A Brother's Secret

by A. J. Downey

  “I won’t take too long, I promise,” I murmured.

  She chuckled a little darkly and said, “Afraid I’ll sully your big friend’s virtue?”

  It was my turn to chuckle and grin as I said, “Something like that.” I let my tone become more serious and asked her, “You sure you’re going to be okay?”

  She rolled her eyes and let out a bit of a scoff, “Sure, I get to have Thor out there mansplain my daddy’s gun to me. What could possibly go wrong?”

  I chuckled again and sighed, “He’s a Marine Corps sniper, he might surprise you and you might actually learn a thing or two.”

  “I have a feeling I might surprise him…”

  “Now of that, I have no doubt.” I pecked her on the nose and reluctantly let my hands slide off her waist. She sighed and went over, grabbing her boots.

  “How long you think you’ll be?” she asked.

  “If I say a couple of hours it’ll end up being like four. Truth is, I don’t have a clue, so don’t wait up.”

  She scoffed, “Good luck getting me to follow that order.”

  “Hey, if I had to pick, that would be the one to ditch.”

  “Be careful,” she said softly and she had that still and quiet way about her even as she tied off the lace on one of her high boots. She pulled the other one on with purpose and I indulged in just watching her for a few seconds. Leaving her here with Trig wasn’t my first choice. Not because I didn’t trust him, but totally because I’d only just found her again and didn’t think I would ever be ready to let her out of my sight.

  “I love you,” I whispered, never taking for granted my ability to tell her again. After not having her close to hear it for so long, I would never deny it a chance to pass my lips.

  “I love you, too.” She finished tying off her other boot and stood. She came for me and we shared one last kiss before someone, likely Rush, banged on the outside of the metal sheeting, causing us to jump apart.

  “C’mon let’s go! We’re burning daylight!”

  “On it!” I called back.

  “I mean it, be careful,” she said.

  “You know I will.”

  15

  Amalia…

  “You ready for this?” he asked in that gravelly smoker’s voice. I fought not to roll my eyes and lost.

  “Why do you think because I’ve never been to a shooting range that I don’t know how to shoot this thing?” I demanded.

  “It’s like any skill, practice makes perfect, right?” he asked. I held out my hand and he turned my father’s gun over to me. He let out a gusty sigh and said to me, “All right, let’s see what you can do, first. Then I might have some pointers for you after that.”

  We were behind the rusting out building and the sun was beating down pretty mercilessly. I wanted to go back into the shade. I wasn’t cut out for dealing with the daystar. I was pretty much a night dweller both by choice and by trade and would much prefer keeping it that way.

  Reaver sat on yet another rusting-out hulk of a car and was grinning at me. I didn’t get the impression that either one of them had faith in my shooting ability, and truth be told, while I knew I was good with a gun owing to natural talent, I’d always popped off under extreme pressure owing to a life-or-death situation. I let out a breath, took aim at the dirty mason jars and bottles they’d set up on a fence post and squeezed the trigger on my exhale.

  A chunk flew off the fence post down and to the right. Reaver laughed and I glanced in his direction, a surge of anger and a little adrenaline swirling through my veins. I hated being discounted for being a chick. Like somehow their cocks were a magic wand between their fucking legs. I popped my neck and letting my irritation fuel me, fired off the rest of the shots my dad’s gun held. I hit all of the remaining targets and cleared my throat.

  “Heh, not bad,” Trigger relented.

  “Beginner’s luck,” Reaver called.

  “Shut it, Reaver!”

  “Yeah, shut it, psycho!” I called over.

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” he said and almost sounded affronted. I couldn’t help it, I laughed.

  “So if I’m seein’ this right, you gotta be a little pissed to hit the target?” Trigger asked.

  “I guess so,” I muttered, emptying out the shell casings onto the ground and accepting bullets from him, loading the old gun a round at a time.

  “Try this one,” he said and brought out a matte black, more modern handgun. “More rounds for one, plus, I think it’ll fit your hands better. I do get the sentiment, though.”

