My Brother, Romeo

By P. Jo Anne Burgh

A lighthearted novella for everybody who's ever had a sibling who drives them crazy. . . .

 

When the Hunter brothers get roped into a small-town production of Romeo and Juliet, their longtime differences could tank the performance, break a heart, ruin their already-rocky relationship--and maybe even get somebody

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tuxedo Cat Press
• Release date: Nov 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781735715728

P. Jo Anne Burgh

P. Jo Anne Burgh is an author, lawyer, musician, and cat lover. Her short stories have appeared in a variety of anthologies and journals. She lives in Connecticut.

Book preview

IF I LIVE TO BE A THOUSAND, I’ll never understand what possessed me.

One minute, I was sitting with the members of the Rankin City Cultural Society in a ranch-style house on Crescent Street, drinking weak tea and smiling genially amid too many split-leaf philodendrons. The next minute, I had somehow agreed to produce a play. In Rankin City. With storekeepers and cowboys as actors and stage hands. And yours truly as the director.

There must have been something in the tea.

The Rankin City Cultural Society is comprised mainly of townspeople—men with short-sleeved shirts and cotton ties and ladies in starched house dresses. It’s like a low-budget version of The Donna Reed Show, which they watch religiously every Thursday night. On the surrounding ranches, we worry about keeping coyotes and mountain lions from killing our herds; in town, they fret about whether the school should send home girls whose skirts don’t cover their knees. Last year, a group of beatniks traveled through town, and even though all they did was buy gas for their rusted-out Studebaker, their mere presence led to a town meeting at which residents debated setting up a toll booth at the edge of town. The measure was voted down, but only after Pop pointed out that it might cause tourists journeying between Sacramento and Yosemite to travel around Rankin City rather than driving through our town and maybe stopping to spend a little money.

I know I’m different from the rest of the Society. For one thing, I’m the only one whose job requires him to work up a sweat. My family owns the Twisted Pine Ranch, about twenty miles west of town. Other than the years I was away at college, I’ve spent at least part of every day in the saddle since I was old enough to sit upright. As if cattle ranching and horse wrangling didn’t take up enough time, a few years ago I convinced Pop that we should diversify into non-livestock endeavors, the upshot of which was our recent acquisition of ten thousand acres of timberland. I’m proud to say that the Twisted Pine is now the biggest spread (and one of the biggest employers) in central California. I’ve long suspected that this is the real reason the town folks invited me to join the Society in the first place, and it’s probably why they continue to tolerate my presence even though I routinely show up for meetings with suspicious-looking smudges on my pants that make the ladies wince when I sit on their Danish modern sofas. Amazing what a few extra trees can do to garner respect.

Or maybe it’s because despite the manure on my boots, I’m the only one in the group who actually finished college. I studied in Boston, where my late mother’s family has deep roots. Even though I didn’t go to Harvard, most of the group seems to equate Boston with Ivy League. I’ve given up trying to explain the difference.

In any case, when the self-appointed guardians of art decided to form the Society, they approached me. Hank and Pete found the whole notion hilarious, but no surprise there. You couldn’t get culture into those two with a crowbar and a quart of axle grease.

I don’t recall now who first raised the notion of putting on a play. To be honest, I wasn’t paying that much attention. Roundup had ended only two days earlier, and I was exhausted. It wasn’t being the trail boss that wore me out, or even endless hours of herding obstinate livestock. No, it was the fact that, once again, I spent nearly the entire time butting heads with my youngest brother. The kid makes cattle look positively reasonable.

I lay the blame for this squarely at the feet of his mother. I was eleven when Pete was born, nearly twenty years ago now. I still remember Colette ensconced in Pop’s favorite armchair, looking more pregnant than anyone ever should. She was well past the date when she should have had the baby, which made Pop more frantic with each passing hour. He’d spent a lifetime birthing calves and colts and pretty much every other critter a ranch might boast, but when it came to humans, he was as nervous as a priest in a brothel.

Whenever something worries my father, his first reaction is to take control, drawing up plans and issuing orders like a general in battle. But even Pop understood that you can’t order a baby to do anything—especially be born. So instead, he barked orders at Hank and me and the ranch hands and our cook and anybody else who had the misfortune to cross his path. He wanted that baby born now, dammit. And pretty much everybody does what Red Hunter commands.

Everybody, that is, except my stepmother. Colette was not going to be rushed, and neither was her son. She kept telling Pop to sit down, that the baby would come when he was ready and not one minute before. I remember her rubbing her enormous belly and cooing, Are you ready to come and see us, Little One? Would you like to meet your daddy? And on and on, gently suggesting that it might be nice if he were to be born—that is, if it wasn’t too terribly inconvenient for him.

So, by the time Pierre François Hunter—named for Colette’s grandpère, one of the last duelists to perish beneath New Orleans’s famous Dueling Oaks—made his entrance into this world, one thing was clear: no one would ever tell him to do anything. One might ask, request, entreat, beseech, cajole, coax, or even beg, but never, ever tell. Even before he drew breath, my little brother developed an aversion to taking orders.

That