Blood Brothers Read online

  For James and Thomas,

  who will always have each other

  Table of Contents

  Jakub

  Lincoln

  Jakub

  Lincoln

  Jakub

  Lincoln

  Jakub

  Lincoln

  Jakub

  Lincoln

  Jakub

  Lincoln

  Jakub

  Lincoln

  Jakub

  Lincoln

  Jakub

  Lincoln

  Jakub

  Lincoln

  Jakub

  Lincoln

  Jakub

  Lincoln

  Jakub

  Lincoln

  Jakub

  Lincoln

  Jakub

  Lincoln

  Jakub

  Lincoln

  Jakub

  Lincoln

  Jakub

  Lincoln

  Jakub

  Lincoln

  Jakub

  Lincoln

  Jakub

  Lincoln

  Jakub

  Acknowledgements

  Jakub

  The sky gets pink close to dawn. Night bleeds away as the sun breathes life into day.

  My finger throbs. The tip of it numb and sticky with paint. The street lamps flicker off as I stand back to survey my night’s work.

  Huge swoops of colour light up the background, like my tag has landed in a puddle of rainbow slime. “Morf,” my other self, glows in bubble letters meant to look like liquid metal. All graff writers have a handle. Mine means something. To change, to morph. To become something else: a metamorphosis.

  With a satisfied sigh, I turn my back on the side of the building and stuff spray cans, my bandana, and black book into my backpack. Hidden in shadows, I scale down the fire escape and drop to the alley, the cans in my pack rattling. In a few hours, people walking to the bus will look up and see my name flash before them. It wasn’t there yesterday. They’d never even noticed that building before. But, now, my name slaps them in the face. They can’t ignore me. My name looms above, stomping on them.

  Two guys stumble out of a house party. I watch as they try to open the latch on the chain-link gate. Too many fumbling fingers. They’ll be trapped in the yard till their vision clears, or they pass out.

  The rooming house rises up between two empty lots. The city tore down one house a few years ago and the other burned to the ground. Arson, the cops said. I smelled the smoke in my dream. Dad yelled at me to wake up as he tried to scoop me up, like he still had the strength to carry me. We made it out and watched from across the street, huddled in a blanket as flames engulfed the building. Two people died in the fire and I had nightmares for weeks.

  There’s two cop cars, their lights flashing, in front of the rooming house. The blue and red orb spins, reflecting off the windows. Shrugging off my backpack, I ditch it in the empty lot next door. I know they aren’t there for me, but my heart pounds anyway. I swear and kick at a stone. If the sirens wake up my dad, he’ll see I’m not asleep on the couch where I’m supposed to be.

  Without my backpack, I feel naked, exposed. It’s like battle armour. I eye the cops; a couple of them mill around the front yard, blocking my entrance. No police tape is up yet. That’s a good sign. Means no one is dead. One of them looks at me, doesn’t bother to question why I’m returning home at this time of the night. I was ready with an excuse if he had: I fell asleep at my best friend Lincoln’s house.

  I put my head down and brush past them, taking the steps in two strides. Two more cops stand outside 1D. The McLarens. Mr. and Mrs. Domestic Abuse. Should have guessed.

  I cried angry tears the first night we moved to this place. When the landlady, Laureen, opened the door to the apartment, Dad and I froze in the hallway; neither one of us wanted to walk inside. It stank. Like piss and body odour. Laureen had promised to have it cleaned before we moved in. But she couldn’t do anything about the stains on the floor or the foam exploding from the couch cushions. Dad explained why we were moving from our two-bedroom apartment to the rooming house. There was no choice. They raised the rent and he couldn’t afford it anymore, not even with a housing subsidy. If we wanted a roof over our heads, this was it.

  Laureen gave Dad two keys, held together by a red twist tie. He gulped and stuffed them in his pocket like he didn’t want to admit they belonged to him. I knew what Dad was thinking, what he was always thinking. This wasn’t the life he moved here for. We’d be better off in Poland than living in this shithole. But, he made his choice twenty years ago, promising my mom a life in Canada. They’d escaped under a barbed wire fence and hid in the trunk of a car, then relied on the kindness of strangers. And for what? So my mom could die after giving birth to me and Dad could end up with a mangled leg from his job at the train yard.

