A Wide, Canvas Tent

By Emily Hall

/ Flash /      

The boys start in opposite ends of the woods behind their father’s house. Maybe they start by hiding, crouching down behind the metal scrap pile or the half-cracked oak. Or maybe they start by running, dodging arms of briar and the spring that feeds into the black mud. How they play the game doesn’t really matter, so long as they follow two rules. They have to chase each other at the same time, and the game is over when one of them finds the other. The winner screams War! and the loser gives up.  

The boys’ father hates it when they play this game. The brothers come back with torn clothes and wispy scrapes from the thorns. But the boys like it because one will win, and one will lose. Their odds will always be 50/50. 

They like it the same way they like dividing up their chores. They’ve mapped out the house’s square footage, and every Saturday each brother vacuums and dusts exactly the same amount. They like it the same way they halve a pair of snack cakes, breaking them cleanly, rearranging the brittle frosting until both are just as sweet. 

But mostly the brothers like this game because they know what it’s like to feel unbalanced.

At night, their father’s temper flares up. The older brother tries to take the worst of it by making himself the focus of their father’s ire. It works, and when the father gives his oldest son the belt, the boy gets through it by imagining his freckled skin is a wide, canvas tent keeping his little brother from the worst of the sun.  

But the older boy doesn’t realize he keeps his brother too safe. The younger one never understands why his brother always messes with their father. He prefers to slink away when he hears their father’s voice rise. And later, when the house calms down, and his older brother comes back to their room with a tear-struck face, the younger brother never wants to hear him speak. Instead, he turns his face to the window and warns his brother in a hard voice, Don’t you dare try to put me in the fucking middle. 

Things only change when the older brother’s body finally takes too much. The father busts his boy’s shoulder, and even after the doctor sets it, the older brother’s arm never quite hangs right. He and his brother still divide their chores—they alternate picking up groceries, and each takes the dog on a daily walk.  Sometimes, they even play War. But when the older brother gets the chance to go to college, he decides to leave the Midwest for the East Coast. 

He doesn’t come back, even for the holidays, so the younger brother realizes he’ll eventually be left to care for their father alone. You’re so goddamn selfish, he cries every week into the phone, while his older brother leans against his kitchen wall and listens wearily. 

And as the older brother cradles the phone in his hand, absorbing his brother’s complaints, he thinks back to all those hours they spent chasing each other behind the house. How his heart punched his chest when his foot once twisted down into the mud. How his little brother crowed when he saw him trapped, screaming WAR! with his face split in a grin. How wrong the two of them had been, thinking they’d found something like fairness so deep in those woods.