Brotherly Love (37 page)

Michael crosses the wooden floor, leaving the others
at the stairway. "Nick," he says, "I got a guy here
used to fight a little, I was thinking maybe Harry could work with
him a couple of rounds, see if he’s got anything left."

Nick looks at Michael a moment, then at Eddie Bone.
He folds the paper and puts it on the floor next to a cup of coffee.
"We ain’t going to train today," he says.

Michael smiles. "Nothing serious," he says,
"just a couple rounds."

On the other side of the gym, Eddie Bone pulls his
shirt over his head. A thick, raised scar runs on a diagonal from his
shoulder down his chest and stomach. Peter stares at it, imagining
the opening itself, the feeling of being opened. For a moment, the
scar seems translucent.

Eddie Bone steps out of his pants, smiling. The timer
goes off and Harry ducks between the ropes and out of the ring.
"Harry," Michael says, "how you doin’?"

Harry doesn’t say a word.

"I was askin’ your father here could you give
my man Tyrone a couple of rounds."

Harry looks at his father, neither of them speaks.
Leonard Crawley has crossed the floor now, and is standing over Nick.
An odor comes off his skin and he is breathing through his mouth.

On the other side of the ring Eddie Bone laces his
shoes.

Nick turns once to look at Peter, and there is almost
a happiness in the look that it takes Peter a moment to understand.

He sits where he is, pressed from both sides.

Nick stands up, smiling an unnatural smile. "Lookit,"
he says, nodding toward Eddie Bone, "we know who that is."

Leonard Crawley cocks his head to put his face near
Nick’s.

Michael smiles too.

Peter hears Nick talking again.

"You want to come in here and work out," he
says, "bring whoever you want. But that guy there"—he
nods across the room—"he ain’t here to work out."

Michael turns and looks at Eddie Bone. Eddie is tying
one of his hand wraps with his teeth, and smiles without letting go
of the ribbon of cloth.

"Harry ain’t ready yet for somebody can
fight’" Michael says.

Nick puts a cigarette in his mouth and lights it. His
hands are slow and steady. "What I’m sayin’, this ain’t
the place for somebody like that."

"It’s a gym, right? He’s a fighter."

"It’s my gym," Nick says. "I built
it myself, from my own idea, and bringing guys like that around . .
."—he points at Eddie Bone, then at Leonard—"and guys
like this, wanting to see them hurt somebody, that ain’t what I
built it for."

Leonard Crawley moves half a step closer to Nick, his
head still cocked.

Harry stands to one side, knowing something is
happening, waiting to see where it will go.

Monk leans against the wall, his arms crossed and his
head down, embarrassed.

Michael shrugs, as if it’s over. "You don’t
want Harry to iight, he don’t have to fight," he says.

Nick nods, holding the cigarette between his teeth,
ignoring Leonard Crawley.

Michael looks at the ceiling and the walls. "I
just thought maybe you’d want to do me a favor."

There is something in the way he surveys the room . .
.

"I’ll do you a favor," Nick says.

Michael turns, surprised. He begins to smile, and in
that moment Nick’s open hand crosses the space between them. The
slap turns Michael’s head halfway around, and he stumbles
backwards, his heels catching on the base of the ring, and he falls,
sitting down hard just outside the ropes. His cheeks bounce as he
lands, one of them already carrying the print of Nick’s hand.

The slap hangs in the air, numbing the room, and what
follows is dreamlike and slow. Leonard reaching for Nick’s throat,
Harry suddenly between his arms, his right hand coming in overhead,
finding the edge of Leonard’s jaw.

Leonard drops to the floor as if someone had cut all
the strings. Michael’s hand covers the side of his face, tears
collect in his eyes. And everyone in the room—even Eddie Bone—knows
that Nick is dead.

Nick and Michael stare at one another in a curious
way, each of them realizing what has happened. Peter sits in the
window, afraid to move. Afraid to leave this moment, as if by holding
on he is holding back everything to follow.

Michael gets to his feet, careful to maintain a
distance between himself and Nick; he heads for the stairs. Eddie
Bone waits for him, holding his pants and his shoes in his hand. Monk
pulls Leonard up off the floor and they follow Michael out.

Peter sits still, and what seems like a long time
later he hears his cousin from the bottom of the stairs. "Peter,
you comin’?"

Nick and his son watch him push himself up. Peter
thinks of their living room, the smell of food. Nick’s wife.

"You comin’ with us or not?" his cousin
says.

Peter walks between Nick and his son, close enough to
touch either one of them.

A moment is lost, and then the next; it comes to him
it is all lost. He is heading down the stairs.

Drifting, he thinks of the living room again; he
looks back up at the gym.

It occurs to him that Nick
has built the things in his life, he didn’t just show up and try to
take them from someone else.

* * *

T
hey are closed into a
small room in the basement of a row house near Veteran’s Stadium.

Leonard Crawley is lying openmouthed on a cot, lost
in the drug he is rubbing onto his gums. He holds his jaw in place
with one hand and feeds himself the white powder with the other, his
finger going from his mouth to the open plastic bag on his chest,
back and forth, waiting for Michael to take him to the hospital.

The house belongs to an old roofer who once did jobs
for Michael’s father. He is upstairs with his cat, listening to the
radio. He didn’t ask what they wanted in his basement, he simply
saw who it was, opened the door and turned on the lights.

Peter is sitting across a card table from his cousin.
It is cool in the cellar, and the water condenses on the pipes over
their heads and drips on the cement floor. The light from the street
swings in the spiderwebs covering the windows.

