Brother on the Lamb

I taught part time at a university but most of my money came from owning a shop. I'd been in this country (not my home country) for ten years. I was a well known and respected member of society. I had permanent residency and they even let me vote in the local elections.

The facade wasn't difficult to keep up. Even though I'd used a fake degree to get into graduate school here, I did have a real degree in my real name. I had actually done the work myself. Even though my masters and PH.D. were done under an assumed name, it was still me who did the work. It had been my real research that had been published and had turned heads all over the world.

In ten years of living here I never broke the law. The only time I'd ever had any encounter with the police was when they had to give me a speeding ticket. And they were super polite about it as well. Police in REDACTED could certainly learn a thing or two by just traveling overseas for a few weeks and seeing how civilized people behave.

I'd been here for so long with no trouble and no drama that it was incredibly easy to just be myself. I didn't even think about it anymore. I didn't even bother to go get a renewed fake passport for that other country I was claiming to be from. Immigration never bothered me. I had no trouble getting a drivers license or business license or even a hunting license. A couple of years ago, the mayor of the city even asked me to be on the panel for some local ordinance thing so I was helping to make the laws now.

From a distance, and without saying who I really was, I kept track of as many of my siblings as I could. It was a difficult task and I didn't always feel like it was worth it.

If you ever wanted to meed a real life 007 you couldn't do much better than my father. You know how James Bond was always the most interesting person in a room and the moment he even walked through the doors everyone in the place immediately took notice of him. That was my dad, all the way. There were other similarities too. Just like a secret agent, my father always seemed to have a whole bunch of money and a new car every time he turned around despite not having a real job. Ah, but you say that Bond had a gun and killed people. Yeah, my dad did that. He did that a lot. Now that I think about it, the list of laws that 007 would break in a typical bond movie paled in comparison to the kind of shit that my father got down to.

The one big thing that made my father very much unlike James Bond was the fact that 007 never went to prison. At the ripe old age of 72 my father eventually got caught and put away. Yeah, he wasn't a spy. He was a hitman for the mafia. Now go back and rewatch all those old films and just imagine Bond as the bad guy and Spectre as the REDACTED justice department and you get the idea.

So where did that leave me. Well, just like James Bond, my father had a prolific, nearly fifty year career bedding women all over the REDACTED; mostly in the South East for some reason. So I came into this world with a lot of various siblings living with their various mothers all over the place. Seriously, I don't even know how many siblings I have. It used to be a matter of debate among those of us who've met each other. And I have so many stories of crazy shit happening.

Like this one time my half brother, Shelby, was working at a hotel when I was in elementary school. One day he brought over his new girlfriend Mirella and the two of them were so in love. She barely spoke English and Shelby didn't speak any Italian but somehow they just looked at each other and they knew they wanted to be together. Shelby thought that she was in the REDACTED on a student visa since she was in college. But no. She'd been born there. Eventually, Shelby's mom and Mirella's mom got together to talk because those two were so in love that they were talking about getting married. Yeah, you know what happened. They found out that they both had the same father, my father. Then there was arguing, and then not talking to each other. Then they'd never be around each other. I almost felt like my two siblings were sharing custody of me. And then in the dead of night they ran away with each other and I haven't heard from either of them since.

Anyway, I had lied and told some of my siblings that I was just a writer who was interested in writing a biography of their father. Most of them were unlike me in that they'd never even met my father. They were lucky in that. As charming as my father was in public, he was ten times as brutal in private where his real colors could come out.

I had a half sister who was eleven years younger than me. When she got out of high school and it looked like she had some brains in her head, I can't say exactly why but I really felt like I wanted to protect her. I had so many siblings incarcerated. I myself had spent the year after I graduated from college in prison. I was innocent of what I was accused of but because I was the son of my father and I'd spent my teenage years in an orphanage (since my father murdered my mom) my guilt was sort of assumed. My last name and my very long juvenile record (also not my fault if we're being honest) branded me a criminal. There was jaded and then there was me. There was no way I would ever have faith in the court system after that. I was just astounded that the prosecutor, the judge, and even the public defender would all just knowingly lie. They weren't even hiding it either. They all knew I was innocent and they were all in on it to do that to me.

When I left prison I was homeless and the degree that I'd worked so hard to earn as well as pay for myself was worthless in so far as finding a job. And then when I had finally scratched together a tiny little life for myself that was completely honest, the police never left me alone. They harassed me everyday. Then one day I was washing dishes at a little rat hole of a restaurant and the cops came to arrest me for no reason and marched me out in handcuffs in front of customers. They didn't even charge me with anything. They just brought me down to the jail, beat me to an inch of my life apparently just for fun, and then dumped me in the middle of the woods late at night while it was raining. My hands were tied behind my back. My ankles were tied together. I was gagged and I was losing blood.

