Alice Hoffman: Here On Earth

The kinder Henry Murray was to Hollis, the more bitter Alan grew. During that first winter when Hollis was with them, Henry Murray came home from a conference in New York with gifts for all. He presented March with a thin gold necklace and both boys with beautiful pocketknives, made of steel and mother-of-pearl. Alan had botched his classes at the law school, and now the fact that he and this creature he’d had foisted upon him were being treated equally, like brothers in fact, sent him sulking. By the time they sat down for dinner that night, Alan was steaming with rage.

“He’s too young for a knife,” Alan told his father. “You’d never let me have one at his age. He can’t be trusted with it.”

“You’ll be fine,” Henry Murray said warmly, ignoring Alan in order to address Hollis, who sat to his left.

“God, you are blind,” Alan proclaimed. It was Judith Dale’s day off, but she had left them their dinner. They were having roast chicken and potatoes and green beans, but now Alan pushed his plate away, upsetting his water glass. “No one in his right mind would give him a weapon. You have to be crazy.”

If there was one thing Henry Murray couldn’t stand, it was a man who was not fair, and that was what his son seemed to be. Hollis said nothing in his own defense, and that’s what March couldn’t bear to see: The way he wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. The way he seemed to fold up inside himself, going farther and farther inside, until the part of him having dinner at their table was only the smallest comer of his soul.

“Shut up, Alan,” March said. “You’re the one who’s crazy.”

March was sitting to her father’s right, and he now put his hand on her arm. “I don’t want you to talk like that,” he told her. “Not to Alan. Not to anyone.”

Hollis still hadn’t touched his food. He was staring at his plate, but March had the sense that he was watching everything. “You’re just jealous,” she told Alan.

Alan gave a short trumpeting laugh. He nodded toward Hollis. “Of that?”

Henry Murray put down his knife and his fork. “Leave the table,” he said.

“Me?” Alan truly was shocked. “You want me to leave?”

“Come back when you can act decently,” Henry Murray said, and it was clear, from his tone, that he didn’t expect such an occurrence anytime soon, certainly not that evening.

Alan got up so hastily that his chair fell with a clatter behind him, sideways on the floor. March had been staring at Hollis all this time, so she noticed that he now proceeded to eat his supper. He cut his food carefully; he looked back at her and didn’t even blink. March was possessed by the giddiest feeling. She would make Hollis laugh; she would see if she could. She crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out at him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” her father said to her.

March hadn’t imagined her father catching her. “Nothing,” she quickly told him.

When she looked at Hollis, she saw that if she hadn’t gotten a laugh out of him, then at least she’d gotten a grin.

“She wasn’t doing anything,” Hollis agreed.

“That’s good to hear.” Henry Murray finally turned his attention to his food. “One rude child is more than enough.”

Alan should have been too grown-up for games of revenge, he should have set his mind to finding a job or studying for his classes, but after that dinner he went after Hollis wholeheartedly. He waited for the time to be right, and at last, on a cold winter day, when a beautiful light snow was falling, Alan and some of his cronies captured Hollis on the path which led to Olive Tree Lake. Staked out long enough to have ice form around their nostrils, fueled by six-packs of beer, these friends of Alan’s were ready to beat someone senseless. They tackled Hollis and spat in his face. They held him down and took turns hitting and kicking him, usually in the ribs, carefully aiming with their fists and their boots.

The horizon was gray that day, and crows were circling in the sky. Alan and his friends hit Hollis until his nose and mouth gushed with blood. They wanted him to call for them to stop, to beg for mercy, to cry, but he did none of these things. He closed his eyes, so that he wouldn’t accidentally be blinded by one of their punches. He cursed them so deeply inside his mind that his expression revealed nothing. There was blood seeping into the snow, and from the other side of the lake came a droning sound, as Mr. Judson, who owned so much land up there, rode his snowmobile through the woods.

Finally, when they had tired of beating him, Alan and his friends tied Hollis to a tree, where he stayed until dark, never once calling out. When he didn’t show up for dinner, Alan took the opportunity to call him irresponsible and thoughtless. When he still hadn’t shown up at nine, March went looking for him. By the time she found him, Hollis was burning with fury and embarrassment. March cut the ropes with the mother-of-pearl pocketknife she knew he kept in his pocket, while Hollis kept his face averted.

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” he said when she was through.

There were bloody, red marks on his wrists where they’d tied the knots too tight.

“I don’t,” March had said. and that was the truth. Even then, it was Alan she’d felt sorry for; for Hollis she felt something entirely different from pity. “I know Alan did this. Tell on him. I’ll say I saw it all.”

“But you didn’t,” Hollis said. He wiped the blood from his face with the back of his hands, then rubbed snow on his cheeks and hands. His coat had been ripped off, and now he tore at his shirtsleeve. “You didn’t see this either.” He motioned for her to hand back the knife; he took it in his left hand. Quickly, deeply, he cut a long gash up his right arm.

“Stop that!” March said.

Ignoring the wound he’d inflicted, Hollis stood up and threw the ropes Alan and his friends had tied him with as far as he could, so that they disappeared into a distant drift of snow. After that, they walked back home, a trail of blood behind them. Halfway home, Hollis’s teeth started chattering, even though his coat was thrown over his shoulders; when they reached the front door and were at last safely inside the warm hallway, he collapsed.

Henry Murray drove them to St. Bridget’s Hospital, where twenty-three stitches were needed to close up the gash in Hollis’s arm.

“Who did this?” Henry Murray demanded to know as he and March sat in the waiting room. “Was it Alan?”

March stared at the floor and could not bring herself to answer, and this response her father took to be a definitive yes.

That night, Henry Murray informed Alan that if he wished to continue living in his house, he would have to treat Hollis with respect. Moreover, he would have to write a letter of apology, and, out of his own funds, he would have to pay for the hospital bill, along with a new coat, since Hollis’s had been ruined. Alan’s knife, of course, was confiscated, in spite of his many denials.

“Don’t add liar to your list of credentials,” Henry Murray said, and after that Alan stopped proclaiming his innocence.

That night, March couldn’t sleep. She went to the kitchen for a glass of milk, and on her way back to her room, she stood outside Hollis’s door, then knocked and pushed the door open. He was in bed, but not yet asleep. March stepped inside and closed the door behind her. She could see by the moonlight reflecting off the snow in the yard. Hollis’s arm was bound with white cloth.

“You know why I had to cut my right arm?” Hollis asked. He had carefully thought it out while tied to the tree. “So no one would think I did it to myself.”

“How did you make yourself do it?” March asked. She sat on the bed to get a better look at his arm. “Didn’t it hurt?”