by Brian Hodge
Which was still far from useless.
He was on me a moment later, and I felt the club pound into my shoulder, my chest, and I tasted blood as we fell, my legs not steady enough to hold us up. I landed on my back, and Aaron came down atop me, grinding onto me as he flailed with the club. The stars I’d seen earlier were starting to come back.
Aaron’s eyes — there was something different about them this time, compared to the way he’d looked at the house. They seemed weaker, somehow dimmer.
Because Olaf had been hurt. Not yet beaten, but nonetheless hurt.
And maybe Olaf, in a weakened state, was more vulnerable to being challenged from within. For a moment I thought I saw Aaron trying to return, surfacing from down deep in the same way you may recognize a familiar face bobbing up from the depths of a pond.
It lasted only a second, but that was all I needed. I swung the axe up, slamming the handle against his head. Then again from the other side. Cuts opened on both sides of his scalp, and trickles of blood began to flow. It hurt me nearly as much to do it to him, but coddling him wasn’t going to work. That was a weakness Olaf would exploit until I was dead.
So I punched Aaron again, and again, and by this time he was up and off me, and I was following. The hickory stick fell to the ground as I drove him backward, his head snapping with each impact and my knuckles feeling as if I’d been taking out my frustrations on a concrete wall.
But I was going to save my brother’s life, even if I had to break his jaw to do it.
At last he crumpled into a heap, a spill of arms and legs that thrashed feebly on the ground for a moment, then fell still. His face finally relaxed, his battered face…
Don’t look at him.
Just the grove, that’s all. Just me and the grove now. One on one.
I lurched toward it, and by now the rain was falling harder, chilly and freezing to the bone. My right leg trailed behind me, a throbbing mass of pain since bailing out of the car, made worse by the knocking around it had taken while I fought Aaron.
I wrapped both hands around the axe handle, and screw the pain in my left wrist … all that firewood chopping I’d loved doing with Dad was just a prelude to this night. I drew close, past the wreckage of my car, closer, past the runestone, closer still, and now the monster tree was towering above me, and the soft, gentle patter of rain grew louder under all the dry, dead leaves hanging overhead.
Hack it to pieces, hack it to bits, turn the damn thing into so many splinters.
I brought the axe back over my shoulder with a bloody grin, ready for that first chopping swing.
The trees began to stir, and all at once I understood what Rick had had to face alone. There had been no wind to speak of, certainly no wind strong enough to make the tree seem to bend forward, reaching with branches that were no longer branches but arms. The wood groaned and creaked like the mast of a sailing ship, and a deep bass vibrated the ground beneath my feet.
And right then I knew I was beaten. We were all beaten.
A thin branch whipped across my face, striping a slash from cheek to chin. I tried to dodge to the side, even got a couple of hobbling steps away, but a thicker branch caught my ankle, coiling tight and yanking me back, back and up. I was suddenly being hauled upward, upside down, dangling above the ground — ten feet, twenty, thirty, caught like a rabbit in a snare and swaying with momentum. I still had the axe, though barely by my fingertips.
The thin switch whistled through the air again, whipping onto my wrist to try to get me to drop the axe. I reached for the switch with my left hand and caught it. It slithered away, leaving thin friction burns branded into the palm, a narrow line of fire.
I was twisting, spinning, every shred of orientation gone, and I was just about ready to go out of my mind, because these things just do not happen!
Fingers of bark began working at me, plucking at my clothes and my skin in a dozen places, two dozen. I chopped out with the axe at anything that moved and a lot that didn’t, sending a rain of splinters toward the ground below, so far below.
But the coils of branch were too strong, and began to draw me down…
Down to a yawning juncture between two limbs thicker than my midsection…
A juncture that groaned and cracked open like a dark, angry mouth…
I was kicking and chopping with every ounce of energy I could summon, and then that persistent switch finally managed to coil around my wrist like a snake, and the axe was suddenly gone from my hand, gone forever, bouncing off branches and landing on the ground below.
The ground…
From somewhere far away there came the sweep of a pair of headlights, and in their glare I could see Aaron. He looked so small, so distant, and he was staggering. Just Aaron again, Aaron and Aaron alone, moving for the trees.
From down below it must have looked as if I were an ancient mariner in the grip of a legendary giant squid, those beasts with two tentacles to replace each one you got lucky enough to hack away. Headlights … and Aaron looking up … and finally I lost sight of him. He must have made it all the way to the base of the tree.
I couldn’t see him, no. But I heard him.
Such a rending cry of anguish I’d never heard in my life. It wasn’t physical anguish, I was quite sure of that … but mental. Emotional. It prickled the hairs on my arms.
The limbs that held me all seemed to flex at once, and then I was free, soaring, weightless, the chill of the evening air and the sting of rain the only things I could feel. I was a dark, spinning shape that crossed the face of the moon, and down below was Aaron’s car, and beyond that another one, too far away to see more than its lights.
I flew forever, then began to fall. What goes up must come down. The ground below began to swirl closer. It would be hard, so very hard, and I would shatter into a heap of broken bones. Maybe on the asphalt, maybe in the weeds.
