The Sonnet of Lochlan Doyle - [1]

September 4th, 2015 at 3:45 PM

If one were to ask Aislinn Doyle what made her brother so mad, she wouldn’t know how to answer them. Nothing is ever definite when it comes to Lock. The slightest thing could set him off on some days, while on others he could ignore it. He’s a ticking time bomb, their mother always said. But he’s trying. I know he’s trying.

She remembers a day specifically when they were kids. They were hanging out at the park close to their home with the other kids. Aislinn was the only girl, but the boys didn’t seem to mind her much. They never made fun of her for being a girl, but rather for her name. They said it was weird. I bet you’re the only Aislinn in the world, one would always say. Nobody wants to name their kid Aislinn except your mum.

Lock would often join in the taunting. He’d laugh the hardest when his sister’s face got all red. But then one day, when they were out in the park and the kids started with the same old jokes again, Lock didn’t laugh.

He punched one of them. Right on the nose. When the boy went down, he jumped on him and started clawing, and clawing, and clawing like he was trying to rip the words right out of him. It took a lot to get him to stop. By the time he came to, Lock claimed he couldn’t remember what he had done.

The twins never spoke to the neighbourhood kids again.

By the time high school started, people liked Lock a lot more than they did before. He quit caring about who Aislinn hung out with while she learned not to ask why he came home late all the time with bruised knuckles. The last time she did, he hit her.

That was the same day they took him away.

“Arms spread, miss. Miss?”

She blinks, finding herself at the doors of the visiting room. There’s an officer in front of her, giving a questioning look as he waits for her to follow orders. She blinks again, a bad habit, then barely stretches her arms at each side. She stumbles when the officer pats her down.

“She’s clear,” he says into a walkie-talkie and opens the door for her. It’s a large room filled with nothing but a rectangular table, a barred window, and two blue chairs at both ends. There’s a water cooler at the corner of her side of the room coated with dust, a dead fly resting on top of it.

Aislinn sits on the chair provided for her, pretending not to be bothered by the officer standing watch at the door. He stares straight forward, but she can tell he’s looking at her from the corner of his eye.

Finally, the moment comes. She hears beeping first, and then the door on the other side of the room swings open. There’s a pause in the air for several seconds like the moment before a storm, and then he comes in; all lightning first before the thunder. He’s taller than the officer that holds him by his elbow, but there isn’t much meat on him. She can tell by the way the blue scrubs don’t exactly fit his body. The uniform hangs on him awkwardly, as if screaming these aren’t yours. You don’t belong here. But he is there, and there’s no stopping it.

Once the officer lets go, he slams his body down on the chair and stares straight at her. Blue eyes to blue eyes. He looks menacing as hell, and if she hadn’t grown up with him, she would’ve pissed right then and there.

Instead, she straightens. “Hey.”

“You sound like shit.”

“I feel like shit.”

“I suppose you would,” he says, “but don’t think you’re the only one. This place is hell. I’ve got it worse than you.”

“Do you?”

Lock slams his hands on the table, which makes the guard on his side flinch. The man’s hand instinctively goes to the baton at his waist, but doesn’t make another move when Lock poses no threat. They’ve got him handcuffed.

Lock grows stiff as his sister stays perfectly still. When she doesn’t even blink, his eyes trail to the silver handcuffs, trying not to feel jealous and angry at the same time. She’s sitting there while he’s sitting here. If he tried to touch her, how long would it take for the guys to jump on him?

He squirms. The blue scrubs they gave him are itchy as hell, and he can’t quite give his ass a satisfying scratch. Not like this.

So he says, “You know they force me to make my bed?”

She finally laughs a little. “No way.”

“I’m serious. Every morning they come into the dorm—I sleep with about nine other guys on bunks—and they’d start screaming and hitting their damn batons on the bedrails. That’s when we have to jump up, make our beds as quick and neat as we can, and stand in a straight line. It doesn’t even matter if you have a woody or anything.”

Aislinn’s laugh is shorter this time.

