Brothersong

by TJ Klune

  I went into the house. Gavin and Mom were in the kitchen. They sang along with the radio. Mom was dancing, Gavin sitting on the counter, bouncing his head in time with the music.

  They turned to me when I leaned against the doorway. Mom reached over and turned down the music. I arched an eyebrow. “Well?”

  “Well what?” Mom asked, as if she didn’t know.

  I rolled my eyes. “Are you going to share what the hell you two were up to that was so secret you couldn’t tell me?”

  “Not if you continue with that tone, we won’t.”

  “Yeah,” Gavin said. “Lose the tone.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I muttered.

  Mom nodded toward me. “Do you want to show him? You might as well. He’ll be insufferable otherwise. You know how he gets.”

  “I do,” Gavin said. He gnawed on his bottom lip. “You… think it’s okay?”

  “I know it is,” Mom said warmly. “He’ll think so too. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m feeling creative. I have a new painting I’ve been working on. I’d hit a roadblock, but I think I’ve found a way beyond it.” She kissed me on the cheek before disappearing up the stairs.

  I turned back to Gavin. His hands were curled into fists in his lap. I was starting to get concerned. I walked toward him slowly. He spread his legs, letting me step between them. I pressed my forehead against his. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

  “Like you’d let it go,” he mumbled.

  “I would if you asked me to.”

  “It’s….”

  “Important?”

  He nodded.

  “Big?”

  He nodded again. “It was… my idea. And I asked Mom first, and she said it was good.”

  I forced down my reaction at him saying Mom. It was something he’d started a few weeks ago, and the smile she’d given him when he’d said it the first time had been blinding. “If she said it’s good, then it is.”

  He sighed. “I think so too. I didn’t…. I wanted it to be a surprise.” His eyes widened. “If you don’t like it, I can change it back and—”

  “Gavin.”

  He scowled at me.

  “Just tell me.”

  “Not tell,” he muttered. “Show.”

  He lifted his hips from the counter and reached back to pull out his wallet. It had a picture of a wolf on it. Jessie had given it to him. He adored it for some weird reason. He opened it up and pulled out a plastic card from one of the sleeves. He set the wallet on the counter, holding the card against his chest.

  “It’s big,” he whispered. “It’s important. And it’s mine. Because you gave it to me. I asked you a question once. What you wanted. Do you remember what you told me?”

  My skin was buzzing. “I said I wanted to feel like I’m awake.”

  He nodded. “I feel that way now. I’m awake because of you. And a name is a name is a name. I have it now. I know who I am.”

  “Who are you?”

  He turned the plastic card over.

  It was a driver’s license. Such a tiny thing in the grand scheme of things.

  He was scowling in the picture. Of course he was.

  But it wasn’t important.

  All that mattered was the name in black letters.

  Gavin Walsh Bennett.

  I stared at it in wonder. I said, “This….”

  “This,” he said.

  I kissed him with all I had. He grunted in surprise, but then he was laughing, laughing, laughing against my mouth, and I swallowed it down, made it a part of me. It was frantic, it was real, it was mine, and I lifted him off the counter. He wrapped his legs around my waist, the driver’s license forgotten on the floor. I carried him up the stairs, and even though he bitched about it, I knew he didn’t mean it.

  I showed him then, in that warm summer afternoon, the sunlight catching motes of dust that hung suspended in our room.

  I showed him what he meant to me.

  I showed how I loved him so.

  Every piece.

  Every part.

  I said his name again and again, like a prayer.

  As my body shuddered and shook, he whispered in my ear that this was real, that we were awake, and Carter, Carter, can you feel it? Can you hear it?

  I could.

  A drumbeat of a heart at peace.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  ON A SUNDAY IN THE FALL, we gathered as we always did. It was tradition.

  Jessie was in the kitchen with Mom, standing over the sink, peeling potatoes. Dominique leaned against the counter beside her, reaching out to touch the new scar on Jessie’s shoulder as if she couldn’t believe it was real.

  Mom stood at the stove, telling Joe to take the cutlery to the table outside. He told her just because he wasn’t an Alpha anymore that didn’t mean she could tell him what to do. She smacked him upside the head. He immediately started gathering the cutlery.

  The window above the sink was open. Just outside, Chris and Tanner were setting the table in the backyard. They were bickering, but when they thought no one was looking, they smiled quietly at each other.

  Bambi sat at the table, Joshua in her lap, trying to shove everything he could reach into his mouth. Rico cheered him on, even though Bambi was glaring at him.

  Robbie and Kelly stood in front of the grill, pretending they knew what they were doing. Robbie pushed his glasses back on his nose and looked relieved when Gordo and Mark shoved between them, telling him in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t allowed to be around fire at any point.

  Joe sat on the back porch with Gavin, listening to him talk about how he’d learned how to take apart the engine of a motorcycle and put it back together all on his own.

  “Where’s Ox?” I asked.

