The Brothers K (28 page)

“Arjuna said, ‘It is made.’”

My brothers and I waited. But Peter said nothing more. He looked distracted. Distracted and sad. “So?” Irwin asked. “What was it?”

Papa threw another blazing strike. And when Peter continued, his voice was reluctant, perhaps even frightened.

“‘What have I promised?’ Arjuna asked.

“‘Only this,’ Drona said. ‘That if ever I come against you in battle, whether alone or with an army, you must fight to win.’

“The Pandavas had all been smiling. They were no longer. ‘You’re our teacher,’ Arjuna said. ‘You’re our friend. You’re like a father to us.’

“‘And you have given your word,’ said Drona.

“Arjuna bowed his head and said, ‘I am bound.’”

Our smiles had gone the way of the Pandavas’. A fastball hit the canvas. Again the dent was in the center of the strike zone. “Did they?” Everett asked.

Peter said nothing.

“Did who?” Irwin asked. “Did who what?”

“Peter knows what I’m asking,” Everett said.

Maybe he did, but he didn’t answer.

“What I don’t get,” Irwin said, “is if Everett’s the crown prince, an’ I’m the Son of the Wind, an’ the twins are the twins, who the heck’s Arjuna? Is it you, Pete? Or Kade? And by the way, who’s Drona?”

“This story is about the Pandavas,” Peter said quietly. “Not the Chances.”

Another pitch hit the target dead center. Irwin grinned and said, “Yeah. Sure.”

Then Everett scowled and said, “They did.”

“Huh?” went Irwin.

“They did meet in battle,” Everett repeated. “For Arjuna to become the greatest archer, he had to kill Drona, didn’t he? Didn’t he, Peter?”

Peter said nothing, but Irwin burst out, “Aw come on!
Arjuna
wouldn’t do that!”

Everett snorted. “I guess you know all about it, Mahatma Irwin.”

I expected Irwin to laugh at himself, or to back off in some way. But he was vehement. “The Son of the Wind knows!” he insisted. “Arjuna wouldn’t! Right, Pete? Because how could you be the world’s greatest anything and kill your friend and teacher?”

For once, Irwin had silenced Everett. Another fastball hit the target, right in the dent left by the one before it. Papa was on a roll.

Peter said, “Drona died at the Battle of Kurekshetra. They say it was the greatest battle ever fought. Meaning it was filled with the greatest
heroics and strategies and performances, I suppose, but also the greatest treachery, the most blood, the most death. And grandsons fought their grandfathers, cousins their cousins, friends fought friends, and pupils fought their teachers. And yes, the Pandavas and Drona
did
turn out to be on opposite sides. But Arjuna didn’t kill him.”

“I
told
you!” Irwin gloated.

“Who did?” Everett asked, violently shoving away the elbow Irwin kept gouging into his shoulder.

“The brothers all knew,” Peter said, “that Drona could never be defeated as long as he held a weapon in his hand. He would have killed them all. But remember the little boy who drank the fake milk? Drona’s son, Aswatthaman? He became a great warrior too, and fought with Drona against the Pandavas. And Bhima knew that Aswatthaman meant everything to his father. The Son of the Wind understood this perfectly, because his own brothers were dearer than life, or honor, or women, or anything else, to him.”

Irwin began to look distressed.

“So during one of the battles,” Peter went on, “when a king allied to the Pandavas was about to attack Drona, Bhima had a terrible idea. This king wasn’t much of a warrior. Drona would have made short work of him. But Bhima waited till the king launched his doomed attack. Then he disguised his voice, and threw it, as only the Son of the Wind could do, so that from his own camp Drona suddenly heard one of his own generals shout,
‘Aswatthaman is dead!’
And Drona’s weapons just fell out of his hands. His heart broke. He just sat down in his chariot on a little grass prayer mat, and the king, Bhima’s ally, rode up and cut off his head. So it was no one, really. Or it was grief—grief and the Son of the Wind’s lie—that killed Drona.”

A Kamikaze snapped down into the strike zone. “Well!” Irwin said, clearing his throat loudly, “anyhow, it’s not about us!”

Everett started to laugh.

“The world was
weird
back then!” Irwin said, making a weird face to emphasize it. Everett laughed harder. “India was an oddball spot in those days,” Irwin blustered. “So don’t let it worry us! Let not the olden days get you down today, huh, guys?”

