Uncle Billy

   A few days before my eleventh birthday I received a mysterious package in the mail. It was a hand-sized, flat square, about as thick as a deck of cards, wrapped in what appeared to be a cut-down, brown paper grocery bag. Addressed to me in neat-but-wobbly, printed block letters, with the words “Birthday Boy” added after my name, it bore no return address. I could tell my mom was suspicious.
 
   Mom held the little package in the palm of her hand, at a good distance from her face, as if it was a cat turd, viewing it from different angles. She scrunched her brow and said, “This’s kinda weird. I don’t know if it’s safe to open.”

   Normally, I don’t think my mom would have given it a second thought. But there had been a recent wave of sensationalized news stories about kids finding razor blades and pills and whatnot in their apples on Halloween, so she was on high alert, distrustful of the enigmatic little item. I had no such distrust. It was clearly a birthday gift. It needed to be opened.

   “I’ll be real careful opening it, I promise,” I declared, keeping my voice steady and calm. I was curious as hell.
 
   “I don’t know,” Mom said. “Maybe we should wait ‘till your dad gets home and let him take a look at it.”
 
   “I’ll use scissors and open it real slow so you can see.” This was my Safety First appeal.
 
   “Well. . .” My mom was thinking about maybe giving in. She was curious too, I could tell.
 
   “It’s probably from one of my friends,” I declared, knowing full-well that there was no way that that was true. The kooky writing was clearly penned by a lunatic rather than a kid. But, in the moment, it seemed like a solid ploy.
 
   “Well, alright,” my mom said. “But I want to see. Just open it real slow, from the side.”
 
   I hustled over to the kitchen table, spun the Lazy Susan around to the pencil jar, and fetched the scissors - the good ones with the orange grips.
 
   I sat down, scissors in hand, snip-snip, and my mom, somewhat reluctantly, handed the package over to me. I carefully cut the tape seam on one side, opened the folds, and slid out a small white box. I placed the box on the kitchen table, set the paper packaging aside, and sat back so we could both get a good gander. I glanced at my mom and she glanced at me.
 
  “Let’s take a look,” we both said at the same time.
 
   I slid the box lid up slowly for dramatic effect. Inside was an index card with more wobbly writing, and under that was a leather wallet. The card said, “Happy Birthday. You’re getting big. Be a good boy. Love, Billy”
 
   The wallet was one of those leather-craft jobs from a hobby store that comes as a kit with the pre-cut leather swaths and stitching and all. It was pretty cool-looking, I thought. Like a wallet a bad-ass cowboy might whip out at a saloon to square up his tab. I liked it a lot. I opened the billfold and there was a two-dollar bill inside. Also very cool.
 
   “Hey look! There’s a real two-dollar bill inside!” I reported, excitedly. I handed the index card and wallet over to my mom so she could give it an official inspection.
 
   “I think this must be from Uncle Billy,” my mom said quietly, stunned and blank-faced. She rolled the wallet over in her hands a few times, studying it. “I think he made this for you.” She handed it back to me.
 
   “Who’s Uncle Billy?” I asked.
 
   Instead of answering me, my mom sauntered over to the kitchen sink, saying something under her breath, and started towel-drying some dishes that had already – obviously – air dried in the rack. She was looking out the kitchen window, with a faraway kind of look, rotating and rubbing a dry plate.
 
   “Whadja say?” I asked.
 
   Cricketts.
 
   “Who’s Uncle Billy?” I tried again.
 
   “Look. There’s a robin out there, getting a worm,” my mom announced. “It’s so cute.”
 
   “Yeah, it rained earlier so the worms are out.” I wasn’t going to get an answer, I knew, so I figured I could at least try to be conversational.
 
   “Do you know the story about how robins got their red breasts?”
 
   Now, I’d heard that robin red-breast story a hundred times from my mom, so I sort of zoned out as she retold it, thinking instead about my big ideas for my new wallet. I could put my pool pass in there. And my library card too. And it was a perfect place to keep the note that Julie Bartlett had passed to me in English class. Julie had a great smile, and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Not the bad kind of freckles. The good kind.

*          *          *

   The Christmas following my receipt of the wallet, I found out about Uncle Billy. We had driven the long, monotonous trip up I-81 to my grandparents’ house for the holidays, and my grandfather, Pappy, my mom’s dad, spilled the beans.
 
   I was up in Pappy’s attic with him, looking for the glass star that was meant to go on top of the Christmas tree. It was an important assignment, as my grandmother was having a conniption about its absence.
 
   “I just know it’s up there somewhere!” Gramma hollered from the base of the drop-down, folding ladder. “Do you see it yet?”
 
   “We’re still looking, Toots. Give us a minute. We just got up here!” Pappy snapped back.
 
   “I just don’t know how we can have Christmas without it. It was my mother’s star, you know.”
 
   “I know it is, I know,” Pappy said back to her. He rolled his eyes and gave me a wink. “It’s an ugly little thing about yay big,” he whispered to me, approximating an imaginary circle with his hands to give me an idea of the size.
 
