It must have been summer: the sun out and hot, the colors brilliant.  Sky is a blue almost to the point of breaking, clouds have a sheen to them that make you squint.  There are yellow flowers, and green waxy leaves.  Even the dirt seems a rarefied and perfect mixture of browns.
    I am standing in front of him, my older brother.  In my hands, as in his, is a rusty bar of metal.  We don’t know it at the time, but these bars are called re-bars, and are often used to reinforce concrete.  I don’t know why, but at this time, and at this place, there seems to be an abundance of re-bars all over the place, lying around in yards, or even in planter areas in the sidewalks.  In any case, that’s what we’re holding in our hands, my brother and I: re-bars.
    My brother’s face is serious.  He’s getting into the role.  It’s always the same role, the one he always assigns himself.  He is the hero in this drama.  And even if I’m three years his junior, and a weak and depleted version of a five year old at that, I’m supposed to be the dreaded villain.  The bad guy.  In my hands, the re-bar is heavy, and the grid-like pattern in the metal, though not sharp, seems to cut into my cold-sweat palms.
    I don’t want to be here.
    For my parents, this is healthy brotherly play.  And perhaps for my brother, in the interim, during the absence of better playmates, perhaps this is some kind of charitable act, some “bonding time” with the little runt.  But for me, it is something I’m forced into.  It is force that leads me out the door of the house, and puts the re-bar into my reluctant hands.  It is force that brings me here, surrounded by all this heat and color, in front of him.
    I don’t recall any words spoken.  I think we’ve played this “game” so often, that the words are unnecessary.  We know who we are, and what we’re supposed to do.
    The re-bar in my brother’s hands rises effortlessly, and then swings in a dark blur downwards.  An unpredictable angle.  My eyes flutter, scared, but needing to see.  Somehow I lift my re-bar sword up to meet his.  A ringing, teeth-rattling, hands abuzz.  There is barely time to be grateful for the block, though, as my brother’s sword comes again and again, always at a different angle, a different speed.  Ring ring ring-ring-ring.
    “Wait,” I breathe out heavily.  But quietly too.  I smile a smile I imagine to be casual, even though there is no casualness between my brother and I.  “What if- what if the real bad guy, he planted some bombs.”  I look sidelong at the nearby trees, landscaped by the town association, with rough, climbable bark.  “Bombs in the trees.  And we have to work together to get all the bombs.”
    Most of the time, my brother does not even acknowledge that I have spoken.  I’m almost grateful when he responds.  “You’re the only bad guy,” he mutters.  And the re-bar thrusts, a poke for my rib-filled chest.  Not sure how to parry this, my feet backpedal, and I almost fall backwards onto the sidewalk.  The re-bar in my own hands swings wildly, an anchor that doesn’t know where to sink.  In the midst of its wild flails, there is a brief feeling of contact.  I hear my brother shout, and there is a clattering a moment later as his re-bar falls to the sidewalk.
    “You stupid runt!” my brother yells.  He is clutching at his fingers.  I can’t see anything wrong; the fingers are all there, and they seem to be the right color.