A Brother's Burden

“That storm’s going to be a problem.”

Sure enough, when Chester looked to the horizon with his hand against his brow, dark clouds blotted out the last rays of the sunset. “Should we head back to the cabin, Davie?”

David bristled inwardly at the nickname. Of course he wanted nothing more than to be rid of his petulant brother. “Great idea; let’s go back empty-handed. What’s a family reunion without disappointment?”

“Better than empty-handed and soaked to the bone.” Chester set his half-empty beer bottle on the ground beside where he sprawled in a lawn chair.

David wanted to argue, but in the low light if any ducks came back to the pond, they’d have a hard time finding them, much less shooting one. He set the gun down but didn’t unload it, leaning it against the blind so the muzzle pointed up to the sky.

Chester eyed the thing. “Maybe we’ll need the birdshot if a bear – or whatever – starts looking for a campsite to ride out the storm.”

If their post – a pop-up ground blind, a cooler, a lawn chair, and a fire pit that hadn’t been stoked in a while – could be considered a campsite at all, anyway. David started to unpack the cooler, leaving only half-melted ice behind and scoffed. “It’d be better company.”

He could have mumbled it under his breath and let the chorus of frogs drown him out, or better yet, kept it to himself, but Chester heard and found himself thinking the same thing.

This was the first family reunion in six years, and it had been three years since David and Chester had seen each other in person. Not nearly long enough.

“You’ve been at each other’s throats ever since your parents passed away. Maybe you should just apologize.” Their Aunt Mary’s advice from the morning surfaced in Chester’s memory. “You’ll be out in the woods, no one will even hear you. Brothers shouldn’t hold grudges like this.”

A grudge was certainly one word for it. “It’s too bad Meredith isn’t here,” Chester said, rising from his chair. “She was the life of any party. Even pity parties.”

David stilled. The icy slurry whirled inside the cooler, and David felt the world around him do the same when he heard that name. The name he wasn’t allowed to see, or hear, or think anymore.

Something stirred on the surface of the pond, breaching from below.

“Take Chester and go duck hunting. Get dinner,” Aunt Mary had said to David, pulling him aside before dawn broke. “I’ll convince him. You just don’t hit him. Explain what happened, apologize. You’re his older brother; you must set the example.”

“Don’t do this,” he said as he tightened his grip around the cooler. “Not right now.”

The response surprised Chester, but not with his words. It was what David didn’t say, didn’t do, that alarmed him. He expected David to threaten him and shout, call him a bum and a loser, maybe even hit him. He hadn’t been prepared for the steely, cold hate and rage in his brother’s eyes and the sad slump in his shoulders.

“My God - Ches! Listen, I can explain!” Meredith’s voice pounded in both the brothers’ heads. “I’m sorry, okay, I’m really sorry!” She’d been so panicked, her normally lovely tone quivering with alarm. This wasn’t how she’d wanted to tell Chester about the affair.

Chester had slammed down the box of movies that he’d borrowed and come to return. “Is this a joke? ‘Cause I’m not laughing.” Chester hadn’t wanted to believe his eyes, his girlfriend of seven months swaddled in the blankets of his brother’s bed. Her blonde hair was tousled from their escapades. Her dark eye makeup smudged and gave her a wide, shocked expression. Like a deer in headlights.

David launched to his feet and had marched up to Chester with his thick, calloused hand outstretched. He’d pushed it against Chester’s shoulder and shoved him back several inches. “You need to get out of here. I won’t tell you again.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you? That’s my girlfriend!” Chester had pushed the offending hand away and pointed to the bed.

David hadn’t given any ground. “Not anymore.”

Chester picked up his drink and downed the rest of it. “You would know better than me, though, wouldn’t you?”

“Listen...”

“She was going to marry you. After you stole her from me!” Chester threw the glass bottle overhand, shattering it against a tree on the edge of their spot. Thunder rumbled behind the shadows, punctuating the accusation with an echo of rage.

Something in the water thrashed along the shore.

David dropped the cooler and splashed the contents into the sand. He thrust a finger through the air, pointed at the younger man. “I’ve never stolen anything in my life. Especially not from you.”

“She was the only thing in my life you wanted! I was stupid enough to think you couldn’t have her.” Chester widened his stance, wheeling his arms to keep balance. Maybe he’d had too many. Maybe he’d finally had enough to say what he’d kept in the depths of his heart. “And you let her die.”

The word rolled over the water of the pond.

They both remembered seeing the wreckage of the little black car in the roadside ditch, half wrapped around a post. Meredith’s blood had painted the inside of the windshield, glinting from the rotating police lights.

"Looks like the brake pedal was loose," the officers on scene reported. "She couldn't stop, she lost control. She wasn't wearing a seatbelt, and the airbag failed to deploy."

The splashing in the pond stopped. David’s lips curled. He shook his head. “It was an accident. You know that.”

Heavy droplets landed on the sand. Heavier than the thing that brough them.

It had always bothered Chester that David didn’t cry at Meredith’s funeral. He’d just stood there, ramrod straight, eyes red and sunken like he’d been crying and hadn’t slept, but in front of the families he just stood there. “I’m sorry for your loss,” that was all anyone would say. “So sorry for your loss.”

Only David and the coroner knew how deep the loss was. They’d found out in the autopsy. Meredith, herself, may not have even known that she was pregnant; if she had, she never told him.

Chester glared at the ground. The embers of the fire seemed dimmer now, the shadows around them longer and deeper. He couldn’t see the water anymore.

