This story is graphic and deals with trauma and sensitive topics. Reader discretion is strongly advised.
I always loved going to my uncle’s farmhouse. The summers of my youth spent exploring and playing games in the surrounding acres with my cousins. Two of them; David and Danny. David was the older of the two by a few years. He was the tough one, the leader of our small group who lead us in our adventures. I looked up to him even though he a bit of an jerk. He might have been mean but he had a good heart when it mattered.
My younger cousin and David’s brother was Danny. Danny was ‘special’, or, at least that’s what they called it then, ‘special needs’ my Aunt would tell us. Danny was developmentally stunted; it always seemed to me he was aware of the happenings around him but he just couldn’t express himself like the rest of us. He walked with a limp and would only respond with simple one word answers.
“Danny do you want to play tag?” “Ye-ah” he would say enthusiastically.
“Danny we’re going to the post office would you like to go?” “N-no” as sternly as he could muster.
This was how he was.
It has been years now, since I thought of them. I had wanted to forget, but after so much time spent with them, there was bound to be something that would pry these locked away memories to the forefront of my mind. Today, that was a boy seated at the table next to me while I tried to finish my lunch before heading back to the office. He was like Danny.
“Eat your lunch please, we need to go soon, we’re already late!” said the woman at the table with him.
“N-n-no… I-I-I don’t w-w-want it” he said as he lashed out at the table from his wheelchair.
He was different than Danny in that he could put together a full sentence apparently, and also that Danny was not in a chair, but could walk, albeit with a limp. They were similar enough in some peculiar way that the entire time all I could think about was Danny, Danny and what happened the last summer I ever saw him twenty years ago. The summer I tried so hard to forget.
I went back to the work without even finishing lunch.
I stared blankly at my screen for the next hour, mulling over my thoughts. Trying to focus on my work but the thoughts kept returning, my eyes glazed over as I stared at my screen. I got up from desk and walked into the main office. I told them that something had come up and I had to leave, I’d need Friday off as well.
“Is everything alright?” my coworker asked concerned.
“Yeah it’s fine, tell Brett I’m sorry and he’ll have the prototype by next week”
“Okay, I’ll let him know… take care now” she said
I made my way to my car. The prototype was the last thing on my mind.
I hadn’t been to the farmhouse in years now. I had been there a few times after… after what had happened but it had never been the same. My aunt and uncle still owned the property but had long since moved away. It was a three hour drive but when I was younger it seemed like much longer, like it was a world away from the city.
A cloud of dust formed behind me as a the gravel pathway crunched as I headed down the drive toward the house. I didn’t like it here anymore, the memories tainted.
The house sat in a large field. It was to the left of the drive and surrounded the house bordered by the roadway in the distance. The house itself was at least one hundred years old, with a large porch and colonial fixtures. There was a small lake to the right of the house down the hill that we often spent swimming and boating in. Finally, beside drive and in front of the house was the forest. The forest that ended my childhood,
I looked at the pathway at the mouth of the wood and memories flashed before my eyes.
“There’s a cabin in these woods. Dad told me! He said they used to fish here and people would live in these woods.”
“N-n-no” Danny sputtered
“What do you mean no Danny?!” his brother said sternly
“Yes they did. They would live in these woods in cabin and fish at the lake. Dad told me. Like two hundred years ago. What are you saying no about. Friggen idiot.’ he said snidely.
‘Ye-yeah” Danny said, apparently now in agreeance.
I hated when Dave called him names, but that was the way they were. The dynamic between them. He might have been mean to Danny but I knew he cared about, and Danny knew too. It was the typical ‘No one makes fun of my brother but me’ type scenario but in this case his brother was ‘different’. It could seem callous to outsiders. The thing was to David and I, we spent so much time with Danny that we didn’t even notice his disability. He was just one us.
That day we were going to find those mythical cabins. In reality they were now nothing more than dilapidated piles of rubble. Only a suitable home for wood bugs and centipedes. The forest was sandwiched between the road way and the house so there was never really a fear that we would get lost there but it was several miles to the road so we still had to be careful and tell the adults where we were going.
The ‘cabins’ were supposedly deeper in the woods than we ever had been but my Uncle said that it was fine if we looked for them as long as we were back before dinner.
“I think we could really turn these cabins into something” David said confidently.
“A clubhouse maybe. We could start a club and invite the guys from school. That’d be cool hey Danny?”
“Yea-yeah” he said excitedly
“Ye-yeah” David said copying
“Danny, I know you got whatever funny business going on in your head but can you ever for once just say anything but ‘yeah’ or ‘no’!” he said and then sighed in the futility of what he was asking.
“Ye-ye-yeah” Danny replied, as if he understood what David had asked him but could still only reply as he always did.
“Dave, relax” I said looking at him directly as I could. We had never fought but he was older and taller than me and even though he had never bullied me I still didn’t want to piss him off.