  Mom nodded toward the front of the house. “Why don’t you go get him? It’s almost time.” Then she leaned over Jessie toward the open window. “Gordo! Make sure you don’t let Robbie touch the lighter fluid. I like his eyebrows as they are.”

  Robbie threw up his hands in defeat.

  I walked through the house to the front door. It was wide open. The leaves on the trees were gold and red, autumn in full swing. The air had a bite to it. Soon we would be in the grips of winter again. The moon was fat and full, hanging suspended in a deep blue sky. Tonight we’d run as a pack.

  I found Ox standing in front of the blue house, hands clasped behind him. He turned his head slightly as I approached, a small smile on his face.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey.”

  “Dinner’s almost ready.”

  He nodded but didn’t reply. I stood shoulder to shoulder with him, the bonds between us plucking like a string. It felt warm and sweet.

  Birds sang in the trees.

  A herd of deer moved off in the distance. I wanted to chase them. Hunt them. There’d be time for that later.

  Ox said, “I was thinking.”

  “About?”

  He shrugged. “Everything. And nothing, I suppose.”

  I sighed. “Werewolf Jesus like always, then.”

  He chuckled. “Something like that. Can I tell you what I’m thinking about?”

  “Yeah, man. Of course.”

  He said, “I’m thinking about this life of ours.”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s beautiful. It stings. It’s astonishing. It hurts. And I often wonder what the point of it all is. Do you know what I decided?”

  I shook my head slowly.

  “This,” he said, taking my hand. “You. Me. The pack. This place. The people of Green Creek. That’s the point, I think. We love because we can. We live because we’ve fought too hard to ever stop. And here we are, you and me. Together. In a moment, we’ll go inside and join the others. We’ll eat. We’ll laugh. We’ll tell stories about our day, inconsequential things that mean little to anyone but us. That’s the point, I think.”

  I nodded, unable to speak through the lump
in my throat.

  He looked at the blue house. “Once upon a time, my mother sat at the table in the kitchen of that house, papers spread out before her. They were for a divorce, though I didn’t know it then. I watched as she signed her name over and over again. And when she finished, she looked up at me, and I remember thinking how bright she was. Like she’d been transformed. She said, ‘And that’s that.’ It was so profound, though I didn’t understand just how much. Not then. I do now. Three words. And that’s that. We danced, after. It was a good day.”

  I squeezed his hand. “And that’s that.”

  He grinned. “Exactly. I knew you’d get it.”

  I looked at him. “What if something else comes?”

  “Then we face it like we always have. Together. Come on. They’re waiting for us. It’s tradition.”

  I followed him back inside the house.

  Before I walked through the door, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

  I whirled around.

  For a moment I thought I saw a white wolf in the trees.

  But before I could call out to it, it was gone.

  “And that’s that,” I whispered.

  WE ATE UNTIL our bellies were full.

  We laughed until we had tears in our eyes.

  But most of all, we lived. And that was the point.

  It was in the way that Gavin held my hand under the table while he talked with his brother about their work in the garage.

  It was in the way Mark smiled his secret smile, gaze never far from Gordo.

  It was in the way Rico said that Joshua would make an excellent wolf when he was old enough, and how Bambi said in no uncertain terms that he was not allowed to pressure their son into anything.

  It was in the way Chris and Tanner surprised absolutely no one when they announced they were going to move in together.

  It was in the way Jessie waved her arms around wildly as she told us a story about the evils of her teenage students, accidentally hitting Dominique with the back of her hand.

  It was in the way Robbie and Kelly held a whispered conversation that we all pretended we couldn’t hear.

  It was in the way Joe groaned when I recounted the story of the french fry walrus yet again, because that shit never got old.

  It was in the way Gavin and Mom were already making plans for the Thanksgiving menu, even though it was over a month away.

  And it was in the way Ox sat, taking it all in with that Zen Alpha bullshit he did so well. He was quiet, watching each of us in turn as the table was cleared. He didn’t speak, but he didn’t have to. We could all hear him anyway.

  As the sky darkened, the moon bright in a growing field of stars, he rose from the table.

  We all quieted as we looked to him.

  He said, “Thank you. For everything. For letting me be here with all of you. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

  “What do we do now?” Joe asked him.

  Ox closed his eyes. “Now? We run. Come. Let us see what we’ll see. I have a good feeling about it.”

  He turned, stripping his shirt off over his head. Black hair sprouted up along his back and shoulders, muscle and bone beginning to grind.

  The others followed suit, Jessie and Bambi trailing after them.

  Gavin and I were the last.

  I looked over at him as our wolves began to howl. “Ready?”

  He kissed me on the cheek with a loud smack. “Ready.”

  And I

  I am

  wolf

  i am wolf

  forest i can smell the

  forest and it’s you and it’s me

  run GavinMateLove run with me

  run

  hunt

  feel the moon

  feel it pull

  it’s ours all of this is ours

  because we are

  we are the goddamn bennett pack

  and our song

  our song

  will

  always

  be

  heard

  TO JOE’S FUTURE

  Hello, Ox—

  Today is a good day, as good as any to put my thoughts down into words. But before I say what I need to say about my son Joe, I need to tell you a story. Please forgive a father for his meandering thoughts. I am finding this harder than I expected it to be.

