~Les Yeux~

"You all done?" Erik stared at his younger sister with a critical gaze. Lisa looked at her older brother with a quizzical lift of her eyebrow. He stared out through the rear porch's sliding door, perched on his wheelchair. Lisa stared at Erik gazing out at the backyard. She knew he was staring at the void of space, the empty dug up hole that once held the family fountain. Their mother's fountain. Lisa had already put it in the bed of her truck, and she had returned for a small respite behind air-conditioned walls. She rested against the counter drinking from a tall glass, gulping in large quantities of the clear refreshing liquid.

"Yes, I am. What's got you in such a hurry? It's not like we're going to be late."

Erik swiveled around his wheelchair to face his sister, his face showing no expression.

"I'll wait for you outside."

Through the distorted view from the bottom of her glass, Lisa watched Erik roll out of the kitchen and into the foyer. Licking her lips, she set down the cup and stared out the window, pausing for a moment, and then followed her brother's lead. Lisa saw Erik push open the door, pop a miniscule wheely over the door jamb, and land rather softly onto the front porch. The Traver's front porch didn't have a conventional wooden terrace, but in it's stead was a simple concrete poured foundation that was level with a walkway that led to the driveway and out to the street.

Lisa watched her brother struggle with opening the door to the passenger side of the small red Chevy truck. He managed to open it all the way before his sister came up alongside him and stared at his attempts to transfer himself from his sitting position and into the passenger seat. After a few grunts of exertion and a tired wipe of the forehead, he slowly looked up to Lisa, who shrugged, her hands on her sides.

She pursed her lips and said, "Are you going to let me help you this time? Or are you going to be difficult again?"

Erik glared at her little sister, gazed at the truck's passenger seat, and then sighed slowly.

Lisa took that as a silent yes, and scooped her hands underneath her brothers armpits, hoisting him off his wheelchair and into the cab.

"I can manage!" Erik snapped as his hands reached out to the handholds inside the cabin. Lisa proceeded to help his brother into the truck, but Erik seated himself quickly and slapped her caring hands away in earnest. "I'm fine! I'm fine! Did you get everything?"

Lisa scratched the side of her nose, blinking hard.

"You know I did." She said as she closed the door after her brother. Then she added, "That's what I always do" before walking around the other side and depositing herself in the driver's seat.

The cemetery was small, rectangular, and wet. A single row of sprinklers were to thank for the sogginess of the brown grass that grew in patches with the occasional weed among the gravestones. There were no parking spaces for visitors; Lisa had to park on the side of the road where the cemetery met the road, a white, waist high picket fence acting as a median. After another awkward beat of seating Erik on his wheelchair, Lisa and her brother walked the solitary brick path that led through the grave site. It was no longer than the average length of a semi-truck and the was width no larger than four trucks stacked alongside each other.

Being the less emotional sibling of the two Travers children, Lisa visiting her mother's grave made her feel like pulling her heart out. Everytime. She couldn't drive past or even look at the white picket fence of Lockwoode County Grave and Memorial without a tear escaping from the corner of her eye.

She was the less emotional one of the two Travers kids.

If she was tearing up inside, then Lisa could only imagine what kind of warzone was inside Erik. Although he was good at erecting the whole stout and stoic big-brother facade, Lisa could distinguish on most days when he had been crying at night. She could sometimes hear him through the walls, whenever she past by his room. Even though he may have been strong when he was younger, Erik had lost his bravado and carefree easiness when he lost his legs. It was during a Memorial Day service at the park. It seemed totally random.

It was a one in a million chance that the Travers family would visit that particular park, on that particular day, at that particular time.

It could have happened to anyone.

At first, Lisa thought a fireworks display had gone off accidentally, a freak accident. But then she remembered it was Memorial Day, not the Fourth of July. She heard the screaming long before the gunshots. The sounds shrieking, urgent shouting and groaning of twenty injured people scarred themselves into Lisa's mind forever; she would carry those noises with her to the grave. Especially those of her brothers. She thought after six years she would forget, that her mind would somehow erase the mind numbing chill of her older brother's hollering and shouting and screaming from her brain. But she never forgot. Because their was always a reminder. Erik's missing legs.

