Joseph Brook Character Analysis

They sent Joseph to Stone Mountain, even though he did what he did because the kid gave him something bad and he swallowed it. But that didn’t matter. They sent him to Stone Mountain anyway.

He won’t talk about what happened to him there. But since he left Stone Mountain, he won’t wear anything orange.

He won’t let anyone stand behind him.

He won’t let anyone touch him.

“I don’t need the milk,” said my father. He pointed at Rosie. “But she needs you to milk her.”

”Do you think Joseph will fit in?” my mother asked me later.

“Rosie loves him,” I said.

I didn’t need to say anything more. You can tell all you need to know about someone from the way cows are around him.

“I respect your parents, I really do. They’re trying to make a difference in the world, bringing kids like Joseph Brook into a normal family. But kids like Joseph Brook aren’t always normal, see? They act the way they do because their brains work differently. They don’t think like you and I think. So they can do things . . .”

“I always know where Jupiter is.”

“You have him shoveling manure, too? Is that what you get out of this? A bunch of kids who have to shovel manure for you?”

The winter I was six, I saw a yellow dog on thin ice on the Alliance. I was with my mother, and we were walking back from a breakfast potluck at First Congregational before it became old First Congregational. The yellow dog was out farther on the ice than Joseph, but not much, and it had fallen through and its eyes were huge and it was grabbing on with its front paws, scratching, looking for something to hold onto. It wasn’t making a sound. I told my mother we had to go get it, but she held my arm so I wouldn’t go down to the river.

“He came onto the ice for me,” said Joseph.

My father turned his face slowly toward Joseph. “That’s what we’ll be talking about,” he said.

“Joseph,” she said, “we began poorly. Shall we try again?”

Madeleine Joyce was thirteen years old when she met Joseph Brook. She lived in a house that had pillars in the front and a wing on each side and statues on the lawn. Her father and her mother were both lawyers, so she spent a lot of time by herself in that big house when she wasn’t away at her prep school. Sometimes she had a nanny who lived in the north guesthouse, sometimes not.

She never asked him why his face looked so beat up.

He was going to be a father, he said.

He was only thirteen, she said again.

“I’m alone,” he said.

“You’ve got me,” I said.

He laughed, but not a happy laugh. “Jackie, I’m a whole lifetime ahead of you,” he said.

“You might get suspended for fighting. All because you were hanging around Joseph Brook. I’m telling you, I know his type. Trouble follows him like a yellow dog.”

“I’ve seen what happens to yellow dogs,” I said.

“Would you have left a guy being beat up to go find a teacher?” I asked.

My father, he wiped his hand across his face, and what was left behind was a smile.

Really, a smile.

“Not in a million years,” he said.

“No one’s ever had my back before.”

When my father put his hand on Joseph’s back, Joseph didn’t even flinch.

You know what happened when Mr. Brook put his hand on Joseph’s back?

Joseph flinched.

But he went into the living room with his father anyway.

“And who do you think you’re kidding? You know you’ve got a sweet deal going. You get your check from the state every month to keep my kid. You’re in this for the money.” He pointed to Joseph. “You know you’re just a job for them? You are nothing but income.”

Mr. Canton had already come by, so full of himself, my mother said, all about how he knew something like this would happen, and kids who come from Stone Mountain are bound to run off, and it’s not our fault, it’s just that’s who Joseph Brook is.

“The boy isn’t your brother?” he said.

“I have his back,” I said

“But he can’t love her just for himself. He has to love her for her, too.”

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

And that’s when I started crying. Crying like a kindergarten kid in front of everyone. Crying because Joseph wasn’t just my friend.

I had his back.

And he had mine.

That’s what greater love is.

“Jackie,” said Jupiter.

“That’s right,” I said. “Jackie.”