“Napalm” // Arts & Letters

*This piece was originally published in Arts & Letters issue 44 and was named a notable Best American Short Story of 2022

I was the owner of Berry Fresh Energy Drink™. Berry Fresh was not just a name, but a rallying cry—an affront to our competitors, the shameless grifters who pumped the youth full of toxic sludge. For ours was a pure and noble energy forged from the natural properties of the elderberry. But my intern, Tyler, insisted our “lame-ass” branding was holding us back. I didn’t care for how brazenly he was overstepping his job description—I hired the little shit to hand out flyers. Nor was I enthused about him interrupting my lunch. Admittedly, it was a sorry affair—a bowl of ramen I cooked on a hot plate in my garage. See, until Cindy and I finalized the divorce, I was not only operating my business out of said garage—I was also living there. I tried to hide this from my subordinates, but they weren’t stupid. It became an ugly, unspoken thing that hung in the air.

Anyway, Tyler sauntered up to my whiteboard and drew two big circles. They were side-by-side but not quite touching. In the circle on the left, he wrote, Energy drink drinkers, and in the circle on the right, he wrote, Health conshus dudes. I folded my arms and restrained, with all my might, the urge to ask, “Are you high?”

“See, it’s a Venn diaphragm,” Tyler explained, adjusting his nose ring.

I didn’t correct him. Now I was amused. “Go on,” I said, smiling.

“Berry Fresh is an energy drink aimed at health-conscious dudes, but health-conscious dudes don’t drink energy drinks. See how the circles don’t, like, intersect?” He asked, putting Visine drops in his eyes. “I’ve handed out flyers at every skate park in town and, trust me, these kids don’t give a shit about ‘all-natural ingredients.’ They’d rather blow their hearts to smithereens, you feel me?” 

I assured him that I felt him. Then I handed him a fresh stack of flyers. The instant he left, I scrubbed his “Venn diaphragm” from my whiteboard. Or, at least, I tried to—wouldn’t you know, the little prick wrote it in Sharpie.

Tyler’s Venn diaphragm haunted me that night, as I lay on the garage floor with the spiders and mites. I dreamt the circles were the size of small moons and I was standing between them, one arm chained to each. Slowly, glacially, they began to drift apart. I grimaced, trying, through some herculean feat of strength, to keep them together. But it was futile. I watched helplessly as my shoulders ripped out of their sockets with a sickening crack.

Somehow, my dreamscapes felt realer than the shiny oak table where Cindy and I sat, flanked by a cabal of faceless suits. I wouldn’t have been offended if those bastards squeezed me for all I was worth—that, after all, was their job. But, instead, they squeezed me for almost all I was worth. They were like vultures who had the audacity to get picky. They wanted the house, the car, and the savings, plus alimony—but they turned their noses up at the mention of Berry Fresh LLC. It was a rotting carcass even they wouldn’t touch.

The nightmares worsened when the divorce proceedings got ugly. The forensics accountant found the assets I hid and put me on the hook for perjury; Cindy tipped off the zoning board about my illegal business in the garage; and my lawyer, a fresh-faced twenty-something, confessed he graduated not from Harvard but from Hartford. Each time I awoke gasping for breath, I switched on my hot plate and pressed my palm to the glowing red coils. There was a sizzling sound, but no sweet release. I was utterly numb. This was why my sweet, sweet Cindy looked at me like a mutant. Something less than human.

In the wake of the trial, I had nowhere left to go. I squatted under the halfpipe at the local skatepark. I began, like Jane Goodall, to observe the customs and rituals of those punk-ass kids—my target market. Though they strove to rip sick heelflips and backside one-eighties, they took special relish in their gnarly falls, which they braved sans kneepads or helmets. And none was gnarlier than the infamous spill of the apple-cheeked boy. The apple-cheeked boy couldn’t have been older than twelve, but he had plenty of hair on his cojones, the onlookers joked, as he lined up at the top of a shiny metal railing. Said railing stretched down six flights of stairs and was slick with rain. Without hesitation, the apple-cheeked boy hopped on his board and grinded that shit. We went wild as he stretched his arms outward like Jesus Christ and held his balance. 

