Jason couldn't remember ever being so uncomfortable in a place he knew well.
They'd ordered a couple of pizzas, light sauce and extra cheese for Billy, pepperoni and double giardiniera for him. Sat in Michael's living room and watched the first Star Wars movie on DVD. Not the true first Star Wars, but the one Lucas made later, with the fart jokes and the long-eared alien. Jason felt the man should have left well enough alone, but the movie was one of Billy's favorites, and that was doctor's orders.
"Shock wears off. Don't pull at him. Just take him somewhere he feels safe and make sure he gets some rest." The doctor, a wiry Asian guy not much older than Jason, had written a prescription for Valium, warning not to give more than half a tab. Then he'd left Jason alone in the too bright hallway, forced to face the fact that the place Billy would feel most comfortable was the last place on earth Jason wanted to be.
"How's the pizza?"
"S'okay," Billy said around a mouthful, eyes on the screen. The familiar surroundings did seem to be helping. Which was something of a mixed blessing. The physiological purpose of shock was to help you operate through pain. Right now, he suspected Billy wasn't even thinking about what had happened. His mind was protecting itself by screening out the day. But sooner or later, he'd have to deal with it.
So will I, he thought, and then leaned back on his dead brother's sofa and forced himself to chew another bite of pizza.
Later, Jason walked Billy up to bed, feeling like an imposter, like at any moment the curtains would pull aside and Michael would step out with an accusatory expression, a look that said I'm dead because you weren't there, and by the way, you're a lousy uncle. He sat on the edge of the bath and watched Billy brush his teeth. Fought to conceal his animal panic at the thought that he was somehow supposed to know all this stuff now. That he had to be responsible. Last night he'd taken home a girl he'd just met and screwed her against the wall of his shitbox apartment, her moans hot in his ear as he buried his fear in sensation.
Today he was supposed to be Daddy?
In his room, Billy pulled off his clothes and tossed them on the floor, then crawled into bed and pulled the covers to his chin, leaving the lamp on. Jason didn't really know the bedtime protocol – was he supposed to read a story? His nephew looked so vulnerable, so tiny, that something in Jason's chest tugged sideways. He wanted to promise that everything would be all right, but he didn't even know what that meant, so he just stood and stared, taking in the boy's long lashes, the white spot where toothpaste had crusted on his lip. Through that doughy unformedness of children, Jason could see the beginnings of the man Billy would become. Shoulders just beginning to broaden. Michael's strong chin – a lot of Mikey, actually, in the nose and eyes, too. For a moment Jason felt an odd lightness, like he was untethered to the planet, but then the boy's small fingers curled around his callused hand.
"Would you stay?" Billy tugged at his hand. "Till I fall asleep?"
"Sure thing." Jason tried a smile. "As long as you want." He sat awkwardly, butt on the bed and back against the wall. Reached out and tentatively stroked Billy's hair.
His nephew let out a long sigh and closed his eyes, scrunching them hard enough to carve little crow's feet. He wrapped the blanket tight and flopped on his side. Through half-closed lips, he mumbled, "G'night, Uncle Jason." Yawned. "I love you."
The words hit like blows. Not the declaration of love – Billy was a sensitive kid, said it all the time – but the recognition that he was the only one to whom Billy could say that now. Panic flooded Jason, and he wished with everything he was that the world would go back to making sense. It wasn't supposed to be Michael who died. Fate had tagged the wrong Palmer brother.
"I love you too, kiddo." Iron fingers squeezed his chest as he stared down at all that remained of his family. "You sleep now."
He switched off the lamp and eased himself to lay on the mattress beside Billy, feet sticking off the end of the twin bed. The ceiling was dotted with glow-in-the-dark stars, the whorls of fake constellations and plastic planets forming a canopy above. Wide awake, Jason counted his nephew's soft breaths, counted and stared up at the false sky, stared and wished he knew what he was looking for.
Oh-one-hundred hours. Back in the living room, the only light was the TV, the DVD menu for Star Wars still up, bright colors showing the Jim Beam was half gone. He poured another two fingers into a juice glass, threw them back in a gulp.
They'd played at Star Wars when they were little. One of the games they could agree on. Michael always wanted to be Luke, the responsible farm boy who saved the world. Jason preferred to be Han, the pirate who saw the galaxy and got the girl. He remembered the broken concrete and brown grass behind the closed meat packing plant, throwing rocks through the window and pretending they were blowing up the Death Star. Sometimes the police would come, and they'd run away, scampering over wrought iron fences and down the river bank, pleased to be chased, knowing the cops didn't care enough to catch them. Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, shoulder to shoulder.
Except in the movie, Han came back to save Luke's butt. And you let Mikey die.
The Worm twisted, stronger and crueler than yesterday. He took another gulp of the bourbon, knuckles white on the glass. Grabbed the clicker and changed the channel to CNN, watched armored M113's, "Hate-wagons," roll through Fallujah. An Iraqi in a striped shirt pointed out where small arms fire had chipped chunks off a concrete wall.
His brother was dead.
