advanced. I’m impressed.”

 

Dean has barbeque sauce on his jaw and happily slurps each of his fingers before replying. “I’m just saying, dude, it wouldn’t kill ya to take a break from… whatever the hell it is you do in the hotel room every night.” He holds up one brown-stained hand. “Please don’t take that as an opening to share.”

 

Sam rolls his eyes. Watch one porno – or two or three – and you’ll never hear the end of it.

 

“Seriously, though,” Dean continues, “you’re all healed up and we’re in Vegas, dude. What’s your excuse?” It’s another roundabout communication: tease to inquire about health. Sam thinks to himself that he should write a book: Non-Communication Communication for Dummies.

 

Sam takes a big bite of cow and speaks with his mouth full. “Shoulder still feels a little sore. Sorry if I don’t table-dance.”

 

On the way back to the car, Dean bumps his shoulder into Sam’s non-injured one. “Howsabout we head up to Oregon for a while?”

 

“What’s in Oregon?”

 

“Know a guy up there – mechanic.” Dean pauses and critically examines the Impala’s side. “Goddamned momo took a chunk out of her… she needs some fixin’ up.”

 

Sam grunts and climbs inside as Dean runs his fingers over the deep gouges etched in the car’s metal. They turn north; Dean’s done all of the driving for the last month or so. If Sam was completely honest, which he can hardly ever afford to be with Dean, he’d admit to more than a sore shoulder. His ribs still ache and physical therapy hasn’t gotten rid of the occasional pangs in his neck that invariably turn into headaches. They’ve stayed in more hotels than normal, the luxury of a bed made more of a necessity by too many broken bones. A break would be good; he’s not quite confident enough in his non-communication skills to ask for one without it sounding like he needs a break from Dean.

 

-o-

He has to get back in the game sometime, though, so Sam swallows two Vicodin and conks out in the passenger seat.

 

When he wakes up his neck feels like the right side has locked up permanently and there’s a dull cramping pain in his right leg. That isn’t what woke him, though: they’re passing through a desert thunderstorm. Skirting it, actually… the heart of the storm dances to their right, throwing down sparks of white that leave jagged lines in his vision. The western sky is still orange with dusk, but the rest has been swallowed by gray-brown clouds; the air thrums with electricity and the smell of wet dust.

 

Dean’s shucked his coat and has his window rolled down all the way. One tanned, bare arm hangs out, rising and falling in the whistling wind like a sail. He cuts a quick grin to Sam: he’s always loved driving through storms.

 

The road out in front of them lies completely straight across brown earth. Not a single curve, just a thin, two-lane dark line that cuts through the desert. When he checks behind them, it looks like they’ve come down from a small range of hills, the remnants of Nevada’s mountainous country.

 

Dean’s playing Hell’s Bells but he turns it down to say, “Welcome to Oregon.”

 

-o-

 

Desert gives way to lush greenery. They wind up across the Cascades and its dense pine trunks; this late in summer there’s no snow on the ground, and black grit edges the road. Sam rubs his neck and tries not to get carsick on the long curves around the mountain peaks.

 

When they tilt downward again, Dean stretches his arm into the back seat and coaxes his cell phone from his coat pocket. “Don’t worry, Sam,” he says around a mouthful of peanuts, “you’ll sleep in a nice fluffy bed tonight. How’s your neck?”

 

The edges of a headache are closing in on Sam’s skull and he’d really rather not talk about it. “So how do you know this guy?”

 

It takes a while for Dean to answer: he’s busy scrolling through his phone, eyes dancing between the road and the screen. “After you left for Stanford, Dad and I hung around the West coast for a while. Y’know,” he shrugged with one shoulder, “’case you needed anything. There’s a classic car show up in Portland every year.”

 

Sam waits, then prompts, “And you met this mechanic there?”

 

Dean punches in the number, puts the phone to his ear. “Naw. But every time I asked an owner something they didn’t know, they called Gary.” He grins, eyes narrowed. “Dude’s got a categorical memory about cars: any part, any make, he knows it all.”

 

Sam wants to ask more but then Dean’s face lights up when someone answers the phone. “Cathy! It’s Dean Winchester.”

 

The phone explodes in a tinny exclamation that echoes all the way across the front seat; “Dean!”

 

-o-

 

Dean takes his hands off the wheel to strum an imaginary banjo and whistles a few notes of the Deliverance theme. He waggles his eyebrows. “Whatsamatter, Sammy, doncha wanna go rafting?”

 

It’s dark by now and they cross over some ancient stone bridge; Sam peers down at the black water and Dean cackles.

 

They drive another two hours, but not towards Portland: Dean takes back roads through Christmas farms and blueberry fields. “What, is this guy some kind of recluse?” Sam inquires, eyeing the trailer homes and small-town slums.

 

The other houses grow fewer in number and still Dean continues through low-hanging tree branches. He slows the Impala to a crawl, his arm dangling out the window again, and the rich smell of honeysuckle pours through. A thick hedge of something rises to their right, impenetrable until Dean suddenly turns the car. Sam hadn’t seen the opening, but he catches momentary sight of the large gray mailbox stenciled in white letters: KENT.

 

On the other side of the hedge, the trees clear away and there are lights turned on just for them.

 

-o-

 

Cathy Kent has tiny, birdlike bones and a pear-shaped body. She stands on the stone porch of her house with the heels of her hands on the backs of her hips, silhouetted by the faint light behind her. Sam can’t quite see her face but the smile in her voice reaches him just fine. “Bet you boys are zonked. You hungry or you wanna go straight to bed?”

 

Dean moves forward and hugs her briefly. “Cathy, you always know the way to a man’s heart.”

 

Cathy pats Dean’s shoulders. “We’ve got spaghetti in the refrigenador¹; you can pop it in the microwave. Gary was already asleep when you called, but he’s got tomorrow off to fool around with you. Is this Sam?”

 

Sam’s wildly off-balance in the dark and barely manages to catch up. “Ah, yeah. It’s very nice to meet you, Cathy.”

 

The hand that finds his feels small and slightly wrinkled, but firm. “Dean’s told us a lot about you. You guys can forage for food in the kitchen, I’ll go get some blankets.”

 

She turns around and goes back into the house, leaving the door open wide. Sam catches Dean’s arm. “We’re staying in the mechanic’s house?”

 

“Dude, there aren’t many hotels out here.” Dean doesn’t wait for any follow-up questions, though he does pause with one foot in the door. “They, ah, don’t really know what I do for a living.” He ducks inside.

 

Sam shrugs uncertainly and goes after him.

 

-o-

 

The only light comes from above an island situated in the kitchen’s center. Dean stands below it, scooping cold noodles onto two plates. “You want some?”

 

Sam shuffles up beside him and peers down into the two pots; the sweet stench of garlic greets him and his stomach growls. “Yeah. So… I take it you know this guy really well?”

 

Dean switches ladles and slathers chunky red sauce atop the noodles. “Yeah. You want some cheese?”

 

“Sure. His wife just let us into their house in the middle of the night.”

 

“They know me. I’ve stayed here before.”

 

“When?”

 

Dean casts Sam a telling glance as he steps around him to the refrigerator. “I told you, dumbass, you were at college.”

 

“And what, you spent the whole four years here? Dean, it’s –” he casts around for a clock and sees the microwave’s glowing numbers. “12:30 at night!”

 

Dean pops the plates in the microwave and nukes them until the parmesan cheese sizzles.

 

A screen door in back of the kitchen leads out onto a wooden deck. There’s just enough moonlight to find lawn chairs and they sit down with their plates in their laps.

 

“So, you were looking for someone who knew classic cars, and you found this guy…”

 

Dean sighs and puts his fork down with a clink. “Sam. Jesus. This is not that big a deal. I mean, we’ve shown up unannounced and bleeding on people’s doorsteps before.”

 

“People who were hunters,” Sam points out. “Not… civilians.”

 

“What,” Dean asks and Sam can practically see the mock-pout, “I can’t have nice friends?”

 

Not normally, Sam wants to say, but bites his tongue. He twirls his fork through the spaghetti, gathering it to his mouth. It delivers a punch to his taste buds, a blend of salt and sweet and spice. “Wow,” he says around the mouthful.

 

“Good, huh?” Dean asks his voice low and knowing. There’s the scrape of silverware.

