For Ever, Forever

January, 2010

    Jay never realized how brilliant the traffic lights were in his town before tonight. They reminded him of red and green and yellow gems. Or the universe. Or that aurora borealis that Ever always talked about. He wasn't sure if it was because he hadn't made a habit of driving at night, or if it was the all of the vodka sloshing around in his head that made the world through his eyes look so kaleidoscopic. But he was sure that they were beautiful. As beautiful as the pure white headlights of oncoming cars shooting towards him like stars and spaceships. However beautiful or otherwise, the subconscious part of Jay's mind — the part that floated like a stranded ship over the sea of liquor drowning his thoughts — insisted that he kept his eyes on the road. He listened.

    Jay had never driven under the influence before. Actually, he had never been drunk before. Even more so, he had never drank hard liquor before. Yes, he had had beer with his friends on Ellingston beach on special occasions, but he always stopped after a few sips. He stopped in part because of his distaste of people who allowed themselves to become sloppy, belligerent nuisances while intoxicated, and in part because of Ever. She always reminded him of the next day's football practice, or that big literature paper coming up, or the test he needed to study for. She was like the conscience personified; the light on his shoulder. He missed her a lot since he went away for college, but they talked on the phone almost all of the time. It was better than nothing, but he couldn't help but to wish he had that light on his shoulder now. Instead, there was a shadow seeping across him that radiated from the body slouched in the passenger seat of his car. The body belonging to his troublesome brother, Andrew.

    It was usually siblings that seemed to be the most stark in contrast, and that theory proved no exception for the Hewitt brothers. From climbing up their basement walls and hanging from the rafters at age four, to stealing their parents car to go to a party at age twelve, Andrew was always wild. He was three years older, but Jay always felt like the elder one. It was as if Jay's birthright was the title of being his brother's keeper; like the name on his birth certificate read, "Jason Dawson Hewitt, Andrew Daniel Hewitt's Keeper." From talking Andrew out of stealing that video game from Blockbuster, to cleaning up the kitchen after Andrew blew up the blender, it was always Jay to Andrew's rescue. Tonight was no exception.

    Andrew wanted to go out that night, and he was the sort of person that got what he wanted. Out of all of the friends he had and the people he knew, he wanted Jay to spend a night on the town with him. However, Jay had a football game coming up in three days; he was in no state of mind to put up with his brother's reckless disregard, but Andrew wasn't having that. Andrew stormed Jay's residence hall with an unbridled fury, and dragged Jay out of his dorm by the hair on his scalp. He forced Jay into his car, and took off speeding down the street like a bat out of hell before Jay could utter a word in edgewise.

    There was a strip of brightly lit bars in the middle of town that gave the area a Las Vegas appeal. Andrew intended to patron every one of the establishments until he was sure he had tasted every brand of liquor known to man. And that was exactly what he did.

    Trading stained bar stools for more stained bar stools, and being strangled by the stenches of liquor, cologne and cigarette smoke, Jay would decline each drink that came his way and watch as his brother pounded down shot after shot. Then Andrew would make at least three trips around each bar and return to his seat with a new set of women's phone numbers. Jay was fine with this routine, until Andrew began throwing drunken temper tantrums at Jay's sobriety.

    At the last establishment on the strip, Andrew's intoxication began to turn violent. He threw glasses across the bar, threatening Jay to drink or the consequences would be a brawl in the parking lot. Jay had never seen his brother so enraged. To defuse the situation, and to save himself from a beating, Jay drank. And he drank. And he drank until Andrew was so deep in his own inebriation that he could no longer threaten Jay to continue. It was then that Jay carried Andrew from the bar, and began on their long car ride home where he noticed the brilliance of the traffic lights.

    Jay's subconscious had insisted earlier that night for him to keep his eyes on the road. In his drunken stupor, he followed the instruction so literally that he forget to check the traffic lights. He breezed through the city streets, beneath the lights as red as rubies and others as green as emeralds. He didn't know it as he weaved between vehicles, switching lanes with reckless abandon while the stars and spaceships flew at him faster and faster, but it was one of the rubies that marked the beginning of a chain of events that would dramatically alter his life.

    It came out of nowhere, but that was what everyone said in situations like Jay's no matter honest he thought of the description. The aforementioned "it" had been a little, white, two-door car that turned onto the main road from a side street. If Jay had been watching the lights, he would've known that his was red. But he wasn't watching the lights, and he wasn't supposed to be driving, and he was too deep in the sea of liquor, feeling as of it could spill from his eyes, that the only things he could comprehend were the screech of someone's tires, a crunch as deafening as anything he'd ever heard, and his body being flung from the seat only to be crushed back against it from the seat belt. Andrew, who had passed out in the passenger seat sometime ago, jolted awake with a bright shock of alertness. Then there was a scream, and the Hewitt brothers sat there staring at each other as if they had both grown several more heads.

    Jay was arrested that night. He wouldn't discover until two days later that the person in the opposite vehicle — a young, married mother of three who had been driving home from working third shift — would be paralyzed from the waist down. And he wouldn't discover until after spending a week in jail that he'd lose his football scholarship along with everything he spent his entire life working for. And he wouldn't discover until almost a month spent between jail and court rooms that he would be sentenced to serve the next eight years of his life in the state penitentiary and to consider himself "lucky" that the judge was "lenient." But he didn't feel lucky at all. Knowing that he ruined a woman and her family's lives was the most unfortunate feeling he had ever known. He couldn't help but to think that if he only called a taxi or refused Andrew and accepted the beating that all of this wouldn't have happened. It was those "ifs" and the knowledge of how easily that night's events could have been avoided that broke his heart.

    Through all of those years talking Andrew off of the many ledges he put himself on, Jay had grown accustomed to rescuing Andrew. It was his self-proclaimed birthright, after all. But in those moments that he sat with his clammy hands gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white, and police lights flashing in his rearview mirror that weren't as brilliant as he imagined the traffic lights being, and with a mind that had never felt so sober, Jay wondered who would save him.

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