Читать книгу Cost - Roxana Robinson - Страница 7

Steven shifted again, his seat entirely numb. He had been traveling for years, it seemed, for most of his life. These last two hundred miles would take as long as the first three thousand, and were the longest.

The bus roared steadily northward, the engine playing without pause its single plangent chord. Steven leaned, bored, against the window. Along the unfolding ribbon of the highway ran a high wooden wall topped by a dense mass of trees. Foliage foamed over the wall, as though from a container.

Next to Steven was another young man, his raised knees crammed against the seat in front. His head had fallen sideways, and he was snoring faintly on the indrawn breaths. The sound was mild and childlike. It was oddly intimate, listening to the soft exhalations of a stranger. Steven wondered if his girlfriend complained—though who would mind this faint high whistle?

Anything might tip the balance, though. Anything might make you recoil from certain flesh. The body had its own life. He thought of the dark line of damp clay beneath Eliza's nails, her moist pink fingertips.

And maybe this guy didn't snore in bed, maybe he did it only on long bus trips, sitting upright, head lolling. He was younger than Steven, in a grimy T-shirt, pocketed cargo pants, grubby running shoes. He and Steven were the only people their age on the bus. Of course he'd sat here, next to Steven: age was the great divider. You understood only your own cohort; shared experience was the essential thing. Older people's lives were wholly different. They had no idea what Steven and his friends were like.

Nor could Steven imagine his parents’ world, that dim twilight epoch before his birth. People standing in the sun beside old cars, eating prehistoric food, their long hair and weird hippie clothes. Who knew what it had been like? All you knew of your parents came from them. There were no unmediated moments, you were handed history as your parents had written it. The material was theirs.

His father's childhood had been like this: the memory of his father coming home to the house in New Canaan, letting in a rush of cold air. Taking off his overcoat in the front hall, his first words a greeting to the dog. His mother, growing up in the stone house in Villanova, hiding in the forsythia bushes. The stories of his parents' childhoods made Steven feel strange. It was weird, thinking of them younger than he, still small and vulnerable, their adult lives ahead of them.

He picked up his paperback, wrapping the cover punishingly around its back. The book was bad, but he had nothing else to read. The video, played on the bus's tiny screens—a thriller, with pretentious dialogue and slow-motion gunplay—was over.

The roadside fence ended abruptly, and a string of chain stores ran smoothly past, their signs bright and urban. He wondered how the mall employees up here felt. Proud to be part of a national network? Angry at the exploitative wages? Glad to have a job, most likely. Steven shifted again, jamming himself into the corner, resting his head against the hard, humming window.

He wondered what his mother would say about graduate school. It would be the opposite of whatever his father said. One of them would ask, “Are you certain you need a law degree, Steven? Have you thought carefully about this?” The other would say, “Education is the highest privilege, of course you should go.” Probably Wendell would be in favor of it; Julia, more cautious, would have reservations. “What do you want to do next? What does it mean for your future? I want you to think ahead,” she'd say.

Both his parents had gone to graduate school, but when they were planning their futures, things had been different. People spent years at one place, their whole working lives. Loyalty was rewarded. You worked your way first to the outside wall, then the corner office. All that was over now, there was no such thing as job security. The idea of it seemed foolish and old-fashioned, like those big-brimmed brown hats men wore. A lifetime spent at one place, a gold watch at retirement: bizarre. Now no one stayed anywhere longer than five years; you worked somewhere until the next downsizing. There were no offices, people worked in cubicles without doors, with walls that didn't reach the ceilings. Or you worked at home, sitting before the screen in your sweats and a T-shirt, coffee rings on your papers, bagel crumbs colonizing the keyboard. Work was fluid now, a ribbon running through your life, not a box which contained you.

