It’s the day after Thanksgiving and I’m sitting wrapped in a blanket on the porch, drinking coffee like sludge and squinting at the hazy orb climbing out of the bowels of Wisconsin. The bucolic quietude of the big rural empty is retreating with the night. A hundred yards away I-35 is flooding with holiday traffic, glinting colorful waves of suburban assault vehicles and overloaded minivans and the occasional barreling semi.

The door bangs open and shut behind me. Brian drops his substantial bulk into the Adirondack chair next to mine. Its wooden slats make threatening noises of collapse. “My fucking back,” he grimaces, trying to get comfortable.

It’s always something with my brother. He’s got a bad back, and recurrent migraines, and knees that ache, and god knows what else. I keep telling him it’s psychosomatic, the toll of contorting himself into my parents’ fucked-up worldview so he can work the farm with Dad. He keeps telling me I’m full of shit.

“I wish I’d seen Wendy.” He says it as if he’s discussing the weather, looking down the swelling girth of his overalls, wiping breakfast crumbs off.

A typical conversation with Brian — I’m already exasperated. “You can see Wendy anytime, dude. She only lives in Des Moines. Why don’t you swing by her place on your way home from the airport?”

“Maybe I’ll do that.”

“You ever been to her place?”

“Nah. I don’t like that creepy boyfriend of hers. I got the address, though.” He takes off his blaze-orange hunting cap to scratch his head. Underneath the greasy blond hair resembles a monk’s tonsure. He’s less bald than I am, which doesn’t seem fair considering he’s a decade older. “When do you fly back?”

I pull the blanket up to my chin. “Not until Sunday. Do we just get shit-faced until then?”

“How about this? We get shit-faced today, and hang out at Krenzels’ tomorrow.”

The Krenzels were our closest friends growing up, a Catholic birth control experiment that resulted in five boys and three girls. Brian was tight with the older Krenzel kids, I was tight with the younger ones. They were one of those families perpetually on the brink of losing their land, mailbox stuffed with FINAL NOTICE envelopes, every harvest maybe the last. There’s no such thing as an honest living on a couple hundred acres, not in this era. You have to plant marijuana in between the corn rows or cook meth in the machine shed. Now Brian is telling me that the bank finally foreclosed and everything went at auction. Mr. and Mrs. Krenzel live in the dead-end town of Somber — you can’t make this shit up — where families blow in off the land and collect like dead leaves.

“Is Ruthie home to visit?” I ask with wary hopefulness.

“Why? You still got a boner for her?”

“Maybe. I’d have to see her again first. Has she porked out?”

Brian throws back his multiple chins to roar with laughter. Beneath him wood screws moan.

Ruthie and I grew up together, a simple friendship that got all mixed up and complicated with our cruel, cruel puberties. One year she was an awkward coltish teen with braces and really bad skin, usually looking as though she was about to walk into a wall. The next year she was a blooming woman-child trying to master her new jutting boobs and the effect they had on boys like me. Her brothers — all friends of mine — jovially threatened me with death if I messed around with their little sister. Like that stopped me when I was a hormonal idiot and she was a heart-shattering vista of desire.

“When was the last time you saw her?” Brian is asking.

“God, I don’t know. Four or five years ago, maybe?” A sudden thought grips me. A thought named Nooshin. “Did Ruthie get married?”

“Nope. She’s still single, far as I know.” He rubs his massive hands together and blows into them, making steam leak out between his fingers. “Remember Kimmie? She’s here through the weekend. She finally divorced that asshole. Cleaned him out. Got the house and the snowmobiles too.”

“Kimmie needs it. Three kids, right?”

“Four now. All girls. Just as beautiful as their mom.”

Kim — Kimmie in the Krenzel nicknaming convention — is Ruthie’s oldest sister and the center of Brian’s sad mooning universe. Ruthie and I were in elementary school when they graduated together, posing in their rented gowns and mortarboards, blinking into the hot summer sun. At that age I was struck by her blond gossamer hair, which looked just like the cornsilk Dad had me detasseling. Now I’d describe her as a pale prairie Ophelia who seemed to glow with phosphorescence. But she was always chased by guys more rico suave than Brian.

He heaves himself to his boots, encrusted with layers of dried mud flaking off. “You ready for a beer?”

“Dude, we can’t let Mom catch us. It’s not even breakfast yet.”

“Mom’s cooking tastes better if you’re drunk.”

“I heard that!” Mom bellows through the door where she’s been eavesdropping, and suddenly I’m so happy I’m practically losing my mind, because I don’t have to subject myself to this troika of dysfunctional misery addicts for another year.