Brothers

Brothers

written by: Darryl B

 

I checked the GPS once more: You have arrived, with the little checkered flag. I looked all around us, then at Mika.

“Are you sure this is the place?” She sounded doubtful. “It’s not what I expected.”

Me, either. It was much more run-down. Almost falling down.

We’d seen nothing for 40 miles except a house with a tree growing through the roof and Talonville, a ghost town since the 1980s when its factory closed.

I looked at the image on my phone, then at the crumbling mansion.

“Yeah,” I said. “This has to be the place.”

***

The news that my dad was dying didn’t really surprise me. The years had not been kind to him. Smoking two packs a day and living half your life in the State Penitentiary will do that to you. But still, 54 is pretty young. I read his letter again, written on yellow-lined prison stationery and smelling faintly of cigarette smoke.

Mika…my wife…came up behind me in the overstuffed easy chair and put a hand on my shoulder. “How’s he doing?” she asked.

I put my hand on her hand and looked up at her. She bent down and kissed me; she smelled like Ivory Soap. She was beautiful.

“Not good,” I said. “They’ve done more tests. They say he’s got maybe six months.”

“Oh, Jack, no…” she said sadly. I shrugged, and she looked at me. “I’m so sorry. Any chance of letting him out early?”

“Probably not. He’s barely served half his sentence and has not exactly been a model prisoner.”

The stove timer beeped, and she turned. “Go wash up,” she said. “I’ll pour you a glass of wine, and we can talk at dinner.”

***

As I emptied my pockets at the visitor intake center the next day at North Carolina’s Central Prison, I thought about the enigma who was my father, Kyle Earl Whitney. Three names used like that automatically brands you as a killer.

I barely knew him. When I was seven, he was convicted of killing his brother—my Uncle Ben—by bashing his head in with a fire extinguisher. His mother never once visited or wrote to my dad after the trial.

I walked around a guy in an orange jumpsuit using a floor buffer. He looked happy and nodded his head at me. Hey. I guess it beats sitting in a cell all day. I walked on toward the visitation area, feeling a little embarrassed at stepping on the guy’s gleaming floors.

I guess it was guilt by association with my grandmother—Jack, the bad seed—because apart from an annual birthday card with a check for $25 and a Christmas card with the same amount, I never saw or heard from her. I was grateful that she remembered, but as the years went by and the checks stayed at $25, I was disappointed. She was very wealthy, and Mom worked 50 hours a week at a bank. But when your dad bashes in your uncle’s head, guess that’s how it is.

A guard behind thick glass looked me up and down, then buzzed the door. I entered a room that stunk of cigarette smoke. People in street clothes sat across guys in orange jump suits, talking in low tones. Big signs were all over: NO PERSONAL CONTACT. ALL VISITS VIDEOTAPED.

A huge guard stood watching everything, and a TV up near the ceiling was showing HGTV. I wondered how inmates got the idea of doing construction when they got out, then going back to rob the rich owners later.

I looked around for my dad; he was sitting in the far corner, under the TV. I laid four boxes of unfiltered Pall Malls on the table before sitting down across from him.

“Thanks,” he said. He looked around furtively, then slid the smokes into his jumpsuit with astonishing swiftness. Geez, the whole prison subculture. What a shitty world.

I didn’t know where to begin. “So,” I finally said. “I got your letter.”

He looked at his yellow nicotine-stained fingers, then at me. “Yeah,” he said. “Ain’t that a bitch.”

“Nothing they can do?”

“Nothing they’re willing to do. It’s expensive.”

He knew Mika and I were in no position to help. I had been teaching high school biology since I graduated from NC State ten years ago. Mika was a bookkeeper, and we were saving for our first house. We were also trying to start a family.

“So your letter said six months. How sure are they of that? I mean, did they—“

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t get your hopes up, Jackie. I’ve screwed up enough people’s lives already without making you think there’s a chance I’ll ever get out of here for a few cold ones with you. I’m gonna die in here, son, and they’re gonna plant me in a plywood box.” His voice became hard, bitter. I waited.