I guess the cops felt their actions were justified since my father killed a lot of police officers and other government agents. I don't know. My feelings were just that they were all evil bastards and maybe, just maybe, all the cops my dad ghosted deserved to die. Again, I don't really know but I'd rather think that than believe there were any so called 'good cops' out there. Right then and there I decided to change my opinion of government authority forever. They were beyond redemption. Yeah, my father was a bad guy but the people who'd done this to me were even worse. And they didn't even have the balls to finish me off right. At least my father didn't needlessly make people suffer like this.

I should have died. At that moment I should have lost my life. I should have been a corpse; no more than food for the alligators. When I blacked out I thought it was lights out for good.

Obviously I didn't die. I was saved by some Cajun hunters who happened to find me. When I recovered I was smart enough to get the hell out of dodge. No country will grant an entry visa to a felon no matter how much they want to claim asylum so I had to be creative with how I escaped.

There were times when people would ask me if I hated REDACTED. I wouldn't allow any REDACTED university to use my research. I wouldn't collaborate with them. I wouldn't even allow my books to be published there. I was invited to a conference in REDACTED and I refused to go. I wouldn't even appear via video. There was even a company in REDACTED that begged me to come and work for them. They guaranteed that they could get me an H1B visa. The amount of money they were offering wasn't chump change either. I turned it down.

But no, I can't say I hated REDACTED. When their government decided to actually obey their own laws maybe we could talk but from my point of view, they were all madmen with guns running the show. You can't trust that. They were an illegitimate government the same way the communist government in China was.

So yeah, when my sister, Denise, posted something on her social media about cops showing up with no warrant to force their way into her home so they could search it, my warning lights lit up in my head. That was how it started. And I knew it would keep happening. The police didn't arrest her that night but it was coming. They would harass and harass. They would follow her and then interview everyone she had any contact with. They would build up this body of detail to put in her file and to an outside observer it would look like my sister was some shady character that kept drawing police attention to herself. With such frequent contact with law enforcement, people would conclude that the eventual arrest was justified. And in the meantime they'd terrorize some kid into being scared of her own shadow.

I knew exactly how it would go. That was exactly what they'd done to me the entire time I was in college. They had me to the point where just seeing break likes from a random car would make me paranoid. The police even interrupted my graduation ceremony to pat me down in my cap and gown.

That was not going to happen to my sister. It didn't matter that I'd never met her. I was going to protect her. I had the means to do it. I had to get her out of that country.

I convinced her to apply for the university I worked for. I got her a student visa with an exception that said she didn't have to start classes until January and I got her on an airplane. I anticipated some shenanigans from the cops to keep her from flying and prepared a couple of different back up options. Luckily I didn't have to use any of them. The police had been too slow to realize she was going to escape their grasp. That went down to her being smart. When I told her to keep quiet and not even tell her mother she was leaving, she listened.

In another country she got off the airplane, got a tourist visa, and then went down to the pier. Then she got on the hovercraft and spent the night traveling on the water. The advantage of doing this meant that the REDACTED would think she was over there in that other country, so if they wanted to bother her, they'd look for her over there. Unlike the airport, where everything is connected for communication, the dock was still run with paper and pencil. It would be days, maybe weeks, before all of that got reported to the central office of the ministry of justice. And besides, the MOJ didn't share information with the REDACTED about everything, just what happened at the airports and information on REDACTED ships. My sister didn't arrive on a REDACTED ship. It wasn't impossible for the REDACTED to eventually figure out she was here but by the time they did so, hopefully, the cops would have moved onto their next target and wouldn't care about her.

I was there waiting for her. In the back of my mind I halfway thought maybe government agents had set this up as a trap to catch me. I hadn't really thought about it for a long time but now that I was sort of back into that way of thinking, it did cross my mind.

But that wasn't what it was. My sister came out of the immigration office and she was fine. Even though I was holding up a sign that had her name on it in English it took a moment for her to orient herself and then recognize I was there waiting for her.

She approached me cautiously. It was so strange to think that we were related. She looked nothing like me. Sure, we were both half breeds but my mother had been white and her mother was black. She had that typical light brown skin and light brown curly hair of a mixed person. It was so different from me because I was so pasty and even though both my parents had brown eyes, mine had green mixed in. Isn't genetics fun?

My first contact with her was when she asked if I was waiting for her and I said I was. She extended her hand to me to shake. At that moment I remembered back to when I'd gotten out of prison and my older brother had been there to welcome be back to the world. He'd given me a hug but I couldn't hug my sister. She didn't even know she was my sister.

Before going directly to the house I drove her around a bit. It was sort of my way of letting go of my anxiety about the whole process and starting to realize that she was here. She'd made it. I'd saved her.

All the way until I got her to my house she kept saying over and over again how thankful she was. I tried to tell her to save it until she saw the course work she'd have to do. It wasn't going to be easy.

Once I got her to my house she kept saying how nice it was.. I gave her a key and set her up in the guest room. If she needed anything she could ask me or my housekeeper for it. I got her a bicycle so she could get around and I made a bank account for her to use. The account was in my name and there was an important reason for that. The REDACTED government recently started forcing banks to hand over all the banking information on all REDACTED citizens all over the world. So even though they'd need a warrant to see how much someone living in REDACTED had in the bank, if you had an account in another country, the REDACTED government gets all your banking transactions updated in real time.

