An Illusion and a Dream

He lay on his back, hands behind his head, and watched the trees from his vantage point in the grass. Chirping surrounded him, and he closed his eyes to block out the glaring sun. The house behind him was a small white farmhouse-style place, painfully clean and astonishingly bright. The door was partway open, though no noise could be heard from inside. A hose coiled around the wooden porch and shone in the sun. He wished he could splash himself with the hose as he would have long ago (before it happened—), but instead he settled deeper into the prickly grass.

Sunset approaches slowly in the summertime. The crickets start their rehearsal at five, and by the time the trees catch fire at seven or eight, a full chorus of thousands echoes and harmonizes across streets and yards and houses. The sound mingles with the evening church bells, charmingly antique and cheerful in the steamy summer weather. Two dark-haired, dark-eyed little boys squeal and chase each other on the big lawn as the day gets cooler and evening approaches. Bubbles and baseballs. Tag and chalk.

The church bells began to chime, and the young man sprang up as if burned and started sullenly down the bumpy road, without so much as a backward glance towards the whitewashed, impeccably clean house. His path was not straight; he didn’t seem to know where he was going. All of a sudden, he darted into the trees behind someone’s house and began trudging down the forest pathway—

—and they charge down the forest pathway, hooting and whistling, their pirate gear slowing them down as the younger one stumbles over a log after the elder, who dances and laughs as he makes his way through. They stop at a small, clear pond, panting and giggling. The younger one immediately pulls his sandals off and sticks his feet in the cool water. The elder one follows suit, and soon they find themselves ankle-deep in deliciously fresh pond water. The younger one tumbles over onto his bottom, and the older one rolls his eyes and with fraternal camaraderie lifts his little brother up. They clamber out of the pond and lay on the rocks close by, making faces into the water.

“Where do the pictures come from?” asks the younger one innocently.

“They’re not pictures,” replies the elder, momentarily savoring his unique knowledge. “They’re illu-jins. They’re not real.”

The little boy’s eyes are wide. “Can I touch it?”

His brother shrugged in response, and the little one reached out his hand to stir the water into ripples…

The still pond burst into life as the handsome, fine-boned was shattered by a stone. The boy stood there, making no sound except quick, heavy breaths until the visage of his scowling face began to come clear again in the water. He turned away and ran out of the glade, ran away from the house, and kept on running until he reached an empty street. The sky was beginning to pinken, and most cars were parked in their driveways. He was grateful that the street was empty; noise was not something he felt up to dealing with at the time.

“I understand you have differing opinions from the rest of your family, Johnny?” asks the school counselor.

He nods his assent in a bored manner. “Yeah. Politics.”

“Does this cause rifts between you? Do you get along with your parents?”

“Yeah, fine.”

“What about your brother? I suppose you and your younger brother must fight a lot, Johnny—”

“We don’t.”

She laughs; he wants very much to strangle her. “Oh, come now, don’t be sullen. How do these fights make you feel?”

“Shut up. Shut up!” He blinks, and breathes deeply. “Sean and I don’t fight, okay? We don’t fight, shut up, what the hell would you know about it, anyway? Only when he gets into his bloody illusions about courage and patriotisms and his honor-fests and my parents smile and nod and put up with that bull—that’s when—but we don’t fight, we never fight! Just—disagreements. Some of the time. No fights.”

He heard a whirr and hum in the distance, like the sound of a large vehicle approaching. He kicked a stone in front of him, trying to distract himself, to look nonchalant as the truck rolled by him. The façade came crashing down, however, when he glanced up and saw the side of the huge blue truck that came rolling down the same road it drove down four years ago, the same road it drove down every time it wanted to take with it fathers and sons and uncles and friends and lovers and--and sometimes even brothers.

Sean laughs, and makes to pitch his ice cream cone at his older brother, who dodges the fake stroke neatly. They both engage in a play scuffle that is cut short due to their awareness that their ice cream is melting, fast.

“Calculus, huh, little bro?” Johnny asks, his question stilted by the rivulets of chocolate that drip down onto his hand as he tries to lick them, somehow retaining the his gracefulness, making the maneuver look messy and charming at the same time. The group of girls down the street that noisy Saturday who giggle as the two rather popular brothers go by are a testament to that.

