“You saw the fight? Where the hell were you?” He dug around in the pocket of his sweatshirt and came out with a wrinkled joint. He pressed in the car lighter and waited, dangling the joint between his lips. “Naw, I got this yesterday. I can’t believe you didn’t notice before now. You’re the watcher, man, you notice everything.”
“Yesterday?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Some Mexican guy. I wanted to see if he could take me, that’s all. He turned out to be a serious disappointment.”
I said, “You think that’s a good idea? Fighting Mexicans?” I couldn’t tell if he was serious.
“I’ll fight anybody,” he said.
“Of course you will,” I said.
Right then, this dog—half Lab, half something else—came charging at the car, barking wildly, snapping at the tires, and I hit the brakes, slamming Win against the dashboard. The dog was obsessed with cars. He’d been run over half a dozen times and his durability was a sort of neighborhood legend. His bones, people said, regenerated like a lizard’s tail. Win and I used to sit on the curb, wait for Dad to come home from work, and wager chores on whether or not the dog would get hit. Usually, I was ready for him, speeding by before he had a chance to build blitz momentum but today, I was distracted. I wanted to put some distance between me and my brother.
“Damn dog,” Win said, getting himself straight in the seat. “I forgot about that fucker.” He checked the joint for damage, saw that it was intact, and resituated it in the corner of his mouth. He hung himself out the window and shouted, “Go on, now. Beat it, dog. Don’t make me get out of the car.”
I crept along until the dog gave up, pretty houses sliding by in slow motion. I could feel the tires turning beneath us. Win said, “That dog needs to get himself laid. One of these days his luck’s going to run out. Pow, man.” He smacked a forearm into his palm.
I turned right on Featherbed Road, our house at the end of the street. We grew up in this neighborhood and nothing much had changed. Same bricks, same people. I could see Mrs. Caldwell watering her lawn, silvery water arcing from the hose. In an hour or so, driveways would begin to fill with men returning from work, street-lamps would blink alive, one after another, gentling the twilight.
“You ever been with a girl?” he said.
I knew what he meant, and the answer was a resounding no. The closest I’d come to sex was a grudging spin-the-bottle kiss, which had been over before I could make my lips stop shaking. I wanted to conjure up a string of sexual exploits for him, to invent women of stunning beauty and refinement who’d given themselves up to me by the dozens, but I didn’t. I sensed that he would know whether or not I was telling the truth. I shook my head.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s a pain in the ass.”
He was looking at his hands, turning them over, pale, fragile-looking palms to ragged knuckles. You would have thought he’d never seen them before, the way he was staring, or that he had, suddenly and without a single lesson, discovered them capable of playing the piano.
“What do you care?”
“You’re my brother,” he said. “I was thinking I could give you a hand.” He paused, his words settling like ash. “You know, Camille might be convinced to help you out. She likes you, Jack.”
My wrists thumped. I felt like I was being offered a bribe.
“I couldn’t do that,” I said. “She’s your girlfriend.”
“It would only be the one night. It wouldn’t have to be charity or anything.” The car lighter popped out and Win touched it to the tip of his joint, paper crackling backward. “You could fight me for her, if that’s what you want.” He gave me a smile, then, smoke curling over his lip, his tongue working rapturously over the place where the rest of his tooth had been.
* * *
That night, my father caught me masturbating. Camille called for Win and when I answered, she said, “Rescue me, baby. I’m going crazy all alone.” I was in bed, supposedly reading my American history assignment, but really I was watching the ceiling fan turn above me, waiting for the mandatory two hours my parents had set aside for homework to be over. The textbook was in my lap and at the sound of her voice I felt an erection pressing up from beneath the book.
“Camille? It’s me, Jack,” I said. “I’ll get Win.”
“Oh hey, Jack,” she said. “You’ve got your brother’s voice. Wait a minute, listen to this.”
I heard rustling, then nothing, and I imagined her holding the phone up so I could listen to the quiet. She said, “What’d you hear?”
“Nothing.”
