Brotherly Love (3 page)

He looks quickly at his father’s face, then follows
his line of sight out into the yard. The tire marks are still in the
snow-trampled and dirty and stained with dog urine, but unmistakably
there, leading across the sidewalk from the street, up a small rise
and stopping at the spot of bare earth where the only tree in the
yard was uprooted.

The boy follows the tracks the other way, back out to
the street.

There is a car there, four doors and green, with a
man sitting behind the wheel, eating. A steady white smoke comes from
the exhaust pipe. The boy knows this is a policeman too, like the man
next door. He is there because the man next door is afraid of his
father.

When his father finally goes into the house next
door, though, this policeman in the car will not stop him. Peter
knows that when his father goes into the house next door, no one will
be able to stop him.

He looks at his father again and thinks of the men
who held him that night, how he fought all of them back and forth
across the room. He thinks of his uncle, struggling with the feet,
and the bigger men, stumbling with each turn of his father’s body.
He wishes he could have that night again and throw himself into them
from the top of the stairs.

In the breaking of his own
bones he could mend what had happened.

* * *

P
eter's uncle comes to the
house in the afternoon, smelling of liquor. Uncle Phil. He is smaller
than the boy’s father, and older, and smiles when there is no
reason to smile. His mother is repulsed by his uncle; he has heard
her whisper it in the kitchen, "I
skeeves
him, Charley."

She is Italian.

Peter answers the door eating cereal out of a box.
His uncle sways in the doorway, looking inside. "Your dad here?"
he says.

Peter opens the door wider and steps out of the way.
When his uncle is far enough in, he closes the door and walks
upstairs, down the long hall to the room where his parents sleep. He
knocks quietly at the door, and then hears his father’s voice on
the other

"What?"

 
His mother spends all day in this room now,
with the lights off and the shades drawn. Peter does not want to say
the uncle’s name out loud and instead opens the door a few inches
and puts his head inside.

The room is dark and still. He smells his mother’s
skin. She is lying in bed with her head against the pillow, her neck
bent until her chin almost touches her chest, staring at her hands,
or perhaps her feet. Something in front of her. His father is sitting
in a straight chair beside the shaded window which overlooks the
house of Victor Kopec. He turns from the window, still holding the
shade slightly away from the glass, and studies the boy a moment.

He slowly stands up and comes to the door.

His mother doesn’t move, her eyes do not follow the
motion in the room. His father steps into the hallway and closes the
door.

"Uncle Phil’s here."

His father nods and starts down the hall. Peter
follows him a few steps but then his father stops, turning to look at
him again, and shakes his head.

Peter walks into his room and listens to his father
on the stairs. His steps are heavier than they were before the
accident, and slower. Sometimes he hears them and thinks a stranger
has come into the house.

"Charley," his uncle says.

His father says nothing that he can hear.

"I come by to see if there was anything I could
do."

"No," his father says, "there ain’t
nothing you can do."

"You mind if I sit down‘?" He hears the
uncle move across the floor. "You got a beer or something?"

His father walks into the kitchen, slow and heavy.
The icebox opens and shuts. "You don’t mind my saying so,"
his uncle says, raising his voice now so that it will carry into the
kitchen, "it wouldn’t hurt nothing, you had one yourself. It
wouldn’t hurt you had a beer and put this away."

The uncle says this while his father is still out of
the room; Peter doesn’t think he would say it if his father were
there. His father comes back and his uncle says, "What? Are you 
gonna give me a fuckin’ beer or hit me over the head?"

His father says a few words; the boy can’t make
them out.

"That don’t do nobody any good," his
uncle says.

"You’re comin’ in here, telling me what I’m
gonna do?" his father says. The boy pictures his father now,
standing over his uncle, watching him as if the wrong answer to that
question could be anywhere in his face.

"I’m telling you what you ain’t going to
do," his uncle says. "Now gimme the fuckin’ beer or brain
me and put me out of my misery."

It is quiet in the house for a few moments; the boy
pictures his uncle drinking the beer. He pictures his mother lying in
her bed, her eyes wide open. Nothing moves. It seems to him that she
has lived in two places a long time, here in this house and somewhere
else, and that since the accident she cannot stand to be here at all.
She comes back only to eat.

"l talked to Constantine myself," his uncle
says. "He thinks maybe you take little Pete and your wife up
into the Poconos a while, stay at his place up there if you want ....
"

"I ain’t going to the Poconos," his
father says.

"The shore then," his uncle says.
"Constantine don’t care where you go, except he don’t want
you going next door . . ." The living room is quiet again.

"He’s helpin’ them on some things, Charley,
and Constantine don’t want him hurt."

"There’s a lot of cops helpin’ them on
things," his father says. "How come this one’s got to
move in next door, into a house a cop can’t afford, drive up and
down the street in his big convertible like some center-city pimp.
 
"He ain’t so bad."

"I’ll tell you what he is. He’s one of them
guys it ain’t enough he’s got more than he’s supposed to, it
ain’t no good to him unless everybody knows he’s got it. And that
ain’t enough either so he drives into my yard and takes what I got,
him and that fuckin’ dog, and now he’s pissed his pants and
cryin’ to both sides for help."
 
"He
shot the dog," his uncle says. "He done that out of
respect."