 

They eat for a while in silence, serenaded by the distant croak of a million frogs. “There’s a river down that way,” Dean says quietly after a while, waving his knife to indicate the reptilian chorus.

 

Another sound pierces the night, a strange high wailing cry. Sam tenses but Dean only chuckles. “Peacocks. Scared the shit out of me the first time I heard them, too.”

 

Sam pauses, listening. “Dean,” he says at last, “how many times have you been here?”

 

Dean doesn’t answer immediately. “A few.”

 

The screen door behind them opens. “Whew. It is hot as hell upstairs,” Cathy announces, coming out to stand on the other side of Dean, her hands back on her hips. “I’ve got two beds laid out in the living room and a bunch of pillows for you, Sam. Oh, look at that moon.”

 

The last sentence rises in wonder usually reserved for glorious feats of daring or the Second Coming. Sam looks up at the cosmic orb in question; it hangs unexceptionally on the horizon, three-quarters to the full.

 

“It’s gorgeous,” Dean confirms placidly.

 

She’s already moved on. “You got some spaghetti?”

 

“Yes, ma’am. It’s real good,” Dean answers, mannered as any schoolboy.

 

Not to be outdone, Sam chimes in, “It’s delicious, Cathy. Thank you.”

 

“We have some French bread, too, actually,” she replies in another sudden flash. “You guys want some?”

 

“Oh, no…” Sam starts.

 

“Oh, it’s good bread,” she interrupts. “It’s great bread. You just try some, you’ll love it.”

 

“I’m sure I’ll be full by the time…”

 

“Well, I’ll just heat some up and you can try some if you want.” She turns and goes back inside the house. “I’ll get you a ka-nife¹, too.”

 

Sam closes his mouth.

 

In the dark, Dean chuckles. “Resistance is futile, Sam. Eat the damn bread.”

 

-o-

 

Sam wakes to the sound of someone creeping past him and sits up lightning-quick despite the protest in his neck, shoulder, and side. Cathy puts up her hands immediately, face broken open in apology. “Sorry,” she whispers, and continues past him on her way to the kitchen.

 

Beside him, Dean murmurs without opening his eyes, “She’s the ninja chef: she’ll wake up at all hours of the day or night to make you an omelet.”

 

Sam blinks and lies back down.

 

-o-

 

In the light of morning, Cathy has black hair with plenty of gray; she looks to be about fifty. She stands behind the stove with one hand cocked on her hip and the other wielding a spatula over a dozen half-baked pancakes on the griddle. “’Morning, Sam. You want an omelet?”

 

“Good morning.” Sam blinks, still half-asleep and aware that he’s wandered into the kitchen in his boxers and T-shirt. “Oh. No, thank you.”

 

She smiles indulgently. “I’ll make you a little one.”

 

He opens his mouth and closes it. “Um, where’s your bathroom?”

 

She waves one hand down the branching hallway; the other deftly breaks an egg. “First door on your right.”

 

Sam heads in that direction, passing one doorway that smells like laundry detergent, and steps into the small bathroom. There are floral prints on the walls and Sam stares at himself in the mirror. He still has stitches above his eyebrow and the eyes that stare back at him look sunken. He ducks his head and undresses quickly, picks up the T-shirt that he brought with him.

 

A rap on the door makes him jump. “You’ve got a towel on the hanger if you want to take a shower,” Cathy says through the door, then her footsteps retreat.

 

The towel has a floral print, too.

 

Sam showers hurriedly, heart racing with anxiety that he can’t quite place. This place feels unreal, strange, and he almost wonders if he’s dreaming. There’s a bottle of shampoo on the shower rack and Sam eyes it warily, wondering if it’s like Persephone’s pomegranate: use this shampoo and you are forever trapped in our realm.

 

The shower leaves him a little wobbly. He’s still not accustomed to standing up for extended periods of time and he blinks against the dizziness, drags the fresh T-shirt over his wet hair.

 

When he exits the bathroom in a rush, he almost crashes into the elderly woman shuffling down the hall. “Oh my goodness!” she exclaims, jumping as much as he does.

 

“Sorry!” he exclaims, still dizzy and a little worried about the shampoo. “Um, sorry.”

 

She’s got one hand on the front of her bathrobe, but steadies. “You’re Sam?”

 

“Um. Yeah. Nice to meet you.”

 

She eyes him cautiously for a moment. “Well, I’m Lillian. You done with the bathroom?”

 

“Oh. Yes, of course.” He steps sideways to let her through and stands there wondering how the hell everyone knows his name.

 

There’s music playing, he can hear it down the hall.

Meet me in the morning, 56th and Wabasha
Honey, we could be in Kansas
By time the snow begins to thaw.

 

The dozen pancakes are piled high on plates at the table and Dean’s sitting there, his hair tousled, laughing. Sam freezes up again, because Dean is laughing, not a chuckle or even a guffaw, he’s got his head back on his shoulders and he’s rocking, just a little. Sam clutches his dirty clothes to his chest.

 

Dean wipes his eyes and spots Sam. “Oh, hey. Gary, this is my brother Sam. Sam, this is Gary.”

 

Gary Kent rises from his chair and rises and rises. Sam looks up. Up.

 

“Sam. Good to meet you.” Shock-green eyes stare down at him. Judging from the lines in his face and his thinning hair, Gary looks to be in the mid-fifties as well; but the rest of him belongs to a much younger man. His palms feel like sandpaper. “Dean’s told me a lot about you.”

 

“Sam, your plate’s down at the end.” Cathy shuffles up, pancakes balanced on the spatula in midair. “I made you some bacon, too.”

 

“Thank you,” Sam says automatically. “Really, you didn’t have to…”

 

“You will be assimilated,” Dean whispers and his grin widens.

 

-o-

 

Gary’s hands look like he’s washed them in acid and pounded them with hammers, which he might actually have done over his lifelong career as a mechanic. His fingernails are irregular; two have bruises underneath the surface; the backs of his hands have various scars. Grease and dirt have permanently embedded themselves in the whorls of his fingerprints and don’t budge even after Gary spends half an hour washing the dishes. When they touch the Impala’s damaged side, though, his hands turn to feathers. “Did you run into a fence?”

 

“Close enough,” Dean answers in a neutral tone.

 

Gary raises his head, wintergreen eyes sharp. Dean meets them and Sam stands at attention to the side while they communicate.

 

Gary grunts, then hefts himself upright and strolls around to the other side. He limps a bit and Sam frowns. “You hurt, Gary?”

 

“Fell off a ladder at work last September.” The older man drops down into a crouch and his voice drifts over the Impala’s hood. “Dropped 12 feet onto concrete, shattered my heels.”

 

Sam flinches. “Damn.”

 

“Yeah, couldn’t walk for months.” His head pops up over the hood briefly and he grins, white teeth flashing except for a gap on the left side where one has gone missing. “Got enough metal in my feet now to set off airport detectors.”

 

It’s such a wide smile that Sam can’t help but return it.

 

 

 

Gary circles the entire car, looking top to bottom, climbing inside to fiddle with the instruments. He takes a penny out of his pocket and drops down to lie on the gravel, doing something to the tires. At the end, he returns to Dean’s side and puts his scarred knuckles on his hips. “Body damage is pretty fixable. If I put it on the front burner I can have it done by Monday for about fifteen hundred.”

 

Sam’s seen Dean haggle with gas station attendants over the price and quality of motor oil, eyes narrowed to doubting slits about what they’re doing to his baby.

 

Gary puts out one fucked-up hand and Dean takes it instantly, shakes.

 

The two of them launch into a talk about carburetors and torque; Sam tunes out and puts his hands in his pockets. The small stones of the driveway scuffle under his shoes and he digs an idle little hole in the gravel with his toe, then fills it back up.

 

All the windows of the house stand open and through the screens Sam again hears the rolling guitar and voice of Bob Dylan. He glances over his shoulder, but Gary and Dean are both still chest-deep in discussion.

 

Cathy sits at the kitchen table with a laptop; she looks up when he enters. “You hungry?”

 

Sam pauses, brain working to find an answer that will not result in him being force-fed, then says carefully, “Not yet, but I will be soon.”

 

That appeases her, apparently, because she goes back to typing; the music comes from her small computer. “I guess you’re the big Dylan fan, huh?” Sam inquires, taking a seat.

