Building Blocks

by Cynthia Voigt

  “You don’t have to be rich to get privacy,” Kevin pointed out. “Uncle Andrew’s not rich and his farm has this same feeling. Of course, it’s not beautiful, not like this. But who cares about that?”

  “I do,” Brann started to say. Then he stopped. Because he didn’t, he really didn’t; and he hadn’t known that before about himself. It wasn’t the fancy house or the close-cropped, well-watered lawn. It was the space and silence, and the sense that they were the only ones there.

  “You’re right,” he said instead. He looked at Kevin’s gray eyes, trying to see inside the boy, this strange kid who seemed to understand already things Brann was just starting to figure out.

  Suzanne paddled up to them and suggested a race. Brann had watched these children swim. “You two go ahead and I’ll be the starter. Twice up and back?”

  “I can’t swim that far,” Kevin objected.

  “OK, once up and back.”

  “And you’ll race the winner,” Suzanne announced.

  They started at the deep end, each hanging on with one hand. “Ready? Set? Go!” Brann called. Lazily, he watched them swim. Kevin had a dogged half-crawl and his feet sent up great splashes of water. His kick was rotten. Suzanne flailed her arms and her legs, making up in energy for all that she lacked in skill. She looked like a windup toy, splashing, splashing, lifting her head straight up to get a breath and check on Kevin’s position. They didn’t know how to make a racing turn, either. Brann stood and watched this, wondering whether when his turn came he should swim as well as he could (which wasn’t that well, but was miles better than Kevin) or rein himself back just because he was so much better. He heard a dog barking, but he couldn’t even tell what direction the distant voice came from, because the hills and trees distorted sound. The dog didn’t sound alarmed.

  As the racers came back up the length of the pool, Suzanne pulled steadily ahead. Her arms rotated into and out of the water, like windmill arms. Her face—eyes and open mouth—gleamed with victory. She won by six strokes.

  “I get to rest before I race you,” she said to Brann. She hung onto the edge of the pool and gasped for breath. “He’s no race at all.”

  “Fine by me,” Brann agreed. “I want a fair race,” he said, adding silently to himself, “So I can beat you to hell and back and there’ll be no excuses.” He leaned down to give Kevin a hand, pulling him up out of the water.

  “Nobody beats Suzanne. No matter how good you are, she wants to win so bad she just does it.”

  “Which some people never seem to learn,” she said to Kevin. She grinned up at Brann, “But some people are born stupid.”

  Brann began to be eager for this race.

  He started, like Suzanne, from the side of the pool. He went down the length, taking it easy, with long, regular strokes and quick butterfly kicks. He breathed every four strokes. He came to the end two strokes ahead of her and didn’t do a racing turn but touched the end and turned around on the surface of the water. Then, passing her on his second stroke out, as she went in to touch the wall, he turned it on. He kicked at maximum efficiency, from the ankles. He breathed only every seventh stroke. He drove his arms into the water as strongly as he could without sacrificing rhythm. He hadn’t hurried the first lap, so he had all of his best energy to put into the second. He cut through the water like a power boat, delighting in the sense of his own muscles working, in a smooth stretch and pull, in the swift, clean movement. When he turned his head to breathe, he could see no sign of Suzanne.

  At the end of the pool, Brann grabbed the edge and grinned up at Kevin. Only Kevin wasn’t there.

  Surprised, Brann hoisted himself and looked across the lawn. Kevin was running into the woods.

  Brann turned around and saw Suzanne struggling to free herself from the grip of a short dark-haired man who leaned over into the pool and held onto one of her arms.

  “Lemme go! Are you deaf? Let me go!” she shrieked.

  Brann hesitated between the girl and the woods. As long as the man was holding Suzanne, Brann could make it to the woods. But you didn’t go off and leave someone else in trouble. Did you?

  Why not? She’d been asking for trouble all day.

  Yeah, but you didn’t. Brann had no choice.

  He walked slowly down alongside the pool. The man was wearing an undershirt, a pair of baggy denim overalls, and heavy shoes without socks. His hair was slicked down.

  “I’ll tell my father!” Suzanne cried. “He’ll have something to say to you! You better be careful around my father!”