For a moment, we thought he might actually make it. 

Then his board slipped out from under him, and he tumbled down three flights of stairs. After he hit the bottom, he smiled a bloody smile, assessing the damage. When the apple-cheeked boy realized his femur had punctured his skin, he asked us to show him the footage. 

“Righteous,” he said when the video ended. Then he passed out cold in our arms. As the paramedics loaded the apple-cheeked boy onto a stretcher, we held our lighters high in his honor. I hated to admit it, but Tyler was right: it was the pain that bonded these little twerps—that forged their brotherhood. In these godless times, self-immolation had become their religion.

That night, as I foraged through dumpsters with the vermin, I caught a pair of eyes glowering at me from a billboard. They were unmistakable in their stoniness, their almost reptilian lack of emotion. They were the eyes of my long-lost brother. As I bit into a stale bear claw, an idea sparked in my mind. 

* * *

My brother was the greatest living daredevil. He maintained this distinction through a Cirque du Soleil-level balancing act of showmanship, motorcycling skills, and fiery wrecks, the fiery wrecks being the most critical component, he explained as he lit a cigarette, for the fiery wrecks made the danger palpable—without them, the whole enterprise would feel like pageantry, a man gallivanting to and fro in tights and an American flag cape. And, though no one would admit it, the fiery wrecks were what filled the stands—though, perhaps, that wasn’t quite accurate, it was more the possibility of the fiery wrecks that filled the stands. Being a daredevil was like being a striptease, my brother continued, and your fiery wrecks were like your tits. You couldn’t flaunt them willy-nilly—that would make you a hack. No, first you had to peel off your jacket and garter and stockings, and only when the tension was too great for the audience to bear, did you reveal those big bouncing moneymakers. It was an art.

My brother learned this early in his career when he was, by any objective measure, pulling off some damn impressive stunts—stunts like jumping a motorcycle over twenty-two Greyhound buses and then, a week later, jumping a Greyhound bus over twenty-two motorcycles. He was perplexed and, frankly, distraught that even with the promise of free admission and drink tickets these feats failed to draw a crowd. Only after my brother crashed his motorcycle into Hells Canyon, igniting a forest fire that would ravage the Pacific Northwest for weeks to come, did the world acknowledge him. They replayed his fiery wreck on every news station in the country and plastered his face across the tabloids. He was the hottest name in pop culture, pun intended. As he lay in his hospital bed, nursing burns that made even the most seasoned dermatologists recoil in horror, his phone exploded with sponsorship opportunities. A revelation struck his morphine-addled brain: if he wanted to stay on top, he had to carefully choreograph his fiery wrecks; they were too important to be left up to chance. 

I stopped listening to my brother; I was too busy watching his cigarette ember. It was the only light in the piss-soaked alley behind the bar. As he took a long drag, I saw the storied topography of his facial tissue: the long pink scar running down his temple, the road rash on his left cheek, the burnt patches of scalp where his lush ginger hair ceased to grow. But worst of all was his nose. The plastic surgeon totally botched the job—it was too symmetrical. Guilt overcame me as I looked into his eyes—or tried to. All I saw were the deep shadows in his sockets. I cleared my throat and, at last, revealed my ulterior motive. 

“Dearest brother,” I said, placing a hand on his shoulder, “do you need a sponsor for your next fiery wreck?” 

* * *

The sea of sour, sweat-drenched dudes stretched beyond the horizon. They were united not by color, creed, age, class, fashion sense, or any other observable characteristic—something deeper bound them. They formed a congregation rather than a crowd, the difference being their demeanor, for said demeanor was not rambunctious, as we’d expected, but rather, reverent. They were not fans of my brother, so much as disciples, and Tyler had done his lord’s work by gathering them here. 

