The old house where we grew up—where Mom and Dad still live today—was just a short distance north from here. No more than a five-minute drive. Back when we were kids, Billy and I walked down here most every morning during the summer. All the neighborhood kids came here. We brought bag lunches and bottles of pop and hid them in the bushes so no one would steal them. Then we swam all day long and held diving contests down at the rope swing. When the weather was too cool to swim, we played war in the woods and built forts made out of rocks and mud and tree branches. Other times, we fished for catfish and carp and the occasional bass or yellow perch. On real lucky days, when it rained hard enough to wear away the soil, we searched for (and usually found) Indian arrowheads wedged in with the tree roots that grew along the creek’s steep banks. We called those rainy days treasure hunts, and took turns acting as “expedition leader.” The creek was a pretty wonderful place.
I thought about all this and wondered if that was the reason Billy had chosen the bridge as our meeting place. Was he feeling sentimental? A little nostalgic maybe? Probably not; as usual, I was probably giving the bastard too much credit….
* * *
Like I told you, I haven’t seen him in more than eight years. Not since that long ago autumn night we spent together talking at my apartment. One week later, Billy just up and disappeared. No note, no message, nothing. Just an empty closet, a missing suitcase, and eighty dollars gone from Mom’s purse.
And to make matters worse, Mr. Lester called the house later that evening and told us that Cindy hadn’t been to school that day, was she with Billy by any chance?
The next morning, Dad called Billy’s probation officer. He wasn’t much help. He told us to sit tight, that maybe Billy would come to his senses. Other than that, there was really nothing we could do but wait.
And so for two weeks, we waited and heard nothing.
Then, on a Sunday afternoon, Mom and Dad sitting out on the front porch reading the newspaper, still dressed in their church clothes, there was a phone call: I know I know it was a stupid thing to do but you see Cindy’s pregnant and scared to death of her father he’s a mean sonofabitch real mean and California is the place to be these days heck we already have jobs and a place to stay and there’s lots of great people out here we’ve got some really nice friends already c’mon please don’t cry Mom please don’t yell Dad we’re doing just fine really we are we’re so much in love and we’re doing just fine….
Six months later, Cindy Lester came home. Alone. While walking back from work one night, she had been raped and beaten in a Los Angeles alley. She’d spent three days in the hospital with severe cuts and bruises. She’d lost her baby during the first night. Cindy told us that she’d begged him over and over again, but Billy had refused to come home with her. So she’d left him.
Over the next three years, there were exactly seven more phone calls (two begging for money) and three short handwritten letters. The envelopes were postmarked from California, Arizona, and Oregon.
Then, early in the fourth year, the police called. Billy had been arrested in California for drug trafficking. This time, the heavy stuff: cocaine and heroin. Dad hired Billy a decent lawyer, and both he and Mom flew out to the trial and watched as the judge gave Billy seven years in the state penitentiary.
I never went to see him. Not even once. Not at the trial. Not when Mom and Dad went for their twice-a-year visits. And not when Billy sent the letter asking me to come. I just couldn’t do it.
I didn’t hate him the way Mom and Dad thought I did. Jesus, he was still my baby brother. But he was locked up back there where he belonged, and I was right here where I belonged. We each had our own lives to live.
So no I didn’t hate him. But I couldn’t forgive him, either. Not for what he had done to this family—the heartbreak of two wonderful, loving parents; the complete waste of their hard-earned retirement savings; the shame and embarrassment he brought to all of us—
—bare knuckles rapped against the windshield and I jumped so hard I hit my head. I also screamed.
I could hear laughing from outside the car, faint in the howling wind, but clear enough to instantly recognize.
It was him alright.
My baby brother.
Suddenly a face bent down into view. Smiled.
And I just couldn’t help it. I smiled right back.
FIVE
We hugged for a long time. Car door open, engine still running. Both of us standing outside in the cold and the wind. Neither of us saying a word.
We hugged until I could no longer stand the smell of him.
Then we stopped and sort of stood back and looked at each other.
“Jesus, Billy, I can’t believe it,” I said.
“I know, I know.” He shook his head and smiled. “Neither can I.”
“Now, talk to me. What’s this all about? What kind of trouble are—”
He held up his hand. “In a minute, okay? Lemme just look at you a while longer.”
For the next couple of minutes, we stood there facing each other, shivering in the cold. The Foster boys, together once again.
He was heavier than the last time I’d seen him; maybe fifteen, twenty pounds. And he was shaved bald, a faint shadow of dark stubble showing through. Other than that, he was still the Billy I remembered. Bright blue eyes. Big stupid smile. That rosy-cheeked baby face of his.
“Hey, you like my hair,” he asked, reading my thoughts.
“Yeah,” I said, “who’s your barber?”
“Big black sonofabitch from Texas. Doing life for first-degree murder. Helluva nice guy, though.”
He waited for my response and when I didn’t say anything, he laughed. This time, it sounded harsh and a little mean.
