Battleship

SOME YEARS AGO

“Miss.”

The two brothers are in the forest near their house, sitting opposite each other. They are both quite young, although the big brother has felt very old for a long time—because he is the older brother, and as such has many important responsibilities. The most vital of these, as far as he is concerned, is to make sure that his kid brother remembers who’s boss.

It is the younger brother’s greatest failing that he never seems to remember that.

The older brother is sitting on a log, allowing him to look down upon his brother. This is, as far as he is concerned, what should be the natural state of things, the proper order of the universe. The younger brother is seated across from him, cross-legged on the ground, getting his pants filthy from sitting in the dirt and not caring about it. It is a crisp day and they’re both wearing light hoodies: the older brother’s is white, the younger’s is red.

They both have pads of lined paper on their laps, playing a game their father taught them called “Broadsides.” They’ve used pencils to draw vertical lines intersecting with the horizontal ones and thus created grids, which they’ve then numbered. They’re using the pads to have a simulated naval battle. It’s natural that their father, a Navy man himself, would teach them how to play it, and claims to have played it when he himself was young.

It is the older brother who has just said “Miss,” and the younger brother’s eyebrows both leap up on his forehead as if they’ve come loose and are endeavoring to make a run for it.

“Whattaya mean, ‘miss,’” says the younger brother in irritation.

“It’s like a hit, but the opposite,” the older brother says.

“It can’t be a miss!”

“Well, it was. D-7…”

“No, wait, shut up.” The younger brother stares at his smaller grid where he’s keeping track of his hits. “I said G-1.”

“And I said miss.”

“It can’t be! That was the fifth hit on your aircraft carrier! Game over!”

“It wasn’t and it isn’t. D-7…”

“You’re cheating.”

The back of the older brother’s neck starts to get red. “I am not. You just can’t stand that I’m going to win a game—”

“No,” says the younger brother, getting into the elder’s face in that way that he has. “You just can’t stand that I’m going to win AGAIN. You can’t stand that I always win and that you always lose. Loser. Looooooser. Looooser loooooser looooser!” He forms an L-shape from his thumb and forefinger and puts it against his head.

“Shut up!” The older brother’s fury is rising. “G-1 wasn’t a hit. Live with it.”

“I don’t believe you. Lemme see.” He is up on his knees and he grabs for the older brother’s pad of paper.

The older brother yanks it away. “Forget it! If you look at it, the game’s over!”

“The game’s already over, loser.”

The worst thing of all is that the older brother knows that this is true. He looks at G-1, where the prow of his theoretical aircraft carrier is sitting. He looks at the smug expression on his stupid little brother.

And suddenly long-simmering resentment boils up and over, and before his younger brother can get to him, the older brother tears apart the lined notepad in a paroxysm of fury. “This game is stupid and you’re stupid!”

“You’re stupid, loser!”

The older brother doesn’t want to run back to the house because he feels hot tears of mortification streaming down his face. And the last thing he needs is his father standing over him and demanding to know what’s wrong. So instead he swings his legs over the log, gets to his feet, and starts running, shouting, “Leave me alone!”

“Will not!” says the younger brother—the little idiot, the brainless turd.

The older brother is running through the woods now, and the younger is right after him, shouting at him, taunting him. He keeps moving, but the little brat is pacing him easily. How the hell does he do that when his legs are shorter? It should be impossible.

There is a river running through the forest just up ahead. It’s too wide to ford, the boundary of their property. He cuts right, moving quickly along it. His younger brother is in pursuit, still taunting, still calling him names, and at that moment he has never hated anyone in his life more than he does his younger brother.

Suddenly he hears an alarmed shriek, and a skidding of feet on dirt. He spins just in time to see his younger brother tumble down an embankment, a section of dirt apparently having given way beneath his feet. His younger brother’s head strikes a rock that’s projecting sideways from the embankment, and the sound it makes when it hits is nauseating. The older brother sees, in horror, that there is fresh blood on the rock, and then his younger brother splashes into the river. It’s not especially deep, but the current is quite strong lately thanks to the heavy rain. All the older brother can see now is a brief image of the back of his kid brother’s sweat jacket—a flash of red in the speeding waters—and then his tormentor is washed away.

With a shriek of pure horror, he calls out his younger brother’s name, “Alex!” and practically vaults down the embankment to the edge of the river. He sprints along it frantically, trying to catch up, hoping that on foot he’s faster than the speed of the water. He closes the gap a little and then a massive fallen tree is blocking his path along the shoreline.

He has no choice.

He throws himself into the water and starts swimming for both his brother’s life and his own.