The way the old, gravel road weaved up the valley, you wouldn't think it led to anywhere. Sometimes it was so steep you couldn't see where the sky ended and the mountain began under the headlights, so far from anything that the radio would hiss and crackle. It was the kind of road town-people wouldn't understand, a road that belonged just as much to pigs and roosters as to cars and people. We parked at the boarded-up school, behind the Ford with dark tint and the stencil of the white hibiscus.

"What I gon tell them?" I said.

"You don't have to do this, Jesse," she said. She smiled.

She had wrapped the gift tightly in red paper. It was heavy as she handed it through the window of her old, broken Civic that had trucked it valiantly up the ridge. Her hands from the end of her sweatshirt were warm in the mountain air. She whispered. She kissed me. Then she was gone.

I looked around. The sign on the school fence was falling off, the one with the shield and cross, the words:

REDEMPTION ACADEMY

I followed the smell of burning newspaper toward the voices and the light that fanned out from the gate. I watched through the hole. Past my mom's dress on the clothesline there was Uncles and Aunties and laughing and Heineken, the wind chime made of cans, the smell of oysters, the sound of ice poured into a cooler, the grandpa by the chair where his grandson used to sit, the black smoke from the grill where the kids fanned the coal high and red, the fire casting their shadows tall against the house, swatting at the embers. Then, a deep voice telling them: "Watch out, 'fore you hurt yourself." I couldn't see what he did, but soon the boy was giggling and everybody was shouting, and the man too, with that same hard voice that had told me never to come back.

"K," I told myself, "no need make one whole scene, just walk up, give the gift, say 'Here, Shelly,' say 'Merry Christmas, Shelly,' walk out." The gate creaked loud as I opened it. Then there was no more laughing.

"Sup, Unks," I said.

It was my Uncle Frank who had the Elvis hair. He spit to the side and looked down into his green bottle.

"How you, Auntie Linda?" I said.

I nodded. She looked down at the bag of charcoal, holding her necklace. I went past the lantern toward my chubby older sister, the one I used to call Gummybear because she was sweet. She looked down and toward her twins.

But her boy Dylan came running up from the grill, grabbing my leg, yelling: "Uncle Jesse, Uncle Jesse!" He started throwing these little punches into my thigh.

"Who taught you for do dat?" I said, feeling shame.

"Second knuckle!" he said. He punched again.

I set the gift for my younger sister Shelly down on the cooking table, the weight almost tilting it over.

"This for you, Sis," I said. "God bless you guys," I said. K, I was thinking, I get it, no one was going to say "Jesse, go grab you one chair, go make one plate." I put my palms up in the air. "No worry, everybody. Jesse leaving."

"Thanks," said Shelly, old and business-like. She crossed her arms in the rain jacket, just in case I thought I was getting a hug. She had a new voice too, from the Mainland college. I smiled. I knew that to her I died on a starry night like this nine years ago.

"What, you never like open um real fast? Then I go," I said. "I just like see if you like um."

"OK," she said. She nodded to my dad, then she made this polite smile to me, the kind girls make when they tell a guy to get lost. The paper began to peel away and soon Shelly was holding the jar, leaning it on the table, the coins jingling. She understood. She covered her face, trying to get her face to stay the way it was.

"Damn you," she whispered.

The thing about drugs is the cleaner you get, the more you remember. About nine years ago, as she was tucked in for bed, Shelly asked why her brother hadn't come home the last four nights, beginning to understand there were things the grownups didn't tell her. But even they didn't know her brother was watching outside the window, waiting.

When she heard something hit the wood floor she woke up. Peeking over her covers she saw her brother between the window and the full moon, her dad's new power drill by his feet, the coin jar under his arm. She got the coins each week for doing her chores.

"Jesse!" she said.

He said nothing. His shirt was damp as he fumbled to open the window. He can have the coins, she thought, Jesse needs my coins. When his shivering hands had opened the window, she reached for him. He yelled. Then the coins were spilled.

"Sorry," she said.

Her face hurt. She tucked her knees under her chin as she watched him from the floor, his eyes like vast dark holes, like shark eyes. As he scooped the coins into the jar she saw the chain of her mom's gold pendant hanging from his jeans pocket.

And that's when she knew. She knew why her mom didn't sing anymore when she did the dishes. She knew why things went missing in the house. She even knew why the grownups pretended: because he made them laugh, because he was their favorite. And he remembered — just the way she said his name as he stumbled out the window, not even mad, way past that, just remembering her big brother, who had been the whole world before, when he was alive.

"Jesse," she said, grown again. "You shouldn't have come here." She held me by the forearm, looking at the tattoos.

"No worry Shelly-girl, I leaving." I said. I winked.

On the way out I nodded to my Uncle Bill. One day on his boat I had tied the knots for his net while he got drunk and told Portagee jokes. He looked away. I nodded to my Auntie Grace, who I used to call "Auntie Sexy." I used to tell her: "Auntie Sexy, no hurt me," and she would laugh. They all looked away, except the boy.

When I was almost to the gate my nephew was grabbing on my leg again, shouting: "I like come with you, Uncle." I laughed. I picked up the next generation by his armpits and crouched down so we would be eye-level. I stopped smiling. The firelight on his face. His mother from behind him was getting closer. I squeezed him.

"Dylan," I said. "When you old enough, they gon try and tell you everything Uncle did to them." He blinked. His mouth became small. "Little man, it's all true."

I let go and he began to fight as his mother picked him up, punching her with his little punches.

"Go with your mudda, Dylan," I said. And she held him in her big dress until he stopped.

Outside the gate again, under the moon, I had to smile, just looking up that mountain that knifed straight up into the bright mist. I thought I might hear the slippers of an old man coming through weeds with his man voice and say: "Eh, Boy." I thought he would see a Civic pull up, and he might see the girl with the kind face.

But there was just the sound of wind and trees that came like soft waves, and me, smiling, thinking about how sorry I felt for those poor town-people and their starless skies. Because people who grow up in town see the proof of people everywhere they look, and they're quick to give up on hope. But people that grow up in the country see the stars and the mountains that could only have been made by something less hopeless than us.

I heard the grass behind me, but it was just this dog. I was probably in his bed, he didn't have a collar. I told him: "You one stray too, ah?" He sniffed. But then his ears stuck straight up in the air and I could just hear this soft faraway voice calling from the school. His little dog legs scurrying under him, he leaped through the tear in the fence near the Redemption Academy.

I smiled. Driving home, my girlfriend asked me what happened.

"Not this year," I said. "Next Christmas, I gon save for one power drill."

She put her hand on my shoulder, her eyes not as young now.

"They did this to you the last three Christmases. Baby, they're not gonna want you there next year either," she said.

I smiled. She was from town.

"They will," I said.