“Exactly,” she said. “Put my man on the phone.”
I yelled for Win and waited, listening to Camille’s steady breathing, until he came on the line. I hung up, unzipped my pants and closed my eyes, working hard, trying to picture myself giving it to Camille, but something wasn’t right. I kept seeing Win in my place, his chipped tooth gleaming in the light of my imagination. I’d forgotten to lock up and, right in the middle of things, the door swung open and there was my father, his mouth slack in surprise, the glare from my bedside lamp reflected on his glasses. I was stunned with humiliation. The hair on my neck quivered like insect legs.
He said, “Sorry, pal,” and closed the door. I heard his loafers tapping down the stairs, then stop and, after a moment, I heard him coming back. I hustled my pants together and this time he rapped on the door and waited until I said, “What?” before coming in and taking a seat at the foot of the bed. He didn’t look at me. He said, “I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything we needed to talk about.”
“Nope,” I said. “I’m sixteen, Dad.”
“I figured,” he said.
My history book was beside us, still open to the page, and my father picked it up. He gave it a look and said, “Bastogne. Nuts.” He chuckled to himself. I didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about; I just wanted him gone. You would’ve thought that he’d already forgotten about catching me with my dick in my hand.
“Anything else, Dad?”
“As a matter of fact, there is something I’d like you to help me with.” He tossed the book to the floor and pushed his fingertips beneath his glasses. He was still in his bank getup, his tie loosened, thrown back over his shoulder.
I said, “Right now?” but he ignored me.
“I was hoping you could tell me what’s going on with your brother,” he said, still not looking at me. He smoothed his tie between two fingers. “Your mother’s worried sick over Win. She doesn’t sleep at night.” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “I feel like I owe someone an apology.”
“Who, Dad?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Somebody.”
He rubbed his eyes again and, just for a second, I thought he was going to cry. I prayed silently that he wouldn’t. I felt sorry for him, not knowing anything, not knowing what to do about his son. It was awful to see him like that. What he wanted, I thought, was to talk to me for a while, the good son. He wanted to be reassured that he hadn’t made a complete hash of fatherhood, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. I considered telling him what I knew, which wasn’t much. Win had been fighting. I didn’t know why. He was still smoking dope, but that would come as no surprise. The thing was, I couldn’t figure out how it would help anybody for him to know. I could guess what would happen. There would be a blowup, serious shouting, and threats of violence with my mother’s tears all mixed in. But, when it was over, we would all be just as unhappy.
“Sorry,” I said. “I can’t help you.”
“That’s too bad,” he said, remotely. He patted me on the ankle and drifted down the hall, sort of dreamily, like he’d forgotten why he’d come. When he was gone, Win stuck his head in my room and said, “He asking about me?” I nodded, feeling like I was betraying a secret. He thumbed his chipped tooth and said, “Okay then.”
When I was seven years old, Win convinced me that if I stripped naked, clutched my penis, and whispered, “Youbaby, youbaby, youbaby, you,�
� over and over, I would become invisible. I wasn’t a complete sucker, but I was a kid, and my brother had an answer for every question. I was already the pride of the family, reading and writing and monkeying around with simple division, things that would make any mother proud. And Win was already Win. When my parents’ friends came over to visit, they asked about me first. It came as quite a shock to my mother and the bridge ladies, when I cruised into the room without a stitch on, my little kid balls tight with apprehension, chanting my perverted mantra. They scattered cards, kept the table between me and them. My mother was flattened. Her eyes glazed over, and her face went pale. She didn’t say a word.
I found Win in the backyard—he’d been watching through the window—lying in the grass, crippled with laughter. I wasn’t mad at him. I just couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong. How had they been able to see me? Win got himself together, made me sit beside him and explained that he had only been kidding. There was no way to turn yourself invisible. I was more disappointed than anything else. The yard had been recently cut and grass clippings were caught in his hair and stuck to his shirt where he’d been rolling around, laughing at me. I was glad to make him laugh.
“You’re right,” Win said. “It’d be nice if nobody could see you.”
