The Mule’s Last Apology

He sat there staring at it like it was going to jump up and bite him like a rattlesnake. Remy McAlister had a lot of experience with rattlesnakes growing up in the backwoods of Alabama. He and his twin brother, Rom, saw and caught their fair share traipsing around the woods behind their house. Their Mom’s father, whom the boys called Papaw in appropriate Alabama drawl, taught the twins how to catch those snakes and how to safely cut the heads and tails off. Much to the twins's mother’s disdain, they kept those tails in a Sketchers shoe box under their bunk bed.

At this moment, Remy would have rather faced 100 rattlesnakes than be the new owner of “it”. “It” was a little bloodstained, weather-beaten black book. It was now the only thing he had to remind him of his stupid, reckless, pig-headed little brother. Rom was born only nine minutes after Remy on a very hot day, July 29. But Rom would grow up to be anything but “little.” At 6-foot, 5-inches tall and weighing about 220 pounds, Rom towered over his 5-foot, 9-inch tall “big” brother.

Only once did their Mom explain how the boys came into their names and that was only after she got a little tipsy on Papaw’s homemade muscadine wine. The story Geraldine Jane Graham McAlister told that drunken night was that she and the boys’ dad, a good man but partial to drinking a bit too much when out with his buddies, decided if the twins were boys, they would be named after him, Douglas Dwight McAlister. But three months before the twins were born, Doug died in a car accident after driving home drunk. Their Mom was so pissed off at Doug for dying and leaving her alone that she refused to name the boys after him. So, she named them after her favorite subject in college, Mythology, and herself, just to get back at Doug. Thus began the lives of Romulus Gerald McAlister and his big brother Remus Graham McAlister.

Remy had been known his whole life by either his given name, Remus (only used by his Mom), or his nickname, Remy. Romulus had a few names -- Romulus (used by Mom), Rattlesnake (used by friends and family who asked Rom to rid their yards and gardens of the pesky snakes and for that service he charged $1 each), and The Mule (used by his Air Force comrades). These two rambunctious boys began life together with unique names but with personalities as opposite as two people could possibly have, and yet, sharing the strongest bond two souls ever could.

Twelve days ago, Rom joined his father, a man he had never met, in the hereafter. Today, Remy sat at the funeral home holding his twin brother’s little black notebook. Remy felt more alone than he had ever felt before.

“Hey, you alright?” Remy heard a voice behind him in the funeral home’s break room. He turned to see Rom’s best friend, Tech Sergeant Jared Timmons, TipTop they called him, standing in the doorway, wearing his Air Force Service Dress. No wonder they call him TipTop, Remy thought, he looks like he should be on the Air Force’s recruiting website, he’s the epitome of a squared away, fit, military man.

“Hey, you alright?” Repeated TipTop.

Remy’s eyes didn’t leave the Moleskine notebook as he choked out the words “Yeah, yeah, just peachy.”

“You know, he took that stupid thing everywhere,” continued TipTop. “Always had it in his pocket, always writing in it. Never let any of us read it, called it his booty call book. You know how he was with the ladies – you being his brother and all. Ain’t that crazy what they say about twins, you both know exactly what the other one is thinking or some shit?”

“Yeah, its some crazy shit,” said Remy.

“Hey boy, you gonna come out here and greet these people?” interrupted Papaw, a 79-year old retired electrician who was never one for sentimentality. “I been doin’ your host duties damn near an hour now and my throat is hoarse from saying ‘thank you for coming’. You know, that book ain’t gonna bite, boy. Best rip off the band aid, open it up, see what Rom was up to in his final days. Maybe he wrote you a goodbye message.”

“What the Hell Papaw! Sometimes you’re meaner than those rattlesnakes we used to catch as kids,” snapped Remy back at the old man. Remy remembered his Mom and how she would have slapped him for speaking to an elder like that so he quietly mumbled a half-hearted apology, “sorry but you know he died sudden-like, Rom wouldn’t have had time to write me a farewell in here.”

“Look boy,” responded Papaw, trying to be a bit more sensitive to his grieving grandson. “I know it’s hard, burying your brother and all. Hell, I lost two of mine when I was about your age, didn’t even get their bodies back from Viet-nam. Didn’t get to bury them proper-like with a gravestone or nothing. But you got to find a way past this. I know I sound as crazy as a Bessie bug but maybe that book can be your connection to him in the living world. Now come on, we’re about to start the service.”

The funeral service was an hour long – just what Rom would have wanted -- with lots of crying and carrying on from all Rom’s family, childhood friends, ex-girlfriends, and Air Force buddies. After heading up to the cemetery and lowering the casket in the ground, Remy stood at the edge of his 23-year-old brother’s grave. That deep hole now held the biggest, loudest, most gregarious soul the tiny town of Holtam Hollow, Alabama, had ever seen. The mourners left and it was now eerily quiet, something Remy was not used to when Rom was around.

“Let’s get a drink,” Remy heard Papaw say as the old man pulled on the young man's elbow. “Pour one out, honor the dead.”