  The man took one look at Brann and nodded his head, in greeting. Then he lifted Suzanne up, out of the pool and onto the stones. He was strong enough, Brann thought. He kept his grip on her arm.

  “What names are you?’ he demanded. He spoke his words thickly, as if his mouth was full of potatoes.

  “Suzanne Connell,” she said, bold. “And my father’s Thomas Connell, the builder. You better let me go now.”

  The man held on and looked at Brann.

  “Brann with two n’s,” Brann said.

  “Brann what?”

  “Connell,” Brann said, before he thought. Suzanne flashed her eyes at him, but she didn’t say anything. A mean little smile turned up the corners of her mouth, as if she and Brann shared a secret, and she knew more about the secret than Brann did.

  “Suzanne and Brann,” the man said. “Good. We will be going down to seeing just what your great father says. Your friend has made a getaway, but you have not been so lucky.”

  “He’s a chicken,” Suzanne muttered.

  Brann didn’t argue with her. He was disappointed. Not angry at Kevin, just disappointed. It was too bad the kid was the way he was, in that way. That wasn’t all there was, but that part was—too bad.

  “You have been trespassing on private property. That breaks the law,” the man said. “We will go ask your father what he thinks about trespassing on private property.”

  “You can’t take us home.” Suzanne sounded scared. Why should she be scared? “We won’t ever do it again. Honest. I promise. Please mister—you don’t have to tell him.”

  The man studied her until she finally stopped. “I do yes have to tell him. And this makes some importance to you. Good you got clothes somewhere? You, Brann, get them. Then follow up this way.” He indicated with his free hand the far wing of the house. “My truck waits for you there. You will not fear the dog barking, for he is enchained.”

  “You gonna run away too?” Suzanne demanded. “I’ll tell anyway, you can bet your boots.” Brann didn’t bother to answer her.

  They rode down the long, winding hill in a pickup truck. Suzanne tried everything to talk the caretaker out of taking them home. Then she tried to talk him out of telling her father. Her father, she said, wouldn’t be home yet anyway, and he wouldn’t like being called away from work.

  The caretaker said he didn’t believe Suzanne. Then, he said, he knew of Thomas Connell, and Thomas Connell would think this was important, his children trespassing on private property.

  Brann put his shirt on in the kitchen. Suzanne sat at the table, shivering. The caretaker dialed the number written by the telephone. “They come home right away,” he announced to the children, and sat down to wait.

  Kevin padded into the room. His hair was still wet although his overalls were dry. “You are the other one?” the caretaker asked.

  Kevin nodded, dumb and pale.

  “You should have stayed getawayed,” the caretaker remarked. “If you run away you can stay away just as easy.”

  “I shouldn’ve been the one to stay, Brann,” Kevin said. “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s OK,” Brann said. He hadn’t expected Kevin to come back so soon. He hadn’t expected Kevin to come back at all. You had to respect the kid.

  After a while, Mr. and Mrs. Connell came in the door. Thomas Connell’s face was dark with anger, his footsteps heavy. He shook the caretaker’s hand and they went out onto the porch to talk.

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nbsp; In the kitchen, nobody spoke. Suzanne was crying and sniveling. Kevin’s mouth was tight at the corners. When Mr. Connell came back inside alone, Mrs. Connell looked at him. Her face was simply tired.

  “Take the boys to the living room, Polly. I’ll begin with Suzanne.”

  He took the belt off of his pants. It was a wide, black leather belt, with a heavy brass buckle on one end. When he had it off, he slapped it once on the table.

  Suzanne began to cry out loud.

  Brann and Kevin went into the dim living room to wait their turns.

  Six

  Evening light washed over the living room. Long golden bars of sunlight slipped under the lowered shades.

  Kevin stood by the dining room door, listening anxiously to the wails and carryings-on from the kitchen. Brann went to look out a window. He snapped up the shade, then remembered that he should have asked Mrs. Connell first. When he turned to ask permission, he saw that she was sitting in a polished wooden rocker. Her belly ballooned out before her. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

  Suzanne shrieked so loudly he could hear every word, every cry, even though the dining room was between them. Her father told her to take down her pants, and she shrieked that she was a girl so he better be careful with her, and that it was all Kevin’s idea. She yelled for her mother. “I don’t want to be whipped!” she cried. Then she sobbed it over and over. “I don’t want to! It’s not fair—they made me! I don’t want to be whipped.”