But a moment later all I could see was the surface of the pond, spinning in at the speed of light, a black mirror that rippled beneath me, then I exploded through the reflection of the night, and the abrupt thunder in my ears was just as suddenly muffled. A numbing cold sealed around me like a liquid shroud, and it was so black under here you’d think that light had never reached this far.
A burst of bubbles streamed from my mouth.
I reached out with blind hands, and my fingers sunk into the cold slime of the bottom. More bubbles. My head throbbed with a pressure from inside that would surely blast my skull apart if I didn’t get to the surface soon.
I clawed through the muck, kicked and dug with my feet, and after a moment I could hear the sounds of heavy splashing. No balance, I didn’t even know which way was up, which was down. The last of my air leaked out, and in came a choking trickle of muddy water.
That’s it give it up just let go…
I felt hands on me, yanking frantically upward, and after a frenzied moment of struggle I burst from the water, retching and slithering up onto the bank. The crystal night air was cold and as sharp as a razor, and when I looked left, it was Shelly Potter’s face I saw. Her glasses were speckled with mud and water, her hair hung in wet locks that clung to her jacket. I was too tired to think, too hurt to wonder where she’d come from. For the moment, it was enough that she was there.
We fell together into the weeds that rimmed the pond, the overwhelming cold a force that had grabbed me by the throat and wouldn’t let go. We were coughing, we were wheezing, we were crawling steadily upward, away from the pond and toward the asphalt cul-de-sac.
And when we got there, time stood still.
Because I’d just seen what had become of Aaron. He looked my way, and in that all-too-brief exchange, even at that distance, I knew he was still my brother, that it was all Aaron inside him. More Aaron than had ever been there before.
It’s my fight, he’d said. You just don’t understand.
It was all about to become very clear.
He was kneeling on the ground, several feet away from my car, before
the great tree, amid a litter of shattered branches. Before Aaron was the runestone, standing on edge. He wrapped both hands around the rune-inscribed axe, lifted it high above his head.
Aaron, blessed as he must have been with more insight into Olaf than I could ever gain, as well as a rare moment of freedom to act upon it, must have seen exactly what to do … and didn’t hesitate.
For the love of a brother knows no limits.
He brought down the axe dead center onto the edge of the runestone, and with a burst of blue sparks the memorial cracked into two jagged halves. I swear that the rain stopped then.
Because the tide of favor had finally turned in our direction.
The sky split overhead. A numbing clap of thunder accompanied a blinding bolt of lightning that arced down to shear the huge tree in half, then slam into my shattered engine compartment. The car went up with a fireball that clipped limbs off trees and lit the night brighter than the sun lights the day. The last glimpse I had of Aaron was of him hurtling backward into the grove like a toy soldier.
“Aaron!” I screamed. I was just about ready to go down for the final count, but I pushed myself up and forward one more time. I was weaving like a drunk and stumbling toward the grove. The heat was already a shockwave rolling across the asphalt in scorching ripples. “AARON!”
“NO, CHRIS, NO!” Shelly was running up behind me, throwing her arms around me before I could get any farther, and we both went down on the asphalt. I clawed the pavement and rolled over to see the grove. I was crying, finally, finally crying, and so was she…
As I watched the world come to an end.
The brief rain shower hadn’t been enough to undo weeks of dryness. Tree after tree caught fire with a mushrooming effect, flames shooting up the trunks to flare furiously at the top. The fire roared with a hunger that could only be described as insatiable, and for a moment I saw the remains of that largest tree writhe.
Shelly clung to my shoulder, lay halfway across my chest, and I didn’t even have the energy to tell her how much it hurt. So we lay there, tears dripping onto the crumbling asphalt, until the heat grew unbearable and fine ash drifted down like snow.
She was wise enough not to say anything, not to even try. And so I didn’t, either. I just stared, fighting a blurry double vision and the wracking chills deep within my soaked clothing.
I now knew what it was like to lose an actual part of yourself. What it was like to feel the blade of the scalpel slice you from one end to the other, and rip away the better half of your heart. What it was like to love so much it became a crushing weight.
It was something I could never have conveyed in words. I could only wish that Aaron, wherever he was now, might look down into me and see it.
And I guess that’s the greatest failing we all have. We don’t look until it’s too late.
Shelly helped me stand, both her arms around me, and we squished when we walked. She loaded me into her car as the grove blazed away into an inferno, roaring and crackling and jetting a dark column of smoke into the air.
As she drove us away, as I tried to gather my clothes around me in wet and bloody tatters, as hot tears leaked down my raw cheeks, I looked out the window at Tri-Lakes for the last time.
At the funeral pyre of the two best brothers you could ever know.
Chapter 46
“Chris?”
Sounded like Mom. Home so soon? Must’ve wrapped things up with my cousin Robin pretty quickly.
“Chris, are you awake now?”
My eyes fluttered open, and I began to climb a painful spiral staircase leading from sleep into awakening. I squinted against the light stabbing in through the blinds. Blinds? A TV hung bolted to a swivel up on the wall directly across from me. An empty bed sat to my left, and Dad slumped in a chair in the far corner, apparently dozing. Or sedated, more likely. Everything looked pale, sterile. Like a hospital room.