 

The key-clicks pause and Cathy regards him closely. “No. That’s my daughter Rebecca.”

 

Sam smiles, uncertain about the change in her mood. “Well, she’s got good taste. I like this song.”

 

That brings a wide smile to Cathy’s lined face. “She went to college down in LA. I didn’t want her to go quite so far, she’s my best buddy; but she wanted to study film, so she just had to go to LA.” She pauses for a moment to type again. “We had such fights over it before she left. It’s the only thing she and I ever fought about. She’d never been away from home alone before and I was scared for her.”

 

Her face is drawn, pale with painful memory. Sam clears his throat and changes the subject. “What’re you working on?”

 

She tilts the screen towards him, shows him the AIM window. “It’s what Rebecca and I do. We both put on A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, then type the lyrics to each other.”

 

On the screen the words I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinking appear in the AIM window just after Dylan sings them aloud. Cathy pulls the computer back to type the next lyric.

 

A rail-thin young man comes flying down the stairs into the kitchen and slides across the tiled floor, shrugging a shirt down over ribs that poke through his skin. “Hey,” he greets Sam in a surprisingly deep baritone. He looks to be 23 and a good inch or so taller than his dad. “Who’re you?”

 

“This is Dean’s brother Sam.”

 

“You’re kidding!” Mart’s face lights up. “Dean’s here?”

 

“We got here last night,” Sam supplies. “Uh, Dean’s having your dad look at his car.”

 

“Cool. They outside?”

 

Cathy leans back in her chair. “Why don’t you take Sam out back with you.” She drops her voice to a loud, perfectly-audible whisper. “There’s some beer in the refridgenador. Don’t drink all of it, though; I think they’re planning a Carlo Rossi.”

 

“Okay. Yeah.” Mart smiles slyly, putting out his hand to Sam. “Nice to meet you.”

 

-o-

 

Dean, Gary, and the Impala have vanished from the driveway, but Mart seems to know where to find them; he strikes off through the row of flowering dogwood trees. A six-pack of Corona hangs from one mile-long arm and he fishes out a bottle as he walks. “You want one?”

 

“Sure.” Sam uses his jacket sleeve to twist the cap off, pockets it, and takes a swig of the bitter liquid. “You’ve got a really nice home.” The house behind them is large-ish and surrounded by green lawns, a rainbow of flowers, and neatly-trimmed hedges. Towards the south, they’ve got quite a view of the distant Cascades.

 

“Yeah… Mom and Dad built this whole place from the ground up. When they moved here, there was nothing at all; Dad built the house and Mom planted all the trees.” He makes this strange coughing noise and it alarms Sam for a second before he figures out that Mart is laughing. “My little sister Becca used to say that Mom was ‘tree and bush crazy.’ So did you get in an accident lately or something?”

 

“Naw, I got jumped…” By a massive, spine-covered momo that threw me against a tree like a ragdoll, broke half my ribs, almost snapped my neck, and straight-up fucking killed me for three whole minutes before Dean got my heart started again. “… by some bikers.”

 

A familiar roar makes Sam look up. There’s another structure here among the trees, a single-room barn with a high roof and rose bushes climbing up one side. The Impala’s growl comes from inside, mixed with something else.

 

Half a mile from the county fair and the rain came pourin' down
Me and Billy standin' there with a silver half a crown.

 

Old tools and abandoned projects litter the barn’s dusty interior; somewhere among the piles of wood and equipment, Sam spots the hull of a small rowing boat, half-finished and raw. The back doors of the barn have been thrown open and this area is clear, clean, surrounded by well-cared-for tools. The Impala sits there, its hood propped open and Gary behind the wheel. Beyond Dean’s car there are a half-dozen other classics in various forms of disrepair scattered across the gravel pit out back. Gary revves the motor again, shouting something to Dean over the noise.

 

Dean sits atop the work bench and shouts back, his boots dangling in midair; the stereo’s next to him. He looks up when Sam and Mart enter. “Hey,” Dean hollers. Mart passes him a Corona. “How’ve you been?”

 

Beside Sam, Mart takes in a deep breath, lets it out. “Better. Y’know, sorta. Grammy said you guys were starting up the Carlo Rossi?”

 

Dean grins mysteriously, winks.

 

Gary herds them all into the car with vague promises of a new pub in town. He pauses only to peel the Morrison tape out of the stereo before climbing behind the wheel. In the back seat, Sam grips his longneck because he has never seen anyone but Dean or their father drive the Impala and there are only so many rules that can go broken before he starts waving a gun around and demanding answers.

 

In the light of day the path back into town loses the breathless mysticism it held last night: it’s lined by blackberry bushes and moss. Rabbits still dart across the center line and Gary guns the engine every time he spies one. “Little sonsabitches,” he growls and swigs his Corona.

 

Beside him, Dean chuckles and Mart leans across the seat. “C’mon, Dad, five points.”

 

The engine roars and Sam cringes, putting a hand up over his face. On the stereo Van Morrison sings These are the days… as they slide under green boughs.

 

The pub’s local color comes in the form of rough-hewn men and underage kids. They take a booth beside the door, Dean and Sam automatically putting their backs to the wall and their faces to the entry. The sour-mouthed bartender flops up to their table, massively pregnant and actually barefoot. She tosses down a glass of Scotch for Gary, ignores Mart, and raises eyebrows at the Winchesters. Dean indicates her stomach. “Awww, that’s sweet. Whatcha calling it? Corona? Bud?”

 

She glares, rolls her eyes, and waddles back behind the counter only to return with a pair of Zimas. Mart eyes her departing back. “I think I was in second grade with her.”

 

-o-

 

“… so the car went straight over the side of the curve and rolled.” Gary’s big, ruined hands work the air, weaving the story. “Now I hadn’t seen how far the hill went, and I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.”²

 

“Jesus, Dad.” Sam’s a little grateful that he isn’t the only one at the table in some state of horror; Mart’s eyes look like golf balls. Dean’s rapt, grinning.

 

“So the only way I could keep from snapping my neck was to put my hands up on the roof of the car while it rolled, hold myself in place. And I musta gone… I dunno… fifty feet down this goddamn hill just guch-guch-guch-guch,” he twirls his fingers over each other, “before I hit a tree. And the goddamndest thing was,” he took a swig from his third glass of Scotch, drawing out the moment, “when I got out of the car, I looked at it and the whole damn roof was flat as a pancake,” he slaps his hands together, fingers laid out rigid, “except for the part right above my head.”

 

Dean’s lips part. “You held the roof up?” Gary grins and Dean breaks into incredulous laughter.

 

“Broke my finger,” Gary admits, holding up his crooked pinkie. “And sprained my wrist, but I didn’t feel it until the next day. I was sky high on acid. My dad was livid.”

 

Mart drives them home, not even a question; it's habitual. As they pull up in front of the house, Cathy’s on the front porch again, hands on her hips and a grin on her face. “Jim and John are on their way in.”

 

Dean whoops into the night air, loud as any peacock.

 

-o-

 

Uncle Jim and Uncle John arrive at 2 AM and Sam’s starting to understand why their late-night appearance yesterday didn’t raise any eyebrows. Cathy’s brothers from Kansas duck their heads under the front doorway; they’re both tall and wiry, grizzled with gray. John has a moustache and a warm smile; he lunges forward to hug Dean. The gaunt, hawk-nosed Jim hangs back.

 

“Dean Winchester,” he says in a low smoker’s voice. “You’re as spud-ugly as ever, kiddo.” Then his face breaks open into a grin and he hauls Dean to him.

 

“This is Sam,” Dean says and Sam’s never felt short before.

 

“Kansas boy.” John claps his shoulder approvingly. “Just like a cornstalk.”

 

“More like a beanstalk,” Dean replies. “He sprouts them under his hair, that’s why it looks like that.” He ducks Sam’s swipe.

 

Jim peers at Sam with his little dark eyes, then breaks into hacking laughter that Sam recognizes as Mart’s. “Goddamn. Ugly runs in the family, I guess.”

 

Jim and John fetch their own bedding and lay themselves outside on the deck. When all the lights go off and Sam’s just heading up the steps towards his bed in the living room, he hears Gary pause at the screen door. “Carlo Rossi?” he whispers.

 

Jim’s rough laughter drifts back. “Carlo Rossi,” he growls.

