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A Story

My brother would often get drunk when I was a little girl, but that put a different sort of fear into me from what Mr. Speed did. With Brother it was a spiritual thing. And though it was frightening to know that he would have to burn for all that giggling and bouncing around on the stair at night, the truth was that he only seemed jollier to me when I would stick my head out of the hall door. It made him seem almost my age for him to act so silly, putting his white forefinger all over his flushed face and finally over his lips to say, “Sh-sh-sh-sh!” But the really frightening thing about seeing Brother drunk was what I always heard when I had slid back into bed. I could always recall my mother’s words to him when he was sixteen, the year before she died, spoken in her greatest sincerity, in her most religious tone:

“Son, I’d rather see you in your grave.”