  He could feel sorry for himself, but he doesn’t. Polish pride, he calls it. There are some things that are non-negotiable: church every Sunday, good grades, and good food. No matter how tight things are, Dad always has a meal ready for me. I come home from school to find him limping between the sink and stove, boiling potatoes or stirring soup. My brain needs food, he says. We won’t have empty stomachs. That was one thing we’ll never have, empty stomachs. He had enough of that in Poland. A boy can’t grow or succeed in school with hunger pains to distract him.

  He probably should have been a chef. He hums to himself, old Polish folk tunes, when he cooks, his fingers turning crimson with beet juice. Or love songs, if he’s feeling nostalgic, glancing up at the one photo we have of my mom. Grainy and out of focus, she’s standing in front of the church, the golden spire rising from a white dome, a mosaic of the holy family glinting in the sun. Scrawny legs, made scrawnier by the fullness of her skirt, and bushy curls obscuring most of her face.

  Father Dominic stopped by the apartment soon after we moved in. Taking a look around, he skimmed over the books and his eyes came to rest on the crucifix perched above the couch. He nodded at it, like he was greeting a friend. Father Dominic had baptized me and stood over my mother in the hospital as she took her last breath. All in the same week. It was touch and go with me in those early days. No one knew if I’d make it or not. I don’t ask a lot of questions about what happened. Dad doesn’t like to talk about it. Says I’m a blessing from God, no matter what. But then he gets teary and quiet.

  The door clicks shut behind me. I half expect Dad to be sitting up waiting for me. But he’s a heavy sleeper. Sirens in the night are so common, we’ve both learned to sleep through them. His snores fill the apartment, a low rumbly wheeze.

  I pull back the sheet and blanket on the couch, leaving my jacket on the armrest. Closing my eyes, I picture the newly marked building. Like a baptism, I christened it mine.

  I’ll walk past it in the morning, to see how the colours look in daylight. I drift off to sleep content. I accomplished something this night. No one could accuse me of not leaving my mark on the world. It was there, for all to see.

  Lincoln

  Henry has his feet up on the table in front of the TV like he never left, like he hasn’t been in prison for the last eighteen months.

  The door, a flimsy metal screen one, rattles shut behind me. I stare at him for a few minutes, trying to figure out if I’m supposed to be pissed, or happy to see him.

  He doesn’t say nothing either. His thick lips turn down in a frown. With eyes hooded like he’s half-asleep, it’s hard to tell what my brother’s thinking.

  I take a few more steps into the living room. “Hey,” I start.

  He stands up and growls. Prison made him bigger, more muscly. His shoulders start under his ea
rs, rolling with bulges. New ink, a dagger dripping with red blood, is engraved in his neck. The gang tattoo for Red Bloodz. I take a step back, but in a second, he has his arm around my neck, squeezing it so hard I can’t breathe.

  I slap at it, but his forearm is like an iron bar. I’m a scrawny weakling compared to him. When I stamp my foot hard on his toe, he finally lets me go with a laugh. “Good to see you, bro.” He takes my face in his hands and I scowl, like, What the hell are you doing? but he ignores it and pats the back of my head, jamming it into his chest. “God, it’s good to be back.”

  He fills up the room. Takes it over with his size and gravelly voice.

  “When’d you get back?” I ask, but what I mean is, When’d you get out? How long was he hanging with friends before he decided to put his feet up on our coffee table?

  He gives an exaggerated shrug and sits back down on the couch. Right in the middle and stretches his arms out on either side, like he owns it. “Couple days ago. Fill me in, what’s been going on around here?”

  I pull my cap down low over my eyes and shrug. “I dunno. Nothing. The same.”

  “Who are you hanging with?”

  “Koob.”

