Family ties bind.
Break them before they break you.
Break them before they break you.
Battle Scars by Cal Marcius
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My grandfather treated his grandchildren the way
he’d treated his own, quick with the back of his hand. Decades of practise had
made him a great marksman.
At family get-togethers, while the women and
girls prepared food, he would take all the boys to the barn and make them
fight. There were promises of sitting at the head of the table for the winner.
Humiliation was the gift for the loser. A face
smeared with blood and animal shit, and the laughter of the others following
you while you made your way to the stream to wash off the hurt.
“This’s how men are made,” he’d say.
He’d spit in the straw and select his next
fighter, the strong against the weak.
“Don’t cry. Don’t show fear. Don’t show rage.
Most importantly, don’t give away what you’re thinking.”
He made us shout out the words. A mantra for
hardened boys.
When he wasn’t around we would laugh at his
accent, the drawl in his voice and the words no outsider could understand. Made
up words that became part of his language. Part of us.
I rode my bike to the barn every day, and I was
never alone. We were like moths to the flame. Desperate for his approval.
Desperate to be crowned his favourite.
My grandfather prided himself on our reputation.
It was well known you didn’t mess with the Harrison kids. Thugs, who’d end up
in prison, or worse.
I would show my sisters the battle scars, the
cuts and bruises and broken bones. I would listen to my mother, forbidding me
to go back to him, but would rush back as soon as my injuries had healed,
dragging Tommy with me. Telling him to man-up. Telling him to stop embarrassing
me.
***
Five years on, I stand over the old man, my
knuckles dipped in his blood. The last of a dying breed.
We switched off Tommy’s life support in the
morning. It took my mother eleven months to understand there was no coming back
for him. Brain dead, they’d said. The machines just prolonging his suffering.
But she had to try. I had to.
My grandfather knows it’s the end for him as I
shout in his face, “Don’t cry. Don’t show fear. Don’t show rage. Don’t give
away what you’re thinking.”
Each word is punctuated by another blow to his
face. And with each blow I see Tommy, crying, wanting to go home.
***
My mother tells me to head to the mainland. Tells
me that her brothers will be coming after me.
“I’m not afraid to die,” I say. “I don’t care.”
“I know,” she says. “But I do.”
She hands me an envelope filled with twenties and
a bag packed with my clothes.
And I leave, knowing I will never see her again.
