I took off down the alley as fast as I could, Mom’s voice imploring me to run fading with every stride, my racing heart exploding in my ears. I cried and screamed as I ran for my life, “God, help, Dad, Mom … someone, please!” I stumbled and fell to the ground, cinders and pebbles tearing through my jeans at the kneecap, causing blood to ooze down my leg.

Normally my older brother, Doug would catch me if I fell; but he was in a rage, as though possessed, waving a sword over his head while incoherently yelling and stumbling. Still, he kept coming in my direction.

Only minutes before, I had come home from school to find Doug on the steps leading up to our apartment. Out of the blue, Doug said, “Let’s shadow box, open hands, no fists. I want to see if you’re still a pussy!” Doug never thought I was manly or tough enough for the hardscrabble neighborhood we grew up in during our school years. He would say things like, “Mike, you’ve got book smarts but not street smarts. Dad feels the same way. We’ve got your back, but that’s not the same as you being able to handle yourself out there.”

I immediately felt a sense of trepidation. Soon after graduating from high school and landing a good job at the steel mill, Doug had a bad car accident. Drunk at the wheel, he rolled his car coming home from a buddy’s house. He had life threatening injuries, including an edema on his brain that left him unconscious for eleven days. Recovery took nearly half a year. After Doug’s discharge, he was eerily agitated much of the time and drinking heavily, likely to cope with the after-effects of his injuries.

Looking up at Doug on the steps, I carefully replied, “The guys are waiting for me to play some hoops before supper. Besides you know I have no boxing skills. I’m no match for you. Let’s go down to the river after supper and do some fishing. Perfect time to have a chance at some big ones. I’m going to go grab my Converses and head over to the b-ball court for an hour.”

I headed towards the door in a cautious manner. As I went to go by him, Doug jumped up, blocking my way. As I tried to move around him, he pushed me away from the entrance. I could smell the beer; he was drunk. He swung at me, open handed, just missing my face. As I moved to defend myself, he closed his fists and took a couple wild swings at my stomach, then my face. I was desperately fending him off.

Mom saw out the window and yelled, “Stop it Doug; you are going to hurt your brother!” Doug stopped, turned towards the window, and wobbled into the apartment. In a few minutes, I heard things breaking inside and out of the corner of my eye I saw Doug staggering out the door wielding an old, civil war saber, a family keepsake. That’s when Mom yelled, “Mike, run! RUN!”

I gained some distance as I ran down the alley, crossed the railroad tracks, and scaled our Appalachian town’s dike, heading towards the marshy, overgrown woods running along the riverbank. Our neighborhood was crisscrossed by railroad tracks whose freight trains carried coal extracted from strip mines to the east. Route 15, a heavily trafficked north-south trucker route, sliced through our neighborhood like a serrated knife cutting a piece of bread. A single red light caused truck drivers to downshift their powerful diesels as they came off the bridge spanning the West Branch of the Susquehanna River in Northcentral Pennsylvania.

I knew the riverbank terrain; it’s where my gang of town buddies had pretend battles, chucking river reeds sharpened with our pocketknives in the direction of one another, imitating old Tarzan movie scenes. It was in these woods where we carved out hiding places after throwing rocks at freight trains and getting chased by railroad cops.

As I was about to enter the woods, I could see Doug cresting the dike. I stopped screaming, realizing only silence would give me a chance to evade him. I headed upriver where the ground cover was thickest, and the trail interrupted by marsh ponds.

Sirens blared in the distance, giving me the hope of being rescued. Out of breath, I burrowed into my hiding place, shaking and sobbing. Repeatedly, I chanted to myself, “This can’t be happening to me; it’s not real!” The repetition of this thought momentarily comforted me.

But this spell was broken when I heard the thrashing of underbrush and Doug’s voice nearby. In a creepy, frightening tone, he was repetitively yelling, “Mike, ready or not, here I come.” After what seemed like a lifetime of hearing his incantation, but probably no more than a few minutes in real time, I heard people crashing through the underbrush.