"Is that what he said? What are we, fuckin’
Italians—‘Out of respect’?"

"It was a gesture."

Peter sits down on the floor of his room, his back
against the door, and remembers the look in his sister’s eyes as
she came to him through the air.

"Charley," his uncle says, "the man
skid. I got a child too. If it was something else, I’d of taken
care of it myself, right there that afternoon .... "

His father doesn’t answer.

"Charley? You listening to me here?"

He hears the icebox door open and shut, his uncle
getting himself another beer.

"I would of got a bat and beat the eyes out of
his head," his uncle says, back in the living room. "Family
is first with me, and Angela’s my niece. She’s like my own
daughter .... "

A moment later, he hears the front door open. "The
long and short of it, Charley," his uncle says before he goes
outside, "Constantine don’t want this guy touched right now.
There ain’t nothing you can do about what happened, and there ain’t
nothing you can do about the cop."

"First they’re in our business, now they’re
in my house," his father says, speaking of the Italians. The boy
has heard them talk about the Italians before.

The front door closes and a moment later his father
is on the staircase. He climbs to the top and then walks to the door
outside Peter’s room. He stops a moment, his shoes close enough to
block out the light, and then walks the rest of the way to the end of
the hall without stopping, past the room full of stuffed animals, and
into the room beyond that, where the boy’s mother lies in the dark.

Where he will pull back
the shade and watch the house next door from the window.

* * *

P
eter Flood returns to his
school.

Just as before, he is taken in the morning by his
father, and just as before, a man who works for his father is waiting
in front of the school at the end of the day to take him home. The
man does not speak to him on the ride home and the boy understands he
does not like this job.

And each day when he comes
home, the rooms of the house are filled with the accident. The place
seems even quieter now, coming in from the movement and noise of the
school, than it had in the long weeks he spent inside afterwards,
overseeing the motionless panic of the only two people he loved.

* * *

V
isitors come into the
house at night. Often it is only his uncle, but sometimes he brings
some of the men who held his father that first night, and kept him
from going next door.

His father accepts his guests, standing to the side
as they come in, not offering them a chair or a beer, simply allowing
them to take what they Want. The presence of the guests makes no
difference to him at all.

Peter sits in his room or at the top of the stairs,
listening to the men talk. They complain that the Italians are trying
to take more of the money than before.

His father rarely speaks—he no longer cares who
gets the union’s money—and his mother’s room now is as still as
his sister’s.

His uncle has his opinions
about the Italians, though. He says they will get one more cent out
of the union than they get now over his dead body.

* * *

O
n a Friday night,
Constantine himself comes to visit. Peter has heard the way the man’s
name is spoken by his father’s visitors, and he is surprised now at
his appearance. A gray-haired old man in a black coat and glasses
fogged from the cold, he stands in the center of the room, holding
his hat, not moving from the spot until he is offered a place to sit.

"Sit down," his father says, and Peter
hears something in his voice that is not there for the others.

The old man unbuttons his coat and one of the men who
has come here with him lifts it off his shoulders. He takes a wooden
chair near the dining room. He crosses his legs carefully and removes
his glasses, wiping them clear with his handkerchief.

"How are you doing with your tragedy, Charley?"
the old man says.

His father shrugs and looks around the room. The old
man fits the glasses back on his nose.

"Who can say?" his father says.

The old man nods, as if that is an answer. He is soft
and slow, and the boy cannot imagine that he can tell them all what
to do.

"That’s what I heard," Constantine says
in a sad way, and then he falls silent.

The boy’s father stands in front of the old man,
wordless.

"What I heard," he says suddenly, "you
ain’t let it cool down enough yet that you can see it’s an
accident."

His father shakes his head.

The old man smiles in a kind way. "What, you
think he did it on purpose? He drove up in your yard and hit the
little girl on purpose? It was an accident .... "

"The word don’t mean nothing," his father
says, and his voice is hard and clear and stronger than the old
man’s. His voice makes Peter afraid.

The old man holds up his hand. "You know this
guy, Charley?"

He shrugs. "I lived next to him two, three
years," he says.

The old man closes his eyes. "You and me, we
ain’t so different from everybody else," he says. "We
have accidents too."

His father turns away and stares at the man holding
Constantine’s coat.

The old man seems to weigh that gesture. "Charley,"
he says finally, "do me a favor."

His father turns around to face him again, and one of
the other men in the room looks quickly at Peter’s uncle, and there
is something between them, something they both know and his father
does not. The old man sits patiently in his chair, looking at this
Irish Charley Flood, waiting for an answer.

"Tell me what it is."

Another look passes between his uncle and the man
standing nearest his father. Peter understands that his father has
said something just now that his uncle, for all his talk about
fighting the Italians, would never say.

The old man doesn’t seem to notice. "A simple
favor," he says, and waits.

His father shrugs. "I’ll do what I can."

The old man brings the fingers of his two hands
together and lets them touch. "I want to bring this guy over
here," he says, looking at the fingers. "Let him tell you
he’s sorry."

His father begins to shake his head; the old man
holds up his hand. "I want you to see this guy, Charley, let him
explain what happened."

His father stands completely still.

The old man closes his eyes. "I want to bring
him over, you can see him for yourself."