Oh, you don't believe me? Go look up FACTA. It basically allows the REDACTED government to not only see exactly how much a REDACTED citizen has in a foreign bank but it also allows the government to take that money even if there isn't a reason for it. If the feds can't borrow enough to cover all the stupid spending they do, they can just steal the money and they don't have to pay you back or tell you they did it. They might not even be doing it to cover legitimate government expenses. Maybe some bureaucrat wanted to give himself a bonus or buy his daughter a new car. Why save up his own money like a normal person when he can just steal the money and no one can stop him? No one would even think he did anything wrong. So, no, I very strongly impressed upon my sister that she should not get her own bank account. If she wanted more control over her own money, there were things we could do but a checking account in her own name was not a good idea.

The first night my sister stayed in my home she was so tempted to get on social media and let everyone know where she was. She came to ask me if it was a good idea and I told her the truth. No, it was not a good idea. She needed to create a fake identity on social media and she could befriend all her old contacts that way but never reveal to them who she really was. If she did, all the work we'd done to get her to some place that was safe would be for nothing.

"Is that what you did?" she asked me.

"What makes you ask that?"

"Well, I've just been trying to figure out why you'd do so much to help me and how you'd know so well about my family and my father. I never even met him."

"And what have you concluded?"

"I don't know, but I guess I'm thinking you're one of us. You've got fingers like my other brothers. And Scott isn't exactly a Spanish sounding name."

"I actually don't speak Spanish very well."

"Oh my God. So who are you?"

"I'm exactly who I say I am. I just limit the government from being able to interfere with my life."

"So you are one of us?"

I nodded.

"Who?"

"You never heard of a brother named Scott?"

"I did once I think but everyone thinks you're dead."

"And they're going to have to keep thinking that."

"This would totally blow everyone's mind if they knew."

"As fun as that sounds, it's probably best to leave them in ignorance. And actually, I'm going to have to insist on that."

"Right. I know. And thank you again for everything."

"You can thank me by doing two very important things for me."

"Anything."

"First, do well in school. I expect you to be at the top of the class no matter what class you're in. Do the work. Put in the time. Excel. There's no excuse not to."

"And the other thing?" she asked with a bit of a seductive smile.

"Keep your nose clean. We don't break the law. I don't care if the law is stupid or unfair. We obey the law to the letter in everything. This isn't like it was back home. Police officers aren't psycho here. If a cop asks you to stop, you stop. If he asks you questions, you cooperate. Show them respect and they'll do the same."

"That'll be weird."

"That's what you have to do. Maybe some idiot at the college will assume you've got access to drugs or whatever because you're black. You'll have to keep creeps like that away from you. In this place, we're model citizens. We let it be known that we're untouchable, completely above reproach. It's the only way."

"Ok, so just to get the words out there, you're my brother."

I nodded.

Her reaction to that was to stand up and offer me a hug. I accepted and as I hugged her I again told her not to tell anyone. She couldn't even hint at it.

Long into the night she asked so many questions about our father. She didn't really like a lot of the answers. She had sort of heard this and that but most things were hear say. It was very different to hear those things from me since I'd actually known him.

"A week, or maybe two weeks at a time he'd just be gone." I said.

"And you were just alone in the house?"

I nodded.

"What did you do?"

"Nothing. I just watched tv. I mean, I went to school and then I went home. Occasionally I'd go play with my friends. I think I read every book in every library I could get to on my bike."

"You were that bored?"

"I wouldn't call it bored. I was free. And I did see my brothers and sisters at times."

"What was it like when he was there?"

"Honestly, terrible. I had to sneak into the house. I had to sneak out of the house. He'd get pissed off at any sound. And then there were times when he'd go like wild eyed and start getting flashbacks or something. He'd barricade himself in one of the rooms with a gun and start yelling in all these different languages."

"Really?"

I nodded.

"What do you think was wrong with him?" she asked.

"I don't know. I think maybe just all the violence. I mean, some of the things I saw him do were just ... you know. And I had to assume that when I wasn't there to see he did even worse. How does the mind process that?"

"Maybe it can't."

"Exactly. Once you start down the dark path; you're lost."

"You're childhood was even more messed up than mine."

"It's not a comparison. But I will say, even though you're in this country as you, maybe keep all this to yourself. These other people around here, they don't have any kind of experience with the kinds of things we went through. They aren't going to understand and they'll assume all kinds of negative things about you if they knew. Who's your mom? Who's your dad? It's none of their business anyway. So all the different stories you heard, just keep it to yourself. You're here to study. And once you have your degree, you're eligible for permanent residency. Then you never have to go back. And if you don't want to stay here, you can use that degree to go get a job in any country you want. Even change your passport if you feel like it. I've thought about it."

"Oh, I know. I was in middle school when word went around about my sister and my aunt."

"I know the story." Denise had a half sister who was 12 years older than her and she also had an aunt that was just about the same age. Those two grew up pretty much like sisters and then when they were adults they were acting not like sisters at all but very much like lovers.