“Do I wish I could do that day over? Do you not think I’ve thought every damn day about your uncle’s head, the blood, his brains?” He put his face in his hands. “Every night after lights out, I see it like it’s yesterday.”

He looked up at me. To my astonishment, there were tears, a haunted look. “Oh my God, Jackie,” he said, his eyes brimming. “Oh my God.”

I reached over to take his hand. “Dad—“

“Sir!” The huge guard was looking at me. “No personal contact.” I pulled back, and he resumed his monitoring.

“Dad,” I said. “You’ve never wanted to talk about it. Maybe now’s the time. I was only seven.”

He looked at me, and I pressed.

“Dad…what happened?”

Kyle Earl Whitney took a deep breath and began.

***

Dennis Whitney and Meg North met at a Spring mixer at NC State in May 1959. He was pursuing his Master’s in engineering, and she was a Junior English major.

They married in 1962, and he joined a growing engineering and design company. He did well, and the young Whitneys bought a modest house in a Raleigh suburb the following year.

Promotions and raises came, and in 1969, they welcomed their first son, Benjamin Taylor. Two years later, Kyle Earl appeared.

After 15 years, Dennis was a Senior Vice President and doing very well. He decided he wanted to give his sons the kind of childhood he had enjoyed, out in the country.

They found a rambling antebellum house outside Talonville, and in 1979, Dennis carried Meg over the threshold as Ben and Kyle jumped with excitement.

As the years passed, differences between the brothers emerged. Ben was quiet and intelligent; Kyle often felt he was in his brother’s shadow and made up for it with boisterous, disrespectful behavior.

The gaps widened. Ben got excellent grades; Kyle often served detention and got Cs and Ds. Ben was attentive in church, while Kyle played the clown, much to his parents’ embarrassment.

Dennis was concerned by Kyle’s growing hostility and jealousy of his brother. He took the boys camping, deep-sea fishing off the Outer Banks, hiking on the Appalachian Trail. He stressed the importance of family and the special bond between brothers.

Despite his efforts, by the time Ben went off to NC State in the fall of 1987, the boys barely spoke.

When Ben graduated with honors in 1991, Dennis and Meg were proud. Kyle gritted his teeth as it was announced Ben would be joining his father’s firm. Kyle struggled in Community College.

Both boys moved out in 1993: Ben to a modest starter home; Kyle to a seedy apartment just off campus from State. Their paths further diverged as Ben’s career thrived and he got engaged, while Kyle worked menial jobs and was arrested for shoplifting.

On a May afternoon in 1998, while at work, Dennis was in a meeting when he paused. He clutched his chest, sweating, pale. He never made it to Big Wake Hospital.

After the funeral, Meg moved out of the house into a condo and left most of the household furnishings in place. She put the house on the market, but there was zero interest now that Talonville was gone. The house sat empty with sheets over everything.

Finally, after the boys had not spoken in over a year, Meg asked them to meet with her and the family attorney. The attorney explained that the majority of the estate was in a trust for the two boys, which would be divided equally upon Meg’s death.

However, the attorney also said their father wanted him to convey that there was something else on the grounds, something of inestimable value that could be theirs, now…but the boys would need to work together to find it, and share it. It was Dennis’s last attempt from beyond the grave to unite his two sons.

The brothers spent every weekend during the next two months removing sheets, opening drawers, and searching high and low for this mysterious thing of inestimable value. As the weeks went by, they reacted predictably. Kyle grew increasingly angry, impatient, skeptical, while Ben became more thoughtful and resolute.

