My Brother’s Blood Machine

Part 1:  The Sound I Wake Up To
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            Before I realized it, I was lost in the sound.  The speed bag thumping over and over against the plywood backboard was a melodious sound.  There was a week left before my fight with the Champion, and I had a long way to go before I’d be ready.
            Physically, I could throw down with Moses any day of the week, but mentally…
            I stopped punching to grab a drink of water and a new sound permeated the room immediately.  It was a kind of whirring, beeping, clicking sound, and I couldn’t begin punching again soon enough, trying to block out the din.
            My brother’s blood machine was both a blessing and a curse.  Our father was in prison for dealing drugs to provide funding for the massive machine and our mother had died a long time before; but it was the only thing that kept him alive.  Back then it was just me and him; and that sound blaring all day, every day.
{CLICK--BEEP--WHIRR--CLICK--BEEP--WHIRR--CLICK--BEEP--WHIRR--}
            I couldn’t keep the rhythm, so I left the speed bag swinging softly, trying to get its bearings after the beating I’d given it.  I opened my bedroom door and peered out to see my brother sleeping on our couch, which was surrounded by myriad piles of clothing and empty milk cartons, and boxes of Lucky Charms that had had all the marshmallow pieces removed.
            I contemplated sneaking over and flipping the switch; pulling the plug.
            I made my way as quietly as possible over to where he lay, dodging empty pizza boxes and bowls filled with milk congealing into cottage cheese.  Standing over him, I watched as his frail chest heaved laboriously in time with the sounds of the CellSaver.  My hand stretched over his sleeping form, reaching for the glowing red demon’s eye of a power button.  It would have been for the best, it would have been a mercy to the suffering he had endured…
            But then my brother moaned in his sleep.  It was the most pathetic sound I’d ever heard, and instead of pressing the button I walked into the bathroom and snatched his bottle of medicine from the countertop.
            “Wake up Johnathon,” I said as I nudged him awake and handed him a glass of water and two of the pills.  He groaned as he drank the water first and downed the pills dry afterward.  “What the hell is wrong with you?  You’re doing it in the wrong order, you know.”
            “Arthur, don’t tell me how to take my pills.  How long have I been taking them?  Seven years?  I know how to fucking do it.”
            I thought of socking him on the arm, but the needles and tubes protruding from his frail limb dissuaded me.  I had been robbed of many brotherly activities such as wrestling and play-fighting and rough-housing by my brother’s cancer.
            “You’re not old enough to say fuck.  When you’re eighteen, maybe, but not before then, now shove over,” I said as I snagged the remote from the table and turned on the television.
            “If I live that long,” he mumbled as he moved delicately over to the other side of the couch.  The sound of the CellSaver began to annoy me even further, and I wished that the television’s remote had the ability to alleviate the depressing racket.
My brother and I were opposite in every way.  I had dark, thick hair, while his was light blonde, nearly white, and scraggly from the chemo.  My eyes were light hazel, and his were dark brown; and while he was as fragile as a porcelain doll, I was an underground prize fighter, the top in the region, and I had a match with the Champion coming up in a week.
I turned the volume up as loud as it would go, but the sound of the blood machine was always there in the back of my mind.  I hated that fucking sound.
            Most people would have told me to tune it out or something.  Then again, most people have never had to live with something like that in their house.  It was like a washing machine that has a heavy, thunderous thumping sound, or a furnace that roars like a lion in the middle of the night.
            It was one of those things that just cannot be ignored.
            Johnathon pinched my arm to get my attention and then signaled for me to turn the volume down.  I ignored him and turned my attention to the channels I was flipping though aimlessly.
            I realized as I settled on “The Price Is Right” that something felt odd about the couch.  It was as if I was sitting on a lump of sand or something, and I stood up to investigate the situation after a few moments of continually shifting my weight to no avail.
            What I saw that day was something perplexingly simple, but profoundly devastating to my grasp on my brother’s situation.  I had been sitting on a groove in the couch that had been perfectly molded by my brother’s sleeping form.  I could clearly see the outline of the side of his body, accompanied by a mould of his right arm curled up next to the outline of his torso.
            I had never taken the time to contemplate the amount of time my brother had spent on that couch in our dingy apartment.  Every hour of every day, except when I had to give him sponge baths, which found him on the floor rather than the couch.  Johnathon had been relegated indefinitely to the puke-green piece of furniture in what must have been the dirtiest apartment in the world.
            Glancing frantically at the tubing connecting my brother to his monstrous anchor, I became sick to my stomach.  I thought again of tearing the cord from the machine, of flipping the switch, but this only made me more queasy.
            I gathered my coat and stormed out of the apartment shortly after my discovery.
Part Two:  The Going Price for Home
            “So your fight is tonight?”
