KS SS02 - Conspiracy by Dana Stabenow

FOUR BROTHERS, FOUR MEN born one each year for four sequential years, before their parents figured out how babies were made and Took Steps. They were named, in order, Matthew, Mark, Luke and Peter, because their mother refused to burden a child with the homonym for toilet, upon which her loud, rowdy and profane brother had just congratulated her. Her husband, a faithful Presbyterian who disliked his brother-in-law anyway, remonstrated that this upset the gospellian design decided on before the birth of their first son, but she remained obstinate. They compromised on Peter, upon being informed of which her brother then spake aloud and at length on euphemisms for male genitalia, until Peter’s father had more than words with his brother-in-law in the alley out back of the Ahtna General Hospital. A faithful Presbyterian, he wasn’t a pacifist.
    The brothers were equal in height (five ten), similar in color of eye and hair (dark brown), and steadfastly united in fraternal loyalty, in part because their parents had died young, drowning when their fishing boat went down off Hinchinbrook Island. Matt had just turned eighteen and so was able to take responsibility for his three brothers, thereby keeping the family together. Exercise of in loco parentis authority was brought to bear, like father like son, mainly with Matt’s fists. It was also conducted in private, which explained why no piece of furniture brought into the family home by their parents survived.
    At the same time the Grosdidier brothers were settling on a command structure at home, they were willing, nay, eager to assert their independence abroad. There were a few years when Park rats had only to see the Grosdidier brothers coming in one door to exit immediately out of any available other. Their quadranarily sequential ascent to the venerable age of twenty-one was viewed with alarm, and there was talk in the Park that Something should be Done.
    “Like what?” Bernie Koslowski said. Himself, he relied on the baseball bat and the twelve-gauge shotgun behind the bar to discourage bad behavior beneath his roof. Not that he had need of either, because as proprietor of the only bar within driving, snogoing, flying, boating and snowshoeing distance of Niniltna, all Park rats with a wish to imbibe liquid refreshment in congenial surroundings had a vested interest in keeping the Roadhouse peace.
    No one had a good answer to his question, and the idea died a natural death, although the commentary on the Grosdidiers’ continued willingness to instruct Park rats and indeed any stray passersby in the code of conduct tolerable to the citizenry of twenty million acres of southeastern Alaska was audible, particularly from those who had been so instructed. The decibel level grew to the point where Ekaterina Shugak, Chair for Life of the board of directors of the Niniltna Native Association, decided to harness all that youthful vigor and direct it onto a road which might more benefit themselves, not to mention their fellow Park rats. She caused an Emergency Medical Technician course to be held in the Niniltna High School gymnasium and invited any Park rat with an interest in the subject to enroll. She went personally to the Grosdidiers’ house and encouraged them to enlarge their collective horizon. Not even the Grosdidier brothers had the backbone to face down Ekaterina Shugak when she was on a mission, and they found themselves signing meekly on the dotted line and arriving at the gym promptly at 8 am for class each morning.
    To everyone’s astonishment, not least including Ekaterina’s, the Grosdidier brothers embraced the EMT course with enthusiasm and no little ability. Possibly a trifle bored with having been for so long the proximate cause of injury, they became curious as to how those injuries could be healed. Each graduated as fully qualified EMT-1s, and a few years later off their own bat even signed up for an EMT-2 class in Ahtna. Today, they were the Park’s first