“Chris?”
Mom sat in a chair to my right. Her eyes looked red, bleary, puffy from too many tears.
“What day is this?” My voice came out in a raspy whisper.
She patted my hand. “Saturday. It’s Saturday, hon.”
I tried to swallow, found a throat so parched it was nearly impossible. “Water?”
She lifted a glass from the bedside table, held it toward me, a right-angled straw aimed at my mouth. I reached for it with my left hand, finding my forearm oddly heavy … covered with a cast. Oh yeah.
Mornings are the worst, Aaron had once written me, when you wake up and remember that it wasn’t a bad dream, it was real.
Amen, brother. You knew. You knew.
I leaned forward and sucked at the straw. Lukewarm. But better, much better.
“Chris, what happened?” Her voice quavered. “What was all this about? Can you tell us?”
I sank back into the pillow, eyes closing against my will. “Later … we’ll talk later…”
I suppose I got off lucky, in terms of injuries. My wrist was broken and I had a concussion, plus numerous abrasions and contusions and lacerations and whatever else doctors have thought up to make your injuries sound as awful as possible. They wanted to hold me over the weekend, and I hoped they’d keep me doped up the whole time, knocked into a dreamless sleep. They weren’t that merciful.
Mom and Dad left me sleeping after I’d awakened briefly on Saturday morning. Certain arrangements had to be made. Arrangements … I hate that word. One of life’s absurd little euphemisms that disguise the anguish of having to pick out a coffin for someone who helped make life worth living. Someone whose remains would probably fit in a dish basin.
They came back in the afternoon and sat with me for a long while. None of us seemed very talkative.
After they left again and I lay in bed in that empty room, I realized that I’d had my fill of sleep for the day. Time to face the truth, alone.
Phil provided a brief diversion when he showed up that evening, firm-jawed and grim-faced. He made no mention of the terrible words I’d hurled at him over the phone the day before. He acted like it had never happened. In some ways, that was the best present I could have received all day.
Except for the unlikely prospect of watching Aaron walk through my door.
I ran the facts through my head time and again, wondering why Olaf had chosen to take Aaron instead of me. Circumstances, I finally decided. I was the elder, as Thorfinn had been. Aaron was younger, maybe a little more volatile at times. And I never even thought it could happen this way until it was too late. But what greater victory could Olaf achieve than turning his enemy’s bloodline against itself?
I like to think that Aaron was given a choice up there, that he and Olaf could coexist together or perish together, and that Aaron had taken the noble path. That in the end, Aaron’s courage had surpassed that of anyone else who had confronted Olaf, regardless of whether they’d lived or died.
The latter I knew was true. The former? I would never really know. So I spent a lot of time staring out the window. And recalling a Bible verse that reads, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” And there can be no greater friends than two brothers truly committed to one another, by love.
I had another visitor later that Saturday evening, at a time when a soft voice and an even softer pair of eyes didn’t sound too bad. Shelly Potter came in, bundled into a parka and treading almost as quietly as the nurses. She stood at my side, touched my good hand. Blinked away tears? Yes, I think so.
“Don’t tell me how good I look,” I said.
She shook her head and bit her lip. Stroked my hand. “Better than last night,” she finally said.
“Maybe.” I checked out the window again. Nothing had changed. “It all went wrong on us.” I shook my head, and something inside felt as if it were rattling. Must be time for another pill. Bring ‘em on.
Her grip tightened.
“Looks like it’ll be our secret, too.” I laughed, the laugh of a veteran who’s witness
ed too much carnage to ever see humor again. “Everyone else thinks Aaron and I were just screwing around up there. I don’t want to have to explain it all.” I looked at my cast. No signatures yet. Virgin territory. “But it’s a shitty way for him to be remembered.”
Shelly cleared her throat. “Can you tell me now?”
“Not yet. Give it a little more time. Please?”
She nodded and bowed her head. Then she reached into one of the parka’s pockets and pulled out a couple of sheets of paper, folded into quarters. She eyed me from underneath her bangs. “I have something I’d like you to read, if you’re up to it.”
“Yeah, sure.”
She unfolded the papers and I took them, glancing over the top sheet. It was a typewritten news story, coded to run through the computer scanner that set the newspaper’s type.
“This was in tonight’s paper.”
“You wrote it?”
She nodded.
FIREFIGHTERS BATTLE COUNTY BLAZE
The Jefferson County Fire Department was dispatched last night to the long-dormant Pleasant Hills housing subdivision. They were summoned by a Route 37 resident who saw flames from his home a mile away. A large grove of trees was completely burned out, but firefighters were able to contain the blaze before it spread to a wider area.
The fire was the result of an apparent automobile mishap that injured the driver, Christopher Anderson, age 18, and killed his younger brother, Aaron, 16, both of Mt. Vernon. Christopher remains hospitalized in stable condition.
County firefighters sustained a few minor injuries of their own while battling the blaze, citing unusually intense heat generated by the fire. Three men were treated and released for first-degree burns sustained through their protective clothing. Paint also blistered from one of the fire trucks at the scene.
