Your brother finally let you come along with him to the hot springs when you were barely eight, the same year he left. You had gotten in your first real fight at school, and you had won. Gabriel said that your decision to win was crucial, and that your entire future with women depended on it. He said it like you were his business partner. Mom was making dinner in the kitchen, slamming things that didn’t need slamming. Gabriel hung from the kitchen door the way mom always told him not to, and you couldn’t hear everything she said but you caught “just like your father” a few times, and then you stopped listening. Dad had been away for a while, "drying out" as mom called it. This wasn't the first time. Gabriel advocated for you to your mother, told her you felt terrible, guilty, ashamed, even. She didn’t even pretend to believe him. Gabriel told her you needed to talk, just to talk. She said to be back by dinner even though it was already getting dark.
Gabriel was almost eighteen and had been in more fights than you could count on two hands. He looked like your father, his stern features always looking a little like stone despite a scar that crossed his eyebrow, an ugly wrinkle in his ear and a slight hump in the bridge of his nose, which had been broken twice and, as he said, earned him a few notches on his belt. Gabriel had never taught you to fight, had never said more than ‘make sure it’s for a good reason,’ but there was something about the pain in your fat lip, the soreness in your knuckles from hitting someone, really hitting someone, that felt good, and not because it was right. Tyler Fairbanks’ face had felt like dough against your knuckles. Like it would break if you hit it hard enough. Like you could choose not to hit hard enough.
You had nagged Gabriel incessantly to go to the hot springs. Nagged in a way you were ashamed to mention now that you were old enough to be invited. You didn’t think he would have ever let you go with him if you hadn’t won that fight. You asked him if there would be girls there and he shrugged and said maybe. You asked him if there were good fish too and he asked you where our fishing poles were. You asked him why his friends weren’t here, and he smiled, said it was just going to be the two of you.
You and he walked up the gravel slope that you were still too young to climb without stumbling a little bit, past the Liminas’ house. Their oldest son had died in a wreck right at the end of their driveway. Right where you were standing. That kid would have been a year older than Gabriel if that asshole hadn’t come around the curve doing something like eighty. Could have driven into the house killed the whole damn family. Gabriel looked a little sad as we walked by. You guessed he and the kid knew each other but you didn’t want to ask just in case he said yes and then things got awkward and the whole experience would be ruined before it even started.
The slope was steep and you would have slid clear down it to the lake at the bottom if Gabriel hadn’t been in front of you, holding one arm back towards you. He stopped suddenly, as soon as you were right at the edge of the woods where the rocks began and the undergrowth became tangled and would rip your clothes if you tried to climb it. Gabriel got to his knees slowly behind the Wall of Thorns, (which is what it seemed like to you), pulling on your arm, knowing you wouldn’t ask any questions. You didn’t have to ask anything. You heard them from over the barrier between you; their voices so soft they didn’t even sound like voices, splashing off into open space. Gabriel didn’t let go of your arm, so you knew not to move. He was already smiling, already just as excited as you were. He held the both of you still for what seemed like the longest time, just listening, then put one finger over his mouth as he got up to his knees, then up to his full height. You mimicked him as perfectly as you could.
They were more than you had dared to think about, the curves of their bodies full and smooth in the bleaching moon. They stepped carefully and nervously into the water before sliding in, sighs escaping them that seemed like a call. They went under and then came back up, their breath like moaning in the quiet, their hands smoothing over their dark hair streaming down. You thought about Tyler Fairbanks for a moment and then told yourself not let him in on this. Not even for a second. You thought about dad, but then looked at Gabriel who was grinning like a dumb bastard and nodding his head to some beat you couldn’t hear. Then he looked down and reached around in his pockets for something. You almost wanted to tell him to pay attention, to keep his eyes on the prize, but you didn’t want to question his leadership at a time like this. He was, officially, the coolest big brother ever.
He flicked a lighter and you smelled the burning paper, then the slightly bitter smell you recognized. You had smelled it on him before. You had smelled it on dad. It wasn’t like your dad’s cigarettes, which smelled just plain disgusting. And Gabriel was enjoying it much more than you had ever seen anyone enjoy a cigarette. You weren’t sure where to look, so you looked back at the girls. They were laughing, calling to each other, swimming with their bodies arcing out of the water and then back under. They were more confident when the water covered them, even though they were all girls, even though their bodies were the same.