"Lisa?"

It was Erik.

She had spotted her doing it again. Lisa looked away from her brother's cold marble-blue gaze and back to the gravestone in front of them.

Lisa had been looking over her brother's slumped shoulders and down at his decapitated legs. The surgeons claimed they had done everything in their power not to cut too high, and Lisa believed them. They had done a good job, stitching, resetting bone, and cutting off Erik's legs at the knees. Lisa hadn't been there while they had amputated, but she was there when he woke up. If she had been given a choice in between watching the amputation and watching her brother's shocked realization, she would've taken the amputation. At least then she knew he was asleep. At least he wouldn't know.

But for Lisa, she wasn't that lucky.

Instead she got to watch.

She got to watch Erik wake up, a sudden jolt from sleep as if he had been struck by lightning. His short cropped fiery red hair stood on end, and his face was slack and dull after eighteen hours of a drug induced slumber. But his eyes-Lisa could see in her big brother's eyes-he was more than awake. He was screaming. He had been screaming when he awoke. But that wasn't the worst of it. It wasn't his frantic look for the rest of his legs. It wasn't his rapid, deep breathing after a moment of realization. It wasn't even the moment where Lisa had to calm Erik down by hugging him with all her might so that he wouldn't break his IV feeder.

The worst part was watching Erik afterwards.

Watching his happiness, joy, carefree attitude all drip out of what was left of his soul every moment Lisa saw him. He became a sand hourglass. His life had been flipped on its head for one day, left there to stay forever, and Lisa got to watch as her big, solid, brother trickled away into someone else.
He was the most emotional of the Traver's children.

Sitting in front of her, in that grave yard, staring at Mrs. Travers' grave wasn't Erik. He wasn't Lisa's brother.

She knew the truth. She was just taking care of Erik's soulless husk.

"Let's go." Erik's lifeless form said, prompting her with a violent twist in his seat. Just a lifeless husk of what he once was, Lisa thought.

Erik said, "What are you waiting for? Come on!"

"Right." Lisa replied.

"You're going too slow."

Lisa treaded down the single pathway given by the county's grave site through the rows of standard headstones. All of them looked identical, every single one of them shared the same likeness, the same make, and even the same lettering. But Mrs. Travers gravestone was the only one that mattered to Lisa among the tens of stones there. She loved the words etched under the name of their mother. She cherished them as the last reminder of their mother's love as much as she had loved the woman that had spoke them among the Travers family. Now she turned her back on those words, waiting for another day when she could face the headstone again.

"Erik?" Lisa began, dreading a reaction, any reaction from her now volatile brother.

"What?"

"What do you think. . ." Lisa's words trailed off. Should she bring it up? Was it worth it, now, anyways? Lisa waited too long. Erik grunted, "What?"

Lisa sighed, and then spoke. "Do you think Dad will be okay?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Lisa could hear the intensity in his voice, a rising fire that Lisa couldn't possibly find a way to extinguish. "He's coming home from a war that he never wanted to go to, mom's gone," Erik swiveled around in his seat, sparks ebbing at the edges of his ocean-blue eyes.

"And I'm still like-like. . .this." He gestured in a stiff overall motion towards his legs. Erik glanced back up at Lisa. Wildfire replaced by sparks brimmed out of his eye sockets and singed Lisa's face.

"How do you think he's gonna be?"   

As both Travers siblings walked away from their mother's grave, the solitary fountain cupid perched on his post watched them go. It was placed directly behind Mrs. Travers headstone, just as she had requested it to be. The gray baby faced angel's skin was made even more pale and gray by the overcast day, the clouds filtering the noonday sun. the poised statue looked calm and serene, standing guard over the grave of its beloved owner. With those closed almond shaped eyes of his and a pensive brow hunched high on his forehead, one might think he could see into the future. One might guess, in fact, that he had already seen the future, and he hadn't liked what he had seen.