My Brother's Keeper

Gabriel

Blink. Another beautiful day. Nothing but the open blue sky, swaying wheat, the sound of thick boots on the soil, and the sight of crop visibly ready for harvest. Ready after months of toil, months of work getting it prepared: trimming away the weeds, cutting away the dead parts, blanketing the very air with toxic pesticides to kill the locusts, the ladybugs, the… A perfect crop.

On a day like today, it’s not actually perfect. The sun is too strong, and there is no way to cool down. You go to the barn, ‘fix the equipment’, linger awhile and find the hidden pack of cigarettes, left, like needles in a haystack, though placed well enough to know where to find them if you know what you are looking for.

Probably not the brightest idea to light one up in a barn full of hay, but the chickens don’t care. Not really. They are just about smoked anyway.

My brother is out working, toiling away. “I am my brother’s keeper”. My fourteen-year-old little brother. He worships me, I know that. He’s soft, quiet, does what he’s told… He learnt that from me. Though, he’s dumb, too dumb to know how to play the game.

You might ask how I get rid of the smoke, how they don’t smell it on me. Well, my father lost his sense of smell as a boy. He’s pretty tasteless too, if you ask me. My mother simply lives in denial, and as the golden child of the family, with a silver tongue, I can always talk my way out of a situation when the need arises.

Puff. Inhale. Exhale.

I see a trough, it’s full of water. It’s much too tantalising on a day like today. I could kill in this heat, and I would kill for some water, even one shared by the chickens, the pigs, the…

My reflection says a lot, it means a lot: I do look quite saintly. They trained me as a carpenter, I can whittle away at wood. I am practical, always have been, so I’ve been told. My father is a pious man, he taught me right from wrong at an early age: he beat me until I did what he said was right, and from that I learned what was wrong.

Eli is looking around for me… with his big hart eyes.

In the reflection, I see the face of an angel. This barn is full of shadows, places to hide, my face is rigid right now, locked into a face of contentment, I see one light blue eye, the other side of the face is too dark to see.

Puff. Inhale. Exhale.

I relax, the expression changes. I see myself and I am not smiling. My golden eyebrows, wolf-like, make me look angry, maybe I am, maybe I…

Puff. Inhale. Exhale.

Time to get back to God’s honest work, to do what the only God in this place intends for me to do. I am to toil, and labour, and bend and grow the way my father intends me to. I smile, but it isn’t the same smile as before. My eyes are clouded behind a wisp of smoke.

I am nearly a man now. I have waited, and waited and… Carpentry, fence-fixing, threshing, corn-cutting, seed-sowing. Up and down, up and down, up and down until—

“Gabriel”, shouts my brother. “Can you help me?”

I crush the cigarette under my thick boot, hide the evidence and put the pack back in the haystack. There is a lot you can hide in a haystack. I pick up a pitchfork, my instrument. Time to get back to work.

Time to step out into the light.

“I’m here Eli”, I smile with a smile that could melt the world. From corner to corner, I smile.

Eli

They say I am a little bit small for my age, but that has never stopped me. I am good worker, I do what I am told. Call me and I will come a running. I am good with the animals too, Ma says no one can calm the cows in a thunderstorm the way I can.

“Always try your best”, I do, I am.

I collected eggs this morning. One of my chores.

Up and down, up and down. I work in the field, but I am not as fast as my brother.

“Eli”, Pa shouts to me.

“Eli, run to the well and bring more water”.

“Yes Sir”, I shout back and start running. I will do my best, I will try, I am trying.

It’s too hot in this heat. I feel the sweat on my forehead. Wiping it away doesn’t work. Never mind. The bucket isn’t here. I wonder if I could have some lemonade if I asked Ma, I wonder if—

“Eli!”

Yes! The bucket is here. The red paint of the barn looks faded from the sun, it’s been relentless recently. So hot, I wish I could dive into a glass of ice-cold water.

Running, running.

Puff. Inhale. Exhale.