I plucked the clippings from his hair and shoulders. I said, “Yeah.”
“That’s the trouble,” he said. “They can.”
It was Leo who told me Win was dealing. Sweet, fat, guileless Leo sat beside me in the cafeteria, where I was working on a ham and cheese sandwich, and said, “I saw your brother down in the parking lot selling marijuana this morning. I think that’s what he was doing. I thought that only happened at public school, but I saw him. Hey, are you coming over tomorrow night?” He touched the lenses of his glasses with two greasy fingertips, smudging them. Leo didn’t care that Win was my brother, and I didn’t think he was intending to do anything with his information, both of which I was grateful for. Leo had been unliked and unnoticed for so long, he’d gotten used to being ineffectual. The world went gladly on without him. Sometimes, I hated being his friend. He had given up, resigned himself to being unnecessary. I felt implicated by his complacency. But at that moment, the cafeteria ablaze with voices, Leo telling me, “There’s good movies on cable tomorrow,” if I’d been called upon to choose between him and my brother, I would have taken Leo in a heartbeat.
I let Leo have my sandwich and hurried down to the lot, but Win was already gone. I stood there a minute, among the somnolent cars, my heart flopping, feeling like I wanted something to happen. It wasn’t that Win was selling pot; he could do whatever he wanted, for all I cared, as long as he didn’t do it in my life. I had enough trouble getting along without him. I piled in the car and headed home, hauling ass through the neighborhood. The dog made a rush at me, his body low and hard, but I was too fast for him to catch. I lurched through the front door, stormed back to Win’s room, and found him kneeling on the bathroom floor, nursing his swollen hands in a toilet full of ice. At the sight of him like that, his mouth tight, his eyes wide and innocent with pain, all the anger I had been feeling evaporated.
He said, “They hurt too much to turn on the faucet.”
He showed me his hands, cradled them on his belly like broken-winged birds. His knuckles were cracked and bloody, the bones shattered, his fingers dappled with bruise colors, as flaccid and puffy as wet bread. There was a crust of blood rimming his nostrils, a runny scab at his hairline, and a bluing lump on his right cheekbone. We were alone, Dad still at work, Mom out running errands or something. The house was quiet.
“Dad’s gonna shit himself,” I said.
“Too late to worry about that,” he said, his voice thick, like his tongue was swollen. He did a wincing grin. The phone was ringing in another room.
“I don’t even wanna know what happened,” I said. “I don’t wanna have any secrets to keep. I’m gonna get in enough trouble for leaving school.”
“Afraid the old man’ll get it out of you?” Win said. “He’s a pro, that’s for sure. I’m surprised he doesn’t have a chair in the basement with a bare bulb dangling over it. For interrogations, get it?”
“We’ve got to get you out of here,” I said.
He shook his head. “Nothing we can do.”
“They can’t see you like this, Win,” I said. “Not so soon. It’d kill ’em.”
I gripped his elbow and helped him off the floor. He wobbled a little on his feet, righted himself, then yanked his arm free. Win wouldn’t let me take him to the emergency room so I just got him to the car and started driving. I was thinking about when my father brought him home from Marshall, both of them emerging from the car, slump-shouldered and bewildered like smashup survivors. How hushed and sad that ride must have been. Out of nowhere, Win said, “Camille hates Muhammad Ali.” His voice was strange, too timid and small for his body all of a sudden. “She thinks he converted to Islam to keep himself out of Vietnam. And, if you knew Camille, you’d know that was an unforgivable offense in her eyes.” He settled his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. He looked so unfamiliar to me that, just for a moment, I couldn’t remember his name.
I drove him up to Marshall, stopping on the way to let Camille know we were coming, and the three of us stashed ourselves away at the barn. He had his head in Camille’s lap, was holding his hands up to see them better. They looked diseased in the gray evening light. He had taken a couple of bong hits, wedging the tube between his wrists, while Camille worked the lighter, and was feeling easy. He kept saying, “You should see the other guys.” Camille was stroking his head, her fingers snagging in his hair. She was still wearing her cadet uniform—pine nettle green slacks, a soup-brown tunic with her rank pinned into the collar, and blocky black shoes, polished to a reflective shine. I couldn’t stop myself from pacing.
