by Cote Smith
“Are you close?” I asked him.
“I think so,” my dad said. “Now grab your bag. I’ll take you home.”
* * *
The feeling in my chest was the lake without the dread. It was more excitement than fear, more last day of school than first. My dad could not drive fast enough; the streets were eternal. There seemed an unending number of houses and buildings, all in my way, all telling me to slow down, asking in Rick’s voice, Where’s the fire? Maybe that’s what the feeling was, inside my chest. Something I had to put out, that would burn until I saw my brother and told him the Stranger was nearly caught. There was nothing to worry about.
When we finally pulled into the parking lot I forgot to tell my dad goodbye. I didn’t answer when he said, Your mother’s waiting inside, right?, and I didn’t say I loved him. There was no time, there was a fire. There was me slamming the cruiser door, me sprinting the sidewalk, shouldering through the pea-green door. The stairs were as long as the city’s streets. They belonged to a tower, not a two-story apartment. I braved through. I climbed the ladder higher and higher, ignoring the flames, the thick musk of the smoking lady’s smoke. And then I was at the door, and I was ready for whatever great thing was about to happen.
That my brother wasn’t there didn’t make sense. It didn’t fit the story my brain had worked so hard to tell me. I was a hero ready to play my part, but no one else got the memo. There was a note in the kitchen, which I skimmed, something about my mother having to run out. To where and for how long it didn’t say, and I didn’t care. I crushed it in my hand and searched the rest of the apartment, the bedrooms I knew were empty. What was left but to look for clues, to pretend if I put the pieces together, they would all add up. There were new fingerprints, etched in the dust. In our bedroom, shirts missing. Shoes. My brother’s favorite toys. The man torn between his family and revenge was long gone. He had chosen doom.
In the bathroom a towel was missing. A toothbrush. My brother’s trunks were taken from the tub. I sat on the toilet and put my head in my hands. I closed my eyes and tried to think it through. I held up all the missing items in my mind. I put them in my brother’s weekend bag. I put the bag on my brother’s shoulders and, with a cry, sent him down the street.
* * *
All that was left was the pool.
The apartment was empty, the laundry room humming but the same. Outside, the summer was its hottest. A hot wind shook the trees but offered no relief. I took the longest way possible around the other apartment building before finally taking a peek, seeing the thing I was most afraid to see.
Slicing the pie, I saw my brother. I poked my head around the far apartment building and I saw him. I saw Chris. They were not in the pool. They were behind it. They were at the top of the little hill and they were facing the woods. My brother had his bag around his shoulder, just as I had imagined, and was looking up at Chris, like a son would a father, like I would my brother. Chris put his arm around my brother. He squeezed him close. He took a look around, and as I saw his head twisting in my direction, I hid. I dissolved myself into the apartment bricks and prayed he had not seen me.
I caught my breath against the wall. I told myself to count to ten, then slice another piece of the pie. But like so many times before, when my brother was the hider and I was the seeker, I didn’t count as high as I was supposed to. Because I couldn’t wait. I had to look. I had to find him. I skipped a few.
If I had counted all the way to ten, I would have missed what happened next. I wouldn’t have seen Chris take my brother’s hand, hold his arm out, as if to say, This way, please. Are you ready? My brother nodded, but his mouth didn’t open. He stepped toward the woods, took one last look back. If I had counted to ten, if I hadn’t skipped three, five, and seven, I would have missed that look. That face that was so familiar. If I had counted to ten, I would have had no idea that my brother was afraid.
* * *
Many tens ticked away before I decided to act. How many it was hard to say. I was not counting. I was staring, at the hole in the world my brother had disappeared into. The door in the woods Chris had opened and taken him through. Magic.
What could I do? I could walk to the pool. OK. I could climb the little hill, stand before the door. Done. But then what? I could turn around, yes, the same way my brother had done. And I could wonder. Not about the things he was thinking; I didn’t want those thoughts. No, I wanted to know what was next. I wanted to know whether or not I should follow. My hand shielded my eyes from the sun, and I found our apartment. Our sliding glass doors. I could go inside, I realized, and call my mother, at Rick’s or at work or wherever. I could call my dad. The police. But what would happen in the meantime? Where would Chris take my brother, while a phone cried in an empty room?
