Brotherly Love

by Pete Dexter

  He wipes cold tears from his eyes and finds a place against the wall where the wind isn’t as strong.

  The short one sees them first. He looks up and seems to stumble; the cigarette falls off his lip and blows up the sidewalk to meet them. He turns his head, looking for someplace to run. A house or a store, a fire station.

  The taller one stops too, but he only looks at what is there in front of him.

  The colored boys close the distance. Nick sees the short one is pretending to have something in his pocket.

  Nick crosses his arms and waits. The colored boys collect in a circle over the white boys; as big as men. They look up and down the street.

  One of them notices him then, half a block away. He stares at Nick, deciding something, then slowly smiles, as if there is an understanding between them.

  Nick feels himself deciding to walk away. He looks down Chadwick again, at the open door and the sign over it—NICK’S AUTO REPAIRS AND GYMNASIUM—his kid leaning so far into the Cadillac’s engine that it looks like he is going to fall in.

  He decides to walk away, but he doesn’t move. He was born on the second floor of a house a block and a half from his shop and the neighborhood is still his, even if he lives two miles away in a better part of the city. He knows the history of this street and all the streets around it—he is part of the history—and he knows the faces, even if he can’t always remember the names.

  He remembers the names later, sitting at dinner, or lying in bed. Nothing is lost, only stored farther back. That is what lets him smile.

  He pushes himself off the wall and moves toward the boys until he can hear them over the wind.

  “Let’s see them pockets.”

  The white boys go into their pockets and come out with a dollar or two in change. The colored boy who noticed Nick before turns and looks at him again, surprised to find him closer.

  “You crazy, motherfucker,” he says.

  Nick doesn’t say a word. Phillip Flood’s kid notices him then, thinking at first he is help, then deciding he isn’t. The other one, Charley’s kid, stares at the dark faces in front of him, holding himself straight. He reminds Nick of Charley, the way he holds himself. Charley had worked with his hands before he moved up in the union. He’d spent time on roofs and looked it, nothing like his brother.

  Phillip never was part of it until his brother was running Local 7.

  One of the colored boys takes the money. He studies it a moment, then says, “Shit,” and puts it into his pocket. “Let’s see them shoes,” he says.

  Nick folds his arms again and spreads his feet. The white boys take off their shoes—new, white sneakers—and the colored boys take them too. Nick feels something stir, but he thinks of the Cadillacs that come and go in front of the house across the park, all hours of the night, and stays where he is.

  He does not want the connection.

  “Let’s see them other pockets,” the colored boy says, and the white boys look at each other and then pull their coat pockets inside out too. A comb, some matches and cigarettes, something that looks like a lady’s compact. Nick squints; and yeah, Charley’s kid has got a lady’s compact. His hands are pink from the cold, the nails are dirty. The compact is round and almost the color of his skin.

  The colored boy reaches for the compact too, but the kid pulls it away. The colored boy smiles.

  “Let’s see that,” he says.

  The boy shakes his head no.

  “I gone whip your white ass right here,” he says. The kid who looks like Charley doesn’t say a word. His cold hands roll into fists and he waits.

  “You think this old motherfucker gone help you?” the colored boy says, nodding to Nick. “He ain’t gone do nothing but get fucked up hisself. He probably like to get his ass beat, make him feel good.”

  The boy holding the compact is as grim as this street. The other one, his cousin, stares at him, waiting for him to give the colored boys what they want.

  And if he does that, Nick will go back to the garage and look at the water pump. That’s the contract he makes. If Charley’s kid stands up, it’s another story. Nick won’t leave him in this alone.

  The colored kid stares at the boy with the compact, a smile breaks his lips.

  Nick waits.

  He doesn’t want the connection. He doesn’t want to be a thought in Phillip Flood’s head; it gets turned around.

  He sees something change in the white boy’s posture; he senses this kid who looks like Charley Flood is going to turn over what is in his hand. Its value has changed.

