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In the dead of winter one night of 1993, one Casey Hicks went missing — to which everyone who knew him just assumed he finally skipped town without so much a word, much like his brother did over a decade ago. It was two weeks before anyone took notice of a strange contrast of black glinting beneath the snow, and soon the body was pulled out of a ditch, the chains on his rear tires clamoring and the snow crunching under his dead weight.
There was no evidence of foul play; the only damage sustained was on his front where he'd careened into the frozen ground and the scrapes along his side from offending brush. But it evidently wasn't self-inflicted, either. The snow chains alone suggested that. Why go to the length of protecting yourself if you had a death wish?
Still, chains weren't foolproof. On derelict, ill-maintained roads in the haze of the winter, it was sometimes easier for things to go wrong than it wasn't. And that was precisely the brain teaser: it had been a clear, calm night when Casey was lost. Speeding? No. Some knew Casey to be excitable enough to become a little frivolous on an empty road for no reason but the thrill sometimes, but not on ice.
It had been a clear night and Casey was of sober mind, but a mean storm was on the way, and folks were already hunkered down in their homes for the next few days. Nobody would drive by. Nobody would notice the scrapes sheared into the icy road or the flattened brush on its shoulder. Because by the time the blizzard had come and gone — the storm that Casey himself was likely headed home to shelter for — several feet of snow had obscured any evidence of Casey Hicks' departure from this world.
"He was wearing chains," Chick says plainly, like it was some saving grace. The policeman he’s stood in front of is one he went to highschool with. They never liked eachother. Chick always thought he was a cynical wet blanket, and in turn the guy always thought Chick was a bit too much of a wild card. But still, the man had the decency to give Chick a sympathetic look. Chick hated it.
"Doesn't really matter; low visibility, bad road conditions. Chains or studs, neither are foolproof." He says it like he's said it before, more than a couple of times. “He was probably spooked by a deer or some other animal and swerved into the ditch. It happens.”
It’s those words that ring in his head days after, when the funeral's already done and passed and Chick has cozied up and made his home in the local bar. It happens. It happens . Dismantling the monumental loss of life down to some mundane occurrence. A passing comment that Chick would've never given a second thought a week ago now echoing in his mind.
Maybe it was a little bit fitting, because if anyone had asked Chick before now what his twin was like, however they could possibly get ahold of such information locked tight as it were, he'd just say that Casey Hicks was really… nothing special.
Casey Hicks was mundane and his death was mundane. He had driven that very same, ordinary road every single day, as a child to an adult, and death had gripped him even from the mundanity. From the safety. And now the biggest presence Casey still poses anywhere is within Chick's own mind; nothing more than a fading streak of black for the inhabitants of their hometown. The Hicks name now clung to one car only.
All Chick can think about is the mundanity. Because, well, Chick always favored studded tires. Easier to swap out, they were. Looked better. Weren't so clamorous that every single revolution on asphalt rode through your frame. But Casey was old-fashioned and didn't see the need to spend the cash on extra tires when he already had a good, reliable set of chains passed down from their father.
Chick takes a swig of his drink and ignores the way the few inhabitants in the shared space of the bar seem to flick their eyes to him every time he moves so much as an inch. They recognize him. Not just because of how often he'd appear on their beat up old televisions at home or because he vaguely shared the body of a recently-deceased member of the town, but also because nobody could forget Chick Hicks, even if it'd been over a decade since he'd left. Casey was the forgettable one — not him.
Then a lone pickup pulls up next to him. Snow still clinging to her fenders, a plastic-lined bed that still had damp chunks of bark and splinters from hauling wood, and an endearment coming out of her mouth that he cringed at. He'd seen her during the funeral and didn't spare her another glance, because there was a distance in his eyes that beckoned his attention more.
“Don't you call me that,” his words slur, just a little, and he looks down at his drink. He hadn't that many yet, had he?
It's not very subtle when her eyes run across his body, hanging a little longer at the big numbered decal at his side. But his glances at her are comparatively reluctant, and he looks back down to his drink as soon as her gaze moves over to his. Some nostalgia fights the bitterness and it mixes into something he didn't have the mind to describe.
She waves away the approaching bartender and keeps her eyes on him much in the same way everyone else had been, and that's how he knows she came here just for him. “You didn't used to mind it,” she says quietly.
“Phfff, yeah — when I was, what, nine?”
“When's the last time you saw him?” she says suddenly, straight to the point, and though Chick opens his mouth to give an answer, one doesn't come out as instantly as it should. He has to think. He'll chalk it up to the booze addling his brain.
“Ehh… twelve years. Give or take.”
“So… not since you left.”
“Yeeep,” he draws out. It was a mutual decision, he supposed. Not a single phone call made or a letter sent from either end. Chick's emergency contact was Bruiser. Evidently, Casey's was their cousin. Chick looks at her and blinks when she slides something across the counter to him. His drink jostles to the side.
