Brother's Keeper

by C. E. Smith

  Burkett envisions them wrestling, his brother and the captain. He resists asking if such a bout occurred. He prefers to think of himself as his brother’s final opponent, even if he hasn’t wrestled in years – not since medical school, when he tried to get back in shape by working out with the team at Georgia State. The coach there was glad to have him – at the time the Burkett twins had a reputation in wrestling circles – but in a single practice he sprained his knee and vomited from sheer exertion.

  The captain excuses himself when his new horse emerges from the stables. The handler accepts an envelope from the captain’s aide before handing over the reins. The piebald horse whickers and tugs against the hackamore while the captain whispers in its ear and pats its neck.

  ‘The wrestling clinic was your brother’s idea,’ says Beth. ‘But Captain Rich wanted to use it for tactical purposes.’

  ‘Tactical purposes?’

  ‘He saw the wrestling clinic as a means of recruiting young men as informants.’

  ‘I thought the American troops were here only as advisors.’ He watches as Rich and his aide guide the horse through the crowd.

  ‘Officially,’ she says, ‘they’re here to teach people the art of using drones.’

  ‘I see,’ Burkett says. ‘And drones aren’t much use if you don’t know where to send them.’

  Burkett notices the man he saw earlier, the drug addict, striding past the stalls. The man’s eyes, no longer dazed, are locked on the captain. His hands fumble in the baggy sleeves of his tunic. A feeling of dread comes over Burkett as the young man cries, ‘Allahu Akbar!’ and drops to his knees. Burkett shouts but his voice seems to reverse course, as if shoved back into his mouth by a wave of heat.

  When he looks again, his ears ringing, a cloud of smoke has replaced the bomber. The captain’s horse staggers on three legs – the fourth reduced to shredded pulp and shards of bone – before collapsing amid the flaming debris. Blood from the horse spreads toward a smoking shoe which – it takes him a moment to realize – contains an amputated foot, presumably the bomber’s.

  He sees Captain Rich hurrying toward an SUV, his aide trailing close behind. Beth, apparently stunned, kneels amid bits of puckering flame to pick up her apples.

  Even though it is a Saturday, they leave open the clinic’s gates, expecting injuries from the blast, but it seems the only casualties were the horse and the bomber himself. The military closes all roads in and out of town, forcing Nick to spend the night in the capital. Burkett had planned on grilling strips of lamb for dinner, but now feels nauseated by the idea of meat. Instead they eat rice, flatbread, and apples. If Abu and his nephew Karim are disappointed by the meal, they are too polite to say so.

  ‘It must have been a front-loaded vest,’ Abu says. ‘He was facing the horse when he blew up.’

  ‘Who has to clean up the horse?’ Burkett asks.

  ‘People will collect the meat and eat it.’

  Burkett can tell from Abu’s face that this isn’t a joke. ‘Wouldn’t it be contaminated,’ he asks, ‘with pieces – of, I don’t know, the bomber?’

  ‘Once you cook it and pick out the – the metal balls?’ Abu says.

  ‘Ball bearings,’ says Beth.

  ‘Once you pick out the ball bearings,’ he says, ‘you can’t tell the difference.’

  Abu interprets for his nephew Karim, who expresses revulsion at the notion of eating the horse. He likes horsemeat well enough, but he happens to have known the suicide bomber from childhood.

  ‘They were schoolmates,’ Abu says. ‘How is it that my nephew could become a successful driver and find a good wife, while his friend would come to this? Isn’t it strange how God works?’

  When Karim and Abu have gone home for the night, and Burkett is finishing the dishes, Beth emerges from the storage closet with a bottle of wine.

  ‘There’s a surprise,’ he says.

  ‘An IMO rep left it as a gift. We thought it might come in handy some day as a payoff.’

  ‘I can’t speak for your local warlords, but that happens to be my cur­rency of choice.’

  Since the explosion he has felt an almost celebratory impulse. Perhaps it is nothing more than the relief of survival. He thought he was alone in this, but the wine would suggest she feels the same. Or else her sudden urge to drink stems merely from the absence of her teetotaler husband. Whatever the case, he decides not to risk changing her mind by asking for an explanation.

