Free Cicada by J. Eric Laing Page A

brother’s passing. Pitted small and alone against the cruelness of the indifferent world ; that was how as a girl she’d often romanticized him, a cord of her brown locks pressed between her lips. A simple and childish enough outlook, of course, but then again, that’s all she was at the time.
    As if he meant to be true to Frances’s newfound imaginings, John Sayre did change after his brother died. He shed his childhood and childish ways in one unfortunate afternoon and never spent another day looking for where he’d left such behind. After the death of Walter, John’s mother no longer had to complain about clothes on the bathroom floor, or to finish his plate. No ridiculous radio shows squawked about masked crime-fighters or swashbucklers from the crackling family radio. One morning his comic books were in a box on the back porch. When asked, John said he was taking them to school to give to some younger boy. If the sports broadcast ran late, not once did he plead to stay up to hear the game’s conclusion. Even when his mother and father suggested he could, he shrugged the offer off and made for bed. And never again did his father have to threaten to be sure that John rose before the sun to see to his chores. He worked at his chores—and even things his father didn’t expect of him, when he saw they needed done—and he buried his nose in his studies. He didn’t carouse and sneak off to drink beers and try cigarettes as the others his age. And girls apparently were of no concern.
    “It’s more like both of them died,” one young cousin remarked sardonically—and a bit too loudly—over that year’s Thanksgiving dinner at the Sayre’s. For his pithy insight, that garrulous boy received a sound thrashing at the end of his father’s belt strap once he and his family had returned home. Later that night, between the covers of their bed, that cousin’s mother and father had agreed with their boy’s observation.
    But John was far from perfect. Besides his disinterest in the fairer sex—something that eventually would greatly trouble his parents—he at once became sullen and moody, given to long days of silence. He labored through what remained of his youth with an intensity that left three other classmates with black eyes or chipped teeth for their rude slights. After that, the other boys minded John’s boundaries. Had it not been for the fact that his studies improved greatly—he became a straight A student almost overnight—John might have been expelled for his volatile temperament. Also to his benefit, he brought his barely-bottled tempest onto the playing field. Throughout high school John was to be his many coaches’ favorite. He was captain of both his football and baseball team, and during his reign his teams were for the most part victorious, with much of the credit due to the young man who suffered little foolishness either on the field or off. It was a demeanor that made all the girls, especially Frances, swoon, but it was a passage of youth enviable only from the outside, only in appearance.
    By his mid-twenties, John Sayre was a man admired, looked upon with countless approving nods as a man’s man. He was at once quiet and strong, of steadfast character and no-nonsense to the core. Who among them did not envy his character and wish that if not they, then perhaps their sons, might be more like him? The truth was, however, all of those admirable traits were sown from a ground of shame and guilt. At his foundation he was a coward with his horrible lie tucked away and buried beneath a façade. And this was undeniable because in his heart that was how he perceived himself. Not one but John Sayre knew that he was the saddest excuse for a man that most men would ever meet.
    The truth of the matter was that John Sayre wasn’t dealing with the mere guilt of a hunting accident. He had loved his brother, yes, but he also at times had despised him; upon occasion he’d fallen bitterly jealous of him.