“How are your feet today?” says Fat Man. He does not want to carry his big brother today, as his own legs ache terribly. What he wants is to rest, to sleep under that family’s roof. Not because it is difficult to sleep outside but because it is so easy—to sleep, and to sleep through whatever happens, such as the approach of two police who may be brothers or may not be, who may recognize them, who may suspect them of some crime.
“They hurt,” says Little Boy. “I could barely sleep.”
Little Boy says it’s time for breakfast. The pigs watch them as they approach the home. A man is kneeling in the pen, examining a sow’s corpse. The man does not know they are there, or knows but does not care. As Fat Man’s gaze lingers on the sow’s body a maggot surfaces between its teats. The man startles. He flicks away the little worm.
Little Boy lets them into the home. Inside mother and daughter eat rice with their fingers. They are quiet like dead things are quiet. When they see the brothers they do not startle or speak. They look at their food. The daughter tightly gathers the fabric that covers her breasts, the better to cover her skin.
Little Boy says, “Here.” He offers the mother a dollar. She shakes her head and motions for her daughter to leave the table. Her daughter goes. Little Boy says, “Here.” He says, “Food.”
The mother looks to Fat Man as if for confirmation. Fat Man says, “Food.” He mimes eating with his fingers.
The mother takes the bill. She gives Little Boy her daughter’s bowl and Fat Man her own. She goes to make more rice. They sit at the table to eat. The daughter watches from the next room through a partly open door. She is still quiet like a dead thing.
They use their fingers, quickly eating the rice to keep it from molding. Spores form beneath their touch, giving the remaining grains a bitter, musky, gamey flavor. This is getting worse. Neither has spoken to the other of it yet. Fat Man knows it is not normal. They cannot cover their bowls with their hands, as this would make the growth worse. The mother boils water for more rice.
They are quiet a long time. When the new rice is done Little Boy puts another dollar on the mother’s leg. His skin brushes her skin; Fat Man hears it happen. With some reluctance, she gives him the rice. She seems to consider boiling more water, decides against it. Leaves the kitchen, taking her daughter by the hand. They go to another place, to be together, quiet like dead things.
The quiet gets to be too much for Fat Man. “What about France?”
“Why France?” says Little Boy.
“They were barely in the war, and the food is supposed to be good.”
“Does it always have to be food?”
“I think we were put here for a reason.” He stuffs handfuls of rice into his face, sullen as a fish.
“Uh huh?”
“I think we’re supposed to help rebuild, now that the war is done.”
“Then we should go to Britain,” Little Boy says, finishing his rice.
“I don’t want to go there.”
The father comes into the home, sees the brothers in his kitchen. He is shirtless, coated everywhere with pig muck, except for his feet and his hands, which he must have scraped clean in the grass outside. He is thinner than his wife, thinner than his daughter. He is a small man. He looks at the brothers a while.
It becomes clear they still will be sleeping outside. The father watches them until they go.
“Does it really have to be France?” says Little Boy, as the door closes behind them. They’ve grown accustomed to the idea no one understands them. English might as well be a code the way they use it.
“It doesn’t have to be anywhere,” says Fat Man. “I’m as scared of leaving as I am of staying.”
“Take responsibility for yourself,” says Little Boy. “I can’t play nurse to you forever. You have to make some of your own choices. We’re going to France. It’s your decision, and you’ll live with it.”
“Then can we go by boat?” says Fat Man.
“No,” says Little Boy. “We’re still hijacking a plane.” If he smirks it is a subtle smirk.
They bum around the farm for the rest of the day, planning their hijacking, contemplating the hogs. They pay for lunch and dinner inside the home—the father watches them eat as if they were livestock—and they find a place to sleep behind the farm, among trees, on a bed of leaves they press into the damp dirt with their shoes.
A PORTRAIT OF
BROTHERS
It takes them several weeks to find a forger. The way they do it is Little Boy talks to American soldiers about fake passports while behind him Fat Man watches silently. The soldiers assume Fat Man is using Little Boy to make himself look innocent. But Little Boy’s thinking is that this looks the most natural. As the older brother, he should take charge. Fat Man wonders several times why they always seem to talk to him when ostensibly answering Little Boy’s questions. Little Boy says it’s because he’s taller. “They don’t have to crane their necks that way,” he says, his voice thick with disdain: what lazy brutes, these soldiers.
There are also whole days where they talk to no one but each other, where they lie in the dirt and breathe. Fat Man tries to talk about the fire, about birth, about the tree. Little Boy doesn’t want to hear it. He says that’s all over. He says, “Little boys don’t have to think about such things.”
Some days the farmer’s family feeds them salted pork. The farmer’s family never speaks in their presence. The brother bombs whisper when they enter the home. Some days they do not visit the farm to buy food at all, which Fat Man takes to mean the money’s running thin. Most days Fat Man wants to leave.
The police still wake them up sometimes, holding hands. They don’t say anything. Only watch the brothers and after some time leave. They look thinner every day. Little Boy won’t leave the farm, won’t say why. The brothers find new sleeping spots around the property. The policemen find them. One time the brothers found the policemen sifting through the leaves where they had slept the night before. One of them found a small something—the brothers couldn’t see what. He showed it to the other and put it in his breast pocket.
One day Little Boy talks to the right soldier. The soldier whispers into Fat Man’s ear what to do, where to go, who to see.
Their forger is a GI who goes by Ralph. They meet him at his post outside a former munitions plant, which is being repurposed to make washing machines and refrigerators. He wears his helmet at a rakish angle. They know him by the red handkerchief tied around the end of his gun’s barrel. He knows the brothers are coming. When he sees their tentative approach he closes the distance to offer his hand. “Hello,” he laughs. “You the ones want the passports?”
They follow him back to his post, where he stands with another soldier who doesn’t bother pretending to do anything but listen in.
Ralph says, “So?”
“We heard you could help,” Little Boy says. He attempts a commanding tone. It comes out of his mouth slantwise, like it doesn’t want to go. “What’s it going to cost to get documentation that says we’re two American brothers?”
“Not too much,” says Ralph. “Got to wonder why you’d go with such a cockamamie story though.”
“We don’t look American to you?” says Little Boy. “How many Japanese you know his size?” He raps his brother on the gut.
“Looks like a sumo to me,” says Ralph. “But you ought to go as whatever you really are. Father and son, uncle and nephew, two strangers passing in the night. Not that it matters for passport purposes. They don’t exactly come in matching pairs you know.”
Little Boy fumes. “He