Tyler Keevil - No Good Brother

‘We can handle it,’ Jake said.

‘Good. Maria said you’d get it done. She said you were reliable.’

‘Maria?’ I asked.

I couldn’t help it. It just popped out. They all looked at me, expectantly.

‘Like Maria O’Connell?’

‘That’s her,’ Mark said. ‘That a problem, Relic?’

‘I just didn’t know she was involved.’

Pat jerked a thumb at me, and asked Jake, ‘He gonna be all right?’

‘He’s fine.’

Mark was giggling again. He started telling a confusing anecdote, the overall point of which seemed to be that Maria had set fire to his brother’s Hummer, after an argument.

‘She was always a firebrand,’ Jake said.

‘She’s turning into a goddamn liability,’ Pat said to him. ‘You’re gonna see her and her brat down there. Do me a favour and make sure she’s not too strung out, will you?’

‘I’ll look after her.’

There was an edge to how Jake said it. Pat didn’t miss that. He jerked his chin.

‘You two used to have a thing, didn’t you?’

‘Years ago.’

‘You’re lucky the bitch dropped you.’

The door opened and that guy, Novak, came back in. He’d brought the cake and four plates. He laid the cake in the centre of the board and from his pocket slid out a slim blade, a stiletto, which he used to slice four pieces, getting the sizes exactly the same. With the flat of the knife he lifted each piece onto a plate, then went to take up his position by the door again.

‘Our mom makes the best fucking cake,’ Mark said. ‘Try this shit.’

Pat took his piece and stuffed the whole thing in his mouth. I ate mine more slowly, pretending to really appreciate it. I have to admit: it was good cake – lemon and poppy seed.

‘Golden,’ Jake said.

Pat grunted. Then his phone buzzed, and he checked the screen.

‘I got shit on,’ he said. ‘We good here?’

‘What about our money?’ Jake asked.

‘You’ll get your money on delivery.’

‘And then Jake’s square with you, right?’ I said.

Pat held out his hand, palm up, as if to say, ‘Who the fuck is this guy?’ and they all laughed. When the laughter settled, Pat reached over and thumbed a crumb off his plate.

‘Sure,’ he said, popping it in his mouth, ‘and then Jake’s square with us.’

Once we had left the Delaneys’ and were alone in Jake’s truck, cruising back along the Upper Levels towards the bridge, I didn’t say a damned thing. Not at first. I sat with my arms crossed and stared out my window at the concrete barricade that divided the highway from the houses and yards and normal lives that lay on the other side. I was trying to demonstrate my rage and general ire at the mess my brother had once again gotten himself into, and me along with him. In addition, I was trying to work out the whole thing in my head, but didn’t have much success. A lot of what I’d heard in there hadn’t made any kind of sense. But one thing had stood out.

‘Maria,’ I said. ‘Your Maria.’

‘She ain’t mine any more.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me she was part of this?’

‘She isn’t, really.’

‘That’s not what it sounded like.’

‘She’s with him now. Big slick.’

‘When did that happen?’

‘Few years back. You know Maria. She’s got her needs.’

When it all went haywire after Sandy’s death, he and Maria had both gotten into a lot of different shit. Jake went clean, eventually, but Maria didn’t. And apparently still hadn’t.

‘I knew she was rolling with some shitty people,’ I said. ‘But that boner?’

He flicked his cigarette out the window. ‘Why do you care, anyway?’

‘I care because you told me this was about you paying your debts.’

‘It is.’

‘Now it turns out Maria’s involved, and brought you into it, and that we happen to be working for her boyfriend, who’s a total fucking Carlito. Don’t tell me that’s a coincidence.’

‘Of course it’s not, you turnip. You heard him: she suggested me.’

‘Why would she do that?’

‘Maybe because she knows I need a chance to pay them back.’

‘Or maybe because her boyfriend needed a patsy, and she knew you’d do it.’

We were on that section of the Cut with a wide shoulder. I told Jake to pull over and, after a second’s hesitation, he swung in and shoved the stick into park and killed the engine. The rain spattering the roof and hood seemed to crescendo, like the roar of applause, or laughter.

I said, ‘Are we doing this for her or for you?’

‘It’s not that simple, man.’

‘It’s simple enough.’

‘It’s not like it was all laid out. It’s not like they called me up and said, “If you don’t do this you’re dead.” She recommended me and they asked me and I said yes because these are not people you say no to, and because I owe them, okay?’ He paused, and shifted in his seat, as if he’d sat on a pinecone or prickly pear. ‘And I owe her, too.’

‘You don’t owe her anything.’

‘You weren’t even here.’

‘Weren’t here when?’

‘When do you think? Some brother.’

I couldn’t talk to him like that, all twisted sideways in the cab. So I got out. I got out and he got out and we started shouting at each other across the hood of the truck in the rain. I pointed at him and demanded he take it back, but he said it was the truth and that at the time I hadn’t been much of a brother, and I told him that was a cheap and low-down thing to say.

He said, ‘Sandy dies and you skulk off like a total shrew, and go tree planting for God’s sake. You were up there for like three months, having your little blue-collar bonanza. What the hell do you think was happening back here, aside from Ma having a stroke?’

‘I know what was happening. You and Maria were playing Sid and Nancy.’

‘Fuck you we were. We were looking after Ma, getting her treatment.’

‘That sure worked. Did you inject heroin directly into her brain?’

Then something shifted in his face and I understood we were going to fight, right there at the side of the highway. And it came as a relief, that realization. It was inevitable and probably had been since he’d first arrived at the boatyard.

Jake walked around the truck and started trotting towards me and I stepped into him and we sort of crashed together like that, like a couple of rams or bucks, both of us hard-headed and bone-stubborn, and both of us just as dense and senseless as the other.

I know exactly what my brother will do in a fight and he knows the same about me. He has a penchant for chokeholds and grappling and I prefer to punch him repeatedly in the ribs and torso. We rarely hit each other in the face unless we’re drunk or insane with rage, which sometimes happens – so perhaps by rarely I mean less often than not. He tends to get my head under his arm and squeeze down so my chin touches my chest and my windpipe gets cut off, and now the tendons at the back of my neck click repeatedly from having suffered this technique so often. But I also know how to wriggle out of it, just as he knows to cover his sides with his elbows to avoid the body-blows with which I aim to hammer him. It’s worth noting that my punches are much less effective than before the accident with my hand but in truth even before that I wasn’t much of a puncher. My hands are too small.

This makes our fights strangely futile. Neither of us can get the advantage because neither of us really wants to win. What we want, I suppose, is to annihilate the other and at the same time absorb or become him. We’re like conjoined twins, frustrated at being yoked together, grasping and punching and flailing both at our brother-double, and ourselves.