Gabriel leaned back against the roots of a pine that seemed to have grown around his body. He was lost to darkness except for when he blinked and the sheen in his eyes was lost for a moment before returning.
He wiggled the joint at you and all you could see was the ember, like a glowing bulb. “Have some of this,” he said.
You pretended you had done this fifty times, pulled in only a little so you wouldn’t cough and give yourself away.
“So,” Gabriel said, and a long sigh escaped him that I could see floating in the air a few seconds after. “So tell me about this fight. Who was the guy?”
“Tyler,” you said. “Fairbanks. Assclown.”
Gabriel laughed. “Fairbanks? Tyler Fairbanks? You fought a guy named Tyler Fairbanks? How hard could it have been? Was it even fair?”
“My lip hurts.”
“Of course it does. But come on. What’d he do, slap you?”
Gabriel handed you the joint and you were nervous for your lip. You closed your eyes until the feeling went away.
“I wish I had some scars. He didn’t even give me a black eye.”
Gabriel laughed and tapped the joint. A few sparks fell down into the needles and you watched them, afraid there wouldn’t be smoke.
“All in good time, dude. It’s good to lose a fight sometimes. Keeps you from becoming a big-shot.”
“I don't want to be a big shot?”
“No way. Big shots are full of shit. Everyone’s gotta lose sometime, you know?”
It was heavy. So you didn’t talk for a while and it seemed that Gabriel liked the silence. You asked him if the girls would get pneumonia swimming around like that.
“They’ll be fine,” Gabriel said.
You waited again. Gabriel had a way of making you quiet if he wanted you to be, without even asking you to be quiet. You felt the pleasant thumping rhythm in your head, and you patted your hands on your knees without making much sound even though you didn’t know the song you were thumping to. You were stoned.
“But the girls like it, right?" You asked after a while.
“Oh yeah.” He nodded and you saw the side of his face in light and dark, the shadow that cut into his cheek, turned his jaw into a black line. His face didn’t look like it had been mashed in even once.
“They say they don’t like it,” he said, “they say women don’t like blood and gore like men do. My ass. They love to see a man bleed. They look for it.”
You nodded like you understood, trying not to think about a generous bosom in a soft blue sweater, a cooing voice above my head and a heartbeat against my face.
“The quicker you learn that, the better off you’ll be. If some dude isn’t kicking your ass, some woman will do it just to hold your head in their lap when it’s all over.”
Gabriel was licking the tips of his pointer finger and thumb, squeezing the end of the joint, really taking the whole orange bulb and crushing it between his fingers like it was nothing. He put the joint, whatever was left of it, you couldn’t see, in the breast pocket of his shirt. It was your dad’s flannel shirt, one of many tokens he always gave him when he went away. He didn’t say anything for a minute and you were afraid that was the end, that his voice had receded into the silence and the darkness and you realized suddenly you had forgotten all about the girls. You had been looking, but also looking at something beyond them, something that made their white bodies turn into blurs with no distinction between them. You were both looking now, blinking slowly and you thought maybe the silence wasn’t so bad.
“But there’s something”…Gabriel said, shaking his head. He said, “just something…about the way they look at you. The way they ask you if it hurts…” he sucked at his teeth, spit back into the woods away from you and the girls. “It’s pretty great,” he said, and you believed him.
You nodded, not too much. Just what you thought was enough. You liked the way Gabriel laughed. Like he was certain of something.
“It’s comin, little man, don’t worry.”
You were thirsty. You were about to die you were so thirsty. But you didn’t tell Gabriel that.
“So this Tyler Fairbanks. Did he start the fight or did you?”
“He started talking about things he shouldn’t have, so I asked him to be quiet.”
“You asked?”
“Yeah, I did,” you said. “Honest. Asked nicely. But you know how some guys are.”
Gabriel nodded and it was the first time we really agreed on anything.
“He was talking about dad.”
You think you said it because it was so dark, because this might be the only time you could say it out loud and not have to see someone’s face when you were doing it; not see Gabriel’s face, when he always loved dad a little less than you did. You always knew.
After a second he asked, “what was he saying?”
“Saying his dad used to play Hold ‘em with him at the Bull and he didn’t play fair. Wouldn’t let anyone know his tells. Said it wasn’t right for a guy to win that much.”
In the darkness you heard Gabriel laughing hard, gasping, slapping his leg. You saw him lean back against the tree, the side of his face a white blade in the light.
“What? What’s funny?”
“You fought a kid over that?”
