Jamie the native American was waiting for him. His face was always marked by a strange serenity that was unknown to Dylan and yet he was hopelessly attracted to it. He would have liked to own it too.
Jamie didn't ask him any questions, Jamie seemed to have all the answers.
Antonia followed all the movements without saying a word. She had followed Dylan on that adventure, she had followed Dylan because she hoped he would heal from his evil of living, because she wanted him to love her but she knew that his heart belonged to another woman.
Jamie had them sit in his tent and offered him a drink of lavender and other aromatic herbs.
The taste was bitter but Dylan felt an immediate sense of relief.
"You came here because you want answers," Jamie said.
Dylan nodded.
"I wish you would take me back to those places"
"Spirits will only allow you to see the truth if your heart is open to understanding the truth, to accepting it"
"I want to go back to those places," Dylan repeated, "I saw my future, I saw my death"
"Death is everyone's future," Jamie said, "maybe what you saw wasn't your death or maybe it wasn't your future"
"What do you mean?"
Jamie got up and went to get some necklaces made from animal bones. He put one around Dylan's neck and one around his neck.
Jamie looked at Antonia.
"She is a friend," Dylan tried to explain.
"She's a good spirit," Jamie smiled.
Antonia smiled at him with her eyes, she realized that Jamie had sensed her love for Dylan and her sacrifice in staying one step back.
"You may have been in your past or your future, there's no other way to know than to go back to those places. Remember that you can't change your past. Not even if you want to. You can only attend at"
Dylan observed all of Jamie's movements, his singing in recalling spirits.
"Are you ready?" He asked Dylan.
"I'm ready"
Antonia watched everything from her corner.
She saw Dylan breathing deeply, he was in that place without really being in that place.
Dylan began to relax, he heard Jamie's prayer but it had become a distant lullaby.
Dylan saw himself walking in the fog.
"I don't see anything," he said.
"You have to know how to wait, you have to know how to resist ..."
The fog quickly thinned.
Dylan saw himself running inside the body of a child.
A field of corn.
"Is there anyone near you?"
Dylan said yes, there was another child next to him "he is blond and has blue eyes"
"Dylan! Hurry up" the blond boy ran in front of him, they crossed a river and arrived at a farm.
"Brandon!" The mother of the blond child came out to call him.
A good woman, with a sweet face.
"From the house comes out a scent of freshly made bread, the baby's name is Brandon like my friend Brandon"
"What do you see in the house?"
"A pendulum clock, no TV, there's a little radio, some old ones, Brandon is sitting and eating bread and milk and the mother put a bowl of milk for me too."
"There's a newspaper on the table"
Dylan approaches the newspaper and sees a date October 18, 1923.
"It's 1923," Dylan exclaimed, his voice was low, he was talking to Jamie, it seemed like there was a little glimmer of connection between the present and the past, and Dylan had slipped right there.
Brandon's father came home. He was tired.
As soon as walked in Brandon immediately got up, took his bowl and put it in the sink, under his father's stern eyes.
"What have you been doing all day? Did you play and waste time?" Brandon's father's voice was angry with misery.
"I did everything you asked me to do," Brandon whispered, holding his head down.
The man looked at Dylan who stood up immediately.
"What about you? Did you help your brother?"
Dylan nodded.
"Brandon is my brother," Dylan told Jamie. Dylan kept his eyes closed. Antonia was watching him. She clung to every word to understand what he was seeing.
"Are you glad he's your brother?" Jamie asked him.
Dylan nodded "I always knew he was my brother, only we've been lost lately"
"It also happens to the blood brothers," Jamie said, "what do you see now?"
Dylan concentrated he heard the voice of his mother and father shouting and then he heard his father beating the woman, Brandon and he were in the same bed and squeezing tightly not to hear.
Then his mother entered the room to check that the two of them were asleep and hadn't heard anything but found them both awake.
Dylan immediately noticed the bruise under her eye that his mother was trying to hide.
Brandon didn't speak.
They both hated him. There had been a time that the father was a hero to them. He would take them fishing, play the accordion in the evening or turn on the radio and make his mother dance and Dylan and Brandon would clap their hands in rhythm and laugh.
Then a monster made its way into his father's mind. A deep black monster.
He had fought in Europe as a Young soldier , against the Germans. He always said that he had seen things he didn't want her kids to ever see.
Sometimes at night he would wake up crying and screaming. The mother told the children to lock themselves in the room and faced her husband and the monster alone. Beating became a habit.
The emotion and pain made Dylan cry. Antonia noticed, the tears were authentic and made her cry too.
"Maybe we should interrupt, it's something that's digging into your soul..." Jamie suggested.
He called Dylan back from his visions.
Dylan opened his eyes wide.
"Let me go back there..."
Jamie gave him a smile "first we have lunch, I'm hungry"
Jamie got up and walked out of the tent.
Antonia looked at Dylan and she noticed that tears were running down his face.
"It was all so real"
"I don't know if I could resist"
"It's something I need, I need to understand"
Antonia nodded.
They were invited to lunch, ate fresh fruit and meat cooked over high heat.
