Kevin's Watch

THE MAN WHO KILLED HIS BROTHER, Chapter 2

There are many people on KW who haven’t yet read these books, so I am adding this spoiler warning. Already in Chapter 2, there are things that thump the reader in the chest with surprise.

In Chapter 1, we met Brew in the present moment. In between the events of Chapter 2, his inescapable memories are telling us how he got there. You will remember Ginny came to tell Brew that his niece Alathea is missing. She drags him home from the bar. Brew is “half blind with dread” about Alathea, and between Alathea and the bender he has been on for days, he isn’t capable of taking care of himself. All six foot five and two hundred forty pounds of him is at Ginny’s irritable mercy.

Ginny goes through the whole process of sobering Brew up. SRD spares us the most horrible physical details, but Brew’s humiliation and helplessness are there intact. It’s enough to scare off any borderline drinker, and this isn’t even the worst, as we see later.

Brew wrote:...having Ginny there, having her see me like this, made me ashamed on top of all the other remorse and responsibility. And there aren’t many cures for it. Sometimes work is one of them. But the only one you can actually count on is alcohol.

There is the vicious circle Brew is caught up in. The way SRD tells it, it’s not only vicious and self-disgusting, it’s tragic.

In the morning Brew isn’t recovered, but he’s determined to start anyway. Because Alathea, his niece, actually likes him. Ginny and Brew go to the house of Brew’s widowed sister-in-law Lona.

Brew wrote:...the door shut behind us, and my retreat was cut off. I felt like I’d made a fatal mistake. The voice in my head started to shout, You need a drink! It sounded desperate.

Lona hates him, but, as we see, she isn’t as hard on him as Brew is on himself. Seeing Lona forces Brew to relive, and tell us about, the death of his brother Richard. Five years ago Brew was drinking in a bar, trying to decide whether to ask Ginny to marry him. This was when they were full partners in the detective agency. He spied a man running away from a bank, shooting at the policeman pursuing him. Brew shot at the fleeing man. Mildly drunk, he missed, and hit the policeman instead. His brother. He has been in disgrace, hated, ever since. Hated most of all by himself.

Brew has come a long way down, from then to where he is now, sitting in his sister-in-law’s living room adding her silent accusations to his own and shivering in withdrawal. They learn the details of Alathea’s disappearance and Lona’s fruitless efforts to get police help. (Somewhat surprising the police won't help, considering how eager Richard’s policeman friends were to avenge his death.) They also learn Lona got a note written by Alathea, saying she would be away for a while.

Now we learn the worst of Brew’s fears, which I won't tell you, but it makes me hurt for him. It turns out not only is the note a fake, but another girl Alathea’s age ran away a few months ago, and turned up suspiciously dead.

We are first introduced to Brew’s intuition here. By the end of the chapter Brew is recovered enough from this bout of withdrawal to face Ginny down.

Brew wrote:Her face has more than one kind of blank, and this wasn’t the right kind.

From their confrontation Brew understands that Ginny thinks this case may too much for Brew’s mental balance.

Brew wrote:”Don’t do me any favors.”

Does this seem to echo another Donaldson character we know?

The chapter ends with Brew turning his back on the resolutely lower-middle-class neighborhood where Lona and Alathea live, where greenery and peace hide sorrow and anxiety.

Brew wrote:It still looked like the kind of place where nothing ever happened. It was too tidy, and there was too much sunshine.

In creating a character, SRD has an eye for the target that equals Deadeye Dick. In these chapters he is still creating his characters, and dart after dart pierces his readers in the center of our sense of truth.

Great work, Joy. I can honestly think of nothing to add.

Not quite great work, then. I should take my cue from Kasten, and leave something for other people to say.

I do wish I could convey the emotional impact of Brew's efforts to function through his mental and physical pain. There is such urgency to his concern for Alathea, and any of us would be equally concerned in the same situation, so I find myself making the efforts along with him.

Yes, very well done! Sums up the chapter and the analysis that follows is excellent! Had to read it again to find an angle to comment...and found it, took the easy way out...language...