Everything was fluid now. The Internet, cell phones, communication, everyone was in touch all the time. On the sidewalk, people around you staring straight ahead, looking through you as they spoke into unseen ears. In a bookstore in Seattle he'd been ranging through the shelves while a woman nearby talked loudly to a friend. “You're going to have to get rid of her, Richard,” she said. “Her needs are not in alignment with yours. She's very, very demanding, and you're going to have to recognize this. You like to keep these women hanging around, but it's not healthy. Remember that time in the sauna?” He wondered who Richard was, and if he wanted an assessment of his private life broadcast so clearly and specifically in the Travel section of Elliott Bay Books.

But people talked to each other all the time, everywhere, loudly, in public; there was no privacy protocol. It was while you were traveling that you most wanted to connect. Everyone in airports had phones clamped to their heads, talking, talking, talking to make sure their lives at home were intact, that their places in the world were still held, that they were still connected to something. On 9/11, all those doomed people on the airplanes, calling home, as though the connection itself could keep them alive.

Steven gazed out the vibrating window and felt the humming of the bus through his body. He'd read somewhere that all engines hummed in the note of E. He wondered if it were true and, if so, why? Was it metallurgical—was all metal intrinsically tuned to the same key? Or to do with the way engines worked? Engines all over the world—mopeds in the Philippines, vacuum cleaners in Edinburgh (DC current), hairdryers in India, trucks in Detroit—all humming a jubilant, unheard, universal chorus.

Outside, the trees were in place again, foaming thickly over the fence. Behind him, unimaginably distant now, was Seattle: the low friendly city, with its glittering waterside, the peaceful rhythm of the streets.

He thought of Eliza at the café on the last day. Her silky blond hair, short and thick as suede. Her hands curved around her coffee mug: her stubby, bitten fingers, like a child's. The clay rimming the bitten nails, she was a potter.

“I might come back after Christmas,” Steven said, his words audibly untrue. They were sitting outside, on a cobblestone pedestrian mall. Behind Eliza he could see a street singer approaching them, with a battered guitar and a wide professional smile.

Eliza nodded, behind her mug.

“That'd be good.” She understood he didn't mean it. She looked at him steadily. “It's too bad there aren't any law schools out here.” This— gentle sarcasm—was the closest she would come to accusation.

Steven looked into his own mug, stirring it with the flimsy plastic stick. He could not explain exactly what had happened, how it had become clear that his time here was over.

The singer stood beside their table, already strumming. His guitar was held around his neck by a band of red hand-woven cloth. Steven looked up, the singer gave him a folksy grin. Steven's own face was stiff. “No, thanks,” he said.

Steven's arrival here, a year earlier, had seemed like the discovery of a new country—glittering water, amiable people, the unknown Western birds. That sense of being on the very edge of the continent, on the shore of the raging misnamed Pacific, with its towering storms and plunging surf. Beyond it all were the great reaches of Asia. The Northeast looked toward Europe, but here in the Northwest it was Asia you looked to, wide, ancient, and mysterious. Stretching above you was Canada's cool green wilderness.

Steven had wanted to leave the East for somewhere less known. He wanted to do something serious and positive, and in Seattle it was easy to find a project. Nature was nearby, and important; idealism was current.

He joined an environmental NGO set up to protect a stretch of old-growth Douglas firs from clear-cut logging. Everyone in NOCUT was cheerful and energetic. They went hiking together on weekends, they all loved the wilderness. Jim Cusack, the head of it, was in his mid-thirties, older than the others. He was bearded and friendly, and wore work boots and plaid flannel shirts. He knew how to get funding, organize, draft petitions.

Things went well at first. They raised money, collected signatures, were written up in the paper. They set up a meeting with a congressman who sat behind his desk in his shirtsleeves, frowning intently, listening, nodding at each point. He shook everyone's hand when they left. They felt exhilarated then, but later things began to stall. There were no more articles, and the logging company refused to take their calls. The congressman's schedule was now crowded. When it became clear that logging was imminent, Jim suggested guerrilla tactics. He said they should chain themselves to the threatened trees.

