Change of Season
The Bolt brothers were holed up in their new self-made cabin. Heavy rain and winds made working too big a risk. All they could do was wait it out.
Jason was working on the ledgers, Joshua was reading a newspaper at the table, and Jeremy was on the floor on his stomach, legs in the air, either writing or drawing in a school writing tablet. He'd been mostly silent since they'd come back from town Sunday evening.
Da was getting thinner and more irascible. And sleeping more, but more restlessly. Jason knew he needed to talk to his brothers but he didn't know how. Would it really be so bad to just – let things happen?
It would be dishonest, something he tried never to be with his brothers. Or would it just be sort of dishonest? Not telling a lie, just – not mentioning the truth? Lie of omission, that was called.
So still a flat out lie.
"Do you 'member," Jeremy said suddenly, "when I was little, and we lived in a for-real home?"
"Vaguely," Jason answered promptly. "Let me think for a minute. You know the memory is the first to go as one ages."
Jeremy laughed. "You're funny." He had drawn diagonal lines across his paper and was shading in some of them.
"What about it?" Josh asked.
"I was thinkin'."
"We're in trouble."
"Ha. Ha."
"It was a joke. If Jason can be funny, so can I."
Jeremy half shrugged. (It was hard to shrug when propped up on one's elbows.) He began coloring in another diagonal, this one darker.
Jason and Josh looked at one another, and waited.
"When I was little, Mama made me take nap every day. We'd have lunch and go for a walk and get tired, and come back and go to bed.I liked going to bed with Mama." Jeremy's feet moved , and his hands pressed harder on the pencil. "She was nice. An' her bed was warm, and she'd tell stories 'bout fairies and sing songs an' play tickle, jus' a little bit. If she tickled too much, I'd get 'cited and wouldn't sleep, an' she wanted me to go to sleep so she could."
Jeremy started a new line, coloring this one lightly with small looping motions. "If I waked up afore her, it was okay if I came out and played in front of the fire, but I mustn't touch it. I could fall in or make the fire fall out.
"When she waked up, she'd take care of the fire and make supper.
"One day, when I waked up, I tol' her I was 'wake, and she made a sound like this,-" he exhaled a long quiet sigh, "so I knowed it was okay and I came out and played with my pine cones, only they wasn't all pine, but we called them that. Mama said they was really fir cones, because all the winter trees was cone-y firs. But that sounded funny."
The boy stopped coloring (and talking) and studied his design. He put his head down on his arm for a moment, sighed, and started making lines across one of his lines.
He sighed again.
"It was getting dark and cold, cause the fire was getting done, an' I went to make Mama wake up. But she was cold, and wouldn't wake up, so I put her big cover on her and came back to play some more."
Jason covered his eyes as he realized where this was going.
"An' it got darker and colder and then everything was getting quieter and quieter, and I got scared. I went under my bed and hided from all the quietness that was cold and dark. It started to rain, not like today. It was like whisper-rain, like crying wifout noise, but just there. That prolly meant Josh'd be later to come home from school, but maybe Da and Jason would come home sooner. I went to tell Mama so she could make coffee, but she was still asleep. An' it was colderer and quieter in that room, an' I got scared again. So I got my blanket and went back under the bed. I knowed somebody would come, and make noise, and make the fire back, but I really jus' wanted Mama to wake up.
"Only she didn't." He crossed his arms over the writing pad and put his head down. "I jus' wanted my Mama, not, jus' me, not the big cold and quiet. I just want my Mama." He started crying, hard.
Joshua was down on the floor beside him, pulling him closer and patting his back and stroking his hair. He stretched out next to him, quietly talking. "It won't happen again, bubby," he soothed. "I told you. I won't let it. You don't have to stay alone with him. If he makes you stay, I'm staying too. I promised. I promise."
They knew, Jason realized. He wondered how long they had known, and remembered the secret looks they had been sharing all summer long. He remembered Jeremy leaning on Josh, not him.
They had known longer than he had.
Jeremy's sobbing slowed and quietened, and he put an arm around the brother who had shared his secret all these months.
Children. They were both children, although Joshua was growing out of that state. Proof of that, Jason thought, was the more thoughtful way he had been treating his younger brother.
But Jeremy was still very much a child, and a traumatized child at that. He had rarely spoken of his mother's death, and cried only sporadically over her absence.
Or so they'd thought. Thinking over what had been said, the temper tantrums at bedtime looked a little different. His screaming and crying then had often included the words 'cold' and 'no be quiet!' and, of course, 'no dark'. But that dark thing, Da had said, was normal for the age, especially with all the upheaval.
"Poor kid," Jason said.
"He's scared," Josh defended. Jeremy was asleep, or nearly so. "You want me to just get a blanket for him?"
Jason smiled. "Is he getting too big for you to haul around?" He got up to put their youngest to bed."
"From off the floor, yeah. I can pick him up if he's standing, an' I can piggy-back him. He's growed a lot."
"That he has." Jason returned to his chair, and Josh, warily, to his newspaper.
"How long have you known?"
"The last time you was gone. And, we didn't exactly know all at once. We sorta learned."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Josh looked at him as if he were crazy. "How do you tell your brother something like that?"
"A good question. I was pondering the same thing."
"Oh."
"Tell me about it."
"When you went on that long job, and you wasn't there to argue with Da, or make a joke, or tell a story when he got all tangled up in his talking, he – he didn't yell, exactly, but he'd say stuff that made us feel angry or stupid. Jeremy, especially, because he wouldn't answer back. He'd just cry. Da didn't like that."
"Cry?"
"Not like just now. Just big tears rolling out his eyes and down his face, not making a sound. Like Mom did sometimes when she was tired."
"Oh."
"Da'd either leave or sit down and go to sleep. When he woke up, he'd be himself again. At first he'd apologize. But without you here to distract him, he was getting – not meaner, but differenter. So I started making jokes and stuff, like you'd do, and it helped.
"Jeremy noticed Da wasn't eating very much, and he started not eating unless Da did. And then you came back."
"And everything started changing."
"Except Da. He was sleeping more and eating less and –" Josh gestured " – I don't know. Just being like somebody else instead of himself. Getting mad, or crying, or both, or just – not paying attention to things. Sometimes drinking too much.
"And one night he went out and Jeremy asked me if I thought he was going to go to sleep and not wake up like Mom did. And when I thought about it, I thought maybe he was right."
"And?"
"That was when Jeremy started getting scared and didn't want to be alone with Da. Because he was afraid he'd go to sleep and not wake up. He still wants to be with Da, but not alone. So I told him –"
"That you'd stay with him. Them. I see." Jason fell silent.
"Jason."
"Hmm?"
"I'm glad you know."
"I'm glad you know. The question now is."
"What next? Yeah. D'you know what Da wants?"
"I think he wants us to keep doing what we're doing. Other than wanting more time with us, especially his little one. I suppose we could spend more nights in town together. At least until we get a lasting break in the weather. Until then we'll just do day work."
"Should we tell Da about –?" Josh gestured at the bed.
"We'll play that by ear. As we go along. Any objections?"
Josh shook his head. "As long as we all know what we're all doing."
"Agreed."