The Sum of Little Things

The Sum of Little Things

Never have I seen a greater, or more beautiful, or a calmer or more noble thing than you, brother. It is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers. — Ernest Hemingway 

The extended family is there. They sit around the kitchen table biding the time: chewing nails, tugging hair, gnawing lips. The air is tense, brittle to the touch, and everyone is on edge. 

The food is gone. 

Dakota sits on the far side of the room, looking out the window. He’s trying to recall a memory of his younger brother before the war. But he’s having trouble seeing his face through the fog of memories wiped clean by the mismanagement of his ego. How long had it been since he last saw him? Four, maybe five months?

What were the words?

“Don’t die over there,” Dakota says to Toby, as they wait with the other families at the barracks in 29 Palms, a marine base in the barrens of Southern California; the air is filled with laughter, smiles, hugs, and tears shed for boys who may never come home again.

“Marines don’t die,” Toby says. “We grunt and keep going.”

As children, Toby idolized Dakota. He followed him around everywhere he went: doing everything he did, liking everything he liked. He was Dakota’s shadow, looking up to him as if Dakota were something worth aspiring to, something more than what he was. Yet even taller, maybe faster, smarter, somewhat stronger, Dakota wasn’t brave.

No, Toby owned that one. 

Once, in elementary school, they were on the playground and Dakota was swinging from the monkey bars, trying to impress some of the girls from class. He swung from bar to bar as they looked on, skipping every other one as if he were an Olympic athlete crossing the rubicon. Loving the attention. He yearned for it. Held it in his hands, precious, looking down on those who might be envious enough to try and take what he had.

One boy was. He sauntered over, jealousy tinting his eyes like the crazed look of someone dying of thirst. He taunted Dakota, trying to get him down, trying to show him who was bigger. But Dakota paid him no heed. He was an Olympian after all, and he need not trouble himself with the insecurities of others. He was above all that; quite literally.

Insulted, the boy yanked at Dakota’s leg, throwing him to the asphalt, scraping his knees and elbows, drawing blood that brought tears to his eyes.

“Is baby gonna cry?” the boy said.

That’s when Toby came over.

Seeing Dakota on the ground, the older boy looming over him, he let loose a burst of violence that Dakota hadn’t seen before: one punch. That’s all it took for Toby to bring the boy to his knees, gasping for air, as he towered over him.

The girls cheered.

“You okay,” Toby said, lifting Dakota onto his feet, wiping him off.

“Yeah,” Dakota said, wiping away the last of the tears.

“What happened?” Toby said, looking to the older boy still huddled on the ground, clutching his stomach.

Dakota shrugged.

Later, Toby was called to the principles office to address the altercation with the boy. He explained what had happened and the principal took his side. Didn’t even call his parents. But they found out anyway when Dakota got home from school.

“What happened!” mom and dad said.

“Nothing. I’m fine,” Dakota said.

“Tobin. What happened?” mom and dad said.

“It wasn’t him,” Dakota said. “It was another boy. Tobin helped.”

“Okay,” Mom and Dad said.

“Should we call the principal?” Mom said to Dad.

“No,” Toby said.

“He fixed it,” Dakota said.

“Mhmm.”

Dakota was afraid, back then. He wasn’t the type of child who could stand up for himself, and he sure as hell couldn’t be trusted to stand for another. But Toby was different. He didn’t give a shit about the world or the people in it. Because he was small. Overlooked by those he came across, written off like a bad check to be cashed at the most inopportune time, always.

He took it in stride, though. Because he knew that he’d prove himself one day, to anyone who looked down on him, to everyone who doubted him, to all those who shunned him. One day they’d see. One day he’d escape their wills; their rules and expectations; their misconceptions of who he was and who he ought to be — free.

Free to live. Free to be.

It’s later. 

The rest of the family is gone and Dakota sits with his dad, watching the news. On the TV is a scene of a firefight: men dressed in fatigues, wearing helmets, saluting, marching, carrying rifles, shooting rifles, shouting commands, heeding commands, launching rockets, dour faces. 

His mother comes down the stairs and enters the kitchen where they sit in silence. “Has he called yet?” 

“No, not yet,” says Dakota’s father.

“Oh.”

“We’ll hear from him soon,” Dakota says.

“Okay.”

“I’m sure he’s okay,” says Dakota’s father. “Just you wait and see.”

But Dakota isn’t sure. It’s been weeks since they heard from his brother. Not a phone call, nor an email. Not even a letter or a postcard — not that he expected such a thing at such a time. As he sits in the living room, far from the TV, Dakota once more tries to remember that day. 