There was a collective thrill at the idea of action. This was more than making phone calls and collecting signatures. The idea of using themselves, their own bodies, aroused them. They knew they would succeed. They were invincible. This was a holy war, and they were on God's side.

The day of the chaining started early—the middle of the night, really. Steven got up while it was still dark, moving quietly through his apartment. He felt the night outside, the sleeping people all around him. He felt a sense of urgency and purpose. His apartment was on the third floor, and when he left it, he kept his footsteps light on the stairs, nearly soundless. They were meeting in the office parking lot, where he parked among the cluster of pickup trucks. Dim figures stood around them. Everyone spoke in low voices. There were meant to be twenty of them, but only twelve had showed up: eight men and four women. They waited until Cusack said they should go. He said this happened, people changed their minds. He didn't say anything about people getting scared.

They'd kept their plan quiet, not wanting to alert the logging company, but they'd told a reporter, swearing him to secrecy and hoping for coverage. It all felt serious—the strategy, the secrecy, the meeting in the chill predawn. There was the chance of danger; it seemed like war.

The reporter hadn't shown up, but they hoped he'd meet them there. Steven went with Cusack, heading out onto the dark roads. Once they were on the highway, Steven turned to Cusack. “So, have you done this a lot?” He was ready to hear the stories. But Cusack did not smile or look at him. Eyes on the road, he shook his head. “Never,” he said. Fuck, thought Steven.

After the highway they took smaller, narrower roads, finally jouncing slowly over the dirt logging trail. The trail ended deep in the woods, in a rough open circle, the ground hugely torn and rutted. Around it towered the great Douglas firs. Their shadows shifted and fled from the beams of the flashlights. Faces, lit weirdly from below, became those of strangers. They stumbled on the uneven ground, the chains they carried clinking faintly. They felt the great shadows of the woods all around them.

They each took a tree, Cusack directing. Steven walked his chain twice around the huge trunk. Snugging the cold links up against his chest, snapping the padlock, gave Steven an odd flicker of excitement and fear. The bark against the back of his head was rough, and links of the chain dug in at his hip. There was no easy way to stand. The discomfort felt sacrificial, daring. They were at risk.

At first they called back and forth, laughing, but after a while the darkness and silence of the forest settled into them, and the voices stopped. The trees, reaching loftily overhead, became larger in the stillness. They could hear the high limbs shifting in the faint wind. It was still early, before daylight, and Steven began drifting in and out of a waking sleep. It was impossible really to sleep, standing up, chained against the trunk, but it was also impossible really to stay awake, in that lightless stillness. His mind drifted, freewheeling; he was not asleep, but he seemed to be dreaming. Great animals moved slowly around him, and something was not right, was there a storm in the offing? An eruption, an earthquake? The landscape was apocalyptic, full of dangerous lights and dread. He waked in darkness, confused, his neck stiff.

The light came imperceptibly, at first merely a shift to grayness in stead of blackness. Silhouettes and outlines became visible—or did they? Nothing was certain. They vanished in the dimness, then reappeared, finally taking on substance. Slowly the scene took shape: the huge shaggy trunks, standing all around him. Tiny fir cones, scattered on the rough needle-carpeted floor of the forest, and on the rutted open ground. There were faint twitterings, high up. Woodland birds, maybe warblers. Colors came last: the needles were rusty brown, the torn earth dull ocher.

Like the light, the sound of the approaching trucks arrived so subtly that Steven heard it before he knew he was hearing it. When he realized what it was—the loggers were coming—Steven felt something shift in the pit of his stomach. He felt excitement, and something else.

The sounds grew slowly louder, and the trucks appeared. Four pickups, loaded with equipment, pulled into the open area and stopped in a semicircle. The drivers got out of the trucks and drew together into a group, all looking at Steven and the others. It was not quite daylight, the air was still dim and gray. The protesters had propped big signs up against their trees, with hand-painted slogans: CLEAR-CUT IS CLEAR

MURDER, and THINK OF THIS TREE AS A CITY: YOU'RE COMMITTING

A CAPITAL CRIME. None of the signs was as brilliant as they'd wanted. Steven's said TREES MAKE OXYGEN. PEOPLE BREATHE OXYGEN. ARE

WE CRAZY?