  I traded weapons with him and let out my breath slowly, firing on my exhale. The kick wasn’t as bad as the old Colt, but at the same time, it was unfamiliar. I made my shot but didn’t try firing in succession.

  “Feels weird,” I said a little self-consciously.

  “I bet, but go on, you’re doing good.”

  Bolstered by the lack of ridicule, I took out the rest of the glass that’d been lined up and turned to find the big man nodding and Reaver grinning with a shine of what looked like pride in his icy blue eyes.

  “Confident I won’t be blowing any of your balls off now?” I asked.

  “Eh, I wouldn’t go that far,” he said and I looked up at him sharply. “Confident you won’t be doing it on accident, though.”

  I blinked and asked, “Was that a joke?”

  “He has been known to make them. You know, from time to time,” Reaver remarked from his perch. He was scratching out dirt from under a fingernail with one of his switchblades.

  “No. No intentions of blowing your balls off,” I said handing over his gun. “At least not right now.”

  Trigger laughed and shook his head, “Never figured Data the kind to go for a firecracker like you,” he said.

  “Are you kidding me? I did,” Reaver said getting up and jumping down from the car’s trunk.

  “Dude!” Trigger cried.

  “And if I wasn’t curious before, I am now…” I muttered.

  “Let me guess, bro. Me and my big mouth?”

  “Yeah, and I am taking myself and these guns away from this conversation…” he said and trudged through the tall, dry grass back towards the building.

  I rolled my eyes. “Please, it’s not like I expect that Kyle was celibate for seventeen years.” He couldn’t be and fuck like we did last night.

  “Eh, let’s just say it was his regular choice in club girl before she got snatched up…” Reaver said, and dare I say, actually looked pretty embarrassed.

  I crossed my arms and debated on whether to sweat him or not, finally deciding to, but just a little.

  “Just tell me,” I said.

  “Ahhhhh…” he bounced in place looking from left to right but Trig was gone and wasn’t going to save him. Not from this one.

  “Seriously, I promise not to be mad, but I’m curious.”

  He let out an explosive breath and said, “My cousin Shelly.”

  I raised an eyebrow, and asked, “You let your cousin whore around with your guy-pals?”

  “Uh, no, Shelly does whatever the fuck Shelly wants to do. Leastways when it came to it, I knew who she was doin’ it with and if any of ‘em laid a hand on her…”

  I nodded slowly, “all right, fair enough, I can see it.”

  “Anyways, it’s been a couple of years. Shelly is Ghost’s ol’ lady now and off limits.”

  I stopped my head from its slow and steady bouncing and looked at him, “I get it,” I told him. “And I am probably the last person to throw stones, living in a glass house.” Still, I’d be lying if I said the potential of meeting someone that’d been intimate with Kyle wasn’t weirding me out a little, but it was true… I understood he had a past. I had one, too. I could either accept it or let it eat me alive so I chose to accept it.

  “Come on,” he said looking me over and nodding himself. “It’s hot as fuck out here.”

  “I know that’s right. I’m not much of a fan of the daystar.”

&
nbsp; “Yeah?” he asked.

  “Worked mostly on a sort of swing shift so I could avoid it.”

  He dragged open the back door and held it for me, “Oh yeah, what does someone on the lam do for a living?”

  “I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m a tattooist.”

  “Oh yeah? No shit?” Trigger asked, looking up from his phone.

  “Got any of your stuff with you?” Reaver asked. “Like your drawings and shit?”

  “I suppose it’s as good a way as any to pass the time.” I went for my messenger bag.

  The two men circled almost like sharks, grabbing and setting up a dusty card table and planting a couple of folding chairs around it. I pulled the rolling desk chair across the cracked cement floor and parked it before up ending my bag on the table, letting them pick out a sketchbook to thumb through. I set about folding the clothes Kyle had bought me and decided that if I were going to be staying a while, I might as well unpack a little. I took the neatly folded garments with their price tags still attached over to one of the workbenches.

