The Hawthorn Child

CONTENT WARNING; swearing

We were halfway through some Hymn in Italian when my phone went off. Its usually turned off during church so I am surprised it went off at all. Yanking it out of my pocket I moved to turn it off only to see the name on the screen and curse.

“We are in church! Turn it off!” Daniella hissed in my ear. I could only apologise to her as I pushed my way out of the aisle and made for the door. I made the mistake to look back and see her thunderstruck face before I thumbed the receiver and put it to my ear and stepped out into the sunlight.

“What is it?” I asked at once surprised to find my voice already had that harsh edge to it that came out when I talked to my brother.

“Fuck me, you sound like you are nursing a gut punch.” Said Marcus, that same irritating charm to his tone. “Do they let you smile over there or is that just the way you talk to me?”

I sighed; Marcus had a way of bringing out the worst in me. Every conversation was a game to contest who had the moral high ground. We hadn’t always been like this. Back home we had been close. It had been the bloody arguments that had done it. After mum died, they had fought tooth and nail over everything. Her funeral, the things they believed and everything in between. Finally I had met Daniella when she was leading a school retreat and had gone back with her to Italy where we had married not long after. Marcus had stayed in Cork and taken over mother’s house.

“No… I just.” I began to say already getting more annoyed

“Oh so it is just me, that really brightens up my day you know, to know that my twin can’t even stand the sound of my voice.”

“I was in the middle of church”

“How the fuck was I supposed to know that. Besides you are in that dammed place all the time, won’t be able to call at all if I can’t call during gods hours. How’s Daniella?”

I sighed and decided not to rise to the bait “She’s fine, doing well at the…”

“Yea that’s nice,” Marcus interrupted “you need to come home.”

I let out a dry laugh. “Oh yea, and why should I do that?” I was expecting him to say something about visiting mothers grave, about family or some such nonsense, then I could bring up how he had never cared about family or anything till mum died, that would spin off to all sorts of avenues for attack. I was just formulating them into a nice order or escalating anger when he said suddenly, his voice dead of emotion.

“The Hawthorn tree is dying”

“What?”

“Aye, I checked on it this morning and it was groaning each time the wind shook it”

“and” I said calmly, though in truth my heart was beating fast and there was sweat on my brow.

“and…And!? And don’t you think you should be here… you know when it does come down?”

“Don’t know why I should” I said “I have Daniela here, I have work. Besides what will change if I am there huh?”

Marcus let out a long sigh on the other side of the phone and went quiet for a bit. He was quiet so long that I almost wondered if he had hung up.

“Look… I haven’t seen you in years. Not since mum died. In all that time, not once did you think to come visit.”

“Neither did you” I say before I can stop myself

“Ah fer Christ sake! I had to look after the tree didn’t I!”

I wanted to reply to that. Tell him he had done a piss poor job of it, that this was all his fault and if I had been there we wouldn’t have even been in this position. I take a deep breath then force it away. The question I really want to ask is niggling at me, as it has for the last few years. It was the one thing that almost made me pick up the phone. I let out a deep sigh

“I just… I don’t see why I need to come”

“yer kidding right” he replied his voice with the sort of dead disbelief that foretold an imminent shouting match.

I looked back at the church. Its high imposing tower cutting into the sky, the sound of voices still echoing from within. Marcus could not understand the Italian, despite being married to an Italian and living here so long he had barely learned. I had meant to but never found the time. Despite this the voices had a comforting note to them. I knew that I could put down the phone and step inside, then I would be surrounded by the voices and the certainty and the community, and it would all be ok. I would be safe and I wouldn’t have to deal with my brother, or dangerous thoughts about trees and babies and my mothers mad lies. I sighed again, I liked to sigh when I am worried, it made me feel like I had a modicum of control. This sigh was a doozy, a real full and painful sigh, all rattling angst and shuddering frustration.