See, when I was homeless, I had no choice but to pay Tyler in shares. I’d forgotten about the little ad hoc deals I’d brokered with him over the years—e.g. “Hey Tyler, I’ll give you five shares for a bite of your sandwich,” or “I’ll give you twenty shares to fuck off”—but he’d carefully recorded these in a spreadsheet. By his count, he now owned forty-nine percent of Berry Fresh LLC, and, with his immense influence, he wanted to be my CMO. 

As his first order of business, he was to publicize this event—the most pivotal in company history. Not wanting to leave anything to chance, I drafted a press release and gave him a list of media contacts to reach out to. As I later learned, Tyler only emailed the first contact, Mallory Damon, a Media Relations Specialist at the New York Times. But he misspelled her name, triggering an autoreply from mailer-daemon@nytimes.com. Mistaking the mailer-daemon for Mallory, he corresponded with it for months, forging what he thought was a fruitful professional relationship. As Tyler learned he could count on the daemon’s prompt replies, even in the loneliest hours of the night, the relationship blossomed into something deeper, more personal. He began to spill his heart out to the daemon, detailing the twisted psychological games his stepfather played with him and the emotional scars said games left. When the daemon replied that his emails couldn’t be delivered, Tyler didn’t take it literally. He thought it was a joke—a bit of ol’ Mallory’s trademark absurdist humor. But, perhaps, deep down, he had always known she was a bot. Perhaps he just needed somewhere to dump all those ugly feelings. 

In any case, by the time he came to grips with the truth, there were less than twenty-four hours before the big event. With no time to waste, he slapped together a shoddy graphic and posted it on social media. To the public, the graphic was not shoddy; it was “cryptic.” Soon, it was trending worldwide, as people tried to decipher its meaning. At last, some kid in Idaho cracked the code, unleashing a hysterical wave of FOMO that swept the internet. The whole affair felt like a surprise album release—this, Tyler insisted, had been his strategy all along. 

The congregation encircled a massive aircraft carrier. On its hull, read the inscription: USS Enterprise. In its day, the warship had weathered all the petty conflicts of man, maintaining a quiet dignity through onslaughts of artillery shells. Now, rusted and battle-worn, it looked doomed for the scrapyard. But it would die not with a whimper, like some pathetic beached whale; it would go out in a blaze of glory that would forever reverberate through the annals of history (or so we hoped). For, flanking the vessel on either side, were two long wooden ramps, torqued at angles that bordered on absurd. Tyler asked if the “Noise-O-Meter” on the jumbotron was broken when it shot off the charts, despite the stone silence of the congregation. Somehow, this quiet anticipation felt bigger, vaster than cheers and applause ever could. 

All eyes turned to my brother as he rolled his motorcycle up to the runway of the takeoff ramp. He showed no signs of fear as he stared down the 1,093-foot jump before him. He remained still for a moment, revving his engine. This gave the cameraman ample time to zoom in on his chest. Our new logo, an orange flame, filled the jumbotron. Below it was our updated branding: 

Napalm Energy™ 

Set your heart ablaze

Tyler and I came up with the name “Napalm” when we visited my father in the nursing home. The old bastard told us he was waiting for the onset of dementia—in fact, he was actively courting it by isolating himself and drinking heavily. He wanted to trick his brain into believing it was still ’69, the greatest year of his goddamn life. See, in ’Nam he had the best friends a guy could ask for, friends who would do absolutely nothing for him. Most friends said they’d do nothing for him but, when push came to shove, common decency compelled them to do something for him. But not these friends. When he asked them to leave him for dead in the jungle, they left him for dead in the jungle—no questions asked. As he bled out alone, consoled by the fact that his suffering would soon end, he watched a napalm strike descend from the heavens. It brought him to tears as it turned the sky vermillion then fuchsia, at last, leaving a pink afterglow that dwarfed aurora borealis. The strike hit so close, it burned out his retinas. But it had been worth it to witness its beauty, he said, as he downed the remainder of his whiskey.

Three Blue Angels rumbled overhead, sending a ripple through my brother’s orange cape. He kicked his motorcycle into gear. The congregation held their collective breath as he sped toward the ramp and his impending crucifixion.

