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my parents planted an autumn blaze in remembrance of kevin in their backyard. mom chose the spot because a dying evergreen had been there before and kevin had helped remove it, which was probably the last job he ever did for my parents before he died.
dad met kevin when he was having a drink at menard’s tavern with uncle jim. jim had pointed him out to dad as someone he knew who was out of work and would do jobs for cash. dad first hired kevin to help him lay the brick for their patio wall. he ended up doing odd-jobs for my family for four years, he was always around our house in the summers.
some evenings, kevin would stay and drink beers with dad and have dinner with us on the patio. he didn’t have a car, so i often gave him lifts back to menard’s, where he lived, when i was picking up brian in the villages to go to the loop for the night. kevin and i would smoke cigarettes in my car together, even though it was a habit i hid from my parents, and we’d jam to classic rock with my mustang’s windows down. once, he invited me to smoke a joint with him, and i considered it, but thought it might be weird so i declined. which was probably for the best anyway since i had more driving to do.
kevin’s laugh was infectious. he loved to talk and would crack himself up, his giggle turning to ha’s that came out loud, steady and quick. he was a short and compact man who wore oversized white tees, using the length of the fabric to wipe the sweat from his bald head and clean his glasses whenever he worked.
mom said kevin was always eager to learn any skill and that he almost always tried to replicate how she and dad did things. “i loved how he would cut the grass or paint like i did,” she told me. “kevin had the uncanny ability to copy. to date, i’ve never worked alongside someone so effortlessly.”
my parents never knew all that much about kevin. he had joined the army at some point in his life, which is where they suspect he got his work ethic from. he came from new liskgard and had a sister.
before the end of his life, kevin was nurturing a baby squirrel that had visited his window, he was feeding it every day. mom remembers him being very attached to that small, defenseless creature. things took a turn for the worst when kevin was accused of causing vandalism at menard’s. another renter told the new building owner that kevin was intentionally clogging up the toilets in the upstairs rooms to cause flooding downstairs in the bar. my parents say this makes no sense; kevin was already anxious about maintaining his room rental when the new owner bought the place—why would he have put that in jeopardy? somehow, in the midst of all this, kevin had fallen behind in his rent, which didn’t help his plight, even though he was working steady jobs for my parents and for others.
on the day that kevin died, he was meticulous about tarping the entire bed area in his room so as not to make a mess. then, he put the barrel of sawed-off shotgun into his mouth and pulled the trigger.
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