Three Weeks With My Brother

"No problem." He paused. "You do know you were nuts when it came to the Vikings, don't you?"

"I know. I tended to go overboard in a lot of things."

"You still do."

"We all have our problems. Even you."

"That's untrue. I'm perfectly happy. Haven't you noticed? It was I who--through the sheer force of my buoyant personality--lifted you from the depths of despair only a couple of days ago."

I rolled my eyes. "That's just because we're on the trip. You have to remember--doing something like this has always been more your style than mine. You grew up loving adventure. You used to search it out. I just tagged along, trying to keep you from getting into too much trouble."

He grinned. "I did get into trouble a lot, didn't I?"

"Quite a bit, actually. Especially when it came to weapons."

A look of fond reminiscence crossed his face. "You know, I just don't understand why that happened. I wasn't a bad kid. I was just trying to have a good time."

I smiled, thinking, good times indeed.

My parents, being the wise and wonderful folks they were, finally realized Micah and I weren't exactly responsible when it came to BB guns, despite the good times we had had with them. No matter how much we begged, they refused to buy us new ones. Nor would they consider giving us rifles, when we offered that by way of compromise. Instead, they bought us bows and arrows.

We had fun with those bows. Our aim wasn't too good, but what we lacked in accuracy, we made up for with velocity. We could send those arrows humming, practically burying them into trees. My brother took to it a bit more easily than I did, and eventually got to the point where he could actually hit a fairly large target from thirty feet away at least 5 percent of the time, as opposed to my 3 percent of the time.

"Hey, let's put an apple on your head and I'll try to shoot it off," he finally suggested.

"I have a better idea," I said, "let's put the apple on your head."

"Mmm. Maybe it's not such a good idea."

One day, when we were out with our bows and arrows in the woods, one of the arrows went astray, heading toward a group of workers that were framing a house. (In the years since we'd moved there, construction on new homes had begun in earnest.) Now, the arrow hadn't landed too close to the workers, but it wasn't too far away either, and one of the carpenters got pretty mad at us, even when we tried to explain that it was an accident. "Don't even think about shooting arrows around here," he growled, and even worse, he refused to give us the arrow back, no matter how much we pleaded. Since we had only three arrows to begin with, losing one was a big deal.

My brother and I skulked off, heading back up the hill toward our street again, seething. By the time we reached the top of the hill, my brother decided that he wasn't about to follow some stranger's orders, especially since he'd kept the arrow.

As he put it: "He can't tell me what to do."

My brother loaded an arrow and tightened the bow, then leaned back with the intention of shooting the arrow straight up into the sky in a statement of defiance, a sort of "take that!" He launched the arrow and it zoomed skyward, higher and higher, until it was just a speck in the sky.

Of course, he hadn't taken note of the light breeze that afternoon. Nor did my brother actually shoot straight up, though--as God is my witness--that was his intention. Instead, the arrow had just enough angle to sort of veer in the direction of the house (and workers) at the bottom of the hill, and the wind took over from there. I watched the arrow's changing trajectory, feeling my chest begin to constrict as I realized where it was heading.

"Micah--is that arrow heading where I think it is?"

"Oh, no . . . no . . . NO . . . NOOO . . . NOOOOOO!!!!!!"

My brother, turning white like me, was hopping up and down in ardent denial, as if hoping to change the obvious. We watched the arrow as it began arcing downward, toward the worker who'd confiscated the previous arrow. Had Micah aimed, had he purposely been trying, there wasn't a chance he'd ever launch an arrow two hundred yards with such accuracy.

"NOOOOO . . . NOOOOOO!!!!!" Micah screamed, continuing to hop up and down.

I watched the arrow descending toward doom itself, surer with every passing second that we were actually going to kill the guy. Never had I been so terrified. Time seemed to slow down; everything moved with dreadful determination. I knew we'd end up in Juvenile Hall; maybe even prison.

And then it was over.

The arrow hit the ground, less than a foot from where the man was working with a shovel, landing in a poof of dust. He jumped to the side in shock and horror.

"Oh, thank God," Micah said with a long sigh. He smiled.

"You got that right," I agreed. "That was close."

Of course, at that age--and in that particular moment--we weren't able to fathom how the worker might view this particular incident. Unlike us, he wasn't thankful at all. One minute, he's doing his job, and the next minute, he's nearly impaled by an arrow, launched by two kids at the top of the hill. No, he wasn't thankful, not even a little bit. He was ENRAGED! Even from two hundred yards, we saw him raise his eyes toward us, toss his shovel aside, and start racing for his truck.

"You think we oughta run?" I asked, turning to Micah.