            “Yeah,” I said, flicking aside the cigarette I had been smoking.  I was unnerved.  The bills for the CellSaver were almost due, and I had to win this fight.  Everything was riding on how I fared against the Champ.  The constant racket wasn’t helping either.  Sighing, I said “It’s tough being a prize fighter, Johnny.”
            “I’m sorry,” he said.  I couldn’t believe it, but he actually felt that he was to blame for the way things had turned out.
            “Don’t beat yourself up for something that’s not your fault.  It’s not like I have any other choice.”
            “But you do.  You do, Arthur.  You could go back to work down at the docks, at the grocery store, at the fucking mall.  You don’t have to fight.”
            He had a valid point.  I suppose didn’t have to fight.  I had worked the docks in the years before our father had been convicted, but…“None of those jobs provide the kind of money we need.  Maybe if dad were here, maybe if somebody else could share the…” I hesitated a few seconds before continuing, “…share the burden.  But there’s nobody else.  Just you and me; and boxing’s the only thing that I’m good enough at to make a living on.  I mean, think of it this way:  at my level I get more money from one fight than I would get in a month working any of those other jobs.”
            Johnathon scoffed, “Sure, you probably like kicking the shit out of people for a living.  Probably makes you feel real good about yourself.  What if you ever killed somebody in the ring?  Wouldn’t you feel bad about that?”
            I contemplated his statements for a few moments.  Whatever I got out of fighting, it sure as hell wasn’t pleasure.  Boxing was something I was good at, to be sure, but I would never go so far as to admit that I enjoyed it.  “It’s not that I like it.  There’s a real danger every time you step in the ring.  It’s either you, or him, and both of your lives are literally on the line.  I suppose that if I ever killed somebody in the ring that I’d be fine with it.  I’d feel bad, of course, but it’s understood that boxers gamble not only with money, but with their lives.  It’s an all or nothing deal.”
            Johnathon turned sullenly away from me after making a loud choking sound.
            “What’s wrong?” I said, lighting up again.  It was my last cigarette.
            Johnathon fondled the tubing connected to his veins.  It was the kind of fondling that a psycho killer in the movies gives to his victims before killing them.  “How is it possible for a person to even think that way?  How can you be so cold?”  Before I could answer, he continued on, steamrolling over my reply.  “I wish you didn’t have to fight for me.  I wish I could support myself.  I wish I could do something by myself without this stupid fucking machine!”  His words quickly became frantic as he finished, “I wish that things could have turned out differently for us…for me.”
            “Who says I have to fight for you?  Maybe I choose to fight for you.  Did you ever think of that?”  I realized that I was nearly screaming at him and brought myself down to a manageable level of calm.  “Come on, this is what brothers do for each other, or didn’t you know?  And don’t say fuck!”  I raised my hand to clap him on the shoulder, but let it drop as I realized that I probably shouldn’t.
 “It’s a price I pay gladly,” I said, more gravely than I had intended.
            A smile slowly spread across his face and he hugged me lightly.  He was probably putting all of his effort into the hug, and I put my own arms around him, but he felt like a paper doll that would crumple if I applied too much pressure.
            “I just…I just want to sleep in my own bed for once.  I just want things to go back to the way they were before…I want a good night’s sleep before I die.”
            “I’m so sorry, Johnny.  I wish it were me instead of you,” I replied, but of course, I didn’t mean it.  I wanted no part of what he was going through.
            The CellSaver provided an awkward soundtrack for the moment, and guiltily I remembered how easy it would be fore me to turn off that stupid fucking machine.  But I could never have brought myself to do it.
            Later, after several minutes of brotherly embrace (the first real contact we had had in a long while, in fact), I stood and headed out to the fight.  I was looking forward to leaving the clangor of the blood machine behind.
            “Don’t worry about me,” were my last words to him before I left.
Part Three:  The Fight of Moses Early & Sir Arthur McCloud
            There’s a monstrous black bear sitting on a stool at the other side of the ring.  Most boxers warm up with some shadow boxing when they first get into the ring, but Moses Early is the Champion, and he doesn’t need any warm-up.  He knows in his mind’s eye that he’s got me, but I know in my mind’s eye that I’ve got him.
This is it, is the only thought I have time to think before the bell rings and I’m thrown into the maelstrom.  Moses Early outweighs me by fifteen pounds, but there are no regulations in underground bouts.
            There’s a thunderstorm in the ring.  Most people think you can’t be struck by thunder, but until you step in the ring, you don’t know shit about thunder.
            Moses’ fists are the storm clouds and lightning strikes every time he lands a blow.  Most people think lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice, but my face begs to differ.  Static electricity is flowing through my veins.  Rain-like runnels of sweat are flowing down my face, into my eyes, into my wounds, stinging and wakening me to new pain with every moment.  I am a pillar of agony, but I have to win this fight.