* * *

My brother didn’t soar so much as he thumbed his nose at the law of gravity. He hung suspended above the warship, above the camera flashes, above the dizzying pyrotechnics for what felt like an eternity. The picture on the jumbotron was so crisp, I could see through the slit in his helmet.

To the untrained eye, his expression looked nonchalant. From a young age, I’d watched him don this mask, this tough-guy persona. I’m ashamed to admit that I was the root of my big brother’s self-destructive behavior. See, the chemical weapons in ’Nam didn’t just take my father’s eyesight; they played musical chairs with his chromosomes. As a result, I was born an abomination, a child who could not feel physical pain. My brother was utterly emasculated as I breezed through every male rite of passage—the titty twister, the noogie, the purple nurple—without so much as a wince. He began to overcompensate, to hide his emotions and vulnerabilities because those were for pussies. Soon, he was taking on every double– and triple-dog dare thrown his way, no matter how many broken bones or chipped teeth it cost him. As his self-immolation burgeoned into a legitimate career path, we grew apart. When I watched his stunts on TV, I could see the cracks in his façade, the momentary flashes of panic. Because, beneath all his bravado, he was still that scared kid I grew up with. And he’d never looked more terrified than he did on this jump.

“Hey, Boss, does his flight pattern look off?” Tyler asked, jolting me from my trance. 

My brother had glided clean over the crash zone. See, before each fiery wreck, he slathered his body in flame-retardant gel and designated a place where he would wipe out. He coated this area in foam pads and appointed a crew to lie in wait with fire extinguishers (all of whom were sworn to secrecy with strict NDAs). I searched my brother’s face for some clue as to what the hell he was thinking. When he reached the apex of his trajectory, it became horrifyingly clear: his pride wouldn’t let him go down in a fiery wreck—not in front of me. He was trying to do the impossible, to clear a jump that was not only designed to fail but, in fact, defied the basic tenets of physics.

For a beautiful moment, it looked like my brother was going to make it. He soared over the flight control bridge with ease, waving and blowing kisses to the congregation. I watched their eyes twinkle with adoration. In my opinion, it was my brother’s charisma, more than his fiery wrecks, that had catapulted him to the top. His press runs were the stuff of legend—he had a reputation for making daytime hosts blush, late-night hosts spit-take, and celebrity judges look through his briefs. But he also stayed in touch with the common folk, learning the names and coffee orders of every Joe who swept up his smoldering debris. There wasn’t a person on Earth he couldn’t charm, and that included my sweet, sweet Cindy. In the tenth grade, when my promposal was about to flop, my big brother came to the rescue. He said I was the toughest guy he knew and, when Cindy said prove it, he snuffed out his cigarette on the back of my hand. I didn’t flinch. The rest was history: a magical night at the prom, a bout of passionate dry humping in the back of my father’s station wagon, and ten years of marriage. I owed it all to him. When he landed safe and sound, I’d give him a big hug and apologize for putting him in this position—for asking him to risk his life in the name of my stupid goddamn energy drink.

Just before my brother hit the landing ramp, his back tire clipped the stern of the ship, flipping him head over handlebars in what seemed like slow motion. From there, the wreck unfolded like some diabolical Rube Goldberg machine: his bike struck the pyrotechnics launcher, redirecting the fireballs at the Blue Angels—one of which veered out of control, spiraling down and down and inevitably down toward the USS Enterprise. The congregation gasped when the steel bodies collided, but they didn’t flee. They gazed in awe at the white-hot flash of light. They cheered when they heard the deafening boom. The cloud that burst forth was not crude and mushroom-shaped, as I’d expected; it had the subtle contours of a tulip. It festooned the horizon like the first hopeful bud of a springtime garden. Tongues of flame danced on the wreckage like old lovers. With a graceful pirouette, they swallowed our Napalm Energy™ banner whole. The explosion kissed the sky with flamingo red, the clouds with the most delicate magenta. As a glowing ember landed on my arm, I forgot about my brother, about Cindy, about the precipice of financial ruin upon which I stood. There was only that feeling—that wondrous, stinging sensation. Then, almost as quickly as it had arrived, it was gone.