  “When did you do this one?” Reaver asked and I shrugged without looking.

  “I dunno, look at the date.”

  “There isn’t one.”

  “Then it’s probably the first book you’ve got, does it have the Nine Inch Nails sticker on the front of it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then it was done in high school. Probably ’98 through 2001 or so.”

  “Good likeness,” Trigger commented and I turned around to see Reaver holding the book out to him. I blinked and realized it was the book I thought it was and, of course, realized too late the sentiment attached to some of those early drawings.

  “Yeah, well, I’d been drawing a long time by then, since late elementary, maybe early junior high. I started dating everything in the next book. Seemed important.”

  “So like, these are your diary?” Reaver asked and I gave another shrug, going back over and dropping into the desk chair.

  “I guess so.”

  “Oh, weird…” he closed the book and set it down like he’d just been caught going through my underwear drawer. I laughed.

  “What’s this?” he asked, picking up a small, black velvet bag.

  “My old pocket knife.”

  He slipped the old red Swiss Army knife out of the bag and opened it up, wrinkling his nose as he tested the edge.

  “I see you took care of this about as good as Trig says you took care of your daddy’s gun.” I frowned at him, but Trigger barked a laugh.

  “I don’t think that thing had been cleaned since your dad bought it,” he remarked.

  I snorted, “My dad didn’t buy it,” I said. “He either won it or stole it. My dad wasn’t really in the habit of holding down an honest living or, you know, buying things if he could lift ‘em or cheat ‘em out of somebody.”

  “Apple fell far from the tree, didn’t it?”

  “Only because Kyle and his folks got to me and intervened. They did what they could to teach me the right way to do things and I’ve probably struggled with it ever since.” I was watching Reaver by now, who was going through his many pockets, my poor, old, little pocket knife that hadn’t actually cut anything in years open on the table in front of him. He gave an ‘ah-ha’ and produced a little whetstone out of one of his pockets.

  “Got any oil on you, Trig?”

  “What? Yeah, gun oil.”

  “That’ll do for this, I think.”

  I sorted through the rest of my meager belongings, stacking my books, setting my art supplies near them, and generally just moving things around when Reaver stopped me again, thrusting his chin out and asking, “And what’s that?”

  “God, you’re nosy, aren’t you?” I teased.

  “Maybe, now what is it?”

  “They’re my Tarot cards. Kyle bought them for me when we were,” I rolled my eyes and my breath left me in a rush as I tried to remember exactly how old we were. “God… fifteen?”

  “Oh yeah? You any good with ‘em?”

  “I dunno… You tell me.” I unwrapped the deck and set it in front of him. “Shuffle.”

  He raised an eyebrow and looked over to Trigger who grumbled at him, “Don’t look at me, asshole,” without even looking up from the sketch he was absorbed in. I frowned slightly.

  “You’re looking at that thing like it’s the map to the holy goddamned grail,” I said.

  He glanced at me over the top of the book and said, “It's good work, your lines are clean and your design well-thought-out. You as good with a needle as you are a pencil?”

  I held out my arm and said, “What do you think?”

  “You did these yourself?” he asked, leaning forward to scrutinize my forearm.

  “Just the forearm, here. Awkward as fuck to reach the rest, so once I was sure Djinn had it down at the shop I used to work at, then I let him do all of the rest, but this one was important and the watercolor style isn’t easy.”

  “It’s a pretty new thing, that’s for sure. Not many people do it.”

  “Which is exactly why I kicked its ass. Women love it.”

  Trigger nodded to himself and went back to my sketchbook. I turned back to Reaver and raised my eyebrows goading him on, “You gonna puss out over a deck of cards or are you gonna shuffle already?” I asked.

  I was genuinely curious as to what the cards would tell me and so I didn’t feel too bad about the slight manipulation to get him to pick them up. He set aside my tired old pocket knife and his tiny whetstone and swept the cards off the edge of the table into his long-fingered hands, shuffling them deftly. He was as light with the cards as he was with his knives, even pulling some dealer’s tricks with them, shuffling them all fancy-like.

