Nobody Knows Read Free Page B

adjusting to the early morning light that slipped through the space between the window frame and the frayed vinyl shade. The first thing he heard was the comforting drone of the air conditioner. The second thing he heard was the familiar sound of his brother’s cough.
    Kicking off the cotton blanket, Vincent sat up, threw his legs over the side of the twin mattress, and stared at his younger brother lying in the companion bed crammed into the small room. Unmindful of his latest coughing episode, five-year-old Mark still slept. Vincent supposed the kid had to sleep through it if he was to get any rest at all. Mark had been hacking through the night, every night, for as long as Vincent could remember.
    Many nights the eleven-year-old would listen in the dark to the coughing coming from the next bed. He was afraid that his brother was getting worse. He resented that Mom focused so much of her attention on Mark. He was angry that he had to help with his little brother when every other kid his age seemed to be out playingwithout a care in the world. He was relieved that he didn’t have the same condition that afflicted his brother. And then, ultimately, he felt guilty. Why did Mark have cystic fibrosis? Why had Vincent been spared?
    The doctor at the clinic had tried to explain it. Some people unknowingly carried the defective CF gene. Both mother and father had to have the gene and pass it on to their baby. Mark had gotten the sickly combination. Vincent had not. It was just the luck of the draw.
    Some luck
, thought Vincent as he quietly pulled on his shorts. His brother had an incurable disease, his mother was worried all the time, and he hadn’t seen his father since three Christmases ago.
    Careful not to make any noise, Vincent stepped gingerly over Mark’s inhaler on the bedroom floor. He couldn’t wait to get to the beach. He hoped he hadn’t missed anything good by not going late yesterday afternoon after the swimmers and sunbathers left. That was the time to go, at the end of the day, the time with the best chance of finding the good stuff. But Mom had to go into work early to cover for one of the other waitresses who’d called in sick and Vincent had to stay with Mark and give him the treatment with the pounder.
    Vincent hated the pounder, the electric chest clapper that helped dislodge the mucus that built up in Mark’s lungs. But the pounder was a lot better than the old-fashioned way Mom used to do it, clapping and pounding on Mark’s chest with her fists. Three times a day for twenty to thirty minutes each time. Little as he was, Mark never complained. In fact, he said it didn’t hurt. But Vincent cringed to watch it.
    Mom tried to make the time go faster by singingsongs with Mark. For Vincent, television was the preferred diversion during the pounding treatments, as much to keep
his
mind off what they were doing as to distract his brother.
    The door to his mother’s bedroom was open, and Vincent stepped though the doorway. A ceiling fan whirred over Mom’s bed, moving around the sticky air. There was only one air conditioner in the small, rented cottage and the boys had it in their room. Mark’s condition demanded it. Vincent supposed that was one plus. Another was the mini-trampoline that lay on the living room floor. Mom had bought that for Mark to jump up and down on to supplement his chest physical therapy, which gave Vincent a chance to play around on it, too.
    His mother stirred in her bed and, in her fitful sleep, muttered something that Vincent could not understand. He walked over to the bed. Her blond hair was tangled on the pillow, and there were dark smudges under her eyes left by the mascara she hadn’t bothered to wash off when she got home last night. Jumbled together on the floor at the foot of the bed were white sneakers, denim shorts, and a black T-shirt with the bulldog mascot of The Salty Dog stenciled across the front.
    Vincent tiptoed to the dresser and counted the carefully stacked