  The wine alone isn’t enough to affect him, not till a couple of pills have melted into his nervous system. He can see the pinpoint pupils of the suicide bomber. Burkett’s idiotic notion to ask the man about drugs might well have gotten him killed. After such a close brush with death he should probably be trying to catch the next flight home, and maybe tomorrow he’ll wake up and start making calls, but for now he’s overcome by a kind of tranquil satisfaction, a feeling of near invincibility, as if he’s survived an ordeal through strength and wits rather than sheer luck.

  He and Beth sit on the concrete steps behind the clinic, drinking from coffee mugs. His brother seems to occupy the silence between them. Burkett all but holds his breath, listening for some hint of another pres­ence. A distant gunshot breaks his reverie – the soldiers shooting at dogs.

  ‘Did my brother have any kind of – romance?’

  She shrugs. ‘He didn’t have many options here.’

  He almost asks: What about you? It would be too direct, too forward, but it’s likely his brother, with so few options, would have felt drawn to her. Perhaps she felt something for him as well.

  ‘Did he ever talk about old girlfriends?’ Burkett asks.

  She purses her lips, gazes upward – almost like an actor’s representa­tion of the act of trying to remember – and says, ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘So no old flames?’ he asks. ‘No past regrets?’

  She shakes her head. He isn’t sure he believes her. The name he’s circling is Amanda Grey, a name like an iron splinter in his gut. But why would Owen still pine for a woman he’d loved more than fifteen years ago? He should have forgotten her after so long, or at least forgiven his brother for stealing her. Burkett always meant to bring it up – to end their years of silence on that particular subject. Owen probably would have laughed: you’re still hung up on that? But now it’s a conversation they can never have, another layer of regret.

  Beth’s phone jingles – Nick checking in, telling her he’s safely ensconced in some hotel. His voice is audible from where Burkett sits. He wants to make sure she locked the gate and the side door, that she double-checked the gas level in the generator. Of course she did: she seems increasingly annoyed with the interrogation. She interrupts him with a peremptory ‘Love you’ and hangs up.

  ‘Does he always give you the third degree?’

  ‘We complement each other,’ she says. ‘He’s the idealist and I’m the pragmatist.’

  ‘He’s just so – dogmatic.’

  After a pause, she says, ‘They say true saints are hard to live with.’

  In this she seems to be siding against her husband, so he pushes further: ‘Is he a true saint?’

  ‘As close as any I’ve ever met. He devotes himself completely to easing the suffering of others.’

  ‘Not everyone,’ he says.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Those who live with him – you said saints are hard to live with.’

  She shrugs.

  He’s pleased by this trap of logic, but if he were sober, would he still feel like he’d scored a point? Would he still be pursuing this course? A voice tells him: Leave it at that, change the subject.

  But he goes on: ‘I’m sure my brother was the same way. So rigid. Always spouting aphorisms. God has a plan, whatever.’

  He reaches for her hand, but she pulls it away.

  ‘I’m sorry,�
�� she says.

  The last of the wine he drinks alone. A scenario forms in his mind: Owen slept with Beth, so Nick killed him, or paid someone to kill him. He almost wishes for it to be true, an easy fiction. As grounds for murder, sexual jealousy is more plausible than religion. At least then he’d under­stand the reasons behind his brother’s death.

  He takes another pill to help him sleep, not bothering to check if it’s Xanax or Valium. Lying in the dark he tries to summon his brother, but no image comes.

  Xanax and Valium, his drugs of choice. Xanax has a stronger, more immediate effect, while Valium works as a kind of baseline stabilizer. Classed as benzodiazepines, or anxiolytics, these drugs are designed for the treatment of anxiety. Shortness of breath, rapid heart rate, dry mouth, and insomnia. The tremulous flutter in his belly. Given such similar symp­toms, one would expect the benzos to work just as well for shame and grief, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

  The pharmacy here has a small stock of alprazolam, generic Xanax, locked in a glass case, along with several narcotics. The key lies in the top drawer of the desk, in a built-in pencil trough. The drugs are easily acces­sible. There’s no record of access, no need for a forged prescription.

