Brad Watson - Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives

You sure are, you bet, the boys said, piping up but sticking to their spots on the sofa as if glued there by their pants.

The mother said she would think about it while she had her drink with Dr. Hornegay, and in the meantime she allowed the boys to watch television. The oldest boy got up and turned on the set and they began watching a different episode of the same western they had been watching the day their mother had become upset. At first they partly watched the western and partly watched their mother and Dr. Hornegay having a drink and talking. Then Dr. Hornegay offered their mother one of his Camel cigarettes, and they both began to smoke along with their drinking and talking, and Dr. Hornegay was offering to call in an order to Mrs. Benson for the hot tamales but pouring himself and their mother more drinks first, and the boys became more distracted by the western. Dr. Hornegay and their mother were becoming louder and were laughing a lot and the smoke from their cigarettes was creating a beautiful haze of gently swirling blue smoke in the hanging lamp above the little dining table, but all of this had moved into that part of the boys’ brains that resembled the waking equivalent of a dream, there but not there, attached to but somewhat removed from their primary consciousness. This is something that often happened to them, in school or church or while watching something unfathomable on television, such as the evening news. But now it was the eminently fathomable western program they were watching, whereas the little get-together of their mother and Dr. Hornegay, although engineered by themselves, had become unfathomable, and thereby had been relegated to the nonverbal part of their brains.

Outside the big sliding glass door beside the dining table where their mother and Dr. Hornegay sat drinking and smoking and talking and laughing, the darkly silver gloaming began to creep again into the sky, and the greens of the grass and the unkempt shrubbery on the hill behind the house also darkened softly.

In the den, in the failing light outside the penumbra of the hanging lamp where their mother and Dr. Hornegay sat, the animated light from the television set trembled, flickered, and leapt about the room.

Ooo, damn, the oldest brother whispered to the others, all three of them with their eyes on the western program. How does he jump off the top of a house like that and land on the horse and not rack his balls?

I don’t see how, the youngest brother said.

You don’t even have balls yet, the oldest brother said.

I do, too.

I see how he could do it, the middle brother said.

Bull, the oldest brother said.

I do. It’s all in how you land. You have to land with your legs squeezed up, and back on your butt a little bit.

Slightly, the oldest brother said. You’re so full of crap.

I’ll show you, the middle brother said.

Stay in the yard, don’t wander off up the street, their mother called as they filed out the carport door.

The oldest brother helped the middle brother extract their old rocky horse, which was actually a springy horse, from the storage room built just off the carport and set it up in the grass just below the lowest overhang of the roof there, then the oldest brother helped the middle brother up onto the eave by cupping his palms together and boosting the middle brother’s foot, and the middle brother was half tossed, half self-hoisted up onto the roof and he turned and squatted and looked down at the faces of his older brother and younger brother where they stood on either side of the springy horse, looking up at him in the softly failing light.

He knew, all of a sudden, what a fool he was, how badly hurt he was going to be if he made the leap onto the back of the springy horse from where he now squatted on the roof. His first idea upon knowing this was to leap and pretend to miss the horse, and maybe he would only twist his ankle. Then his second idea was to suggest that the youngest brother try it first, since he didn’t have balls yet, not really anyway, and the oldest brother and the middle brother could also check the youngest brother’s landing when he arrived at the plastic saddle of the springy horse, and control it all.

And then he thought he would cry, because he was flooded once again, for the first time in a long time, with the shameful memory of something he had done to the youngest brother one time when they were being watched by Rosie, back when she was their maid and the oldest brother was in school but the middle and youngest brother were still both too young to be in school. It was a warm afternoon and they were all three out in the yard, the two brothers in shorts with no shoes or shirts, and Rosie, who sat on the low retaining wall between their yard and the next while the youngest brother and the middle brother played in the grass nearby. Rosie, who wore a maid’s uniform that was not unlike their mother’s nurse’s uniform except it was blue instead of white, was reading the newspaper where she sat on the retaining wall a few feet away. Looking down into the thick St. Augustine grass, the middle brother spied something gleaming and picked it up. It was a toy razor blade, double-edged. He knew it was a toy razor blade because it was so easy to bend back and forth.

Look, he announced, I found a toy razor blade.

Rosie, biting at a fingernail, glanced over at him and wrinkled her brow. She was trying to finish something she was reading in the newspaper and didn’t really want to be disturbed in order to deal with some foolishness on his part.

Put that thing down, she said, before you hurt yourself.

I can’t hurt myself, the middle brother said. It’s a toy.

It’s not a toy, Rosie said, it’s a razor blade, young’un, you put it down.

It is not a real razor blade, the middle brother said, I’ll prove it.

He walked over to the youngest brother, who had been niggling with his finger at a worm or roly-poly in the grass, not hearing any of this, and he ran the edge of the razor blade down the length of the youngest brother’s sun-browned, naked back, following the bumpy line of the youngest brother’s spine.

A bright red line of blood jumped from his brother’s back and began to bead and run down in crooked trails. The middle brother dropped the razor blade and stepped back, and he screamed just as Rosie dropped her newspaper and began to shout, and a moment later the youngest brother, turning in a circle like a dog after his tail and trying to see what had happened to his back that was making everyone scream and shout, began to scream and cry, and the middle brother fell down into the grass, bawling and striking the ground with his fists, blubbering out, I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it, I thought it was a toy.

Remembering this now as he squatted on the roof, looking down into the youngest brother’s irritating but inarguably innocent face, the middle brother felt the same terrible wave of shame he’d felt just after slicing open the youngest brother’s back three whole years before, and he felt a heartbreaking longing, also, for the presence of Rosie, who had been such a comforting maid, because she had never been afflicted with sadness, and had always been cheerful except when she was mad, and she was never mad for longer than it took her to get the madness out, and then she was always and ever her regular self again, and it had always brightened his spirits to see how she could be such a normal person, even though she was colored, even though a maid, even though he knew quite well she must miss her own children while she spent her whole long day there taking care of them, him and his brothers, who didn’t appreciate her at all. And now, just today, they had called her a nigger. He might as well have said it, too. The only thing he could do, now, was to jump.