Knocking - Part III
I was only told by Mother much later that Brother had seen Gabriel die
There was one thing Father did overlook, however. Maybe it was an oversight, or maybe it was something he just procrastinated on and resigned himself to the facts later. The time before he went into the market to buy meat and cheese and milk and other supplies for the week, he never bought any hay. And the following week when he came home with Just-Old-Enough-Olly, he knew old Gabriel couldn’t handle a hay barrel on either of his sides while towing along Olly. And so when Brother was tending to Gabriel, he was removing the worst of the hay that he could without leaving the stable barren. It was this chore that caused him to accidentally witness Gabriel’s mercy killing.
On that day, I was told to stay inside and help Mother with the cooking and my continued sewing lessons. Father hoped I would take up textiles like his grandfather had. The thunderous knocking above my head reminds me that will never come to fruition. But inside I was, cutting potatoes after Mother skinned them. We had a great iron pot on the fire, using some rabbit meat from a trap Brother had set the day before. Father didn’t look too happy that morning and Brother mimicked his mood, so Mother and I thought using the rabbit meat he had caught would cheer him up. Looking back, the rabbit stew only made things worse.
I only learned a couple of days after the fact that the whole reason I was kept inside all that day was because Father and Brother were out digging a giant hole out beyond the field, over by where Brother would dump the bad hay. With Father looking as dark as a storm cloud, Brother knew better than to ask him why they were digging the hole. When they had finished, it was late afternoon. I only know this because Mother had just thrown the chunks of rabbit meat into the pot as Father and Brother walked in. That dinner was quiet. Not tense, but morose, contemplative. Mother’s mood had darkened since Father had come back in; she no longer laughed and hummed and tousled my hair like she had been doing while we cooked the stew or she taught me how to sew. But now Father and Mother were emotional mirrors of each other, leaving Brother and me confused and concerned as well. I thought they were having a fight with each other in their heads, projecting the quarrel into the other’s mind as people who really know one another only can. I think Brother knew better, though. While I don’t think he perceived what was truly going through our parents’ minds, I think he did know that something significant in our lives was about to change.
After dinner, Brother was bound to set himself to work on the last of the bad hay in Gabriel’s stable, and to feed both old Gabriel and young Olly. Father told him not to mind the hay today and just to feed them. So he did. But leaving that bad hay behind for Gabriel to lie in gave him unease and a twinge of guilt, and even contempt for Father. Brother told me when I was older, “How could Dad just leave Gabriel wallowing in his own shit like that?” He only used “shit” around me because he felt it was manly to use bad words he picked up from Father. On that night, while Brother lay in bed, guilt-ridden and sad for Gabriel, thinking of the condition his stable was in and how weak and unable to do anything about it he was, Father got out his rifle. And while Father got out his rifle, Brother decided to assuage his guilt and throw out that bad hay to give both him and Gabriel a peaceful night.
He set out. He grabbed the wheelbarrow and pitchfork from the shed and made his way to the stable. He later told me he found it odd that Gabriel was not in his stable, but the stable door had been closed and latched, so he thought Father had brought him out for a stroll, benching his anxiety for a runaway elderly horse. He forked all the rest of the bad hay into the wheelbarrow and, lacing the handle of the gas lamp over the shaft of the wheelbarrow, began pushing it to the small hill beyond the field.
I was only told by Mother much later that Brother had seen Gabriel die. Brother never finished his story of that night. The way I imagine it happening is this: as he pushed the wheelbarrow past the field and up the gentle slope, past that by the tree line where he dumped the bad hay, he must’ve seen Gabriel standing there, backlit by an effulgent moon just above him. He probably thought it queer for Gabriel to be standing right in front of the hole he and Father had dug just that day. He may have even figured out what was about to happen to Gabriel; I don’t know. But he did see it: the bullet crash through Gabriel’s head. I imagine Brother dropping the wheelbarrow and falling back on his heels just as Gabriel fell into his grave. And Father, hearing Brother’s cry of fear, confusion, and grief, rushing out to comfort him, although any show of comfort or empathy likely only betrayed what gentle scolding was to come the next day.
After that, most of the childlike wonder in him died. He only ever showed any signs of youth and giddiness around me, and that was sparingly and only when Father wasn’t around to see him. But mostly he stayed close to Olly. Father must have seen the prospect of their ages around that time. Olly would be getting old enough to learn the chores that Gabriel had done before her, and Brother was becoming strong enough to learn and help with Father. The two grew together in those two short years before Father was enlisted into the war. Thanks to Father, they learned their chores together, and Brother began accompanying Father to the village market with Olly in tow. And in all the little gaps of time they had between the chores and sleep and eating and day and night, they were together. I was only allowed to join them a year after we heard the news of Father’s death. That first adventure we had down by the riverbed was nice, but their knocking brings me back.