"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.