looking both ways

You didn’t look both ways when crossing the road. You never did, it scared the hell out of your friends but you never did, you just walked out assuming the traffic would stop. It’s amazing that you got to this age, but you always put it down to blind faith in your own actions, that you always did the right thing. You got halfway across the road when you heard a dog bark, and turned to your left to see a blind man with his seeing-eye dog, and you thought: that’s why they call it a seeing eye dog. It can see everything. And you realised that all the while you assumed you knew what was happening, what was going on, what was going to happen next, what your next move was going to be, and knew that you were doing the right thing, leading the way, taking the right path, that you might have been wrong.
That when you were only six and three quarters, on holiday in Wales where the sun seemed to shine continually, and there was always a fair on, that you shouldn’t have hit your brother with the cricket bat on the side of his head when his back was turned, that maybe he didn’t deserve it. When the blood trickled down his face onto his neck and mingled with the red in his football shirt that maybe he hadn’t been so bad to you, that maybe when he’d kicked you the day before when you were hiding in the bush trying to catch rabbits to cook on a fire in the den, that wasn’t enough of a reason to hit him that hard, and it was hard. You remember only being six and three quarters and always losing arm wrestling competitions with your sister who was younger than you so you couldn’t have been that strong and when you lifted the cricket bat above your head it was heavy, and you struggled to do it, your mom had always said you were a sickly child, and told the story of how you were born early and had always been weak but your brother was such a big strong baby and that made you feel so inferior to him, so inferior to him in all you did that when you lifted the cricket bat above your head and swung you wanted to kill him, to hurt him so bad that he never came back, that he never hit you again, or practised wrestling moves on you with his friends or made sure you played in goal at every football game or got the window seat when you went to town on the bus.
And afterwards you felt so proud, seeing the blood on his hair and on the grass and on his hand and face where he’d rubbed his eyes to stop crying. When your mom came out because she’d heard the shouting and your dad woke up from where he’d been sleeping on the rug outside the caravan and you saw the blood on his hands where he’d been tying the tea towel to use as a bandage and you saw the blood on mom’s face where she’d been hugging your bleeding brother and she looked into his eyes and whispered to him that it was ok, and probably an accident and that his brother still loved him and you thought no, no I don’t still love him, I hate more than anything in the world, more than rats and spiders and dogs (and it was weird that he thought of dogs because he quite liked them really, except that one that growled at him when he tried to stroke it and chased his sister away and they had to hide up the tree to be safe).
You said sorry to him when your mom told you to but you didn’t mean it, you didn’t mean any of it you just remembered a time when there wasn’t this competition and fear and need for attention and that he deserved it. As you looked first at the guide dog, then at the red ford mondeo coming towards you while the driver talked on his phone you realised that you shouldn’t have hit your brother and when you sister was born you both felt a little lost, and jealous, and confused.