This year, they’d skipped the prison.
They had a new obsession. They piled up rocks and put a flat one on top, then placed smaller rocks around the perimeter, creating a makeshift wall.
They would each catch a crawdad and pit them atop this rock, which they called the arena. Sometimes, you had to encourage the crawdads to fight, but it was good fun once they got going.
Today, they only pitted a few crawdads before losing interest because Cole remembered the hatchet.
“Let’s practice throwing it,” he said.
They’d both heard about Indians throwing tomahawks and figured any self-respecting boy should be able to do the same thing.
They lined up in front of an old dead tree that had snapped off years ago. It was a thick, dead stump twice as tall as them. The rest of it had washed away in a spring flood before they were even born.
“Who goes first?” Cole asked.
“Me,” Conn said. “I’m older.”
Cole rolled his eyes and laughed and handed the hatchet to his brother. Their difference in age—fourteen minutes—was an old joke between them.
It was ironic, really, that Conn was the older of the pair. Even at eight years of age, he understood that irony.
Because his brother wasn’t just better behaved. He was more responsible, too, more mature, and more patient.
Cole generally did the right thing whether he wanted to or not. At least most of the time. Though he wasn’t above blackening the eyes of neighbor kids, putting a frog in his sisters’ bed, or fooling around like they were today, throwing the hatchet at the old tree.
Conn went first. The hatchet whirled through the air, winking in the bright sunlight, and stuck in the stump with a satisfyingthunk.
Cole pulled it free and tried to replicate his brother’s feat. The hatchet struck the trunk at a bad angle, clanged loudly, and fell into the weeds.
This happened over and over and over.
Conn laughed at his brother’s repeated failures. “Let me have another turn.”
Cole handed him the hatchet.
Conn tried again and sunk the blade on the first try.
Cole frowned but didn’t give up. He was no quitter. “Let me get closer,” Cole said. “I just gotta get the feel for it.”
He stepped up close to the stump, hauled his arm back, and threw the hatchet with all his might. It hit wrong again, clanged loudly, and went spinning away.
This time, however, much to Conn’s horror, the hatchet struck his twin brother in the face.
It’s funny how, when something bad happens, time can slow down. It was a thing Conn had noticed over the years, even at that tender age, and something he saw many times over theyears that followed, how, when something dangerous happened, the whole world slowed down, letting you see and even think about things as they unfolded.
It was something he noticed in saloon brawls and especially during gunfights, these experiences coming to him years later, when he’d ridden off alone to see the world.
This day, he watched the hatchet spin, strike, and fly away, and even while the thing was still flashing through the air, he saw its path and knew it would strike Cole in the face.
He started to shout, but that’s another funny thing about those moments when the world slows down. Our eyes and minds might move at high speed, but our bodies remain slow.
At least until we train them. And at eight, Conn had not yet learned to control his body in that way.
All he could do was stand and watch that brutal chopping tool slam into his brother’s face.
Then Cole was down, and there was blood everywhere.
Conn had seen the cutting edge strike his brother’s face, so the blood was no surprise. He just didn’t know how bad it was.
