Donald Antrim - The Hundred Brothers

“I’m very serious about these evolving dangers, little brother,” Foster cautioned Andrew. He had Andrew pushed against a magazine rack. Insistence is crucial to Foster’s conversational style. Tonight he was worked up. He leaned forward, glared directly into Andrew’s face, and proclaimed, “The earth changes are coming. Everything points toward massive geophysiological change. I’ve been saying this for years and I’ll say it again. Oceans rising! Plants and mammals becoming extinct! Inner cities dying and genetic calamities of every order sauntering around like it’s Sunday in the park!”

“What are you talking about, Foster?”

“I’m talking about the coming wave of brand-new cancers spreading everywhere like the common cold during the global red tide of the immediate futures.”

“Future s ?”

“Sure. The future is the aggregate of all tenable futures of individual selves,” exclaimed Foster, as if to a child. Then he declared, “You know, Andrew, I really admire the work you do with the homeless.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that.”

Now in the red library the light was diminishing; evening was falling and the winter sky outside looked ashen against the clear windowpanes overlooking the east. What time was it anyway? That glum hour before moonlit night. The cocktail hour. Why wasn’t there a fire in the hearth? Where was Spooner? Spooner always carried hooch.

“After all, aren’t we all indigent, in a metaphysical way?” Foster was saying to Andrew, intensely. Foster’s face was red and his eyes burned with belief in something larger than himself. Our Foster has at one time or another shrilly publicized the most amazing things: synchronicity, interspecial telepathy (animals read our minds), seraphic intervention (angels help us succeed in life), morphic resonance (every member of a genetically interrelated family group, no matter how widely dispersed or apparently dissimilar, will immediately comprehend or embody the changed attributes and learned abilities of one individual), Possible World Theory, Chinese astrology, and assorted ancient divinations of planetary transformation in the years after the millennium. If Foster has his way, we’ll all be abandoning our depressions in favor of united, heartfelt crusading for wide-scale spiritual reform. In this respect — this grave interest in working for causes — grandiose Foster is not unlike his more pragmatic brother Andrew, who often takes time out during family functions to pass the hat for donations to aid the residents of the flourishing tent city that has sprung up, virtually overnight it seems, in the untilled meadow beyond the garden gate, just outside our walls.

I always give Andrew whatever silver comes from my pockets. You can see their fires out there, late at night.

“Is it cold in here or is it me?” whispered Virgil.

“There is definitely a draft,” I told him. His body, squeezed close beside mine on our tasseled and embroidered love seat, felt damply warm; his cheeks and white forehead wore that pasty sheen that accompanies Virgil’s recurrent nighttime fevers. “Do you want my sweater?”

“No.”

“Are you feeling all right?”

“Once Hiram gets the fire going I’ll be fine.”

“Sure?”

“Positive.”

“Let me know.”

“Kind of you. Thanks.”

We turned our gazes then to take in the scene around Maxwell. The fallen man was laid out on his back and surrounded by feet. Maxwell wasn’t moving. His clothes were a mess. At his head knelt Barry. Other men peered from behind Barry, and behind these were more looking down with eyes fixed on Max’s face and the doctor’s hands. Barry seemed to be reaching inside Maxwell’s mouth. Yes, Barry did have a hand in Maxwell’s mouth, fishing around there. Then he removed the hand. He took a vast inspiration of breath. Barry pinched Maxwell’s nose shut between fingers and thumb, lowered his own mouth to Maxwell’s, and blew a series of puffs.

“This is serious,” someone said. And it was as if the saying of this made everything true — our dear brother’s life in danger and all of us lollygagging ineptly on the furniture (all except Barry hunkered low over Maxwell’s head, blowing, blowing). It was like that time when Vincent was five and fell off the roof and only Raymond and Nick were around playing in the yard, and they were too young to grasp the severity, so Vince dragged himself bleeding across the gravel and up the steps into the front hall where he passed out in a lagoon of his little boy’s blood. No one particularly knew what to do then, either. Thank God for Barry. Fortunately, Maxwell was not bleeding. There did appear to be a twig of something green and leafy sticking out from the breast pocket of Maxwell’s blazer.

And quietly came the sound of Virgil’s voice, the humid feeling of his breath tickling my ear, as he brought his face close to mine and complained vehemently, “Fuck. It’s Chuck’s dogs.”

It was the truth. Here dogs came, whipping through the library’s tall eastern doorway, claws viciously scraping hardwood, one fleet Doberman and one shedding English sheepdog, Gunner and Rolfe, off the leash as usual and tearing obnoxiously for Maxwell’s body as if it were a toy for them to pounce on and lick.

“Whoa!” cried Henry.

“Careful!” hollered Arthur.

“Dogs!” yelled James.

“Look out!” warned Simon.

Then both dogs were atop him. Paws flailing Max. Walking on Max’s stomach. Tongues out.

“Grab its leg!”

“Get your hand around the mouth!”

“The other way!”

“Pull them off his head!”

Then the sound of Foster, piercing and distinct: “Leave them alone! They know ! They’re trying to help ! They want to revive him! It’s what dogs do !” shouted the animal telepathist.

“Screw that,” someone said as, from the direction of the door, the voice of the dogs’ owner, Chuck, a prosecutor for the county and just now following the dogs into the room, commanded, with authority:

“Sit.”

Obediently dogs climbed down from man and came to rest on either side of inert Max. There they stood, two intent and furry guardians watching over his form. Discreetly the dogs peered up at faces glaring down at them and at Maxwell’s face and hair lacquered in dog spit. The botanist’s shirt and my Italian silk tie were gummy with wetness from these dogs’ panting and drooling. Barry’d been knocked back by their lunges and now grumbled a complaint while righting himself. Gunner in his studded collar bared teeth and growled.

Luckily, this animal’s master approached bearing leashes and a pocket stuffed with treats. In that imperturbable, crooning voice dog owners adopt when addressing misbehaving pets, Chuck called, “Easy there, Gunner boy, easy. Gunner, good boy, good dog, easy Gunner-gun, good dog.”

The Doberman became sullen. Chuck produced the snacks. He tossed these through the air toward his dogs’ mouths. Sheepdog and Doberman swung heads to make ace catches without any movement away from Max’s side.

That sheepdog is a sweetheart, but everyone fears the other, thanks to its breed.

Of course all this incited reproaches from Barry, who declared, “I’m trying to revive your brother. Why don’t you control these animals. Especially that one,” glowering at the Doberman.

Chuck rose to the dog’s defense. “Gunner never hurt anyone. These are the sweetest creatures on God’s earth. Leave Gunner alone.”

“Here, boy,” Chuck said to his Gunner, dispensing another treat into the mouth of the black-and-cinnamon purebred. Gunner’s eyes shone maniacally. He was all pent up. As were we all in that long moment while the sun went down outside and lamp-thrown shadows lengthened across the darkening walls of the enormous red room.