At the well, I loosely tie a knot around the handle. It’s a tin bucket, a little rusty, but it will do the trick. I lower the bucket, down it goes. Perhaps I can just have a sip of the water, perhaps just a splash on my face. Pa probably wouldn’t approve, he’d see it as weakness, and I am tougher than that, I can handle a bit of sun. My skin might be baked, I might be tanned and burnt but…

Splash.

Oh no.

I tied the knot too loose. I turn and see no one is around. Blink. I turn and see…

“Gabriel!”

He can help me fix this. I am trying, I don’t want to make mistakes, I want to be like him. I don’t want Pa to know that I dropped the bucket. Gabriel will know what to do.

My brother walks out into the sun. He seems so calm, always so cool, despite the heat. I love my brother.

There are footsteps coming too.

Stomp, stomp, stomp.

Pa is coming.

“I dropped the bucket down the well”, I say sheepishly. Gabriel looks concerned, but still not panicked. “Not the best day to be doing that brother”, he says. He lays the pitch-fork in his hand against the well. “We will have to make a snare, attach it to the rope, and fish the bucket out”.

I don’t mean to shake a little, but I am shaking. I am still a bit breathless in the heat. My hands are covered in dry dirt, it’s in my fingernails. Just a splash of water would have been nice. Gabriel puts his hand on my back. “Don’t worry, I have got this”. When Gabriel is here, I know everything will be okay.

Pa is in a rage.

“Stupid boy”.

“It was me”, says Gabriel.

“I dropped the bucket, it was an accident, but it was me”. Gabriel stands between me and Pa.

“You should know better”, I hear Pa say. I smell smoke, and see that Pa has bloodshot eyes. Alcohol is in the air, he keeps a bottle of whiskey in the barn, thinks I don’t know, but I do. He’s been drinking in the heat and it has gone to his head. I am not dumb, I can see that.

“Yeah, I should and I do, but it was an accident”, Gabriel repeats himself, still cool in the heat, still calm. He smells of smoke, he must have been burning something, dead plants, dried roots.

There is anger mixed with the heat mixed with the confusion mixed with the alcohol.

Smack.

“You will learn from this”.

He smacked Gabriel in the face. Pa hit Gabriel, but he didn’t hit me. I feel worse than if he had just hit me. I could have stepped in, I could have said it was me. I love my brother. My brother’s face will bruise and it will be my fault.

Pa walks away, he staggers a bit as he goes. Gabriel turns to me and he is still smiling.

“I am sorry Gabe”, I say to him.

“It’s nothing”. He pauses and pats me on the head. Finally, he adds, “we’ve both taken worse blows than that”.

The bruise won’t come up straight away, but his eye will turn purple, and brown, and blemished. My blemish, on his face.

“I am sorry” I say, I won’t well up, I won’t tear up. Not in this heat. I am a good worker, I am strong, I am—

“Relax E. Just relax. Now, about that snare…”

Virginia

Streaks of purple, of brown, of shame, of hate. Streaks of…

“You should have just called me, I would have found you another bucket”, I say to my son.

“There wasn’t time”, Gabriel tells me.

“I wouldn’t have allowed it, had I been there…”, I shake my head. “I would have found you one”.

My oldest son is such a wonderful boy, he has a kind nature, always looking out for his brother. I just wish I could do better sometimes, I know about the whiskey, who doesn’t? Magnus doesn’t listen to me, he is a good man, just not all of the time. I will tell him to quit drinking, he needs to stop. It’s not right on the boys, it’s not right… on me.

“Did you get the bucket out?” I ask, trying to sound as normal as possible.

“No”.

“No?”

“I left it down there, if Pa needs water, he can go to the trough like the other animals.” Gabriel stops himself too late. He never speaks like this, I am not sure if it’s the heat, or the bruise on his head, but that’s not like him at all.

