Summary: While the Civil War pits brother against brother, a night on Hell’s battlefield pulls Joe and Adam into a fight that only one can survive. (Response to ML’s 2012 birthday challenge.)

Rated: T   Word Count: 3,000

• See old reviews on Page 2

Brothers, Above All

XxXxX

It was a soft sound…subtle.

It could have been thunder. But if it was, it wasn’t threatening, just a far off rumble, the kind that lets you know God’s still up there, watching and listening. Or, if not thunder, it might have been an old tree losing a heavy, weak branch somewhere deep in the woods.

It was such a soft sound no one even seemed to notice. No one but Joe. When it came again, he rose, stretched and stepped away from the checkerboard, not particularly concerned that he was just one play away from winning.

“Where you goin’?” Hoss asked. “We ain’t finished yet.”

Joe grinned, but his brother didn’t notice. Hoss’s attention was set firmly on the pieces in front of him. Leaving Hoss to it, not bothering to answer, Joe crossed to the front door and pulled it open to the crisp air of an October evening.

“Joe?” Pa called over from where he sat at his desk. There was no real concern in his voice; his reaction was one of habit from what Joe could tell. Pa was too focused on his account books to be truly interested in why Joe had opened the door.

“I thought I….” He thought he what? Heard a tree fall in the forest? Joe grinned again, looking over toward Adam and wondering if those words would get older brother to finally pull his nose out of that book. “Thought I’d check on Cochise,” he decided to say instead.

“If you’re going outside,” Adam said, his tone as chilling as the breeze seeping in, “then go! And close that door behind you!” He never even looked up from that blasted book.

Joe’s grin died. He turned to grab his jacket from the hook behind the door, but froze when he heard a distant boom. This time, he could almost swear it was canon fire.

Still his family was unmoved. Hoss stared at the checkerboard. Pa stared at his accounts. Adam stared at his book.

Another boom sounded, closer now. And then another. And suddenly those booms were accompanied by a hundred rifle shots. And more.

Joe’s heartbeat started to join the cacophony. Panting in fear, he turned to shout a warning to his family.

Adam was already on his feet, his eyes locked on Joe.

No. It wasn’t just his eyes. His rage was locked on Joe; and he was coming at Joe with…a bayonet?

“I told you to close that door!” Adam seethed, his lips tight against his teeth, thin as they could be, his eyes flashing yellow fire.

Joe backed away, stumbling on the threshold as the point of that bayonet reached for him. Somehow he managed to keep his feet, although he wished he hadn’t. Falling would have moved him instantly away from the piercing blade. Now, the point was pressed up against his breastbone.

“Adam?” he whispered, breathless from shock.

Adam’s eyes may as well have been a stranger’s. There was no love in them at all. No compassion. No remorse. “Murderer!” he shouted. Even his gaze screamed for vengeance.

Not justice. Vengeance.

What’s wrong with you? Joe wondered without speaking. It was as though his brother wasn’t his brother anymore, as though every angry moment they’d ever shared had come together into one, single moment of.…

Somehow he and Adam had stepped out of the comfort of the ranch house and landed straight in Hell. They were in the midst of a bloody battlefield, surrounded by canon fire…rifle fire…men screaming, dying at their feet. And Adam….

Adam was wearing the blue of an army uniform.

“Adam?” Joe started. He was unsure what else to say, or how to get his brother to help him figure out what had happened. How had they come to be there? And where were Hoss and Pa?

“You killed them!” Never taking his eyes from Joe, Adam tilted his head toward a pile of blue-clad bodies.

“No! I—”

The point of the bayonet pierced Joe’s skin. He felt a hot sting, and then the trickle of warm blood gliding down his chest…his abdomen…pooling in his navel.

“Why, Joe? Was it really for the right of a people to hold to their way of life? Or was it for nothing more than the love of a pretty girl?”

“No! Adam!” He tried to back away, but something was behind him, blocking him, holding him where he stood. “You know that’s not true! I voted to—”

“You killed them, Joe!”

“No! I—” He lifted his hands, desperate to push the bayonet away, and saw that his fingers were already coated in blood—clearly not his own. “I didn’t. I couldn’t….” His sleeves were gray beneath the spatters of dried and drying blood.

