Failure, why did you even try? He’s probably dead, and it’s all your fault. It isn’t my fault, it isn’t my responsibility, I did the best I could, it isn’t my responsibility. You don’t actually believe that, do you? You piece of shit.
It was dark. Gram’s eyes were closed. Laying restlessly in bed. The hunt should have started in earnest a few months ago. He hadn’t heard anything, which is precisely what would occur if Marco was safe, but also exactly what would occur if Marco was dead. He had drastically underestimated the resources hunters could burn, would burn. He had overestimated this hunter’s laziness. He had gotten so much wrong. But why would such a hunter take a no-fight anonymous contract? The best guesses he based his plan on were all garbage. Gram had been sloppy enough, left enough of a trail that his adversary could easily find him if he wanted to.
And Luna, how did he miss the danger Marco escaping could potentially cause her? He kept an eye on her just in case, though realistically, what could he do? Nothing. But if anything happened, he would do something. Knowing that you were that kind of coward, knowing for sure, that would be worse than death.
But it wouldn’t come to that. The hunter was principled, or as principled as someone who hunts the poor for sport could be. Principled and tenacious, any difficulties Gram created were more likely to excite than dismay. What if the hunter got frustrated? If the trail went cold for too long, would he change his tactics then? How fragile was his ego? Too many unknown variables, too many branching paths.
Planning had been exhilarating, picturing some rich toff banging his head yelling in frustration. But planning is one thing—you can plan that next year you’ll exercise three times a week, stop smoking, drink in moderation—when you actually have to pilot that body for months, it all breaks down. The fantasy was hard to keep. The mistakes his brain pointed out kept multiplying. His brain wouldn’t shut up. I did my best. Your best is garbage.
He had blown the money he had been saving up to move out on bribes. He considered asking Marco to at least cover those costs, but he knew if he did, Ira, the reason for those costs would whisper in his friend’s ear honeyed words of that being evidence of Gram’s betrayal. Funds exhausted, he could barely afford to go out and drink, not that he had wanted to be around others anyway, but he wanted to be around his Dad even less.
His Neutral Milk Hotel record was playing for what had to be the hundredth time that month. The blunted needle of the player had begun to distort the already scratched record. Gram realized this and did nothing.
A heavy hand hammered at the door.
“Turn that mopey shit off and get outta yer room!”
Fuck you, Dad. Gram thought, saying nothing.
The hammering and yelling continued. Gram got up, turned on a light and turned down the volume.
“I know you’re in there! This is my fuckin house an’ as long as you are squatting ‘ere you’ll do what I damn well say!”
Gram had nowhere else to go. That prick damn well knew it. He turned the music back up, as loud as it would go, and tried to focus on tinkering with some of the stuff on his desk.
The Day Gram Got his Name
– Sixteen Years Prior –
As a child, Alex Brown did not get along with his teachers, with his parents, with the other students. He did get along with Mrs. Eliza, the librarian, Mr. Tobbs, the janitor, Ms. Stikes, the lunch lady, stray animals, and Marco. Marco was a few years ahead of him, physically built like a bull, popular, attractive, good at sports. Alex had been stuck in detention with him a few times. Marco would always laugh the loudest when Gram played the clown.
One day they had been tasked with writing “I will not misbehave” one hundred times. Alex had finished the task early and began reading a book.
“What is this?” The teacher said, pointing to his sheet of paper.
“Well, you are a math teacher, so you should already know.”
“This isn’t what was asked of you.”
“Well yeah, ‘I will not misbehave’*100 is the same thing. Didn’t you teach us we should simplify expressions?”
“That’s it, detention!” Her face was red.
“When?”
“Tomorrow!”
“Oh, no…hmm…already booked for tomorrow, I’m afraid.” He said, looking through his notebook casually. “Do you have any preferences about which day of the week?”
Her face turned scarlet, “That’s it! Make it two detentions!”
Alex looked into his notebook like a maître d’ at a prestigious restaurant being asked if they could seat three. “Ohh, mmm, do you want those served consecutively? Because that could be a problem.”
As the roar of laughter filled the room, the math teacher’s face turned a rare carmine before yelling and leaving the room.
After that detention, Marco had approached him and said they should hang out sometime.
They sat outside throwing rocks. Marco made sure to demonstrate he could throw further. Alex conceded the point freely. They threw rocks in near silence until it was getting dark.
