“Twenty-two.”
“Grover Cleveland.”
“Thirty.”
“Calvin Coolidge.”
“Twenty-four.”
“Grover Cleveland.”
“You just said Grover Cleveland twice.”
“He was president twice.”
James shook his head and said, “How the hell can you store that much information in your head?”
If the life of Harry meant anything, it only meant that he had mastered obscure trivia. Presidents, mostly. He usually thought his interest in US Presidents was because of the fact a president shared his name, Harry Truman. He could recite pi to thirty-six decimal places, he could tell you the Academy Award winner for Best Picture for every year since its inception, he could recite the presidents in order, he could regurgitate the most obscure facts about biology and mathematics. He was brilliant.
“I guess maybe a more important question would be ‘why the hell do I have that much information stored in my head?’” Harry mused.
The pair were walking home from William Henry Harrison High School, or as Harry often referred to it before having to make himself clear to someone else, Number Ten High School. They reached James’ house first. He departed, leaving Harry to walk the final few blocks alone. The autumn wind was beginning to pick up.
The fall was hardest for him. Everywhere he went, he saw the brown of dead leaves. Everywhere he went, he saw the color of his brother’s hair. It had been six months since his brother died. Damn cancer. Maybe he cared. Part of him felt he should, but another part of him told him he couldn’t. His brother wasn’t technically his brother, and the two never got along well together. They fought. Frequently. They engaged in battles of brawn and brain, ranging from fist fights to passively-aggressively sitting in one another’s chair.
His brother never really liked his adopted brother Harry. He said he hated Harry. There wasn’t one day that didn’t involve the yelling of insults or the slamming of doors between the two boys. Harry knew his brother was an asshole. But he was still sad.
The teenager arrived home, tossed his bag and books to the floor near the pile of unfinished and overdue school work, and threw himself on his bed. The leaves outside his window fell in a scattered stream. The wind blowing through the trees carried the leaves through the air. The tree and the grass outside of Harry’s window were a mucus-like blend of the most depressing shades of yellow, red, and brown. But no orange. Isn’t that funny? Harry thought. So many leaves of so many hues, but there’s not even just one orange leaf.
Harry was a good kid. And a walking oxymoron. He was intelligent, yet he was blonde. He was intelligent, yet he never really tried. He was intelligent, yet he never really cared.
Overdue work? Check. Studying that would never be done? Check. Dead asshole of a brother? Check. Parents he hated? Check. Parents. As a kid who was in foster homes, Harry thought he should be grateful for people like his parents who rescued him from the system and delivered him to the safety of a real home, but they were shit.
"Well I don't know how we're supposed to pay for college if we're still working off the payments from the cancer treatment..." Harry heard the words of his mother from the kitchen directly below him.
"He doesn't need to go to college. He's smart enough to make it on his own," his father replied. "My parents couldn't afford to send me to college and I turned out just fine."
Seriously?! Harry shouted in his head. What. The. Fuck. You dipshit. Do you not fucking realize that to "make it" I'll need a goddamn degree? No one takes deadbeat asswhipes like you. Yeah, just look where you are. You didn't turn out "just fine." You're living in a shithole that you can't move out of or even make it bearable to live in because your dumb ass can't do anything right. You can't get a job to get the money to get a decent home, you can't afford chemo for your son who's now dead, and you can't give me the start I need to life. Why? Because you're a fucking idiot, that's why.
His mother went on. “Irregardless, we still don’t have enough money. Maybe if you could afford not stopping by the bar every single day we could start to scrape together ---”
“Oh go to hell. It’s better than being stuck here with you the whole damn day.”
And so it began. The bickering. The yelling. The screaming. The shouting. The fighting. What number was it this week? Today was Thursday, so counting both rounds on Sunday and the three round knockout from Tuesday, Harry figured it was fight number eight. Just like clockwork. If there was a God, Harry pleaded Him to give evidence of a miracle by making his room sound proof. Then and only then would he believe. Well at least the neighbors only complained about the noise twice this week, so maybe there was hope.
Harry looked out his window. He stared out his window. He thought that maybe if he could focus on something, he could take his mind off of what was going on under him. This was the strategy he chose every day, but it never worked. Yet without fail, he tried it. Almost as he was about to stop thinking for the first time all day, he spotted a singular orange leaf on the branch of the tree outside. The wind was roaring through, but the leaf was holding on by a thread. It didn’t want to budge. But in the end, the wind didn’t give the leaf a choice. In an instant, the leaf was gone and out of sight.
Harry walked into his father’s room and pulled his father’s service pistol out from its hiding place in his father’s closet. Maybe he’ll be good for something. Harry walked back to his room in his father’s house. He sat on the bed and continued to look out the window.
“You lousy son of a bitch!” he heard below him.
Harry lifted the gun and opened his mouth. He could feel the cool barrell on his lips and just on his tongue. Harry noticed the wind was beginning to calm outside. No more leaves had been swept away.
As Harry pulled the trigger of his father’s pistol in his room in his father’s house, he looked out of his window and saw for the first time in a long time the still sea of yellow and brown of autumn colors.
It was a beautiful day.