Newcomers were told without solicitation: That’s where they found his brother, Craig Rey, you know. Right back there under that same diagonal dumpster behind Happy, before Happy was even Happy, what seemed like forever ago, when it was still the far-left corner of an awningless, signless Russian-American social club (Razborka-Razborka!) that splashed its heavily accented contents onto an otherwise deserted strip mall’s parking lot every Friday and Saturday night.

They found Tyrone’s brother’s dead body right back there, Alphebeters would remind one another, often with a fleshy neck-twist tacked to the back of the phrase, for emphasis. Or one of those sharp, hum-like grunts residents let out sometimes, especially when actual words felt too exacting and precise for the ambiguities of other people’s pain.

That’s the same grunt neighbors offered up when they described what Teetee’s pitbull did to Mrs. Harrison’s granddaughter behind Building 8 a couple of years back, what a shame. The very grunt, sometimes cut up into three different-sized phonetic chunks (uumm, um, uuuum!) that got passed around liberally after folks found Ms. Rita Millon’s living room furniture, church clothes, and everything else she owned spilled out against the concrete sidewalk space in front of Building 9, the sheriff and his marshals dragging her and fourteen-year-old Keisha from their one-bedroom apartment inside. Umm, um, uum. That exact grunt punctuated people’s tales about Tyrone, about that dumpster, and about the cobble-stoned alleyway behind Happy Liquors. And nobody thought it was just a coincidence that whatever it was that happened to little, skinny Tyrone happened way back there, behind that dumpster where nothing ever really happened, except that one time, a year before, when Tyrone’s brother’s dead body had been left there to soak up rainwater all night.

Mr. Jenkins, God rest his soul, who used to live in Building 4, didn’t wonder upon it until the next morning, during one of those 5 a.m. walks he used to take, before the streets got too dangerous. Someone else called 911 from the corner pay phone and the crowd stayed right there long after the ambulance came to siren the body away.

Craig was probably the most strikingly attractive individual many residents in the Alphebet Houses would ever see — at least face-to-face. Tall since forever, though not nearly as lanky as his younger brother, Craig’s appearance must have been engineered from the start, designed to hold itself together with surgical foresight — a nose that thought purposefully about its relationship to the lips below before taking a single breath; cheeks with dimples so deep and sharp they must have come together at a point somewhere above his tongue. But it was those eyes! That’s what people loved.

Women twice Craig’s age always felt compelled to comment on them — a brown several shades lighter than his maple skin, with irises and pupils easily discerned, nothing like Tyrone’s, those two dark spheres of blackness surrounded by a lighter black that Tyrone himself could only barely distinguish, and then only by kneeling atop the bathroom sink with his nose scrunched up against the medicine cabinet mirror. No, Craig’s eyes were really brown, not “brack,” which is what Craig took to calling Tyrone’s after happening upon one of his little brother’s nose-flattening, bathroom sink balancing-acts.

Tyrone’s brack was several crayon-boxes away from Craig’s brown — or better yet, his browns, since Craig’s right eye was an even lighter shade of brown than the left, and by more than just a tint or two, with this last idiosyncrasy only adding to the deceased older brother’s exotic allure.

And Tyrone had what was probably an unhealthy admiration for his big brother; something far more reverent and distant than two years between male siblings usually produce. They should have been battling about everything, agreeing on nothing, fighting almost every waking minute of every day—how brothers are supposed to show a backhanded kind of affection. Certainly, twenty-five months is a long time, especially in boychild years, but not nearly long enough to justify the wide-eyed awe Tyrone had for his older brother, an exaggerated esteem that only increased once Craig was gone, his silent body left behind Happy Liquors until a noisy ambulance came by to get it at sunrise.

(Brainstorm illustration adapted from a photo by Flickr user dandeluca)