I locked in on a single voice. It was my dad, sternly but calmly confronting Doug, “Look at me. Put that damn sword down, now! You could hurt me or one of the fellas here waving it around like that.” With little hesitation, Doug submitted, like a boxer returning to his corner in defeat. The sword fell from his hands, glancing off a rock and landing in a clump of weeds. In a voice still not his own, Doug repeatedly murmured, “Just a game, Dad. I’m tired. Need to go home and lie down.” The town police officer handcuffed Doug and along with a couple of burly neighbors, walked him up the dike in the direction of flashing lights and a small crowd.

As soon as Doug was gone, Dad called me out from hiding. Gasping and crying, I raced to him. He engulfed me in his arms, pulling me against his bulging chest with a great bear hug and said, “It’s okay, son. I gotcha; you’re safe now. I knew this is where you would hide. Come on, let’s go home and get you cleaned up.”

As we walked up the dike, I felt secure with Dad’s arm around me. I wasn’t mad at Doug but shaken to the core by the horrible experience of his rage. A lifetime of damage was done. Sleep doesn’t come easily to me. But when it does, it’s often too brief, interrupted by a repetitive nightmare. I see a sword swishing through the underbrush where I am hiding, revealing a contorted face of a man with one glowing brown eye and the other, pale gray without a pupil. When Doug was a preteen, he and a group of his buddies were shooting at cans in a local quarry with their BB guns. A BB shot from one of their guns ricocheted off the quarry wall and entered Doug’s left eye, resulting in a lifetime discoloration and extremely blurred vision. His “good” eye remained a vivid brown.

Cresting the dike and seeing the scene below, I turned to Dad and said, “what happened to Doug?”

For the first time ever, I saw tears welling up in Dad’s eyes. He replied, “I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but I know he’s not been right since the car accident. But you’re safe and that’s all that matters right now.”

Neighbors of all ages were gathered on one side of the alleyway. As we walked by, I felt a few pats on the back and voices of relief that I was okay. But I was too stunned by the experience to pay attention to them or their gestures. I walked towards the flashing lights, anxiously scanning for Mom. An ambulance with its rear doors open came into view. Dad kept me moving, but I peered inside and caught a glimpse of Doug strapped down on the gurney and next to him, holding his pinned hand, was Mom.

I wouldn’t see her for hours. From what I heard later, Doug resisted when he was walked towards the ambulance rather than home. Somehow, he knew this was a consequential moment, but Mom calmed him. He was committed to the wing of the local hospital dedicated to mental illness and soon after transferred to an institution some miles away that dealt only with mental disorders.

In addition to waves of prescribed drugs, Doug was administered electric shock therapy. It was nearly a year before he was released, arriving home with Mom and Dad on a bright, but chilly early spring day. As soon as he got out of the car, I ran to embrace him, and he pulled me into his chest like the way Dad comforted me a year ago when I came out of hiding. He said, “Hey little brother, sorry about what happened. Got something for you; Dad, give it to Mike.”

It was a bright red Swiss Army pocketknife with two shiny blades and a set of gadgets, including scissors and a screwdriver. Doug said, “I heard you asked for this at Christmas. Now you can get rid of that old, rusty hand-me-down knife.” After inspecting all the pieces, I handed Dad my old knife and slid the Swiss Army into my front pocket. I put my arms around Doug again and said, “Wow, it’s the best! When are we going fishing? I wanna put it to use!”

I still have the knife though not in my pocket. Whenever I pull it out of my keepsake drawer, I run my fingers over the scratches on the red handle, play with the gadgets, and think of the good times Doug and I had together that spring and summer, the last before the end of Doug’s teen years and the start of my own.

 

Michael Musheno has published extensively in academic journals and university presses, including the University of Michigan and Chicago Presses, focusing on issues of public affairs that draws upon the stories of others, mostly frontline workers in the public sector. four of his stories have appeared in earlier issues of The RavensPerch.