Michael’s face is bloodless. The slap has faded off
his cheek, leaving him with only a swollen lip. He dabs at the lip
with the back of his hand.

They have been in the basement over an hour, Peter
has not spoken. There is no way to frame the argument against this;
there is no argument.

"We do them in the morning," Michael says,
testing the way it sounds.

Peter looks at him, waiting. He has changed his
mind—morning to night—half a dozen times. Both times leave
something unsatisfied.

Michael puts his hands behind his neck and stares at
the sweating pipes, reconsidering the timing. "What I wish,"
he says, "there was a perfect moment, you know? When what’s
gonna happen is right there with what already happened, where Nick
sees it all at once, the cause and the result .... "

He thinks, then shakes his head and looks at Peter.
"Tell me how to do it," he says.

Peter doesn’t say anything.

"What I wish," Michael says, "we could
do them more than once." He sits looking at Peter. Peter
trembles, and something in that satisfies Michael, gives him back
what is his. He looks at the pipes.

"We park a car in front of his garage door in
the morning," he says, trying it out. "And when they stop,
the kid gets out to open the door, we do him bang, on the sidewalk,
in front of the old man where he can see it. I want to make sure he
sees it, before we do him."

He looks down from the ceiling again, his fingers
still laced behind his neck. Peter sits still. Nothing has changed,
and that satisfies Michael, and gives him back what is his too.

There is a noise on the cot, Leonard Crawley sneezes,
then breathes deeply through his nose. He moans softly, "Fuck
me," and puts his finger back into the envelope.

"In the morning," Michael says to Peter.
"You and Monk do it in the morning. I don’t care who does who,
but do the kid first."

It is quiet a moment and then Michael suddenly pushes
himself up, the table unsteady under his weight, and climbs the
wooden stairs into the old man’s kitchen. A moment later Peter
follows him up.

The old man is sitting in a straight-back chair,
holding the cat in his lap, looking out the window.

"What do you got for me, Frank?" Michael
says.

"What you need?" the old man says.

"Something sawed," he says. "Pump,
double-barrel, it don’t make no difference."

The old man shakes his head. "I ain’t got
nothing like that," he says.

Michael sits down and stares at the old man; the old
man stares out the window.

"I ain’t got time for this," Michael
says.

The old man shrugs. "You got other places you
can go."

"I need them right now."

"You need everything since you were ten years
old right now," the old man says. "Get yourself a cat,
Michael. They teach you it don’t get you nowhere to be in such a
hurry."

His hand strokes the animal’s head. An old hand
with sunken, spotted skin. Peter sees the bones all the way to the
wrist.

"Let’s see what you got," Michael says.

The old man looks out the window.

Michael closes his eyes, then notices Peter standing
at the doorway. He winks. "I got to go upstairs and tear the
place apart?" he says. "That’s what I’m gonna do,
Frank, you don’t put the fuckin’ cat down and show me what I
want."

The old man turns in his chair to look at Michael,
and then at Peter, and then, without another word, he puts the cat on
the floor and stands up.

Michael follows him upstairs into a small bedroom and
Peter follows Michael. There are pictures all over the walls—ancient,
formal portraits of his family on the steps of a large white house.
His father and mother, six children arranged by height in front of
them. Two girls, four boys. Peter wonders which one of the children
is the old man.

The old man opens the closet door and pulls the
string cord to the light. The closet is half full of women’s
clothing. Peter tries to remember when the old man’s wife died. He
thinks it must be fifteen years.
 
The
shotguns are on the floor farther back, and Michael chooses two of
them, both double-barreled, both sawed at eighteen inches. Oiled and
cleaned. He breaks them open and closes them.

The old man finds a box of shells and turns off the
light. "How much I owe you?" Michael says.

The cat appears in the doorway, then wraps itself
around the old man’s trousers. He bends slowly at the waist and
picks it up, and then sits on the edge of the bed and strokes its
head.

"Seven hundred,"
he says.

* * *

M
ichael goes back through
the kitchen to the basement stairs, holding a shotgun in each hand.
Peter follows him. They are exactly where he left them, Leonard on
the cot, Monk standing over by the wall. Peter sits down at the
table.

Michael sets the guns in front of him. "You
ain’t going to try to talk me out of this?" he says.

Peter doesn’t answer. He looks at the shotguns,
accepting them as part of what has happened, and what will happen
next.

Michael drops the box of shells on the table between
the shotguns. Peter stares at them; he does not move.

"Take what you need," he says.

Peter blinks, looking slow and tired, and then his
hand reaches across the table and picks up one of the open weapons.
He looks at the gun, he looks at his cousin. Michael sees there is no
argument in him. He sees everything is settled.

"Remember," he says, "the kid first,
then the old man. He’s got to see it happen."

Monk picks up the other shotgun and drops half a
dozen shells into his coat pocket. He pushes the box across the table
to Peter, who takes only two. Tired and slow.

Peter puts the shells into the chambers and closes
the breech.

"There ain’t nothing to talk about, right?"
Michael says. He watches Monk shake his head; his cousin is looking
at the gun in his hands. Michael smiles.

"I was just thinkin’," he says, "it
might be best you did the old man yourself, Pally. Keep it in the
family .... "

And he watches his cousin slowly nod, as if he had
expected that, and then slowly lift his eyes.

And then, just as slowly, he lifts the shotgun until
its barrels are eyes too.

One of them blinks, and it
is the last thing Michael Flood sees in his life.

* * *

H
e feels his arm jump, and
Michael is blown backwards toward the stairway. Peter stares at the
shotgun, deaf or numb from the noise, he doesn’t know which, trying
to understand what has happened.