Bones are Made to be Broken

by Anderson, Paul Michael

  Jude’s eyes never left the envelope, his brow wrinkled.

  “What is it?”

  Ben looked from the envelope—he didn’t need to pull the thick sheaf of papers out, had already memorized the cover letter: Dear Mr. Sheever, After reviewing your application, we’re delight to inform you—to Jude, who stared up at him expectantly, not even put off by how Ben acted. His heart whammed within his chest harder than it should’ve, the air of his exhales prickly around his mouth.

  He sat on the edge of his bed. “A letter.” He swallowed. “I applied to Ohio State.”

  “Oh yeah? Did you get in?”

  Ben pulled the papers from the envelope. Beginnings of financial aid and declaration of majors and meal options. Etc., etc., etc. “Yeah.”

  “That’s cool, Benny! You gonna tell Dad?”

  Ben’s head snapped up. “No! And you’re not gonna, either.”

  Jude squinted. “But, why? This is good news, right?”

  For an instant, he felt that trickle of irritation that everyone must feel around his punch-me brother.

  He flushed with guilt, as immediate as the irritation and stared at the letter. The packet felt so goddamn thick. “Yeah. No. Maybe.” He shook his head. “I have no friggin idea. But until I do, keep your mouth shut, all right? To everyone—especially Dad.”

  “But Benny—”

  “No,” Ben hissed. “Okay? Just no.”

  Jude studied him a moment. All Ben could see was the goddamned bruise, highlighted by the light through the window.

  Finally, his brother said, “Okay. Wanna go watch a movie, or something?”

  “Sure,” Ben said and Jude bounded out of the room.

  Ben folded the papers and slid them back into the envelope. His hands shook. The muscles in his upper arms and shoulders jittered, over-taxed with adrenaline from a fight that didn’t exist.

  What are you going to do after graduation? the interior voice asked, and Ben didn’t have an answer.

  The snow continued to fall. The temperature continued to drop.

  Ben hadn’t noticed it immediately, but Jude finding the Ohio State letter had started a clock in his head. It pervaded his thinking. It kept him up until the late-late hours, when he would finally escape into a thin, unrestful sleep.

  He found himself unable to not be in the same room with Marcus and Jude, but didn’t know what to do once he was in there. The movies and primetime sitcoms were beyond his comprehension. He was constantly one-sentence behind whatever conversation Jude and Marcus might be having.

  Even when the bruise on Jude’s face faded, even when he stopped pissing blood, Ben saw the bruises still to come, the blood still to flow.

  When he’d opened his mouth back in September, when he’d seen how the game was going to go and finally found the courage to call it, Marcus had settled, had stopped the irrevocable train of building tension and intensifying violence. Ben felt, for the first time in years, hope.

  But that was gone now. The night beginning school break, the morning after—those events had obliterated them in a way dismissal from the counselors, the requirement of therapy, the closing of Jude’s file, couldn’t. It showed that the autumn hadn’t been the end of something monstrous, but only a brief respite before …

  … before what?

  Well, that was what Ben was afraid of, wasn’t it?

  Christmas passed in a blur, although Jude and their father seemed to enjoy it. On Christmas night, a storm blew in hard, burying the town under nearly two feet of snow. Marcus was called in to assist Public Works and Ben and Jude huddled on the living room couch, watching movies and listening to the snow hit the windowpane like handfuls of spackle. Sometime in the third act of Jumanji, Jude fell asleep, leaving Ben with the sound of snow and Kristen Dunst asking her movie brother, “What do you think’s gonna happen to you if you don’t start talking?”

  Try it, sis, Ben thought, settling in to give Jude as much room on the couch as possible. It ain’t as easy as it seems.

  Two days after Christmas, the temperatures shot into the giddy thirties, leaving a world dazzled with sun and filled with the drip-drip-dripping of snow.

  Ben left Jude alone—when their father was still at work, of course—and traipsed to the Buchanan River, the snow high enough, and his boots old enough, for some to get down his socks, soaking his feet.

  The river had finally frozen over. Their dad had said as such, complaining about the kids who would try to skate on it or walk across it.

