“I don’t take too well to pressure,” he told me. The lines of his face looked like wires, deeply set- cinched and taut. “How long have I been sitting here?” he asked. “One hour? Two?”

I didn’t know what to tell him. If anything, it had been ten minutes. I was 11-years old and not one for talking. His single eye peered up at the sky. The pupil seemed to throw itself against it, like it could go off and explore.

“You don’t need to look at me,” he said. “To know I’m sad. To know that I’m a case.” “Case of what?” I asked.
He dictated his voice, like an old-fashioned 50’s reporter. “The Case of the Sad Sack,” he

orated. His hands conducted in front of him, as if spelling out the headline.
It was Thanksgiving night, and yet it already felt like the stretch between it and Christmas -

one of those blue nights. The violet-type, without plumes: just thin clouds, edged in black. Torp sat in the center of my porch. His hands clung in his lap; his feet dawdled to the ground. He was the only uncle not invited to Christmas. The rest – four of them - emerged, jovially, gift-baring, double- eyed. No, I only saw Uncle Torp on Thanksgiving and that was because Mom gave him a sympathy call.

Maybe he won’t pick up, she’d say to my dad, leaning on the counter. You want him to come, he accused her, as if this were some crime. You have an agenda. That was my father, if you picked an opposition to him, he assumed you found something deeply flawed about his character. Typically, I hated when my parents fought. I’d vanish into a closet, (or the cupboard,) occasionally landing beside my siblings. But I’d heard this fight enough not to worry. It was an annual discussion. I have no agenda, my mother said, hands raised. I simply want to do the Christian thing.

“The Sad Sack and the Seeing-Eye Kid. Wouldn’t that be some movie?”

I leaned against the porch’s post. Even at this distance, he wouldn’t look at me. His eye just stayed above, pointed at the sky. His patch caught the sky’s shades. “Old Uncle Torp, all alone. ‘Cept he’s got the big old Sympathy Kid.”

I wasn’t sure what to tell my uncle. I couldn’t tell him that he hadn’t made a mess of things. He had and he knew it. Inside, the house was in disrepair. Our fine china was spread across the dining-room floor, glass bits glittering in the carpet. At first, the adults had yelled for the children to flee and for God’s sake get your shoes on, and then they had looked at Torp with such universal hatred, that even my mother had gotten a primal look about her. And he had backstepped, and he had said: This is what you get. This is what you ask for, when you don’t give me the time of day. Nobody had known what he’d meant. He hadn’t known what he’d meant. There’d been a frothing shine to his single eye and his hands were raised and it looked as if his whole body were pulsing, lurching at each, clumsy step.

How’d he get his eyepatch, Freddy had asked, one year back, as our family had been watching TV. My little brother, who had so many siblings prone to fits-and-starts, that he himself had none. Either he had seen so many outbursts that he’d gotten sick of them, or he saw the toll it took on my parents and wanted to help them. As a baby, he had been typical, but the moment he had come to understanding, it was as if any part of rebellion within him snapped shut. My mother fretted that when he left for college he would strike back at us, with the drugs and the alcohol. I knew this would not be true. Cue Larry’s (the oldest sibling, lanky and shaggy-haired, with a propensity for outbursts) exasperated reply: He’s five.

Freddy cleared his throat and tried again. How’d he get his eyepatch?

Godammit! my father had cried. With a smack, his remote flew off the TV tray and into the ground. We’d been sitting in the living-room, idly watching a muted show.

I’m sorry, Freddy had said. He clutched his arms around his head. I didn’t mean it.

My mother whispered that it was okay. She lurched across the room and wrapped her body around Freddy’s head. His chattering voice barely rose beneath her body. I don’t deserve a helmet. I don’t deserve a-

It had been some months since my father had seen Torp, yet he had the rage, as if he’d been mauled today. I don’t want to hear about your goddam uncle, he’d said. I don’t want to think about his eyepatch. I don’t want questions. I don’t want it to begin to cross my mind’s eye. A silence had held. Then, he pointed at us, with a sudden second wind. And I don’t want you guys thinking about him.

The rest of us had just sat still in our respective couches. He had not yet hit forty, yet he looked like a small, old man. He swiveled to point his finger at each of us.

