Blood From a Brother

In the summer of 1981, I was 13-14 years old, my brother was 9 years old.

Our home during my middle and high school years sat on the back edge of a neighborhood outside the town limits. Surrounding the neighborhood was woods and farm land, and a few barns of varied structural integrity. One of the cool things, for kids, about living in tobacco country during that time was the ubiquitousness of tobacco sticks.

Find a barn, even an old, currently unused barn, and you would find at least a dozen forgotten inch-square sticks about four-feet long. One barn on the edge of our neighborhood was a mother lode for these sticks, with probably a couple hundred stored in bundles of a dozen or so. Tobacco sticks were perfect for imaginary swords.

At the time of this story, I and a friend had “gathered” a couple of bundles from that particular old barn. We had 20-30 swords ready to go in my backyard. For days we had major sword fights among all us kids. When a stick broke in mid battle, you had to run as fast as you could to the reserve pile, while your opponent chased you with his sword raised above his head, trying to strike you down while unarmed.

We were having one such battle in and around the tree house in the woods behind our home. It was me and my little brother (on the ground) against my psycho friend (up in the tree house). We were trying to storm the castle while he was trying to keep us at bay. It was all good fun until . . .

My little brother gave a short cry of pain. I stopped my assault on the tree house to see what had happened. Brogrit was standing on the other side of the fort holding his head, at his front hairline. His stick sword was lying on the ground where he had dropped it.

He was calm but had obviously gotten hurt. We called “time” on the fight, and I walked over to check on him. I think he said, “Ow,” but he didn’t seem anything more than just momentarily stunned. Then I saw the blood trickle down from under his hand. He took his hand away from his head, held it in front of him and looked at it.

“AAYYYEEE!” he screamed, at seeing his blood-covered hand. There was a lot of blood running down his face from his hairline. “Oh crap!” I said.

The battle, of course, came to a complete end as I got my little brother around the house to the front porch. It was a weekday afternoon and our mother and step-dad were both at work. I ran in the house to call Mom.

I don’t remember the details of the phone conversation, but I do remember our mom’s car coming racing up the neighborhood street before I could hang up. OK, maybe I was woozy from seeing the river of blood pouring from my little brother’s head, and I lost track of time. It might actually have taken Mom a whole 30 seconds to drive the normal 15-minute distance. Either way, she got there PDQ.

In my shock, I don’t remember anything right after that. I think I went to my room and laid down. Mom took her 9-year-old boy to the hospital where he got some stitches in his head. (Mom or brogrit will have to fill in those details, if they wish, in the comments below.)

The next day, Mom made us take all the tobacco sticks away — even the broken ones; especially the broken ones. We weren’t allowed to have those things in the yard anymore. So ended the glorious summer of the Knights of the Tree House.

Bullgrit