“How’s the folks?” he asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. “You know, pretty much the same. They’re doing okay.”
“And Sarah and the girls?”
My heart skipped a beat. An invisible hand reached up from the ground and squeezed my balls.
“Mom and Dad told me all about ‘em. Sent me pictures in the mail,” he said.
I opened my mouth, but couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe.
“They’re twins, right? Let’s see…four years old…Kacy and Katie, if I remember right.”
I sucked in a deep breath. Let it out.
“I bet you didn’t know I carry their picture around in my wallet. The one where they’re sitting on the swing set in those fancy little blue dresses—”
“Five,” I said, finally finding my voice.
“Huh?”
“The girls,” I said. “They just turned five. Back in October.”
“Halloween babies, huh? That’s kinda neat. Hey, remember how much fun we used to have trick-or-treatin’? ‘Member that time we spent the night out back the old Myer’s House? Camped out in Dad’s old tent. Man, that was a blast.”
I nodded my head. I remembered everything. The costumes we used to make. The scary movies we used to watch, huddled together on the sofa, sharing a glass of soda and a bowl of Mom’s popcorn. All the creepy stories we used to tell each other before bedtime.
Suddenly I felt sorry for him—standing there in his tattered old clothes, that dumb smile refusing to leave his face, smelling for all the world like a dumpster full of food gone to spoil. I suddenly felt very sorry for him and very guilty for me.
“I didn’t break out, you know,” he said. “They released me two weeks ago. Early parole.”
“Jesus, Billy. That’s great news.”
“I spent a week back in L.A. seeing some friends. Then I hitched a ride back here. Made it all the way to the state line. I walked in from there.”
“I still can’t goddamn believe it. Wait until Mom and Dad see you.”
“That’s one of the things I need to talk to you about, Hank. Why don’t we take a walk and talk for a while, okay?”
“Sure, Billy,” I said. “Let’s do that.”
So that’s exactly
what we did.
SIX
I still miss him.
It’s been four months now since that morning at the bridge. And not a word.
I read the newspaper every day. Watch the news every night.
And still there’s been nothing.
I think about him all the time now. Much more often than I used to. Once or twice a week, I take a drive down to the old bridge. I stand outside the car and watch the creek rushing by, and I think back to the time when we were kids. Back to a time when things were simple and happy.
God, I miss him.
* * *
He wanted money. Plain and simple, as always.
First, he tried to lie to me. Said it was for his new “family.” Said he got married two days after he got out of prison. Needed my help getting back on his feet.
But I didn’t fall for it.
So then he told me the truth. Or something close to it anyway. There was this guy, an old friend from up around San Francisco. And Billy owed him some big bucks for an old drug deal gone bad. Right around thirty grand. If he didn’t come up with the cash, this old friend was gonna track him down and slit his throat.
“So how about a little help, big brother?”
Sorry, I told him. No can do. I’d like to help out, but I’ve got a family now. A mortgage. My own business barely keeping its head above water. Sorry. Can’t help you.
So then he started crying. And begging me.
And when that didn’t work, he got pissed off.
His eyes went cold and distant; his voice got louder.
He said: “Okay that’s fine. I’ll just hit up the old man and the old lady. They’ll help me out. Damn right they will. And if they don’t have enough cash, well, there are always other ways I can persuade you to help me, big brother. Yes, sir, I can be mighty persuasive when I put my mind to it….
“Let’s start by talking about that store of yours, Hank—you’re paid up on all your insurance, aren’t you? I mean, you got fire coverage and all that stuff, don’t you? Jeez, I’d hate to see something bad happen when you’re just starting out…And how about Sarah? She still working over at that bank Mom and Dad told me about? That’s a pretty dangerous job, ain’t it? Working with all that money. Especially for a woman…. And, oh yeah, by the way, what school do the girls go to? Evansville? Or are you busing them over to that private place, what’s it called again?”
I stabbed him then.
We were standing near the middle of the bridge. Leaning against the thick wooden railing, looking down at the water.
And when he said those things, I took out the steak knife—which had been sitting on the kitchen counter right next to where I’d found my car keys—I took it out from my coat pocket and I held it in both of my hands and brought it down hard in the back of his neck.
He cried out once—not very loud—and dropped to his knees.
And then there was only the flash of the blade as I stabbed him over and over again…
* * *
Last night, it finally happened. Sarah confronted me.
We were alone in the house. The girls were spending the night at their grandparents’—they do this once a month and absolutely love it.
After dinner, she took me downstairs to the den and closed the door. Sat me down on the sofa and stood right in front of me. She told me I looked a mess. I wasn’t sleeping, wasn’t eating. Either I tell her right now what was going on or she was leaving.
She was serious, too. I think she thought I was having an affair.
So I told her.
Everything…starting with the phone call and ending with me dumping Billy’s body into the creek.
When I was finished, she ran from the room crying. She made it upstairs to the bathroom, where she dropped to her knees in front of the toilet and got sick. When she was done, she asked me very calmly to go back downstairs and leave her alone for a while. I agreed.