In the end, it was not that much different from my first dive in the pool. I faced the trees and I squared my shoulders. I took a deep breath and told myself a story. About me. About my long-lost brother, separated at birth when our family was lost at sea.
He is out there, I said.
He is waiting for you.
I stepped into the trees, the story’s whisper tickling my ear.
Find him, it said. You have to find him.
* * *
Like my first dive, as soon as I stepped into the woods, I knew I had not fallen in right. Or, I had fallen in OK, but was in a place that was too big for me. Like the deep end, this was a place I didn’t belong. The trees were not the trees surrounding the golf course, loose and spread out. These were longer, thicker with leaves and needles, and much closer together. Some locked limbs or leaned into each other like they were sharing secrets. Insects buzzed from places unseen, alerting the world of my presence, warning the rest of the woods, and Chris.
I didn’t have a plan. Not a real one, other than to run. To push my way through brush and grass until I caught sight of my brother. Our dad once taught us how to tail a suspect, but I couldn’t remember how, not with my heart drowning my head, my chest swimming with worry. Only small pieces of memory found their way through. Don’t get too close … Blend in as best you can … Never work alone …
I paused, out of breath, and let the rest come back to me. Never work alone. That always surprised me. A good tail, our dad said, works with a team: two or three partners to pick up the pursuit in case the mark makes you. If one of you gets too close, if the suspect gets suspicious, fall back, let another follow. But won’t he see us? Won’t he notice us both? No, he said. People are dumb. Most focus on one thing at a time. They get so fixed on one idea, they ignore the obvious other.
I ran some more, and for the first few minutes, none of what I remembered mattered. I didn’t see anyone, any signs of Chris or my brother. I saw trees, bushes. I saw the sun disappear behind clouds, reappear heavy on my neck. I grew tired. My run became a walk, and I could feel the ache in my feet. In the movies, people kept running. They never ran out of breath. They tripped. They fell, flipped over on their hands and feet like a crab, and watched the axe fall on the last of their lives.
Keep going, my story told me. You’re so close. I can see the shore.
I looked at my legs, these useless paddles. I looked back at where I came from, to see how much of the sea I’d swum. But I couldn’t see my way back. I couldn’t see anything. The trees had swallowed everything behind me. There’s only forward, the story said. There’s only Chris, your brother, and the end.
A fat gust of air ruffled my shirt, moved on, and the sea calmed. I took a long breath in, out, and began to row.
* * *
I changed from tens to twenties, to hundreds. Count to one hundred, I told myself, and if you don’t see anything, run home. After the first hundred, I stopped and looked around for clues, for bent bush limbs or a secret signal fingered in the mud. There was nothing. No paths. The woods were untouched. When I came to the second hundred, I stopped again, but not as long. When I came to the third, the fourth and fifth, I didn’t stop at all. I stopped counti
ng before I gave up. I let a last number go, something in the high hundreds, but kept on walking. How long I’d been in the woods there was no way to tell, but it felt like forever and a second at the same time. Whichever it was, it became clear to me that the time needed for my sea story to tell itself had expired. Somewhere, in a world weirder and happier than my own, I was reunited with my brother. I braved a storm and crashed a shore, and in the morning I stumbled from my wreckage to find him sunbathing on the beach, dreaming up a list of moves to do off a nearby waterfall.
But in this world, under these trees, I sat down and cried. Softly, as if I might waken the woods. I pulled my knees to my face and sobbed, louder this time, not caring who heard. When my eyes were spent, I lifted my head from my legs. The wet I left behind was a blob on my bony knee. I let my mind play the cloud game and tried to make a shape. Something that would cheer me up, replace my sea story. Something that would tell me to get on my feet, to keep moving. All I could think of, though, was the shape the chalk kid had drawn what seemed long ago. Before I learned the secrets of the Stranger. Before the kid and mom’s apartment was robbed. Before Sandy and Rick, my dad, my mom, and everything else.