Jamie's wife had made a dessert with nuts and honey.
Dylan felt that his soul was bubbling, he had to go back to those places, and he had to go back right away to see that scene.
XX
Brandon was packing his bags. He had tried to call Kelly back but had not gotten an answer.
Donna had said she had left for New York and had left nothing for him. Not a note, a message. Nothing.
He still couldn't believe how he let his anger take over and that anger, that frustration had overwhelmed and destroyed everything. Every Single moment.
"Are you ready?" Jim asked him with a proud air.
Brandon had given up on the Chicago Chronical but for some strange game of fate the Boston Globe had called him.
He had accepted the same evening.
Kelly was gone, there was only rubble of what had been.
He couldn't get the look out of her in front of his eyes and mind, she hadn't said a word, she had listened to everything he had wanted to say to her and hadn't stopped him.
Leaving was the best of solutions. Immediately.
Without thinking about it. He couldn't even stand the idea that Kelly was now in the hands of that Colin. He had torn and burned the photograph of the newspaper, he just couldn't stand its sight. That's what Kelly had done to him, he had made him lose his defenses and without defense he felt lost.
Dylan had disappeared, his sister was heartbroken somewhere in Europe, Kelly in New York, and his parents would leave for Hong Kong. A new job opportunity for Jim, the end of the Walsh family inside that house that had been his safe place for so long.
Brandon felt crushed.
To Leave. Leave right away.
Brandon put his things in the car.
"Why don't you take the plane," Cindy asked worriedly.
"I like driving more and I don't want to think about anything," Brandon replied.
Cindy nodded and understood her son.
It broke their heart to both of them when they saw him turn the corner. Brandon and Brenda were gone. Time was slipping under their fingers and now they too had to leave that place.
Cindy wiped a tear.
"They're both going to come at Christmas," Jim said, "they promised."
XX
After lunch Dylan and Jamie returned to the tent.
He had waited patiently for the end of lunch, kept thinking and rethinking what he would see.
"Your soul is too restless," said Jamie, who seemed to be able to read his soul inside.
Dylan breathed a deep sigh as Antonia took her seat further back.
Antonia hoped that in the past life that Dylan was reliving there would be room for her too, that at some point he would see her.
Jamie had explained how souls were connected and that they would soon come back together in the succession of lives. One after the other. They had to find peace. It was a continuous search.
The wrong concept was to think that the soul mate should be a love relationship. There were more soul mates in a person's life and they were the ones that changed your life, that led you to get better, grow, accompanying you for part of the journey until you let go.
In the past life Brandon was his brother, in this his best friend, in the next maybe Brandon would be his son, no one could know the faces that would have those ties so close and so important.
He distinctly remembered seeing Brenda. She remembered seeing Brenda crying and wanted to know why.
"Are you ready?"
Jamie again put the necklace of bones around Dylan's neck.
Dylan began to breathe deeply.
He saw a flash. A grave.
"We are in a cemetery, in front of a tomb"
"Who's around you?"
Dylan turned his head and saw Brandon.
"There's Brandon but he's older, maybe he's 23 and my dad is there."
Dylan immediately realized that that tomb in front of him was his mother's grave.
Nicole Joanne Gibson May 18, 1888- December 25, 1940.
"My mother is dead," Dylan said.
Antonia felt tears rise in her eyes.
"It's Christmas Day in 1940," Dylan said in a low voice, "we've come home. There is no longer the smell of milk and biscuits and neither is there the smell of sweet."
The father didn't say a word but he cried a lot the whole time. His desperation was strange, it seemed that he had lost his heart. It seemed that the heart was his heart and his life was buried inside his mother's coffin.
Brandon walked out of his room, wearing the air force uniform.
"We have to go," he told Dylan.
The father looked at them with lost eyes.
His wife had just been buried and his kids had had a 48-hour leave just to say goodbye to their mother.
The father knew what the horror of war was and prayed that the United States would remain neutral. He had been a pilot too, he had died in Europe before returning home.
He didn't want this for his children, her mother was worried and had tried to stop them. His kids were no longer children and his father had been a soldier.
It was snowing outside.
"We're going to the station on foot," Dylan said, hugging his father, a father he had also hated and who for the first time seemed to him small and old.
"Never leave your brother, take care of him," his father whispered.
Brandon approached his father and he hugged him too
"Never leave your brother, take care of him," the old man whispered again.
He couldn't hold back the tears, he couldn't hold anything back anymore.
Dylan and Brandon arrived by train to Westover Base. The return trip was quieter than usual. Everyone was in his memories of the mother, the father, of that lost childhood.
They were both pilots, both good pilots.
Brandon had chosen that path, Dylan had followed him.
Captain Franklin had called both of them into his office.
"I offer you my condolences on the death of your mother," he said.
"Thank you Sir," they both replied.
Franklin was a tough officer, a real soldier. He never smiled but he loved his guys. He would give his life for them. A true leader and both Dylan and Brandon trusted him blindly.