“So like why’s the sun gotta go down? Couldn’t they jus’ make it stay up there?”
“The sun doesn’t go down, bricks-fer-brains.”
“Then where does it go?”
“Well, technically, it moves in space, bu’ relative to earth, it’s standing still. We’re constantly movin’, fast at that, spinning while we move around it.”
“Doesn’t feel like we’re movin’…”
“Well, if the earth were to stop, you’d think differently of it.”
“If yer so smart, why’re you always in trouble huh? Why aren’t you out there making money?” Marco said, landing a solid hit against a nearby tree.
“I’m not that smart, Marco, yer just dense.” Alex chuckled, hitting the same tree with noticeably less force.
“Feck you!” Marco hit him on the arm, hard but playfully.
Alex hit him back, putting in as much force as he could while still making it look playful. “And even if I was, wouldn’t matter. We’re stuck.”
“Whatcha mean?”
“Let me tell ya a story.”
Marco began listening intently. Alex hadn’t guessed it when they first met, but Marco was a genuinely curious bloke.
“There once was this king, and this dragon, and this hero. The dragon hoarded a bunch of gold. King wanted the hero to slay the dragon, as heroes do, so he can take the gold, as Kings are liable to want. But the thing is, he needed a sword that could cut the damn thing. The King put ‘is best man on it, but the hero just broke ‘em like twigs against the anvil that forged them.” Alex made a gesture like he was breaking a sword on an anvil. “But this tough, he wasn’t a normal hero, his dad had dealings with the one-eyed god, that god had gifted his father with a sword of unrivaled ability, only to break it in two later so he’d die in battle.”
Marco furrowed his brow. “Makes no sense. Why give a man a sword and then break it?”
“Yeah, well, the one-eyed god was kinda a dick like that. He would ‘elp both sides, start a conflict, or give them something to make ‘em confident, just so he could take it away at the last moment, leaving ‘em vulnerable.”
“Why would ja want a god like that?”
“Dunno, gods ‘r gods, ya don’t choose ‘em. Anyway, he was a clever god. Maybe the stories are meant to remind us that relying too much on things can be a weakness. That’s why I don’t tie my shoes.”
Marco leaned back, looking up at the sky, “Bullshit.”
That was fair. In truth, Alex never could quite get the hang of tying them properly, so they always came undone. “Nah, see, the problem with an untied shoe is that ya don’t know it. So, ya trip and fall on yer face and the like. If you never rely on them being tied, you never have to worry, ‘cause you’ll always be careful. Keepin’ your shoe untied is in keepin’ with the lessons of the one-eyed god.”
Marco rolled his eyes, “Jus’ get on with it.”
“You’re the one who interrupted! Anyway. So, the hero had the two halves still and got someone to reforge it. Afterward, that sword cut right through the bloody anvil. He used the sword to kill the dragon, only to find out the dragon was the king’s brother, transformed by greed, and the king was planning on killing the hero to take the cursed treasure for himself, so the hero killed the king and inherited the dragon’s hoard.”
“So, what’s the point? Greed’s bad?”
“Point is Marco, yer dad ever give you a magic sword?”
They both laughed.
“What’s yer name anyways there Mr. Brown?”
“Alexander the Great, Augustus, Caesar, take your pick,” Alex said with a mock grand sweeping gesture.
“Blow it out yer ass.” Marco chuckled.
Mr. Stuart Brown was already well into his cups, which was not unusual given that dinner typically happened an hour or so after his work shift ended. Alex didn’t understand why his dad drank. He never seemed happy when he did.
Alex had just been reading a book on nuclear power and was talking rapidly about it—it was cool because it harnessed energy from the atom and there were all types of different designs, but it was also kind of lame because it was just boiling water to create steam to turn a turbine like everything else did. He freely used words his parents didn’t know and continued to chatter in far too great of detail despite their obvious lack of interest.
“That’s nice, dear.” His mother said.
His father sat there grinding his teeth.
“Always puttin’ on airs. If yer so bloody smart, why your grades so low?”
“ ’cause they don’t like me an’ it’s all just a bunch of repetitive busywork.”
His mom put down her fork and looked at him. “Alex, you’ll never get anywhere with that attitude. Do you want to be a guarantee worker?”