  “Kids have no idea,” Marcus said one night over a dinner of Stouffer’s lasagna. None of the Sheever men were decent cooks. “They never think that one wrong step onto a weak patch of ice, into that water …” He shook his head. “It only takes an instant to regret a lifetime.” Marcus paused, as if startled by what he’d said.

  Now, Ben looked south and saw tiny pinpricks of black and blue, moving slowly under the Route 67 Bridge. They were probably egging each other on, seeing who would go the furthest out.

  Ben watched them, then the ice. It did look thick enough, but there were troubling dark spots, particularly towards the center, where the thaw had begun its work. What would one of those kids do if his foot suddenly plunged into the near-zero water below?

  Ben knew—fall and get swept away by the current, dead from hypothermia or drowning too quickly to be saved, their bodies finally getting stuck against some fallen tree in Butler County.

  Ben was more interested in the other kids—what would they do, particularly if they’d been the ones egging the dead kid on? How would they live with that?

  Ben shivered in a way that had nothing to do with the cold. All his thoughts cycled back to Jude. Jude was the kid whose foot went through the ice; the kid who, when that center of gravity was lost, could count the remainder of his life in minutes and seconds instead of decades and years.

  “The kid without hope left,” Ben breathed.

  Who was the one, metaphorically, egging the kid on? Marcus with his whip-crack snaps of temper? Was it him, Ben, for failing to pull Jude back from the black spot back in September? (Was the ice a metaphor for the school district? The bullies and thugs of McMillian Elementary? Was the ice their father, if Ben was the kid egging Jude on?)

  He shook his head. He wasn’t good with figurative language—he could barely understand Grendel and its gray definitions of evil. That had been his mother’s game. When Jude was older, Ben had no doubt his brother would excel in English for the same reason.

  Provided he lives that long, the internal voice murmured.

  He started for home, feeling colder than the day could take credit for.

  The sound of the front door swinging open and bouncing against the wall shook the house, startling Ben, upstairs and trying to dope out Grendel.

  “What the Christ—” he heard Marcus say downstairs, then heard Jude moan, his voice slushy, “Daddy—” and the rest was lost in the sudden tumble of heavy bodies.

  Ben vaunted off the bed and into the upstairs hallway. His socked feet slipped over the hardwood as he rounded to the stairs. He grabbed the newel post in order to keep from falling against the wall, looked down, and froze.

  Marcus appeared to be all back and shoulders down in the foyer, hunkered over Jude, Jude’s snow-suited legs kicking. The two of them bounced between the walls, the stairs, the archway to the living room—drunken pinballs gaining momentum instead of losing it. Ben saw blood fly.

  Marcus braced his legs. “Goddammit, hold STILL—”

  And something clicked in the front of Ben’s head. He’s going to kill this kid.

  His brain was a half-step behind his body as it leaped down the steps. He heard a tea-kettle scream and dimly realized it was himself. Marcus had time to look up, his mouth an O of surprise, revealing Jude’s pale, bloodied, and very-bruised face, and then Ben landed into the bigger man, driving him off Jude.

  Marcus rolled with him, sending him into the front door. The doorknob drove into his spine, a vicious joybuzze
r of pain.

  Marcus untangled himself, his face red and sweating. “What the fuck—”

  “Bastard!” Ben shrieked and leapt over Jude, taking Marcus around the waist and driving him down the hallway. He heard glass break. He heard Jude scream. He smelled the hot, wet musk of the two of them, bitter and pungent.

  He clawed up Marcus’s body and slammed his fist into Marcus’s face, driving lips against teeth. The pain in his knuckles was stupendous and oh-so satisfactory. It felt good to stop worrying. It felt good to do something and know he could do it. Talking hadn’t worked; this would.

  He punched Marcus with his other hand, sending Marcus’s nose to the left. A third shot shut Marcus’s left eye. A fourth snapped a tooth—Ben felt it give.

  And then Jude was on him, arms around his neck, pulling him back, yelling in his ear.

  “Stop it, Benny! He didn’t do it! Stop it! That’s DADDY!”

