When my brothers Harry and Barry come over in the summer something strange always seems to happen. Don’t know why, but it’s true. Like the Fourth of July a few years back when the bison bolted right down our neighborhood street. Turns out it escaped from a rancher’s truck out on the bypass ramp. Then one year my entire backyard flooded on the same day they came—it hadn’t rained in weeks. I’m still waiting for an explanation from the county on that one. Thankfully the flood didn’t take my house with it. My sump pumps held up.

So, last June when Harry suggested that he and Barry come down to drink a few beers and shoot some pool, I was worried. I looked at the calendar and told Harry that we’ll have to do it on the 19th instead of the 26th.

“I don’t care one way or another,” he said. So the 19th it was. Helped me to sleep at night knowing it wasn’t the summer proper.

See the thing is, I’m the only one of the three of us who holds a job, who has a steady life. Harry worked for the county junkyard for fifteen years, checking permits and that sort of thing. For the past few years he just skimmed by doing the bare minimum. Job
satisfaction was in the single digits. But then he started sleeping in. He wasn’t drinking or anything. Harry just couldn’t wake up before eleven. Mr. McGrady understood for about a week, but after that he just had to let Harry go. He was apologetic, but Harry told me he didn’t mind. Harry said he almost felt sorry for the guy. He had ten grand in the bank, and wanted a break anyways. Said he wanted to retire.

“A job’s just a job,” he said.

Barry’s even worse. As long as I’ve known him he’s never found a fulltime gig. In a way he tries harder than Harry, but Barry just gets nervous. He goes in for interviews and doesn’t know what to say. He stammers and stutters and clams-up. The one time he
interviewed for an assistant manager slot down at the bakery Barry asked me to come along. I sat out at one of the ratty tables eating a box of peach tarts, drinking coffee. When Barry came out half an hour later he wouldn’t look at me. He stared straight
ahead like some kind of automaton.

“Hey man, what happened?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I got to talking and the next thing I knew I was saying how I can’t do anything right, and that I can’t cook for squat, and that I am probably depressed. He shook his head and said he would give me a call if they wanted me. It was a disaster.”

I’ve asked HR if they couldn’t find something for either one of them, but George Bunter said unless they have at least an associate’s degree they’re shit out of luck. Our janitorial staff has always been stocked. No turn-over either. I feel bad since I’m the youngest, but all I can do is ask around and look in the classifieds. I try to help but sometimes I forget and feel guilty. Or I feel helpless. They’ve never asked me for money though, and I never offered.

Barry has been living off unemployment for years. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Harry and Barry live together. Harry was married once for about a year to a woman he met at work, but his wife turned lesbian and ran off to Alaska with her physical therapist. I
doubt if Barry has ever kissed a woman. My wife, Cynthia thinks they are both strange and they make her feel “grubby.” When I tell her my brothers are coming over she usually makes plans with her friends. This time wasn’t any different.

“Just don’t let them ruin the Orientals,” she said. Cynthia can be patronizing at times, but I do love her for other reasons.

So Harry and Barry pulled into my drive about eight thirty. The sky was still stretched out in a beautiful ochre when they rang my doorbell, Harry holding a case of Busch. I opened the door and gawked at the sunset, but they seemed oblivious, and instead
made a beeline for the pool table.

“I can’t wait to get a few games of Cutthroat behind me. Wish we had room to get one of these things in the apartment,” Harry said, stepping into a bank shot on the seven.

“Harry, the floor would never hold a pool table,” I said.

“Sure it would. Why not?”

“Well, there’s beams, but that’s about it. Nothing to hold a ton of slate. You know how they build apartment buildings. It’s just wood and plaster in between.”

“Then we could get a small wooden one maybe,” he said. “A light one. One of them kids sets. That way we could really kick your ass when we come down to this shit-hole.”

I rolled my eyes.

“That’s still a pool table,” Harry said. “Ain’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said, lining up on the eleven. “It’s something.”

“But we have too much furniture,” he said. “Don’t need it one bit. We should dump some of that stuff.”

I could absolutely imagine Harry and Barry taking a band saw to one of their old clammy couches andchucking the tattered segments out the window.

Harry kicked our asses at three games of Cutthroat, four games of Eight Ball, six games of Nine-Ball. Then we decided to give ourselves a break. Fine. I was just relieved that nobody broke an arm or had a seizure. After all, Harry had already drunk half the
beer.

We lugged the rest of the beer out onto our patio. Cynthia and I had just bought the house a year before. We loved that house more than anything. It wasn’t huge, but it had character and charm, and she kept it clean. Best of all, it was ours. And more than
anything else we loved sitting out on the patio on summer nights listening to the crickets in the park behind our yard and watching the stars stab through the light pollution. So I thought Harry and Barry might like it too.