"You have been chosen to join the Eagle squadron," Franklin said, "this means you could be sent to fight with the RAF in Europe. This means that you will see the Germans up close and that you will risk dying every single day, as a soldier does, those who don't feel like taking a step back."
Neither Dylan nor Brandon moved.
"Well!" He laughed loudly Franklin "waiting for you for medical visits in New York next week now go away ." Franklin lit a cigar and watched the two boys come out. He was a soldier but he was worried anyway. Dylan and Brandon were formidable pilots but war was always war thought Franklin snorting out the smoke of a bad cigar.
The war for Brandon and Dylan was something they wanted, it had the charm of the scenes in the cinema, it had the scent of those old medals of his father that he never wanted to see but that instead Brandon and Dylan went to admire secretly and then put well in place so that the father would not notice.
Brandon was the only one who wrote him letters and also told him about his brother, about what Dylan was doing, at the bottom of the letter he wrote to him that they loved him, both of them but Brandon had the suspicion that Dylan did not love him, he only loved his mother and that his father, after all, knew it.
New York was a whirlwind of lights and colors, they adored it, the military hospital was in the center of the city, they found other soldiers, they befriended one named David, a radio technician and engine enthusiast.
He was a shaved, tall boy and then there was Steve. From California.
And you could see that he was from California, he looked like he was always on vacation.
They made friends almost immediately.
They were talking about a bar not far away, a nudie bar. Brandon would also have gone right away. He had never fallen in love, but neither had Dylan.
They had had some relation with the girls of Cedar Rapids, some touched in barns, or at the movies.
They had both discovered sex for a fee. In Chicago and they hadn't stopped since.
"Do you really want to go to the RAF?" Steve seemed rather bewildered "the farther I am from the war the better I am, they send me to the Pacific: Hawaiii" he said smiling "it will be a wonder"
Brandon laughed and so did David but Dylan instead wanted the war, it was a serious thing, maybe he would silence the demons he had inside and that didn't leave him alone.
At the entrance to the hospital they had given him numbers 189 for Dylan and 197 for Brandon after which he was a pilgrim stationed in the room to take blood tests, vaccines and more.
Dylan was afraid of the eye examination, he saw us very well but he confused with the letters, they were inverted, and Brandon always helped him, he hoped to stay with him or he would have serious problems with the eye examination.
Brandon knew how to suggest letters to him, he fascinated nurses, he always knew how to do it.
Dylan was holding his arm, a rather burly nurse had just taken his blood and then slapped him on the butt for him to leave.
Dylan looked up and saw her.
"Brenda," Dylan said in a low voice.
Jamie and Antonia heard her name. Brenda was in Dylan's past life. She was a nurse. A magnificent body, black hair collected.
She looked at him and their eyes sparkled for a few seconds.
"Brenda," Dylan repeated.
Brenda looked amazed "how do you know my middle name?"
'What?' Dylan asked.
"How do you know my middle name?"
Dylan smiled "the first name what is it?"
"Laura" she said with a smile but at home they call me Brenda like my grandmother, to tell the truth they all call me Brenda.
Dylan couldn't believe he had her in front of his eyes. The scent was the same, the complexion clear, the mouth perfect.
He would have liked to hug her. Tell him what he knew.
"Get off," Brenda ordered him.
'What?' Dylan asked.
"Stripping"
Soon after, the doctor came in and Dylan understood.
'What do we need to check?'
Brenda laughed "it's a complete visit, let's start with the presence of hemorrhoids"
Dylan blushed while the doctor was wearing gloves
"Oh no.. I don't have hemorrhoids"
The doctor had the gloves worn "we will determine this, undress and turn around"
Dylan wanted to die of shame.
Brenda smiled as the doctor finished his visit and signed the certificate.
"A moment," said the doctor, "misses the eye examination"
"I did it," Dylan lied because he was afraid to make the visit without Brandon's help.
The doctor looked at the clock and then quickly told Brenda to do by herself and he get out.
Dylan couldn't help but look at her.
"Cover your eye with this," she told him, handing him a little cardboard and read these letters.
The light board began to do its malicious work, the letters got confused, Dylan began to read "D. B. N..."
Brenda didn't say anything. She would go from one line to the next trying to help him but Dylan suffered from dyslexia and she noticed.
"I think we should inform the doctor"
This would mean the end for Dylan and he didn't hesitate to tell her, he stopped Brenda by the arm and that gesture was an unknown shock to her.
"So you ruin me, please, I'm a pilot, I'm a good pilot."
Brenda couldn't take her eyes off Dylan's. There was something familiar about him.
The doctor returned shortly after. Brenda gave a deep sigh.
"Is it all right Laura?"
Brenda hesitated a few seconds.
"Yes," she said and Dylan smiled at her with his eyes.
The doctor signed the positive result.
Dylan went out, the numbers got confused with the people, the people with her face.
Dylan couldn't think of anything else as he, Brandon, David and Steve walked to the nudie Bar.
"Sorry guys, but I have a commitment," he said, interrupting the walk.
'What commitment?' Brandon asked with a diss length.
"A girl," he said as he smiled at his brother and returned in the light rain of a February in New York.