  It is so dark that he sees no difference between opening and closing his eyes. Has he in fact succeeded in conjuring his brother? Is this the very darkness in which his brother now finds himself?

  Perhaps he should light a candle. A vision comes to him – flickering lights across a dark landscape, beacons for all the dead. But almost imme­diately he realizes it isn’t a landscape. What he sees is a much smaller space: the market in the town square. These lights aren’t candles either, but the sputtering flames of exploded bits of flesh.

  In the morning he and Beth work together in the clinic. Perhaps too casually he says, ‘Sorry about last night, I drank too much.’

  She gives him a curious look before turning back to her patient. Is she feigning confusion, or could she be so naïve that she didn’t notice his desire for her? He doubts it. She wasn’t a married missionary all her life. Whatever the case, he understands all too well. They’ll act as if nothing passed between them. It is a role he’s played before.

  7

  The family Owen visited that day lives less than a mile from where he was shot. It is a compound of stone and crumbling mortar, with rows of sisal plants in the yard. A boy of around ten emerges with a partially deflated soccer ball. Behind him stands a little girl who smiles when Burkett gets out of the car. They have the dark skin and high cheekbones of Khandari natives.

  ‘Salam,’ Nick says.

  The boy scurries back inside, but the girl remains. Probably five or six, she wears a dirty shawl, a shirt down to her knees, and baggy pants. Nick kneels before her and places a hand to his abdomen as he speaks. Burkett thinks he recognizes the phrase Kaifa haloki? How are you? The girl lifts her shirt to reveal a fresh bandage, and Nick peels away the tape and gauze, which is stained with antibiotic ointment. Burkett bends down for a closer look at what could have been his brother’s final incision, almost com­pletely healed. The girl offers him a rubber dinosaur missing one of its legs.

  ‘Thank you,’ he says.

  ‘She thinks you’re Owen,’ Nick says.

  Burkett smiles and pats her head the way he thinks his brother would have done. It feels awkward but she doesn’t seem to notice. He’s almost disappointed when Nick explains to her that this is a different doctor.

  Nick laughs at her response.

  ‘What did she say?’ Burkett asks.

  ‘That all white people look the same.’

  They follow her into the dusty courtyard, where the boy dribbles his ball past a tethered cow. An old man appears in a doorway – probably the grandfather, or great-grandfather, of the children. He shakes hands with Burkett and Nick.

  ‘Marhaban,’ he says. Welcome.

  He conducts them into a large room, where rugs and pillows surround a smoldering fire. A pot hangs from a gambrel. An old woman, apparently his wife, ignores them as she flicks an orange powder into the pot. With a wooden spoon she stirs and tastes. The man utters something, a command of some sort. She ignores him, so he repeats himself, only louder. Without looking at him she disappears through another doorway and moments later returns with a bowl of dates and sets it on the floor with a clatter.

  A pleasant aroma spreads in the dry air – some kind of spice, what­ever the woman sprinkled into the pot – as Burkett listens to Nick and the old man. He’s heard enough Arabic now that he can detect the difference in Nick’s accent – the fricatives softer, the vowels rounder. Perhaps the natives find him hard to follow, the accent too thick.

  ‘He and his family offer their condolences,’ Nick says. ‘Your brother was a friend, an honorable man.’

  ‘Tell him thank you,’ Burkett says. ‘We need to find out how many men live in this house.’

  ‘It’s rude to ask a man directly about his family.’ Nick pauses and adds, ‘He’s the only man here at the moment.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘When a guest arrives, the men of the house typically present themselves.’

  ‘What about the father of those kids?’

  Nick eats one of the dates. ‘Maybe he’s out working?’

  Burkett looks at the fruit but only takes one after the old man nudges the bowl.

  ‘Ask him what happened the day Owen came here.’