In the end I could make no shapes out of the pool on my leg or the chalk kid’s sketch. No whales or hippos, ships or pirates, no secret islands in the sea. Nothing made sense, and all that was left was to keep going. To wipe my leg and walk on.
* * *
What felt like hours passed. I found footprints and they were my own. I was walking in circles, with no idea how to go home. It shouldn’t be this hard, I kept telling myself. They weren’t that far ahead. I started in a different direction. I saw trees I hadn’t seen before, creeks I prayed were new. The sun glowed high above and wasn’t close to quitting the day. I pretended I was in the desert and started making my own mirages. That creek was an oasis. That mud was silver, those rocks were gold. And what was that laughter? Where did those voices come from? From some bush that was my brother. From some splintered trunk that was Chris.
I shook my head, but the mirage didn’t go away. I still heard voices. I heard Chris’s laughter, close, and I ran to the sound. In the fall, I would have been noisy. I would have crashed through dead leaves breaking beneath my feet. But now, at the tail end of summer, the world was much louder than me. Under the rush of wind pushing fat clouds across the sky, I ran, my feet drumming along to the beat of birdsong. I came to a faint path. A thin line of dirt stamped a lighter brown by two sets of footprints. I bent down and touched the smaller one, then sprinted the path until I saw my brother. Or the mirage that was my brother. My brother that was and wasn’t real. Chris had taken his bag and carried it for him. His other hand held my brother’s wrist.
I should have screamed right away, but the scene before me was a bad dream. Someone was standing over my bed, preparing to hurt me, and I couldn’t open my mouth. The sleep world wouldn’t let me. All I could do was moan, Mmmmm, like a mummy, and point. There. There it is. Somebody please make it stop.
I couldn’t yell or talk, so I followed. More clouds moved in, a possible storm. My marks moved quickly. They didn’t run, but they walked with long legs, their bodies in a hurry.
They paused at a hall of trees. A long, narrow clearing, with the towering woods lining each side. I had to tell my legs, so used to walking, to stop. I lay down on a muddy slope and listened, spied like I did on my parents in the dream about the tree.
“What?” my brother said. “Is this it?”
“Close,” Chris said. “This is the road to it. A little farther.”
“I don’t get it. You keep your car out here?”
“No, not here, exactly.”
My brother took his hand from Chris. “Yeah, but how did you get it here? Your car. It doesn’t make sense.”
Chris kept looking around, but not at my brother. “This isn’t the time for questions, OK?”
“Yes, but—”
“I’m sorry, we have to keep moving.”
My brother looked down at his sneakers, which he hadn’t worn all summer.
“Remember,” Chris said. “I asked you. I asked you if you were ready. I told you what it would mean. Remember? I made sure.” He handed my brother his bag. “But it’s up to you. You can take your bag and run back home, if you’d like, to your tiny apartment and your mom and dad, or we can stick to our plan. But I can’t keep talking about it.”
My brother cradled his bag to his chest, and Chris asked him what’s it going to be, my liege, a hint of his early charm returning to his voice. But my brother wasn’t so easily fooled. His body tightened and his mouth stayed straight. He wants to go home, I should have said. I should have stood up, revealed myself, and said, I’ve never seen that face, but that’s what it says. Sorry, Chris. It’s over. We’re going home.
And this time I did stand up. This time I shook off my dream and my voice returned to my throat. But as I opened my mouth to speak, my brother handed Chris his bag. He said, Here. He said, I don’t want to go back.
* * *
They walked a little longer. Chris kept his arm around my brother, though neither seemed to enjoy it. I tailed them without even trying. I didn’t watch where I stepped or keep the proper distance. I sulked. I hoped I’d get caught, but had lost the courage or will to come out. What was the point? I didn’t know where I was or how to get back, and there was no one around who cared enough to show me the way.
