Cote Smith - Hurt People

That my brother wasn’t there didn’t make sense. It didn’t fit the story my brain had worked so hard to tell me. I was a hero ready to play my part, but no one else got the memo. There was a note in the kitchen, which I skimmed, something about my mother having to run out. To where and for how long it didn’t say, and I didn’t care. I crushed it in my hand and searched the rest of the apartment, the bedrooms I knew were empty. What was left but to look for clues, to pretend if I put the pieces together, they would all add up. There were new fingerprints, etched in the dust. In our bedroom, shirts missing. Shoes. My brother’s favorite toys. The man torn between his family and revenge was long gone. He had chosen doom.

In the bathroom a towel was missing. A toothbrush. My brother’s trunks were taken from the tub. I sat on the toilet and put my head in my hands. I closed my eyes and tried to think it through. I held up all the missing items in my mind. I put them in my brother’s weekend bag. I put the bag on my brother’s shoulders and, with a cry, sent him down the street.

* * *

All that was left was the pool.

The apartment was empty, the laundry room humming but the same. Outside, the summer was its hottest. A hot wind shook the trees but offered no relief. I took the longest way possible around the other apartment building before finally taking a peek, seeing the thing I was most afraid to see.

Slicing the pie, I saw my brother. I poked my head around the far apartment building and I saw him. I saw Chris. They were not in the pool. They were behind it. They were at the top of the little hill and they were facing the woods. My brother had his bag around his shoulder, just as I had imagined, and was looking up at Chris, like a son would a father, like I would my brother. Chris put his arm around my brother. He squeezed him close. He took a look around, and as I saw his head twisting in my direction, I hid. I dissolved myself into the apartment bricks and prayed he had not seen me.

I caught my breath against the wall. I told myself to count to ten, then slice another piece of the pie. But like so many times before, when my brother was the hider and I was the seeker, I didn’t count as high as I was supposed to. Because I couldn’t wait. I had to look. I had to find him. I skipped a few.

If I had counted all the way to ten, I would have missed what happened next. I wouldn’t have seen Chris take my brother’s hand, hold his arm out, as if to say, This way, please. Are you ready? My brother nodded, but his mouth didn’t open. He stepped toward the woods, took one last look back. If I had counted to ten, if I hadn’t skipped three, five, and seven, I would have missed that look. That face that was so familiar. If I had counted to ten, I would have had no idea that my brother was afraid.

* * *

Many tens ticked away before I decided to act. How many it was hard to say. I was not counting. I was staring, at the hole in the world my brother had disappeared into. The door in the woods Chris had opened and taken him through. Magic.

What could I do? I could walk to the pool. OK. I could climb the little hill, stand before the door. Done. But then what? I could turn around, yes, the same way my brother had done. And I could wonder. Not about the things he was thinking; I didn’t want those thoughts. No, I wanted to know what was next. I wanted to know whether or not I should follow. My hand shielded my eyes from the sun, and I found our apartment. Our sliding glass doors. I could go inside, I realized, and call my mother, at Rick’s or at work or wherever. I could call my dad. The police. But what would happen in the meantime? Where would Chris take my brother, while a phone cried in an empty room?

In the end, it was not that much different from my first dive in the pool. I faced the trees and I squared my shoulders. I took a deep breath and told myself a story. About me. About my long-lost brother, separated at birth when our family was lost at sea.

He is out there, I said.

He is waiting for you.

I stepped into the trees, the story’s whisper tickling my ear.

Find him, it said. You have to find him.

* * *

Like my first dive, as soon as I stepped into the woods, I knew I had not fallen in right. Or, I had fallen in OK, but was in a place that was too big for me. Like the deep end, this was a place I didn’t belong. The trees were not the trees surrounding the golf course, loose and spread out. These were longer, thicker with leaves and needles, and much closer together. Some locked limbs or leaned into each other like they were sharing secrets. Insects buzzed from places unseen, alerting the world of my presence, warning the rest of the woods, and Chris.

I didn’t have a plan. Not a real one, other than to run. To push my way through brush and grass until I caught sight of my brother. Our dad once taught us how to tail a suspect, but I couldn’t remember how, not with my heart drowning my head, my chest swimming with worry. Only small pieces of memory found their way through. Don’t get too close … Blend in as best you can … Never work alone …

I paused, out of breath, and let the rest come back to me. Never work alone. That always surprised me. A good tail, our dad said, works with a team: two or three partners to pick up the pursuit in case the mark makes you. If one of you gets too close, if the suspect gets suspicious, fall back, let another follow. But won’t he see us? Won’t he notice us both? No, he said. People are dumb. Most focus on one thing at a time. They get so fixed on one idea, they ignore the obvious other.

I ran some more, and for the first few minutes, none of what I remembered mattered. I didn’t see anyone, any signs of Chris or my brother. I saw trees, bushes. I saw the sun disappear behind clouds, reappear heavy on my neck. I grew tired. My run became a walk, and I could feel the ache in my feet. In the movies, people kept running. They never ran out of breath. They tripped. They fell, flipped over on their hands and feet like a crab, and watched the axe fall on the last of their lives.

Keep going, my story told me. You’re so close. I can see the shore.

I looked at my legs, these useless paddles. I looked back at where I came from, to see how much of the sea I’d swum. But I couldn’t see my way back. I couldn’t see anything. The trees had swallowed everything behind me. There’s only forward, the story said. There’s only Chris, your brother, and the end.

A fat gust of air ruffled my shirt, moved on, and the sea calmed. I took a long breath in, out, and began to row.

* * *

I changed from tens to twenties, to hundreds. Count to one hundred, I told myself, and if you don’t see anything, run home. After the first hundred, I stopped and looked around for clues, for bent bush limbs or a secret signal fingered in the mud. There was nothing. No paths. The woods were untouched. When I came to the second hundred, I stopped again, but not as long. When I came to the third, the fourth and fifth, I didn’t stop at all. I stopped counting before I gave up. I let a last number go, something in the high hundreds, but kept on walking. How long I’d been in the woods there was no way to tell, but it felt like forever and a second at the same time. Whichever it was, it became clear to me that the time needed for my sea story to tell itself had expired. Somewhere, in a world weirder and happier than my own, I was reunited with my brother. I braved a storm and crashed a shore, and in the morning I stumbled from my wreckage to find him sunbathing on the beach, dreaming up a list of moves to do off a nearby waterfall.

But in this world, under these trees, I sat down and cried. Softly, as if I might waken the woods. I pulled my knees to my face and sobbed, louder this time, not caring who heard. When my eyes were spent, I lifted my head from my legs. The wet I left behind was a blob on my bony knee. I let my mind play the cloud game and tried to make a shape. Something that would cheer me up, replace my sea story. Something that would tell me to get on my feet, to keep moving. All I could think of, though, was the shape the chalk kid had drawn what seemed long ago. Before I learned the secrets of the Stranger. Before the kid and mom’s apartment was robbed. Before Sandy and Rick, my dad, my mom, and everything else.