A few months after my biological brother’s funeral, my father calls to say my stepbrother just got shot and killed by Milwaukee police. They say they tried to pull him over but he sped off, crashed, fled on foot with a gun in hand. You can imagine the rest. When my stepmother takes the phone, she sounds like a glass sculpture that fell off the windowsill. Another young black man shot dead, she says. I tell her I don’t know what to say. My father says he’ll call when they learn more. As the phone clicks, it hits me: I don’t even know my stepbrother’s real name.
*
We meet for the first time on a family vacation in Vegas. My father and stepmother introduce him as Junior. We play the slots. He describes the used car he’s saving up for, says this was his first time on a plane. Last day there, I win a small jackpot in an avalanche of flashing lights. A pretty woman comes over and fills my open palm with dead presidents. On the way to the cab, I hand Junior a twenty and wish him luck. Then I rush off to the airport, pockets bulging.
*
Bystander footage shows cops dragging off Junior’s body like he’s one of those deer I grew up seeing mangled along Midwestern gravel roads. Love a good story with dinner, says Chris on Milwaukee PD’s Facebook page (his profile pic a stock photo of a bald eagle). One less criminal on the loose, says Ann, sporting star-spangled gym wear and memes on stolen elections. Jerrilynn takes a break from championing stray animals to call my stepbrother an idiot. Another one bites the dust, says Joseph, seen grinning with his sweetheart before an oversized white pickup. The police report says they performed CPR. The bystander video shows them lifting Junior up, carrying him a few feet, then dropping him face-first back onto the earth.
*
The day my father calls, it’s unseasonably windy. A couple power lines have gone down, sparking against the railroad tracks. This whole neighborhood is darkening with the sunset, though the power company says everything is fine. I walk down to the corner store with the cash I have on hand. It’s dark there, too, but a homeless woman is trying to scrape together enough change for a sixer. A guy waves me forward, figures out my bill with a calculator. As I’m leaving, I hand my last five bucks to the woman, who tells me her name and asks for mine. By the time I get home, I’ve forgotten hers.
*
The last time the power went out like this, I was visiting my late grandmother in an Iowa farm-town surrounded by hills, wreathed in rivers, knuckled in trees. Same windy slant of twilight, though. After a while, my grandmother brought out these ancient-looking lanterns and we talked by kerosene as the storm went on darkening the world around us. I don’t remember a single thing we talked about, though I knew enough to listen. At one point, I turned just in time to see a tree fall.
*
The day after her son is shot and killed by police, my stepmother returns to work. Everyone tells her not to but money’s tight – even without the funeral director’s estimate – and anyway, she prefers running a cash register to drowning in silence. All day, she handles fast food, punches numbers. Between customers, she dabs her eyes. From time to time, strangers ask if she’s all right. Just something I’m dealing with, she says, and smiles back.
*
My father and stepmother call to update me on the case – all bad news – then say Junior’s birthday is coming up. My stepmother has his present because she ordered it a few days before he was shot: an interlocking bracelet that says Mother and Son. They mention the videos circulating online – cops dragging him around by the leg, turning to bark at bystanders once they realize they’re being filmed. Then, she whispers his name: Herman. I write it down.
___
Michael Meyerhofer is the author of five books of poetry – including What To Do If You’re Buried Alive (Doubleback Books). His work has appeared in The Sun, Missouri Review, Southern Review, Rattle, DIAGRAM and other journals. For more info and an embarrassing childhood photo, visit Trouble With Hammers.