The loggers wore battered hard hats and jeans. There were five of them, and they stood together, talking, looking at Steven and the others. One, in a yellow helmet, set his hands on his hips and shook his head slowly. Their stances—belligerent arm-crossing, scornful hands on hips—suggested anger, and at that, pride reasserted itself. Steven was proud to be here, confronting an angry enemy, making a declaration. He felt excited and triumphant. His heart began to pound.

Yellow Helmet turned his back and began talking to the others. They all watched him. One of them laughed; Steven felt a small shock. What could be funny? This was serious. He wondered what they were saying. The back of the truck held chain saws.

Steven began to feel uneasy at their laughter, their casual stances, their saws. The loggers seemed to be in charge of this situation, whatever it was. They seemed practiced, experienced: they knew the forest. They ruled here.

The logic of the protest no longer seemed so clear. Was it foolish? Was it sensationalist, misguided? The back of Steven's head was chafed and raw against the bark. The chain now embarrassed him. It seemed silly and theatrical, with its evocations of imprisonment, religion, torture. But if not now, when did you take a stand? All heroic gestures seemed

foolish at the time, didn't they? It was afterward that they took on significance. Though this was only meant to be a gesture: it came to Steven very clearly now that he did not want to lose his life, or his leg. He wanted only to make a statement, not a sacrifice. But here he was, chained bizarrely to the rough bark of this tree.

It was, he understood now, absurd, a children's performance. But how else did you effect change? The company refused to talk, the congressman would do nothing. The forest—this huge natural engine, this silent, efficient factory of oxygen, soil, clean water, habitat—was at risk. No one else would protect it.

Behind him, someone began calling out, taunting and jeering: “Come and get us.”

Steven, nearest the trucks, on the wide curve of his big tree, could not see the others.

“Chicken!” shouted someone. “What's the matter, you don't dare do anything?”

The taunts were idiotic. They hadn't discussed this at the meetings. And where was the reporter? Who was going to record what happened? They shouldn't be yelling. Where was Cusack? Why didn't he say anything? This could get out of control. He imagined the high, terrifying whine of the shredder, its stutter and catch when something was thrown into it.

Yellow Helmet left the circle and began to walk toward them. He carried a long shaft of rolled-up paper, like a blueprint. Steven watched him approach, his heartbeat rising. He braced himself: here he was, the enemy in the flesh. Here was the man who would bring down these towering giants, destroy this grove of silence and coolness, transform it into a churned-up wasteland.

The logger walked across the clearing. He was short, with a heavy chest and a thick middle. He wore jeans and a faded plaid workshirt. He reminded Steven of Jim Cusack, chained somewhere behind him. The same clothes, the same short, shaggy beards, the same ruddy cheekbones. Even the same bright blue forceful gaze.

We're the same, Steven thought, we're the same. He could feel the pounding of his heart. The idea seemed a revelation. The logger came closer, and Steven saw he was older than Cusack, his sunburnt skin thickened and lined. He works in these woods, Steven thought: this had the clarity and weight of crystal. The logger's life seemed suddenly immanent, a transparent fan of experience. He lives near here, Steven thought; that's his truck. He has young kids, an ex-wife in a trailer somewhere.

As the logger reached him, Steven felt a powerful bolt of kinship. He met the man's eyes, his own eyes eager. I understand you, he thought. He was ready to smile. I'm like you. The logger stopped before him and put his hands on his hips, a negligent, contemptuous gesture.

“You asshole,” the logger said, and spat at him.

The impact was small but shocking. The saliva was heavy and clotted, and slid slowly down the side of Steven's nose. He tried to lift his hand to brush it off, but his arms were behind the chains. He felt it slip onto his cheek and stop.