“I took that one, remember?”
He looks down. Past the clear speckles of alcohol, there’s a small, noisy print of his brother. Casey boasts a wide, goofy grin and he's waving with a vaguely surprised expression on his face that suggests he didn’t expect his picture taken. Chick stares and his sluggish mind starts to wake. If he pulled from the stack of newspapers at the end of the counter he'd be able to find that this was the same photo she'd used in Casey's obituary.
“Kept trying to get you both in there together, but you wouldn’t have it.” Her voice immediately picks up a reminiscent quality. “Didn’t ever want to be seen as a pair. I joked that we needed some kind of proof there actually was two of—”
“Yeah – yeah, I remember,” Chick interrupts. Because yes, he remembered when this photo was taken. Especially because if one scrutinized hard enough, they’d be able to make out a nearly identical car out of focus in the background, expression cut off by the border. But he came here to get drunk, not sobered up by nostalgia. “What's this for?”
“You.”
Chick looks down at the photo again, and the emotions, or maybe lack thereof, swirl around in him. He doesn't know how much of it is anger. For once, nothing seems to come to a head. He'd been going on autopilot ever since he was given the news of Casey’s death over the phone. He had blinked, and he was here. Right now he feels like he's the dead one and his body is just being puppeted around.
What do you want done with the body? I don’t care. When should the funeral be held? You decide. Would you like to arrange a visitation? I don’t give a damn. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. He’d have left everything up to someone else if he could’ve. Write the obituary, arrange the funeral, conduct the estate sale. Let him do anything but face what he’d left behind for so many years.
Even though he swore they never would again, his tires are touching roads they hadn't in over a decade now. It doesn't quite taste like nostalgia — there's too much baggage there and whatever pleasantness that bubbles up is stamped down whenever he flicks his eyes in a different direction and just recalls something new — or something… old, really. Like a photo album you shove to the back of a room to forget but are still too attached to actually commit and throw away.
Chick hears his cousin clear her throat to his side, but he tumbles the rare moment of introspection in his head a moment longer, because this entire situation is filled with rarities when even his drink has now gone warm.
“He had chains,” Chick then says low and suddenly, without meaning to. The words sound uncannily thick coming out of him.
“What?”
“He had — uh, he was wearing snow chains. When they found him. In the ditch.”
She stares at him. “It is winter.”
“They didn't save him.”
“I wouldn't say they're foolproof,” she says, and Chick laughs at that, because otherwise it would feel like he's the one being mocked. He laughs so sincerely that his cousin gives him an odd look, along with all the other eyes in the bar. He downs the rest of his drink, voice casual, maybe a bit perky.
“Gotta be honest — these hell winters around here? Part of the reason I left. Can't stand them. Don't see how any of you can. But Case — Case never minded as much. Told me winter was his favorite season once. Though, y'know, once spring came around, he’d turn around and say that was his favorite instead. He liked ‘em all, I guess.”
He then chuckles again, and it revolves back around to a full-bodied laugh. “...Chick?” his cousin prods quietly while his eyes squeeze shut in some sort of imperceptible way between bliss or pain.
“The damn chains didn't save him,” he wheezes, “and you know how many times my old man swore they saved his hide?”
She watches him. He’s getting tired of it. “You need to get out of this bar, Chick.”
“Nah.”
“Getting wasted isn't going to help anything.”
“I'm not–” Chick doesn't hide his scowl. “I'm not ‘getting wasted’, okay? What do you think one drink's gonna do, huh?” That was a lie — he’d had more than the one by this point, and it was probably obvious, but he didn't want her on his back about it.
And of course she still reads him. “You got anyone to drive you back?”
“My hauler. He'll come around when I call.”
“Alright…” She starts to back up. ”Goodbye, Charlie.”
Chick looks down at Casey's photo again and doesn't watch her as she leaves. “See ya.”
He hears the door swing shut and he loosens a sigh. And about an hour later, because he's a mite drunk but not so wasted, Chick thinks it easier to just let his hauler keep the trailer parked on the old family plot and drive back there himself. Because there was still a smidge of daylight left, even if the intensity of the setting sun was glaring in his eyes and he was hanging too close to the shoulder to try to nab some of the shadow of the treeline.
The road winds here and there but it’s flat for the most part. Stubs of corn stalks stick up from underneath the snow from a harvest a few months ago and there’s the occasional homestead he’d spent many nights when he was younger deliberately speeding by as loudly as possible just because he thought it was funny. Wherever he’s going he doesn’t need to even think; it’s still in him like second nature after all these years.
Then, suddenly, the squeal of Chick’s brakes cause a covey of quail to rupture from some nearby brush and the rest of the wildlife to fall into a silent lull. And — oh, hell — a blink of rationality comes to him. No snow tires means he slides forward a bit on the ice. But all the snow was shoveled off into the ditch and there’s a guardrail mounted on the shoulder now. The shoulder of the site where his twin had died not two weeks before.
