It was afternoon and the clothes on the line hung peacefully in the back yard garden. Little Miki, for the first time in his life, saw the sun dry a wet piece of garment. It was then that his brother was brought back home on a carriage by a man from the country.
"Why has he come home like this?" asked his mother as a carriage rolled through the front gate. Little Miki then saw his brother, from a distance, haggard and barely awake, lying on a flat wagon with large wooden wheels. His mother had torn her shawl from her head and tears streamed down her screaming face like Miki had never seen before. One of his older sisters quickly shoed him inside, and he hid under a bed until it was dark.
The first few days were quiet. Miki's returning brother was placed by the woodstove. The sisters all took turns taking care of him at night, while Miki was excused on account of his young age. But during the day, his mother took care of the returning son. He had left because of a spat with his father, who had since set out to find him.
Upon first appearance he had lost a great deal of weight and his body was covered in bruises, as if he had been beaten or mugged. He carried no bag and was dressed without shoes, covered in mud head to toe. After he was bathed and fed, he fell asleep and woke up only intermittently for a week, eventually developing a pattern of sleeping in shifts of several hours, waking to eat, and then sleeping again.
It was some time later, perhaps weeks or months, that Miki's brother had started to cough blood. His mother immediately called a doctor, who tentatively diagnosed TB and told her not to handle any blood without wearing leather gloves and cleaning it with hard soap.
At first, Miki's brother would spit his discharge into a bowl provided by one of the sisters, but his hostility towards the situation was such that he began spitting it onto the wall instead, more than likely out of spite.
His mother did not take kindly to this blood spitting, and immediately began scolding him. Yet everyday, without saying a word, Miki's brother continued to spit his blood onto the wall.
When Miki's father returned, he immediately barred any of the children from entering the central room of the house where Miki's brother slept and spat. He took out his kit but realized that if it were TB, as his wife had told him, he wouldn't be able to take the risk of touching the boy if he didn’t have to. He would have his wife continue to clean the blood, under his supervision, and he would make sure she cleaned it thoroughly.
The children were sent by their father to stay with their aunt a few days later, and were told to say goodbye to their brother through the window into the central room on the day they left. He was asleep, and fresh blood trickled down the wall beside the bed, but the siblings all said their goodbyes to him through the window as told.
Miki's brother died not too long after, and the family burned the house down, contents and all, and built a new one a few acres off.
