Nevertheless, Adam found himself literally on his knees in his brother's bedroom two days later.
"You're the middle brother, Hoss, you've got to play peacemaker here!" Adam pleaded, a wild-eyed look in his eye that unnerved Hoss.
"Alright, I'll try!" Hoss conceded. "I don't have any magic solutions here, you know, Adam."
"I had no idea," Adam repeated, standing and running a hand through his prematurely thinning hair. "The whole countryside has been seeing him hang out with the Peticci gang, I'm the last to know of it?"
"I thought you and Pa knew, Adam, I thought that's what half the problem was about!" Hoss pleaded. "The family runs a printing business, for God's sakes. There's no proof that that gang is involved in any—"
Adam groaned aside any further commentary. "Two and a half weeks," he repeated to himself. "All I have to do is hold down the fort for two and a half weeks. I would never embarrass him they way he's embarrassing me, this is really low."
Hoss paused, and decided to take the chance. "You know, you cast an awfully long shadow, Adam," he said.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Joe might be trying to find his place in the world, if he doesn't seem needed here with you and Pa."
"What? Do you feel that way?" Adam faced Hoss with a fresh level of incredulity on his face.
"Not me, no, I'm enough of a loafer to be fine playing second fiddle. But Joe, I don't know, he has to find his own way."
"Okay, well, I hate that we need to act like woman, but we have to talk about all this at some point. But tonight…when Joe comes home, I'll have to…I'll have to set consequences if he associates with a rough crowd in the next few weeks, and then can you take him aside and try to talk him out of it? I'll be bad guy, you be good guy?"
"Fine, Adam, but just—don't set me up! I think he's looking for support outside our family right now!"
Adam groaned in response. They both heard a door open and softly close…just before 6:00., the same as last night.
Adam cringed and steeled himself to go downstairs. Little Joe noticed him and similarly stiffened his spine for the coming confrontation.
Adam decided to try being vulnerable, if only for a few seconds. "Joe, I just heard about you associating with…certain newcomers to the area. What's going on, bro?"
Little Joe had no intention of having his barriers crumble. "You will not tell me who I can and cannot be friends with, Adam."
Adam took a deep breath. "I'm just asking what attracts you to them, Joe."
"It's personal."
Adam felt his patience give way under the blunt reality of a steel barrier that he could not scale. "Some of us need to run a ranch here, baby brother," he responded sarcastically. He held up a hand as Joe attempted a scathing retort. "I would have talked about your feelings, Joe, but you didn't want to. But I'm at the end of my rope. Let me hear of you associating with those felons again, and you will experience a repeat of the punishment you did the other night. Or—" Adam gave him a meaningful look—"OR—you could just put with these rules until Dad comes home, and take up your issues with him, as I told you before."
Joe furiously gave Adam a wilting look as he went upstairs and locked himself yet again in his bedroom. Hoss gently knocked at the door and eventually persuaded Little Joe to grant him admittance.
BBBBBB
As Adam waited for his brother to return three nights later, he mercifully found himself in a state of semi-dissociation. He remembered Joe throughout the years, a toddler with all the attention…an award he'd won at school, that had made their father want to throw a bash that reminded Adam of the story of the Prodigal Son, a fact that was all the more poignant as Adam had been literally out in the fields holding down the fort as the party went on all day, and part of the night.
And now this. Joe had matured into a good-looking, suave teenager, with more than his fair share of attention from girls. Adam had barely had time for girls with all his responsibilities. What could a kid this spoiled possibly want?
His mind barely registered relief as Joe showed up of his own volition this time. "I don't know why it has to be like this, Joe," Adam said numbly.
Joe glared at him with an expression of steel. "You don't know anything," he said emphatically, yet bent over to accept his punishment.
Adam used a riding crop this time, hoping it would be more effective. It was only more effective at making him feel guilty, as he heard Joe sucking in his breath in acute pain. Last night, he'd seen Joe shuffling uncomfortably in an awkward gait that betrayed his attempts at minimizing the effects of this nightly punishment.
Adam felt his stoicism crumble in the last couple of strokes, striking more harshly than usual. Joe flinched but did not cry out. Adam roughly grabbed Joe, pulled him to standing, and pushed him against a wall. "I'll tan you every night, boy, if that's what it takes," he growled with controlled fanaticism.
"What it takes for what?" Joe winced involuntarily, leaning his weight backward against the barn wall.
"For you to think of someone besides yourself."
Joe's mouth dropped open in a moment of bewilderment, then shut again. "I'm being selfish?" he asked dubiously, and then, between ragged breaths of exhausted pain, slowly began to chuckle deeply.
"Damn it, this is not a joke!" Adam snapped, seeing stars in an attempt to suppress his anger. This time, his efforts did not work. "Your entire life has been a series of selfish acts!"
Joe gaped in disbelief, then clutched his hair to distract his hands from throttling his brother. "Yeah, that sums up my life," he responded, his voice dangerously low.
"I'm saying that you could try to live a life of redemption, instead of making my life a living hell!" Adam screamed, his hands tightly clamped on his brother's shoulders. "I guess I have to start walking you to and from school."
Little Joe's eyes narrowed. "What goes on in this barn is between you and me, Adam. But if you start bringing other people into it, embarrassing me, then I will have to inform Pa of that incident with the senator's daughter last December."
Adam's lungs weren't drawing in enough air, and he almost panted in his frustration that now blackmail was part of the equation. "What can I do, then? If I have to tie you to the bed, I'll be tempted to set the house on fire as well."
"The only person around here who makes any attempt to understand is Hoss," Little Joe snapped. "He said he'd try to explain to you how—how hard it is—"
And that was the first moment of their lives that Little Joe briefly became stronger than his powerful older brother, surprising him with an arm twist that left Adam gasping in confused pain, holding his shoulder protectively while Little Joe ran out into the night.