The Church Home

Two brothers decide to move an old stone and log church to their farm and make it a summer home they’ll return to in the decades of their adulthood and separation. It is the last job they’ll do together on the farm before striking off in separate directions, one to become a dancer in New York City, the other to become a carpenter in the nearby metropolis.

They allot two months for the job, but it ends up taking three. The adventure for awhile masks the tension and anger they are each feeling towards the other, but finally things start to break down. They are once again bitter foes, like they were before the one went to college to learn dance.

They decide they’ll finish the summer home then sell it to a neighbor who plans to start a cheese and sausage store for tourists. One evening that is terrible in its heartbreak and hate, they sign papers with the guy.

Then they must finish together their broken, painful dream. Now they are just laborers on a job for which they’re making only a paltry profit — and both have delayed their new lives in order to do this thing together.

Now, not obligated to love one another or be great pals or even have a memorable time, they begin to do all those things — like they did when they were boys, before they were enemies. It’s like the time they build a fort of scrap lumber at the edge of the woods. They become excited about the same things, and excited about the rare experience of communion, of shared enthusiasm, of almost clairvoyant team-manship — not with a blood brother but with another human being.

They finish the house and on their last night together drive out to the place after midnight and sit on the porch looking at the stars. They have been drinking tequila but are feeling sober and clearheaded. They are sad to have given up their house, but both feel the permanent fragility of their friendship and know the house might not have bound them for long. They realize that  brother is different from friend, but believe they might still come together at times: and that might be enough. They only have to stop regretting what they can’t have.

If the angry summer and the sad dream made them see this, they feel, it was worth it.

* * *

Church into a holiday home: technical brotherhood into real brotherhood. Doesn't work. Too much a ritual. Not that they are profane but that they are being too ceremonial.

Don't live up to dreams. Just live.

When they were little the older one was hurt and bled and his blood got on the other, who felt (besides the strange revulsion of seeing mortal life nakedly exposed) that it should somehow seem like his own blood, but was frightened that it did not: that this brother of his seemed simply like one of the many other distant spirits he couldn't really touch, and he felt lonely and jealous and scared. But also, like a sneeze about erupt, a deep sob over the other boy's pain, almost wishing the injury had been to him and not his brother. ~ July 1998