Cote Smith - Hurt People

“I know, I’m sorry.” She put her hand to her mouth, to stop herself from apologizing. But she didn’t know what else to say.

“Forget it,” my brother said. He kicked the spilled ice out of the kitchen and onto the carpet, where it would melt into dark pools I would accidentally step into later. He left. I sat in my chair, watching my mother think things through. Her hand in her big hair.

“He wouldn’t hurt you for no reason,” my mother said. “Rick isn’t perfect, but he’s got a good heart.” I didn’t know what she wanted me to say. If she wanted me to confess about the cart, that wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t going to betray my brother again. She’d have to get it out of Rick.

“He didn’t deserve that,” I said. “We didn’t do anything.”

My mother nodded. She got up from the table to fix dinner: hot dogs and beans for the third time that week. She dumped the beans in one small pot, started water in another. Normally I would help her get everything ready. My mother would take down three plates and I would put a hot dog bun on each, opening them carefully so they didn’t tear. I would get the ketchup out if we had any and turn it upside down, so whoever used it first didn’t get the runny stuff. I would help my mother keep an eye on the hot dogs, which I knew were ready when they floated to the top, like the dead men we pretended to be at the pool.

But I didn’t do any of these things. I couldn’t make myself want to help. I kept thinking of Rick, of what he would say to us the next time we saw him, and the time after that.

“You’ve got your thinking face on,” my mother said. She shut off the stove and put two plates on the table. One for me, one for my brother. Though my mother sat in his spot, the hot dogs drowning in the plate of beans in front of her. “What are you thinking about?”

I used my fork to make a mountain out of my beans. I dipped one of them in ketchup and it looked like blood. I said I wasn’t thinking about anything.

“You know I meant it,” my mother said, “when I said Rick’s got his own issues. Did you see his sling?”

Yes, I saw it. I yanked it until I made Rick scream.

“Well, it wasn’t an accident.”

“What happened?” I asked. I pictured all the ways Rick could have hurt himself — falling off a ladder, the scoreboard, tripping down the stairs — and I couldn’t help but smile. But my mother wouldn’t say any more. How wasn’t the point, she said. The point was someone hurt him. And now he had passed that hurt to me. To my brother.

“But it better stop there,” she said. “You better stop it before someone stops it for you.”

* * *

Before she went back to work our mother reminded us to take out the garbage. The trash men were coming tomorrow. I scraped the beans and dogs my brother never ate into the kitchen trash and tied the bag shut, replaced the old bag with a new one while my brother waited by the door. Outside, the complex was quiet, minus the buzz of bugs swimming around our building’s exterior lights. The lights were set to a timer that turned them on at dusk, off at dawn. I imagined the bugs dreading the moment the sun started to show, leaving sad when the light went away.

My brother decided to swing by the pool before we went back in. I had never seen the pool at night. Not up close. It was different in person. Its sugary blue glowed brighter, so that the water looked like something from the future. Something one of the men in my brother’s plots would fall into and receive special powers from. My brother didn’t open the gate. He ran his hand over the pool rules sign. No running. No horseplay. No swimming at night. But if that was a rule, why leave the pool lit up and uncovered? Why tempt us little bugs who didn’t know any better?

My brother put one sneaker in the fence and hopped over. He opened the gate, but didn’t wait for me to follow him through. I traced a path around the pool, to the shallow end where it was safe. Where if I fell in I could rescue myself. The water was still. No pumps were on. No wind formed a small tide, crashing waves against the pool’s concrete side. There was no lapping. I got on my knees and bent over the water, until I saw myself staring back up at me. I waved to this other me, and when that wasn’t enough, I reached out to touch my face. I wanted to feel this new water, feel something different. I wanted to wipe away my reflection, which hadn’t changed at all since I studied it in the video store candy case. I was the same as I had always been. The water felt like it always did. Cold. Wet. There wasn’t anything special about it. I sat back and looked up, first at the naked sky, then at the diving board, where my brother stood fully clothed, peering into the pool. The light from the maintenance shed outlined him as a shadow.

“What do you think?” he said. “Should I jump?”

I shook my head, but wasn’t sure if he could see. From behind him, a second shadow emerged.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Chris said. “What good is the Gainer if no one’s here to see it?”

Chris stuck out his hand and helped my brother down from the board. Even though it was night, he still wasn’t wearing a shirt. He gave my brother a hug and said it was good to see him again. He didn’t say the same to me.

“What are you guys doing?” Chris said. “It’s not safe to be out here alone. Not at night.”

He and my brother walked over to where I was sitting on the shallow side. Chris was wearing the same trunks as last time, and had a hat on backward. “Then again, I guess you’re not alone, are you?” Chris said. I could feel him smile, though not with the amount of energy I was used to. He sat down next to me and dipped his legs in the pool, like the first time we met. His tattoo shone in the pool’s light. I stared at his trunks. I wanted to ask about his time as a lifeguard. I wanted him to finish the story.

“Where have you been?” my brother said.

“Oh, here and there,” Chris said. “Trying to sort some things. You know how this world can be. One minute you’ve got it all figured out, the next you feel all wrong.”

He craned his neck to the sky and sighed. And now? my brother said. What was Chris up to now?

“Just looking at the stars, my man. I like to come out when it’s clear like this, check out the constellations. Look.” He put his arm around my brother and pointed at the sky. “There’s the Little Dipper. Ursa Major. There’s Orion. And look at that, he’s doing the Gainer.”

Chris laughed a little, but his laugh sounded fake too. I looked at the stars, but couldn’t see any of the things he pointed to.

“I’m just kidding,” Chris said. “But did you know that Orion is the Hunter? He was a famous hunter who got stung by a scorpion … like this!” Chris turned his hand into a stinger and stung the back of my brother’s neck. “And he died. But the gods really liked him, so they brought him and the scorpion up to the sky. See, there’s Scorpio.” He drew another line with his fingers.

“That’s cool,” my brother said. “What else is out there?”

“Well … oh, I know. You’ll like this.” He tilted his head into my brother’s, so their faces were nearly touching, their eyes set on the same spot. “You can’t see them this time of the year, but to the right of Orion there are two super-big stars. Brothers.” He planted two fingers in the sky, where the brothers should have been. “See? Those are their heads. And you can’t tell, but they’re always holding hands. Playing, having a good time. Always by each other’s side.”

He wiggled his fingers in the sky, made the brothers jump around.

“What are their names?” my brother said.

“Hmm,” Chris said. “Good question. I forget.”