The Brothers

He tied the knot tight around his brother's wrists and thread the rope through the loop and pulled it tighter again. It took only a few moments for the skin on the boy's hands to turn a mottled blue. 

It’s too tight, the boy said. 

It ain’t. 

The elder brother turned away from him and hoisted himself up into the low-hanging branches of the weeping willow which stood lonesome amidst the prairie. With the tail end of the rope in his mouth now, the elder brother scrambled upwards. The bark and the branches were dead and pulled apart and crumbled in his hands. His fingers sweeping and searching and pulling, he found a sturdy branch and tied a hitch-knot around it. Cautiously, he ambled back down the tree and dropped to the grass.

It’s too tight, the boy said.

Shut up.

 

The elder brother took off his satchel and knelt beside the boy, who was now slouched against the trunk of the willow. The boys’ eyes were swollen and dry and looking off somewhere else. 

Here, the elder brother said. He dug out a canister of water and shook it.

Ain’t much in it so use it wisely, he said, and threw it down onto the boy’s lap. 

The boy’s eyes were still fixed on some place further away and his brother turned and followed the boy’s gaze to see nothing but the hills rolling atop of each other, onwards into the sunset. 

 

In one breath it was the evening and the next it was night. Night of the darkest kind, the stars hidden behind the swollen nimbus clouds and a faint outline of a moon that may or may not have been. A night of nothingness. Of no light or sound, no wind through the tree or crickets on the witch-grass. As the elder brother lay on the ground, a few paces from the tree, he had a strange sensation that the sun had set and taken the rest of the world with it. 

He checked his satchel for the Colt and ran his fingers along the chamber to check that it was loaded. Two bullets. He looked across to where the tree had been before and saw nothing. He thought, the sun has taken my brother too. How much easier that would have been. 

On the cold iron of the revolver’s grip he could feel his own palm-sweat. He could smell it, the bitter, damp, dirty-coin smell of the metal. 

A voice then from the darkness. How much longer? 

Somewhere to his left. The boy’s voice was haggard and gravelly. 

A few days, the elder brother said.

How many days?

Maybe four. 

Maybe three? If we are fast?

Maybe. 

Sniffling then and the pop of the canister and the glugging of water.

I’m hungry, the boy said.

I know.

Sniffling again and, after a few moments, the soft purr and snore. How childlike it was and in the blinding darkness, the elder brother could have believed it to be a newborn under that tree.

Before he turned onto his side, he checked the revolver again and packed it away and held the satchel close to his chest. To his surprise, and almost disdain, he felt tears of his own welling behind his eyes. This darkness made children of the best men.

 

The day came quickly which told the elder brother that he had slept. He dreamt of nothing. The sky a pale blue canvas and above him, a flock of cranes appeared as an arrowhead gliding far above. He hoisted himself up onto his feet and pulled the satchel over his shoulder and made his way toward the tree. 

The boy and that nowhere-stare. His eyes glazed as he sat against the trunk.

The elder brother snapped his fingers. Did you sleep?

I don’t know, the boy said.

Well you did or you didn’t.

I didn’t.

The elder brother dug the pistol from the satchel and tucked it into his belt line and made his way toward the boy, stepping over him and up into the tree. Once he reached the knot on the branch he untied it and scrambled down the trunk and onto the crest of the hill.

 

Boy first and brother in tow and that’s how they made tracks across the fields. The rope undone from the boy’s wrists now, so he could walk free. The rope folded neatly and placed in the satchel on his shoulder.

The elder brother watched ahead as his little brother picked and clawed at the fresh-welts on his wrists. The rope burned deep and the flesh around his too-white skin had turned a searing red.  

Stop pickin, the elder brother called ahead. 

The boy let his hands drop by his sides, let out a sigh and continued onwards. 

Twenty paces between them, no more and no less. The elder brother made sure of it.

When the boy slowed to a shambling pace, so did he. 

And, if the boy marched onwards ahead, he kept pace. 

Once, as the made their way through a tangled wall of shrubbery by a forest’s edge, the boy turned back and came upon the elder brother and the elder brother tried to remain calm but toppled back over his own feet and, with flailing hands pulled the Colt from his waist and accidentally fired off a shot. Starlings erupted from the trees and beat their wings frantically in the air and the elder brother's heart beat faster again he pointed the gun at the boy with hands that were not his. 

The boy had collapsed into tears.

 He said, I was just coming back to find another way through.

You have to give me warning. 

Why? The boy cried.

Because you know why. 

 

They marched in formation until they came upon a creek running through the field. Trees stooped over the babbling water from the bankings. 

The boy said, there’s a creek. That’s why I’m stopping.

Alright, the elder brother said. He hadn’t reached for the pistol but made note of its position, cold against the skin of his hip. 

The boy looked down on the brook from the raised grass banking and leaned out over the water, looking left and right along the stream. 

It’s not deep, he said. I reckon it’s not deep.

Then go on across, the elder brother said, waiting behind him.

The boy took his shoes off and tossed them onto the opposite side. Tentative, he let his foot fall beneath the surface and, almost instantly, he was pulling short, sharp breaths through a crack in his lips and goosebumps spread like a rash across his arms.

 It’s cold, he said. 

The water coming up over his calves and knees. And he hoped it would stop and plateau but it just got deeper and now the soft-running creek was swallowing his ribs and chest. The current soft but tugging at his balance. His arms in the air and now he craned his head back as the brown, soily water came up over his neck and ears.

I taught you how to swim, the elder brother shouted. 

I can’t mind how to do it, the boy said. 

The elder brother watched nervously. A jittering beat in his throat turned to a thunderous pounding in his temples.

As the boy fought for air, so too did he: the air itself being carried away with the river.

He furled and unfurled both his fists as he watched the boy wade deeper. He reached into his belt line and pulled the revolver out. A bar of soap in his sweaty hands.

The current nudging at the boy’s body. Nudge. Nudge. Beneath the water his tip-toes clawing at the miry riverbed. 

He was getting close to the other side until he wasn’t. The final nudge too-much, and he was off, splashing, flailing down the river. Low-hanging branches from the banking trees dipped their fingers into the water around him and he grasped at them. None proved strong enough and there was a storm of falling wood around him now and his hands lacerated and splintered and he screamed for his brother. 

I’ll follow you, his brother shouted. Just get out when you can and I’ll find you. Christ. Jesus Christ. On your back! Float on your back!

He put his hands on his head. Christ, he said again. He put the pistol in his satchel and tied it tight around his shoulders and set off along the river’s side.