  He is relieved and let down at the same time.

  And then, almost in the same moment, the boy surprises him. He takes a step forward, claiming the empty space between himself and the colored boys, and throws a soft-looking fist at one of their heads. He is off balance and scared, his thumb is tucked inside his fingers. He hits the colored boy’s mouth as hard as he can; the colored boy barely moves his head.

  A gesture, nothing else.

  The colored kid runs his finger over his nose and checks it for blood. “Now I gone kick both your asses,” he says. “See what you done?”

  He smiles again, showing a slice of pink inside his lips, as if he had been opened up. The short white boy ducks his head and bolts. One of them reaches for him, but he is gone. Faster than he looks. He crosses the street and goes into the alley where Nick first saw the other four, and is almost to the next block before he looks back and sees that no one is following. Then he stops, shoeless and red-faced and out of breath, and screams one long, furious word.

  “Niggers.”

  The word dies in the wind.

  “Give them their shoes,” Nick says.

  The colored boy who is holding the shoes turns to look at him, but it is the other one—the one Charley’s boy hit—that Nick is talking to. He is the one who will decide.

  He smiles again. “Man, you must be comical,” he says, and it’s done.

  Nick tosses a meaningless slap at the boy’s ear, bringing up his hands, and then hits him as hard as he can in the ribs, feeling the bones through his jacket. He stands still, watching him fall to his knees and then to the sidewalk; he watches him curl.

  Nick stares at the kid holding the shoes. The kid turns and runs, into the wind, the shoes bouncing against his leg.

  “Robert ain’t but fifteen,” one of them says, looking at the boy on the sidewalk.

  The boy on the ground fights to breathe. Nick thinks of the feel of his bones underneath the jacket, wonders if he’s broken his ribs.

  Charley’s kid stares at him, as surprised as the boy on the ground. The other one is still in the alley, watching.

  “His brother gone find you, man,” the colored kid says. “He gone kick your ass for sure.”

  The kid on the sidewalk gets to his knees, his face still resting on his arm. He holds the other arm motionless and tight to his body.

  “What do you think, everybody in the world’s going to give up their shoes?” Nick says to the kid on the ground.

  His blood quiets, and he is beginning to feel sorry. There was no fight. For a little while it felt like one, but it went away before it started.

  He is sorry for what happened and he is sorry for what didn’t.

  From the alley, Phillip Flood’s kid screams again.

  “Niggers …”

  The colored boys look at Nick as if he’d said it too, all except the one on the ground. He is making small, crying noises as the air comes in and out of his chest. His breathing is shallow and quick. A line of spit connects the boy’s mouth to the sidewalk. It bends in the wind and breaks.

  “You got a father?” Nick says.

  Charley’s boy looks up quickly, as if Nick might be asking him.

  “His father gone whip your ass for sure,” one of the colored boys says.

  The word comes across the alley again, under the sound of the wind. “Niggers.” It is like a howl.

  Nick squats next to the kid on the ground an
d uses the arm he is resting on to get him to his feet.

  The boy stands, bent to his right, holding his ribs.

  “Somebody be back to see you,” one of them says, moving farther away; ready to run.

  “This is where I am,” Nick says, “right around the corner.” He points behind himself to Chadwick Street.

  The colored boys walk into the cold wind, the one that Nick hit is bent at the waist and stops now and then to catch his breath. Charley Flood’s kid watches them, still holding the compact in his hand.

  “You better get home,” Nick says.

  The kid hears him, but he doesn’t move.

  “They ain’t going to bother you anymore,” he says. He looks across the street to the alley. “Tell your cousin to watch where he steps; people throw glass in that alley.”

  The kid puts the compact into his jacket pocket, then touches it from the outside, through the material, to make sure it is there, and starts across the street in his socks.