He takes a breath and doesn’t look back yet. Because although it’s not the first time he’d visited the site of Casey’s departure since coming back to his hometown, it’s the first time he’s here alone. He blinks and keeps his eyes ahead, on the open road, where the reflecting light on the snow of the opposing fields is rapidly growing duller and duller. Any sense to him tells him to keep moving before it gets dark enough that he can't, but he remains frozen.
That’s when he knows something is wrong with him, because he doesn’t even flinch.
“‘Sup, Charlie.”
“Hey, Case…”
There's the slow, gentle crunch of the ice as the car pulls up next to him, his eyes equally toward the horizon, admiring the view where Chick was just silently cursing the descending sun.
“Have you seen this from back home again, yet?” Casey asks, voice a smidge excitable as he leans in toward Chick. “The old farmer down the road finally cut down that dead maple for firewood a few years ago and you can see it a lot better now.”
Chick shrugs. He didn't even notice the tree was gone. “Haven't really paid attention. Guess I'll check it out.”
“I took a few photos and entered one into that annual landscape contest the paper runs. Got second place! Thought that was funny. Some family curse, you think?”
Chick's face screws up a bit. “Ugh. Don't say that.”
Casey doesn't look at Chick until Chick looks at him. He isn't sure what he’s expecting. It’s not like looking in a mirror; it never was. Casey always had a different kind of life in his eyes. But right now Casey's gaze feels more pointed, and Chick feels uncomfortably visible in about the only way he never wanted to be. His brother smiles innocently and he can't bring himself to return it. Instead, his mouth turns down into a frown and an audible sigh escapes him as he averts his gaze and settles down a bit lower on the empty road. It’s still silent.
“I hate you. I just hate you so much, you know,” says Chick finally, after a time.
“I know.”
“Why'd you have to go and do this to me again.”
“I… don't know. I’m sorry.”
“Should've stayed alive longer so I could just forget you. Forget all of you. Good going, jackass. You ruined my plan. Always figured I'd kick the bucket first anyway. Some sort of… blaze of glory, or somethin’. But nah, you had to beat me to it. And in such a boring way, too. Seriously — a ditch? Who the hell drives into a ditch?”
“I dunno. Guess I just wasn't paying attention.”
“Right. If that were true then you would've died a long time ago.” Chick's teeth grind and he closes his eyes. A chill begins to bite at him. “...It wasn't supposed to be like this.”
“We shared a lot of fantasies when we were kids, but racing was always yours. Not mine.”
Chick can’t tell if that’s a lie or not. Because whenever he played the fantasy out in his mind as a child, he always placed Casey by his side. Now, as an adult, it just sounded more like a kiddie pipe dream, some kind of juvenile satisfaction of what they were — a pair. Thinking about it now just made the bitterness simmer in him, and he scoffs as he glances over at his brother again. “Yeah? And how's the accounting treating you, then? Have a lot of fun?”
“It’s… simple. I like that. Simple. Nothin’ wrong with that.”
“Yeah, real rich life you led. Die alone in a backwater town with the whole world forgetting you.” Chick gives a joyless chuckle. “I'll take my world any day.”
He ran off to forget, to set the distance, to define himself apart. Some act of rebellion, of revenge. Maybe to Casey, maybe to their father, maybe to the world — as banal as that sounded. But now that's all been clearly defined by his twin dying alone in a ditch, Chick feels like he's been fighting against some force of nature this entire time and only finally won out.
His voice feels unnaturally weak now. “Should've bought some new chains, Case.”
His brother hums a quiet laugh. “I didn't replace them because I'm cheap, Chick. Just like how Dad didn't replace them ‘cause he was cheap.”
“Yeah. You're the one that got his brains.”
But even their father didn’t die alone and forgotten. He had Casey.
Even Chick didn’t have that.
Casey paws at the ground a little. “You stickin’ around town much longer?”
“Figured I'd head out tomorrow,” Chick shrugs, and Casey nods. It'll probably be the last time either of them are ever there again.
It’s a lonely road, and it always was, and it always will be. Chick will let nature win out on this one.
There's a sliver of orange still hanging onto the horizon. They watch in silence. Chick feels the chill more now. He looks over at his brother and tries not to look away this time. The last light casts that streak of orange across Casey's black paint and Chick finally laments that they didn't share the color anymore. Casey smiles sadly and Chick still can't bring himself to return it.
“Goodbye, Charlie.”
“See ya, Case.”
In the dead of winter one night of 1993, Chick Hicks wakes up on the side of an empty road, having spun out on the ice in a drunken stupor hours before. Thanks to a freshly installed guardrail, the only consequence suffered is a coating of frost, a few scratches, and a sizable dent in the racecar's side that carried an ache that went a little deeper than just his metal.
He shakes off what he can of the physical pain, but what he can’t, he swears he won't forget.