 

 

 

 

Part 2, The Game

 

The next morning dawns with anticipation, some kind of unspoken spark in the air that Sam feels against his closed eyelids. Cathy goes creeping past him before dawn’s even touched the sky; Sam drifts back asleep and when he wakes up again, Sam shuffles into the kitchen, pulling at his sore neck. Cathy promptly assaults him with quiche.

 

“Jim and Mart are at the store, buying supplies,” Gary tells Sam. “You want anything in particular? Or are you okay with beer and swill³?”

 

“We’ve also got a whole bunch of other stuff.” Cathy tosses open a cabinet. Sam cranes his neck and makes out a series of multi-colored bottles: Vodka, rum, Scotch and Bailey’s Irish Crème. Cathy hops on top of a chair, and stretches up to fetch the rum. “You want a blizzard³, Sam?” she inquires, then returns to the blender without waiting for his response. Above the pancake griddle, John tosses him a wide, knowing grin and shakes his head.

 

Besides his sister, John’s the shortest member of this mammoth family, and that must be some strange part of the reason that Sam finds him more accessible; somehow, people taller than him just feel unnatural. Over pancakes and quiche and rum-soaked blizzards (it’s not even noon), Sam edges further down the table until he’s right at John’s elbow. “So do you guys live in Oregon, too?”

 

“Hm? Oh, no. I was up in Alaska until I got divorced. Jim’s ex-wife Linda, she moved the kids back to Kansas and Jim wanted to be near ‘em while the little snots were young, so I headed back home and the two of us got a house together in Kansas City. We’re hardly ever there, though: me and my big brother are on what you might call an endless road trip.” John’s smile turns self-deprecating.

 

Sam feels his spine straighten. “Really. Doing what?”

 

“Selling, mostly. Pipes and steel. We go all over the West, we were actually in Idaho when Cathy called and said Dean was in town. Y’see, we always been a pair of rolling stones, the two of us; tried livin’ the normal life and it just didn’t work out too well. So we roll around between here and Kansas.” He shrugs loosely. “It’s a life.”

 

It is a life and it’s theirs, his and Dean’s. After years of buckets seats and one-bedroom shares, the two of them only pretend not to understand each other, for decorum’s sake; the only proper boundaries between them are of their own invention. Looking the other way often costs them a lot more than Sam wants to give, occasionally leaves him with this desire to throw fuckin’ decorum to the wind and just shake the Hell out of Dean until all his secrets rattle free like loose change.

 

Once in a while, though, Sam catches a break and sees some clue to the inner workings of his brother’s mind that he doesn’t have to pay for. John goes back to his eggs and Sam smiles at his own jelly-smudged fingers.

 

-o-

 

Dean and Jim return with a dozen jugs of red wine, limes, beans, onions, and a few yards of lumber. Jim sets about making bean soup and John hefts the lumber out of Jim’s pickup truck; he enlists Mart, Sam, and Dean to carry it out back. The rear of the house sprouts with a bed of wild flowers, dominated by roses.

 

Arching among the bushes is an arbor, made of the same light-colored wood that Sam holds in his hands. John grins. “Ah, the five-year arbor. I work on it a little every time I come into town. You boys wanna help?”

 

‘Help’ entails Sam measuring and marking the wood according to a five-year-old sketch, John cutting it with a saw, and Dean sitting on the edge of the deck drinking beer and critiquing their work. “Measure twice,” he instructs after Sam has to re-cut a length, “cut once, Sammy.”

 

“Don’t you have to go gel your hair or something?”

 

“Hey, at least my hair isn’t long enough to braid, Pippi.”

 

Sam pauses in his sawing and straightens. “Pippi? As in Pippi Longstockings? Dean, the fact that you even know that book gives you no right to complain about my carpentry skills.”

 

“I only know it because you made me read it to you every damn night until you were six.” Dean deflects the small cord of wood that Sam chucks in his direction. “Ooo, temper temper. Hey, John, you heard from Rebecca lately?”

 

Sam blinks, surprised at the sudden jump in conversation; John lifts a cross beam atop the arbor and fits it into the groove there. “Not first hand, but her momma talks to her every week on the Internet. She passes on her love.”

 

The screen door opens and Jim emerges, a tall glass of swill in hand. “My God. You still haven’t given up on that contraption?”

 

John puts his hands on his hips and glares. “Now, there’s no way in Hell I’m working with you on the sidelines.”

 

“Bold talk from a one-eyed fat man.” Jim adds to Sam, “Watch out, kid, they call me Jimmy the Fair: I treat everyone like shit. You’re next.”

 

John catches Sam’s eyes and rolls his own. “Brothers. Yeesh.”

 

-o-

 

After another hour of carpentry and emotional abuse, Cathy pops out onto the deck. “John-dog, Jimmy-bear, it’s time to eat. Dean, Sam, c’mon in and have some bean soup. Jim made enough of the stuff to feed Bolivia.”

 

“Without me, you damn fools would starve.” Jim hefts himself up from the edge of the deck with a groan, third glass of swill clutched in hand.

 

“He lurches, he staggers, he rises,” John chuckles, his hand on Sam’s shoulder.

 

Once risen, Jim eats standing up, bowl in hand, and resolutely ignores the chair that Cathy fetched for him. Dean eventually hooks a foot in one of its legs and pulls it over to him, stretching out with a satisfied smirk. Mart doesn’t eat, but hangs around the periphery watching them all with hawk eyes, and Sam feels the spark of anticipation again. Eyes move from side to side, soup is eaten slowly, conversations cease.

 

At last, Gary puts down his empty bowl; Mart snaps to attention like a border collie at the bell. “Right,” Gary says, putting both feet flat on the floor. “Who’s playing?”

 

“Cathy, you should,” John says immediately, his eyes mischievous.

 

“The hell,” Cathy blurts and bolts from the table. “I’ll be the DJ.”

 

John shakes his head at Jim. “You’ve cured her for life. She’ll never play with you at the table ever again.”

 

Jim downs the last of his soup and tosses the bowl lightly into the sink. “It’s a shame, poor girl; she’s bereft of my company. Dean? Sam?”

 

“You bet,” Dean answers. “Sam doesn’t know how to play but he’ll pick it up, he’s plenty smart. Sam, get over here.”

 

Mart’s clearing the table and Jim’s fetched six glasses and one of the giant bottle of red wine. Sam catches sight of the label: it’s Carlo Rossi. Jim pours out a hefty portion into each glass and slides them around the table, little couriers of dark liquid.

 

“Gentlemen,” Jim declares, lifting his glass. The others follow suit, though Sam cautiously sniffs his – making sure that it isn’t actually Kool-aid – before raising it. “Gentlemen, I hereby call to order the 12^th Semi-Annual Carlo Rossi Invitational. Victors win bragging rights, losers are scorned, cheaters are shot.”

 

“Hear, hear!” Mart bangs the table, face lit up like a neon flare.

 

The wine gets tossed back shot-glass style and it tastes like bitter cough syrup going down; Sam pulls a face, choking. Dean claps him on the back, his own mouth twisted slightly, and presses a glass of swill into his hand. “Oh, thanks,” Sam groans. “Yeah, that’ll really help.” Beyond Dean’s smirking face, Mart and John have started shuffling two decks of cards. “So what, then… poker?”

 

“Nope.” Dean’s grin splits his face, a flash of white teeth in the late afternoon sun. “Bridge.”

 

-o-

 

Bridge, Dean explains, is played with four people, two partners. They sit across from each other at the table: Dean and John in the north-south positions, Jim and Gary in the east-west chairs. Mart and Sam sit out the first round. “Now don’t you be pullin’ anything funny, partner,” Jim growls, pointing a toothpick at Gary. “I wanna see some good cards outta you or I’m gettin’ the pliers.”

 

Besides idle threats and insults, partners are not allowed to talk to one another. The deck is dealt out, 13 cards to a player: Sam, sitting at Dean’s elbow, watches as his brother quickly re-sorts his hand into the four suits. Aces equal 4 points, kings are 3, queens 2, jacks 1, and voids are 2. Thirteen points needed to open and the dealer makes the first bid.

 

From the living room, the phonograph needle jumps, then drops onto a record. John Stewart growls She was never a summer child… and then the guitar kicks in. Naw, never at all… Gary grins, and bids, “One heart.”