“I just”

“Look I don’t care if you don’t believe, I do. I believe it with all my heart.” Said Marcus firmly though there was a hint of desperation there “And this could be the last chance either of us have to see one another before its done. One way or another this tree is coming down soon and I just don’t know what to do if I am alone when that happens. So please… I’m begging you, I need you to be my brother, I need you to do this for me. just get on a plane and come here… Please”

“I…”

The plane ride had not been a pleasant one and Daniela had not understood at all, in fact she had made such a show of not understanding that I was sure I would be sleeping on the sofa for a long time after I got back. Marcus was waiting for me outside the terminal.  He was all biking leathers, tattoos, rings, and piercings up to his eyeballs. Other than that he was much the way I remembered him. We were identical twins, but we couldn’t have looked more different as I strode up to him. Marcus had always been the cool one, the handsome one, though his handsomeness had been with the way he held his face. He just seemed more charming and open than me, something people had always pointed out to my great annoyance.

He grinned that familiar gin now, but it was half hearted, the same fickle grin he had tried to keep on his face during mum’s funeral. That had been one of our biggest fights. He had wanted to turn mum’s funeral into some sort of party, and I was having none of it.

We greeted eachother and talked about the flight as I clambered into a busted old car, he pulled around for me to hop in. The car stank of sap, diesel, and stale cigarettes. Oily engine parts were lumped over the back seat along with a rather old looking sheepdog that licked my palm. Marcus said he was called Reginald because ‘he is a proper gentleman’.

We drove in silence, the only time we broke it was to ask if I had eaten or how Daniela was. Soon we were off the main roads and darting down looping curving lanes that were barely large enough for a car at a time. I was violently carsick at one point and Marcus had to search his car for a bottle of water, apologising profusely when he almost gave me a bottle of white spirit. Reginald tried to eat my sick and Marcus had to haul him back into the car. It was dark by the time we got to the farm, and I carried my belongings into the small white farmhouse that had been our mothers.

It was much the same as I remembered and that was not a pleasant thing. Marcus made tea as I wandered through the house, my eyes going over the various pictures on the walls. Marcus and I as nut brown children on the beach in summertime, our faces caught smiling together, impossible to tell which of us is which. Then I noticed the missing space on the wall.

“Yer teas ready” Marcus called from the kitchen

“Where’s mums’ crucifix?”

“Fuck if I know, things get lost in here. Come drink yer tea.”

I felt my face growing red and my voice growing hard “where is the crucifix, Marcus?”

He shrugged but didn’t look at me, pretending to be busy about the kitchen. “I threw it away, she didn’t care for it did she. Said she wanted it gone before she died”

“She didn’t mean that you know she didn’t. this is all about you and your stupid beliefs.”

Marcus didn’t rise to that, just continued working away with his back to me, though I could see his shoulders tighten.

“Hey” he said nonchalantly “she said quite clearly what she believed. And where she wanted to be buried. You know… right after she told us that one of us was found beneath a hawthorn tree.”

I felt my face grow hotter and my hands tighten into fists, how dare he say that, how dare he bring that up after I travelled all the way out here just for his mad imaginings. “You asshole,” I growl, spit foaming in my teeth “she didn’t know what she was talking about! She was delirious. I came here because you begged me not because of some… some…”

“What are you trying to say huh?” Marcus was turning now a sneer on his face “come on now, out with it. Because you are trying to say that you know better again aren’t you, that this is all just some damn story, some lunacy caught in a dying mind of an old lady. But you can’t say it because you know that’s not true don’t you?”

I snapped then, it was something about that familiar sneer, it sent me to the next level “it’s a god dammed tree Marcus! It’s a god dammed Hawthorn tree that’s all it is!”

“And your crucifix is a piece of dead wood, your church is dead stone, and your head is dead and empty air!” he roared back all calm disappeared.

I hit him then. I am not sure why I did it, I had never hit him before, not in all our years. Christ I had never hit anyone before. It was something about the sneer, the look like he was looking straight through me, like he knew from the beginning. It was not a hard hit but it shocked Marcus and made him stagger back.

“you fucking…” he growled, then he tackled me, picking me up and slamming me into the wall sending smiling pictures scattering in all directions. I kneed him in the stomach, but he just absorbed it. He had been out here working on the farm while I had spent my days in an office and growing plump on a Mediterranean diet. He put his leg behind mine and flipped me to the floor, where I landed with an audible crunch. He was on top of me then, fists pummelling down on me from all sides. Lips curled back, spit flying and roaring with each strike

“why do you hate me so much?” he said, almost desperately between punches, almost pleading and I found myself answering before I could stop myself.