  Nick watches him go, and thinks of getting in one of the old cars sitting in front of the garage and driving the boys home. That’s what he would want someone to do if it were Harry. But then, Harry wouldn’t have given up his shoes, not to four of them, not to all of them in the city. Someday that will get him hurt, but when you’re hurt that way, it heals. He thinks of Phillip Flood’s boy, leaving his cousin and running. How long does it take to get over that?

  He walks back to the garage, feeling unsettled. Wondering if he should have taken the boys home. In the end, he doesn’t know.

  In the end, all he knows is that he doesn’t want the connection.

  Peter walks home in his socks. His feet ache from the cold and he steps on small stones when he crosses streets.

  He walks into the pain, accepting it, and then through it. On the other side, he is an observer, watching himself make his way up the sidewalk, a few yards ahead of his cousin. It is a talent he has developed, this removing himself from the moment.

  His cousin had cut himself on glass, and Peter hears him in a distant way—as if he were on the other side of a door—making crying noises.

  He stops and turns around. His cousin stops too and looks down at his feet. He says, “Jesus Christ …” Whatever else he meant to say is gone. His eyes fill and tears run from the corners down his round, wind-burned cheeks.

  “It isn’t that far,” Peter says.

  His cousin sits down on the sidewalk. “I can’t walk no more,” he says. He picks up his feet and holds them in his hands. “They’re froze solid.…” He looks up at Peter for help. As if he had shoes to give him.

  Peter leaves him and walks in the direction of the house. When he has gone half a block he turns around and sees that his cousin is still sitting on the sidewalk. He goes back.

  “C’mon, Michael. It ain’t far now.”

  His cousin gets slowly to his feet and then limps a few steps before he stops again. He looks up the street, then back at Peter. “The old man’s going to kill us,” he says.

  “C’mon,” Peter says, and begins walking again, and in a moment he hears his cousin behind him, breathing through his teeth.

  “What are we going to tell him?” he says after a while. Peter doesn’t answer; he isn’t going to tell his uncle anything. “He’s going to be pissed,” his cousin says.

  A cop walks past them, looking quickly at their shoeless feet, then disappears into a bar on the corner. “Peter?”

  “He’s pissed anyway,” Peter says.

  It is quiet a few minutes as they turn the corner and head up Twenty-second Street, six blocks from home. “We got to think of a story,” his cousin says.

  Peter shakes his head. He isn’t good at stories, and his uncle thinks everything he hears is bullshit anyways. Peter wonders what kind of stories he makes up himself, to think everyone else’s are bullshit.

  They walk another block in silence, as his cousin tries out different explanations in his head.

  “The niggers got us,” he says finally.

  “That isn’t a story, it’s what happened.”

  “Grown-ups,” he says, “and they beat us up.”

  His uncle talks about the niggers all the time now, how they are trying to get into some of the unions. It isn’t the niggers he is mad at, though, it’s the Italians, telling him what he’s got to do about it. That he’s got to make it look like the niggers can work if they want to.

  Peter turns and studies his cousin. “He isn’t going to believe we got beat up by grown-ups,” he says.

  They walk farther, his cousin forgetting his feet to think of a story for his father. “He’s going to fuckin’ go crazy,” he says finally.

  Peter shrugs.

  “He don’t touch you,” his cousin says, and he is close to tears again. “He never touched you in your life.”

  True.

  He has never come after Peter with a belt. They have lived in the same house without touching each other from the morning he stepped into Peter’s bedroom and told him something had happened to his father. His uncle had moved his family in even before Peter was out of the emergency room.

  He understands that his uncle has been pulled two directions ever since; wanting to hurt him, wanting to be forgiven. Natural enemies. He takes Peter and Michael twice a year to Connie Mack Stadium to watch the Phillies, Christmas Eve they go to church. He delivers lectures on girls and cops and school, sending Aunt Theresa into the kitchen for the parts he does not want her to hear. He tells them, again and again, that they are brothers, flesh and blood.

  And sometimes when he says that he watches Peter’s face to see if he believes that the words change what is there between them, if he believes the words can recast events that have already passed.

  It infuriates him that he cannot change what Peter sees.