Honey, Mother said. You’re scaring Freddy.

Well... he’d drawled, reaching blindly for the TV tray. He looked over when the remote wasn’t there. Well, that’s just the way things are.

That was my father. You never knew what would set him off or what would get him frankly kooky. He was a thinker, meaning you never knew at what current consideration he was with a thought. In good moods, he danced about the kitchen, pointing his finger in disco formation. In others, he took a quick but static position, like an army man on patrol. There was no real threat to it. We knew that once Dad blew up (whether it be sadness, anger, confusion) he was rooted in place and would not move, like a tree, throwing itself against the wind.

Once, as I’d been falling asleep, I’d heard a snatch of his conversation drawling through the wall. He often told things my Mom observations of himself. Sometimes I just want to get angry, he muttered. Sometimes I just want an excuse to get right up and throw something. Do you ever want to throw something?

“Not liked,” Torp muttered. “Not by my own brother. Or his kids.” I started to talk, but he cut me off.

“Not by the kid’s mother, or the mother’s sister. A whole house of people who don’t like me. And if I’m being honest, I don’t like me either.”

And for a moment, I was sure he was not talking to me, just whatever leered beyond the clouds.

“Whatd’ya make of that?” he asked. Then he turned to look at me. To get his good eye in my direction, he had to turn his head so far, it seemed it might snap off its pivot. His head canted unnaturally forward. His hair lolled off and bent, as if it too wanted to go, run free.

I settled in beside him. My feet hung, just short of his. And I knew then, that as much as I wanted to like Uncle Torp in spite of my parents, I didn’t. It was as if the whole of him had been made of uneven parts. His left leg looked longer than his right. His eyebrows were bushy and spare in equal measure. He was always in jackets, but I worried what I’d see if it was removed. A smattering of hair, I imagined, placed loosely over the course of his back.

“Oh great,” Torp said, noticing my gaze. “Oh jolly. The kid’s taking pity in me now.” He looked back to the sky. “Thank ye, Holy Wanderer. That’s it. The Sad-Sack, The Pity Boy, and The Holy Wanderer.”

Uncle Torp didn’t believe in a Holy Wanderer, or anything. I knew because he drummed about it at dinner. If you give him anything, my mom had whispered to my dad earlier this very evening, give him the non-alcoholic wine. My father had swatted her away. They’d planned it for sometime. Torp could not make a show if he were not given a drink. Even still, within a few sips, he leaned forward against the table, elbows all-in. (A pirate would be offended, our cousin said, as we’d gotten seconds in the kitchen.) He said nothing about the taste, he just talked with a wider gape in his mouth and spoke more freely to us kids. There isn’t nothing, there never was and there never will be. The only church that’s real is the Church of Doom. The last part had been a joke, but with siblings as young as four, it didn’t

seem so funny. They looked at their parent’s wide-eyed, as he hacked into his elbow. My parents shared a long look.

Uncle Torp believed in no ‘Holy Wanderer’ or God. He was the Holy Wanderer and he didn’t even believe in himself. He believed in words. He just spoke until nights swallowed him up.

Our various family threads had had to meet about him before, and still they all seemed surprised. We will not give him the power to destroy us, an aunt had said, glancing periodically at the ceiling. We will just be relatives. At his outburst, her eyes looked like gaping mouths. She finished her wine in a long pull. There we’d been, in our living-room, and yet, as much as we’d spoken about it, it hadn’t seemed real. He’s just some guy, Larry had said. My oldest brother, just out of high-school, and puttering around the house like a live-wire. He’s the same guy we’ve been dealing with for sometime, and I think we’re all taking this a bit too seriously, if I’m telling the truth.

“Larry likes me, maybe,” Torp said, now. “Now that’s a good kid.”

Shit-stain, piss-kicker! Larry had cried, as Torp had backed out the door. Freddy clutched the table leg, overwhelmed by all the outbursts.

What’s the eye-patch for? he’d asked, some days after Dad’s blow-up. He’d requested me for a private meeting in his bedroom. To my knowledge, this was the biggest infraction Freddy had made. He stood close to his light bulb, as if the dark might whisk him up.