“Yeah, it’s a killer,” Sean replies, glancing slightly abashedly at the girls his brother’s age or older who are glancing at the pair occasionally from across the way. “Useless subject, I say.” He shoots a mischievous look at his older brother. “Can’t imagine an idiot who’d choose to take it again in college. Voluntarily. Can you?”

Johnny cuffs him on the back of the head as a truck starts turning into the street. The two boys move from the side of the street up onto the curb, and watch the truck as it passes. Sean is looking at it with thoughtful interest and a bit of eagerness. Johnny takes one look and promptly bursts out laughing.

The truck is plastered with a V-formation of military privates looking seriously into the camera. They all look the same—white skin, blue eyes, maybe gray. In the very middle and tip of the V, however, a black private is looking straight ahead with the exact same expression.

Johnny’s exploding laughter turns into snickering after a while. “See that, Sean? That’s what they teach you in the army; diversity’s symmetrical!” He starts hooting again, knowing that there couldn’t have been a better way to get Sean riled up if he had tried to find one.

Sean hasn’t heard him, though, but he turns around to Johnny a minute later. He doesn’t say anything, and is not smiling.

Johnny’s look fades into one of incredulity. “Don’t tell me you fall for their bull!”

Sean’s expression turns serious suddenly as he looks at his brother. “Don’t you believe in honor and courage?”

“Not the way they see it!”

Sean almost smirks in disbelief. “What’s the difference the way anyone sees it?”

Johnny takes a deep, steadying breath. “Courage is only courage sometimes. There are people—the army—the idiots toss the word ‘honor’ around! Honor and patriotism are not interchangeable, Sean!”

“When my country needs me—”

“Neither are honor and jingoism! And don’t try talk to me of bravery or honor! They don’t even believe it themselves, the bureaucrats who just want to sell it off so they can recruit—””

Sean turns away from him. “I know what’s right, Johnny.”

“You know what? I don’t think you do, you little idiot! Will it take you getting killed to understand that?” He throws his Coca-Cola bottle against the wall. It smashes. “Fine, then! Go off and find out yourself who’s right and who’s dead!”

Sean’s disbelieving expression turns furious. “What do you want from me?”

“I want you to use your head once in a while. The right way.”

“Yeah? And what was that other stuff you said? If it gets me killed, is that it?”

Johnny doesn’t answer, and Sean opens his mouth, closes it, makes a disgusted noise, and stalks off. Johnny can hear him running after he turns the corner.

His face turned into a fierce scowl at the sight of the blue truck. “Damn you!” he spat under his breath, too infuriated to even yell.

He brushed his hair out of his eyes, and looked at the truck again. All the faces became Sean’s, staring back at him blankly from the face of the truck. He shuddered. Self-deluded boys like his brother went off to fight for the illusion of a dream, for the right reasons but the complete wrong ones at the same time. And then they found out the hard way that it was only about their dreams the first time they saw a battlefield, and after that they had other excuses to kill again and again…

The truck started up again and started to roll quietly down the street. The sky was overcast again, rain waiting to fall. Johnny leaned against the wall, and then things started to blur.

“What do you want, Johnny?” asks the counselor. “What is it that you want?”

“I want the truth,” he replies staunchly, and suddenly Sean is standing in front of him. “I don’t want to be blind like you!”

We regret to inform you…

“There used to be honor in the world, Johnny. Remember?”

…that your brother Sean, on the twenty-first of October…

“The high talk of honor and courage they’re selling you is a dream. An illusion. A fantasy, Sean. It’s a lie. It’s for dreamers like you who think they can get back—glory, or chivalry, or something stupidly noble like that, and that’s all very well, Sean, but they’re selling you something that can’t be if you go about it the way they offer it to you.”

…perished in combat from a wound to the chest…

“What do you want from me?” Sean yells.

…and a wound to the leg, and excessive bleeding…

Johnny steps forward. “I want—I don’t want you dead, is what I want. Or stupid.”

…he died an honorable death, defending his country…

“Do you fight with your brother, Johnny?”

…courage…

“Shut up!”

…freedom…

“Don’t talk to me of bravery or honor! They don’t even believe it themselves, the bureaucrats who just want to sell it off so they can recruit—”

Sean turns away from him. “I know what’s right, Johnny.”

“NO, YOU DON’T!”

And then the street was empty, except for a half-torn brochure picture lying in a puddle on the sidewalk. The picture—one of a dark-skinned man flanked on both sides by identical blonde privates—sank into the mud and was immersed in water within minutes as Johnny walked away.