Everett’s eyes were streaming, Pete and I were laughing too, and the fact that Irwin was genuinely distressed made his rampant backpedaling all the funnier. “But really!” he said. “If one of us
was
a Pandava, we just plain wouldn’t fight in that situation! Turn the other cheek, right? That’s all there is to it, right? We’d just flat out refuse!”

Peter stopped laughing. “What if you’d promised, Irwin?” he asked. “What if you’d given your word, like Arjuna?”

“I’m never fightin’ nobody!” Irwin insisted. “Ever!”

Peter just smiled at this. But Everett, imitating Irwin’s voice and bluster to cruel perfection, added, “Not even if some maniac comes after Mama with a knife! Not even if some goon with a Presto-log dick decides to rape my girlfriend! I’m just gonna run, like Jesus says!”

Papa threw another Kamikaze. Again it snapped down into the dent left by the previous pitch. Irwin’s face reddened and his mouth opened and closed several times before he managed to mutter, “That’s not what Jesus says.”

Meanwhile Peter closed his eyes, and in a soft voice began to recite:
“Arjuna placed the deep blue gem on Drona’s brow. The severed head was beautiful as a dark hill covered in new fallen snow …”

There was a quiet, during which I found myself picturing, very much against my will, Papa’s head, with its new snow at the temples. Then Irwin cleared his throat. “No offense,” he said, “but I’m headin’ in. I don’t like weirdness. And if you ask me, you guys are gettin’ weird.”

He left us.

Peter and Everett and I didn’t move.

Papa threw three straight fastballs right into the dent.

The bird’s severed head kept falling.

A
t the next no-Papa grace time it was Everett’s turn to pray again—and Mama still blames him for all the hell that broke loose. But I don’t. I feel there’s no blame to place. Everett was sixteen years old at the time, chock-full of hormones, chock-full of doubts about the Sabbath cult he’d been born into, and chock-full of pride in the intelligence it took to entertain and articulate such doubts. If his siblings were going to start indulging in a bunch of cornball hillbilly graces, all right, he figured. But his turn was
his
turn. And he was having nothing to do with the buckle, band or notches of any sort of Bible Belt. So …

Bowing his head over his macaroni, and speaking in a voice gone suddenly creaky with nerves, he said, “Dear God, if there is One …”

And the walls came tumbling.

“Not
one more word!”
Mama hissed.

“Dear God, if You exist,” he repeated.

“Silence!” Mama shouted.

“Dear God,” he said again, “or whatever we mean by that word—”

“Shuttup!”
she shrieked. And Everett’s attempts to pray and Mama’s efforts to stop him fell so close upon each other that they formed an insane litany:

“Dear God, if there is any such Being—”

“Shame
on you! Get up to your room this instant!”

“Dear
Jesus
, then, if there really was a resurrection—”

“Shut your mouth this
instant!
I’ve been expecting something like this from you, and I’ll not have it! Not in my house!”

“Dear God, if You exist!”

“You don’t know anything about
anything!
And you will leave this table this
instant!”

“If You’re still kicking, Lord, if there’s any life the preachers haven’t beaten out of You, I’d sure appreciate it if You’d make Mama here pipe down, because—”

“Satan, get behind me!
Beatrice, Winifred! Cover your ears! No! Go to your rooms! Everybody out! I will not have this in my—”

“Dear God If You Exist!”

“The Lord is the Shepherd I shall not want! He maketh me lie down in still waters! He restoreth my—”

“Dear Pops, Spook and Junior! Please help Mama see that I’m not trying to lead her lambies astray. I’m only trying to be
honest
, dammit, and—”

“Yea though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death …”

“I’m
sick
of reciting pious Betty Crocker recipes! I don’t know Who You are or even
if
You are, and instead of speaking David’s or Luke’s or Matthew’s minds I want to speak my
own
for once—”

“And your mind is a sewer that Christ alone can cleanse!”

“Speak for yourself, Mama! DEAR GOD
IF YOU EXIST—”

Mama jumped to her feet, swung from the heels, and slapped Everett so hard he fell clear over against Peter. But when he lifted his face again he looked her in the eye, then slowly, arrogantly, but also biblically turned the other cheek. “Dear God, if there is One,” he whispered.

Mama let him have it again, this time with her fist.

“Dear Christ, if there was One,” he murmured.