  Nick returns to Arabic, gesturing toward Burkett. The woman re­appears to stir the pot and sprinkle in more of the orange powder. The children’s voices and the sporadic thump of the deflated ball echo from the courtyard.

  ‘He says that after Owen examined his granddaughter, and gave her medicine, the two of them, he and Owen, had coffee. He thinks the killers were waiting for him while he was here.’

  ‘Why does he think that?’

  ‘He heard another engine start when Owen got into his car.’

  ‘He didn’t see the other car?’

  ‘No,’ he says, but inquires again, just to make sure, and the old man shakes his head.

  ‘An engine is a common sound,’ Burkett says. ‘It could have been a coincidence, a neighbor.’

  ‘None of his neighbors have cars.’

  ‘Did he tell the police about it?’

  Nick relays the question, and the old man nods.

  ‘What did it sound like? Could he tell what kind of car?’

  ‘It was an old car,’ he says.

  ‘All the cars here are old.’

  Another woman emerges, this one wearing a burqa, but he can tell she is young from her hands, from the lie of fabric over her breasts and shoul­ders. He feels a twinge of desire as she bends down and places a tea kettle directly into the fire. He catches himself staring and looks away. Normally he is not one to stare – he can assess a woman in just a glance. He blames the burqa, its dual effect of blocking his view while also creating a false sense of privacy, a freedom to stare without being seen – as though it concealed him just as well as her.

  ‘Ask him if there’s a phone in the house,’ he says after the woman disappears.

  Nick speaks for longer than necessary, no doubt to avoid the imperti­nence of direct interrogation. The old man draws a flip-phone from his pocket.

  ‘This is the only phone,’ Nick interprets. ‘His son had one, but now his son is dead.’

  ‘I guess that answers our question about the father of the children,’ Burkett says. ‘Do any of the women have phones?’

  ‘No.’ Nick doesn’t bother conveying the question. ‘Unmarried women don’t have phones.’

  ‘What about the old woman, his wife?’

  He can tell he’s testing Nick’s patience, and yet Nick complies, or seems to comply, by turning to the old man and asking a question. But it’s obvious from the somberness in the old man�
��s voice that the conversation has moved beyond cell phones. The silence that follows lasts till the water on the fire reaches a whistling boil.

  ‘His son died in a suicide bomb attack last year,’ Nick says as the young woman emerges with three cups on a tray. ‘An attack the Heroes of Jihad claimed responsibility for.’

  Burkett meets the old man’s stare. He wonders if he should feel some spiritual connection since they have this terrible thing in common. Does a similar rage lie behind the old man’s placid eyes? Burkett looks down at the bits of leafy debris floating in his cup. When the old man speaks again he gazes over the fire as if searching out his words in the smoke.

  ‘He says the night after his son’s death, the shark god Samakersh came to him in this very room and swore that his son would be avenged. This is how he knows that the Heroes of Jihad will be annihilated.’

  Nick doesn’t interpret the exchange that follows, but Burkett catches Isa al-Mesih, Jesus the Messiah. Burkett excuses himself and ducks into the courtyard. The boy and his sister are nowhere in sight. He notices figures carved in the lintel: the eyeball and shark teeth.

  On the way home, Nick says, ‘In some ways these pagan shark-worshippers are harder to convince than Muslims, but Owen was on the verge of a breakthrough. He might have given him a Bible. But of course, the old man sees Owen’s death as divine punishment, evidence against Christianity.’

  It is nightfall when they return to the clinic. Seven men, including the sup­posed Christian converts Abu and Hassad, are praying in the courtyard, either on rugs or on bare ground.

  Burkett starts toward his module, but Nick grabs him by the elbow, silently reminding him to take the long way around. It would be an insult to walk in front of the men during their prayers.

  ‘I thought Abu and Hassad were Christians,’ Burkett says when they’ve passed out of earshot.

  ‘Followers of Jesus,’ Nick corrects him.

  ‘So why were they praying like that?’ he asks. ‘Have they gone back to Islam?’

  ‘Of course not,’ he snaps. ‘Prayer is more than bodily position or even words.’