Six perfect strokes still remind me of Davy Hollander.
He died three years ago, age 21. It was clear
that he wouldn't live to get gray hair and stiff fingers,
but even I thought 21 was a litttle early.

When Bob Stilton phoned me, I was just about
to paint Chinese characters on my white
bedroom wall with a huge badger hair brush.
Love, life and beauty, anything
but the sinister sign of sudden death. My hands
were stained with black ink, still wet under my fingernails.

Bob sobbed so he could hardly speak. He's a big man,
mountains of muscles welded in stainless steel. I wanted
to die when I heard him cry for Davy. All I could say was
"I always told Davy not to race like an asshole". My right
hand painted a Chinese "death" on the wall,
it's still there, the sweep almost perfect.

Davy, Bob, and me had always been in the same class.
As long as I can remember, Bob had sat between us,
a human buffer against my disgust and Davy's senseless
work on me. He'd lean forward, stare at me, and boast
"Don't try to escape, my Asian princess, we are made for each other".
I used to draw a line "Don't cross this border, jerk."

I wanted to scratch these orange speckled green eyes
out of his head, but Bob wouldn't let me. He caught my wrist,
and his touch felt too damn good to waste any thoughts about toad eye.
Once Davy crushed a light bulb and began to eat it in front of the class.
"Look, babe," he said. "This will cut my guts like you cut my heart
every day". But next day he was still alive, and I hated him even more.

I still don't understand why I felt numb when Bob told me that Davy
had crashed his car into an oak tree. There was not much left
of his red Porsche, his wheat blond hair, or his arrogant smile.
Just six black strokes on a white wall, and my agony of hearing Bob suffer.

Jane C. Brandon



Jane C. Brandon is a great fan of the theater and ballet and adores spending her free time in front of or behind the stage. Apart from writing poems, she writes children's books, short stories and surrealistic plays.