“You think we want to fuck around with you guys?” asked the logger. “You know what it means to run an operation like this?” The man stared at him. “We know what you're up to. We know you freaks are trying to grow marijuana in here.” He shook his head. “We should just cut these trees down with you assholes on them.”

“Right,” Steven said stiffly. He meant this to be cruelly cutting, conveying sarcasm and fortitude, but it came out like weak agreement. He felt like a fool. And what did the guy mean about marijuana?

NOCUT lost the battle, and the trees had come down.

The loggers had left that morning, but returned two days later with an injunction. This time Steven and the others stood by, unchained, while the sawblades whined sideways into the ancient trunks. The loggers wore ear mufflers, but the protesters did not, and their bodies vibrated with the roar. It drowned out the sound of their pulses, it echoed in their skulls. The big trees stood steady while they were cut, then went down fast and suddenly, toppling like mountains, thundering down like the end of the world. NOCUT held up signs and shouted slogans, but no one heard them in the din. The trees went down. This time the reporter was there, documenting their failure (he'd gotten the day wrong before). By the time the article came out, the forest was leveled. There were only splintered stumps and degraded earth left. Every bird, animal, and insect had been evicted from a densely populated thousand acres.

After that, Steven felt his time was over in the Northwest. He felt stranded, as though he'd been abandoned by some tidal movement. The day after the trees came down, Jim Cusack asked if he wanted to come hiking that weekend. They were all going, he said. Steven could see that for the rest of them nothing had changed, that they were all still carried along in that surge of energy, but for Steven it had stopped. He'd become separated from his life there.

On the bus, the snorer shifted, twisted, and settled his head on the other side. Steven wondered how old he was. When did you decide you were too old to wear dopey pants and Grateful Dead T-shirts? Was there a moment when it came to you, that you were too old for this now, or was the change unconscious, part of a sartorial drift that functioned throughout your life, moving you silently from one set of wardrobe options to another?

He looked out the window again: the fence was gone, and the mall. The bus was passing through thick woods now, conifers crowding up to the highway.

He knew his mother would ask if he'd seen Jack when he went through New York. He dreaded it. She'd wait until they were alone. Steven didn't know yet what he would tell her.

He had seen Jack.

He'd gone to see his new place, way out in Brooklyn, on a dingy street beyond Williamsburg. It was a crummy neighborhood, with trash littering the gutter. The tiny stretch of lawn was tired and beaten down. Jack's building was brick, low and blocky, newish, but already seedy and dilapidated. Its small windows were high and meanly spaced.

In the foyer was a row of buzzers. The slot for 3C held a torn-off strip of paper hand-lettered ANdorN. Steven pushed the button and was buzzed into a low-ceilinged hall. There was no elevator, and Steven climbed the uncarpeted stairs. Upstairs, the hall was narrow, the walls scuffed. There was a bad smell.

Steven rang at Jack's door and waited, trying not to breathe the smell. Inside the apartment there was no sound, though Jack had just buzzed him in, downstairs. After a while Steven pressed the button again, harder. Still silence. He waited again, then pressed the bell a third time. At once, as though he had released a spring, the door opened on his brother.

“Hey,” Steven said.

“Stevo,” Jack said, nodding. He looked terrible; pale, very thin. Dark stubble stood out against his white cheeks. He wore jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, the grimy cuffs unbuttoned and flapping. His feet were bare and dirty. “Good to see you. Come on in.” He ran his hand self-consciously over his head. Steven had the feeling that Jack had just done something quick and furtive before coming to the door.

Steven followed him inside. A huge TV with a tangle of cords was on the floor. In front of it was a plaid sofa, its stained cushions flattened and sagging. There was nothing else, and the bare floor was scattered with CDs, empty cans, food wrappers. Jack stopped and stood awkwardly, with his hands in his back pockets.

“So, great,” Jack said. He nodded and smiled again. “What's up? How long you here for?” His eyelids were heavy, and there was something wrong with his smile.

