Free Boy on the Wire by Alastair Bruce

stick in his hand and they were standing over something in the road. I could not make out what it was and, taking another look back at the house, went to join my brothers.
    It was a dog, not a mark on it, at least nothing I could see. Its eyes were closed. I thought – more and more of this scene is coming back to me – it could be asleep. I stepped forward, then knelt by the dog, slowly reaching out a hand. I was dimly aware of my brothers behind me but I was focused on the dog, willing it to open its eyes. Someone, I do not remember whether Peter or Paul, reached out to its haunches and shoved it, making a barking noise at the same time. It was Peter, I remember, and it is him in the picture too. I jumped, but stumbled, falling backwards into Paul’s legs. They pushed me forward again and this time I had to put out my hands to stop falling and one of them I placed against the dog’s fur. It was still warm, but the flesh beneath was stiffer than it should have been. I remember arms holding me there, touching this animal; me, unsuccessfully, holding my face back from it. I cannot remember what I said, whether I was laughing with them, whether I was screaming at them.
    After what was probably just a second or two, they let go and walked off back to the house, Peter’s arm around Paul’s shoulder, my camera in Paul’s hand.
    Did I fling stones after them? A detail that could be the product of my adult mind and not a fact that occurred almost thirty years ago. Memories get embellished.
    These things were nothing. What boys do. Forgotten five minutes later. Children do not bear grudges.
    The third photograph is of Paul. He is sleeping. A photograph taken by a loving parent. His child asleep, growing, replenishing. Any minute now he will open his eyes and smile. He is nine or ten and the time for this is fast running out. Best cherish it. He will reach out, still half asleep, for Mommy or Daddy, and bury his face in their neck.
    The boy has golden hair. An angel. I can see this even though the photograph is faded, even though it is almost thirty years old. The hair is parted at the side and falls neatly to the left. He faces straight up from the pillow. He is smiling, as much as you can be in your sleep. I am smiling now too.
    Paul, the middle child, was favoured by both Peter and me. He was Peter’s closest companion, and he was, in many ways, the boy I wanted to be. Always laughing; almost as tall as Peter. And, when Peter was not around, we played together. It hurt that he would turn to Peter when the three of us were together, but it was natural.
    I put the photographs back in the envelope and place that in the drawer. I will keep these. Once everything is done, maybe I will hold on to these.
    I hold the other envelope, turn it over. I do not open it, but instead start to walk out of the room. In the doorway I stop, turn around. I go back to the drawer and open it slowly. I take out the photographs again and go back to the last one: Paul. The picture is different now. Where before I could see, could feel in fact, the blood in his veins, feel his breath on my cheek, now it is different. The child is dead; the body in a coffin, or lying on a shelf in a morgue. The camera excludes everything except the boy’s face and the cushion beneath it. The picture is taken from the side and above. It excludes the left side of his skull so the viewer cannot see the break. He has been expertly prepared. The hair, too neat for a sleeping child, combed lovingly, for the last time, by my mother – or perhaps by someone else, the morgue attendant, a stranger. It is hard to tell.
    How did I miss it? The pallor of the skin, the blueness of the lips. No amount of make-up could ever disguise it.
    I wonder about the photographer. I imagine my father. Maybe it was not him, but I picture him nonetheless, his hands shaking slightly, but at the moment he presses the shutter, still. Why would a father do this? How could a father do this? I picture