He tried to grasp the thought, but it was like throwing his arms around smoke. Nothing made sense. Ever since Soul Patch stepped out of the shadows, letters tattooed on his forearm and a chromed-up automatic in his hand, the world had stopped following rules Jason understood.
No, not yesterday. Before then. It had stopped making sense when Martinez died.
Martinez, who'd once stuffed sock tits under his fatigues and painted his lips cocksucker-red, then paraded around the FOB with his rifle at his shoulder, a ghoulish, heavily-armed cheerleader. Even the LT had hidden a smirk and turned away, let the grunts have their fun.
One more brother he'd let down.
Seemed like every time he dared to care for something, it went away. First Dad, the fucker, and later, Mom. He'd found a home in the Army, and a new set of brothers. But that ended when Martinez died. He'd lost his friend, and then he'd lost his second home, and now he'd lost Michael. If there was a rule to life Jason understood, it was that he was poison.
The bourbon cut, but he poured another, drank it fast. Conscious of the pulse in his forehead. On the television, a lonely building burned, black smoke bruising the sky.
Cry. For Christ's sake, cry, man.
He remembered sitting in the basement of Michael's bar. A tinny radio in the background. The old safe behind the fake radiator, Michael explaining they'd kept money there in the Prohibition years, when the place had been a speakeasy. Michael opening it to get a bottle of Black Label, taking a pull and passing it to Jason. Smiling at him, all arguments forgotten.
Saying, "To the good life, bro."
Cry, goddammit!
He slammed a fist on the muscle of his thigh, then again, feeling the meaty thwack of it. The dull rippling pain that didn't change anything. What was he? How many times since his return to the States had he sat in the dark and tried to cry, and yet the tears never came. No tears for Martinez, and none for himself. And now, none for Michael. What kind of man couldn't cry for his brother?
Jason remembered the morning, cleaning the Beretta. The strange trance he'd felt as he spun it around and pointed its lethal eye at his forehead. The siren call of gleaming metal, his thumb on the trigger, the urge to squeeze it. He was tired of failing people, tired of infecting them. Tired of moving weightless through the world.
And inside, the greasy twisting of the Worm.
Jason leaned forward, his hands clenched on his stomach, fighting the urge to wretch. Gulped deep breaths, then took the bottle by its neck, wrapped his lips around it like he was sucking redemption through the rim. Tilted it and opened his throat, the liquid splashing hard and hot. He breathed through his nose as he swallowed and swallowed, picturing the Worm drowning in it, writhing and screeching, its sick flesh slapping waves of amber.
He swallowed until the bottle was empty, and then he let it fall numb from his fingers. CNN had switched to talking heads, Rumsfeld spinning vagaries into rhetoric. Jason remembered years ago, shortly after he'd first arrived in country, hearing Rumsfeld's famous line about known-knowns and known-unknowns and unknown-unknowns and thinking that crazy as it sounded, he knew exactly what the guy meant, only it wasn't the war he was talking about, it was life, at least life the way Jason had always seen and never understood it, and for a while he sat and stared at the television, let the light wash over him without touching him, trying to see a way to make sense of things, to knit the world together.
By the time he gave up, his mouth was dry and he had the beginnings of a head-splitter. The clock on the cable box read two twelve. He reached for the clicker and fumbled around until the television snapped off. Dropped the remote to the table with a thud. Unlaced his tennis shoes, pulled off his socks. Rack time. For a moment, he thought of going upstairs to his brother's bedroom.
No. No way.
Jason pulled the blanket off the back of the couch, curled his legs under, and put his head down. A long, terrible day. A day with no sense to be found. Maybe sunlight would make things clearer.
He was almost asleep when he heard glass breaking.
July 2, 2005
Billy's tongue is between his lips. He's gripping the hammer wrong, little fingers clenched too far up, and though he whacks the nail again and again, it never goes in. On the ground beside him lay five mismatched two-by-fours and a tangle of rope.
He's building a treehouse, he explained to Jason earlier, and his uncle laughed, and ruffled his hair, and went back to the house for a fifth beer. That one is gone, and his mouth is dry for a sixth, but Jason lingers on the screened porch, watching his nephew. Billy winds up and swings wildly. The nail pings free and leaps away. He drops the hammer and kicks the tree, then hops around on one foot.
Instead of going to the kitchen, Jason opens the screen door and steps out.
He shows Billy how to grip the hammer, hand at the base. Drives one tenpenny to demonstrate: Two taps to set, three blows to finish. Then he holds the board and hands his nephew the hammer.
When Michael gets home, he finds them in the tree, each to a branch, legs dangling. An uneven ladder runs up the side of the trunk. He takes it in silently.
"We're out of wood," Billy explains.
Michael sighs and walks away.
"What's wrong?" Billy looks suddenly nervous.
Jason shakes his head. "I don't know."
A moment later Michael returns carrying two pine deck chairs. He sets one upside down, reaches for the hammer, and snaps the leg off.
"Can't stop now. Look how much higher you could go."
He winks as he hands up the plank.