            The announcer is babbling incoherently to the crowd, telling them what they’re seeing because they’re too enthralled by the possibility of my death to take in all the information under their own power.
            It isn’t what you would call a one sided fight.  I land a few punches here and there, the speed bag having gifted me with the promise its name gives.  I can see after the first round that I’ve blackened the area around Moses’ right eye.
            The bell rings once again, beginning the second round, and it reminds me of the sound I have heard for the past seven years. 
{CLICK--BEEP--WHIRR--}
            It fills me with a fervor I have never felt before.  My brother needs his blood, and I’ll bring him blood; machine or no.  This is the thought that flows through my mind as I unleash my own thunderstorm on Moses Early’s face and stomach.
            Right, left, left, right.  Jabs, uppercuts, hooks and roundhouses.  Blood, sweat, and quite possibly tears.
            He’s reaped the whirlwind, though not of his own accord.  I strike like lightning again and again and again, drawing forth blood with each blow.  Something flies into the ring, apparently caught in the tornado.
            It’s a towel, and in the eye of the storm my hand is lofted above my head by the referee.  Old Wayne Andrews, my manager, and the town’s bee keeper rushes into the ring and hugs me like a brother.  The way I have always wanted to be hugged.  His hair is white and scraggly like my brother’s, but his grip is strong and tight.
            “Gad damn, kid!  You was like a machine out theah!”
            I look past his honeyed words hanging in the bloody air and see Moses lying on the mat, motionless.  One of his eyes is literally dangling from its socket, and his chest is unmoving; un-breathing.
            “Come on, we got’ta get you outta’ ‘ere, kid,” Wayne says, grasping my shoulders and pushing me toward the exit.  I can hear that the crowd is growing restless.  It sounds like a bee hive has been kicked over, and Wayne knows that we have to get out quick to keep from being stung.  I guess that seeing the challenger dead and seeing the Champion dead are two very different visions.
            I look back one last time at the late Moses Early’s lifeless form as we leave and mutter to myself, “You’ve paid for my brother’s blood with your own…I’m sorry…”
Part Four:  A Good Night’s Sleep
            I clenched a fistful of dollars as I rushed up the stairs leading to our apartment.  I had been gone for only an hour, and I couldn’t wait to give Johnathon the good news.  My key stuck in the lock as it always did, and I had to fiddle with it for a few moments before it popped open.
            Immediately, I knew that something was wrong.
{UTTER SILENCE}
            “Johnathon?”  As I entered the room, I inquired half a dozen times as to whether Johnathon was home, afraid to turn on the light.  But of course, there was no reply.
            I dropped the money and frantically fumbled about to find the light switch.  The light confirmed my fears.
            Dashing through the kitchen to Johnathon’s room, I tripped over a stack of pizza boxes and struck my leg against a wooden cabinet.  The pain in my leg was nothing compared to the pain in my soul, because I already knew.
            He had made it almost all the way into his room.  I don’t know how he summoned up the strength, because he had been unable to even stand in those last few months, but he had almost made it.  Johnathon lay stretched out in the hall, his right hand just barely touching the closed door. 
The silence was maddening.  Cliché as that sounds sounds, it’s true.
I could hear myself screaming; crying vehemently as I gathered his paper doll body in my arms.  Words came with detached meaning as I shouted with both anger and sorrow.  But these sounds only added to the silence, being swallowed by the immitigable soundlessness that had settled on the apartment.
“Why?  Why, Johnathon?  I won.  I won for you.  I killed for you.  What the fuck is wrong with you?!”  I realized fearfully that I wasn’t really angry at him.  I saw my reflection in his glaze-coated eyes and was filled with fury at the helplessness I felt.  “What am I supposed to do?  What am I to do now that you’re gone?  Who am I supposed to fight for?  Who am I supposed to protect?  I need you as much as you need me, you know!”
            When the calm settled in, I lifted Johnathon and opened the door to his room.  A musty smell emanated from within, but I ventured forth without trepidation.  His bed, after so many years of disuse, was dingy and disgusting to look at, but Johnathon didn’t care.  I had to put him to bed one last time.
The couch still held Johnathon’s outline.
            I sat there for hours, wallowing in the silence before glancing over at the blood machine.  The tubes that had been connected to Johnathon’s veins rested upon the top of the machine, and there was dried blood caking them.  He had probably done it shortly after I had gone out to the fight.  The last great crusade of a dying boy.
            I tried to light a cigarette, flicking my lighter again and again to no avail.
{CLICK--CLICK--CLICK--CLICK--}
            The rhythm was all wrong.
            I looked to the CellSaver once more in desperation and flipped it on.  Then I curled up on the couch, allowing the sound to envelop me in its peaceful cadence.
            Sleep devoured me as I sank peacefully into my brother’s silhouette.
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