Robert Earle

The Brother

by Robert Earle

They had him, and they had no business having him. What would their business be? Fixing him? How would they fix him when they didn’t have him following them around all their life, keeping his eye on them, cocking his ear their way, driving them crazy repeating the things that came out of their mouths because he thought they were juicy?

From day one that’s how it was with the brother. I said something, he said something. I did something, he did something. I had a woman, he wanted next. Made me nuts, not to mention her. He’d do it before I got me zipper up. No tomorrow as far as he was concerned. Born in today and lived in today and kept being himself no matter what the weather did or anyone tried on him, which would not be advisable unless you were me.

I had purchase on him if not ownership, a lay-away plan so to speak— eventually I’d pay him off lock, stock and barrel and then I’d fix him, see? We started together, bundled up in the same womb, and I had my hands on him most likely, and he liked them there or expected them there, and when they were there, it was all the same to him, my hands, his hands, made no difference, but your hands, keep them to yourself. Knock me off the jungle gym in the schoolyard and you’d find out who would do the knocking. The brother would do the knocking. Someone might think, Well, all right, I’ll knock him back, but here’s the difference simple as I can put it. A person like the brother does not feel the same kind of pain these others do. Knock him all you want, and he keeps at you, flailing and kicking and biting. The brother would do all that until a whole crowd fell upon him and pulled him loose by main force and I said what they all wanted me to say, which would be, That’s enough now, Charlie. We proved our point.

They took him away fifty times if they did it once and found what it was to have him and sent him back to me. If he’s going to be somewhere, it’s going to be with me, that’s what they learned. We’re like an atom. Split us and watch out. Kaboom! Don’t take no Einstein to figure that one out.

But this time they pronounced him old enough and dangerous enough he must be held forever or as long as it took until he wasn’t himself anymore, a danger to the universe, so it became a question of me taking steps because how do you give a life sentence to a man whose life is not an hourglass, whose sand never trickles down, because tomorrow and tomorrow does not exist in a person already prancing in eternity?

I needed to get him out of that prison, but there was no way to communicate with him since the lot in there, guards and guarded, doctors and nurses, were a lying untrustworthy duplicitous corrupted scum of what sometimes is categorized as humanity but lacks all the attributes humanity allegedly possesses, including fairness, mercy, and the ability to think outside the box. Here was the conundrum and irony, you see. They were putting the brother in a box when he was outside the box from the get-go, needed no instruction or whispers from some genius as to how to be there. No whispering from me on that score, that’s for sure.

Me, a genius? Look, I’m the normal lusts and greeds whereas the brother’s the fury, the hail of needles and hammers of rage, which being the case, him in there that way, trying to get him to turn on me, rat on me, say I was the zenith and nadir of evil, the one who always put the blame on him, snitched on him, said he did it, not me—it’s folly, my friends, all you’ll do is have him radiate your livers with one of his stares. O, they’ll be what you’re not wanting deep in your fatty greasy hidden tissue, preying upon your souls, squeezing them into squish with the devil’s own grip.

He’s not having it, I tell you. He’s already as fixed as he can be fixed, mild as the noonday sun of May as long as I don’t set him off, because yes, it’s true, I frankly admit it, I’m the more evil of the two. I do put him up to what I want, Rolex, Bentley, whole block of merchants pissing their pants seeing me roll up, and his honor the brother, hopping out to do my collecting, hang them by the balls in the closet until every last shilling shakes loose. I could never do what he can do, but he would never do what he does without me telling him: Here, look, me brother, I’m offended, I’m in need. So poke at him if you dare and see. Yes, he’s a loon, of course he did it, while I always stood well clear of judgment and censure, all of which, the opprobrium and insults, drove and damaged him and now have him imprisoned on the other side of that fence which I will have to snip through meself so I can get him back to do my bidding, innocent, credulous, loving soul that he is.

So there I am, applying for, interviewing, and accepting a job as a kind of picador in the corrida of Western State. And there I am coming into the room where the brother is strapped into a chair in the little dining room reserved for the impossible, and it’s an instant connection, of course. You can split atoms, but you cannot split brothers, much less twins, home and circuit and gravity binding us to one another beyond dark forces and dark matters and all the rest Einstein, rest his brain in its jar, never imagined.

What is it about the human heart that is so deadly and mysterious and explosive? Why is the grandest thing two of them beating together in lifelong malice, not caring a farthing for anyone else, all caught up in their original sin of love deeper than love, everything else in the skies and seas a picnic feast for the plucking?

