Page 57 of By Any Means

August flopped onto the bank nearest and lounged, ankles crossed. “If he comes back early, I’ll run. Just say I’m a bear.” The beard, long hair, cut-off blue jeans, and bare feet did make him look vagabond-like, a disguise enough for anybody less observant than Laurie Tulley. “Maybe since that kiss, he’s breaking it off with another beau posthaste. ’S’only polite.”

Chary sighed. “Why are you halfway to the nude? You will be eaten by the mosquitoes.”

August grunted. “I forget which of us is eldest sometimes. Do you?”

“Frequently.”

“You’ve been old since birth. Since I stood over your crib and hated you.” August settled back into his elbow and closed his eyes, as though he had not just spat decades-old vitriol. It didn’t matter; it held no venom. Chary had heard it before, from lips less—and more—sober than tonight’s. “Imagine if I’d killed you,” August murmured, “then I’d have been out two mothers.”

“I don’t remember much mothering from the original.”

August paused, then said softly, “I do.” He rolled onto his side and grinned. “More from the copy, granted.”

Chary almost risked the book a second time. Luckily for August, it was a William Morris.

August lay there a while, until the light faded completely, and Chary could no longer see the words to read and wouldn’t risk a lantern for drawing in biting insects and moths. Or Laurie Tulley.

Then August said, “Did you tell him yet, now it’s kissing official?”

“Of course not.”

“I heard you fake it pretty good. That is commitment, there. Even with a man so pretty.”

Fake it? As with his sobriety, his accents, and his sincerity, it was sometimes hard to tell when August was joking.

Not so at the moment. He wasn’t.

“I don’t understand what you mean,” Chary said slowly. “Commitment to what?”

“I’m dead, Chary. It’s been months. You don’t need to keep up that you’re the queer one anymore.”

Behind this bizarre statement, there was so much wrongness and meaning and sheer assumption, so much potential answer to it, that Chary couldn’t choose what to say. He simply sat for a moment on the bench, stunned.

He’d once witnessed a reenactment of a Civil War battlefield, the booms of repeated cannon fire and Gatling guns leaving the innards of his ears tingling and dulled afterward; this was much the same.

Keep up that you’re the queer one. His brother didn’t think— He didn’t know? Three years, and he didn’t⁠—

“You’ll get yourself in hot water in a small town like this, kissing handsome men in fields. I thought you liked it here.”

Perhaps August was joking after all. Maybe if he refused to react, his brother would cease in it.

But he didn’t. “You can leave it, really. You’re not bad at it”—still closed-eyed, August raised a hand and waved it, wrist yielding a flop so exaggerated, Chary wanted, somewhat hysterically, to laugh—“but you don’t need to martyr yourself to convince some wolf journalist you’re me. For God’s sake, haven’t you done enough penance?”

The shell-shocked feeling gave way to sinking river muck and cold current.

August didn’t know. Somehow, he thought three years of honesty and brotherhood had been a ruse. A taking-on of identity that he thought wasn’t Chary’s in truth. But how could he not know?

Eventually, Chary managed, “How… on earth… is that the s-simplest answer to arrive upon? Of all of them? Falsehood and penance?”

“Because I know you.” August sat up. “Stop trying to protect me unto death, Chary. I don’t need it. You’ve done enough.”

Somehow, this was the final straw. The most offensive of all. “Stop? No. I won’t. You’re my only brother. I’d been curious about you throughout my whole boyhood. That we found each other again is a miracle; do you understand? You’re not allowed to tell me to stop caring for you. That is absurd, and I shan’t obey. Nor could I. As for penance—sincere sorrow and amendment of sin are lifelong. Even were I to discard what you’re calling a ruse, those things wouldn’t end.”

August looked as surprised by the outburst as Chary felt. Part of it was that Chary had stood up sometime during in blood-pounding indignation; August, in contrast, had curled back, knees beginning to pull up close to his chest.

“But it isn’t a ruse,” Chary went on, sinking back to the bench. “How could you think that it is? I found you outside a brothel, for the love of Pete! You didn’t realize what that might have meant? What it did mean?”

“That has nothing doing with— I never saw you with any man, nor ever flirted, and how many times did I drag you to the theatre? I was not so incapacitated by the bottle.”