Homecoming

A 1600 word short story

I remember lying sweating in the yard with the sun thick on my body and the long arm of a sycamore throwing blue shade over my face when I knew something bad was coming. It was October of 1986, and I turned fourteen. Ma was indoors seeing to Rosie who bawled like some devil had got a hold of her. Birds on their branches cooed. The soft earth beneath my head seemed even to hum a song. My eyes were closed and still I sensed someone walking towards me. Steps all too heavy to be Ma, and that was even if she was carrying Rosie too. But they were both inside.

‘Hello slick.’

I opened my eyes and the world had turned the shade of steel but stood clear in the shadow bright as a moonstar was Jacob, smiling, smiling like he always did through thick and thin and the bad times that rolled on heavy, still smiling, my big brother.

‘Jacob, is that you?’

I scrambled up in disbelief and fell into his open arms and we embraced for some time, my head spinning and tears standing in my eyes.

‘Missed you, kid,’ he said.

Ma sidled up to the yard door clutching Rosie who sucked on her thumb. Jacob let me go and smoothed my hair and smiled and I watched him walk over to Ma who couldn’t help herself crying too; and Rosie and myself with our red, bleary eyes, we were like a whole family born all too close to the well, as Ma put it.

I thought it would be far longer before I ever saw him again. The day he left home those three months ago had seared itself into all our minds, changed things inevitably and with sureness, like how a season changes the trees.

Ma fixed us all some tea in the kitchen. She busied herself at the stove after putting Rosie to sleep who was knocked out after all the fuss and excitement. Jacob sat next to me staring off into the living space, his eyes sort of blank. His fingers were interlaced too, and I had the thought that college made him all too serious. He looked at the clock beside the cupboard and I looked too, then when Ma was out of earshot, I asked him why he’d come back.

‘You don’t want to see me?’

‘Course I do, but…’

He looked at me square and for the first time I realized he did look different. Something about the old him was gone and replaced with something I couldn’t identify, like trying to point out blood on a bleeding cardinal.

‘It’s just that you said you weren’t coming back.’

Ma set the tea on the table and she pulled out a chair to join us. We drank and spoke about small things and Jacob told us what it was like in college, that the people wore nice suits and tried their best to shed their home accents. His hadn’t changed. She asked if he was looking after himself and he nodded, then she asked if he missed home and he smiled. It was a smile he kept to himself but we all saw it, and we all knew that it was one empty of any happiness. She asked if he met any nice girls. He told her no.

Ma became stone-faced and hard to look at. We finished our tea without speaking and she took away our cups and washed them and said from the sink without turning to look at us, ‘your dad will be back soon.’

Jacob stood and asked me if I wanted to go for a drive and I half-expected Ma to snap around and tell me no, but she remained hunched over the sink scrubbing like it was only her in the world and those teacups and the water she washed them in.

I shrugged, told him OK, and we grabbed our jackets and soon left the house.

He’d taken a back lane through the woods and we cruised alone on the road under the shade of giant trees. The road was narrow without much space to meet a car head on, but it was just the two of us and the small trill of birds that rolled through the window I’d cracked open.

‘How long are you home for?’

He shrugged. He leaned back into his seat with just one hand on the wheel.

‘Ma don’t stop talking about you.’

‘What about the old man?’

‘Him not so much. You ain’t too hot in his books.’ I looked out the window at nothing in particular and raised my hand to the cool stream of air that rushed through, hoping it would dry the sweat on my palms.

‘What are you gonna say when you see him?’

‘I had four hours on the drive down to think about it.’

‘And?’

‘Figured I might skip the whole talking and just shoot him.’

‘Jacob.’

‘I’m kidding.’

I believed him as far as his smile would let me believe him, creeping up the side of his cheek like it was a joke only he could understand. I knew that some deep part of him would find relief in it all, like a piece of gravel in your boot finally removed after a hike to hell and back.

But I knew him never to have a bad bone in his body, even up until the day he left home. College didn’t start for another month, but he left anyway.

He moved in with Cain, and that only fired dad up even more.

The day after Jacob left, dad sat waiting on the porch, a shotgun loaded with rock-salt laid across his lap, making sure that he had no ideas about coming back. Luckily Jacob never did.

‘Why did you come back?’

‘Well, I still got family in this little part of the world, don’t I?’ He turned to look at me, his smile had changed to what I thought was affection. ‘That is even if the old man doesn’t want me being part of it.’

It was getting dark out and soon dad would be driving back from his shift at the paper mill. I could’ve only hoped that Ma had taken the initiative to hide his guns, or at least unload them.

‘Rosie’s getting big, ain’t she?’ he said.

‘I suppose. I don’t really notice it.’

‘Noticed she’s started sucking on her thumb.’

‘That only started after you left.’

He sighed, and at the next clearing spun the car around, taking us back through the darkening road in the woods. The trees seemed to close in the closer we got to home, and the closer we got, the bigger this bad feeling of mine started to get.

‘Cain’s dead,’ said Jacob.

‘What?’

‘He got sick.’

Jacob wasn’t smiling anymore but kept his eyes wide on the road like he was expecting it might suddenly fall out from under him. His hand was trembling and I wanted to tell him to pull over but I knew he wouldn’t so I kept quiet.

‘Thing is,’ he said, ‘I’m sick now too.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘That I’m sick like Cain was sick.’

‘So.’

‘So I figured I don’t know when it is I’ll next see everyone. Ma, Rosie, you, even the old man. Doctors say it’ll just get worse. Then they reckon it won’t be long.’

‘Long before what?’

He kept his mouth shut like he never even heard me.

I would’ve thrown up if it wasn’t for him putting his hand on my shoulder. He squeezed a little as if to remind me he was still there, and I closed my eyes hoping that the dark I saw would slip into my mind, maybe take me away.

The trees flitted by and they all looked the same, and the road we took was the same I’d taken a thousand times, yet it was different like how Jacob was different. His hand still rested on my shoulder; his eyes still fixed on the road.

No cars passed us by that evening. The way home was quiet.

Dad’s truck was parked on the dirt apron by the porch when we returned. Jacob parked a little ways down the road out of sight. Still, with the quiet the evening brought, I wondered if dad had heard the sound of the engine and was already waiting by the door.

‘You know I saw him one time,’ said Jacob. ‘It was the day after I left. I came back.’

He turned to look at me and I could feel his gaze asking mine to meet his in return, but I kept looking at my feet.

‘You know what I’m talking about,’ he said. ‘He didn’t see me, but he was armed. He was ready. I wonder if he really would’ve done it.’

I remained silent. I didn’t know the truth of it. I didn’t know what went on in either of their heads.

The sounds of evening awakened and suddenly the long quiet between us was loud with the whir of bugs and small life. The sort of life unseen that grew an agency away from any viewing eye, and I wondered where it all came from.

‘Now I suppose he won’t have a thing to worry about,’ he said. Then he bumped me on the arm and opened the car door. I didn’t budge as he got up. My bottom half was numb and no part of me wanted to move.

He walked round the car and knocked on my window and I looked up at him on the other side.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I want to go home.’