“Are you sure you are okay?” I say again. I hope he is alright. It’s twenty miles to the nearest doctor. I see the purple beneath his right eye, a patch, as if a birthmark. But, it’s not a birthmark, it’s just a mark, a blemish that shouldn’t be there.

I can smell the smoke on him, he is hunched beside me, with his one hand to his head, he leans against a pitch-fork. He winces when he feels the bruise on his face.

“It’s too damn hot”, he says trying to be himself, trying to be my Gabriel. Only, he doesn’t look quite right, his eyes fierce, feral…

…

He needs to rest, this is too much work for a young man.

“You boys finish up early today, okay? I will make you some lemonade”, I’ll make them all lemonade, that way I can sweeten Magnus up before I tell him that if he doesn’t stop drinking that we are through.

It’s the hottest day on record, so they say on the radio. Magnus is sobering up and I see him working in the fields, toiling away. He’ll stop if I ask him to. He’s a good man really, he’ll stop.

Magnus

Should I have hit the boy? What was I thinking? Work it off, old man. Work it off. I just want to make him stronger, to make him tougher, the world is a harsh place and he needs discipline, guidance. He knows that I love him, I didn’t hit him hard…

I… I… I feel like I am going to have a heart attack.

Up and down, up and down.

Coming closer now to my sons, now moving away.

Virginia is making something in the house. Maybe I need to stop, it’s too hot today, even for me. We all need to cool down. I move closer to Gabriel, he holds a pitch-fork. I can see the resentment in his eyes, the flash of anger that he is trying to conceal.

“Toughen up”, is what I ought to say. Okay, I was wrong to hit him over an old bucket. Perhaps I will apologise later, perhaps… He is coming towards me through the swaying wheat. I stop.

Puff. Inhale. Exhale.

Too much dust in the air.

“Pa”, he says to me.

I turn and stare, he drops his hand and the pitchfork is pointed at me.

“You think you are tough don’t you”, I say to him.

“I don’t care what you think anymore”. My son is a man now, dare I say it, imposing.

Blink.

“How dare you speak to me like that”, I say. I have raised him, cared for him, fed him, clothed him.

So, he might actually try to do this. The steel glints in the sun as he waves it around.

“I think I must have hit you real hard Gabe, real hard”, I pause and hold my ground.

“Think about what you are doing”.

There is red in his face, alongside the purple. His skin is flushed. He’s not himself. The blue in his eyes contrasts with that flustered face, that reddish skin. Heat is not his natural counterpart.

We stare, his light blue eyes to my dark blue, his blonde eyebrows to my darker brows. Finally, he relents, as he should. “He who strikes his father or mother shall surely be put to death”.

He knows what the Bible says, knows better. He breaks eye contact and looks at the ground.

“I am sorry Pa”, he says. Not as tough as he thinks. “It’s just too damn hot”, he says.

Eli

Gabriel is with Ma, now he is walking to Pa.

Up and down, up and down.

I am going to show them, I will work the hardest. The heat doesn’t bother me… Though, water would be nice, just a sip would be enough, but I am not weak.

Up and down, up and down.

Only fourteen, I will show them that I can do anything they can. I am going to do what is right. I’ll cover Gabriel’s work, to make it up to him… I just need to work harder.

Up and down, up and down.

It’s hard to see from over here, is Gabriel holding that pitchfork out? Is Gabriel?

Blink.

I have to stop him, but it is so far. Ma doesn’t know what’s happening, she must be inside. I have to get to them to stop anything bad from happening.

Puff. Inhale. Exhale.

Puff. Inhale. Exhale.

The sun is bright, it’s such a sunny day. Everything is going dark. I tried… I am falling to the dirt now, I feel the dry dirt on my fingers, on my face. My heart is racing, going a million miles a minute, like a little man stomping in the dirt.

Stomp, stomp, stomp.

I feel cold in the heat, and nauseous. I can see that Gabriel has put down the pitchfork. I love my brother. I can’t move and everything is fading. It’s all going away. I love my family.

Blink.

I close my eyes.

End.