“Yeah. It was dad.”
"And dad's a drunk. How do you know he isn't a cheat, too?"
He was looking at you through the darkness, waiting for you to say something. When you didn't, he sighed and said, "Look, kid. I'm not saying I'm not proud of you. But you gotta pick your battles, you know? Only fight for yourself or for something that's really true."
“Well what did you get in all those fights for then?”
You heard your voice trembling, and the darkness itself seemed to be quivering in the tears that were bubbling up in your eyes. You hoped Gabriel couldn’t see them but you knew he could hear you, so angry you were crying.
“You okay, little man?”
You held your breath and tried to hide everything.
There was a sound, a snapping of branches, closer and closer, and then a click, clear and decisive.
“Gabriel?”
“Just stay still, Matty.”
It was Gabriel’s voice but different, like he had to force it to sound familiar in the dark.
“Shut up, both of you,” said the third voice, an older one. Trembling more than yours. Angrier. “You’re trespassing, you know that?”
The voice sounded a moment away from screaming, like it would be screaming if it could breathe.
“We don’t have to scare the girls, do we?” the voice said.
You turned towards them but couldn’t look. You couldn’t think of their bodies with cold metal and bullets so close.
“Sir,” Gabriel said, and you heard leaves rustling. When the older man spoke again, the rustling stopped.
“There’s nothing but woods and water around here. I can tell the police you were breaking into my house and I shot you. I could tell them anything I want.”
You heard Gabriel’s voice after a patient breath, starting to reason, maybe to beg, and then his voice cut off by a cracking sound, a sound that reminded you of your fist hitting Tyler’s face, the way it echoed, sharp and clear against the hallway walls. Gabriel’s head jerked sideways, and all you could see was the smear of his face as it cut through the light and then back into the shadow. There was another sound, a packing sound, and a groan from Gabriel’s body that sounded like an animal. It was so dark. You couldn’t see. You still couldn’t see.
“Stop,” you said, reaching out towards Gabriel. He should have been right there. You wanted to scream, to panic. But you didn’t want to scare the girls.
The pounding sounds stopped and the pointed gun was in front of you, a clear, white line in the dark. You could imagine him putting it to your head. You could feel the twitch right before he pulled the trigger, the pop of your pitiful skull and the spilling out of your brains.
“Quietly,” the man said, and he was moving backwards as if he had no fear of stumbling. "Come with me.”
“Sir,” you said, like Gabriel had tried to, “we know Mr. Limina. He lives right over there. We used to know his son.”
As you said it, you wondered if any of it was true.
“Then you should know we don’t have kids around here anymore. You should know that. And if we did, he wouldn’t be down here in the woods spying on these girls. He’d be man enough to go down and introduce himself, wouldn’t he? You should be ashamed to say you knew him.”
He stopped as if he was out of breath and when he looked down towards Gabriel you saw the sagging skin of his face, the deep black line of his mouth. He might have been waiting on you to say something, but you didn’t. You felt like everything inside of you was about to come out of every opening. He let the shotgun drop to his side like a withered limb and told you to get off his property and to take your hophead brother with you. You waited until you could barely hear his footsteps and then crawled over to Gabriel. He was flat on his back, a horrid splash of red on the right side of his face. It glowed in the white light. He moved his right arm, scraped it against the pine needles, opened his mouth and murmured something but didn’t open his eyes. You put your hands around his face and said his name. You told him we had to go and that you couldn’t carry him. When he went still you stopped speaking, as if you were bothering him, then watched the rhythm of breath in his chest until you were sure it wasn’t going to stop.
You were afraid of tripping, of falling down the slope all the way to the water. You were afraid of startling them. But you crouched down until my ass was nearly on the ground and went down carefully, digging my heels into the dirt. When you were still too far away for them to see, you called out ‘excuse me’ like a gentleman would if he were asking for a match from a woman on the street. You liked the way they jumped, the way they ducked down into the water and clutched their breasts, their heads swiveling on their long necks. You said you needed help and you liked the way they asked you to come out where they could see you.
Gabriel would have been proud. Maybe even jealous of the way you handed them their clothes and respectfully turned your back while they dressed. He would have enjoyed the way they gasped when they saw him, dropped to their knees and touched his face, the way their hair fell onto his mouth as they listened for breath, held you to their still-damp bodies and said in soft voices, “oh, you poor things. You poor little things…”
No comments:
Post a Comment