My Brother's Loss, Mine

The following story is fiction.

"My Brother's Loss, Mine"

I tell him he'll get arrested, that what he's done is reprehensible. We sit in the damp sand, cold in the moon's weak light, and the moonlight jumps from crimp to ripple on the black lake. The sky, dark and clear, sinks down around us. His face is too white.

"He's only twelve," I tell him.

"Yeah and he acts six."

"He's twelve, Ryan. You don't punch a twelve-year-old. And you don't—" I exhale, lie back, let the cold sand cradle my naked spine. The coolness feels good against my shoulder-blades. At the edge of my eye, I can see Ryan, a twenty-three-year-old man, my brother, cradling his raw knuckles against his chest like a baby. I close my eyes and imagine I am back in Chile, lying on the sun-scorched beach in Valparaíso. The darkness outside my eyelids is only the sun's unbearable brightness, inverted. 

In Chile, life was not mundane—not petty. I don't remember once brushing my teeth or getting dressed, though I'm sure these things were done. I took busses and trains and taxis to University every day, but I spent no time in transit. I scribbled notes on the color of the sunlight streaming through the barred train station windows, the color of my cab driver's earring. 

I filled a book a week with these notes.

And then I was in class—from street-notes and stories to class, transported. Antonio Skármeta stood before me. Antonio Skármeta. I've now read everything he's written, but, back then, he captivated me live. He is an actor, I believe—an actor who lives the intonations of his speech. Every lesson was a story, and he shared that story with me and all of Chile. A camera crew circled our class, and I knew this intimate conversation on the effect of an immoral government on the morality of its people and the power of art to undermine such a government, was being broadcast.

And I loved knowing that. This conversation—my conversation with the great writer Antonio Skármeta—was one of the most important conversations in Chile:

When a government—when Pinochet—disregards morality and dwarfs the value of a human life, the citizens of that dehumanizing doctrine will internalize it—will begin to treat one another as valueless. The crimes of a government are thus reflected in the crimes of its people, Skármeta taught. When a government murders thousands, murder no longer seems wrong. People will kill each other over petty things. And the government won't punish the murderers—won't care. It is the responsibility of the artists—the writers, painters, musicians, filmmakers, storytellers—to expose the brutality of immoral governments and, thus, to color dark scenes of oppression with hope. I loved this. I devoured it and craved more. I, an aspiring writer, could be essential.

I will tell Ryan that leaving a twelve-year-old bleeding on the street solves nothing, no matter what the child has done. No, I'll show him—make some illuminating analogy so potent he'll feel his wrongness. 

"You don't—" I say, sitting up beneath the navy sky, glowing beige in the east and lighting the side of our faces. "It's like—imagine," I try. "The government, like Guantanamo." My voice chokes over a dry spot in my throat. Ryan stares into my eyes. I need some water. "Let's just go home."