Sixteen
You’re a great host brother, Garrett told me, so I attempt to act like it.
We pretend Christmas Eve didn’t happen.
“Yikes,” Gloria says sympathetically when I tell her about it. “Sounds like the dude is working through some things.”
But even she fails to offer any useful advice about what I’m supposed to do.
My extended family leaves the day after Christmas, and Garrett and I spend the week of school break playing games with Emma, sledding on the hill at the end of the street, baking with Aunt Liz.
We wake up each morning and are together until we go to bed, and I tell myself it’s because he’s part of our family and nothing more, that I would hang out this much with Davit from Tbilisi.
But part of me knows that Davit and I wouldn’t spend entire afternoons playing Lords of the Shadowrealm together, wouldn’t stay up until three in the morning, drunk on sleeplessness, arguing about books and repeating inside jokes until we cry from laughter, wouldn’t read each other’s facial expression across a room and know what the other was thinking.
Almost like family.
But family are the people who have been there from the beginning and will always be there, and that is not who Garrett is.
At this time next year he will be with his real family in Atlanta and I will be here, and we’ll have only the memory of how a messed-up exchange placement brought us together for ten months.
On the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, Emma, Garrett, and I sit on the couch watching The Lord of the Rings—Garrett because he idolizes Aragorn, Emma because she idolizes Tolkien, and me because I idolize Howard Shore, the composer of the most brilliant soundtrack ever written—when Dad steps into the room, phone in hand.
“Jim just texted,” he says. “Little Ollie has the flu, so he can’t make it tonight. Are any of you up for running this year?”
Emma and I look at each other. We have successfully avoided getting roped into this every year, and we’re not about to start now.
“Garrett would be awesome,” I say, deciding to throw him under the bus. “He’s great at running.”
“What am I running from?” Garrett asks.
Dad looks him over. “You’re strong, too…”
“And,” I add, “he already knows the team from your weekend at deer camp.”
“What team?” Garrett asks.
Dad nods decisively. “Yes. You’re in. You’ll be great.”
“At what?”
I nudge him with my shoulder. “Just think of it as part of the foreign exchange experience.”
Our family trudges down to Main Street as twilight begins to fade into night, casting the snow-covered world in a cold, dreamlike blue. We wear warm mittens and hats and winter jackets, and Garrett and Dad also have ice cleats strapped to their boots, though Garrett has no idea why.
“Seriously,” he says, falling in step next to me, “what the hell is about to happen?”
We reach the top of Main Street just as the streetlamps turn on.
Wooden barricades block both ends from traffic, and the whole length of the street is packed with people.
Ahead of us, the road descends in a gentle slope toward the woods, where it dead-ends at the Caving Grounds.
With the snow-covered trees in the background, it almost looks like something out of a Christmas card.
Parents with small kids line up at a stand selling hot pasties, a type of meat pie that’s a U.P.
specialty, while people without kids hover near a beer tent.
At the far end of the street stands a ramshackle line of structures resting on skis. I point. “That’s what’s about to happen.”
Garrett squints. “Are those … outhouses?”
“Yeah. You and a half dozen of Dad’s very drunk friends are going to pull one up Main Street.”
“What the fuck,” he whispers.
“It’s a race,” I continue, craning to count the outhouses. “It’s why the guy on your flight here was talking about his outhouse. It looks like there are seven other teams this year. One more than usual.”
“You’ll do good,” Dad says, punching him on the shoulder, misreading his incredulity as apprehension.
Garrett nods mutely, and we head down the street.
It takes us a while to get to the outhouses because we have to navigate through half the town along the way.
Garrett’s camera has been hanging on a strap over his shoulder, and he pulls it out and begins snapping photos of the town.
Candids of parents talking to one another while managing small children.
Close-ups of the warmly lit displays in the shop windows.
A portrait of snow falling in the glow of a streetlamp.
We wind our way to the end of the street where the outhouses wait. Each one has been built and decorated by the team that will race with it. Garrett laughs when he sees them up close.
“People take the theme seriously,” I explain.
Verner Kivi stands next to one adorned with massive plywood moose antlers, THE BULLSHITTER emblazoned on the side.