“Just the night.” Steven looked around. The smell from the hall was in here, too. “Nice place.”

Jack laughed. “Yeah. A palace.” His eyes seemed unfocused. “It's not mine, it's a friend's. I'm just staying here while he's in LA. So. Want some coffee? Want to go out?”

“Sure,” Steven said. “Let's go out.” He understood that Jack didn't want him here in the apartment.

“Shoes,” Jack said, and left the room. Steven followed him.

In the bedroom the shade was pulled down, and the window shut. The air was unpleasantly dense. The closet door was open, clothes heaped on its floor. A bureau stood beside the closet, one of its drawers pulled out. On a wooden chair lay an electric bass, its bright reflective surfaces gleaming dimly. The room felt claustrophobic, as though it were its own whole country, with its own secret laws, its own sinister climate. Entering it felt dangerous.

The bed had no headboard and stood slightly away from the wall. Jack sat down on the tangled sheets and scuffed his bare feet into shoes. His movements seemed labored. He stood up again and gave Steven the bad smile.

“Let's go,” he said.

As they reached the sidewalk in front of Jack's building, a huge black man approached them. He was gray-haired and wore a knitted cap and a red hooded sweatshirt that said HOUSTON COUGARS. His enormous stomach strained against the shirt. He was talking loudly and making large swinging gestures with his fists. As they approached, he looked at Steven and said angrily, “Not once. Not once! Motherfuckers!” The brothers parted, passing on either side of him.

When they rejoined, Steven said, “Jesus. I thought he was going to take a swing at us.”

“Nah, he's harmless,” Jack said without interest. “I see him a lot. Turn here.”

The next block was lined with dingy brownstones. This is Jack's neighborhood, thought Steven, these littered streets, run-down houses, weirdos swinging their fists. It was a shock, realizing how separate their lives now were.

Growing up, they'd shared everything. They'd gone to the same schools, known each other's friends, breathed each other's air. But now Steven saw how little he knew of his brother's life, how opaque it was to him. This was partly age, of course; Jack was still locked into that stupid college routine, all pot and no plans. Jack had always had dumb pot-soaked ideas, rock bands and big schemes, nothing that would ever work. But he'd been funny before, hilarious; he'd had a manic, luminous glow.

Now, in this seedy depressive neighborhood, in the sickening smell and strange silence of the apartment, things were no longer funny. Jack's presence seemed dead, flattened. No light came from him, the air around him was inert.

At the coffee shop they sat in the back. The waiters took orders in a normal voice, in accented English, then turned and shouted in Spanish at the top of their lungs. The other language flowed around them, soft and rapid. At the next table two girls were talking at top speed, like dueling machine guns.

The waiter came, and Steven ordered coffee and a bagel. The waiter looked at Jack.

“Coffee,” Jack said.

“Nothing to eat?” Steven asked.

“Are you Mom?”

Steven shrugged. “I thought you'd want some breakfast.”

Jack shook his head. He seemed not to be blinking.

The waiter filled their thick ceramic mugs and Steven took a sip. The coffee was thin and bitter.

“So,” he said. “What's going on?”

“Nothing much,” Jack said. He shrugged, frowning.

“You working, or what?” asked Steven.

“Is this an interview? Who sent you?”

“Come on,” said Steven. “What's the deal?”

He was irritated by his brother's rudeness, his assumption of Steven's disloyalty, especially since it was justified. Jack always made him choose sides.

Jack shrugged. “I don't want breakfast, that's the deal.” He sipped his coffee listlessly. “So, what's up with you?”

“I'm leaving Seattle. Left it,” Steven said.

“Yeah? How come?”

Steven shook his head. “It's just finished,” he said, “what I wanted to do there.”

“D'jou save the trees?” Jack's tone was nearly mocking.

Steven shook his head again. “No,” he said. “The trees came down.” He looked at his brother, waiting for sarcasm.

“Too bad.” Jack's eyes were opaque.

“So I'm coming back East. I'm thinking of law school.”