 

Bidding is what makes the game, Dean whispers: you have to bid back and forth with your partner to indicate your strong suit. A one-bid in hearts indicates that he’s got a 13-15 point hand and about 3-5 strong heart cards. Any more points or any more cards than that and he’d open no-trump or a two-bid.

 

“Pass,” John murmurs, casting an apologetic smile across to Dean. Less than opening bid count. Gary passes.

 

“One spade,” Jim says with a sigh. Not a strong bid… 4 points, probably, weak in hearts. The order of bidding goes clubs-diamonds-hearts-spades-no trump. Once someone has upped the ante, you either have to go to a higher suit in that same bidding range, or jump from a one-bid to a two-bid and up.

 

Dean closes the fan of his cards with a snap, clacks them against the table. “Two no-trump,” he bids, and grins. Sam had seen the face cards and bets that his brother’s got the points to back it up.

 

“Aw, shit,” Jim swears, dropping his head into his hand and chewing the toothpick. “Cathy, save some a’ that for me, I’m gonna need it with this little bastard playing.”

 

Gary passes; he probably hasn’t got much more than opening count. John counter-bids three diamonds to Dean, but Dean’s weak in that suit. He bids back four clubs and they call it there.

 

Gary frowns at his hand, then plucks out and tosses the ace of hearts. John, the dummy for this round, puts his cards down in order of suit, stacked from lowest to highest in rows. “Hope you like what you see, Dean-o.”

 

Dean’s eyes dance between his hand and John’s, calculating, evaluating his transportation. “I got the magic touch.”

 

John chuckles and sits back in his chair. An unspoken rule at this table, which Sam learns on his own, is that the dummy owes a story.² “A couple of weeks after Gary and I met, we got on this… unbelievable night, where we were just golden gods of the apple-down. Drunker than shit when we get out to the car, and the night just got better from there. Gary’s at the wheel and we get one cop behind us, two cops, three cops, five cops… we were in a ’69 Ford van and we were outrunning cops from two different counties. They followed us all the way up the five and we were actually gaining on them, but we thought, what the hell, they’ve tried so hard. So we pull over to the side of the road and get out of the van to chat with the nice guys.”

 

Sam has to poke Dean to remind him it’s his turn; he’s rapt on John, grinning like a loon. “So one of the cops walks up to Gary and asks him how much he had drunk that night, and bear in mind this was back in ’77, so he didn’t have a breathalyzer test. So Gary reaches into the back of the van and pulls out one, two empty whiskey bottles, offers a third one to the cop. And right then, one of the cops just walks right away. Just put his damn hands up and walked the Hell away. The other three, they got the line out and said to Gary, can you walk this line? ‘Cause at that point I’d be damned if I could walk at all. And Gary looks at that line and says, ‘Walk it? Hell, I can dance! We musta been there talking to these cops for half the night and they finally just let us the hell go. We were that entertainin’ to ‘em.”

 

The John Stewart album winds down and Dean makes his Book plus two, but he needs two more tricks to make his bid and Sam can’t figure out how he’s going to do it. He’s got good cards in his hand but no way to get there; Dean bites his lip, eyes darting between his hand and John’s on the board. If he had a two of spades on the board, Sam thinks, struggling to make connections between the cards, he could play it to the king of spades in his hand, then use both his diamonds and make two more than his bid; but he hasn’t got the two…

 

Dean throws the next trick, lets Gary pick it up. Gary drops the two of spades. “Hope you got it, Jim.”

 

Dean plays the king, picks it up, and lays down his diamonds; Gary groans, shakes his head. Bid plus one. “Now that,” Dean says, turning to Sam with his glass of swill raised, “was a finesse, little brother.” Jim leans across the table to mime a smack at Gary’s head.

 

On the score sheet at Jim’s elbow, the teams are divided into “Us” and “Dem,” and points appear haphazardly beneath those designations. Mart deals into the next hand across from Dean while John departs the table to help Cathy dish out Irish Crème Ice Cream³; Sam’s starting to have trouble feeling his tongue, and that’s only less to do with the dessert’s chill than its alcohol content. The cards in Dean’s hand read like a morgue, so he passes; Mart does likewise and Jim bids a three no-trump. Gary accedes and is dummy; Elton John wants everyone to meet his brand new brother.

 

“I used to race motorcycles over in Eastern Oregon.” Gary pours himself a glass of Carlo Rossi and – voluntarily, Sam can’t believe it – drinks the stuff. He talks slowly, measuring out his words with memory. “Back in my twenties, I’d take off every Friday night and ride up over the Cascades on a Harley. They had these races out there… nothing for money, just a bunch of us riding as fast as we could. This one weekend we went out onto the Alvord Desert and the salt flats. We were racing at night without headlights, what’s called a Devil Run. At dawn, I remember coming up to the edge of the flats and there was a group of guys at the top of this hill. I thought they were watching the sun come up; but they were actually looking down over the side of the hill. Part of it had caved in to form a real cliff and they’d all pulled up just in time. Then I came up and went right over the edge.”

 

Cathy stands on the edge of the table, listening; at this last bit, she makes a faint noise, shakes her head, and goes back up into the living room. Gary’s grin turns rueful. “’Bout a fifteen-foot drop. I was lucky, landed on even ground. If I’d hit a rock, even just a little one, I probably woulda broke my neck. Gave all that up when I got married to Cathy.”

 

Jim’s out of face cards and his eyes are narrowed; the toothpick moves around between his thin lips. He plays an eight of hearts, Gary passes it off with a slough in clubs (which elicits a mighty groan from Jim), and Dean pounces with the ten. “Goddammit, Gary,” Jim mock-growls, thumping the table. “What’d I tell you about having good cards?”

 

Twilight casts long shadows outside and Cathy puts on Jefferson Airplane. The slow-building guitar rises and rises behind Gracie Slick’s howl.

 

When the men on the chessboard get up and tell you where to go,

 And you’ve just had some kind of mushroom and your mind is movin’ low,

Go ask Alice.

 

Mart becomes dummy and Gary grins. “Tell them about the secure floors.”

 

“I, uh, work at U-Haul,” Mart says in his deep, low voice that has none of his father’s confidence as a storyteller. “And, uh, this one day, this guy came into the store. He wanted a truck for a week, said he was going up to Seattle. So I, uh, get him a car and get everything set up, and I ask him for a credit card. He hands one over and I swipe it. And then, uh, this little note popped up on screen that said, ‘Call for authorization.’ So I call in and give them the credit card number, and then I wait on hold for about fifteen minutes, and then this guy comes on the phone and asks, ‘Are your floors secure?’”

 

Gary’s on a strong run of clubs. “So I’m like, ‘Are my floors secure?’ I said it out loud, too. And the guy across the counter turns right around, leaves all his paperwork and everything, and walks out into this driving rain, no coat, nothing. About twenty minutes later this Beaverton cop shows up and says, ‘Where’s the guy?’ And I come to find out, the guy trying to buy the truck was wanted in, like, four or five states for armed robbery. Shot a couple people in Arkansas.” He shakes his head slowly. “Dunno if they ever caught him.”

 

On the next hand, Mart bids a two-heart; Dean counters with spades but Mart is adamant and they settle at three hearts. Jim hums along to Cecelia.

 

Dean cuts Sam a smile over his shoulder. “When I was fifteen, Sam and I were in this little town in Virginia for the Fourth of July.” Sam knows this story instantly and starts laughing. “So Sam was twelve and we – Sam, quiet – we went down to the waterfront for the fireworks display. They had all kinds of bottle rockets and stuff going off, but, see, the place we were in was small enough that everybody in town bought their fireworks from the same guy. I dunno where this guy got his supply, but I swear to God, every single thing had something wrong with it. There was this one thing, this – Sam, what were they called? – Saturn Missiles, that’s right, that went off, but in every direction, not just up.

 

“So the people runnin’ the show were gonna call it a night, cut their losses before somebody decided to sue. But they hadn’t set off the mortars yet, and Sam started freaking out. He’d been looking forward to the mortars all week and when they said they weren’t gonna put them off he just started bawling – ow, you jerk – and begging me to set off the damn things. Like I was the one in charge. So… I get my lighter and I sneak around the side of the field. They were all in back in a row and I just went down through the grass, lit ‘em all up. Every one of them went off at once, except one fell over and started just skipping across the field… it was like a rock on a pond.” He smacks his hands together, miming the action of a skipping stone.