The need(alcohol) was using a vise to squeeze sweat out of my forehead.

and one page later...

I was dripping sweat, and my head almost split open when she said his name.

SRD masterfully shows us Brew's pain and anguish during the conversation with Lona, how it accelerates until it reaches it's peak and turning-point and recedes, then Brew's instincts kicks in. He asks her how the letter was signed...Brew asks the important question...The typical SRD trait, that at the crucial point not give too much information, we don't know his thinking at this point. The question just comes with great timing...

...and this also shines with SRD and TC...

She didn't answer. I could feel the air of the living room pleading with me, raging at me, hating me, but she didn't answer.

Another thing that really gets to you is when Brew asks why Lona want them to take the job finding Alathea, and she spills right into his face...

Because you owe me!

Brew might have deserved it, and Lona was upset, but still, it was a hard thing to say...

kasten

I do wish I could convey the emotional impact of Brew's efforts to function through his mental and physical pain.

I think one of the things that strengthens reaction to Brew is the juxtaposition between his strength--him being a big guy and strong, which we are reminded of pretty frequently--and his fundamental weakness. There's pathos in that he can barely function on his own, but he feels so strongly about people in his life. Again, a common Donaldson move, especially in Covenant whose weakness is not only from his leprosy but his self-imposed refusal to help the Land (and also, arguably, in Mordant's Need's Terisia--apologies for a possible misspelling, I just read that series once a good while ago and I wasn't really engaged in it).

However, Brew's not unwilling to paticipate in a little bit of self-sacrifice in order to try to help Lorna:

I didn't have anything else to offer, so I gave her something to get mad about, hoping it woul help her hand onto herself. [And he asks her why she asked Ginny and him for help, angering Lorna.]

Despite his other flaws, like Covenant (again with the comparing, I know!), he has a lot of compassion for others. (He doesn't want to loom over Lorna when he stands, he doesn't retaliate when she shouts at him.) Perhaps a function of his own pain/weaknesses?

Ginny, on the other hand, does not wear her emotions on her sleeve and seems much more impervious, though she shows remarkable loyalty to Brew and is also taking the case out of concern for Alathea. Seems there's some rule that detective fiction must have diametrically opposed lead characters.

And a couple other TCTC points of comparison/observations:

She was small and vague and somehow brittle, like most wives of cops I've ever met. They don't start out that way. It just happens to them because they're afraid of losing their husbands, and they can't share the danger--or even the strain--and they can't feel good about it because nobody loves a cop. It's like living with a man who has a terminal disease.

I don't think this is really analagous to being or being married to a leper, but it jumped out at me anyway. A recurring Donaldson motif, I guess. It also may be referring more to the anxiety of waiting for your husband to be hurt or killed on the job, but it does touch on some basic isolation.

I spent a lot of time in the drunk tank in those days while bruises I couldn't remember getting turned black-and-blue on my ribs and face. Probably that was where I got in the habit of not letting anybody touch me.

Again with touching!

I see you got the book, W.B. I was hoping you wouldn't have to reserve it.

Good point about the touching. Brew feels unclean, too.

wrestling with my computer,

It just struck me as I read this. What kind of name is Alathea anyway? I do not think I have ever heard it used before.

It's unusual because it's so old. I think it's Saxon, or derived from Saxon.

W.B. wrote:There are some odd names in these books...

What do you expect of SRD?
[This is Joy, fumbling with the mod buttons. W.B. also had a previous sentence which I lost -- sorry, W.B. )

Oh, I do not know. Maybe things like: Thomas? Mick?

But seriously I agree. There are some strange names in these books.

Hi, Ryzel. Good to see you back. Got your books yet?

You couldn't be talking about Teresa Maria Sanguillan y Garcia, could you? An old and honored name.

Is the note really a fake or a cry for help? This book, already, drives me crazy as Puerto is clearly Albq. Lona's house could be my neighbor's...

Has he rearranged the map, or are things in the same relation to the other that they are in Alb?

It's a tad disorienting, I need to read more to get my bearings---alot of old neighborhoods tend to look the same--the bar is def the El Madrid tho...(chapter 3 tonight! )