Men in the Making Read Online Free PDF Page A

feet.
    "I'll help him," Nate said, now a cool, burr-headed sixth-grader, and minutes later they emerged from the back hall together, Nate with a hand on Matty's shoulder. Anne was flipping pancakes onto plates, we all sat down to breakfast, and later Matty walked to school without his braces, his older brother at his side.
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    This past August, while Matty was packing his things for his move to college, I did some rooting around in the attic. I was digging through a hope chest, trying to find the brass cigarette lighter my grandfather had gotten as standard issue while serving in World War I. He'd given it to my father, who gave it to me, and even though my son and I don't smoke, it was the only family heirloom I'd ever had, and I wanted to press it into Matty's palm before he left me for college. Crawling out of the attic, I saw one of Matty's old braces sticking out of a box, and I took it down with the lighter.
    "You remember the day you quit using these?" I asked, and Matty smiled, his eyes bright.
    "You mean the day Nate hid them from me?" Matty said. He raised his eyebrows and nodded at the old lighter in my hands. "What else you got there?"
    In the years since Nate's death, nothing I asked of Matty had come free of charge. A few days after the funeral, I'd sat the boy down and pressed him for details about the accident. I wanted to know if he'd seen Nate after the crash, if my oldest had moved, or spoken, or if Matty had seen him breathing. Anything. But Matty just sat there, his fingers drumming the kitchen table. "I'm hungry," he said, so I took him to town and bought us a pizza. A small gesture, I thought. Hardly a bribe. His favorite dinner for an hour of conversation. At first, I thought it a harmless exercise. After all, Matty had shared a bedroom with Nate, had walked to the bus stop with him on school days, had seen him and talked with him and laughed and joked with him for hours each day while I tended to business at the mill. I couldn't help myself. I wanted these stories. I wanted the time I had missed, and over the years I found myself engaging in all kinds of bargains, buying Matty's memories of his brother. Paying for bits and pieces of Nate's history.
    Whether it was the look on Matty's face—something between a smile and a smirk—or whether my sudden bitterness rose from the fact that he was leaving me, from the sight of all his belongings boxed up and ready to move, something started sparking in my guts, a crackle of resentment for this game we'd been playing for years. I'd brought the lighter down as a gift, by damn, not a payment.
    "This," I said, slipping it into my pocket, "this is mine."
    Matty nodded and I knew that this too would have a price. If he remembered some pact between kids, he'd want to keep Nate's secret, hold on to a sacred bond with the brother he'd lost. That way, he'd have a memory of Nate that was his alone, and as much as I wanted that for Matty, or as much as I should have wanted it, the thought tripped a mine of jealousy in me. Dammit, I thought, I shouldn't have to pay for it. Shouldn't have to pay a red cent. He's
mine.
Nate's my son. "Where'd he hide them," I said, "the braces."
    Matty turned back to his boxes. He was leaving me. He already had. "I don't remember," he said. "Somewhere."
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    The year Matty left his crutches at home, two weeks before Christmas, Anne and I had it out over the dogs and the dirt bike. She was peeling potatoes at the kitchen table, her hands working furiously, independently of her eyes, which were locked on mine, keeping me from the evening paper.
    "Matty can't take care of a dog," I said. "Much less two. He's too young."
    "But Nate's old enough for a motorbike? Christ, Tom. At least the dogs are free. Mrs. Burke says they're housetrained and gentle and good with kids. And Matty
needs
them. They'll get him out of the house more often. He's the palest seven-year-old I've ever seen."
    "Get Matty the dogs," Nate said, walking in from