What were the words?

“How long you gonna be gone?” Dakota says, standing with his brother in the desert heat, drinking a beer and smoking a couple cigarettes while they wait for the buses that will take the platoon off to war. 

“6 months,” Toby says, taking a drag.

“That’s a while,” Dakota says, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, sipping his beer for show, flicking ash into the dirt like it was meant to be there. 

“Yeah,” Toby says, looking at his brother for a moment, then off into the distance, taking another drag and exhaling slowly as his future begins to flash before his eyes: men in fatigues, wearing helmets, saluting, marching, carrying rifles, shooting rifles, shouting commands, heeding commands. Death and destruction.

For a moment the brothers share in the presence of one another, silently waiting for the day when they’ll see each other again. But then the silence is cut like a broken record as a young girl rushes one of the marines, squeaking, engulfing him in hugs and a kiss. 

“Come back,” she says. “You’d better come back, or else.”

The brothers watch the scene with gruff indifference. There’s a slight twinge of pain as they watch the heartfelt encounter. Both of them are missing that part of themselves. 

“You scared?” Dakota says, the wind picking up as the memory begins to fade, Dakota struggling to remember Toby’s final words.

Toby shrugs. “Kinda.”

The next day is much the same: no word.

Dakota’s mother races around the house, cleaning. The maid has already come for the week, but she’s cleaning anyway. In a crazed madness, she wipes the house down until it’s spotless.

“The house must be clean for when your brother gets home,” says Dakota’s mother as she strips Toby’s bed and crumples the sheets into a ball, piling them next to the door.

“Right,” Dakota says.

In the kitchen, Dakota’s dad wanders about, pacing back and forth with the TV on. More war. More men in fatigues, more helmets, more salutes, more marches, more rifles, more commands, more missiles, more dour faces. More death, more destruction.

In his room, Dakota spies a picture on his post-it board: him and Toby sitting in a chair, sharing a birthday — balloons above — all smiles. He has never really considered what death would look like until now — not in any sort of real way, at least.

Yet death is inevitable, he thinks to himself. It’s an inkling of a thought that won’t let you sleep at night. Where the shadows play like fairies in the dying of the light, harking back to times where life was filled with laughter and joy and things that won’t ever be the same once dawned forever in death’s veiled shadow.

A sleepless night.

It’s this notion of a sleepless night, of dreams and nightmare feelings that keeps him awake, tossing and turning under the covers, sweat trickling down his face as a memory flashes behind his burdened lids, his heavy heart. 

Growing up, Dakota always wanted a sister. But he got Tobin instead — Toby for short.

Toby was short. Miniature in size: five-foot-close-to-something. But strong, like a bull, a lion with a proud heart whose roaring will could scale mountains with little more than a week’s worth of rations, a compass, and a pocket knife. Dakota, on the other hand, was a little less than that — a little less roar and little more scurry to the corner, out of sight.

The brothers liked to wage war, you see. Less than a year apart, they were bred to battle one another for no less than living rights; the loser would be heckled until his dying day, or until he fought back.

Toby always fought back.

Once, in high school, egged on by the other boys and girls who liked to watch the brothers battle for supremacy, the two boys got into a tussle over something Dakota said. He couldn’t recall what, but it turned Toby red. 

“Get off me!” Dakota managed to say, as Toby’s chokehold got tighter and tighter around his neck, cutting off the circulation to his brain, springing tears like droppers of blood.

“Say it,” Toby said.

“Say what?” Dakota said, gasping for air as Toby began to loosen his grip, just enough to let out an apology — if Dakota was smart.

“You know what,” Toby said.

“Fuck no,” Dakota said, Toby, tightening his grip like a vice, sending Dakota into a deep slumber. He woke up in the nurse’s office an hour later, the nurse asking him what happened.

“Must’ve been the heat,” Dakota said.

“Mhmm,” the nurse said.

It was October.

Like his brother, Toby didn’t like to be put down. Not in any way shape or form. So he started wrestling. To placate his need to be stronger, better, faster than those who would look down on him. A miscalculation that Dakota would regret often enough in the coming years. And it wasn’t until Toby came home one day, saying that he enlisted — that he was off to “boot” in a few weeks — that Dakota started to see his brother in a true light

Back then, Dakota and Toby were estranged. Lost and forgotten to one another, held in the grips of anger and ego and resentment towards the other. After high school, this rift only grew. But it was, one day, that Dakota’s roar shook the ground beneath them, that Toby came back to his older brother, a shadow returning to the shadow from which it came.