“Law school,” Jack said.

“Yeah,” Steven said. “I don't know if they'll buy it.” “What if they don't?”

“I'll do it anyway, on my own. Student loans.”

Jack raised his eyebrows again. “Long-term loans,” he said. “Big-time debt. Big-time.” He shook his head. “Might as well do drugs.” He grinned: the idea seemed to cheer him.

Steven drank from his mug, looking at him. “Oh?”

Jack shrugged and glanced around the restaurant. He drummed a syncopated rhythm on the table with his dirty fingers. At the next table the girls hummed and buzzed like silvery bees.

“So,” Steven said, “what are you doing?”

Jack looked at him, his eyes hooded. “Me! Nothing. What do you mean?”

“How're you paying the rent? How're you eating?”

Jack shook his head and rubbed his index finger on the tabletop, as though erasing something. “This and that,” he said. “Got some things cooking.”

“Like what?” Steven asked.

“My friend Mario is starting a record company.” Jack looked at Steven. “It's gonna be big.”

“What are you doing in it?”

“Different things,” Jack said. “Producer, maybe. There are a lot of options. Plus the band's starting to cook.” He leaned against the red plastic of the seat. His Adam's apple protruded: his neck was very thin.

Steven stared at him, Jack looked back, then away.

“So, you coming up to Maine?”

“Nah, don't think so,” Jack said. “The band,” he explained. He scratched suddenly, hard and fast, at the side of his neck. The skin reddened under the assault. The grimy cuff of his shirt fell back from his wrist; the inside of the cuff was spotted with dark blood.

Behind them the dark-haired girl spoke steadily and rapidly. Her voice rose and fell, waves of words.

“Jack,” Steven said, “are you okay?”

Jack raised his eyebrows. “What,” he said. “I'm okay. I'm okay. Might get a job in a video store,” he added. “Need the cash.”

Jack and Steven had sat in silence then, looking at each other, each waiting for the other to speak.

Steven, two years older, had always felt responsible for his brother. He couldn't remember a time when Jack hadn't been beside him, struggling to keep up, breathless, intrepid, making trouble. Once, when they were eight or nine, Steven had found Jack in their bedroom, crouched over the scrap basket in the corner.

“Look.” Jack had a book of matches. He was lighting them and dropping them one by one into crumpled paper in the bottom of the scrap basket. The fire—oddly pallid in the daylight—had begun to creep along the edges of the paper, turning them brown, then black.

“Put it out,” Steven said. Alarm pulsed through him.

“It's metal,” Jack said, “it won't burn.”

Steven reached for the scrap basket. The flames were spreading briskly, he wasn't sure he could blow it out. Jack turned his back and shoulder against his brother, holding on to the basket, and they wrestled. Steven, heavier, stronger, weighted by the responsibility, was furious, grappling with his little brother.

“You stupid damn jerk,” he whispered. “If you don't give me that, I'm telling.”

It was the ultimate threat, the worst thing you could do. Loyalty was at the core of everything; telling their parents anything was forbidden. But then—often—Steven had wanted to tell on Jack. Either tell on him or kill him. Jack always went too far. His exploits were too perilous, the risks always too great. He tortured Steven, making him choose.

His little brother had always been Steven's responsibility. The time Jack fell out of the tree in Central Park: Steven had told him he was going too high. When he brought Jack back to the apartment, his arm dangling, Steven had felt as though he himself would be beaten, should be beaten, for failing to protect his brother, keep him safe. Come down! he had yelled at Jack, but Jack ignored him, clambering quickly from branch to branch. Steven had seen him fall, he had been right there. He heard the awful sound of body meeting earth. Now you've done it, he'd thought, now it's happened.

Steven looked out the window of the bus. He had not decided what to tell his mother about his younger brother. He didn't know, himself, whether the blaze was important, dangerous, whether it would extinguish itself, or whether they needed outside help: the fire department, men in boots, giant hoses. The siren of alarm.