pole barn

by Tyler Madeley

My brother misspelled my name in his suicide note. The stupid thing was only about six sentences long, and I was practically an afterthought: “And Becket, take care of Nigel, would you? He doesn’t always get the love he deserves.” Nigel is our dog; I should be distressed at the compassion directed toward our pet, but I’m much angrier at the fact that he left out the second ‘t’ in “Beckett”—he spelled the freaking dog’s name right. My brother and I hadn’t always seen each other properly—a four-year age gap will do that. Since I was always too young to partake in his debauchery, I think he simply dismissed me as a peripheral figure in his life. It wasn’t a recent event; he had hanged himself in our pole barn shortly before his eighteenth birthday. As I stare at the wax candles pulled from my own cake—a one and an eight with buttercream frosting clinging to the bottom, the wicks still singed—I realize something: I am older now than my brother ever was. I wonder if that makes me the eldest sibling? I wonder if I should still refer to him as my older brother, even though he isn't? I could never ask my parents what they think. Four years later, it’s clear my mom will never move on. Even now, as I sit and eat cake in silence with my father at our kitchen table, I can hear her gentle sniffles coming from the living room. I push back my chair; I am certain my dad doesn’t even notice I’m gone. He passively nudges a hardened dab of frosting from one side of his plate to the other. I walk out to our pole barn, begrimed and in desperate need of a power-washing, though neither of my parents has gone near the structure since. They are haunted by it, and they weren’t even the ones who found him. I had gone to get a new drill battery for my dad—we were anchoring a bookshelf in the living room. He had hanged himself from one of the rafters; the rope was long, and he was only about four feet off the ground. He had pulled a bale of hay nearby and either kicked it away or jumped from it. His hands were horribly swollen and purple; the tips of his fingers looked like Concord grapes. As soon as I saw him, I lunged and clung to his body; the extra weight, even at fourteen, snapped the rope. He fell clean on top of me. My parents found us after they heard my wailing. The note was tri-folded in his back pocket. Being back here now doesn’t feel haunting. It feels melancholy. It feels infuriating. My little big brother, who couldn’t even spell my name. I’m overcome with questions, and the anger swells in my stomach. Who did he want to find him? Did he have second thoughts? Was he trying only to kill himself, or was he hoping to take the lot of us with him? He was an egocentric, manipulative, tactless bastard. Even though we weren’t close in age, I feel like we were so similar. We loved running, girls, and horror movies. We hated canned tuna, rainy mornings, and our aunt on our father’s side. We were exactly the same, and we could have been so much more. I bend down and trace his name in the dust covering the concrete floor, but I am sure to spell it correctly. Then, I walk back inside the house; I guess we are different in a couple of ways.

Photo of Tyler Madeley

BIO: As a writer and educator, I am drawn to stories that examine the emotional spaces we often struggle to name. I serve on the English Faculty at Western Reserve Academy, where I work to help students discover the power of language and narrative. My academic foundation was built at LFC, where I earned degrees in English Writing and Secondary Education, followed by a Master’s degree in Educational Leadership from University of Toronto. I live south of Cleveland with my wife and our two children.