Alex looked at her, suppressing an eye roll. She said that kinda thing all the time. “I won’t, ma, I’ll be fine. Jus’ can’t deal with a heap of bullshit.”
His dad slammed his hand against the table, the plates clanked. “And what exactly do you think the real world is like? Huh? Think anyone’s gonna give a copper like you a job that ain’t just repetitive slog?”
“I’ll find something da’.”
“Sure ya will. Can’t even do yer bloody school work, but I’m sure you’ll handle a proper toil just fine. Look at’cha! Ya can’t even use a knife proper like, look bloody ‘tarded.”
Alex glared back, “You know why that is da. Is that really what you want to call me? Your own son?”
“Nah, wouldn’t dream of calling my son that. But you, my boy, you got nuthin’ of me in ya, yer a Brown as much as I’m a feckin’ queen!” His words were slurred. There was a torrent of rage behind them, a dam giving way in a storm.
Alex was confused, looking at his mom. “What’s that mean?” His Mom’s face took up a ghostly pallor.
“I’m sayin’, ya little blue-eyed bastard, that yer a feckin’ bastard! If it weren’t for the cursed neighbors, I’d ‘ave sold ya off to be one of them dolphins.” As he spoke these words, his spit aspirated across the table.
Alex was trembling at the realization, but everything made sense. Given only one grandparent had blue eyes on his mother’s side, his chance of inheriting blue eyes from his dad, while not impossible, was highly unlikely. He doubted his father could work out Punnett squares and wondered why he himself hadn’t before. However, his father knew, it must have been tragically more direct.
The table was stone silent. His dad sat radiating anger. His mom tried her best to disappear into her chair. Alex shook, staring at the spit on his plate.
Finally, Alex looked up at his dad, at Stuart. “Never was there anyone so happy to be a bastard. I’m glad I got nothing of you. Fuckin’ glad.”
“Yeah, you ungrateful little shit? I raise a fuckin’ cuckoo in my nest, and this is what I get?” His dad stormed to the other side of the table and rained a deluge of blows down upon the twelve-year-old Alex.
Standing over the bloodied boy, panting, his dad stopped, stormed past his mom—who was motionless—and grabbed a bottle.
His mom gave furtive glances at her husband. “Fuck this,” he said, taking the bottle with him to his room.
His mom ran to Alex and held him. “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay.”
Alex forced her off him and, without saying a word, walked out of the apartment. He had nowhere to go, but he’d be damned if he gave that prick the satisfaction of knowing it. He spat blood on the welcome mat.
Wandering to the park, he tried hard to hold onto his hatred. It felt warm. It felt righteous. But he just couldn’t help it. Little cracks of doubt kept forming in his shield of wrath. It must have been hard for his father. It wasn’t his dad’s fault or his fault. It probably wasn’t even his mom’s fault. Even if it was her fault, he understood all the sacrifices she must have made to that man to keep him safe.
He sat in the park, bloodied and throwing stones, doing his best to keep the rage firing in his belly. A familiar voice appeared behind him, “The fuck happened t’ you?”
Alex threw a bit of loose concrete against a tree so hard that it broke up into a dust cloud.
Marco simply sat beside him, breaking up a larger bit of concrete, giving the pair more to throw. “Ya know, we got this couch, goes t’ bloody waste at night.” He said after a while.
“Sounds good,” Alex said, throwing another bit of concrete.
Marco’s mom, Maggie, was a plump, friendly-looking lady with ruddy, rosy cheeks. “Oh dear, let’s get you cleaned up! Come in, come in.”
A six-year-old Luna peeked from behind a half-closed door. Alex forgot how badly his face was pummeled and tried to make a funny face at her, which made her promptly shut the door.
Maggie took a wet cloth, padding it to soak up the blood from his face. “What happened to ya then? You got quite the beating.”
Alex stayed silent.
“What’s yer name then, deary?”
Marco said, “That’s Mr. Brown, Augustus Cesar Alexander the Great Brown.”
“Not Brown. The name is Gram, just Gram.”
He stayed there a week before coming home.
*** Eventually, his father, Stuart stopped banging on the door, Gram turned the volume back down. He looked at the little gizmo he was making and smashed it. Then he smashed everything else around him and grabbed some tigal from the bottom drawer, drinking it with shaking hands.
Homo Economicish 