Anton Pol

Antagonist background story.
Anton Pol

Silo Pol lies death-like still in the darkened room. His eyes are closed. An oxygen tube runs from a clear plastic mask over his nose, down along his neck, then disappears beneath the bed-sheet atop his torso. Other tubes run across the top of the sheet at his chest and along both of his arms and wander off into buzzing machine shadows beside the bed. A squiggly green line dances on a heart monitor’s screen to a metronome of beep, beep, beeps, and throws a mystic glow upon the solemn face.

Anton stands in the doorway looking in at this. He cannot hear his brother breathing, but he can see the white sheet covering his stomach, rising and lowering and then stopping. Just stopping. Anton waits and watches from the doorway for the sheet to rise again. It’s like waiting for someone to pop their head back up out of water.

A clear memory flashes into Anton’s mind. A memory of an early morning long ago. A memory of what turned out to be the last time he saw his brother until now, what, fifty some years later?

He and Silo were in the bedroom they’d slept in as boys on Gilley street. Gilley Street was a street in the Bronx they shared combatively with the Polacks. On this early morning, Anton had secretly watched his older brother, his only brother, his only sibling, who was already dressed, sitting on his own bed putting on new shoes. Anton had his face hidden in the folds of his blankets, and he remembers himself watching with great interest. The thing was, it was too early to be getting dressed. Also, there was no way in hell Silo could have afforded to buy new shoes. Something was up.

Anton had been watching Silo then as he watches him now, though now he concentrates not on shoes, but on the sheet which would rise again soon, very soon, like anytime-now-soon.

There! There it goes. Up. . . Down. . .

And there it stops again. . .

That morning back on Gilley street, Anton remembers squinting his eyes to make them less likely for Silo to spot in the hazy darkness. He remembers being nervous, for he watched his brother knowing full well he was never allowed to watch his brother. Don’t spy on me, don’t look at me, don’t talk to me—these were firm rules laid out by Silo Pol. And they were enforced. Any breaking of the rules led to a back-hand across the face, maybe a kidney-punch or two, definitely an arm painfully twisted behind the back. He remembers taking the risk on this morning and wondering the whole time where Silo had gotten the new shoes. Anton knew for a fact he didn’t buy them. He had snuck them up the stairs late yesterday, and hid them high in the closet, telling Anton: “One word you die.”

Anton had been able to see in that room then as well as he can see into this room now. Now, Anton is tracing the tubes running from Silo’s wrists and chest. He is trying to see where the tubes lead, to what machines, and for what purpose. What would happen if he turned the machines off?

Back then, on Gilley Street, it had been too early to be getting out of bed and getting dressed. This alone was of interest to Anton: “Where the hell is Silo going?” That question was a good one, but not as good as the other one: Were had he gotten the new shoes?

Wherever it was Silo got the shoes, Anton knew that some poor Polack was probably there now, stumbling around in socks with his head bleeding.

Their father had yet to see the shoes, but when and if he ever did, he was sure to ask where they came from. No one bought new shoes in this family. Getting enough money to put food on the table was the ongoing and constantly strived-for goal, and one not always reached.

Anton, it turned out, was both right and wrong about the shoes. He was right they’d been stolen, they found that out that night when the police came to the door looking for Silo with a warrant in their hand. But, there was no Pollack walking around in socks bleeding about the head. There was, however, a nigger up on Townsend found dead with an indentation the size and shape of a baseball bat sunk into the back of his nappy head. The murder, they believed, happened after the darky had bought new shoes, Jordan Classics, at the Nike store over there next to the Waffle House. The last anyone in the store saw of the young spook, he was walking West on Townsend with the shoes in a box, and the box in a bag and a big blue-gummed smile on his shiny orangutan face. Silo, it was explained, had been seen in the vicinity. This is what the cops had told them. “Seen in the vicinity.” And with a baseball bat, they added. And, “Give him up now,” they said to his father, “things will go a lot smoother for your son. . .”

Anton looks up and down the hospital floor outside his brother’s door and comes into the room. He shuts the door quietly. At the bed, he leans down close to Silo’s face. He whispers, “Silo. . . Silo. . .” Then, louder, “Silo, you piece of shit!”

Nothing moves, nothing happens, just the beep-beeping of the machine. A bag on a hook hangs over the bed. Anton looks closely at the clean shaven, peaceful face. His brother’s face. The face of an old man now, but the same face. The same grotesque lips that could at a moment’s notice turn into a thin, blood-chilling smile, which meant bruises and pain were soon to follow. This old man lying here now was the boy then who had been the scariest individual Anton had ever, and would ever, encounter. This was the boy Anton awoke to every morning, not knowing what to expect from the day in the way of beatings, or soul wrenching ridicule.

Anton lowers the sheet exposing his brother’s chest and stomach. There is white tape securing round rubber discs in three spots on his chest. There is tightly wrapped gauze around his stomach where the bullet entered. Using his thumb, Anton presses hard on the thick center of the gauze and watches Silo’s face as he does this. Nothing happens. Nothing changes. There is no anguished moan or facial grimace. The beeping of the machine continues: Beep-beep. Beep-beep. Beep-beep.

Silo Pol had disappeared that morning and had not shown up at school. His name was not brought up at the dinner table that night where Anton and his parents ate in silence after the cops left. There was no mention by Anton of the shoes. He never said a word about them; not then, not later. The repercussions would be too great. For fifty years Anton had waited in agonized dread for something that he was sure would one day happen, but never did; his brother’s return.

There is a monitoring sleeve taped over the index finger of Silo’s left hand. Anton believes it is the source of the beeping machine. He removes the tape and puts the sleeve over his own index finger. The beeping sounds basically the same, though it is quicker now.

Anton pulls from his jacket pocket a small and wrinkled brown bag and brings from it three syringes already loaded with different rat poisons and weed-killers, some bleach, then steps toward the hanging bag where he carefully injects one syringe after another into the hole set there for that purpose. He steps back to watch the results.

When it happens, it happens so quickly and violently that Anton is startled. He sees his brother’s face change, then his torso rises high off the bed to hold there stretched out until his legs begin to shake in rapid and quivering agony. A moan comes from Silo, and it is the sound of anguish like a wolf’s howl, filling the room as the body and legs thrash up and down and side to side in constant motion.

Anton smiles. He knows he should get out of the room, but his attention is riveted to the whole of the convulsing body now rigid and nearly suspended in air. The eyes are open! Now the mouth! A high scream follows and makes the piercing sound air makes squealing from a balloon’s nozzle. The awful sound fills Anton with momentous glee. Never has he known such joy! He wants to stay, to watch longer, to listen longer, to soak in the sight of his brother’s agony, but no! He must leave the room now. He pulls the sleeve off his finger and throws it toward the bed, then opens the door just long enough to rush out. The hall is empty and he sees no one at the nurse’s station. He closes the door quickly to contain the screams inside. Then he makes himself walk not run down the hallway away from the quiet desk of the nurse’s station. He doesn’t walk quickly, nor slowly. He keeps his eyes on the linoleum floor. He wants to keep his face hidden from the cameras above his head. He tries to look natural, but he can’t stop smiling.