   “What?” Gramma asked.
 
   “Nothing. We’re looking. We’ll find it,” Pappy declared.
 
   Pappy’s attic was packed to the gills with all sorts of curious loot, and he sent me into the darkest recesses, where only a kid could fit, to see if I could spot the tree topper with my flashlight while he searched the more obvious locations that were illuminated by the single bulb that dangled above the attic hatch.
 
   I spotted some groovy old fishing gear, Pappy’s old Navy uniform, an old phonograph player, and something that looked to me like a candidate for the world’s first electric motor. Good stuff, all of it. Treasures.
 
   “It’s not in a box. It should be out in the open somewhere,” Pappy instructed me.
 
   “What? Didja find it?” my grandmother yelled up to us.
 
   “Hold your horses, Toots! We’re on the case. We’ll find it,” Pappy answered with a gravelly but confident tone, meant to buy us a little more time. My grandmother mumbled something inaudible, and I heard her footsteps as she abandoned her post and went back downstairs.
 
   I spotted a cluster of holiday knick-knacks on top of a small chest of drawers, but alas, when I made my way over for a closer look, there was no star in the mix. But I did find a large, zippered, black-leather portfolio, leaning against the chest. I crouched down, unzipped it, and had a look inside. It was filled with page after page of beautiful, wonderfully detailed, charcoal drawings.
 
   “Hey, Pappy,” I asked, “What are all these drawings?” I held the portfolio up at chest height so he could see as I walked over to him.
 
   “Now, that’s something. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen that, my boy,” Pappy said. He accepted the portfolio, set it gently on a table top, and slowly unzipped it all the way. It opened up like an accordion that allowed all the drawings to be flipped through individually.
 
   Pappy thumbed through several pages, pausing on a few and running his fingertips lightly across the pages. There was one of a giant oak tree with a tire swing. There was one of a girl singing into a microphone. And I saw another one of a battleship. Pappy paused a long time on that one. The drawings were so detailed and good that they didn’t look like drawings at all. They looked almost like photographs. I noticed Pappy’s eyes were getting wet.
 
   “What are all these drawings?” I asked. “Did you draw ‘em?”
 
   “No. My brother Billy did these.” Pappy closed the portfolio and zipped it back up. “Where’d you find this?” he asked.
 
   “It was leaning against that chest of drawers over there,” I answered, pointing over to the chest with my flashlight beam.
 
   “Well, go ahead and put it back where you found it, OK?”
 
   “You have a brother?” I asked. This was news to me. “I didn’t know that.”
 
   “That’s right. Billy’s a year older than me. He lives over in Erwin now. He used to be an artist. He used to draw all the time.”
 
   “How come I never met him?” I asked.
 
   “Well, he doesn’t really talk to anyone anymore.”
 
   “Humm.” It was all I could think to say.
 
   “I want to tell you something,” Pappy said. “About war.” He had a serious look. He reached out and grabbed hold of my shoulder, crouched down a bit, and looked me right in the eyes.  Pappy’s eyes were big, moist orbs, shining in the attic. “Billy was never quite right after the war. You see some terrible things in a war. You might see some terrible things yourself if you ever go to war. I hope to God you never have to.”
 
   Now I really didn’t know what to say. So, I just nodded my head and pretended to understand.
 
   Pappy continued: “Billy was at Pearl with me when the Japs attacked. Not on the West Virginia where I was. He was on shore that morning. But he saw some terrible things. Guys cut in half with bullets, blown to bits. Blood and guts. Not like what you see in the movies, but real friends of his. Good friends. And then he saw some more terrible things when he went out to fight in the Pacific. Things he couldn’t even talk about later. It shook him up. It would shake anyone up. But it’s how you handle things. Afterwards, I mean. You understand?”
 
   I said yes, I thought so. But I didn’t.
 
   “Billy’s my brother, and I love him. But he’s weak. He started drinking after the war. He’s became a drunk. All he does is sit around his house and drink. Billy’s weak. I saw some terrible things in the war too, but I’m stronger than Billy, so I’m OK. Do you follow me?”
 
   “So, that’s why I’ve never heard anyone talk about Billy before?” I asked.
 
   “That’s right. He’s not really Billy anymore. Not the Billy I knew. He became someone else after the war.” Pappy gave my shoulder a squeeze and then patted me on the head. “You’ll meet all sorts of people in your life. Some are weak and some are strong. You take an artist type, like Billy, and you’ll usually have someone weak. You see, artist types see things different from regular people like us. For some reason they can’t handle things too well.”
 
   “Billy made me a wallet for my birthday,” I blurted. “It’s real nice.”
 
   “That’s what your mom said.” Pappy stood back up straight, put his hands on his hips, squinted, and spun his head this way and that to survey the attic. His eyes were still wet. “You know,” he said shakily, “I wonder if your Gramma’s star might be down in the basement.”
 
   – O.M. Kelsey