His sleeves were gray…. He was wearing a Confederate uniform.

“No,” Joe said softly, more to himself than to his brother. “I would never….”

All around him, the earth was littered with the bodies of Union soldiers. “I couldn’t….” An overwhelming sadness took hold of him. He knew he could never have killed those men. But someone had. Another army? An army of Confederate soldiers wearing the same uniform he saw on himself. “I couldn’t,” he repeated.

When his eyes locked with Adam’s once more, he saw an echo of his own sorrow.

“This isn’t real,” Joe pleaded.

Maybe Adam believed him. Or maybe…somehow…it just didn’t matter anymore. The point of the bayonet eased back, removing the pressure against Joe’s breastbone.

Joe started to take a deep breath. They could figure this out. Together, he and Adam could put sense to all of this…this death…this senseless killing. But before either of them could find the words to begin, Adam grunted. Lurching forward, his eyes went as wide as Joe’s…no…wider, as the point of his bayonet pressed into Joe’s skin once more, scraping against bone, and then ripping downward along Joe’s stomach before finally catching itself on Joe’s belt buckle.

Adam crumpled to the ground, his wide eyes losing focus. The fire in his gaze grew ashen…and then white…and then…empty.

“Adam?” Joe cried out, already knowing it was too late. His brother was dead.

In the place where Adam had stood was a gray-clad soldier, his face contorted in a murderous grin, his bayonet dripping blood. Adam’s blood.

“No!” Joe called out. “Adam!”

The soldier clutched Joe’s arm, preventing him from dropping to his brother’s side.

Joe glared at him, the vengeance he’d seen in Adam now burning hot through his own veins. Blue against gray. Gray against gray. It didn’t matter. The uniform said nothing of the man. And Joe’s only sworn allegiance was to his family.

Joe would kill him. He would kill Adam’s murderer right there on Hell’s battlefield.

With no weapon except his own hands, Joe dove forward. Or…tried to. The soldier held him back with ease, a strong hand wrapped now around each of Joe’s arms. He laughed, forcing Joe to look at him, to meet his eyes, to see…himself.

Joe was looking at himself…a Confederate soldier…his brother’s murderer…a man he could never have imagined himself becoming.

It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be.

Hell. He was surely and truly in Hell.

“Adam!” he shouted.

And those strong hands grew stronger. No longer holding him back, they began instead to pull him up…until Joe opened his eyes to look into his brother’s. Into Adam’s.

Adam was alive.

The battlefield was gone.

They were at home. In Joe’s bedroom.

“Are you all right, Joe?” Adam asked, with love, compassion…and even remorse evident in his gaze.

“A dream?” Joe asked, breathless once more.

“A nightmare is more like it.”

“We were in the war. You for the Union, me for the Confederacy.”

Adam’s eyes went wide…almost as wide as they’d gone the instant before….

Joe scrunched his own eyes closed, fighting against the image of his brother’s death.

“I…killed you,” Adam said, sounding as breathless as Joe felt.

Joe looked at him again, and saw a mirror of his own terror. “No! You tried, but…I killed you, instead.” The words could barely come. He had to force them out of his constricting throat.

“I mean in my dream,” Adam corrected. “I killed you.”

“You…you dreamt we were in the war?”

Adam nodded. A moment later, he cleared his throat. “I suppose the news of the war has been hitting a little too close to home, lately.”

“You know I would never—”

“I know. And neither would I.”

“The dream seemed so real. But I couldn’t….” Joe shook his head, unable to say more.

Adam pulled his shoulders back. “That’s all it was,” he said decisively, perhaps to convince himself as much as Joe, “a dream.” Still, there was something in Adam’s gaze that made it clear he, too, had been shaken.

“Adam?” Joe waited until he saw Adam’s tension ease into curiosity. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For everything. For…anything. When we fight, it’s not…. I could never hate you, Adam. I could never….”

“I know.”

“But those men. Brother against brother….”

“I know.” Adam’s voice was strained now. “Sometimes, there are bigger things than….” His voice trailed off, the sentence left unfinished.

“No,” Joe pronounced. “Nothing could ever be big enough to make that us.”

“I hope you’re right, Joe. I really do.” The sorrow was back then, the same sorrow Joe had seen in his brother in the dream…that he had felt himself…in the dream.