According to Dad, the answer was-

Nothing. Nothing, he repeated, quite calmly, another time, a different time, a dinner years back, fingering the shrimp on his plate. As if the situation didn’t bother or please him, but just neutralized him. Neutralized him very much. It had been years before- before Freddy was born- and before his opinion of Torp had always leaned one way. That’s his way of being of interest. It’s his party-trick. When he was young, he’d go to school on crutches saying he’d have a broken leg. The next he’d be in a wheelchair.

Freddy looked unsure, though he would never go so far as to voice it. I was unsure too. Father insisted we should ask him, because he was a compulsive liar and his story always changed. We wished too, yet when we were in his present, it was as if the words were stolen from our mouths. The patch had a belly, as if the eye were unspooled within, and teetering out. His expression was so grim, that we worried that it would take him back to something, so raw and unresolved.

And, Freddy had started. Why do we call him Torp?
His name was Torp, because he called himself so many things. Corkscrew, one day, tornado

the next. And eventually, we had just settled on torpedo. I’m not afraid of sharks, he’d once insisted during a hostile Christmas dinner, over the clamor of silverware. He’d caught a slice of conversation near the end of the table. I would just gyrate away from them, like a torpedo. Spin like a blade.

Not to confuse, but these were all different times, separate family occasions and outbursts, but now this was this time. This Thanksgiving, Torp had not dematerialized into the mist. This time, Torp had messed up so bad that he’d stayed, planting himself right on our porch. That he could not even lurch back down the same grass he’d lurched up.

“Boy golly,” he said. “Have I made a big mess, or has the big mess made me?”
You never knew what he wanted you to respond to, Uncle Torp.
“Well,” he said, side-eyeing me. “What do you say?”
I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t as scared as Freddy (was anybody?) but I didn’t have the fast-speaking

propensity Torp did. Before family arrangements, I grew quiet and bristly. Not because I was scared of him, but because I was intimidated by all of them. They had not seen me in some time, and they would anticipate that I had grown and that I was more mature, and that I could be calm and sling hardballs, just like Larry. And if I did anything else, I was regressing. Maybe it wasn’t at the front of their minds, but it was in their minds. Somewhere. When I spoke, I spoke slow. It’s like he’s measuring every word, Larry would say. He’s a calculator. I was. I just didn’t have the same gusto that I had with

the other siblings. With Freddy, Jim, and Larry, I could be loud and shameless, but at the table, I couldn’t even think in the same way. I was ground down to the basics: Hello. Good, how are you? Anything beyond those parameters sent me out in a whirlwind. I strategically got seconds and used water breaks. It was as if one of them reached into my head and gripped my thoughts with a fist.

Torp nodded at my quiet. “The silent game,” he said. “The silent game is the cruelest game, with the most damaged players.”

His head wavered as he looked off the porch. He reached his hand out to hold it upright. It was as if he really thought he was drunk. Some minutes before Dad had cried out at him that he wasn’t. You’re not and you never have been, he shouted. At least not in the way you think. Torp reached a hand in front of him. His fingers graced the horizon. “How long you give it till somebody comes out of that door?” he asked. “And who do you figure it’ll be?”

Dad, I thought. It’d been Dad who’d insisted that he would not allow his brother to come to dinner, and Dad who’d told us, time-after-time, that it was a bad idea, even when the family insisted they agreed with him. But what mood would he emerge in? I wondered. Though I could imagine nothing less than calm. The color of the night made it the introspective sort. He would sit beside Uncle Torp, and he would tell him it in a slow, lilting manner. I warned my family about you, he might say. We met about you and planned how the kids would interact with you. Some of us had hope, some didn’t. But you were worse than we ever thought, and I don’t want to see you in this house again. Uncle Torp would look at him. And if they weren’t thinking it, I would think it for them. I would remember a time before I was alive, when two brothers shared a glance. Where had he gone wrong? Could Larry ever come out that way? Freddy?

“I do it in spite of myself,” Torp told me, wearily. I wondered if he might tup over and sleep. At some points, the boards would break through and pull him into the porch, I thought. “I come with good intent.”

