WHO: Kaden and Tragos, back when he was Ronan WHEN: Five years ago, and now WHERE: The Hole WHAT: Some Kaden and Tragos backstory WARNINGS: Your usual Murphy domestic violence warning - but more emotional and verbal this time than physical.
When Kaden Murphy was ten years old, he had the best and worst year of his life.
Two weeks after his birthday the cops woke him up bashing their way into his house. Every memory he has of that night has a Ronan shaped silhouette across it, as his fourteen year old brother planted himself in their bedroom doorway, a spikey, vicious barrier between the cops and Kaden. Less like a wall, more like a barbed wire fence.
They weren’t there for the boys, though, the cops. They found dad in his room and arrested him on the spot. Ronan pushed Kaden back into their room as the screaming mass of male energy came thumping down the hall, one very drunk father and two very big cops. Kaden and Ronan watched the rest from the window, watched dad manhandled into the back of the police car, lights flashing.
He remembers Ronan using his shoulder to get the window open – it stuck badly in the damp which meant it was stuck badly always. And remembers Ronan swearing viciously at the cops – their dad shouting at Ronan from the back of the cop car, go back to bed, you fucking shithead, you’re waking the neighbors. Remembers the neighbors watching from their own windows, flashing lights from the cop car across their faces as they kept well out of it. Remembers one of the cops saying to the other Christ, what a shithole.
After the cops had left, Ronan couldn’t get the window closed, and the BANG BANG BANG of rotting wood on rotting wood was loud in the suddenly empty house.
A few weeks later they’d seen a cop car unattended while they were on their way to school, and Ronan got a vicious look in his eyes and crouched down behind a car across the road, pulling Kaden with him. It was these little moments of conspiracy that made Kaden closer to Ronan than their older brothers, since they were both in their twenties by the time Kaden was ten, they didn’t share plans and secrets like this. Ronan had a switchblade, and passed Kaden his Swiss army knife, and together they walked casually up to the police car, stabbed the tires with fury and glee, and sprinted off down the street when the cop spotted them through the store window and came running out.
Moments like that were the high point of Kaden’s childhood: conspiracy, action, revenge, and fun.
And then the low points: waiting at the school gate for Ronan one day and he didn’t show up. Wondering if he was being tested – now that he was ten, maybe Ronan figured he could walk home by himself. Well, Kaden could. He wasn’t a baby. He knew the way. It was just more fun with Ronan. He saw the Warmoths leave and waved at them, but knew he was going to wait for his brother rather than tagging along with them.
But Ronan never showed up, and after half an excruciatingly boring hour (Kaden pulled the leaves one by one off the branch of the tree closest to the school gate, scratched his initials into the sidewalk with a nail he’d found in the gutter, tested to see how long he could hold a handstand before he fell over) Kaden wandered home as well. Barak smacked him on the head for being late, and Cy told him that Ronan had left school at lunchtime and beaten someone up in the middle of the McDonalds carpark, and the police had picked him up and he was probably going to juvie.
The next two months lasted forever. They were lonely, hollow days. No Ronan, no dad. Barak and Connor – no, Barak and Cy – were rarely home. Connor had just recently been initiated into Barak’s gang and changed his name, and Kaden kept slipping up and using Connor and getting a smack for it.
Kaden spent most days during those two months over at the Warmoth’s place, or exploring with Ruth. It was a spring that seemed to drag on forever.
Until Summer arrived, and Ronan came home.
Ronan came home tougher and angrier and way less skinny than he’d been before. He still had really bony wrists but he’d spent two months eating three times a day then putting all his unhappiness into running, press ups, pull ups, sit ups – anything to get up. Barak had hung a boxing bag out in the driveway and there wasn’t a day that passed that Ronan wasn’t out there, trying to destroy it, or his demons, or his self.
But he was back. He walked Kaden to school again, and home. They explored together, going more daring places than the Warmoth girls would (they were daring girls, but the Murphys had to be more so, couldn’t be outdone by girls, not ever). Life felt right, again, with his brother home.
And then one day Barak bought home a puppy, and that’s what turned the year into the best, the absolute best. He’d stolen it from a back yard in Jamaica Hills and it was a little too young to be away from its mother, but Kaden and Ronan slotted themselves right into that role. Cy named him Sniper, a name the boys didn’t change because they agreed it was pretty badass. Kaden got out a dog training book from the school library and Ronan, never a huge reader, spent a lot of time online watching different dog training videos, and every single day of that long summer they spent with Sniper. Trial and error, learning how to train a dog. Trial and error, learning how to love something.
Everything made sense, with a dog at the heart of their lives. It still mattered that there was a giant hole where their mother had been, that there was a gaping open sore their father had been ripped out of, that their older brothers were firmly, firmly in the category of men rather than boys, and were not looking back toward their younger brothers. But Sniper didn’t know any of that, which made every hard thing in the world matter a little bit less.
One of their mom’s brother’s pulled some strings or pulled his weight, and got Ronan an apprenticeship at the local mechanics so he didn’t have to go back to school. Ronan didn’t take his feelings out on the punching bag with any less emotion, but he was splitting his free time three ways now, between the bag, beneath the car, and with Sniper and Kaden. Around Kaden, Ronan didn’t seem unhappy. Around Kaden and Sniper he looked as content as Kaden had ever seen him, and it made Kaden happy, too.
That made it the best year, the introduction of a dog. Kaden felt guilty that the size of his feelings over the dog were the same size as his feelings over his dad, a guilt that made him do crazy, reckless things because he had no way of putting it into words. A guilt that, even five years on, still made him do crazy, reckless things sometimes. He knew he must be a messed up kind of person if he could love a dog as much as his dad. He was trying not to be messed up by working hard at school and keeping out of trouble and all that… but that didn’t change the fact that he knew in his heart something was kinda broken.
And that still didn’t change the fact that getting Sniper made it the best year.
Kaden really, really wished he had Sniper now. Sniper would have been the best buffer against a fortnight of Barak’s attempts to turn him into a man. Barak had taken Kaden’s suspension as a sign that Kaden was ready to step up; taking him shooting, getting powerfully drunk together at their Thanksgiving party, pulling him away from his homework to watch MMA fights on the TV then showing him how to get out of a headlock.
The worst part was that while Kaden hated this, there were moments when Barak was proud of him, and that awakened something grabby and needy in Kaden. Barak, who was rarely pleased or proud of anything, was pleased and proud of him. It was important. It made him want to do better, while at the same time, he really didn’t want to follow Barak (and Cy, and Tragos…) down this path.
Kaden visited Sniper’s grave a lot that week, trying to remind himself who he was, and who he wanted to be. A vet, not a fighter criminal dickhead. A vet that gave free treatment to dogs who’d lost a fight with razor wire, free treatment to dogs with blood poisoning, free treatment to stop any family losing a dog that’d been their heart.
Kaden just had to hold onto that memory and that promise of the future and he’d be alright, right? Just had to ignore the shouty, clingy need for his oldest brothers approval, because they didn’t fit in the same future.
It was like the year he loved his dog and his dad both at once; there wasn’t room inside him for both and yet somehow, both existed in his heart.