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By Root 436 0

father’s love. Now, as his position of favor was displaced by me, Gaylen came to know rejection and mockery, and he could not hide the hurt and fury he felt over this. As a result, I sometimes became the target of his anger—like the time he pushed me down a flight of stairs in our home, the same way that Gary had once thrown him off our back porch, or the many occasions he twisted my arm behind my back, to secure my promise to keep one of his increasingly illicit secrets. I remember my father punishing Gaylen once by taking something from Gaylen that Gaylen wanted very much—I think it was one of his pearl-handled, nickel-plated toy six-shooters—and giving it to me. A day or two later, after my father left town on work, Gaylen dragged all my toy guns out in the side yard and locked me in the house. I watched out the dining-room window as my brother smashed toy after toy with an ax. He tossed the shattered heap of plastic in the trash can, and when he came back in, he was crying. “Someday,” he said in a voice thick with pain, “he’ll hate you too. Just wait.”

My worst memory of any of the incidents during this time involved both Gaylen and Gary, and it took place on a Christmas Day. I don’t remember where the fight started, but at some point my father and Gary were embroiled in an ugly confrontation. They were each daring the other’s toughness, and then they started threatening to kill each other. My mother was pleading with them to stop, but the moment was too tense to get between them. Finally, Gaylen stepped in and asked my father to leave Gary alone. My father—who was already an old man but still amazingly strong—doubled his fist and punched Gaylen in the stomach. I have never forgotten that moment—the sheer awfulness of that blow. Gaylen doubled over in pain and hurt shock, and Gary went over to help him. My father grabbed me and said that we were leaving—that we would spend Christmas in a hotel. This time, though, I did not want to go, and I said so. “Don’t you turn against me too,” he said, and the look of rage on his face was enough to make me go with him. I was afraid of what he might do to us all if I stayed.

My mother begged my father to remain, to apologize to Gaylen and Gary and try to repair the Christmas, or at least to let me spend the holiday with my brothers. My father would hear none of it. As he and I were in the car, pulling out of the driveway, I looked up at my mother and brothers gathered on the porch, watching us leave. I could tell from the way my brothers were looking at me that they would never forgive me this moment, that they would never let me into their fraternity after this.

Pulling out of that driveway, I felt like a traitor. I wanted to join my brothers—to be standing with them on that porch, watching as the source of their hurt left them.

One afternoon a few months later, Gaylen led me out on the back porch and told me he had a present for me. He handed me a small package wrapped in white tissue, with a red ribbon around it. I was thrilled. I loved presents. I undid the ribbon and pulled off the outer wrapping. Inside was a small, odd-shaped object—about the size of one of those prizes that were common at the time in cereal boxes—and this item was also wrapped. I unfolded the inner package, and inside was my present: a hardened clump of dog shit. Gaylen laughed when he saw the stricken look on my face and said: “Don’t be such a crybaby. And don’t tell Mom and Dad. If you do, I’ll pound the living hell out of you.” I sat on the porch, looking at my present, feeling like my brothers must hate me. After a while, I threw the gift away and went and sat under the backyard tree for hours. That was the first time I remember thinking that someday I would leave them all behind.

WHEN MY FATHER WOULD QUARREL with Gaylen, he would accuse my brother of following Gary’s course. “You’re turning into a cheap, no-good crook, just like your brother.”

It is true that as Gaylen became disinherited of my father’s love, he tried to become possessed of crime. Whereas Gary acted on almost every criminal impulse