After his various outbursts, he was prone to things like that. He’d talk to the family unit and tell them he didn’t know how to change these things. His face would be gloomy and his eyes would water but not spill over. To my memory, the nights had followed a similar routine. He’d enter, and he’d make small peaceful conversation. He would grab us kids by the shoulder (his version of a hug) and make wave noises, and rock us around, like we were on a great shaking ship. And he would move like this for sometime, like a visitor, visiting some place ancient and antique, and we would all share a glance, like maybe he had done it. But this time had been the same as always. Sometimes, typically during dinner, it was like the energy of the dinner overwhelmed him. He’d lean forward and the table would slant in his direction, and the silverware would scoot, just an inch, toward him. Suddenly, he was the loudest voice in the room. He was the owner and the father, and the head of the table. He’d launch into stories – spurious, demented stories – fast-talking, chattering, bristling, like he really couldn’t stop himself. And if there was a look in his eye, that he was overstepping his boundaries, it was gone in a moment.

That’s how it always was. That’s how it’d been tonight.

“I get ahead of myself,” he said, not looking at me. “Because I want to destroy me. That’s why. And I love you all. And I want you to hear my voice. And I want to make up for lost time.” He gripped the curled hair on his head. “And it’s not me. The me in me, there is not the me in me, here. And Jesus Christ, it could make someone like me scream.”

Dad never bought it. Mom didn’t either. He doesn’t mean it, he’d declare, in the typical aftermath. He trots in, he makes a mess, and then he apologizes, so he can make a mess again.

But I’d never been this close to Torp, after an outburst. And I saw that he did mean it. The shine in his eye was no fake. The lines of his face were tighter than ever – as if giving him a strangle- hold. He seemed smaller than I’d ever seen him, buried under the things he’d said and done. And I knew that there was no way he was lying, for this was authenticity. In Uncle Torp, there was a full

and complete sadness. I did not know that tonight would be the last night I’d see him. On the way back home, he would stop his car on the edge of a bridge. Whether he’d left with that intent, or got the idea along the way, was unclear. I know that there is a great view of the water, for many roads on the way back, that glitters like glass. I also know that he reached out to grab to horizon. In that moment, I was imagining him living beneath our porch. The water was eleven flights down. I’m not sure if he died in the water, or on impact. Nobody told me. I’m not sure they asked.

“I just wanted to make a show,” he said to me. “I wanted to give everybody a show.”
I think a lot about that night. His final meal.
At first, it had been just the talking. The typified chatter, with the things Aunt had warned

about. His mouth had been shoved with food, and he’d talked anyway, placing another cracker on his tongue. Flakes plumed out with the brush of his tongue. “Isn’t that right, Freddy?” he’d asked, at the tail-end of a dirty joke. Knowing he was between two warring parties, Freddy had not known what to do. He laughed for Torp and looked back at my father with a look of horror. “What about you, Barney?” I was frozen in place. And for an instant, I had seen the sprawl of the night spread ahead. But I had not imagined how bad it would go. He’d gotten up and started dancing. Dancing was a loose phrase for it. He’d finished three wine glasses in rapid succession (Mom filling them dutifully, carefully, the fake wine replaced in the real wine bottle) and now he was contorting like a lunatic. Cousin Beth, was two years old and should not know what dancing was, but even she shrieked. Torp extended an arm toward her: “Now, she gets it. Which one of you lovely ladies would like to dance with me.” He looked about his brother’s wives. “You with the tits. The tatas. The chest growths. Get those checked for cancer, they’re fuckin’ huge.” He clung to his words like they were rafts. My mother touched her chest, self-consciously. Freddy began a slow descent beneath the table. Larry looked at his parents: Should he put a stop to it? I wanted to go to the bathroom, but I couldn’t remember how to move. I couldn’t look at him. My eyes found the carpet. Freddy gestured

