The bush’s needles scratched at my face as I waded into the gate. I closed my eyes and followed the rustling in front of me, the brushing of branches and shuffling of feet. Almost there, I heard Chris whisper. Come on, come on, he sang, come a little closer. There. Isn’t that better?
I opened my eyes and didn’t understand. I was still in the bushes. This was not what I wanted. I pushed forward, harder, the needles tickling my skin with tiny cuts. It’s OK, Chris said, it will only hurt at first. But already I could feel the burn of a scrape, the smear of my own blood. It’s OK, Chris said again. It’s fine. No one is here but us.
When I emerged from the bush, it took a moment for me to understand what was before me. To take it all in. I was in a clearing, yes. Naked of bushes and trees, but somehow shaded, somehow covered. And in the middle, impossible to miss, was a silo, twenty or thirty feet tall, a lonesome tower of block and cement. It was ancient and beautiful, but in bad shape. Its top was shattered; blocks cracked like broken teeth.
I circled the silo, tracing my hand against its grainy, uneven surface. Then my hand ran out of wall. I came to where there should’ve been a side, but there wasn’t. There was a big gap, blown into existence by some disaster I couldn’t imagine. I stepped through that gap and saw the tree. An oak. It was the biggest tree I’d ever seen and it stood dead center in the silo, where it made no sense to be. I craned my neck and followed the tree to the silo’s top, where its branches had grown straight up, as if the tree were being robbed. How big. How strange. This was what Chris had promised. This, I understood, was a secret worth keeping.
Remember, Chris said to my brother, reading my mind. Remember what we said about secrets. Well, this is ours. OK? From now on, this is something only you and me know. Because, the thing is, I’ve tried this before, and it didn’t work out. But that was my fault, understand. I rushed it. But this is different, right? You and me. I’ve waited. Those days at the pool. Our walks. Yes, that’s right. So it’ll be OK. We’ll do what we need to do, then we’ll be on our way, and everything will be just fine.
I couldn’t see where Chris’s words were coming from. They bounced around me, off the silo walls, and faded, fleeing out the gap. I sneaked around the tree. I told myself it was OK. Chris knows you’re here. He’s read your mind and he welcomes you. Leave the past at the pool. You belong here too. You belong with your brother.
On the other side of the tree was a darker shade. In that shade my brother was pressed against the wall, shirtless. Chris had the seat of his own shorts down and was leaning into him, pinning him to the silo like my brother was under arrest. One of Chris’s hands handcuffed my brother’s wrists behind his head, and the other wrestled desperately with the double knot protecting my brother’s trunks.
“You sure tie these tight,” Chris said. “Afraid of losing them in the pool or something?”
My brother didn’t answer. Chris’s legs stretched out in a V and between them I saw my brother’s legs, two pale sticks. They didn’t struggle.
“Good thing I got long nails, huh?” Chris said. “There! Got that fat one.”
I took a step forward, and my brother’s leg gave a little kick. His knee buckled and his hips started to twist.
“Hold on,” Chris said, and drove his hip into my brother’s back until his body stopped ticking. “Almost finished.”
There was the loud rip of the trunks’ Velcro, and I stepped forward. With his free hand, Chris pushed down one side of my brother’s shorts, then the other. My brother told him no, and I took another step forward. I opened my mouth and my brother said the word for me.
“Stop,” he said. At first more of a whisper. “Stop. No. Please.” He threw words out. Short words, words that traveled fast, became louder and louder. Don’t. No. Stop. With each word, I took a step, like it was some sick game where I could move only when my brother was calling out for help. No, step. Chris, step. Please, step. Soon the words were coming so fast I was running. I was running to Chris, my hands in the air, and I was yelling for the whole world to make Chris leave my brother alone.
Chris yanked up his shorts and turned around. “You? What? Not you.”
My brother pulled up his trunks and tried to run, but Chris caught him by the neck. “Whoa!” he said, wrestling my brother’s desperate, flailing arms. “Come on now.” He finally got hold of one arm and used it to fling my brother against the silo wall. He pressed his hand into my brother’s chest and with a fierce look commanded him to stay. “Jesus,” Chris said, catching his breath. “What the hell? Just hold on a second, OK? Let’s think this one through.” My brother clawed at Chris’s arms, his chest and wrist. Chris grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him into the silo wall, flexing his arms and shoulders with a strength I hadn’t seen before. “What is wrong with you?” Chris said. “Cut it out!” He shook him one last time, then held him still. “Calm yourself. Are you calm?” I took another step but Chris warned me to stay back, that he’d deal with me in a second. Still, I could see my brother’s face, reddened with hate, his mouth white with anger. It was what I must’ve looked like all those times my brother pinned me down with his knees, spit on me, or made me make promises I swore in my heart I would never keep.
“Promise me you’ll calm down,” Chris said. “You won’t do that again.”
My brother’s eyes flashed at me. His jaw stuck out, in rage, in disbelief.
“Don’t look at him,” Chris said, and grabbed my brother’s cheeks. “Look at me. Do you promise?”
My brother looked at Chris, his friend, our teacher. He nodded. He said he promised. He said, “Let me go.”
Chris sized him up with one last look. He let him go. My brother’s body relaxed, but he did not move from the wall. When Chris was satisfied that my brother wasn’t a flight risk, he turned to me. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
I ignored him. I tried to ignore everything about Chris, his loose trunks, his sick, milky limbs. I did my best to convince myself he was not here.
“Hey,” Chris said. “I’m talking to you. You shouldn’t be here.”
“Dad got a tip,” I said. “He’s close to catching him.”
Chris blinked his eyes quickly, batting away his confusion. He turned to my brother for answers. “What the hell is he talking about?”
I stepped away from Chris, so he was out of the scene and it was just me and my brother. I just needed a chance.
“Everything’s fine,” I said. “Everything will be OK.”
Chris tried to touch my brother, and my brother slid away. My brother put his head down, hiding his face. I could tell by the shaking of his shoulders that he had started to cry. I reached out to my brother, to comfort him, but he shrank into a crouch, into the fetal position. He hid his head in his arms, in the cave between his knees.
“We don’t have time for this,” Chris said. He pushed me out of the way and bent down to my brother, brushed my brother’s hair with the back of his hand. “It’s OK. We can figure this out.”
More winds rolled in, swirling the silo in a thudding rush. I looked at the circle of sky above me, at the puffy clouds moving in, dropping to the treetops. Chris caressed my brother’s cheek, but shifted his stare to me.
“You realize you’re coming too,” Chris said. “I mean, you know I can’t let you go back.”
A drop of rain. I heard his words and immediately tried to unhear them. My brother lifted his face. He wiped his nose with his arm and through a sob told Chris no. “He shouldn’t have to. Don’t make him.”