  “Lean over the chair, let’s get this over with.”

  “No! No!” shrieked Suzanne, but she must have obeyed, because then Brann heard the slap of the belt against bare flesh. “OWWWW! That hurts! That’s enough! Owww! No more, please, Daddy!” The belt fell again. Three strokes in all.

  If he went out he front door, Brann thought, he would never be able to come back in, and he would never be able to return to his own house, to his own parents. He heard Kevin make a little whimpering sound.

  Mrs. Connell spoke without opening her eyes. “I don’t know why you did something like that. You get no sympathy from me.”

  Kevin gulped and was silent.

  Suzanne came out of the kitchen. Her face was wet with tears, but she was smiling. “You’re next,” she told Kevin. She looked over at Brann and the smiled stayed on her face. When Kevin went into the kitchen, she stood listening at the door.

  Kevin didn’t talk to his father. He apparently lowered his pants right away. Brann heard the belt crack against Kevin’s skin. Once, twice, three times—then again and again. At the sixth stroke, Kevin howled, and at the seventh.

  Kevin stood in the dining room doorway, his chest heaving, his eyes watering. His fathomless gray eyes met Brann’s and Brann nodded.

  Mr. Connell waited by the kitchen table, with a chair before him. Brann guessed he was supposed to drape his arms over the back of the chair and stick his backside out.

  “Take down your pants,” Mr. Connell said. He didn’t even sound angry. He didn’t even sound as if he cared about what he was doing.

  “No,” Brann said, quiet.

  “You’re a guest in my house, you follow our rules,” Mr. Connell said.

  “Yes sir,” Brann answered. “I can understand that. But I won’t take down my pants.” He couldn’t have taken them down and bent over. That—that wasn’t something anybody should be able to make you do.

  Mr. Connell studied him, as if assessing how scared he was. Well, he was scared enough, Brann thought. Mr. Connell’s little eyes grew angry. “Should I send you home for your father to whip you?” he threatened.

  Brann glared back at him. “My father doesn’t whip me,” he said, suddenly proud. “My father wouldn’t do that to his kids.”

  The man growled. “Bend over.”

  Brann bent his head and shoulders over the back of the wooden chair. He concentrated on the muddy brown linoleum floor beyond the chair seat. He focused his eyes on a puddly spot under the table.

  The belt fell, and he gasped. It really hurt. A split second after the sound, the pain began. It fell again and Brann heard a little protesting sound escape from his lips. This time it had fallen partly across the tops of his legs.

  He bit on his lip. He couldn’t focus his mind on anything, but he could keep silent. Mr. Connell was whipping so hard you could hear him grunt. Three, four.

  Brann bit down hard and squeezed his eyes closed. Five. His body trembled and he couldn’t stop it. He made a picture for his mind, of the bright hot air and the cool green of the trees around the swimming pool. Inside his mind, he dived into the pool and floated all alone, in the cool blue underwater.

  Six. Wait. Seven. Brann tasted blood. Eight. He made himself think cool and blue, while telling himself it couldn’t last forever. Kevin got seven. Why should Brann get more? Nine. It had to end soon. Unless the belt would keep falling until Brann cried. If he howled, would that stop Mr. Connell? Ten. Brann waited.

  It was over.

  “Get up now,” Mr. Connell ordered. Brann opened his eyes and stood straight, facing the man. His legs quivered, but he made his face stay quiet. Mr. Connell was looking at him oddly. “You’re the oldest, you should have stopped them,” he said.

  Brann could have argued, but he just nodded his head instead. His mouth was filling with blood, and he swallowed it. He guessed he’d bit through his lip.

  “You said you were one of mine. That was a lie,” Mr. Connell said.

  “Yes, it was.” Brann stared back at the man, thinking his own thoughts about that.