 

“And right out in the center of the field was my Dad. He was yellin’ his head off at me, just pissed, and this mortar went flyin’ at him. He saw it coming and jumped up in the air, and the damn thing skipped right up and smacked his f-f-f-foot.” Dean’s forehead almost connects with the table when he doubles over: he’s sloppy drunk but that’s not at all why he’s laughing. “Singed half his beard off. Man, I got beat for that one.”

 

John switches with Gary, even though Sam feels pretty sure that John had been a part of team “Dem” rather than team “Us” at the beginning. Dean cocks another flushed, flashing grin at Sam. “C’mon, Sam. Show ‘em whatcha got.”

 

The two pairs of brothers play each other and it’s hardly fair; everyone knows what to bid immediately just from glancing across the table. Gary stands at Sam’s shoulder, occasionally muttering advice.

 

Jim: “When I was about fourteen, I was comin’ up the back stairs in our old house. They went up into a long hallway that went around the corner to all the kids’ bedrooms. Well, I got to the top of the stairs and looked down the hall and there was a man there, or what looked like a man. Had on a brown coat and this big, wide-brimmed hat. I knew right away that he wasn’t human, least not anymore.” Under the table, Dean’s foot connects with Sam’s ankle and Sam lurches back into motion, blinking. “He was lookin’ over his shoulder at me as he went down the hall, but he wasn’t walking… just kinda floatin’ along.” Jim pours himself another glass of Carlo Rossi, shakes his head. “Didn’t make a sound, disappeared by the time he got to the end of the hall. I could tell he didn’t mean any harm… felt like he knew the house.”

 

Sam plays the jack of hearts and glances across the table quickly. Dean’s head rests on the back of his chair and he looks back steadily, poker-faced. Bob Dylan’s back on the stereo, Cathy’s curled up in a chair beside Gary, and John makes his bid plus one.

 

Gary and Mart switch in for Dean and Jim, respectively: everyone is playing on both teams and that just sounds wrong in Sam’s head, but then again, they’ve all been drinking since about 2 pm and it’s dark out now. When Gary asks for diamonds, Sam struggles to focus his eyes.

 

John makes his bid nicely. Shelter From the Storm comes on when Sam bids two clubs.

 

Gary: “Cathy and I had just started dating when this song came out. I played it for her on one of our first dates and right… at this… part,” the lyrics roll over to hunted like a crocodile, blown out on the trail, “she said ‘well, it sounds like he’s suffered a series of setbacks.’” He grins wide and toothy, his head turned to his half-asleep wife; she smiles back. “That was it. Right there. I knew.”

 

Gary carries his sleeping wife upstairs on the next hand. Dean slips into his empty chair across from Sam and bids a club.

 

Jerry Jeff Walker comes on singing Mr. Bojangles, and every man at the table sings along quietly, reverently. The next hand is a bidding war, everyone pushing each other higher until Dean drops it at five spades. “Good luck,” Sam smirks and Dean flips him off, then groans at the queen’s absence from the cards that Sam puts down.

 

Sam stretches his legs under the table, bumping Dean’s ankles. “At the end of my freshman year at Stanford, right after finals, I was completely zonked out, just about to go to sleep when my roommate comes in, naked, and grabs his camera.” Dean makes a coughing noise and it’s Sam turn to kick him. “And I look out in the hallway – this was the freshman dorms – and everybody was naked, like, the whole dorm, guys, girls, everyone.”

 

“I went outside and they were all running through the fountain out on the quad, mostly pre-med and engineering types; they were always the really crazy ones. About half of them got through the fountain before the campus security showed up, and then everyone started running inside. I left my door open when I came downstairs, and mine was one of the first doors at the top of the hall, I got back to my room and there were about thirty drunk, wet, naked people hiding in it.”

 

Dean pauses in his gameplay to bark with surprised laughter. “Sam, if you didn’t get laid that night, I’m disowning you right now.”

 

Sam grins and wobbles to his feet. “Don’t worry, I’m still your brother. Gotta go to the bathroom.”

 

On his way back to the table, Sam pauses in the hallway; pictures hang in two long rows along the walls. He’d been a little too flustered this morning to notice them, but now he squints in the dim light, curious. It’s a family Mobius strip of sorts, a whole picture book of growth from infants to grownups: on one side is Martin, who sprouts from round-faced pleasantness to glowering gauntness before settling on his current, gawky uncertainty; on the other is a brown-haired, chubby girl that must be Rebecca. She has her father’s eyes and her mother’s forehead, but the lopsided smile looks like her own.

 

Clumped around their central timelines are various other pictures… Gary and Cathy from younger years (and wow, Cathy was hot, Sam’s inebriated mind tells him), Jim and Gary leaning against a fence somewhere with dry pine trees behind them, and a few older pictures of two other children who are not Martin and Rebecca, but look similar.

 

“That’s Dana and Albert,” a voice says at his elbow and Sam jumps. Grandma Lillian eyes him. “Spooky thing, aren’t you. Don’t worry, kid, I’m not gonna blow your head off. Gary was married before, to another woman named Kathy but with a K.” Her gnarled finger rises and taps a small, set-aside picture of a square-jawed woman with stubborn eyes. “He wasn’t a day older than sixteen, and she was just fourteen. She got pregnant, so they got married… had to, in those days. Kathy had Dana and Albert, and then they got divorced before Gary turned twenty.”

 

Sam peers at the two small faces of Gary’s first children; they have his eyes, circular ones that turn down at the ends and look vaguely sad. “Guess he’s got a big family.”

 

She huffs faintly. “Well, we don’t see them much as we should. Gary’s always been a lot closer with us than his own family. ‘Scuse me again.” She shuffles past him into the bathroom.

 

Sam comes back to the table in time to hear the end of John’s story: “And never stand naked over a lit gas burner while holding a wet cougar’s tail.”

 

Mart coughs his laughter until it sounds like he’s gagging; Gary, who’s come back downstairs from depositing his wife, throws his head back and roars with it. Sam looks across the table at Dean, confused; Dean puts his hands over his eyes and laughs until he can’t breathe.

 

 

 

 

 

Part Three, The Ghosts

 

Sam’s pretty sure that he wakes up at some point in the night to hear singing; but he’s too drunk to stay awake and slips back under before he can discover the source.

 

-o-

 

By unspoken agreements of mutual preservation, everyone sleeps in the next day until about noon. Sam wakes up with his face pressed against Dean’s upper arm so hard that both their skins look flushed when he pulls away; Dean’s mouth dangles open in sleep.

 

When Sam staggers down into the kitchen, Cathy’s on guard and ready. “You want sausage?”

 

Sam sits down at the table and puts his head against it, laughing softly. “Sausage would be great, ma’am, thank you.”

 

“We’re gonna have a fire later outside.” She smiles wide. “A bunch of trees fell over in the ice storm last winter, so we’re gonna burn them. Cook out, have some hot dogs and marshmallows… you eat hot dogs, Sam?”

 

“Yes, ma’am.” He has been assimilated.

 

-o-

 

Gary and Mart spend most of the day working on the Impala in the barn; John tinkers with the arbor while Jim grimly straps on a pair of gloves and helps Cathy drag several trees around the side of the house to a huge pile that looks unstable. Sam locates their garden hose and drags it out there, thinking of wildfires; Dean scoffs, goes back to watching John and his arbor. Everyone has a glass or jar of swill handy.

 

At eight, with twilight in the air and the peacocks shrieking their hearts out, Sam fetches the other men from their various positions throughout the property. Gary and Mart are covered in grease, John in wood shavings, but they come out to the field where Dean and Jim are gleefully dumping lighter fluid on the huge pile of wood. “Oh, this oughta end well,” Mart comments wryly, and ducks.

 

Everything goes off with a foom the moment Dean lights a match. After ascertaining the health of their resident pyromaniacs, Cathy tells Sam, “Find yourself a gitch¹.”

 

He returns from a sapling with several branches over his shoulder to find blankets stretched out and everyone paired up: Mart and John, Gary and Cathy, Jim and a beer, Dean with a blank space beside him. Sam plops down beside his brother and hands him two of the branches. “Here, make yourself useful.”

 

The hot dogs sweat and twist in between the flames and Dean sets all his marshmallows on fire, then peels off the blackened crust and eats the soft sticky innards. Cathy cooks hers perfectly, seated close and turning her stick.

