A BALL
My brother and I sit on a pile of snow looking at the yard in a certain sort of light. It’s that dim sort of winter day when the sun is obscured behind those dark clouds that smother the earth in the snowfall. I’m much smaller than him, standing to about his waist. He and I are both bundled up and I feel like I’m being swallowed by my coat. My hat is too big so that it is tilted over one eye. I look like a bit of a pirate as though that half of my face is covered by an eye patch. My parents are off to work somewhere. At the secret places they go when they have to leave us with grandma and grandpa. We have been living in their house for a couple months now. We said goodbye to our old house before the snow got here, and I snapped it behind my eyelids like a photograph. The leaves had started to fall off the trees and there was a great tree that i felt like I couldn’t see the top of sitting in the yard next to our brick red little shed. That was it. I couldn’t remember much about that house except that it was sad and sort of busted. My mom was crying about leaving that house, but it was only a house. She said something about the memories and how little baby Jordy was once there until his cries were heard no more.
But we aren’t there and when I turn my head away from my grandparents farm house and to the white covered yard my brother and I look at the unlimited quantities of snow that we can use to finish our mission. “Are you ready?” He asks me, I responded with an “Mmmhmm.” And when I struggle to stand up in my great big snow boots and am lost in the unlimited elbows of my winter coat he takes pity on me as he always does and helps me to my feet. Luke keeps me close now. He always had but now it was like he was worried that i would disappear. If I fell down he would pick me up, and if I skinned my knee he would rush to find the band-aids. But he doesn’t talk to me much. That is not one of his strongest areas. But I can tell by the gentle shoulder he lends me, and I hug an arm around him as we walk through the crunching snow.
He leans down to start the ball. It isn’t long before it becomes a boulder. He continues and I just sort of look on. There isn’t much that I can do. He is bigger and thus stronger than I am. He rolls it but I trail behind him. Stepping into the footprints that he leaves behind inside the areas of lifted snow that he has made when he rolled the snowball. Then he suddenly stops and he grunts, and pushes the huge ball a little more. His boots dig into the dirt and disappear beneath the snowfall. “Help Aaron.” He says. It is not a command.
I hesitate because if he can’t do it how can I help. “I can’t push it by myself anymore. Help me.” I turn around and look at the trail and he has made it so far around the yard. The train track of snow is so far. I had nothing to do with that. The path he had made was all his own and here I was now. I had been useless but now he needed my help. He was a god to me, and a god did not need a mortals help. He lets go of his pushing and grabs me by my arm and directs me to the snow boulder. He places my mitten hands upon the wall of the snow and he tells me to push as he does so in demonstration.
Something miraculous happens then. It moves. Together he and I, we as brothers, Luke and Aaron we make it even farther. I’m helping. My feet dig into the snow just like his and I imitate his grunting, and we are working as a unit. We have pushed this obstruction farther than I could have thought. It starts to get tougher but we keep going. My feet dig in more, and so do his, and my arms get tense just as his do. We push on through, until we can’t push anymore.
Around the yard the train track loops around in crazy motions that overlap like snakes around one another. Much of the snow has been picked up like a vacuum and absorbed into our monstrosity. And he lifts me up then and sets me atop the snow and stands beside me. And although I tower above him I know it’s only because he helped me, and I’m not better but equal because my feet are not touching the earth and his are.
We could accomplish so much he and I. There was no need for anyone else.
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