“I am right,” Joe insisted.

Adam looked at him sadly for a long, quiet moment. Then he nodded, and, grasping Joe’s arm, pulled Joe into an unexpected…uncharacteristic…embrace. Joe could almost believe he was a child again, a little boy being comforted by the big brother who could always make everything right again, who could always help him to find the sense in things. But how could they ever make sense of all of this? Of a war pitting brother against brother? And a dream that was so real Joe could still feel the sting of his wound?

“How?” Joe asked after his brother pulled away again. “How could we have the same dream?”

Glancing toward the blackness of the cloud strewn autumn night beyond Joe’s window, Adam shook his head before returning his attention to his little brother. “We talked all evening about the war. Hoss and Pa probably dreamt about it, too.”

“No,” Joe decided. “Not the same dream. Not like us. Not what we…did…to each other.”

“I imagine that’s true.”

“But why did we?”

Adam tried to smile. “Because I’m a Yankee granite head, and you—”

“Maybe,” Joe tried a smile of his own. He failed. Whatever humor they had found over time amidst the battles of words—and sometimes fists—they’d often shared, Joe could see no traces of humor now. “But….” Words still eluded him.

“Never,” Adam said, sounding more optimistic than before. “It could never happen.”

“Never,” Joe repeated, his own confidence slipping.

“I’m serious, Joe. I almost left once before to make sure it could never happen. I would do it again, if I had to. I would put distance between us before I would ever….” Adam looked away again as his voice began to break. “Ever….” He shook his head, clearly unable to say anything more.

“You shouldn’t have to leave,” Joe argued. “Don’t ever let my thick-headed stubbornness force you to make a decision like that again.”

“You’re not thick-headed, Joe. And I can be every bit as stubborn as you.”

“But?” Joe prodded, though he was concerned about what might come next.

“But, brothers though we may be, we are two very different people, with different thoughts, different ideals….”

“But we’re brothers, above all.”

Adam looked sadly back at him. “Seems like there are a lot of brothers fighting in the war who would have believed that themselves once.”

“We’re not them,” Joe declared. “And we’re not there. And even if we were, I would fight with you, not against you.”

For a long while, Adam said nothing. Then he nodded. “I like to believe I would do the same.”

“Then believe it as much as I do.”

Adam nodded once more, and then rose. Joe noticed him cringing slightly as he did so, one hand hovering over his stomach.

“What’s wrong?” Joe asked.

“Nothing,” Adam answered lightly. “I must have just….” He glanced away, but Joe could see a mirror of his own uncertainty. “Must have scratched myself in my sleep.”

“Let me see,” Joe asked, rising to stand beside his brother.

“There’s no need. It’s nothing.”

Deciding it was time to explore his own…scratch…Joe lifted his nightshirt, moving to stand in front of the mirror. And there, marking the journey of Adam’s bayonet, Joe could see a red, jagged line trailing from his breastbone to his navel. It wasn’t the gash he’d felt in the dream…or, at least, it was no longer fresh. In fact, it looked to have been healing for quite a while—a wound he could not have overlooked during all the days of its healing.

He was still studying it…trying to make sense of it…when Adam stepped up beside him, showing that he bore the same, jagged mark.

“It isn’t possible,” Joe whispered.

“No,” Adam whispered back, “it isn’t.”

“Then how…?”

“I don’t know. And I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.”

They stared at each other, watching their matching wounds fade from red to pink, certain that by morning there would be nothing left but the jagged edges of a shared, strange dream.

“What if…,” Joe started. “What if it happens again?” Joe didn’t dare ask the rest. What if it happens again, and this time one…or both of them…fails to wake up?

“It won’t.”

Joe studied his older brother’s eyes until Adam’s confidence began to seep in, becoming his own. It would never happen. Not again. Not ever, whether in reality or in dreams. Because they had vowed to one another that it never could….

…Because, above all else, they were brothers.

“Believe it as much as I do,” Joe had told his brother. And he believed it with everything he had.

It was like that tree falling in the forest, Joe decided. Of course it would make a sound. God would hear it even if no one else was around. Just like He’d heard Joe and Adam.

It could never happen.

XxXxX

~end~