 

Dean bumps his shoulder. “How’s your neck?”

 

Sam’s got cool beer in his belly and his bangs curl in the fire’s heat; mustard tangs across his tongue as he bites into a hot dog. “S’fine.”

 

About halfway through the meal, Gary gives a grunt and sits forward, his hand at his mouth. “Think I broke a tooth,” he mutters quietly.

 

“Well damn, Gary. That’s the third one this year.” Jim leans over him, eyeing the white shard on Gary’s thumb.

 

Cathy lurches up from beside the fire. “You broke a tooth?” she cries.

 

In the same breath, without any pause, she raises her head and exclaims, “Look at that moon!” Then she takes off across the pasture, rhapsodizing about the rising moon.

 

Jim stares after his younger sister open-mouthed. “Jesus Christ. The crack queen abides.”

 

John, Mart, Dean, and even a pained Gary dissolve into snorting laughter, curled up on the ground.

 

Sam’s beginning to figure it all out.

 

He finally gets it all the way when Gary goes back inside and returns with a long, black tube. “Made it myself,” he declares proudly. “It’s a potato cannon.”

 

“A… potato…” Sam asks, staring.

 

“Cannon,” Jim affirms. He sprays a can of Aquanet in one end, shoves half a spud down the other with a broomstick, clicks the button, and launches a potato several hundred feet into the air.

 

“Oh Jesus, Jim,” Cathy’s voice admonishes from somewhere in the dark. “Don’t point it at the neighbors!”

 

“Quiet, crack queen!” Jim shouts. “Gary. ‘Nother spud.”

 

By the light of moon and dimming fire, Sam makes a grab for Dean’s shoulder, desperate to communicate his understanding but not at all sure that he’s going to get it out. His hands connect with Dean’s arm and he grips his brother tight; after about thirty seconds of incoherent babbling he manages to gasp, “They’re crazy, Dean! All of them! Crazy!”

 

Dean leans against him, unable to stand upright. “I know,” he whispers. “I l-love them all so f-f-f-fuckin’ much.” He slumps to the ground, helpless.

 

“Ah, God,” John whoops, shaking his head at his older brother. “You remember Rebecca’s funeral? She requested a fifteen potato-cannon shot in her will. The poor minister didn’t know what the Hell to do about it, so we went out into the parking lot and shot it into the trees.”

 

Sam doesn’t hear it until a few minutes later then spends another half hour trying to figure it out.

 

Finally he murmurs to John as an aside, “You, ah, did you really shoot that cannon off at Rebecca’s funeral?”

 

“Oh, yeah,” John affirms, nodding.

 

Something twinges in Sam’s stomach, cuts cold through the warmth of food and alcohol buzz. He looks across the fire and catches the glimmer of Dean’s eyes. “What’d she die of, if you don’t mind me asking?”

 

John pauses then says softly, so that Cathy and Gary will not hear, “Car-jacking. Hell of a thing. She was living down in LA when a guy jumped in her car at a stoplight and shot her.”

 

Jim sets the potato cannon off again and Gary’s whoop echoes over the warm pasture’s grass, harmonizing with the distant frogs.

 

-o-

 

Sam doesn’t say anything until they’re back in their beds with everyone else asleep. “She’s dead, Dean,” he whispers. “Their daughter’s dead and she was IMing her mom this morning.”

 

Dean shifts and rolls, not answering until Sam sits up on his elbows. “I know,” he grunts at last. He sounds angry, somehow.

 

It feels to Sam like he’s all the way back at the beginning of this weekend, off-kilter and fumbling. “Well,” he starts then stops, tries again. “Dean… shouldn’t we be… doing something about that?”

 

“Like what?”

 

“Um, I dunno. Purify the house, find her grave and…”

 

Dean rolls over sharply, his shoulder knocking into Sam’s. “And what, Sam? Dig up her corpse?”

 

The heat in his voice makes Sam stumble. “Dean. We do it all the time. If she’s haunting her family…”

 

“No. No, Sam. Leave it be, all right?”

 

“Dude, what the hell’s going on?” Sam sits up the rest of the way and tries to see his brother better in the moonlight.

 

“Nothing’s goin’ on, Sammy. Go to sleep.” With that, Dean rolls over and puts his back to his brother. He won’t turn over for anything and after a while Sam lies down beside him, staring up at the ceiling with his confused thoughts running around in circles.

 

-o-

 

He wakes up slowly, one part of his brain twitching and aware before the others. So he’s about half-aware of what’s happening before he processes it all, and sitting up before he can think of what to do about it.

 

Bob Dylan plays on the stereo, so faint as to be a murmur in the background. Where have you been, my blue-eyed son?

 

“Easy, tiger,” Rebecca Kent tells him. She sits in a chair near the foot of his mattress, her elbows braced on her sprawled knees.

 

Sam moves sideways instinctively and bumps against Dean’s shoulder. “Easy,” Dean murmurs, low and even. “Easy, Sam. It’s okay.”

 

They both give Sam plenty of time to wrap his head around the situation, and go back to what they were talking about before he woke up. “So, yeah,” Rebecca tells Dean. “I finally got ahold of that friend of yours, Pastor Jim. He’s doing pretty well on this side… he’s goin’ over slow, though. Gatherin’ up all his friends, making sure they pass over ahead of him.”

 

I’ve been ten thousand miles in the miles of a graveyard.

 

Dean chuckles distantly. “Yeah, that sounds like Jim. How about Caleb?”

 

“Eh, he was pretty bent out of shape for a while, but I think he’s settled down. No haunting, anyway.”

 

She’s lost weight from the chubby kid-pictures, but still looks substantial. Nothing like any ghost that Sam can remember: her eyes don’t look sunken and the imprint that her soul or whatever has left on this world does not flicker. A faint blur to her edges is practically the only thing that gives her away; that and the pencil-thin trickle of blood down the right side of her face from the bullet wound on her temple.

 

It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

 

Rebecca catches Sam’s eyes and smiles lopsidedly. “Relax, dude. I’m not gonna come at you with a knife or anything.”

 

He takes a shaky breath, feels Dean at his shoulder. “Okay. You’re still dead.”

 

“Yep. Cremated, too.”

 

Sam blinks, thrown again. “Then… how?”

 

“This is my home.” She gestures around her, encompassing the people, structure, potato cannon, cards, pasture, and goddamn frogs. “I don’t need a body or something else holding me to the world. Everything I am, everything I’ve ever been, is right here in this house. It’s a deal I made with my mom, dude: whichever one of us went first would come back if they could.”

 

What did you see, my blue-eyed son?

 

He swallows down the shakiness, feels Dean rock-steady beside him. “So why are you talking to us?”

 

“’Cause I’m a wonderful goddamn person,” she answers. “You’ve got questions, Sam. Ask away.”

 

His mouth pops open of its own accord, like half his brain is still ahead of the other half. Then they both get in synch and his lips close up tight, twisting.

 

When he speaks again, it’s not to her. “This is why you brought us here,” he says to Dean, and can’t keep his voice steady. “Not for a vacation, not because you liked the family. Because you wanted me to have a ghost-whispering session.”

 

Dean stiffens but does not pull away. “Who says it wasn’t all of the above?”

 

I saw a white ladder all covered with water.

 

Whenever Dean freaks out, he locks down, goes still and silent; Sam, though, has to talk. The words pour out before he can stop them, fueled by a fear he can’t even place. “You always do this. You always think you know what’s best for me. You never just ask.”

 

“’Cause you would never answer,” Dean retorts without heat. “You think I’m the one with communication problems, but you haven’t said Jess’ name in a year.”

 

Sam’s mouth pops open again, and stays there.

 

It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

 

When neither of them say anything for a while, Rebecca finally murmurs, “You don’t have to ask if you don’t want to, Sam.”

 

He’d be an idiot not to; he knows that. It’s suddenly very hard to speak, though. “What,” Sam finally chokes, struggling to get the words out as his throat closes. “What was it like to die?”

 

Rebecca sighs long and low. “Personally? It pissed me the hell off. Seriously; that guy put the gun to my head and all I could think was how much I wanted to beat the shit out of him.”

 

“But you didn’t… you weren’t afraid?”