  I gave a wry smile as he passed them back to me and said, “Going to do a simple three-card spread. Past, present, and future. Cool?”

  “Cool,” he agreed and scratched the side of his head.

  I laid out all three cards face down in the proper order, let out a breath and focused inward, opening myself up to that space inside myself that let the energy flow. Opening myself up for interpretation, which I didn’t do often for other people.

  Okay, here we go… I thought to myself as I turned the first card like the page of a book, carefully over to see what was on its face.

  “The Knight of Swords in reverse,” I murmured, studying the card and feeling my heart sink a little.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Remember, this is your past. The Knight of Swords traditionally symbolizes intellect and thinking clearly. He is a Knight, so he stands for authority, however, in this case, he is shown reversed or in the negative.”

  “Okay, what’s that mean?”

  “Again, remember this is your past, and the interpretation that I get from this card isn’t that it stands for you per se, but rather someone that was close to you. Reversed like this is harsh. I see a tyrant, an abuser. Someone who the very definition of kindness is anathema to him. It’s definitely a ‘him’, too. I think you were raised by or around a man who it was best to get out of his way as much as possible. Does that sound right?”

  By the way he was leaning back in his chair and the way his fingers gripped the edge of the table, mottled with the force with which he held on, I’d say I hit the nail on the head. I could sympathize. My dad seriously had his moments, but this? The overwhelming miasma of negativity emanating from that card told me that the depths of pain and brutality that he’d grown up with… well, my dad’s moods didn’t hold a candle by comparison.

  “You said the next card is the present?” he asked, jaw tightening and I let the past go. Let it sink back into the dark where it belonged. I nodded and took a deep cleansing breath, shaking off the last card before I turned the next.

  I turned it and blinked, “The Lovers, also reversed,” I said, staring at the couple on the card. While in the negative, the feeling I got from this card wasn’t nearly as ominous.

  “Sh
it, is that bad? That’s bad, isn’t it?” Reaver asked and I smiled.

  “Maybe not,” I reassured him. “I get the feeling this one is more of a warning. The Lover’s in negative like this typically means a misalignment with a loved one. Core values or perceptions may be skewed, leading to misunderstandings or unhappiness. A break up may be coming unless corrective action is taken. I’m going to seek clarification.” I set down the deck and arched them in a neat fan in front of him.

  “Choose a card.”

  He slid one from the fan and handed it across to me. I set it down on the corner of The Lovers and turned it over carefully.

  “Hm, Ace of Cups, also reversed.”

  “Jesus H. Christ, could it get any worse?” he asked, but the laugh he attached was strained and nervous. Trigger had stopped looking over the sketches and was looking at his friend, worry etched in his expression.

  “Not if you listen to what the cards have to say and take the corrective actions needed. Anyways, the Ace of Cup reversed typically stands for blocked emotions. One or the both of you are feeling stagnant. That’s not the end of the world, buddy. That’s flowers and a night on the town for most people, although I get a sense of anxiety here.”

  I blinked and sat back and looked up at him sharply saying, “I don’t mean to be indelicate here, but the Ace of Cups reversed also sometimes means something else. Something more physical… are there problems with fertility?”

  Reaver let out an explosive breath and even Trigger uttered a surprised, “Whoa.”

  “Yeah, I uh, I can get it up just great but my little swimmers… well let’s just say they’re no Michael Phelps…” he said, and I looked back down at the two cards, running my finger lightly across their surface and around their edges.

  “It’s you,” I said. “Not her.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Trigger demanded, frowning.

  “When it comes to the infertility, you need to let that one go,” I said. “It’s not her. It’s you that is making too much of it. I get the feeling she’s upset about something else. Something big, but back here…” I tapped to the left of the cards indicating the past but not nearly as far back in the past as the Knight of Swords… that I distinctly had the feeling was in his childhood. The way, way, back as opposed to just back when.