LIVING PROOF

By Jo

Bar straightened his tie while he waited for the door to be answered. It was taking a long time. Perhaps his brother wasn't at home this afternoon? He was being thoughtless, wasn't he, arriving unannounced? Maybe it would be best if he went back into town and called Sid?  Maybe he...?

The door opened with a slight whoosh of sound, melting into the curved wall somehow, someway. Sid stood just inside, buttoning his cuff, looking entirely put out. He'd been interrupted in activities with his wife and was not happy about it.

"Who....?" he began, his voice heavy with irritation. Then he saw the man standing there. "You?"

"Hello, Sid." Bar extended his right hand, which Sid did not take. "I...I hope it's all right that...that...I've come by, Brother."

Sid's upper lip curled slightly. "Portland. You were in Portland, Maine?" He knew he was right. He was simply never wrong.

Bar smiled. "Yes, that's correct. I'm so pleased you remember!"

"Who...are...you?" One of Sid's eyebrows cocked sharply.

"Bar, Sid. I'm your younger brother, Bar."

"Bar? What kind of name is Bar?"

"The town, Sid. Surely you know the town? It's the hometown of all the Harbors."

"I'm from LA."

"Oh, well, I know that, Sid, but I meant the town our ancestors are from."

"I have no ancestors."

Bar looked confused. "But, Sid, you're my half brother. Half of all my ancestors are yours."

Sid narrowed his eyes. "Look, mister. I admit I saw you once a long time ago in some hamlet far, far away, but I have no brothers, halves, wholes, thirds, none. I'm unique. An," he grinned to himself, "only child."

"Just look at me, Sid. Look at me."

Sid leaned against the doorjamb, staring at the man. "You do look similar. I give you that. What sort of hoax is this, anyway?"

Bar licked his lower lip. He hadn't expected this. Perhaps because Sid had not been raised in a loving family, perhaps that was why he was alienated from things of a familial nature? "It's no hoax, Brother. We have the same father."

Sid knew he'd had a creator, not a father. "My father is dead."

"You know, then? I wasn't sure if you would, Sid. Dad died last year, drowned off the coast during a hurricane when he was trying to rescue that crew from a lobster boat." He blinked back a tear. "They built a memorial to him, right in the town square, statue and all. You'd be proud, Sid."

Sid straightened. "Look, mister, this has gone far enough. That wasn't my father. You are not my brother." He began to turn away from the door.

"Sid!" Bar called out. "It was in his will, Sid, that I find you someday, tell you how sorry he was things didn't work out so he could raise you. Please, Sid, please. Just give me a chance to speak with you. That's all I want. I've come a long way, a terribly long way, to do that." He locked his earnest seagreen eyes on Sid's. "Please?"

"This is utter nonsense!" Sid snapped. "I have no family. Never have. It's not...possible."

"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy," Bar murmured under his breath.

"Here!" Sid said, suddenly reaching into his pocket, and in one motion so fast and smooth it was hard for the eye to follow, had opened a small pocketknife and made a cut along the side of Bar's wrist.

"Ahh!" Bar exclaimed. "What...?"

"Let me see." Bar had clamped his right hand over his left wrist. "I said let me SEE!"

Slowly, almost embarrassed, Bar let his right hand drop. A tiny flow of bluish-red blood dripped from his wrist. Sid's eyes widened.

"It's...it's kind of hard to...explain," Bar mumbled. "I have this odd blood type, Q positive. There's never been a match for it." He looked to the side. "Dad said it was because of some chemical accident he'd had when he was a young man, affected his blood, made it bluish. Said he'd unfortunately passed it on to me, only mine was redder because of Mom."

Sid was looking at him as though he had two heads. How had this happened, Bar wondered, that his odd blood type had come up so soon, so immediately after meeting his brother? "I...I guess," he sighed heavily, "you think that's too strange, huh?"

"Your last name, you say it's Harbor, Harbor and not a number?"

"A number? Oh, you mean ten! My whole first name is Barten. All the Bar Harbors have always been named Barten, but simply called Bar." He looked at Sid. "Is that what you mean?"

"Am I older than you?" Sid asked.

"Didn't the folks who adopted you in LA tell you that? Oh, Sid, I'm so sorry. Did you not know you were adopted?"

Sid smiled oddly. "I never had that mentioned to me, no."

"Dad was in California about three years before I was born. Evidently you're the result of his time in LA. When I was born, he told my Mom about it, how he'd had another son but had never seen him."

"And what did your mother think of that?"

"Mom? Oh, she was a wonderful woman, Sid. You'd have loved her. Everybody did. She mostly just worried about you, hoped you were ok. She never had any idea how to go about finding you, though. Dad was always a bit vague on who your mother was."

"She sounds like someone who took in stray puppies." He knew the type, cloyingly sweet.

"How did you know!" Bar was truly amazed. "She ran the local humane society." He smiled in fond memory of his beautiful mother. "The meals-on-wheels program, too. She was a marvel."

"She's dead?"

"Yes." Bar's chin trembled a little. "Caught dengue fever from a trip she took out to an Indian reservation four years ago."

"So now you're an...orphan? Like me?"

"You're all I have left of family, Sid, all in the world."

"You have no other brothers, no sisters?"

"None. It seems to be some quirk of fate that each generation of Harbors produces only a single son and no daughters. Our generation was the exception, Sid. Somehow Dad made two sons."

"Did he, indeed?"

Bar stretched his arms wide, managing a hopeful smile. "Here I am, Sid. Living proof that our Dad made two of us."

"Why would he do that, Bar?"

"I'm not sure, Brother. He said something to me once about something having gone... wrong...in LA. I never knew just what he meant. I always just thought that because he didn't get to raise you, he was granted the grace to have another son he could keep."

"And your childhood, Bar? You had a happy childhood, did you?"

Bar looked embarrassed again. "I don't know."

"How can you not know? Either it was happy or it was not."

"I...I had an accident about ten years ago. Dad said I fell off the town's water tank trying to get Hannity, the local drunk, from killing himself. Said I fell about 40 feet and landed on my head. When I finally woke up, I'd lost all memory of everything that happened before that moment. So you see...."

"I see you don't know if you had a childhood or not." Sid was looking more and more interested in the man.

"Had a childhood? Of course I had a childhood. I just don't remember it, that's all."

"But what you're saying, Bar, is that you have no memory of not being a fully grown man. Is that right?"

Bar nodded. "I don't see that that matters, though."

"Oh, it just may matter a great deal," Sid smiled. "A great, great deal."  He ran his eyes completely over Bar, making a decision. "Won't you come in...Brother?"