“Yeah I know, sorry. Sometimes… sometimes I just get sick of it you know” he said defeated.
“Danny, why can’t you just say SOMETHING, anything for once!”
“Dave” I said the best I could.
“I know you’re not dumb Danny, they think you’re stupid Danny, but me, your brother, I know you’re not. So why can’t you just say on simple word. Just ANYTHING other than ‘Yeah’ or ‘No’. Just say something” he wasn’t trying to be mean, it was just his true emotion coming through.
‘N.. n… n… NO!’ Danny yelled.
“Ah shut up!’ Dave yelled. ‘Just zip it Danny, don’t say a single word Danny, you hear me?!”
“You’re being an ass Dave, just stop” I said quietly,
“Pshh… whatever” Dave said as he walked ahead of us.
“Are you alright Danny” I said, I could see he wasn’t. He was mad, fuming mad, but just like his brother had asked he said nothing.
“Mmm…” he made muffled growl.
“Danny you can talk, your brother is just being a jerk, he doesn’t mean it”
“Hmm mmm” he made a slightly louder and aggravated sound.
“Fine Danny. Fine, say nothing. I wasn’t rude to you but if you want to be pissed off, you have the right to” I put my hands up and walked away.
The ‘cabins’ were no that far from where we were, maybe ten minutes or so. The entire time Dave kept to himself ahead and Danny behind grunting and hitting his leg with hand in anger.
“Danny now you should relax…” I said carefully, but he said nothing. I hated when they fought like this.
About five minutes later we arrived at the cabins, or what was left of them.
“Well here we are…” Dave said disappointed. “The CA… BINS” he yelled sarcastically.
There was nothing around but trees and the rotten piles of wood before us. A squirrel ran across a fallen tree.
“What do you think Danny? Seem good” Dave said as if he had let go of their fight from earlier.
“Mmm… mmm” Danny said bitterly.
“Danny are you serious right now?” Dave was annoyed.
“Mmm… mmm” Danny said mockingly.
“Ah for shit sakes Danny grow up! Why you gotta act like this huh?” he was getting angry
“Mmm…mmm… mmm…” Danny just kept repeating the sound…
“Danny SHUT UP!” Dave said getting in his face.
“Mmm…mmm… mmm…” Danny kept going getting louder to annoy Dave
“Wow, good job Danny! You’re a bonafide genius! Look at these cabins Danny you can live here. They suit you” it was meaner than I ever heard him be to his brother.
“MMM!” Danny said as he tried to swing a punch at his older brother who stepped out of the way easily,
“Danny what the hell!” Dave said as he shoved his brother in the chest out of reaction in the heat of the moment.
I thought I head something rustle in the bush behind the cabin.
“Danny! Quit acting like an absolute RE-T***” Dave yelled as his brother landed on the ground, looking up at him furious.
I felt sick, I hated to see them fighting and I had never heard Dave call Danny the ‘r-word’. When we were kids everyone would say it like it was nothing, but not once did ever hear Dave talk to his brother that way. Danny was breathing heavily seemingly enraged.
“What Danny? What!” His brother said bitterly, clearly still mad but the fact that he crossed the line was written all over his face.
“You think, it’s funny to make fun of him do you?” I felt sick, I wanted to say something to calm the situation but before I could we heard it. A low raspy voice, snide and unwelcomely imposing. The hairs on my neck stood on end. There shouldn’t have been anyone out here.
I looked up at the man, a cold scowl on his face. A tattered leather coat and ripped jeans. He must have about forty of fifty years old, but his face was grizzled from abuse. He took a swig of the flask he had in his hand and tucked it back into his coat.
“Who the hell are you! This is private property” Dave shouted.
I wasn’t sure that the property line extended this far into the woods but I understood why Dave said it. There was something not right about the man. He looked like a drifter, and smelled of alcohol from a distance.
“What the FUCK did you say to me” his words slurring slightly.
“I said, you need to get hell out of here old man. This is private property” He stretched our his arms gesturing to the woods. Dave was sixteen and while he might have grown quite a bit in the last few years he still wasn’t fully a man.
“Fuck you it is.” the man said spitting though his yellow teeth. “ as he got up in Dave’s face.
“We were just going” I said to the man, sensing that situation could be dangerous.
“No you weren’t. Shut up kid.” he said to me as if flipping a bug off of his arm.
Danny’s anger had been overcome by wonder at the situation.
“I saw you push the handi-cap down. You’re a tough guy huh” he said his accent punctuating ‘handicap’ strangely. His voice was cold and I had no sense that he actually cared at all about the ‘handicap’.
“He’s my brother, he’s fine. Piss off man.” Dave said flippantly
“Are you fine boy?” The man said looking at Danny. “That wasn’t very nice of your brother was it?” he said with a subtle feigned concern that Danny probably wasn’t picking up on.