An hour or so later, she came down and found me out in the backyard looking up at the moon and the stars. She ran to me and hugged me so tight I could barely breathe, and then she started crying again. We hugged for a long time, until the tears finally stopped, and then she held my face in her hands and told me that she understood how difficult it had been for me, how horrible it must have felt, but that it was all over now and that I had done the right thing. No matter what, that was the important thing to remember, she kept saying—I had done the right thing.
Then we were hugging again and both of us were crying.
When we finally went inside, we called the girls and took turns saying goodnight. Then we went to bed and made love until we both fell asleep.
Later that night, the moon shining silver and bright through the bedroom window, Sarah woke from a nightmare, her skin glistening with sweat, her voice soft and frightened. She played with my hair and asked: “What if someone finds him, Hank? A fisherman? Some kids? What if someone finds him and recognizes him?”
I put a finger to her lips and ssshed her. Put my arms around her and held her close to me. I told her everything was going to be okay. No one would find him. And if they did, they would never be able to identify him.
“Are you sure they won’t recognize him?” she asked. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely positive,” I said, stroking her neck. “Not after all this time. Not after he’s been in the water for this long.”
And not after I cut up his face the way I did.
No one could recognize him after all that…not even his own brother.
LITTLE BROTHERS PORTFOLIO
By Stephen R. Bissette
Little Brothers was Rick Hautala’s fourth novel, first published by Zebra Books in 1988.
It was my immediate favorite of Rick’s novels to date, and between face-to-face blathering over beers at Necon and ongoing phone conversations, I encouraged (well, bullied) Rick to continue writing about the Untcigahunk — the ‘little brothers’ introduced in the novel — as they seemed to have almost endless story possibilities.
As Rick himself put it in the original publication of the stories:
“The origin of these stories is quite simple: I got a phone call one day from Steve Bissette, a friend of mine, asking if I would be willing to ‘expand’ on the original concept of Little Brothers… which he and Michael Zulli (The Puma Blues) would then adapt into comic format for Steve’s magazine, Taboo…. I liked Steve’s suggestion because it sounded like fun; it gave me the impetus to go back to the situation I had created in the book and re-explore it, to look at it from several different angles….” (Rick Hautala, Night Visions 9, 1991, Dark Harvest; pp. 175-176)
Actually, there was more to it: I pushed Rick to write the stories because he was in a (justifiable) funk at the time, and had called one afternoon to announce he was giving up writing altogether. I talked him out of it, with the suggestion, then insistence on his following up so we could collaborate on something spinning off from Little Brothers.
I’d have done anything to get Rick writing again.
Rick indeed did follow up, writing four self-contained but interlocking short stories in remarkably quick order. I loved ‘em, and passed these on to Michael, who also enjoyed them.
I powwowed with Rick (including a sunny outdoor picnic in Brattleboro, VT and one trip I took up to Rick’s home in Maine) and Michael and I began swapping sketches and drawings back-and-forth. We also deliberated over which of the four stories to begin with, each of us adapting our personal favorite of the quartet.
The three of us settled on proposing a four-issue comics miniseries, adapting each of the four stories into 28-page comic narratives. To that end, Michael and I did full, comprehensive roughs for two of the stories/issues and Michael even completed a gorgeous oil painting cover proposal.
I tell you, it was lovely stuff. We worked on all this for two years, from 1990-1992, then I went looking for a publisher (since Taboo, by 1992, was defunct).
Unfortunately, we never did sell that comics adaptation o
f the quartet of stories. Damn, I sure tried; we even had a handshake deal with Mike Richardson at Dark Horse Comics in 1992, which (along with two other ventures) quickly proved how little that meant in the comics world. Alas.
I tried again to pitch the project to DC Comics/Vertigo in 1993, only to receive a rejection and kind reply from editor Karen Berger suggesting I seek a home “with the Dark Horse crew or elsewhere.”
Rick and Michael and I had a laugh over that. Rick and I later had a beer or two and more than a few laughs over that.
Rick dedicated the initial publication of the stories in Night Visions to me “with mucho thanks amigo!” but we never did get it off the ground. I was glad to see later editions of the stories and that Rick was reaching a new generation (and getting further mileage out of them).
The last time we dined together, with Chris Golden and our pals in the Vicious Circle dining “club,” Rick asked again if there were any hope for the project to find a new home. Reminding Rick that I’d retired from comics in 1999, I didn’t hold out much hope.
Sorry, Rick—I tried, I really tried—but I let you down.
But you never held that against me.
Mucho thanks, amigo, for the friendship and love.
Stephen R. Bissette, June 2013
Mountains of Madness, VT
__________________________________________________
All artwork ©1990, 1991, 1992, 2013 Stephen R. Bissette, all rights reserved
For more info and artwork, including Rick’s sketches and Michael Zulli’s artwork, see my serialized 2009 blog posting on this project:
Mister October Page 18
