Short Story: The Brothers

I was working one time with a man from Lyndon, Vermont.  He was an older guy, with a big belly and a slow, steady voice.  He struck me as someone who'd worked outside a lot of his life and was not so sad to be in an office for a while.  He was easy to talk to.  He met my eye and did not compete in conversation; he just talked with me and listened as much as he said.  Rare trait, I believe.


Lyndon is a town in Northeastern Vermont -- the Northeast Kingdom, it's called.  It is a small town in an out of the way place.  I'd never met anyone from Lyndon, although I like the town very much. We were talking about the town and I told him how much I liked it.  



I told him I had fond memories of Lyndon because I ski jumped and ski raced in high school.  Trips to Lyndon were an experience.  It was far; had a steep and difficult race hill; was cold; and mostly because it had an old wooden trellis jump, a rickety, leaning, frightening WWII era monster.  It was a right of passage to jump on that old beast.  He knew the jump well and told me about about an incident he’d experienced as a young kid, a long time before I ever saw the jump.  He'd remembered it his whole life.  


I asked him if I could take his experience and turn it into a short story.  He said yes.  Here it is.  

* * * * *

            The brothers climbed the hill just after breakfast.  It was warm, not yet hot, the air dry.  It was just July, so the morning light was strong, even though it was still early.  A slight breeze blew, pushing the warm air.  The ground was wet from the thunderstorms of the day and night before, and the forest, its trees now carrying full leaves, was a deep green.  The leaves rustled a song to the brothers as they walked up the hill.

            The two, skirting the edge of the forest, stuck to the dirt track; a service road of sorts to the old ski jump, which sat at the top of the hill behind the farm.  The ski jump, a thirty-five meter Nordic jump, was built on the top of the small hill.  Built by the CCC a long time ago, long before the brothers were born, although the high school kids still used it, the jump was not very safe.  The brothers walked single file, the younger lagging, but keeping up as best he could.  The deer flies were annoying but mostly did not bite.  Just annoyed.

            The boys were not going up the hill to climb on the jump.  The boys were climbing the hill because earlier, when they were sitting on the porch after breakfast, rocking the porch swing too hard, they had seen something interesting off in the distance on the side of the hill. 

            The brothers had seen three older boys dragging and pushing what looked like a massive black donut up the hill.  Later, when the brothers reached the top of the hill, they could see it was an old grader tire. 

            The two brothers did not know these older boys well, and when they caught up to the team of tire-pushers, the brothers stood to the side and watched, hands thrust into pockets.  The oldest of the three tire-draggers was named Ronnie.  When Ronnie and his team got the tire to the base of the jump the two boys with Ronnie collapsed, panting.  Ronnie had a good-sized coil of rope slung over his shoulder and kicked his friends to get them up.  He struggled to tie one end of the rope around the tire and climbed the jump and tossed the other end of the rope over a big beam, back to the ground.  He scrambled down and pressed the brothers into service to help pull on the rope and get the tire to the top of the jump.  Ronnie worked the tire, pushing it and tugging it and throwing his whole body into guiding it as the other four boys hauled on the rope.  This effort took some time and finagling, but after a bit the gigantic grader tire sat secured at the top of the ski jump.  With the rope work done, Ronnie plopped himself down at the top of the jump and wiped the sweat from his forehead.  He smiled and let out a whoop. 

            “Come on,” Ronnie said and the boys all scrambled up the trellis, where Ronnie untied the tire and directed his mates to steady the mammoth thing on its edge.  Ronnie began to climb into the center of the tire.  The brothers looked at each other.

            Now, the brothers were both younger than Ronnie.  The older of the two brothers had just turned eleven that past March and the younger brother was eight and a half.  The younger brother didn’t know what to think or do but didn’t like the idea of what Ronnie was up to.  He would have left it at that, though, and watched to see the events unfold.  The older brother was not sure what to think either but he couldn't just leave it.  His face contorted.  He furrowed his brow, thinking.

            “ Um, Ronnie, what are you going to do?” he asked.

            “I’m going to ride this tire down the jump and fly.”

            The jump, built up from the top of the hill, was a good three stories tall.  The outrun from the jump was simply the steep side of the slope.  The outrun flattened into a small meadow at the base of the hill, bordered on the far side by a stream and a narrow wooden bridge.  On cold winter days, when high-school boys jumped this jump, they had to work hard on the outrun to avoid the river and, if they could not stop themselves in time, to make sure they hit the small bridge.  The jumping at this jump – the moment in time when boys flew for one brief second – was not the hard part; the outrun was the hard part.

            “Ronnie, it’s none of my business, but you can’t ride this tire over that jump,” the older brother said calmly.

            Ronnie laughed.  “What do you know,” he said.  He smirked at the eleven-year-old telling him what to do.

            The little brother watched the big brother carefully.

            “I’ll tell you what,” the older brother said.  “Let’s send the tire without you in it.  If it turns out O.K., we’ll haul it back up.  You won't have to do any work.”  The little brother nodded his head.  The other boys watched; shocked, fascinated.  Neither said boo.  After an awkward, drawn moment of silence, Ronnie agreed and the five boys steadied the tire and sent it down the ramp to the jump below.

 

            The large tire wobbled at first as the boys sent it on its way.  It straightened out as it gathered speed and spun off the end of the jump strong and true and soared through the air, moving very fast just when it became airborne.  As it flew it lost speed and then it wobbled again and staggered a bit as it lofted itself through the sky and then stalled.  The tire cleared the entire outrun of the jump in the air and then came almost straight down, crashing hard to the flat field below.  It bounded back high into the air, and made a second landing onto the small wooden bridge, smashing the bridge to kindling, letting off a roar and a loud bang, the sound of which reached the boys a second after they saw the crash.  The tire bounded off again, not quite so high or so fast, and disappeared into the thick brush opposite the field across the stream. 

            Ronnie’s eyes opened wide.  He did not say a thing.  There was a silence on the top of the jump.  The boys heard the wind-song of the trees and some birds.  The breeze blew steady across the hill.  After a bit the two brothers said “‘bye,” and left, climbing down the old wooden trellis and beginning the walk back toward home.  Neither looked back, feeling uncomfortable and a bit bad, but good too.  They couldn't say why.

            After walking a bit, the younger brother, although it had been a while since he’d last done it, reached out and took his big brother’s hand.  The older brother let the younger hold his hand as they walked, in silence, home.

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2010 David Rocchio