

On Raspberry Lane

David Xavier

To all who have always wished to write,  
a great novel burning inside them...

The loving actions of Jack Chapel – the large hand patting his daughter's back as he leaned over the crib, the fatherly kiss on the sleeping baby's cheek – would always suffice for saying the word. His three boys stayed and watched, their faces at the crib bars, as their father turned out the small lamp and left them in the dim room with the door cracked.

"What's her name again?" Graham said.

"It's Hannah," Rudy said. "It's Hannah Chapel, like us."

"Tee-tee."

Wade was the youngest of the boys and could not say the word 'sister.' Tee-tee was the sound his tongue made tapping at teeth.

"No, don't turn on the lights," Rudy whispered.

"I can't see," Graham said.

Rudy ran to flick the switch back down. "What are you doing? Get down." He grabbed Graham's shirttail. "She's too little."

"I just want to see better," Graham said. He hooked a leg over the top, and Rudy gave him another tug and the rail came down. Graham crawled out from under, rubbing his head and wincing away the pain. When Hannah began to cry, the older boys ran out, shoulders bumping the doorjamb in their scramble.

"Tee-tee," Wade said again, his fingers on his little teeth, and curled up in the crib with his baby sister until she soothed herself back to sleep.

Being the youngest of the brothers, Wade was the most protected. Rudy and Graham kept him under their watch. A collared dog once nipped too close at Wade's feet, and Rudy and Graham chased it home with a fence slat and a handful of rocks. When the dog owner scolded the boys, Rudy swung the fence slat until it shattered against the owner's front door, and Graham threw rocks through the front windows.

Now that protection went to Hannah, and Wade became one of the protectors.

It was a trait they picked up by watching their father. He always walked ahead of the family, his back straight and shoulders wide, his legs cantilevered at his hips, as if clipped on, and the boys tried to imitate his walk behind him. In church they leaned forward in the pew to get a glimpse of their father, his lifted chin and upright posture, his quiet disposition and warm smile when he shook hands around him. He had a naturally resonate voice that seemed to vibrate the window-stained church walls with hymns. The boys tried to imitate this voice too. A voice of authority.

"You listen to your mother," Jack Chapel told his boys many times, crouching to their level with his hands covering their shoulders.

"Yes, sir, dad, but Graham was the one who–"

"Ah-ah, I said you listen to your mother."

"Yes, sir."

The protection of three older brothers meant Hannah would never be ridiculed by the pointing fingers of childhood, at least not for long. The boys took their job seriously, although unconsciously, and their mother too became an object of their defense. They would stand on the doorstep as a deliveryman reached over their heads to get their mother's signature. He was watched carefully, every move, as their mom juggled Hannah and the clipboard, trying to scratch out her name.

"Nice work, boys," the deliveryman would say. He squatted and put a fist to Rudy's shoulder. "Who needs a watchdog when you've got these warriors, right?"

But the boys kept silent, squinting into the sun, and when the big postal truck started up again, they chased it, running along the sidewalk, past the well-manicured green lawns and pastel cutter homes with matching mailboxes, throwing handfuls of river stones as the truck rolled away in a black cloud of exhaust.

"Inside, boys," Lisa Chapel called out. "Get inside this minute," and she held the door open as each one ran past her. Wade still had stones in his hands. They scattered on the hardwood floor, and he followed his brothers straight through the house and out the back door.

Lisa Chapel had her three boys in three years. Wade's head was off the charts at birth. Hannah came later and gave her a gap of recovery. At twenty-nine she believed she had married Jack late.

"She wasted no time," women whispered outside as they watched the family walk across the church parking lot, Jack Chapel leading the way and the three boys walking stiffly behind him. Lisa brought up the rear and adjusted a blanket to keep Hannah's head warm from the same breeze that threatened her own Sunday dress. "That's why she's so skinny now. She just had a fourth child and look at her waist. Pauline Crawford was on the pill for three years and look how fat she's become."

She met Jack Chapel at a car dealership, Motor Mike's Dodge. He didn't sell her a car. She was there to get her car serviced. The first time he saw her she was arguing at the service counter, and later he drove her home in the dealer shuttle. He was working part-time, running around the parking lot inventory, washing cars and driving customers while he worked two other jobs: an overnight grocery stocker at the only small grocer left in town, Johnson's Pick-n-Save, and his hopeful career as a field reporter for KTVM Channel Eleven News.

He gave a few reports a week, on mindless news stories like the trail of sediment the rainstorm left on the bridge, or the rise in stray dogs being euthanized at the humane society. It was all working toward a primetime spot as an investigative journalist, a promotion that seemed to go over his head to the next in line every time.

