97. Okkervil River “Your Past Life as a Blast” I Am Very Far [Jagjaguwar]
“No one is gonna stop me from loving my brother; not even my brother.”
Montana was going to be boring, or so he had already decided before he even got in the truck. No movie theaters, no friends, nothing to do. He was happy to see his older brother, sure, but he didn’t like the prospect of being in the middle of nowhere for a week. When he arrived the sky was golden and the street his apartment was on was quiet. Only the trees whispered above his head; there were a lot of them. On the first day his prediction was correct. He just sat there, eating cereal, watching TV, and read comics while his brother went to class. The next morning he expected more of the same, but instead opened his eyes to a fishing rod and a tackle box. “This isn’t Montana,” the brother said. “I’ll show it to you.” They drove for an hour and then got out at a seemingly arbitrary point on the map, which the younger one was in charge of but didn’t know how to read. They found a river, followed it a while, and then realized they forgot the bait in the car. The older brother laughed. The younger one didn’t think it was funny; he sat there on the bank, fumed and disappointed again. Then he saw his brother start skipping stones like everything was okay. After the young guy stewed for a while he looked at his feet, where there were several beautiful rocks perfect for flinging along the water. He put one in his pocket - the roundest and most perfect one he could find - and then joined his brother at the river’s edge. They skipped stones until dark and then went back to the apartment. The stone he kept stayed in his backpack until his brother finished school and moved back home.