Things came to a head on a sweltering August afternoon. The house had been completely searched, but no gold bullion, no Krugerrands, no stock certificates, no jewelry. An argument started. Like a spark in a tinder-dry forest, it quickly grew to a massive conflagration with the two brothers shouting, cursing, punching, 30 years of seething sibling rivalry loosed at once. Ben hurled a final insult as he walked toward the door. Kyle, in a murderous rage, grabbed a fire extinguisher and hit Ben on the side of his head. Ben fell, and Kyle straddled him, hitting his brother over and over until he fell forward, crying, gasping, screaming.

***

I sat back, my head spinning. Dad lit up one of his Pall Malls and blew a cloud of smoke at the ceiling.

“So that’s it,” he said. “Now you know everything.”

“So you never found it,” I said, more to myself than him.

He spread his arms. “Hey, Jackie,” he said. “Look around you. What do you think?” The tip of his Pall Mall turned orange as he inhaled.

“But look,” he continued. “I spoke to the lawyers. There’s nothing in the will that says my heirs couldn’t get it.”

“You mean…” I said.

“That’s right, boyo. You find it… There’s that house for you and Mika. And maybe a college fund for any kids.”

***

Mika and I looked at the sad old place; once so full of promise, it now sat derelict, unloved, unwanted. There was no one around except us and the cicadas, who buzzed as though in greeting. It was a little unnerving.

As we picked our way through the weedy yard to the front porch, I tried to picture it in its prime with Dad and Uncle Ben running around, the game on the radio, Grandpa nursing a beer, maybe, and a horse or two in the pasture.

I stepped over the threshold where Dennis had carried Meg almost a half-century before, and we entered the house.

Some say houses retain the energies of those who lived there, be it positive or negative. I got nothing but the latter. I looked at Mika; her eyes were wide. The hair on my arms stood up. The temperature had dropped ten degrees, and we could no longer hear the cicadas even though the door was open.

We were in the abandoned great room. The floorboards were warped and rotted, and there was broken glass everywhere. A huge fireplace was to the right, and in front of it, an equally imposing cracked mirror. Windows at the back let in light, and all around were creepy old photos of long-dead relatives.

“Where do we start?” I whispered.

“No idea.” She also whispered. “I don’t even know what we’re looking for.”

We started exploring, the crunch of glass under our feet sounding uncomfortably loud. We came to a dark maroon spot on the living room carpet, about three feet across. I pointed.

“Do you suppose that’s where Uncle—“

Mika held her finger to her lips. Don’t say it.

***

We had planned to camp out in the house and brought our camping gear. But after a day in the mildewed, ruined mansion, looking all over, both of us dropped that idea. We found a mom-and-pop motel 15 miles away.

Day after day, we looked through the wreckage without success. Our hopes waned.

One day, Mika found the family bible that was on top of the hall closet. She dusted it off and flipped through the pages. A piece of paper fell out.

She picked it up, and her eyes darted back and forth. They widened.

“Oh my God, Jack… listen to this,” she said.

“December 2, 1997

My Dear Sons,

If you are reading this, it’s because I am no longer with you.

I’ve watched you both grow up, and I’ve seen your struggles. I know you have your differences, but one day, you’ll be all that’s left of our family.

I hope this scavenger hunt has brought you closer, rekindled some of the happier times we shared.

I hope you both can make your peace with each other and visit your mother for many more years in our family home.

I hope you understand that family…more, much more, than material wealth…is that which is of inestimable value.

‘A brother’s love, unspoken but felt,
In silence, a bond that cannot melt.
Through trials and tribulations, we stand,
Hand in hand, a united band.’ – Robert Frost

Your loving father,

Dennis”

She and I stared at each other silently in the gathering gloom of the great room.

***

My last visit with dad was three months later.

I told him Mika, and I had searched from the attic to the basement, but found no treasure. I didn’t mention the letter. He looked at me sadly.

His funeral was on a rainy, cold afternoon in November.

There was no one there but Mika and I. And as the rain pattered on our umbrellas and I dimly heard dust to dust, I could almost hear the old house weeping.