Jack Chapel was a charismatic newsman, a creative writer, and handsome enough. But he didn't film well. He had a distracting squint that multiplied and spread down his nose. By the time he wrapped up and signed off on camera, his face was in a painful grimace. He also drew out his vowels, displacing viewers from the cozy Midwest. But he wasn't aware of these flaws and kept hustling to the scene.

In the meantime, he put in his time and worked the necessary jobs to pay his bills. Nobody watched the mid-afternoon news reports, and he was relieved when people didn't recognize him. Every customer he drove from the dealership he avoided eye contact with and his hand went to his face, like a reflex, when they looked at him. People had commented on his recognizable chin all his life.

He had seen the name Lisa Dotter printed on the customer sheets, and he had watched her point a finger across the service desk and turn on a heel.

"These people don't care a thing about other people's time," she said in the passenger seat, checking her eyes in the visor mirror. "They keep pushing it out another day another day another day, you know – you know, I don't _have_ another day."

"Picked a windy day to be messing with car trouble."

She shut the visor and folded her hands on her lap. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean you. What was your name?"

"Jack," he said. "Was and is and maybe will be forever." He smiled but kept his eyes on the road while Lisa looked his profile over. She had never seen such a large face before, not overly large, with features that seemed made for calmly delivering catastrophic details of a death to family members in a hospital waiting room. Or the happy news of a birth. She thought he looked like a doctor, although he could use a restful night of sleep by the looks of it. She had never seen the mid-afternoon KTVM Channel Eleven News.

"It's not your fault," she said. "It's the – take a left on Raspberry Lane – it's the service agent's fault for not fixing it correctly the first time. I know it's not your fault."

"I never said it was."

"It's a simple piece for the air-conditioner and a girl can't be expected to go all summer without an air-conditioner."

"Uh-huh."

"I mean it's just a small fix and most people who have air-conditioning should be able to use it properly."

"Mm."

"Well, I do appreciate you taking me home."

"It's my job. We'll get you on the road if we have to _give_ you a car," he laughed quietly and added in a mumble, "That's the Motor Mike promise."

"I just don't see how a person can go a single day without a car these days. This is Raspberry here. Just follow the curve. Hopefully they'll have my car done soon."

"Some people don't sweat the small things."

Lisa Dotter looked at him. "It's not that I sweat the small things. It's that I like things to be done correctly."

He nodded and blinked away his fatigue, keeping any response under his lip. It had been a particularly tiring week for him, and he didn't much care to hear more of Lisa Dotter's problems, so he kept himself quiet. But then she turned toward the window and crossed her arms.

"Roll with the punches, ma'am," he said, adjusting the vent. "It'll make life a whole lot easier."

She turned to him. "And I like for people not to be so judgmental."

"So do I."

"Could have fooled me. And do I _look_ like a ma'am to you?"

"No, ma'am."

She fiddled with her things and yanked at the seatbelt. "You people are all cut from the same cloth. You're doing your job by the skin of your teeth _without a care in the world for other people's time or concern_."

He leaned over the wheel. "Which house is it?"

"You can let me out here. I don't care to be in this car another minute with you, and I really don't care to have you know which house is mine. If you took a moment to have a decent, understanding conversation with a person now and again you might be able to sleep at night. Oh, I see the bags under your eyes. How does it feel to treat people like dirt, ignoring them as just another ticket on the wall, hm? I said stop here."

She slammed the door and caught her polka dot dress. She slammed it again and marched down the sidewalk, under the rustling maple trees, into a breeze that made her pin down her dress with both arms. She turned once with a gust of wind, pulling her purse back onto her shoulder and fighting her dress to her knees, and she looked through her mask of blown hair to make sure he was not watching her. She pulled her dress into one fist and cleared her eyes with the other hand. He was watching. And he was...laughing.

They began dating two weeks later. Jack invited her to the bowling alley the first time, and Lisa invited Jack to watch her sing the second time.

"You sing?"

"Does that surprise you?"

He stopped and looked her over, his hands in his pockets. "I don't suppose it does. I figured you to play an instrument, is all."

She gave him a sidelong look and raised a finger and an eyebrow. "When you can sing, you don't need an instrument." Then she took his hands in hers. "So, you'll come?"

"I'll be there."

And Jack Chapel was front pew at St Augustine's Catholic Church that Sunday. Lisa saved him a seat next to her mother and father and sister, Wendy, who could not help but notice Jack squirming in his seat.

"He looked as though that was the first time he'd ever been to church. He didn't know any of the songs or responses, and when we were supposed to kneel, he went to stand."

"Maybe it _was_ his first time," Lisa said. "The important thing is that he's going now."

They stayed out all night, as long as Jack had time for before his grocery shift. They went to the movies, where Jack fell asleep in the chair and lurched at the loud noises, or they talked over ice cream malts, or they sat on the hood of his car and watched the shooting stars. The first night he drove her home he stopped at the corner of Raspberry Lane.