The Russo brothers lounge in folding chairs near a metallic-gray one covered in black-and-yellow biohazard symbols. A sign on the door reads WARNING: NOXIOUS FUMES. A gas mask sits in Pete Russo’s lap.
Some college students from Blue Harbor mill around a red outhouse adorned with wings and a propeller. CROP DUSTER is written in bright yellow letters on each wing.
Evan Hegge’s dad stands next to one covered entirely in empty beer cans. He has the same dull, mean face as his son, though his old football physique has morphed into a prominent beer gut.
Dad joins his friends next to an outhouse decorated with crudely drawn clouds and lightning bolts. The word SHITSTORM is painted across the front.
“Incredible,” Garrett breathes, and his camera comes out again.
He moves around, snapping photos of the outhouses from different angles.
It doesn’t take long for the racers to notice, and pretty soon each team is taking turns posing for photographs.
Garrett moves effortlessly between the groups, getting these people he’s never met to relax and appear natural.
He makes jokes I don’t catch, and they chuckle appreciatively.
As I watch him photograph the Irontowners, I wonder how he must see them. The town holds an equal number of hippies and hicks, though it’s nearly impossible to tell the difference by looks alone since they all wear baggy jeans and snowmobile jackets, all hold cigarettes and beer bottles.
Angie Nelson, mayor of Irontown, unleashes a few blasts on an air horn, signaling that the race will begin soon. Teams scramble to get ready, and Garrett and I head over to the Shitstorm in time to see Terry Hanson climb inside and shut the door.
“What’s he doing?” Garrett asks.
“He’s our squatter,” Dad says. “You didn’t think we’d pull an empty outhouse up the street?”
To his credit, Garrett doesn’t ask why anyone would pull an occupied outhouse up the street.
“Hey, Joe!” Evan Hegge’s dad calls from his spot in front of the Beer-Can-Mobile. “You gonna tip your shitter over again this year?”
“We hit a slush pocket, Carl,” Dad growls. “We’d have been clear ahead of you if you hadn’t edged us into the crappy snow.”
Carl shrugs. “All part of the sport, I guess.”
“Tell that to Terry and his concussion.”
Terry’s muffled voice drifts from the outhouse. “It was a hangover, not a concussion!”
Garrett hands me his camera for safekeeping and takes an open spot on the tow rope attached to the Shitstorm.
“You don’t have to win,” I tell him, “but I think the guys would appreciate it if you at least beat Evan’s dad.”
“Don’t worry,” he says, bouncing on the balls of his feet, clapping his mittens together, “we’re going to win.”
One of Dad’s friends thumps him on the back. “Attaboy!”
“And now we’re into outhouse racing,” I say, unsurprised at how quickly Garrett’s confusion has transformed into competitiveness.
“Go big or go home, right?” He clasps the tow rope, and his face takes on a level of fierce determination I’ve only seen when he’s playing football or Lords of the Shadowrealm.
I wish him luck and move off into the crowd to find a place to watch, meeting Trevor and a couple of other guys from band halfway up the street.
After a few more blasts from Mayor Nelson’s air horn, the crowd clears the road, jostling to find spectating locations along the sidewalks.
The town doesn’t plow Main Street for a week in preparation for the races, and the snow looks good this year, packed-down and slick.
Dad’s team should be safe from slush pockets.
The crowd grows still, and Mayor Nelson makes a quick speech into a bullhorn, though we can’t hear most of what she says. Then she steps off to the side, raises a starting pistol into the air, and fires.
The crowd explodes with cheering and clanging cowbells as the runners lean forward, using their weight to overcome the inertia of the sedentary outhouses. Slowly, they gain momentum and begin trundling up Main Street, their cleats gripping the frozen ground, ice and snow spraying up behind them.
Because Main Street isn’t wide enough for all of them to fit side by side, the teams jockey to stay in front of the pack.
The Biohazard pulls past the Bullshitter, ripping off an antler, and one of the college students dragging the Crop Duster trips over the antler, bringing their team to an abrupt halt.
The Bullshitter, now off-kilter, nearly crashes into Dad and Garrett’s Shitstorm, but it takes a lucky turn, both teams escaping catastrophe.
The crowd gasps, then whoops appreciatively.