  “The Polish kid.” He gives a snort, like it’s not the answer he wanted. “Going to school?”

  I nod. I go because Jakub goes. I’m not smart like him, but he helps me with homework and gives me the answers on tests.

  “And?” He raises his eyebrows, like there should be more. “What? You’re an angel? You got nothing else? Shit, man. You’re dragging down the family rep.”

  Henry’s twenty-one now. At my age, he’d been in and out of juvie for car thefts, vandalism, B and E.

  I scratch my head, wishing for a second that I was a badass, just to have something to tell him. I could make something up, but Koob’s always saying what a shitty liar I am. “Me and Koob paint, you know, not just tags, but like real good stuff.”

  “Oh yeah?” He picks up the remote and flicks through some channels. “Anything still running?”

  “There’s a piece up by that old cement factory. It’s been up for a while.” The sounds of a crowd cheering at an Ultimate Fighting Championship drown me out. He doesn’t look at me.

  Through the back window, I can see my five- year-old brother, Dustin, kicking a ball against the fence. Probably driving the neighbours crazy. Mom and Dad are sitting on lawn chairs with a beer and a smoke in each hand. A coffee tin between them overflows with butts.

  Guess they’ve seen Henry’s back. Maybe they’re outside celebrating. Not.

  The last time Henry paid us a surprise visit, he got into it with Dad. They had a big fight. Cops got called. I went to Koob’s, took Dustin with me, too. When we came home, there were a bunch of holes punched in the walls and we had to get a new TV. The old one sat outside on the curb for weeks cuz the garbage trucks wouldn’t take it. Finally, someone smashed it and dumped it on the road. Then it had to get cleaned up.

  I sit down on the couch. It sags in the middle — one of the legs is busted — so without wanting to, I lean toward him.

  He puts a meaty hand on the back of my neck. “It’s good to see you, Link. I mean it.”

  And I want to believe him so bad, it makes me sick.

  “What’s there to eat around here?”

  “You want a menu?”

  He gives me a sharp look. The corner of his mouth turns down.

  “Joking,” I breathe.

  “I want some friggin’ food, is what I want.” He nods to Mom and Dad. “What have they been up to?”

  “The same.” I shrug. “Dad’s been working road crew most of the summer.” He comes home smelling like hot asphalt. His workboots stay outside. Mom doesn’t want them in the house. “Auntie Charity and her kids came down from the rez for a while.” For two weeks, I’d had to share my bed with a two-year-old who pissed it in the night. I was so glad when they left. “Mom took some classes at the alternative school.” She took it real serious at first. Made us all leave the house so she could study and told Auntie Val she couldn’t go to Fenty’s Bar on weeknights any more.

  “What happened?”

  “Dropped out. Didn’t like the teacher, or something.”

  Henry snorts like he isn’t surprised Mom didn’t stick with it. You’re the one who’s been in jail, I want to say. But don’t.

  “Yeah, well. I’m back now.” He narrows his eyes, like he’s got a plan. Like I need the help.

  I do okay without you, I want to say.

  “How old are you now?” he asks.

  “Fifteen,” I say. He snorts and I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing.

  He pulls a phone out of his pocket and checks it. “Some friends are coming around. You wanna ride with us?”

  I don’t say anything cuz I don’t know if he’s serious or not.

  “You got something else going on?” he asks, sarcastic.

  I shake my head. I look at his arms, thick with muscles I’ll never have, and the tattoo on his neck. My stomach flips and I tug the brim of my hat lower so he can’t see me blinking. It’s a nervous tick and makes me a crappy card player.

  “I got nothing going on.”

  “Fuckin’ A.” He takes a breath and looks around. “It’s good to be home.”

  I snort in agreement and lean back into the couch. The UFC fight is lopsided. One guy pummels the other one. I cringe when a roundhouse kick catches him in the jaw. Blood spatters the mat and the crowd roars. He goes for a body shot and the guy doubles over and then falls down.

  “Get up, you pussy,” Henry mutters at the TV.

  “You back for good?” I ask.