"Should I let you out here?" he asked with a smile.

"Oh, you're so mean," she said and she hit him on the shoulder. "I'm so embarrassed about that."

But he did drive her home, where they sat in the driveway and she stopped short his embrace with a finger to his lips before it became too much. After that he walked her along the flagstones all the way to the step of the small, two-bedroom house she was renting on laboratory wages, where they made a habit of long, goodnight kisses in the dark. She would come back out the door and embrace him again just before he hopped off the steps for the night and headed to the empty shelves of Johnson's Pick-n-Save Grocery store where he hummed to himself under the dim fluorescent lights.

"I think it's perfectly respectable what you're doing," Lisa told him of his side jobs. "Stocking shelves and driving customers."

"Respectable? What's so respectable about it? The highlight of my day is finding forty-three cents on the customer's seat."

"You know what I mean. Most people wouldn't have the patience or persistence to hold out for their dream job."

And she set up the timer to record every KTVM Channel Eleven News mid-afternoon broadcast. She soon had a box filled with recordings of his pieces, never having the time to watch all of them, although she gave it her best effort and enjoyed seeing him deliver his lines confidently in front of the camera.

"Why, you're a natural, Jack. A born natural."

Jack wasn't sure if it was patience and persistence that guided him. He simply had no other alternative. He was a good journalist, a decent broadcaster, but he had no other ambitions to distract his path.

He soon began to go straight to Lisa's house after work, where he let himself in with the spare key she had made for him, grab a quick nap, and wait for Lisa. She worked at the Midwest Horticulture Labs as an ecologist, a profession she had sweated for five years in the classrooms of Nebraska Wesleyan University for, perfecting the minute details of germination and incubation. He always heard her car pulling into the driveway and met her at the door. She hardly got in the door and out of her white lab coat before Jack and her bumped against the hallway walls on their way to the bedroom, and soon after, they lay staring up at the ceiling with glistening skin.

"I can't do this, Jack."

"I'd say you did just fine."

"No. You are just awful. I mean, I'm a Catholic. It would be shameful if we were to...well, it's shameful now. We're not even engaged, much less married."

"Of course. It's a shameful act outside of marriage. Only a Godless heathen would commit such a sin, but here we are, we're not Godless, you've never missed a Sunday in your life, and it's happened." He rolled up. "It might happen again."

She put a finger to his lips. "Don't joke about it. I'm serious."

"I know, baby. But listen. Everyone our age is working out the same problem. We'll just be careful. You know, we'll – we'll use something and it'll be all right."

She looked at him. "I can't do that either."

"Do what?"

"The something. I can't do the something."

He fell into a sigh and she took long blinking looks around the ceiling, waiting for him to speak. Then the mattress bounced and he was up on one elbow again.

"Well, between the act and the something, which one's the worse one?"

She came home one day and kept her white coat on. Jack closed the door behind her and took her by the elbow and the small of her back to the living room.

"What's wrong? Did you get fired? What happened?"

"Jack, would it be so awful if we had to get married?"

"Of course not. I suppose I'd have to call and cancel all my dates, and I haven't yet had a moment to argue your father into allowing it, but–"

"Jack."

He squared himself with her and put a knuckle under her chin. "Of course, baby. No, it wouldn't be so awful if we were to get married."

"No...I mean, if we _had_ to."

They had a small wedding that month and later told friends and family that Rudy was born premature. At nine pounds, three ounces, they had to subtract a few pounds when telling others.

"He just looks so big," Mrs Dotter said. Mr Dotter held his grandson high at the baptism, into the painted, morning sunrays slanting across the pews.

"He's quickly catching up, eh, my boy?" he told Jack Chapel. "I'd say he's back on track with no trouble at all. Might be an athlete. Or a president. Just look at those serious eyes."

They took a mortgage and bought the place. The UHaul truck sat in front of the small white house on Raspberry Lane for only an hour. Jack didn't have much to move in. He mowed the lawn every Saturday, standing over the diagonal lines in a sweaty tshirt afterward with a lemonade in one hand. He painted CHAPEL on the mailbox. Lisa added a pink cross next to it. Jack saw it the next day as he pulled into the driveway. He was out by the curb with the black paint a moment later.

"It adds joy," Lisa said. She held Rudy under her chin, shushing in his ear and shading his eyes.

"It's pink," Jack said, bending to see at an angle and touching up one more spot. "And we've just had a boy."

"It lets people know that we're Christians."

"Everybody in Nebraska is Christian, honey. Our last name is Chapel. You put a pink cross on there and people will think we're reading scripture in our basement. They'll be ringing our door for the morning service."

"We don't even have a basement."

"Don't I know it."