I’m sorry Ches. I made a mistake. Please let me back in the apartment. Please. When Chester had read the text on his little phone screen, he’d been so excited for his whole life to change. It turned out that everything did change, but not how he’d expected. She’d only sent one other text that night, to her mother. I’m leaving David.

Neither brother ever found out why.

David shook out his hands and folded his arms. “What do you know about protection? About loyalty?”

Chester stifled a laugh as he steadied himself then took a step forward. Then another. He cleared the fire pit and stood in spitting distance of his older, burly brother. “More than you.”

Another rumble of thunder rolled across the sky – that rumble became a growl, and the growl became a roar that rattled the blind. David’s gun, loaded with birdshot, teetered from where it was propped and struck the ground, discharging with a resounding blast. David clamped his hands around his ears. Chester dropped to his knees and grabbed nearby grass in his fists. The pellets gouged out long lines in the sand and cracked against trees and shrubs.

“What the hell?” David pushed past Chester and reached into the blind to grab a flashlight. He aimed the beam of light over the pond and between the trees. Shadows swirled outside of the beam, twisting with the peals of thunder that grew closer.

Chester straightened his back and stood upright on his knees as the flashlight beam crossed his face and landed on his chest. The shadows behind him tightened and darkened.

David had no time to react. Bright red blood spilled down the front of Chester’s shirt as he let out a sharp cry. The darkness pierced his shoulder where it met his body, leaving a deep gash. The shadow retreated when David grabbed the gun, and he found himself standing over his brother with the light and weapon in his hands. Chester groaned and looked up.

“I told you,” He laughed, darkly. “You can’t protect anyone.”

David set the gun on top of the cooler and collected the spent casing to put in his pocket. “Not even myself,” he said under his breath. This time, Chester didn’t hear.

“You?” David had balked at the papers in his brother’s hands. “Seriously?”

Chester had summoned all his courage to meet his eyes. “Yes, seriously. Mom and Dad agreed that I was the best choice.”

David had ground his teeth and clenched his fists. He’d felt like a live wire sparking rage and hate where it snapped. “You’re doing this to get back at me. To steal from me!”

“I’m not…”

David had jammed his finger right over Chester’s heart. “You manipulated them! You just want the money for your stupid parties. Do you even know where the family plot is?”

“I have time; they’re being cremated. Aunt Mary and I agreed…”

“Cremated? Grandpa spent his savings on that plot! We’re all supposed to be buried, together, there.”

The fight would have escalated if not for the courthouse security being drawn to the scene and forcing David to leave. That was three years ago.

David jammed his hands under Chester’s armpits and dragged him to the blind as rain started to dribble over them. It would keep the water off him, at least. His head lolled a bit as he settled into position, tucking one leg under the other and leaning cautiously against the flimsy support struts. “Get your hands off me,” Chester grumbled, but the blood loss made him weak.

David ignored him and retrieved the gun, then began to reload it.

“What was that?” Chester muttered.

“Don’t know,” David answered. “Didn’t get a good look at it.” He took up the flashlight and scanned the area. The raindrops caught the light and threw it all directions, like tiny crystals.

He heard rustling in the brushes around them, caught glimpses of shadows in the corners of his vision, felt the wind of something rushing past. A bear wouldn’t be that quick, but a mountain lion wouldn’t be so large.

“You know.”

David didn’t respond.

Chester hadn’t been the wisest with his inheritance, given that it turned out much larger than he anticipated since his parents cut David out of most of it. He’d planned to drink most of it away until enough time passed that he didn’t feel the pain of his losses anymore. But then he’d found himself in a private investigator’s office, showing the text message from Meredith and pictures of his brother. “If there’s anything that sheds doubt on Davie,” he’d pleaded, “you’ve got to let me know before I spend all my parents’ money. I told them my suspicions, showed them the message. It was enough for them to disinherit him.”

The P.I. had nodded. “It’s compelling, but it’ll cost you.”

Charlie had reached his hand out to shake. “Anything. Just to know the truth.”

“Murderer.”

Rain doused what remained of the embers in the fire pit. David set the flashlight on the chair, letting the beam roll away, disinterested. Light cracked the sky and illuminated his darker side as he turned to face his weak, bleeding brother. Chester put an arm around his chest and groaned. His head drooped like the words had exhausted him.

Thunder grumbled in response to the lightning. The shadow moved in the side of David’s vision.

The shadow clamped down on the pop-up blind like massive jaws. It folded into the dirt.

Lightning flashed again. In the moment of stillness between lightning and thunder, the shadow drug its captured prey into the woods.

Silence lingered until thunder cascaded into the clearing, but to David it sounded far away. He shut off the flashlight and let the rain snuff out the last of the fire. In the darkness, a tiny, blue light in the dirt caught his eye.

David bent over to investigate and found his brother’s phone face-down in the dirt. Grains of sand stuck to his fingers as he lifted it. Water ran down the front of the screen. No signal, so no phone calls, but it ran a recorder. Judging by the timer on-screen, it had been running since before Chester even mentioned Meredith. Since this fight began. It continued running after it had ended.

He threw the phone with all of his might, and it splashed into the pond where it began to sink into the murky blackness. The light of the screen flickered then died.

The cell phone and its recording joined the tools that had loosened the brake pedal on Meredith’s car. Then the spent shell casing floated down, sinking into the muck of pond scum and dirt that gathered and grew over the shrine of shame.

Lightning illuminated the outline of the sole devotee on the shore, staring until the shadow returned. It languidly slithered through the rippling water, then dove down and into its lair of cold darkness.

The storm passed and the clouds gave way to dawn’s light. Ducks came to rest on the shore of the pond. David cocked his gun and took aim.