  After a while Mrs. Connell called out, “Andrew’s here,” and Mr. Connell told Brann to wait in the living room. Brann didn’t look around as he walked out and stood by a window.

  “You didn’t have to take down your pants,” Suzanne said in her normal voice. “You got it easy.”

  “Shut up, Suzanne,” Brann said, without turning around. He didn’t know how Kevin could stand it, with this horrible sister and that father and his mother who didn’t even act like a human being.

  “It’s not usually this bad,” Kevin said. “Brann?”

  “It’s OK,” Brann said. “I’m just angry.”

  Kevin came to stand beside him. “Angry? Why? They’re right. We were trespassing.”

  “That’s not it,” Brann said. It was fair enough to be whipped, he guessed. “It’s the way he does it.” He didn’t like to think about all the long years Kevin Connell had lived in this family.

  “It’s the only way he knows,” Kevin said. “It’s because he’s scared.”

  “He’s scared?” Brann snorted.

  They were called into the kitchen. Suzanne plopped herself down into a chair and sat with her hands folded on the table in front of her, looking like a perfect angel. Brann and Kevin stood. Brann knew how much it would hurt to sit down.

  A tall, thin man sat with Mr. and Mrs. Connell at the table. His hair was thick and white, his face was tanned red-brown, and his black eyes snapped with life. Kevin looked across at him and the man winked. Kevin’s whole face lit up. His broad mouth stretched into a smile that was about the happiest thing Brann had ever seen. There was no sadness to this smile.

  They all seemed to have forgotten that Brann was there. Nobody introduced him, nobody looked at him. The man, Uncle Andrew, if Kevin’s expression was any clue, sat across the table from where Kevin and Brann stood. “And how’s the world with you, lad?” he asked Kevin.

  Kevin didn’t answer, just smiled and nodded.

  “I’ve been talking to your uncle,” Mr. Connell said. “Look at me when I’m speaking to you, boy.”

  Kevin’s eyes turned reluctantly to his father.

  “Billy will go to the farm this summer. You’ll stay here and work for me. You’ll be here to help your mother with the new baby.”

  Kevin fell absolutely still. Brann didn’t dare look at him.

  “But why?” Brann asked.

  “It’s your responsibility. You can begin to learn my business.”

&n
bsp; Kevin bolted around the table and grabbed his uncle’s brown hand. Uncle Andrew looked at Mr. Connell, his eyes laughing as if to say, Didn’t I tell you so?

  “But why?” Kevin asked his uncle.

  “It’s what your father says, lad. It’s what he said to me, I’m lucky to get the free labor.”

  “But you said—” Kevin protested. “You said I was the best worker you’d ever had. You said you didn’t know how the farm would do without me.”

  Brann sucked at his lower lip. It had stopped bleeding, but the taste of blood was still in his mouth.

  “You know how I blather, lad. Not that it’s a lie, you’ve done a man’s work, more than my boys ever did at your age, and with a better heart for it. But a man blathers and sings and tells stories—and he can’t be held accountable for everything he says.”

  Kevin clung to his uncle’s hand. “But you said you couldn’t imagine a summer without me coming to help out. And he doesn’t like having me around and you said you did.

  “It’s all decided,” Mr. Connell said.

  “But what if I don’t want to?” Kevin demanded desperately.

  “What?” Anger turned Mr. Connell’s face red.

  “I don’t want to work for you. You never said I’d have to work for you. You never said I had to stop going to the farm.”

  “That’s enough,” Mrs. Connell spoke. Her eyes were not angry, just tired. “There’ll be no more out of you.”

  “Didn’t I warn you, Thomas?” Uncle Andrew asked. Then he laughed, easily, and looked up at Kevin’s face. “It’s not the end of the world, lad. Look at it this way, life has its ups and it has its downs. Right now, you’re in what you might a call a down.” Kevin nodded agreement. “That’s better now. What I say to myself, from the bottom of the pit, looking up, you might say, at the stars or at the sun, I tell myself: Lay low until life gets back to an up.”

  “Does that mean I’ll be able to come back next summer?” Kevin asked.

  Even Brann knew that wasn’t what the man meant. What the man meant was that there wasn’t anything he was going to do for Kevin.