  Henry gives me a long look. “We’ll see.”

  Outside, a black car with tinted windows pulls up and honks. Henry stands up. “You coming?”

  I’m looking at the TV. The UFC guy is on the mat. Blood leaks out of his mouth and nose. He’s lying on the mat like he’s dead. The ref calls it. Angry jeers from the crowd follow me out the door. Nobody likes a loser.

  Henry holds the neck of his tank top down so I can see his other tattoo. “Brothers to the End” is inked in fancy handwriting across his chest.

  It’s right there for everyone to see, dug into his skin with needles and ink.

  “What do you think?” he asks. I don’t think anything except it must have hurt.

  “Got it inside for you and Dustin. I’m out now. I want things to be different.”

  We didn’t even know he’d gone in till some girl came by. Said she was his girlfriend, had a ring and everything. Told Mom she was going up for a visit and did we want to send him anything? Mom and Dad fought that night. Dustin crawled into bed with me and I let him. I showed him how to hold a pillow over his ears and count as high as he could till it stopped. He fell asleep before it was over. In the morning, Dad was asleep on the couch, so I knew things were okay. If Mom was really pissed, she’d have kicked him out.

  “Like, what do you mean?”

  “You’re not a kid anymore,” he says, leaning across the table. “I got plans. Made some good contacts inside. A few people owe me favours. I want you with me on this, little bro. I need someone I can trust.”

  The two guys who picked us up, Wheels and Jonny, come back to the table with trays of food. Henry opens the paper wrapper and stuffs half a burger into his mouth. His eyes roll to the back of his head like it’s the best thing he’s ever eaten. “God, I missed this shit!” We all laugh. He wasn’t like this before. Jokey. I remember his heavy footsteps and silent looks. Like everything in the world pissed him off.

  “How old are you?” Wheels asks. Again.

  I look at Henry. He rips off another bite of burger and nods for me to tell them. “Fifteen.” Henry and Wheels share a smile over a secret joke. But not Jonny. As scrawny as me, he’s got a face like a skeleton wit
h jutting cheekbones. He screws up his mouth and glares.

  Henry tosses a burger my way. “Eat,” he says. A bit of half-chewed bun lands on the table.

  Another guy, they call him Rat, joins us. I get squished in the middle. He has a red bandana tied under his hat. I’ve seen him before. He works at the garage on Mountain Avenue as a mechanic. His hands are stained with oil, dark lines rim his fingernails, and he stinks like grease and gasoline.

  “You made it,” he says, raising an eyebrow at my brother. He has a scruffy goatee, buckteeth, and those kind of lips that always look red and shiny. “Who’s the kid?’

  Henry takes a long sip of his drink. I snicker at the long, low burp he lets out. “Lincoln. My brother.”

  “What happened to your face?” Rat asks me. It isn’t like no one has ever asked before, but most of the time, I forget about the scar. Running from my temple to my chin, it covers a whole cheek. Mom always says I was lucky the water didn’t hit my eye, or I’d be blind. I think I’d be lucky if the pot of water never hit me at all.

  Now that Rat’s noticed, I feel self-conscious and wish I could duck further under my hat.

  “What does it matter?” Henry interrupts. He waits a beat for Rat to say something. The other two guys stiffen in the booth.

  Rat just sniffs and clears his throat. “We gonna go outside and talk business?”

  “Can I finish my fuckin’ burger?” Henry asks. It’s not a real question because his eyes have gone hard again. Rat shuts up.

  I tap my foot, my leg bouncing under the table.

  “You gotta take a piss, or what?” Jonny asks. He makes a face at the other guys when Henry’s not looking. He doesn’t want me here. I can feel it.

  My cheeks burn and I hold my leg still. “You sure he’s cool?” Wheels asks. His voice is sandpaper on my ears.

  Henry presses his lips tight. “Ask him yourself.”

  Wheels looks at me like I’m a joke. “Are you?”

  I nod. “Your mama thinks so.” It’s a lame joke, but their shoulders shake with laughter anyway.