So of course I know what no one else knows. How would they, society’s little spoons and screwdrivers, scooping and twisting with no chance of getting the sugar to their mouth or the screw in its hole? And I’m in awe of him, to tell the truth, the brother’s horror at the sight of me on the other side of the punishment, me being one of them, not one of him, a traitor descended from the heavens, God flapping his wings and balling up his claws. Am I to guard him? Am I to stuff the sugar into his mouth and make him swallow? Am I to tighten the screws on his straightjacket until the blood stops running and the muscles stop twitching and all that’s left is the piteous panic in his popped-out eyes?

No, no, I think, communicating the way I do. It’s to get you out, me brother. It’s to free you to be you, the rampage of factual truth, not what anyone says but what you are. Gory, I want that, too, the sight of you aloft in me mind, swirling around, the stone in our sling, the ink in our thoughts, the sermons flapping after us like chickadees chasing us eagles and hawks.

And he goes all soft and loving when he gets me mental message, relieved and crushed with gratitude, a man who’s killed a dozen, banged up ten times more, had women like they don’t like to be had, and made what’s the world’s his own.

None of the others will have him or want him to stay there or think they can fix him. It’s what they’ve been told to do that they know they can’t. Not a guard, not a psychiatrist, not a preacher, and the Dining Room for the Impossible begins to pressurize, you know? It’s like the water’s flooding in at their knees and hips, what the brother and I are doing just being together, all wombed up like from the beginning, and they begin to gargle and gag and the snot spurts out of their noses and the wax comes shooting out of their ears and me and the brother watch as they float and wriggle and struggle to get out of the room and then it’s just him and me, like always, him as ugly as a radish, me as pretty as a palm.

Off with your kit now, I tell him, and get into mine. We’ll swap places, you’ll leave at shift’s end, and meanwhile I’ll play it low until you’re good and gone to the old place down by the beach where you’ll be listening, I know you will, to the story I tell these guards and psychiatrists and priests of what you’ve done to me.

He puts me in the straightjacket and kisses me head and off he goes while I gobble every bean and grain of rice clear off me plate, like never happens when it’s him supposed to swallow their swill. And that’s where I start: Did you notice I ate it all and licked the plate as well? Because I’m not him anymore, say I. That one’s gone. You let him get away. He’s on the street again, menacing murderer that he is, while I your angel am all bound and tied and condemned worse than Christ on His Cross.

He’s in the shack at the beach, eating his tinned kippers and tipping the oil down his gullet to wash down the little bones. Has himself a cup of rum. Spreads his legs and gives himself a pull. Wipes his spurt in his hair and checks the mirror to be sure it’s him in his happy body, not me.

Meanwhile I’m saying he somehow had it all planned, and here I am, sweet and lucid and offering them money I’ll never pay but hearing the little juices perking in their greedy gourds, thinking of the possibilities, a bank robber’s bank robber offering to share his loot. Might as well be rubbing their nipples with the flat of me hand. Might as well be licking the backs of their ears with me tongue. All a tragic misunderstanding, the way we look the one like the other, I say. Get me employment picture. See for yourself. He looks like me, but so do I, and I’ve been done to the way he does things, brutally handled, put in this straightjacket, left with a mouth full of your swill I had to swallow or never take another breath. Let me out, and you will see how gentle I will be, not like him, the one you could never fix. I’ve been fixed from time immemorial, the Bible’s own time, when fish were fowl and the soups of the oceans were brewing life.

Let me out now, my boys and girls. Put me where I can go find him. I’ll know where to look and back I’ll bring him, I swear. Next time you should fry him not fix him. He can’t be fixed, not the brother. Death’s his due, and I’m the one to collect his fee.

They look upon me in wonder. O, what a problem I’ve solved, getting myself pinched, freeing them of the brother, all unholy and howling more hours than in a day.

I’m trusted. I’m freed. I take me time strolling out into the night. Breathe a bit. Suck him in, deep in my lungs, that sweet salty scent of the brother, in every rancid gulp of ripe fresh air.

With more than 100 stories in print and online literary journals, Robert Earle is one of the more widely published contemporary short fiction writers in America. Vine Leaves Press will publish his story collection, Imagining Women, in 2017.He also has published three novels and two books of nonfiction. He lives in North Carolina after a diplomatic career that took him to Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East. His website is robertearle.me