I closed my eyes a moment, and walked to the right, and down; and
I don’t know how it is with other brothers, but with us there would be no circling. It wasn’t Clay and the Murderer, like boxers—this was me, and I walked at him just short of a run, and it was soon that he hit the ground.
Oh, he fought, all right, he fought hard, and he searched and flailed and falled—for there was no grammar to this, no beauty to it at all. He could train and suffer all he wanted, but this wasn’t training the Clay way, it was living my way, and I found him from the first; no more words but those inside me:
He killed us.
He killed us, Clay, don’t you remember?
We had no one.
He left us.
What we were is dead—
But now those thoughts weren’t thoughts at all, they were clouds of landed punches, and every one fell true.
Don’t you remember?
Don’t you see?
And Clay.
The smiler.
As I watch us now, after all he later told me, I see him clearly thinking:
You don’t know everything, Matthew.
You don’t know.
I should have told you—
About the clothesline.
About the pegs—
But he couldn’t say anything, and he couldn’t even remember going down the first time, except that he’d fallen so hard he left a gash there, a scar in the grass—and the world was incoherent. It struck him that it was raining, but truth be told, it was blood. It was blood and hurt and getting up, and going down, till Rory called out enough.
And me—chest heaving, calling in air.
And Clay on the grass, all curled up, then rolling toward the sky. How many skies were there, really? The one he’d focused on was breaking, and with it came the birds. The pigeons. And one crow. They flocked into his lungs. That papery sound of flapping wings, all fast, and gorgeous, at once.
* * *
—
The next person he saw was a girl.
She said nothing. Nothing to me, nothing to Clay.
She only crouched and took his hand.
She could hardly say welcome back, and actually—shockingly—it was Clay who moved to speak.
I stood a few meters to the left.
My hands were all quivered and bloody.