Shelton, Washington. 1960 or thereabouts. My older brother and I are in the basement of the house on Satsup Street. We're fighting. I run for the stairs. Two steps up, I turn.
"You want me to slug you?" he says.
A stupid question, I think, but it lets me know that he has the power to hurt me. As if I didn't already know that. He's 8, I'm 6.
"You want me to slug you?" he asks again. "I will."
I should run upstairs. Our mother is up there and she'll protect me. I'm the favorite. Her good son. Still, I don't move.
"You want me to slug you?"
Again with the question! Does he think I'm stupid?
"Yeah, I want you to slug me," I say.
I am stupid. He slugs me in the gut. Hard. It hurts like hell.
Our mother intervenes, and my brother Harold has the perfect defense: "He told me to slug him."
Mom tells him he should be ashamed of himself. Perhaps he is.
Perhaps he is for the rest of his life. He tries to make it up to his little brother, the innocent victim, but the relationship remains strained until the day he dies, young, of lung cancer.
The truth is he was the victim of a little brother, me, who knew how to play his parents.
He was the good brother, and now I'd like to set him free.
Let your spirit fly, Harry. I forgive you if you forgive me.
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2 comments:
Very touching, especially for a mother of two boys.
Al -- I hope you were able to reconcile with your brother in some way. And anyone you knows you knows that you are a good man, so two good brothers!
Reminds me of Tobias Wolff's story "The Rich Brother."
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