  Don’t you fucking GET IT? Ben thought, but didn’t scream, couldn’t scream. He’d finally found the anger that everyone else seemed to have for his kid brother. No, Jude didn’t get it. Jude didn’t know when to let up and let go and move away. Jude would never get it. Jude was the punch-me, ready-victim, bull’s-eye. Jude would put his foot through the thin ice because that, in a way, was what Jude was made to do.

  And Ben couldn’t do anything about it.

  Ben shoved Jude as hard as he could. Jude crashed against the stairway wall, eyes momentarily ringing double-zeroes when his head connected, and that was when Ben saw that Jude’s face wasn’t as bruised as he’d thought.

  Someone had written FAG across Jude’s forehead with black Sharpie.

  Ben froze. He saw it all—Jude asking him to come play, Ben begging off because he had holiday homework. He saw Jude running into other kids. He saw Jude trying to engage them in his Jude way and it … not … going well.

  All because Ben hadn’t been there.

  He saw Jude stumbling home when the other kids were done with him, Marcus’s startled reaction, which looked like anger.

  This was where Ben came in.

  He stumbled off their father, towards his brother, all emotion a hard, wet, phlegmy knot through his chest and throat.

  “Jude—”

  And Jude flinched.

  Ben blinked. He looked from Jude, cowering against the wall, to Marcus, groggily sitting up while holding his head.

  The knot expanded and expanded, choking him, filling his lungs. The cannonball in his gut gained weight, the pressure on his shoulders pushed down. He heard the ticking in his head, louder than ever, and if he could just scream—just scream—he could shut it down, cut the knot, shove off the cannonball and the pressure.

  But he couldn’t.

  He couldn’t.

  Ben didn’t go home that night.

  He followed Shenandoah Avenue until it became Route 67 North, exiting town, then turned and headed south. He walked up Gaines Street Hill, taking in all the shops and markets with their winter hours. He walked until his feet were cold blocks of meat, and his skin felt similar to the cool hardness of marble. He hadn’t bothered switching from sneakers to boots, or trading his torn flannel overshirt for a jacket when he’d left—escaped might be a more fitting word.

  His brain was a television tuned to an out-of-range station, all static and sporadic ghost-voices.

  He thought of Jude. Jude with his bruises and blood. Jude with the word FAG written on his head. Jude telling him that it wasn’t Daddy and to stop it, stop it, STOP IT.

  Jude flinching.

  When he finally returned home, the sky was beginning its hesitant lighting of dawn. He stood outside Jude’s room. Jude’s back was to Ben, but that was all right; Ben didn’t think he could handle seeing how those other kids had treated his little brother’s face.

  Like a bull’s-eye, the interior voice murmured.

  He studied the line of his brother’s back through the blankets, the tuft of hair—the same shade as their mother’s—poking out from the top.

  I can’t protect him, he thought and the internal voice offered no dissent on that score.

  He closed Jude’s door softly, wincing at the minute squeak of wood-on-wood as it latched, then padded down to his bedroom.

  The Ohio State envelope snatched his gaze.

  Without thinking—to think would be to hesitate—he took it and sat at his desk, clicking on the lamp. Working quickly, he filled in as much of the information as he could, skipping the parts he would need to look up or ask about—which wasn’t all that much, he discovered.

  When he finished, he slid the paperwork back in the envelope, clicked off the light, and climbed into bed, still clothed. He thought he’d lie there, unable to sleep, his mind still tuned to that just-out-of-reach channel. But he dropped off almost immediately as, outside, it began to snow.

  A creak of floorboards and then Jude’s voice, that hesitant are-you-awake tone: “Benny?”

  Ben opened his eyes and rolled over. Jude stood in the hall, just outside the doorway, as if it was a border he couldn’t cross. He was already dressed, his face still gleaming from just being washed. He’d gotten most of the Sharpie off, leaving the ghost of a gray smear.

  Ben sat up. “Hey, bud.”

  They stared at each other, Jude still visibly wary and Ben unable to find the words to the things he needed to say. His eyes kept getting drawn to the smear. Other kids did that. Not their father. Ben had forgotten—the evils of the world weren’t contained within one imperfect man and his lack of closure over a dead marriage.

  “Where’s Dad?” he asked finally.

  “At work.”