  I wrote you a letter once.

  Oh, not you specifically. It was meant for the idea of you, the one who Joe would choose to love, would choose to spend his life with. I have done the same for Carter and Kelly, though theirs will be less specific as I don’t know what the future holds for them. The letter I wrote originally for whoever you would be now seems… lacking. And that simply will not do.

  I am writing this second letter because I know you now.

  You are eighteen years old today. Soon, you and Carter will be graduating high school and beginning the next stage of your life. And soon I will travel to Caswell to store this letter with the others I’ve written for Carter and Kelly’s future until there comes a day—far from now—when it will be time for my words to be read. It seems as safe a place as any and is strangely fitting with all Joe will become.

  I worry about that.

  I worry that I haven’t been the best father I could be to him.

  Expectation has a weight to it, heavy and cumbersome.

  Joe, as you are aware, will be Alpha. I remember what that was like for me, being told by my father at a very young age who I would become and what it would mean for me. For my family. For all the wolves. While I know this is the way of things, I can’t help but think I’d take this burden from him if I could. The mark of a good parent is that they always want the best for their children, putting their needs above all others. Am I doing the right thing? I wrestle with that thought constantly. Lizzie says I underestimate him. She may be right. She usually is.

  Still….

  There are days when I wonder if this life, this purpose, is something Joe truly wants. He says he does, but I think it’s because I’m his father and he wants to make me proud. Does he know I would be proud of him regardless? I hope so. I tell him as much as often as I can, as I do my other sons.

  Here is what I know about Joe:

  He was born, and I was terrified. I didn’t know how it was possible for me to make more room in my heart for him. I thought I’d have to lose the parts meant for Carter and Kelly, especially when we realized that Joe was different than his brothers. I needn’t have worried, not about that at least. There was, much to my surprise and joy, more than enough room for him. He carved himself a place within me, tucked neatly between my wife, my brother, and Carter and Kelly.

  He didn’t cry when I held him for the first time.

  (Lizzie will tell you I was frantic about it; I could scoff and tell you I most certainly wasn’t, but that would be a lie.)

  He watched me with those big eyes of his.

  And I was lost to him.

  As you know, he was taken from us.

  I blame myself for that. I was blinded by the belief that I could see the good in the people I chose to surround myself with. People I trusted. That was a mistake, and not my first, nor my last.

  I cannot begin to describe the terror that filled those weeks. It would take a much greater man than I to ever put all those feelings into words, so I will say the bare minimum. The man who dared to touch my son deserves no more than that.

  Joe was returned to us, and he was a shell of who he used to be.

  I tried everything: begging, crying, shouting, holding him, loving him, whispering little things into his ear. Nothing worked.

  As a last-ditch effort, I gave up all that I’d worked for.

  It was the easiest decision I’ve ever made.

  We returned to Green Creek, the home I’d loved and cherished. I hoped the territory would allow Joe to heal. I should have known that it wouldn’t be enough. It didn’t need to be, because the most remarkable thing happened.

  You
came into our world.

  You know what happened next. There is no need to rehash that here. I have much to tell you, and the hour grows late.

  Joe made his choice. I should have stopped him. But I couldn’t, and for that, I’m sorry. You didn’t know what it meant, the gifting of a wolf of stone, and how could you? For all you knew, we were just a normal family, and there was something so terribly wonderful about that. We did not do right by you. In fact, it could be argued we took advantage of you. I don’t know if that makes me any better than the man who hurt my son in the first place. I’m sorry.

  Joe is kind. His empathy for all things is staggering. Once, when he was four years old, he found a wounded bird in the forest surrounding Caswell. He came to me in tears, asking me why the bird couldn’t fly away and be with its friends. I told him that was sometimes the way of things, that for all the beauty in the world, there were harsh lessons to be learned. The bird would most likely not survive. I tried to take it from him, from the shoebox he’d put it in, but he wouldn’t let me. He said he would help it heal, that he would take care of it until it could return to the sky.

  And he did. He did just that.

  For weeks he was diligent in its care: he fed it, he gave it water. His mother helped him weave a little nest of twigs and bits of string. I prepared for the day the bird died, ready to impart on my son the cruel but necessary lesson of death and all that it entails.

  The bird healed.

  It gained strength, and on a sunny day, he took it outside. He set the box on the ground and told it that it was free, that it could go home.

  It did.

  It flew away.

  Joe watched it until it disappeared into the trees.

  Then he turned to me and said, “See, Daddy? See? It just takes time.”

  How momentous that moment was. How humbling.

  It just takes time. I’ve never forgotten the lesson my son taught me.

  “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

  Joe is sarcastic, a byproduct of his brothers. If God exists, he or she must have a sharp sense of humor to give me such mouthy children. They are aggravating and make me want to pull my hair out at times. But then they’ll look at me with the same eyes as their mother, and I’ll know they are our greatest creation.