A bush stopped them. The size of a tree but not a tree. What is it? my brother said. A gate, Chris said. A passage to something special. Yes, my brain mocked, it’s always something special with Chris. He peeled back the bush and gestured my brother in. The gate was a mouth of darkness that led to a place unseen. But what did I care. This is the time to turn around, I told myself, to find your own way home. This isn’t the time to worry about your brother. He didn’t want to go back. This wasn’t the time to wonder why you’d heard no sounds after Chris disappeared into the bush and the gate closed up. To wonder what was so great about this place, to let doubt creep in and poke you with stupid questions: What if this is something great and you’re missing it? Or, what if it’s the opposite? What if your brother needs you? What then? What would it be like to not be able to forgive yourself?
The bush’s needles scratched at my face as I waded into the gate. I closed my eyes and followed the rustling in front of me, the brushing of branches and shuffling of feet. Almost there, I heard Chris whisper. Come on, come on, he sang, come a little closer. There. Isn’t that better?
I opened my eyes and didn’t understand. I was still in the bushes. This was not what I wanted. I pushed forward, harder, the needles tickling my skin with tiny cuts. It’s OK, Chris said, it will only hurt at first. But already I could feel the burn of a scrape, the smear of my own blood. It’s OK, Chris said again. It’s fine. No one is here but us.
When I emerged from the bush, it took a moment for me to understand what was before me. To take it all in. I was in a clearing, yes. Naked of bushes and trees, but somehow shaded, somehow covered. And in the middle, impossible to miss, was a silo, twenty or thirty feet tall, a lonesome tower of block and cement. It was ancient and beautiful, but in bad shape. Its top was shattered; blocks cracked like broken teeth.
I circled the silo, tracing my hand against its grainy, uneven surface. Then my hand ran out of wall. I came to where there should’ve been a side, but there wasn’t. There was a big gap, blown into existence by some disaster I couldn’t imagine. I stepped through that gap and saw the tree. An oak. It was the biggest tree I’d ever seen and it stood dead center in the silo, where it made no sense to be. I craned my neck and followed the tree to the silo’s top, where its branches had grown straight up, as if the tree were being robbed. How big. How strange. This was what Chris had promised. This, I understood, was a secret worth keeping.
Remember, Chris said to my brother, reading my mind. Remember what we said about secrets. Well, this is ours. OK? From now on, this is something only you and
me know. Because, the thing is, I’ve tried this before, and it didn’t work out. But that was my fault, understand. I rushed it. But this is different, right? You and me. I’ve waited. Those days at the pool. Our walks. Yes, that’s right. So it’ll be OK. We’ll do what we need to do, then we’ll be on our way, and everything will be just fine.
I couldn’t see where Chris’s words were coming from. They bounced around me, off the silo walls, and faded, fleeing out the gap. I sneaked around the tree. I told myself it was OK. Chris knows you’re here. He’s read your mind and he welcomes you. Leave the past at the pool. You belong here too. You belong with your brother.
On the other side of the tree was a darker shade. In that shade my brother was pressed against the wall, shirtless. Chris had the seat of his own shorts down and was leaning into him, pinning him to the silo like my brother was under arrest. One of Chris’s hands handcuffed my brother’s wrists behind his head, and the other wrestled desperately with the double knot protecting my brother’s trunks.
“You sure tie these tight,” Chris said. “Afraid of losing them in the pool or something?”
My brother didn’t answer. Chris’s legs stretched out in a V and between them I saw my brother’s legs, two pale sticks. They didn’t struggle.
“Good thing I got long nails, huh?” Chris said. “There! Got that fat one.”
I took a step forward, and my brother’s leg gave a little kick. His knee buckled and his hips started to twist.
“Hold on,” Chris said, and drove his hip into my brother’s back until his body stopped ticking. “Almost finished.”
There was the loud rip of the trunks’ Velcro, and I stepped forward. With his free hand, Chris pushed down one side of my brother’s shorts, then the other. My brother told him no, and I took another step forward. I opened my mouth and my brother said the word for me.
“Stop,” he said. At first more of a whisper. “Stop. No. Please.” He threw words out. Short words, words that traveled fast, became louder and louder. Don’t. No. Stop. With each word, I took a step, like it was some sick game where I could move only when my brother was calling out for help. No, step. Chris, step. Please, step. Soon the words were coming so fast I was running. I was running to Chris, my hands in the air, and I was yelling for the whole world to make Chris leave my brother alone.