me to join him, in the dark. I stayed still. Torp’s limbs flew dangerously close to the armoire. “Torp,” Dad had said. “Why don’t you do us all a favor and take a seat.” Torp opened his mouth wide. And I was certain, even if he wasn’t drinking wine, he was feeling it. “Because I’m a cunt-licker, Dave.” My Dad’s name was Gerald. “And I’m the Priest of Doom,” he said gleefully, “and I want my clit wetted long and good. Don’t you want that for me?” Where I thought Dad might snap up, he stayed in place, with a soft register to his voice. “It’s not real, Torp.” Torp grinned at him. “We can make anything real,” he’d responded, not getting it. And I knew, he thought we were playing along. He truly thought we were all part of it, one big joke. The room hung silent – beside the whooshing of his limbs. “The alcohol,” Dad said. “The wine is non-alcoholic. You haven’t drunk anything.” Torp slowed to a stop. “Sure, I did.” There was a moment, where it seemed to register with him, where the thought crossed his mind, and then the grin overtook it and he cried, “I drank your blood!” With a whip of the arms, his glass hurled across the room. Freddy covered his eyes. Dad, slowly, pulled himself to his feet. Larry rested his hand on the back of his chair, ready to rise. I did not move. There was no shattering noise, just an unsatisfying clunk. The glass stood wedged against the floor and the wall. “Look,” Uncle Torp cried. “It didn’t break. It stayed. Because I’m the Magic Man.” In a flash, his hands held the end of the tablecloth. It was white and ornamental and by the time we realized it was between his fingers, he tugged it toward him, and all the glasses and plates and food bowed in his direction, and all the family’s mouths hung open, some between words, some between gapes, others in the first note of a scream. It hit the ground, in a wave. The sound covered all else. A long burst of glass, split open and spread across the carpet. Torp stood at the center. Wherever the glee had gone, it was no longer on his face.

But Torp had not killed himself for tonight. He’d done it for the multitude of them.

“And I suppose, that’s that,” he said, on the porch, glass gems still shining in his jeans. “That’s always that.” And then, with a cursory glance at the door. “When do you think your dad’s coming out?”

I wasn’t sure. I didn’t even know if this night, could coexist with that house. I couldn’t imagine a world where the tender blues mixed, even partially, with the screaming and the breaking. In my head, Dad couldn’t be angry. No, he must be in there, stroked by Mom, glancing at Freddy. And by the time he came out the door, he would understand this man (no matter how twisted) was his brother, and ought to be treated as such. He would sit beside us, and we would spend some time talking before we even spoke of the occasion at all. This, of course, was an optimistic viewpoint. It would be a few minutes before he came. And when he did, he’d be screaming before he left the door. Within minutes he would get Uncle Torp to a standing position, and force the eye-patch off his head, revealing a champagne-cork, trenched in his socket. At first none of us would know what to do with this information. Then, Torp would give us one last show.

Moments before, Torp glanced back at the front door. “I don’t think he’s coming out,” he said. “Might just be me and you.”

With that, the door burst open.
“Good living FUCK!” my father cried. “Good baby-fucking SHIT!”
In another room, Freddy plugged his ear to the curses. Larry watched through the door-

window, ready to emerge. When our Uncle was to be mentioned in later conversations, he was not talked about in the same tone. Now, there was a grave underline to the sentences. Do you think any of us could’ve stopped him? A cousin had asked, at his funeral. We’d felt compelled to go. By the time he pulled that tablecloth, was there anything we could do?

Even if they’d known they could, I don’t think they would’ve.

We didn’t know. We couldn’t. Looking at Torp then, I saw a spread of nights ahead. As my dad screamed, as my uncle looked back to the horizon, I comforted myself on the fact that these arguments had existed before, and they would exist again. Dad knew it. Torp knew it. We all knew it. We were just playing our roles.

“You’re terrorizing our family,” Dad spat. Already, he’d begun to lose his voice. His vocals came like frayed strings. “You’re a terrorist.”

Torp smiled.

“You’re a fucking terrorist, and your target is our family. We’re your Twin Towers.” Even Dad must’ve known this was a ridiculous, but he couldn’t stop himself. He slouched toward Torp, primal. Spit flecked with every word. “You hate us because you’re a fucking baby. Because you never grew up.”

Torp’s lips widened. He rocked his head, as if listening to something.
“You’re a liar,” Dad said. “You say things to make people react.”
“Priest of Doom,” Torp mused.
Dad grabbed the back of his head, like they he must’ve as a kids. His fingers tightened on a

clump of hair, and yanked. Torp’s head bent backward – Adam’s apple shining. A deep glug rose from the back of his throat. I’m not sure if he got the idea then, or if he’d always been looking for a time. “You’re a liar,” Dad said. Then to me: “I’ll show you, Barney. I’ll show you.”

