blood brothers

what do you do with a friend who won't share? how can you make them understand that it's inpolite not to? this is the problem i have with hank. he just won't share! and it's not fair!

growing up, hank and i were best buds from the beginning! i moved into the house next door when i was 3, and we have been going strong ever since. i am 10 now, he is 11.
boy....that's a life time, isn't it?

we first got to know each other when our mom's became friends. then our dad's got to know each other, and it was all over then. inseperatable. some people even used to say we shared a brain! i think that's SO funny, don't you?

when we got a little older, and could go off by ourselves, we used to go on adventures all by ourselves. what mischief we would heap upon each other!

you have to understand, we lived in the country! way out in the boon-docks. dirt roads and all. gee wiz,we had to walk a mile from the bus stop to our houses after school! and good golly, when it rained....the mud puddles where heaven! no car could come down that road, i garuntee that!

the first time we had to share anything was summer before last. glory be, what a summer that was. we had a new family move in to town, and nobody liked them. they were what most would call "poor white trash". i didn't know what that meant. weren't we all poor and white? the trash part....who knows? but even though nobody in town liked them, they had great kids! 2 boys and a girl. all around our ages. and they did love to plunder and have adventures. we would be out from dawn to dusk, everyday, until supper time. it was a great summer. the smell of honeysuckle and the sight of fireflies! that's what summer's all about, i can tell you!

well, anyway, that summer, hank asked me if i wanted to share something special with him. i of course jumped at the chance. hank could be selfish sometimes. we rarely got treats, because our folks were so poor, so most times, shareing was out of the question.

he took me down the path, back behind his barn, and through the wood. we came up to the creek where we liked to swim, and crossed it to the other side. we were going pretty far away from home, which we sometimes did, but this time it was already getting dark and if we were late, we would get our behinds tanned for sure.

i should tell you i was so excited to be going on this adventure. i couldn't imagine what in the world hank had to share that was so far away! we came to a pile of sticks and leaves, and hank dropped to his knees and started brushing aside everything. underneath all the debrie was one of our playmates! the girl! the pretty little girl! she had a great big goose egg on her forehead and hank said it had been an accident. he said he just didn't know what to do. so he covered her up, and came to get me. i finally REALLY looked at him....i couldn't believe what was happening.....and i noticed a dried trickle of blood coming down from one corner of his mouth. i got scared. the little girl was dead, and if hank was hurt, how could i get help all by myself?

hank assured me he wasn't hurt, and ponted to the little girls arm. he had taken a bite out of her! can you believe that? this is what he wanted to share with me!

hank is older and a little bigger than me. the look in his eyes scared me a little. he looked like he was seeing the county fair all lit up for the first time. you know that feeling?! where you see the rides all lit up and you can smell the candied apples and the cotton candy? almost like you are outside yourself?

well, i took a bite for myself! after the initial shock of it all, it wasn't half bad. and hank said if we kept it secret, and pinky swore to never tell anyone...then we would never be hungry again! i could go for that. times were hard, and didn't look to get much better!

so all that summer, we would share! once in a while someone's young'un would go missing and couldn't be found. but like i said, times were hard and life goes on.

then, i noticed this summer, hank was going off by him self, without me. can you believe that? i asked him what he was doing, and he said "nothing" and went about his business. i got mad. i mean we were like brothers...blood brothers....and now he was ignoring me.


so one day, i followed him. through the woods and across the creek. to the same place he took me that very first day, summer before last.

there in the brush ,was the remains of people i didn't even know! what was he doing? "hank!", i shouted. "what in the world have you done?"

he only stared at me with eyes that sunk in and a look of someone completely lost. i saw for the first time i had lost my brother.

i looked around and found a large round rock. i struck hank in the back of the head and he went down with a quiet thud into the leaves. i rolled him over and hugged his neck. a tear rolled off my check and onto his chest as i took a bite out of the soft aea under his chin.

what DO you do with someone who won't share? how can you make them see how impolite it is not to?