“This morning I didn’t fix my bed properly. A part of it was hanging out a little. This crazy officer comes all up in my face and says does that look like a made bed? Does that bed look fucking made to you? This is not how we do it around here, Doyle. You’re not in Kansas anymore. Then he grabs all the sheets, rips them off, and throws them at my feet.”

She’s silent.

“It got real hard not to sock him, you know. I felt the blackout coming, but I heard they put you in solitary if you do something out of line. So I didn’t. I’m just Doyle to them, after all. I’m just Doyle. Not somebody’s brother or son. Just Doyle.”

“Is it really that bad?”

“I’m still new; I’ve got a lot to learn.” A pause. “Nobody talks to me much. There are these guys that stare the hell out of me though. I think they’ll try something soon. I can feel it.”

She nods in understanding. A lot of guys want to try something with him. Lock looks vulnerable as hell. His face hasn’t changed much since he was thirteen, he looks like he’ll blow away with the wind, and he’s always sulking around with his notebook full of bad poems. Aislinn always said he should give it up; the poetry. But he’s still at it. Even now.

“It’s not your fight, Lock,” she says. “Remember that. No matter what they do, it’s not your fight. That’s why the officers are here.”

Lock glances at the two guards standing by both doorways with a look of disgust. “They don’t give a shit about us. I mean it, Ash. Some of those guys are meaner than the boys locked up.”

She doesn’t know what to say because he’s probably right. She glances at the men too, who stare straight forward.

“They call this a correctional facility, but I don’t see any correcting going on,” Lock says. He smiles. “I should put that in the book.”

“That’s an awful line.”

“Maybe, but I’m writing it anyway. How’s the old cow?”

“Don’t call mom a cow.”

“Isn’t she one?”

Her eyes get a little sadder. “She’s sick, Lock.”

“She’s always been sick. She’s been fucking sick since we popped out. When will you stop using the damn sickness as an excuse for everything she does?”

“It’s not getting any better.”

“Nothing gets better. Look at me.”

It’s their first visit and they’re already on the verge of fighting. Lock leans back and sighs when he sees his sister’s eyes well up, her bottom lip stuck between her teeth.

The boy looks back down at his hands, fists clenching and unclenching.

“We didn’t have a choice,” she says.

“You could’ve kept quiet.”

“They would’ve found you anyway. You assaulted an officer. That kind of thing doesn’t go unnoticed.”

Clench, unclench. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” he says again, like he didn’t hear her. “He was treating me like a criminal. I was only sitting in the fucking park and he comes rolling in his cruiser, acting like I’ve just committed murder. He was all like, what are you doing over there, son? And you know I fucking hate it when people call me son, so I told him that. Then he starts coming at me like I’m some dealer—” He sighs. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“I know he wasn’t right, but sometimes you just got to take it.”

“And what about guys like him? They need to learn too, so I taught him a lesson.” He looks at her and grins. “I call it blind judgement. Get it?”

She does, but it still isn’t funny. There’s nothing funny about trying to claw someone’s eyes out.

She sits still for a moment, trying to find the little boy he used to be in his eyes. But he doesn’t seem to be there. Gone, just like the rest of him. Even though she doesn’t want to, but she remembers the day her brother stormed into the apartment with blood on his hands, sweating and panting and talking all at once. He looked at his sister and then at his mother and said I think I killed someone. I don’t remember how, but I think I killed him. Is he dead? Can you go and tell me if he’s dead?

She whispers Jesus like the guy’s going to come straight from heaven and clean him up ‘till he sparkles. Lock tries not to laugh.

“You’re lucky you didn’t get life,” Aislinn says.

“Yeah, lucky.”

“If you just be good and work on getting better, they may let you out.”

Lock screws up his face. “You make it sound like I’m mental.”

“That’s because you are mental. Anyone who’s mad all the time without actually knowing why is mental, aren’t they?”

His throat gets tight. “Shut up,” he says, but Aislinn doesn’t seem to care that he’s getting a little mad. She slouches lower in her seat, playing with her thumbs.

“Nothing’s ever definite when it comes to Lochlan Doyle. Not even his anger.”

He tries to laugh again, but it’s bitter. Harsh. “That’s a nice one. Mind if I put it in the book?”