Sam - A Short Story

This is my brother who held my hand when we heard the news, that repeated it to me as he squeezed my palm, as if I hadn’t understood the words told to me by the officer a moment before. But I knew even then that it was him who was trying to understand. His eyes bore into me--eyes of the only family I had now--as they searched for the reaction where there was none. I was numb.

The busybody neighbor had come to see what the fuss was about by then. She pulled me away, her eyes more tearful than mine, while my brother stayed to talk to the police. Later, he tried to explain it to me. “It was just a stupid drunk driver, Scott. He was just drunk, man.” He was just drunk. The “just” was supposed to give some kind of rationale behind it, I guessed.

This is my brother who raised hell when they told us we would have to be separated in the foster homes. The brother that shouted his voice hoarse and made all kinds of big threats I knew he couldn’t keep, but got the cops involved anyway. It was ugly, and loud, and I knew that he was fighting for me more than for himself. In the end, all anyone could really do was talk him down. At least they let him hold me until the cars came to take us to our new homes. Away. Apart. When you waited on something like that, it didn’t matter that I was eleven years old and he was holding me like a baby. I didn’t want him to ever let go.

He gripped my shoulder as we passed from our world--the one of books read to us at night, of music played loud on the weekends, of movie nights when popcorn scattered the carpet from all the shuffling and laughing--to the world that would be filled with a state of fear, and confusion, and loneliness. A world where we’d be apart. Where I might fall apart. Then, I had tears. Then, I could feel it all gushing out. Then, I cried. For him.

He rapped on the window weeks, months, two years later. My brother, with his gapped tooth smile that you could spot anywhere. The one who had hair even redder than mine, even longer and slicked back and and giving off a more wild look than I ever could. The mattress depressed beneath me as I hobbled to the edge of my bed to pry the glass up, hasty and eager. Rusted and cold from the fall weather outside, it hit to me that this was the first time I’d ever tried opening it. Maybe one of the first times I’d looked out.

“What are you doing here?”

“What do you mean, what am I doing here?” The gapped teeth showed themselves to me as his lips spread to the biggest grin I’d seen since our parents passed. “I came to see you, smartass.” He’d developed an accent, slight but still evident to me. Bostonian. It was an accent less common in the part of the state I was in. I thought it made him sound like a tough guy.

He said he’d gotten out of the foster system. That he was seventeen and he didn’t need them anymore, but I had a feeling he didn’t leave so peacefully. He didn’t do anything peacefully. Even that night, it wasn’t like he was trying to use the door.

This is my brother who reached out his hand for me to follow him out, away from the safety of the warm bed and the quiet home. Just for one night. Just for old time’s sake. “Come on, man,” there was the tooth again, as the hand outstretched. “What’re you waiting for?”

I couldn’t think of a reason, and once his hand grasped mine, I couldn’t think of anything but how right it felt to be holding it again. It was warm against the chill of the outside, pulsing with the life that anyone could see in his eyes.

He had a motorcycle now. He said he’d worked like a dog to afford it, and even though it looked like a piece of junk, I thought it was one of the coolest things I’d ever laid eyes on. He’d worked for it, he owned this. I didn’t own anything, not really. Anything in my possession was either bought by my foster parents, or brought from the world before. A world I wasn’t a part of anymore, and felt no real claim on. But this bike, this was here and now, and it came from no one but my brother. He told me to hop on, and I straddled it with trembling, giddy legs. I could feel the engine rumble against my entire body, and then I could feel the world turn into a blur.

We drove faster than I had ever gone in my life. My eyes trained hard on the speed gauge. I watched it crank further and further until I had to shut my eyes because the wind was ripping out tears. I held onto him for dear life. I felt his strong muscles as he tilted with the bike at every turn. He was bigger and stronger than when I’d last seen him. I wondered if the work had been kind to him. I wondered where he’d been staying this whole time. My brother did not accept charity. I just hoped he wasn’t calling somewhere under a bridge his home.

But I never got to find out, because this is the brother who knew how to keep me thinking about other things. He drove out, way out until we were spiralling around the mountainside, up enough to see the world lower and spread before our eyes. Streetlights and house lights and city lights scattered across the horizon as we finally slowed to a stop by a cliffside. The kickstand sprang out with a resounding crank, and I slid off the seat to step by the edge. There was a distant call to watch my footing, of course, as my brother buried his face in the bag at the end of his seat.

It was a marvel. Not just the view--not the view at all. I was finally aware of the time passing again. I could reach out and feel the minutes slip by as the wind spread through my fingers. It was fall. The air had started to get cold like this right before they had passed. Right before time had stopped for me. And here it was now, picking back up again, with a breeze that brought goosebumps to my skin that I reveled in. My brother was there to drop his jacket on my shoulders helpfully.

It was like the world had been waiting for us to come back.