Remy, Papaw, TipTop, and two other Air Force friends of Rom’s met up at the local pub after the Airmen changed out of their uniforms and into less conspicuous clothes.

“Here’s to The Mule,” said Staff Sergeant Craig Hopkins, a.k.a. Toxic, as he held up a shot of whisky.

“To The Mule,” repeated TipTop and Senior Airman Nick Sherwood, a.k.a. Payday.

“To Rom,” responded Remy and Papaw.

With whisky shot number one down the throat and loosening the tongues of the five mourners, the stories started flowing.

“Hey, Rom ever tell you why we named him The Mule?” the still sober Payday asked Remy, who shook his head sloppily since he was two more drinks in than the others. “Well, the first field training our group did in Georgia, there was a shit-ton of equipment to haul around in addition to our rucksacks. So, the training leader announced that anyone who helps carry the excess equipment can get extra rations. So, Rom picks up all that shit and treks it a few miles to our training site. Strong as a damn mule he is. Was.”

“Hell, you know how The Mule ate, I think he just did that 'cause he didn’t wanna share the extra food,” added TipTop, laughing at his little joke and knocking back another whisky shot. “Besides, I’d rather be called The Mule than Toxic. We call him Toxic because it doesn’t matter where we go -- the club, the bar, wherever – he always keeps us from talking to girls. Hell, we even went to Waffle House and he scared the waitress away.”

Everyone in the group laughed except Toxic. It was clear he did not like his nickname but it was too late, it was stuck on him like, well, toxic fumes.

“Screw you guys,” Toxic retorted in his seemingly accent-less, Ohio-born tongue. “At least my name is legal. What about Payday? He got his moniker because he cheats at cards, gambles, and dabbles illegally in the stock market.”

“I don’t do nothing illegal!” snapped Payday with his strong Boston accent directed straight at Toxic. “Everything I do is on the up-and-up. Who legally made you $3,000 on the ponies when you needed to get your car fixed? And who legally made TipTop $9,000 for that down payment on a house for him and his lady? And who legally made The Mule $20,000 at the roulette table in Biloxi so he could give Tamsyn an apology?”

The other Airmen nodded in agreement at what Payday had said, TipTop even adding a mumbled “thank you” while he pounded his empty shot glass on the bar. But Remy and Papaw just stared at Payday with a look of confusion.

“What? Wait, you mean you made my grandson $20,000 at a Mississippi casino so he could use it for an apology?” asked Papaw, who was by this time slightly drunk. “And who, or what, is a Tamsyn?”

“Yeah, that was a hell of a night wasn’t it?” said TipTop, seemingly oblivious to old Papaw’s questioning, focusing his storytelling toward Remy. “The Mule said he needed $10,000 to make it right with this girl named Tamsyn. This was after your Mom died and he went through his rough patch. Anyway, we had a four-day weekend so we all drove to the Beau Rivage and Payday here sat at the roulette table three hours straight to win not $10,000 but $20,000 for that stubborn Mule.”

“But who is Tamsyn?” asked Papaw, now visibly irritated at not getting all his questions answered and sobering up at the mention of $20,000.

“Oh God, that was a crazy trip!” exclaimed Toxic. “I couldn’t get a waitress to give me the time of day, couldn’t win a nickel at the slots either. Shit, I am toxic!”

“I’m going to drop you in a vat of toxic chemicals if you don’t answer me, boy,” Papaw shouted in his deep, raspy drawl – the effects of way too many packs of Marlboro cigarettes. “Who is Tamsyn and what the hell did my grandson do that he had to apologize with that kind of money?”

“Whoa, Big Paps, I have no idea why he wanted to give Tamsyn money,” said TipTop as he tried to calm the old man. “But knowing The Mule, he wrote about it in the notebook. He put that money in the bank. I know because I drove him to the bank, saw him deposit it. But he never got a chance to get it to Tamsyn. Since Remy is the beneficiary, it’s all his now.”

“Have you even opened it yet?” Toxic asked as he nodded toward the little notebook in Remy’s hand.

Remy slowly shook his head. The last thing he wanted to do was open that notebook, which was the last thing his brother touched while he still had breath in his body.

“Give me that, you big wussy,” mumbled Papaw as he snatched the notebook from Remy’s hands. “Always was the sentimental one. Let’s see what dying wishes Rattlesnake-Mule-Rom left.”

Papaw thumbed through the notebook unexpectedly releasing a small slip of paper from between the pages. It was a bank deposit receipt. He reached down, picked it up, and read it aloud.

“$20,000 deposited at First City Bank, Valdosta, Georgia, October 19,” Papaw read. “Well, boy, I guess you better talk to the lawyer and get access to that bank account seein’ as though Rom left it to you.”

“Or did he mean to leave it to Tamsyn?” asked Remy.

“Legally, it’s yours,” responded Payday in a matter-of-fact tone. “If you really want to find out, read the notebook. And you might want to take a road trip to talk to Tamsyn.”