I hadn’t asked to see anything. I was stuck in place, like I’d woken up, half-asleep, and couldn’t move. How much we rely on our brains, to move our arms, our legs, anything. I couldn’t think of one. Torp said nothing, as Dad clambered him upward. Together they stood, Dad barrel- chested, Uncle bent forward in front of him. Dad gripped the edge of the eye-patch and ripped it off.

Even beneath his fingers, I imagine Freddy heard our collective silence. I couldn’t see but I imagine Larry’s eyes bulged under the door. A cork jutted out of his head – chiseled and cracked. Block letters on the head reading 1846 Rye. Torp looked at him then, and then he’d looked at me, as if I’d wanted to see. “See, Barney?” he said, leering toward me. “It is real.” I couldn’t look away. I was eleven then, and still it was like I was taken back to the nights of young Halloween, when ghouls were real and streetlights meant nothing. When 9PM was a death sentence.

“A party trick!” Dad cried, confused but unrelenting. “A prop! A Party City bonanza!”

Torp, my uncle, his brother, turned to him, with the flash of a head. His fingers wrenched around the cork – and before any of us could know what he was doing – he tore it out, with a sickening rip. The cork sliced across the air, dazzled in red. At once, his socket was wide and open. It leered at all of us. A hole, Larry said later. A pit. Even he stopped watching then. He slid his back against the door and took long breaths. Dad, too, went quiet.

And Torp, for the last time, got his show. Even in his last act, there was no grace in his movements. He bounded toward father, until they were nose-to-nose. There was no suspense. He sprang his finger into his socket, up to the knuckle, and started jiggling. The sound was like a soda, being shaken, or like a finger, pulsing in-and-out of a jar of putty. He leaned into my father, in-out, in-out. Ancient blood spattered onto his cheek. His shirt. Dad took a step back. Torp followed. And then he sprang on me. And there was joy on it. Despite all the pain – and it was real – this was what he liked to do. He’d been driven beyond words – to the point where his breath came in quick, slicing gasps. He saw the horror in my face and he stood above like the boogie-man, and then he leaned in, close enough for me to smell it, the stench of mold and something buried, the smell of dirt and limbs in casts, and - now, I know - the smell of approaching death. I will never forget the sound.

Dad straightened. Miraculously, the action had taken his anger. It was as if, in spectating such a display of offense, he had considerably matured. He stood straight-backed, until Torp

stopped. They stood facing each other. The wind passed between them. Trees rustled against the sky, but we didn’t see them.

“Whatd’ya want me to say?” Uncle Torp said.

Dad considered him and turned into the house. Larry struggled out of his path, as he swept down the hall. The door whisked shut.

“It’s very yellow in that house,” my uncle said, matter-of-fact, as if nothing had happened and nothing would. “The lights are all tungsten, and you should get some daylights, if you want to even ‘em out.”

“Okay,” I said.

He looked back to the porch edge but decided against sitting. He stepped over the steps and walked out to the yard. A deep whistling rose from his belly. He sent it up to the stars. A few feet away, he stopped, and turned squarely over his shoulder, to look at me. The cork was still in his hand. The pit lolled.

By now, Larry had departed into the house. My father had taken the others into the dining- room to explain. Even Freddy had slunk back to the others, to listen. It was just me and him.

“Y’know,” he said. “I see a little of me in you.”
At the time I thought little of it. I nodded.
It would be ten years before my father told me he hated me.
As if on a musical cue, Uncle Torp kicked his foot out, and swept into gear. He didn’t slow.

His feet skidded off the curb, and he slouched away.
When the officers came, my Dad didn’t buy it. “Right,” he’d said sarcastically motioning for

us to enter. “Listen, your Uncle’s dead.” Freddy’s face went deadly still. The cop frowned and begun to speak, but my father was too quick. “A good trick, but a party trick. Cops. Uh-huh. That’s very 90’s.” My mother touched his shoulder. The officer’s right-hand-man begun to pull at his own

collar. “I don’t suppose I could see your badges,” my father asked. “I don’t suppose you’d let me touch them,” when they were out. “Badges aren’t typically made of plastic.”

And he begun to laugh.