“What are we gonna do?”
“I don’t know,” Camille said. “The hospital is still a good idea.”
“Bad idea,” Win said. “I’m fine, okay. You should—”
“I don’t want to hear about it, Win,” I said. “I don’t care what you did.”
“Jack’s in charge,” he said.
He tilted his head back to look at Camille. She smiled at him and covered his eyes with her hand. It was still a few hours from dark, but the moon was up, a flat white disc nestled among the branches of the trees. I said, “We can’t just leave him like this. We have to do something.”
“What do you have in mind?” Camille said.
“I don’t know.”
“I know,” Win said. “You two have sex. I’ll watch.”
Camille slapped his chest hard, and he grunted. I said, “It’s okay, Win. The party’s over. You can quit being an asshole now.”
“Seriously,” he said. “I told you I’d ask her. Hey, Camille, how would you feel about having sex with my little brother? It’s okay with me, if it’s okay with you.”
“Stop it, Win,” she said, getting to her feet, dumping Win’s head from her lap.
“He’s a virgin,” Win said.
I couldn’t look at her. I was thinking that somehow she knew about the other night; she could see it in the blood hurrying to my temples, knew that she was in my thoughts, when my father caught me. I remembered Leo, what he’d told me, and I was angry again, my throat and shoulders tight.
Camille said, “Win, don’t make trouble. You’ve done enough.”
“I promised Jack,” he said. “I told him I would help him.”
“I don’t need your help. You need help,” I said.
“C’mon, Jack. Who’s kidding who?”
He drew himself up, slowly, painfully.
“Win, stop,” Camille said. “He’s your brother.”
“A genetic fluke,” Win said. “Look at him. He’s pathetic.”
That’s when I hit him. It wasn’t much, a reflex. He took a step toward me, and I rapped him in the mouth, snapping his head back. For this one terrifying ins
tant, the world went quiet, and it wasn’t so much like silence rushing in, as all the sound sucking out, like an undertow. He just looked at me, smiling, blood running in the spaces between his teeth. His arms were at his sides, palms turned out, his chin raised just slightly, sallow light playing on his face and hands. This is where my memory goes funny on me. I know that something came loose in me. I remember the feeling, like shrugging away old skin. I know that I hit him again, harder, wanting to hurt him, and I kept hitting him, over and over. And I know that he didn’t resist. He couldn’t resist. His hands were useless. But in my memory, Win is talking as I hit him, saying “That’s it,” and, softly, “Yes,” and, “There.” He keeps standing for a long time, staggering, dropping to his knees, but always regaining his feet. Camille tries to pull me away, but I shake her loose and beat my brother back down. I can feel the bone and cartilage in his nose coming apart beneath my fist, the pulpy lids of his eyes. In my uncertain memory, he keeps whispering, and I keep hitting him, my hands burning, until he runs out of things to say.
My father met us at the emergency room. When he came in, Camille and I were sitting in the waiting room, drinking coffee. I had called him at work, so Mom didn’t know yet. I hadn’t told him any details on the phone, just that Win was hurt. He stopped a few feet away, asked me where they were keeping him. I stood and pointed, and he stalked off down the hall. A black woman was sitting across from us, her hair done in cornrows, and I watched her cheating at solitaire. Whenever she got into trouble, she’d just peek under the stacks on the table, find the card she needed, and slip it into the deck, real sneaky, like she was fooling herself.
When my father came back, he said, “Jesus. What happened? His face is all bandages.” He took the coffee from me, our knuckles brushing, and I could see his hands trembling. “Where’s the doctor? I want to talk to the doctor.”
“The doctor is hiding,” the woman said, looking at us, the beads in her hair ticking. “He’s dodging work, like everybody else.”
“Thank you,” my father said. Then to me, “What happened, Jack?”
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