“Hey, come on.” He passed something into my hands now, and I could feel the leather of the baseball glove before my eyes could make it out in the glow of the moonlight, and he already had one on to match. “Let’s play.”

I wondered if he’d let me keep the glove, when this was through. I wondered if keeping it could be like a ransom, a promise for him to come back and play with me again. We used to play catch all the time, him and me. I didn’t even like baseball. He’d drag me to games with him and Dad all the time, and flick my ear when I started to doze. One time, he was so busy trying to rouse me he didn’t notice the stray popfly coming at him, until it clobbered him right in the nose. He wouldn’t speak to me the rest of the night, and Dad and I called him Rudolph for a month. We stopped going to games together, but Rudolph started a nightly ritual of catch after that. He said the least I could do was help him catch the next stray ball.

And now, the ritual was on again. We played catch all that night, and I would hammer him with questions the whole way through, each one emphasized with a toss. He was good at dodging the personal stuff, or even sending it back to me. What are yourplans for the future? Are you planning on going to college? It wasn’t the same. I was thirteen, he was seventeen. I was still in the system. He, apparently, wasn’t. But this is my brother who knew how to play catch.

I did get some answers out, though. When I asked what he was going to do next, he let out a loud, exaggerated hum as the ball raced back towards me. I caught it and tossed it back in one motion.

“I think I’m gonna head to California after our visit.” His feet fell forward to catch this one. Then it was back to my hands.

“Lots of people there.” To him. Thwap.

“Lots of jobs, too.” To me. Thwap.

A pause between tosses. “Will you come back?”

He lowered his arm and looked thoughtful. The moon traced his figure in the darkness. Then, finally, “Nah. Next time, you’re gonna have to come to me.”

That was all he would say about it. The ball hurdled towards me as he shifted the subject. “How’s the foster family treating you?” he asked.

“You’ve gotten my letters.”

He had to shift to catch this one. I’d thrown it with a little less force, and he’d barely caught it on the edge of leather. Even so, there wasn’t a hiccup in his body as he tossed it back. “And you’ve been vague as hell.”

“It’s been fine. They’re quiet. They don’t bother me much.” Another toss too soft. “You never talked about your foster home, either.”

Where my pitch was weak, his came too hard, and I had to duck to avoid the ball hurtling at me. I heard a muttered “Shit, sorry,” as he trotted after it for me. From his rolled up sleeves, I spotted scars and burn marks. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen them, either.

He’d called me, once. A video call. It had been an impromptu thing, and we were only able to do it because he’d borrowed a laptop from a friend and holed up in a McDonald’s. The screen filled with the image of him under a glaring bright light over his booth. It had been the perfect spotlight for those same marks to reveal themselves every time he pushed his hair back, or reached to adjust the screen. Then, they had been fresh.

He never explained it, and I never asked. The possibility of answers scared me. If our caretakers had been switched, would those marks still be there? Would they be on me instead? What was the safety of my home compared to the uncertainty that was now his? The ball chucked between us as often as questions bounced in my head.

We started back only when the sky dipped the world into the cobalt of early dawn. The ride had a peace to it, a peace that flustered me as I found my eyes too ready to droop, to miss what little time I had left. Time was moving too fast now.

Too soon, I was standing back in front of the window I had left from the evening before. I could feel eyes boring into my back, because this is my brother that didn’t know how to say goodbye. I’m the brother that didn’t want to.

You shouldn’t go pushed at my throat, words trying to tug free.

“Hey,” he said, a dim voice to my ears. “Don’t cause trouble, okay?”

“You shouldn’t--”

He spoke over me, with the firmness of Dad but the empathy of Mom. Or at least, my notions of them at the time. They turned more into caricatures every day. “If I stick around,” he stated, “you’ll be at my heels.”

Indignant, I ducked my head to hide my flushing face. “I’m not a puppy.”

“Do better than I did. School, college, all that garbage. Even if you just age out of the system, even if you don’t get a family to show for this shit, you’ll only need to rely on yourself. You hear me?”

This is my brother that wanted me to do as he said, not as he did.

There may have been more, but with a surge of urgency I scurried through the window and shut the door, to muffle the sounds of the engine roar before they started. But the sound came anyway, and when it was gone, there was only the distant click of the clock on the wall.

Shrugging out of my clothes, I was struck with the realization as my brother’s jacket fell off my shoulders. He’d left it. A night this chilly, and he’d somehow neglected it. I pressed my nose to the collar, and his scent slid through. My shoulders eased from a tension I hadn’t realized I had. This was mine now. I looked between it and the wall clock, still doing nothing but breaking the silence with its tick.

But it did tick. Despite everything, it moved along.

I could map out dozens of facets of my brother. His comfort, his sense of justice, his anger, his sorrow, his impulsivity, his faults and his fears. All of it made the brother that was mine. The brother that was waiting for me.