 

“Not really. I’ve always had an understanding of my own mortality, even when I was little.” She ducks her head, studies him sternly. “I’m not sure what it’s like for everyone else. That’s just me.”

 

And what did you hear, my darling young one?

 

Sam’s shaking too hard to ask the next question and he grips Dean shoulder, ashamed. “What happens afterward?” Dean asks for him, his voice quiet and clear in the dark.

 

She sits, her hands clasped and eyes raised to the window and the moon beyond.

 

“There aren’t words in any language,” she says finally, softly, “that could help me explain that to you.”

 

A little bit of Sam’s voice comes back to him. “But it’s good?”

 

“It’s…” She searches and finally raises her palms helplessly, exhaling a little laugh. “It’s everything. It’s nothing. I don’t know. How would you explain color to a blind person?”

 

I heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’.

 

“’Bout halfway through,” she warns.

 

Sam sits up straighter, feeling the moment stretch, listening to the music. “You can talk to other people? Other ghosts?”

 

“Not talk,” Rebecca clarifies. “But yeah, something like that.”

 

“C-can you talk to a girl… Jessica Moore?” Something trickles down his face but he doesn’t try to stop it; he doesn’t have time.

 

She smiles to him, slow and sad. “I could try.”

 

It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

 

“Could you tell her,” his mind races, wild and desperate. How many times has he thought this, asking the world at large, asking a god he’s not sure he even believes in, for one moment? For ten seconds, a last glimpse, a kiss, a touch of hair, anything. “Could you tell her… that Sam says he loves her. And that he misses her and he wants to see her again more than anything. That he’s so – so s-sorry,” he starts to break apart, shivering that racks his lungs and makes him stammer under the weight of this. “That he’s so sorry for what happened and… and he wishes that he’d done more. He wishes… that he’d had more time… with her.”

 

Dean’s arm has wrapped itself around his shoulder and Sam leans into it, letting his injured body slump and unwind, letting himself go. It’s okay; no one will see it happen except Dean and the dead.

 

And who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?

 

Dean clears his throat and sounds a little shaky himself. “You think you can get that message to her?”

 

“If she’s around, yeah,” Rebecca replies softly, then smiles. “Come back and ask me in a year.”

 

Something in that sends another twinge down into Sam’s stomach. “Dean,” he says, “did you…”

 

“Yeah, Sammy,” Dean murmurs. “Mom says hi.”

 

I met a young woman who’s body was burning.

 

It’s all a little too much for Sam and he curls up into himself, drawing his knees against his chest and leaning against them. The world unravels and rewinds itself around them; he’s not sure what’s the same and what’s changed yet. They’re still in the dark, where rules and lines blur. “Are you happy?” he asks helplessly, inanely. It isn’t what he means, but it’s all that he can think of to say.

 

“It’s not too different, Sam,” Rebecca tells him. “There isn’t a hard and fast rule, you know? There are still happy people and sad people, just for different reasons. Me, I miss being able to hug my mom. I can’t talk to everybody as much as I’d like to; but I don’t always have to. I get my brother now a lot better than I ever did before. Like, I get him now.” Her lips curve, crooked. “I wanna tell him that as soon as he dies.”

 

And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

 

“It doesn’t have to be sad, Sam,” she says. “And it doesn’t have to be an end. Doesn’t mean you should rush into it, though: for everything you gain, you lose something else.”

 

Dean is warm and solid beside him; Sam has absolutely no problem grasping that particular concept. “You’re waiting, then?” he asks, his voice stronger. “You’re waiting for your family?”

 

“Yeah, pretty much. Mom, Dad, Mart… I might wait around for Jim and John, except those chain-smoking alcoholics will probably live forever, just to be bastards about it.”

 

Dean chuckles a little, nodding. “They would.”

 

Rebecca turns her deep, dark eyes away from Sam for a moment and regards Dean. “They’d take you, y’know. You’d never have to be alone as long as anyone lives in this house. I know you think about it.”

 

Dean tenses, but says nothing to that.

 

And what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?

 

“Last verse, boys,” Rebecca says, sitting back a little. “Make it count.”

 

Sam feels a burst of panic, imagines waking up tomorrow with a million regrets. What else can anyone say to the dead?

 

It’s Dean who speaks. “Could we come back here, if – ” he breaks off, can’t finish the sentence. Sam turns to him, eyes wide in the pre-dawn darkness.

 

I’m a-going back out before the rain starts a-falling.

 

Rebecca laughs. “Yeah. Yeah, either one of you could come back here, if you found the way. It’s a big house to haunt; you’d be welcome.”

 

Dean takes in a breath, lets it out, and won’t look at Sam. “Okay. Cool. Thank you, Rebecca. Seriously.”

 

She smiles, already fading a little. “Don’t mention it. It’d be nice to have company, and I get to watch you in the shower.”

 

Dean jerks and she laughs again, putting her head back just like her dad.

 

And it’s a hard rain that’s gonna fall.

 

The song ends and she’s gone.

 

-o-

 

They don’t talk about it the next day. Sam’s pulled in on himself, still feeling a bit overwhelmed; Dean handles the farewells and pleasantries. Cathy looks at them sideways over breakfast, but if she’s been in communication with her daughter about last night, she makes no comment.

 

The Impala’s as good as new, the doors replaced and the dents hammered out. Dean paces around her, stroking and tapping, before he exchanges another firm handshake with Gary. “Don’t outrun any cops,” he says, grinning.

 

Gary shakes his head, smiling. “Too old, these days.”

 

Jim snorts. “Age’s got nothin’ to do with it. You get a kid around and start thinkin’ twice about pullin’ that kind of shit.”

 

Mart’s walking from the barn to the house; Gary eyes his son’s departing back and smiles. “Guess so.”

 

Cathy loads down the back seat with leftovers and mozzarella sticks. John and Jim extract promises to get together again next year for the 13^th Semi-Annual Carlo Rossi. “And bring some swill with ya next time,” John says, grinning slyly.

 

“We will,” Sam promises.

 

-o-

 

Three hours later, heading south on the I-5 highway, Sam switches off the music. “Did Rebecca appear to you your first night there?”

 

Dean groans. “Oh, yeah. Scared the shit outta me; I almost shot her with rock salt until she got me calmed down.”

 

Sam laughed. “Wish I’d known her in life. She seemed like a nice girl.”

 

“Well the one I really wish I’d known,” Dean declares, “was the grandmother. Apparently she was a tough old broad.”

 

Sam can’t talk for the second time in as many days.

 

Dean gapes at him. “Don’t tell me you saw the grandma.”

 

“She… was dead, too?”

 

Air pours into the car, full of summer heat and promise; Dean whoops loudly, amused. “Jesus, Sam. Yeah, the grandma was dead. She died three years ago, had a stroke in the downstairs bathroom.”

 

Sam stares open-mouthed, at a loss. Dean laughs again, shaking his head, and turns the music back on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-o-

 

Footnotes

 

1. Strange words (“refridgenador,” “ka-nife,” etc.) that you may think are misspelled or downright squirrelly are, in fact, just my family’s language.

 

2. Any and all horrifying, incredible, hilarious stories related herein are real – even the ghost stories.

 

3. The Drinks:

Swill: The cheapest boxed white wine you can find and seltzer water.

Blizzard: Strawberries, frozen orange juice concentrate, ice, bananas, and a whole lotta rum.

Carlo Rossi: Carlo Rossi cabernet sauvignon (traditionally consumed at the Carlo Rossi Invitational) is cheaper than bottled water in Los Angeles.

Irish Crème Ice Cream: Vanilla and/or chocolate ice cream mixed with half-baked brownies and Bailey’s, then re-frozen and served in glasses.

 

 

A/N: Y’all, meet my family. Names have been changed to protect the innocent, except in the cases of my Uncles Jim and John: nothing innocent about those bastards. My grandmother and I are still alive, but other than that, no characters have been changed except for their names.

 

My mother’s family has a habit of dying young and ‘coming back.’ The ghost story that my Uncle Jim tells is real; also real is the story of when one of my great-uncles came back to his house after dying at a hospital. He walked up and down the halls, rearranging the comforters on all the beds until my grandmother stood in the doorway and said, “Don’t be silly. You go on, now.” I guess he went, ‘cause they never heard from him again.

 

I do, in fact, have a standing agreement with my mother that whichever of us goes first, the dead one will try to contact/haunt the living.