“Why can’t you be on my side,” Dakota said, tears raging in his eyes.

“I’m on my own side,” Toby said, kneeling before his brother, looking at him with an indifference that seemed to be shedding its skin as he looked upon his brother’s fragile psyche.

“We’re brothers,” Dakota said. “You can be on my side.”

“Fuck sides,” Toby said. “Sides or no sides. We all die alone.”

“I am alone,” Dakota said.

“No, you’re not. I’m here,” Toby said. “I’ll always be here.”

How I wished that were so, Dakota said to the nightmare, the dream that wouldn’t let go.

What were the words?

Another week goes by; still no call. 

Dakota’s mother cleans, while his father paces in front of the TV, looking for his son. 

Dakota sits outside. It’s a clear day, yet a pall hangs over the house. It obscures Toby’s face from view; the face that wouldn’t age, even as the darkest days came to pass. He sees Toby’s shadow in the clouds, walking into the darkness, all clarity seized as he tries to remember the words.

What were the words?

“You ready?” Dakota says, finishing his beer, smashing the can and tossing it into the trash a few feet away. 

“As I’ll ever be,” Toby says, finishing his cigarette, stomping it out and tossing it into the trash a few feet away. 

“You need anything,” Dakota says, taking a drag. 

“Nah,” Toby says, gearing up. 

Dakota nods. “Did you get ‘em?”

“Yeah,” Toby says, handing Dakota a set of dog tags.

“Thanks,” Dakota says, taking them, examining them, the memory fading out as he struggles to keep it alive.

What were the words?

A week later, they hear the news on the television: several outposts have been hit in the Helmand province. The casualties are still being accounted for. Some of the units are still out. Some are missing presumed dead. 

Nothing about Toby’s unit, though.

The house is still. 

The next day, there’s a knock on the door. 

Dakota looks through his blinds to see a military vehicle out front. He can see the plates, the insignia, the meaning of it all, and he quakes, trembles, staying by the window because he can’t remember the words.

There’s another knock. 

Silence follows. It inches its way through the house, into every room, every crevice, every nook, and every cranny, sending a chill running through him like ice water in his veins, cooling the very touch of him as if death’s tendrils were creeping through his soul.

Another knock and someone goes for the door. 

I suppose it’s time, Dakota thinks to himself, leaving his room and descending the stairs in slow, baited movements, teetering on the edge of what’s to come. It’s as if he were walking a dream, a tight rope on the edge of the world, everything small, little, far away, and hard to remember.

What were the words?

“Don’t die over there,” Dakota says.

“Marines don’t die,” Toby says. “We grunt and keep going.”

“You would,” Dakota says.

“I will,” Toby says with a smirk, grabbing his gun, his pack, and heading to the bus that will take him away to a far-off place, foreign to him, them, and all of us. 

“You better,” Dakota says. “I need my little shadow. Can’t seem to do much without him these days.”

“I love you, too,” Toby says, looking back one final time as he walks off into the shadows of men in fatigues, wearing helmets, saluting, marching, carrying rifles, shooting rifles, shouting commands, heeding commands, launching rockets, dour faces, death…

The door opens, a cry.

As Dakota remembers their final words to each other, he treads the last steps into the entryway. His vision begins to fade in and out, in and out, like a haze surrounding him, engulfing him, suffocating him. As if he’s drowning in forgotten words, forgotten smiles, forgotten memories that he wishes were here but are now there, veiled in death. 

Perched on the final step, he can’t help but think: Gone are the days of childlike wonder and joy. The days of carefree living and play. The days of water gun fights and balloon wars and carefree words too precious to forget. The lost days of their childhood.

Gone.

It’s time, he thinks to himself, treading quicksand as he makes his way forward, to a fate he doesn’t want nor concede to be so. One foot in front of the other. 

Step by step. 

A cry, a sob — Let it not be so!

But there he is, in the doorway. Shielded but visible: a little older, a little gruffer, a little more worn around the edges, tired.

“You’re home!” his mother says, engulfing her youngest son with tears in her eyes. “We were so worried. We thought you were…They said on the TV that you were…We didn’t know where to look, where to call, to find you. We were so worried.”

“I’m okay,” Toby says, muffled by his mother’s embrace.

“I told you, ” his father says, smiling. 

Dakota takes a step forward into the light of what hasn’t come to be and sees his brother: a man, a marine, a vet returned home. He smirks and says, “What happened over there?” 

Toby grunts. “War.”