Cote Smith - Hurt People

After dessert, we sat on the couch and watched a repeat of the parade. My mother convinced my brother to stay upstairs with us, at least for a little while. Have a second slice, she said. It’s your special day. You deserve it. But five minutes later, when my brother’s plate was clean, and he dropped it noisily in the sink and went to the basement without saying thank you or good night, it was clear that the second slice, him spending an extra moment upstairs, was his gift to us, not the other way around.

My mother poured herself a cup of coffee and sat on the love seat. She’d been sleeping there since my brother was found, but now that he was back in the basement, she had no real reason to. Or not the same reason. More than once I heard my dad invite her to sleep upstairs. To take his bed. He would gladly sleep on the couch. It’ll be like old times, he said with a smile, you upstairs and me in the doghouse. But as comforting as a full bed sounded, my mother kept telling him no. She didn’t want to be too far away from my brother.

The parade ended. The streets of that big scary city cleared and the floats were taken down. When it was all over, it was way past my bedtime. I closed my eyes, wanting to stay upstairs as long as I could. Not wanting to spend another night with my brother, listening to his troubled breathing, feeling his tossing and turning. I pretended I was asleep and listened to my parents talk close to each other. At first, they talked about anything they could so they wouldn’t have to talk about my brother. They talked about things they read in the paper, things they heard. They talked about how the state was losing some of its funding and would have to let a few officers and guards go at the end of the year. They talked about my mom’s job, what she wanted. They talked about my mother going back to school to get her teacher’s degree, though she said she didn’t know. She kind of missed her work, missed Sandy. They talked about other people I didn’t know, places I had never seen or heard of. They talked about things I tried to understand.

But they couldn’t ignore what was everywhere. The thoughts of my brother, their son, which drowned out our days, despite our best efforts to smile, to wade, to stay afloat.

My mother was the first to speak. “What are we going to do?”

A few weeks ago, my dad would’ve said, Give it time. Give him some space. But we had tried that and it had taken us only so far.

“Maybe he should talk to someone,” my dad said.

“Like a therapist?”

“He won’t say any more to me or you. We’ve tried.”

“I know,” my mother said. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Part of me doesn’t want to make him relive it. But what else could he be doing down there?”

A week ago I woke up in the middle of the night, and I was happy because I couldn’t place where I was, what life I was living. The feeling didn’t last, however, and when I remembered all we’d been through, the burning returned to my chest and I sat up. My brother’s half of the bed was empty. I thought about sneaking upstairs, spying on the world and finding my brother, who for some reason I assumed was sleeping on the couch again. Maybe he couldn’t take it, I guessed. Maybe being down here with me was too much after all.

But when I put my foot to the floor, I heard a noise from the wall by the stairs. A hiccup. A choked sob. My eyes adjusted to the dark and I saw the shadow of a boy, balled up in the fetal position. I went to him, part of me thinking this was still a dream. And when I touched him, he didn’t slap my hand away and his heavy breathing told me I was right; this was a dream. But it was my brother who was dreaming, not me. He was the one who couldn’t wake. Who moaned and moaned, terrified by some unseen force. I tried to put my arm around him, but that only made him wail louder. A siren, calling closer and closer. I didn’t know what else to do, so I ran back to bed and hid under the covers. I listened to him cry for several hundreds, as I counted sheep after sheep, praying for someone to take me to sleep.

In the morning I woke and found my brother dressing, preparing for his lessons with my mother. He didn’t say a word to me. And I didn’t know what to say to him.

But now, maybe, an idea. Something I could do.

“You’re right,” my mother said. “He needs to talk. He needs to tell someone his story.” Then she repeated what she said to me. “He can’t carry it alone.”

My dad agreed, and it was decided they would call someone in the morning. Set up something for after the holiday. But that wasn’t soon enough, was it? My brother needed to talk now, and not to some stranger.

My mother finished her coffee. My dad shook me awake from my fake sleep. Both said they loved me. Both, Boys sleep in beds.

* * *

My brother was already asleep. I thought about waking him. Whispering, It’s OK. You can tell me. I know what you did for me. And I will never forget.

Where to start? In my mind I went over what I knew. I skipped past the beginning, meeting Chris. The middle, Chris growing closer to my brother. I skipped past what could have been the end. The story would have to start with Chris catching my brother in the woods. The bad guy capturing the good. If it were a movie, we would see Chris tie my brother’s hands, maybe with the rope he used to tie the desk chair to the pool fence. We would see a strip of duct tape stretched across my brother’s mouth. We would watch Chris march my brother miles into the woods, until they emerged in a part of the city I didn’t recognize. It would be the middle of the night, and they would walk to a silent street full of old empty houses. For Sale signs would creak in the wind. Chris would lead my brother to one of these vacant places, inside which were stacks of stolen items, cans of food and toiletries taken from the chalk kid’s apartment, nearby houses. Chris would crack open a back window and shove my brother inside. He would throw a leg over the sill, take one last look around to make sure no one was watching, that no one would interrupt what he was about to do. He wouldn’t smile. He wouldn’t look at the camera. He would pull his other leg into the darkness, shut the window, and the screen would go to black.

But my brother’s story couldn’t end there.

I rolled over and stared at the ceiling, the water pipes that ran beneath the floor above. The first weekend we stayed at the duplex, my brother and I had contests to see who could hold on to the pipes the longest. The loser had to get back up and hold the pipes some more, while the winner pretended he was an evil prison warden, sent by the state’s corrupt governor to torture the inmates for information. The warden would whip the prisoner’s ribs with a pillow, or drill him in the stomach with a sock ball, until he got the answers he wanted.

They would have to bring my brother in, I realized. In the movie, to fill in the rest of the story, they would drag my brother down to the station. We need to know what happened, they would say. What exactly this man did to you. We need to know why he drowned himself and not you. We need answers. For our sake and yours.

My brother wouldn’t talk. He would give them the same thousand-yard stare he’d walked around carrying for months now. The police would get mad. Out of anger, they would treat him as a hostile witness, not the victim he was. They would bring in the good cop so they could bring in the bad. But it wouldn’t matter. No one would get my brother to describe what he’d been through. No amount of pressure or force. They could beg. They could plead, and they would. We just want to understand. Why did you go with this man? Why do something we told you never to do? Still, my brother wouldn’t talk. Everyone would throw up their hands. A cop would kick over a chair. You know, this is for your own good, they would say. We’re doing this for you.