“because I don’t want to die!” it escaped my lips before I could stop myself. The torment of mothers passing having overwhelmed and buried it deep within me. Marcus sagged off me and pushed himself back. We sat there for a very long time, not saying anything.

“I don’t want to die either” Marcus said suddenly and I could tell from his voice he meant it. We were trapped then, two idiots in the prison of rage we had locked ourselves in. closed off the time we had until it was down to its last trickles. We sat there, panting and waiting, the moment shifting between us, changing from uncomfortable to relaxed until I realised I had let go of it all, all the anger, resentment, fear, it was all gone in that second. A shattered picture lay nearby, a pair of nut brown children on a beach, arms around one another, smiling up at the camera.

“lets go watch this fucking treen die” I growled and slowly, I reached out and took Marcus’ hand. Together we pulled eachother up, and staggered to our feet.

It was there, tottering to one side, its branches drooping. I sagged to the ground with a groan and looked at it with bleary eyes. Marcus sat beside me. I heard the clinking of glass and a moment later he handed me a beer. I took it and drew a long gulp. Reginald was by our side and I instinctively felt my hand reach down to pat his greying head.

“I buried it” I said “wayyy down. For so long I didn’t want to remember. You spend your whole life believing one comfortable thing and then you have to believe a much worse thing. And do you know the worst part?”

Marcus said nothing, just let me speak, a bruse was forming on his face but I bet I looked worse.

“The worst part is I cant decide which is worst. If its me… or if its, you. I don’t hate you Marcus. I am jealous of you if anything but no I don’t hate you. I just was too scared to come back.”

A moment seemed to linger then as Reginald licked at my hand. Finally Marcus said.

“I know, don’t worry, I always knew you were stuck in your own head. And this shit isn’t nice, its not fun or exciting. It just is what it is. But we are here now. and everything is forgiven” he splashed beer on his hand and flicked it at me mockingly, impersonating a blessing. “Besides” he added “there’s no way it’s you, you are far too uptight for it to be you. Magic works on the weird ones I’m sure. And don’t worry about me, I had my life, l loved it all. To go now… well that wouldn’t be so bad. I would miss it sure but... well, at least if I go this way I don’t have to go to your damn heaven” he chuckled then, a dry chuckle. I laughed too but I didn’t want to say it, to point out that if either of us went that would mean this was real, which would also by default make heaven not real.

“Marcus?”

“Hey”

“I am sorry, for all the time we lost. The time I lost us, fighting over nothing. I- I’m glad I am here now.”

“eyyy” Marcus said and he threw an arm around me “I love you brother. I ain’t going anywhere yet.”

And together we sat and watched the tree, and waited for the sun to rise.

A man sat on the hillside, staring down at the fallen tree. It had spit open at the core, as it toppled like it had burst from within, some massive force wrenching it apart all at once. The shards of wood littered the wet grass, thorn and twig mingling with glittering dew. Looking at it you would assume that some great force of nature had been suddenly wrought upon it, a bolt of lightning perhaps, or some enormous ripping gust of wind. Something biblical and terrible. It had not happened like that though. It had happened suddenly and quietly, so that the two men on the hill had not known that it was happening until it was over.

There was only one man now. He was alone, a long stretching, vacuous alone that seemed to reach upwards and inwards more than it did outwards. He stared at the remnants of the tree and his hands shook, and tears ran down his face. He did not know what to believe. He did not know how to judge the enormous absence that came from all sides. It was the deep gnawing emptiness that fills the world of the ‘was’ and the ‘used to be’. Without realising the man added into that box of nothingness the word ‘brother’. It did not fit neatly, it did not wish to go. But it was far too late for it ever to be real once more. Like the wild haired warrior clutching spear and sword or the monstrous creatures that lived in the dark places and offered magic in lies. The heroes, wizards, adventures or gods none of them could exist in this world anymore, and neither could the Hawthorn child.