Barry was telling a stupid joke about three bald dwarves when I noticed a bright light in the sky at about eleven o’clock.

“Hold on, Barry,” I said. “Take a look at that.”

“You aren’t going to let me finish my joke?”

“Just hold it for a second. What is that?”

“I don’t know, but it ain’t a star,” Harry said, sucking down another beer and tossing the crumpled can onto my lawn. Harry said it looks like a plane.

“So who cares?” Barry said. “Who really gives a shit?”

“It looks like it’s falling,” I said. And it did. The light seemed to be coming closer and closer. Whatever the light was, it was coming toward us fast. At first I thought the light was heading south of us, but the more we watched it the more the light looked as if it was headed right at the roof of my house. Then I was terrified. We all popped opened beers.

“That thing is coming right for us,” I said.

“Now, what are the chances of that?” Harry said.

Then we watched it in silence for five minutes, and the light was twice as big as it was before.

“I think the light is headed our way,” Harry said.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “I think you’re right.” I could feel that weird tingly feeling in my stomach, the feeling that told me something bad was about to happen. So in this situation the rules go out the window. We couldn’t exactly dial 911 or alert our local congressman or the homeowner’s association. Instead Harry and Barry jumped in Harry’s old pickup, and I got behind the wheel of my Honda, and we took off for a hill about three miles down the road, beeping and waving and yelling at anyone we saw to get out of the
area. As we drove I tried Cynthia on her cell phone, with no luck. When we got to the hill, the light was at about ten o’clock and screaming down toward the horizon. Then
suddenly it seemed to pick up speed, and the skyline burst with fire and light followed by a thunderous BOOM.

“Oh shit!” I said. “Oh my God!”

For at least ten minutes we just stood there watching the fire in the distance. We watched the smoke bulge and cascade above the tree line. It was something. Harry and Barry just stood there shaking their heads like two existential bobble-heads. I tried to phone Cynthia again to no avail, and then the fire department, cussing and hollering. “Oh shit! Oh shit!” I kept telling myself “I hope it didn’t hit my house. I hope it didn’t hit my house. I hope it didn’t hit my house.” Everything else was secondary.

Then we drove back. My hands were sweaty, trembling, and I could barely operate the vehicle. I actually had to have Harry lead the way. The whole time I was cursing myself for allowing Harry and Barry for bringing hell and damnation upon me once more, as if
it was their fault the thing fell from the sky. Well, maybe it was, I thought.

When we drove into my neighborhood I could see the fire truck lights blaring, and hear the sirens. Smoke fumed into the night, and I could see the flames leaping from the trees. We drove down Maple towards my house, but the police barricade stopped us. But I
was a man possessed. I just wasn’t thinking about my brothers then. Parking behind the barricade I cut back through my neighbor’s back yards on foot, climbing fences, running. I had to see what had become of our home. My heart was on a tear.

When I got to the corner where our house was I could see the fire a hundred yards or so away from my house in the woods, and dozens of fire trucks blasting the flames with hoses. Whatever it was missed my house! I sat down on the curb and nearly cried out of
elation. I could see the windows in my house were clearly shattered. I thought surely there must be some structural and plumbing damage. But who cares? The house was intact. The fire was contained.

As I was sitting there I could see a metallic hull through the trees, melting and blackening in the flames. I could see rods poking in five different directions. I just couldn’t believe it. It was a damn satellite in the woods behind my yard. For half an hour I just sat there watching the thing melt into the woods, watching the flames simmer to smoke.

That night when the firemen and police cleared out, Harry and Barry pulled back into my driveway. Harry just wanted to play more pool. I started wondering if I should ever have them back down. For a while we sat in the living room and my brothers finished off the
rest of the case of beer. Then we walked around inspecting the damage. I didn’t see any cracks in the walls or the ceilings. The faucets and toilets all seemed to work, but almost all of the windows were shattered. Half-drunk Harry and Barry helped me sweep
up the glass. I would have to call the insurance company in the morning and assess. Barry kept saying that I dodged a bullet, and he was right. I did. I blamed them.

When we were done cleaning up, Harry and Barry just left with no big hurrah. They walked down the sidewalk leading up to my house like nothing happened at all. My brothers.

I fell asleep. It was still early, only eleven thirty or so. I remember my wife stripping in the dark, and sliding under the covers with me. I could feel her warmth against my chest, and she didn’t say a word about the satellite, or the smoke, or the shattered windows. She fell fast asleep. As I was half-asleep I thought about how much I need Cynthia around. Cynthia was never there whenever disaster struck. I wondered if that was a coincidence. I felt the cool pillow under my head, and could smell the acrid smoke lap through the gashed windows.