And she slammed him a third time. His eyes glazed, his mouth started bleeding, Bet started screaming, Freddy and Peter were in tears. “Dear Holy Ghostie, Dear Post Toastie,” he blithered, “Dear Tricycle, Dear Triceratops, Dear Larry, Moe and Curly …”

She’d literally knocked him silly. And she was ready to hit him again. But Irwin jumped up, and stood between them.

“Leave him alone, okay, Mama?” he said. And he was smiling, nearly laughing as he said it. But it wasn’t a request: it was an order.

Mama said nothing. She just blasted Irwin’s face as hard as she could. And at that moment—at the sight of her little white fist bouncing off Irwin’s big smile—I completely lost contact with my body. My mind remained conscious, I kept listening and watching, but I’d entered a state of such complete thralldom to the situation that I honestly don’t think I’d have moved or acted even if Mama had picked up a steak knife.

“Please, Mama,” Irwin said, and his smile, instead of fading, had intensified. “Let’s all calm down now. Everett too.”

She hit him again. He hardly flinched. “You’ll hurt your hand,” he said.

Mama picked up her plate. Bet screamed. Then Peter, moving so quickly I could hardly follow, lunged and grabbed Mama’s wrist from behind. She struggled briefly, perhaps kicked him once or twice, then Irwin had the other wrist. For a moment she fought them both. Then she froze. And then she began to let out a series of horrible, convulsive gasps which, even in my wooden state, I recognized as the death rattle of my brothers’ and my childhood.

“It’s just us, Mama,” Peter said, awkwardly trying to pat her shoulder with one hand as he gripped her wrist with the other. “We’re not your crazy father. We’re just your boys. It’s just Everett, Mama. And Irwin and me.”

His voice was soothing, at least to me, and though there were tears in his eyes his composure was amazing. “We know Everett and all his big theories, Mama. We’ve heard them plenty, and I don’t think one of us agrees. But they’re his honest feelings, Mama. And he’s not going to corrupt or ruin us just by saying, at grace time, what we’ve all heard him say at other times. Remember the verse
Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling?
I think that’s all he was trying to do, Mama. Till he lost his temper, anyway.”

You could tell she was listening. You could tell Peter’s words soothed some part of her, tempted her to calm down. But being tempted, even by forbearance, is still being tempted. And a lifetime of sermons had left no doubt in her mind about who the Master of Temptation was. Abruptly stiffening, she turned and shrieked in Peter’s face,
“Get thee behind me, Satan!”

“I’m not Satan,” he said as calmly as he could. But she’d stunned him, you could tell; she’d sickened and weakened him. Then with a sudden
mad lurch she pulled both her wrists free, leapt away from Peter and Irwin, and with her hair in her face spun round till she was half crouched, right in front of Everett, like an animal about to spring. It was the worst thing I’d ever seen. The language of her body, the hatred in her eyes, these were things that none of us, the seven-year-olds especially, should ever have had to see. Not in our mother. Not aimed at one of us.

Not knowing what else to do, Irwin and Peter placed themselves in front of Everett. But she looked between them and spoke her hate: she screamed—a horrid, insane shriek of rage. And when it was over she grabbed Bet and Freddy and dragged them, howling and hitting and fighting her all the way, back to their bedroom, where she slammed the door so hard the entire house rattled like the cheap, hollow box we usually managed to forget it was.

Irwin sat down, still wearing the dregs of a smile. Then he hung his head in his hands, and silently started to cry. Everett’s mouth was still bleeding; his face was a mottled red and pale gray. “Are you happy?” Peter asked, plunking down in the chair beside Irwin. “Are you proud of yourself?”

“She
hates
me,” he said, sounding stunned now, and frightened, and maybe even a little sorry. “She
despises
me! She really does!”

Over the sniffling of the twins back in the bedroom, we heard Mama sob,
“Examine me
, O
Lord! Try my reins and my heart, for thy loving kindness is before mine eyes, and I have walked in thy truth …”

Peter’s forehead dropped onto Winnie’s shoulder. “The Psalms,” he groaned.

“Betty Crocker!” Everett shouted down the hall.

“Shuttup, Everett!” Irwin and Peter cried in unison.

But Mama had heard him.
“I have not sat with vain persons!”
she hollered through the door.
“Neither will I go in with dissemblers. I have hated the congregation of evildoers, and will not sit with the wicked …”