  Ben winced. “How …”

  Jude grinned. “He was talking about that at breakfast. Said he was gonna say he ran into the basement door.”

  Ben thought of what he’d done, and his mouth slipped free: “What’s he gonna say when someone asks how many times?”

  Jude laughed, a tinkling sound, but there was a flash in his eyes, like a brief sunburst over chrome, and Ben knew he’d just remembered how Marcus had ended up like that. He’d briefly forgotten, but now it was back.

  “Whatcha need, bud?” Ben asked.

  “Wondered if you wanted to go for a walk,” Jude said, then added, “In the woods, I mean. Go to the crick.”

  Avoid other kids, you mean, Ben thought. “Okay—still coffee downstairs?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Ben swung his legs over the side.

  “Pour me a cup, will ya? I wanna change.”

  Jude eyed the fact that Ben was still wearing the clothes from yesterday, then nodded.

  As he started out, Ben called him back.

  Ben made his mouth work. “I’m sorry, Jude. I mean it.”

  Jude grinned again, the sunburst-chrome glaze of wariness banished from his eyes. The grin was awful—it seemed to make the smear darker, his skin paler.

  “S’okay, Benny. I know you were just trying to help.”

  Ben nodded and Jude left.

  He changed out of his clothes, which felt twisted and ill-fitting after sleeping in them. As he was shoving the wad of old ones into his hamper, he noticed the blood for the first time.

  He dropped his jeans and flannel and shook out his gray tee.

  Three dots, like wavering ellipsis, near the collar.

  He stared off, thinking of breaking his father’s nose, breaking a tooth, as Jude screamed behind them. Maybe that was what Jude was staring at. He heard the ticking in his head.

  He dumped the shirt into the trash, then looked across the room at the bulging Ohio State letter.

  What are you going to do after graduation? It wasn’t the internal voice now, though, but a memory of a voice.

  Then he thought, I’m doing this kid no good, and the internal voice murmured, He’s doing you no good, either.

  The air was crisp in his lungs, shockingly so, but Ben’s head still felt addled. He moved through the snow like a drunk, struggling to maintain balance over t
he uneven ground. The snow was thick and wet underfoot.

  Jude walked a little ahead of him, his movements confident, as if their roles were reversed—Ben the one beaten to hell the day before, and Jude the over-worrying brother.

  They reached the creek. The post-Christmas thaw had raised the water level and its intensity.

  “They were playing outside,” Jude said after a moment. Ben turned to him, but Jude was staring at the water, his snow gloves shoved into the pockets of his winter coat. “With skateboards. Too cold for skating, but one of them had these cool metallic markers and they were all coloring and talking about what they were gonna do with the boards once the snow melted.”

  Ben opened his mouth, then shut it again.

  “They were older,” Jude went on, “but not that much older. Like, fifth graders. I didn’t know ‘em, but I don’t know a lot of people. I thought they’d be nice.”

  He looked up and Ben recoiled. Jude’s eyes were fiery and desperate and confused. The smear on his forehead, partially covered by the hood of his winter coat, looked like the ash marks Catholics sometimes put on.

  “Why weren’t they nice, Benny?” Jude asked. “I just wanted to talk to them. I thought they were cool. They called me ‘babyfag.’ Real fast, like that. ‘Babyfag, babyfag.’ The whole time. They tackled me when I tried to run.” His lips peeled back from his grinding teeth—at the moment, looking exactly like Ben had when Ben had finally taken after their father, although Ben didn’t know that.

  Ben cleared his throat. “I … I don’t know, Jude.”

  Jude turned back to the water. “People are dogshit, Benny. They’re mean. I just wanna be nice to them, the way Mom said I should. That’s the only thing I remember about her—‘Be nice to people, Jude’—and I don’t even know why she said that.”

  Ben did, but he didn’t say. Jude wouldn’t remember—Ben was surprised Jude remembered anything about their mother—but their mother was the epitome of nice. To everyone. Every door-to-door salesman and Jehovah’s Witness was welcomed in and given coffee or water, sometimes snacks. She baked things if anyone was sick on their street, regardless of who they were. It used to drive Marcus bugshit, Ben remembered.