  “You ain’t got nothing to worry about,” his cousin says. But Peter has seen the way his uncle looks at him—has seen the way he looked at his father—and knows that isn’t true.

  The black Cadillac passes them a block from the house, tires popping on the street. The side of his uncle’s face is in the back window, looking strained. Peter knows that look; it’s the Italians.

  Phillip Flood is standing in the hallway waiting for them when they come in. Still in his coat. Peter stops cold, caught in his uncle’s stare.

  He looks at Peter, then at Michael. He looks at their feet.

  Michael sits down just inside the door and peels off his socks. He feet are pink and tipped white, and one of them is cut. He holds them in his hands, rocking back and forth on the floor. His father watches him a moment, then turns back to Peter.

  “It was the niggers,” Michael says. “Big ones.”

  “What niggers?” he says, still looking at Peter. Peter doesn’t answer. He notices his feet are beginning to burn in the warmth of the house. He thinks they have been out in the cold too long to be comfortable now inside.

  “The niggers took your shoes?” he says.

  “There was six of them,” Michael says, and then bends over his feet, as if to cradle them in his arms.

  “You ain’t hurt,” he says to Michael, and then looks again at Peter. “So where were these niggers?” he says.

  “McKean Street,” Michael says. “They were as big as you … bigger.”

  “Are they still there?” he says.

  Michael shakes his head. “A man chased them off.”

  It is quiet a long moment. Peter hears his aunt moving around upstairs. Probably making the beds.

  “They were big,” Michael says.

  “You didn’t fight them for your shoes?”

  “The man came along,” Michael says. “An old guy.”

  “So how did they get your fucking shoes?” He whispers that, not wanting Aunt Theresa to hear him use the word in the house.

  “After they got them, then he came,” Michael says.

  Phillip Flood takes one more long look at them and then climbs the stairs. Aunt Theresa passes him on her way d
own. She looks at his face, then at the boys beneath her on the landing.

  “Michael,” she says, hurrying now, “what happened to your feet?” She washes down the stairs like a flooded bathroom.

  “He ain’t hurt,” Peter’s uncle says behind her.

  She pays no attention. She hurries past Peter, smelling of onions and garlic, and kneels in front of her son. “They’re frostbit,” she says, and looks up the stairs. “We got to get them in warm water.”

  His uncle stands where he is, looking down. “If me and Charley ever come home without our shoes when we were kids, we’d come home without feet.”

  The house is suddenly quiet. Phillip Flood doesn’t mention his brother’s name in this house. A rule that no one realizes is there until it is broken. He is still a moment, hearing what he has just said, and then he turns suddenly away and walks down the hallway into the back.

  “You see what you’ve done?” Aunt Theresa says to Michael. “You’ve upset your father.”

  Late in the afternoon Nick is standing in one of the windows overlooking the street, deciding if he wants to box. A nice-looking Jewish kid from the neighborhood is beneath him on the street, practicing dance steps. He uses the street sign as a partner. The kid calls himself Jimmy Measles, and he is on television all the time, dancing on the show from West Philadelphia. Nick can’t remember what they call it.

  The kid believes he is a television star, and maybe he is. The neighborhood girls are around him all the time. He sometimes sees the kid patting their fannies.

  The gymnasium sits over the garage, connected by a steep, unlighted stairway. Nick hears the door open downstairs and promises himself that he’s going to put up handrails before someone falls.

  He has been thinking a lot about lawsuits lately, expecting a colored lawyer to walk into the shop any day now and hand him the papers for breaking the boy’s ribs on the day Harry took apart the fuel pump.

  He checks the cars outside, looking for something that a colored lawyer might drive, but there is nothing out there he doesn’t recognize. A dozen cars are parked on the sidewalk, waiting for rings or voltage regulators or hoses. Most of them are old; Chevrolets, Fords, Pontiacs. He won’t work on foreign cars; he doesn’t even own a set of metric wrenches.