By Cameron Blue

We tore down our neighbor’s greenhouse in the dead of night. Its wood was black at the joints and crumbled easily beneath our hammers. My father pulled down the corner post, collapsing the first wall, and inside we could see banana, papaya, and guava trees shivering with their first touch of wind. We switched to axes. I waited for my father to look before sinking my blade into the soft trunk of a banana tree. The metal came away damp and smelling sweet.

In the morning, we ate a large breakfast, dictated by my father: eggs, sausage, and glistening beans on white bread. A man keeps his own borders, my father said. He protects what’s his. He was looking at me, but the words were directed at my mother and her untouched plate. I wondered if Spyridon had discovered his ruined greenhouse. I wondered if it was okay that I felt so afraid. Our oldest dog, Winston, trembled in his sleep. His teeth flashed against invisible rivals. I no longer speak to my father. He was wrong about the greenhouse. He was right about borders. 

All of this happened because of the meadow in our olive grove. Sheep in an orchard are not content with grass and sour clover; they strip trees. Spyridon dismissed my father’s complaints. His sheep had been grazing that grove for decades before we arrived. We put up a fence; it grew holes. We set up game cameras; they went dark. Our wounded trees multiplied. He wouldn’t do this to another Cretan family, my father said. We paid for this land. They’ve got to show us some respect. “They” meant my mother’s people and “us” my father’s. It had been three years since we had left Manchester, but my father never doubted that I belonged in his “us.”

Have you told anyone about the greenhouse? I promised my mother that I hadn’t. Good. She didn’t want me further involved. It would be another of our secrets, like her smoking, like my magazines. But in the days after the greenhouse, I was afraid to go out in the evening. I let nights pass without football practice, drinking, or seeking out construction sites to spray-paint with the other boys. I didn’t want to walk the dark mountain road by myself, past Spyridon’s compound, and be touched by the yellow light from his windows.

My mother discovered our poisoned dogs. Her scream awoke me, but I didn’t move.I wasn’t sure if it was a nightmare until my father pounded on my door. Death was now a player in our feud. Death of four purebred hounds with open eyes and dried foam on their muzzles. When the dogs lay in their graves, asperged with lye, my father took my shoulder and said that hard times make a man’s character. I watched the dogs as soil blotted them out. I straightened my heartbreak into hate. 

My father’s plan was simple and, later I learned, plagiarized from The Godfather. He would meet with Spyridon on the pretense of appealing for a truce. They would drink wine and shake hands, and I would slaughter four sheep. Are you capable of doing it? He asked, and I heard myself say yes. Same as the greenhouse, my mother was not to know. Spyridon kept his flock in a shed down the mountain from his home. As I approached, the sheep began to cry out in their deep, manlike voices. The noise, trapped in metal-sheet walls, was enormous. I stood outside with my knife in hand. What I did next I only ever told my father. My loved ones know I hate violent movies, can’t stand the sight of blood; they will never know that the first sheep came to me when I entered, and nibbled at my raincoat in the dark.

Killing the sheep would be the final move, my father claimed. For us, the orchard was a hobby. For Spyridon, his herd was his livelihood. Checkmate. After this it would be over. But if he meant that, then why the theatrics? The wine and false meeting? Why did he make me practice every night with the rifle? And why, each time he spied movement in the grove, did he seem so exhilarated? I think I understand him now. Well enough, at least, to make sense of what happened next.

My memories of that night are untethered. Bare feet on the cold gravel; my father in his pajamas, spittle on his lips, howling; my mother’s hands running through my hair, pressing the sides of my face; our windows turning black from the inside, cracking open. The arsonist was precise. Even without accelerant, the firefighters couldn’t have arrived in time to prevent our house from caving in, first on one side, then all at once. Complete surrender. We left Crete with only the bags my mother had hastily managed to pack. My father tried pressing charges from England. To my knowledge, he still is.

Sometimes, my mother visits me in London. She brings recycled plastic containers heavy with home-cooked food. She likes to sit beside me, not across. She wants to meet my partner, and soon I think I’ll let her. Does Dad know you visit? No. He doesn’t. It’s another of our secrets. Like the boy she caught me kissing, like the gasoline I smelled on her hands.