“N-n-no…” Danny said looking away clearly still upset from earlier.
“You know my Granddaddy, was a handicap to. Had em on a cane after the war. I’d never tolerate that if someone said it to him. Do you like it when he calls you that kid” the man said still talking to Danny.
“N-n… NO!” Danny said his anger welling up on the last word.
“Yeah I wouldn’t like it either. You gotta limp too, huh?” He must have been watching for a while if he saw Danny walking.
“You know, I bet you wish you could stand up to him don’t you?!” the man said with a fake smile.
“That’d be neat wouldn’t it? He would never call you that again.” it was like he was leading Danny to a conclusion.
“Ye-yeah” Danny said grinning.
“How about this? How about… how about I do it for you? Just a push.” the man said coldly.
“Danny” I said barely able to speak.
Dave was starting to look concerned his back against a tree and the man in front of him. I could see Danny was thinking, clearly still remembering his embarrassment from earlier.
‘Ye-yea-YEAH!’ he said with a sour smile and laugh.
“What the fuck Dann-“ Dave’s words were cut short as the man violently pushed him down, with much more force than Dave had pushed Danny. Dave groaned in pain nearly hitting his head on a rock nearby.
“HOW’S IT FEEL! HOW’S IT FEEL HUH” The man yelled as Danny laughed not sensing the seriousness of the situation. Dave started to get up and the man kicked him hard in the side. Dave gasped and tried to catch his breath.
“Leave him alone!” I yelled petrified.
“SHUT UP” the man barked.
I looked at Danny who seemed to now realize that this situation was not normal. He started to become agitated.
“How about I really show him hey Dan?!” The man must have picked up on his name incorrectly, ‘Dan’ as if they were buddies.
My cousin looked scared now, as his brother was on the ground trying to get air into his lungs”
“N-n-n-NO!” Danny shouted.
“Oh come on!” The man said as he kicked Dave again.
“STOP!” I yelled, my feet planted in place.
On the second kick Danny began to cry, the realization that something bad was happening must have finally dawned on him. As Dave tried to regain his breath the man turned and walked. Was it over?
Then I watched as the man picked up a large tree branch and raise it over his head. Danny was still recovering from the kicks.
‘NEXT TIME. THINK! THINK BEFORE YOU SAY THAT WORD. THINK BEFORE YOU HURT… SOMEONES… FEELINGS!’ He shouted at the top of lungs as he stumbled over under the weight of the branch which was more like a log.
And then… then he threw it down at David.
He fell from his knees to the ground like a sack of dust.
“Yeah, not so tough now are you, little shit” the man said as he lit his cigarette and started walking away. “Next time, think, before you use your words” he said as if there was any semblance of consciousness left in David’s lifeless body. He walked away muttering to himself, picking up his case of beers and stumbling away.
Danny was on the ground sobbing uncontrollably,
I felt like the world was spinning around me. I struggled to walk to walk the yards where David was standing minutes ago, I bent down and shook as I grabbed his arm tears rolling down my cheek. I held his wrist as our Uncle taught us to check for a pulse, to check for life…
“Dave… Dave… come on Dave” his pulse was almost imperceptible.
I gathered what courage I could. I wasn’t strong enough to carry him.
“Danny we have to go tell Mamma and Pappa what happened”
“Danny come on, we have to go” the man was still in the woods and Dave needed an ambulance bad.
Danny wouldn’t move, he just sobbed and sobbed. I tried to grab him but he was stuck to the ground.
When I got back to the house I could barely get a word out in shock. Eventually they realized Dave was hurt and needed an ambulance. I don’t remember much after that but even an hour later when I saw Danny leaving the entrance to the woods he was still sobbing.
The got Dave to the hospital as soon as they could but it was too late, he was gone.
Danny never said another word again. He passed away in sleep later that year.
And that’s how I lost my cousins and my childhood that summer. The thing was even after all these years I still wondered if I did the right thing. I still wondered if I should have done something differently. I still don’t know why I did what I did, why I said why I said what I said when they asked.
“What happened to David? What happened!?” they yelled.
The police questioned me the same night.
“So you were in the woods at the cabins and Danny decided to climb a tree?”
“Yes” I said nodding, the drifters yellow smile in mind
“And he fell, on his side? And the branch fell on him?” The officer asked incredulously.
“Yes” I said
“Alright…” the officer say ‘Are you sure that’s what happened?’
“Yes.” I said nodding.
The officer sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Alright then… it just doesn’t add up” he said.
He didn’t get a word from Danny either. Not a no, not a yes.
I still don’t know why I didn’t say anything. I wondered to this day what happened to that man. Most likely drank himself to death. I’d never forget. I told myself he succumbed to the cold, or was hit by a car. I wondered if he ever even knew what he had done. Did he remember at all in his drunken stupor? Did he have any idea the destruction and pain he caused that day?
I couldn’t say.