Oh, Brother

In 1967, I was the third of five sons and a teacher’s pet in first grade. My oldest brother, a tough third-grader, told me a filthy sex joke that I did not understand, which I repeated during show-and-tell. I was confused when Mrs. Robinson didn’t find the joke funny, and that my friends on the playground were incredulous.

With two kids in diapers and a husband out to sea, my mother relied heavily on Ray to watch over and entertain me and brother No. 2 in the Navy housing where we lived. He was an expert on everything and had fascinating facts that I often repeated. Years later, he informed me that most of his wisdom was made up on the fly just to toy with me. He built wicked tree forts with working hatches and ladders, adorned with designs like “Love” and “Groovy,” which I ruined by painting “pece” on them because I was a new speller.

I was a nuisance to him and his friends, but my mom forced him to let me join them. He even had to take me to the Naval base with him, to bowl, watch a movie, or just hang out. Once, we were busted on base for smoking cigarettes the older kids stole from their fathers. During the interrogation, I recall Mr. Asher asking me how old I was. “Six,” I said, at which point he went ballistic on the older boys. The school playground was rough, but more than once a bully would be stopped from picking on me by those older boys. “Don’t mess with that kid. He’s Ray Kelly’s brother.”

Dad’s retirement from the Navy brought the family back to Seattle during the Boeing layoffs of the 1970s, so he moved us to the home of his youth in Central Oregon. My brothers and I would spend hours playing by the Deschutes River. One scorching summer day, I started a wildfire playing with matches. Luckily for us, my uncle and his grown son happened to be fishing in the same area and helped us put out the fire. Ray covered for me, saving me from Dad’s leather belt. Even my uncle did not snitch on me.

When Ray learned to drive, he was once again saddled with me as a precondition to use the car. We went downtown to the Klamath Falls pool hall. Ray and I were playing pool when a guy I called Hawaii Five-O walked in.

“What are you staring at?” My answer was a sarcastic “Not much.” I thought I was sure to get a butt-kicking when my brother stopped him with a pool cue to the ribs.

A few years later, we moved to Des Moines, back in Washington. When my parents split up just a few months shy of my graduation, Ray was pressured to take me in so that I could finish at Mount Rainier High. He and his girlfriend got married and spent their honeymoon on a weeklong hike in the mountains. Meanwhile, their car was broken into, and the thieves found their spare keys and registration, and decided to burglarize their apartment. While I stayed there alone, they attempted to make entry but were stopped by the chain lock. This was the only time my sister-in-law said that she was happy I was there.

A few months later, Ray and his wife visited me at my dormitory. I showed him a new Elvis Costello record I just got and encouraged him to borrow it. He declined. “We are leaving Washington, and not coming back,” he told me. I was devastated to lose him.

Years passed and my life went into a tailspin of divorce, depression, alcohol, and the bad choices I made along with it. He called me long distance with the advice to get over it because, despite what they said, nobody cared since they had their own problems.

He eventually returned to Washington with enough money to buy a house. I helped him check out properties, and he settled in Poulsbo. When my 15-year-old daughter died of leukemia, Ray refused to leave my side, going so far as to sleep in the same bed with me to protect me from doing something stupid. He paid for a men’s retreat to help me accept my loss, and I regained enough sanity to keep on living.

In September 2008, having just been fired for a second time, Ray called me and told me to pack a bag because we were going to Houston. He got me hired on with his company, which was providing first responders after Hurricane Ike. With the city shut down, we had to share a motel room. He kept waking me up to tell me to quit snoring so he could sleep. “We have to work tomorrow,” he’d say. I finally grabbed a pillow and blanket and slept in the lobby. It’s not like he didn’t snore just as bad, but I somehow always managed to be the first to fall asleep.

When I woke up from my recent surgery for colon cancer, Ray was there in my room, once again to protect me.

“Whatever you do, don’t throw up,” he said. “They will stick that tube up your nose again to drain your stomach.” Ray beat the same cancer last year.

If we ever move into an old folks’ home, we’d better have our own rooms because the dude snores. One thing is certain, if that home has a billiard room, Ray and I will rule over the other old men.

John Pat Kelly is a KPFD fire commissioner. He lives in Wauna.