But Micah was already gone, racing back toward our street, his legs moving as fast as I'd ever seen them.

I ran after him; thirty seconds later, as I was chugging across neighbors' lawns, I glanced over my shoulder and saw the truck come to a screeching halt at the edge of the woods, saw the man jump from the truck and start chasing us the rest of the way on foot.

Oh, he caught us all right, and he was even madder up close than he was far away. When my dad learned what happened, he was mad, too, and we were grounded for a couple of weeks. Even worse, later that afternoon, the sheriff came and confiscated our bows and arrows.

With the exception of the one trip to the Grand Canyon, our vacations would be spent with relatives in San Diego.

For whatever reason, the majority of both my mother's and father's family had moved there, and consequently, we were able to visit them and enjoy the beach without having to spend much money. A good thing, I might add, for a family that didn't have any to spare.

We would always drive the ten hours it took to get there, the three of us crammed into the back of the Volkswagen van, along with Brandy (our Doberman) and assorted luggage. Though we would stop for gas twice in those ten hours, we never bought food or drinks; instead, our meals consisted of ham sandwiches, Fritos, and pink lemonade that my mom had brought from home.

Those were grand times. Our parents never required us to wear seat belts (are you really surprised by that revelation?), and we'd read, play games, or wrestle in the back as we zipped down Highway 5, heading for grandma Sparks's house. I don't mean the kind of wrestling where we'd poke each other and whine; I mean real wrestling complete with headlocks, punches, twisted arms and legs, and punctuated with screams and tears. Usually, my parents would ignore it for a while, but sometimes it got to the point that dad would finally look over his shoulder and scream at us to "Stop shaking the G-D-N van!" thereby initiating the inevitable DEFCON countdown, which we never seemed able to avoid. And, of course, we'd stare at our father as if he had cornstalks growing out of his ears, wondering what on earth could have possibly upset him.

"It was your fault," Micah would hiss. "You shouldn't have cried."

"But you were hurting me," I'd say.

"You need to learn to be tougher."

"You were twisting my ear! I thought you were ripping it off!"

"You're exaggerating."

"You're an idiot."

His eyes narrowed. "What'd you call me?"

"He called you an idiot," Dana would helpfully add.

Micah would glower. "I'll show you who the idiot is . . ."

At which point, the wrestling would begin again. I often tell people that we never actually drove to San Diego; for the most part, the van sort of hopped there.

We were

also "country comes to town" when it came to visiting with our cousins. Their families tended to be better off financially than we were, and as soon as we arrived we'd go blasting through the door toward the cousins' bedroom. Beyond the door, we knew, was Nirvana itself and we'd simply stare for a moment in wonder, little tears welling in the corners of our eyes. They had more toys than we'd ever seen, and we quickly made good use of them.

"Hey what's this?" we'd ask, grabbing something. Soon we'd be wiggling pieces, trying to figure it out.

"It's the new, battery-operated construction crane," my cousin would proudly exclaim. "It can assemble entire houses from scratch--"

Snap.

The cousin would freeze in horror at the sight of the toy in two pieces.

"What happened?" we'd ask.

"You . . . you . . . broke it," he'd whimper.

"Oh, sorry about that. Hey . . . what's this one do?"

"It's the new electronically enhanced remote control car, complete with--"

Snap.

"Oh, sorry," we'd say again. "Hey, what's this . . ."

Once the toys were broken (we always wondered how so many accidents could happen in such a short time), we'd try to play with our cousins. Not that they viewed it as playing. We did nothing with them that we didn't do back home--to us, it was regular fun--but to them, it bordered on merciless torture. None of them, it seemed, had lived a childhood like ours, i.e., one without real rules. We thought it great fun, for instance, rolling the little ones up in area rugs until they were pinned and suffocated, unable to move. Then my brother and I would take turns launching ourselves from the couch onto the soft bulge where their bodies were and screaming, "Bingo!" whenever we really crunched them. Or, we might dunk them in the pool--really dunk them, for a long, long time--until they nearly passed out. Sometimes, we'd try to teach our cousins how to punch hard, demonstrating on their little arms.

"No, not like that. Cock your arm waaay back, and really use the knuckle. Like this . . ."

POW!

If there was one thing wrong with visiting my cousins--and it pains me to admit it, since they're family--it's that they were whiners. They cried all the time when we were around. It's a wonder how their parents ever dealt with it.

Anyway, the visit would eventually come to an end and it would be time to leave. We'd head to the van, and we'd turn around to see our cousins ghost-white and trembling as they waved good-bye to us, their little arms covered in bruises.