Chapter Text
When there was nothing left to burn, we sat on the ground and watched the fire consume and purify the place where we had endured so much suffering, like scouts watching a campfire.
- The Book of Joseph
The barn burns bright and fast, dry grass feeding the greedy flames as spooked animals smash through fences and stampede through their foster mother’s vegetable garden. John lets out a wet laugh as a cow stumbles through the fragile bush of blooming white flowers alongside the house. She had made John kneel in grits for nine hours once after his toddler clumsy body had fallen into them, snapping the thin green branches.
She was too busy screaming to fuss over them over.
Joseph stares at the burning building, cheeks sticky with sweat. His mouth moves, a whisper of something. Jacob can’t hear anything over the roar of the fire; the violent crescendo of his heartbeat ringing in his ears, but he feels it.
The shift of before and after. This moment has fractured the fragile equilibrium of their existence, the edge him and his brothers have hung from since their father condemned them to a life of grasping breathes and tightly clenched fists. Jacob can’t gather the pieces of their shattered rift, can’t steady their sinking descent.
When Joseph turns to look at him there is a stranger lurking behind his eyes. A creature they exorcised with a match and a child’s grief. An intruder that crept along the cracks and stuffed itself inside Joe. It has burrowed in the very marrow of his brother.
This is the first time Jacob fails Joseph.
Jacob comes back to his brothers in pieces, scraped off the fly trap sticky floor of some homeless shelter in Georgia. John finds him half mad, ghosts of childhood clawing up his throat. John is oil slick words and half-truths as he shoves Jacob's meagre amount of belongings into a sleek navy blue suitcase. He still talks a mile a minute, his words running into each other as he lays out a lifetime of moments into the five minutes it takes for him to pull Jacob and his whole life out of their pint-sized hometown. His baby brother had traded in the blades and lighters for designer drugs and a law degree, weepy baby blues for blown out pupils, and their father's wrath for the greedy mouth of lust. John doesn't ask about his scars, just gathers him into a black SUV and presses too warm hands to his face.
Jacob crowds John's air space, running his hands through John's hair like he could singlehandedly turn back the clock. Like he could run back through the years apart and lap up all the moments he had missed. John doesn't pull away or turn his face, as desperate for contact as Jacob is beautiful John, his weak baby brother is alive alive alive breathing surviving.
"Joseph?" Jacob croaks out, voice wobblily and uneven, a record skipping. John leans back slightly, his blue blue blue eyes sparkling. The driver shifts, leather creaking as he looks steadfast forward. An interloper in their private reunion. Jacob itches to reach out and snap his neck. It would be easy, quick. But one of them would have to drive and that meant untangling; separation. The idea makes his scars ache and burn, healed skin ready to split open. What would hurt worse? An IED or putting space between him and John? Fire melting flesh or Johns tattooed fingers too far to reach?
Jacob grips John's neck tighter, question answered before it had even been fully birthed.
"He's waiting for us, Jacob. He's been waiting this whole time for us to come home, so we can be together like we were always meant to be. He has a plan for us and we'll never be apart again. No one will be able to separate us again. Not even God himself." John's voice is honey poured into his ears. Joseph is waiting for him.
Joseph; his Joseph.
Joseph is waiting for him. Little Joe with knobby knees and a belly full of ghosts is alive and waiting for him. Jacob lets out a pained keen, more animal than man. Jacob had gone off to war with two dead brothers and a death wish. He had come back with a belly full of meat and his brothers breathing.
He wonders if this is how Mary felt, if the sight of her son crawling out of his stone grave had sent her howling in grief, in victory of a returned soldier.
Maybe faith was a homecoming wrapped in words of gospel.
Joseph is no longer a too-tall teenager with limbs stretched tight over bones. He has grown into himself, handsome and cutting. He’s waiting when the SUV pulls down a dirt driveway, still as stone. Standing under the hot Georgian sun, glowing, waiting.
This is the new Joe, the one John says found his purpose. “His peace.” Impatient, wrathful Joe tucked into the shoes of Father Joseph. A proper man of god, a sinning widow, a grieving father.
So many new roles for his little brother to play. Joesph could always act.
John vibrates next to him, heat drips off him in waves. He pushes Jacob against the door, all hot breath and a racing pulse. Little eager John always chasing after his brothers like a hungry dog.
Weak,hopeful John.
Jacob grips John’s arm to steady him but can’t rip his eyes away from Joseph’s lone silhouette. The yellow glasses, the clasped hands, the rosary dangling from his scar covered wrist. A perfectly manicured image and story. The same way Jacob’s scars told strangers ‘ danger’ ‘predator’ ‘dangerous’.
Joseph’s story was this; a faithless man meets Faith and marries her, becomes a good man for her. Returns to gods fold and dedicates himself to the righteousness that had gotten them beat as children. Joseph impregnates Faith, and two become three. Joy and rejoice for the happy couple. Until disaster strikes, stealing Faith and their Hope from his grasp. Cruel God forcing Joseph on a new path, a path of forgiveness. A new calling. Joseph the father after all.
Joseph had been a dramatic child, prone to fits of rage and hysterics whenever the gravel of their childhood got under his skin. Little Joe the Liar . He had been deceitful and cruel, words sharper than any knife. Jacob had been the one to protect them but it was Joe’s lies that had saved them.
It was Joseph the liar who waited for them at the end of the long driveway.
Jacob grips John tight too tight he’s hurting him god he’s hurting him as the car rolls to a stop. He pushes the door open with a sharp tug and jumps out, Joseph’s tranquil performance breaks as he and John tumble out of the backseat. Joe takes a hesitant step towards them, as hungry with desperation as either of them. Jacob doesn’t even realize he’s runningdraggingtrapping John with him until he’s colliding with Joseph. All three of them fall to the ground under Jacob’s weight, dragged down to the hot dirt of course they do Heavy Strong Jacob would drag them all to hell with him. Someone is laughing crying and Joseph is dragging his face closer to lay fever hot kisses on his brow.
“Jacob, my brother, you’re home. You’re finally home.” Joseph’s voice is low; cool ice sliding down Jacob’s damp neck. There is no before this moment, and there will be no after. There is only this, Jacob Seed alive in the dirt of Georgia in the arms of his dead but breathing brothers. This is why he didn’t die fighting someone else’s war, why he had stuffed his belly full of meat in the desert to survive.
Yes, he’s sure this is what Mary must have felt.