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This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue... cc&d magazine (v215) (the December 2010 Issue) |
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Order this issue from our printer as an ISSN# paperback book:  or as the ISBN# book “Entering the Ice Age”:  |
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Brothers
Billie Louise Jones
Winter in New Orleans is miserable. It is a grey, damp cold that seeps into the marrow and stays there. A tropical city looks shabby in the winter.
Two men huddled in a recessed doorway. There were some empty bottles of cheap wine beside them. A third man sat on the sidewalk backed up against the stoop. He was younger than the others, early twenties; but the streetlight showed a wasted face. His life had drawn the lines of a much older man in his face. It was not a bad face, just a wasted face; and his black hair and beard were growing shaggy. He pulled the collar of his denim jacket higher. Denim and boots were not enough against the permeating damp cold.
Three men walked up from the other end of the block and stopped a few doors away. Two of them seemed to be indicating to the third, but he saw already. He touched their shoulders, a man’s gesture of thanks. He walked on by himself and knelt by the man crouched against the stoop. He was bulkier than the wasted man, but in the streetlight their bearded faces resembled. They could even be brothers.
The big man talked. The bend of his head and the way his hand reached out spelled earnestness. The other man twisted from side to side, backed up against the stoop. His shoulders and hips, his features, looked delicate.
“Leave me alone!” he shouted. “Go away!”
He pushed the other man’s hands away. He got to his feet and started off down the street. Yet at the corner he seemed to pause. He did not look back, but something in the line of his back called to the other, wanting to be followed.
The big man followed him, talking. He stood with his head bent. The big man came beside him and touched his shoulders. He shook his head desperately and moved off, but only a few steps. The other followed. They went like that, starting and stopping, then seeming to walk together around the corner and out of sight.