Graham came the next year and Wade the following fall. Jack had to convert the garage with drywall to make a third room. He added a single window on the street side, and a heating vent to the floorboards, but it remained too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer. Lisa found Rudy in the hall one morning, huddled small over the heat vent. She sewed together old blankets into a cover and made heavy blankets for her boys.

"It broke my heart to see him curled over the heater, Jack. Just broke my heart."

When Hannah came along, the three boys moved into the converted garage bedroom. The first night, the boys fought over the top bunk. They were supposed to rotate every month, but Rudy didn't much care to have the top bunk, and Wade was too small to pull Graham from it. Lisa Chapel rocked her baby in the nursery while the boys tore through the house at top speed, leaving lights on and windows open and water running. The lower half of every wall in the house became smudged and dirty as if floodwaters had risen and drained away.

KTVM Channel Eleven News had an investigative journalist position open. They announced they were going to search internally for the hire before taking any outside applications.

"I know you'll get the spot, Jack."

"I'm not the only one in line, honey."

"But you're the best in line." And she kissed him on the cheek as he went out the door. The boys waved to him as the long Chrysler LeBaron drove away, laughing when their father pressed his lips and nose to the window.

Jack wrote an interesting story on the Strategic Air Command at Offutt Air Force Base, citing quotes from Pat Frank's novel, _Alas Babylon_ , and he landed an interview with the commanding officer, Colonel Sharper, in front of his duplex on General's Row. It was a glimpse inside the world of Air Command operations, giving local viewers an air shot in the cockpit of an E-2 reconnaissance plane as Jack spoke his closing lines from the pilot seat. He had done his research well and the family gathered around the television set to watch the recording.

"Why, you're a shoo-in, Jack. I'm so proud of you."

Jack smiled into his rum and ice, squinting just as nervously as he did on camera. He noticed it then, leaning out of his chair toward the television.

"What the hell am I doing with my face?"

"You know, you look perfectly handsome, Jack. You look like Peter Jennings."

Wade smudged the screen with a kiss, his hands pressed on the glass.

"Grah-Rudy-Waaade," Lisa always went down her boys' names until she got the right one. "Wade, get down, we're trying to see daddy. That's very nice, but you let everyone else see too, okay?"

Jack stood. "I look like Peter Somebody. Peter Rabbit. Look at my eyes, what am I doing? I'm surprised I can even see the signals." He left the room to refill his glass.

They gave the job to Mark Polvis, a fresh-faced, ambitious twenty-five year old, who had completed an internship in Washington D.C. He had a very impressive ten-second CNN clip he liked to talk about, of him standing on the spot where President Reagan had been shot during an attempted assassination. It was a matter of a young intern being in the right place at the right time when the cameras rolled.

"There will be other opportunities," Lisa told him. Rudy sat forward reading a book much larger than any boy of eight years had ever attempted, and Graham played on the floor with G.I. Joes while Wade watched. Hannah sat quietly in the corner, a concentrated look on her face.

"Mark Polvis still has the smell of Hastings on him," Jack said. "He wouldn't know a goddamn story headline if it fought its way into his mouth."

"Not in front of the children, Jack."

"Sorry, honey, but that kid ought to be spanked for even applying for the job. That's the way journalism is going these days."

"Daddy, say you're sorry." Wade stood at his father's elbow, giving a glare. "You said a bad word."

Jack pushed his rum to the center of the table, a few wet rings around it, and put Wade on his lap. "You're right." He touched his son's nose. "Give this man a pink cigar."

"Say you're sorry."

"I'm sorry. Even daddy should say sorry for that word."

At the newsroom, the missed promotion turned out to Jack's advantage. KTVM had other plans for Jack that didn't include sending him roadside during a blizzard to report on the snowdrifts. He came home with the news, smiling as if it were printed on his teeth. It allowed him a better handle on his schedule, and he was able to quit stocking groceries and driving dealership customers, two jobs he had been humping for much too long and accepted as permanent long ago.

"No more talking to myself in empty grocery aisles," Jack announced, hanging his jacket in the front closet. "Johnson's Pick-n-Save Grocery will miss me. Those shelves will never be as straight again."

The boys collectively shouted from unseen areas of the house and rushed their father, and Jack Chapel squatted to embrace them all. Wade was the last to leave, running toward the back door. His little feet patter was cut short.

"Aht...wait," Lisa said. Jack listened from the front hall. "Did you put underwear on?"

There was a brief pause and he imagined his son paralyzed in thought. "I think so."

The back door slid open and closed. Lisa slowly came into view. Jack moved his hand, revealing a smile.

"He made quite the discovery today," she said.

"What was it?"

"He was in the tub and he says, 'Mommy, come here.' And he points down and pushes it in and says, 'Look, it does tricks.'"

"A fearless explorer, just like his daddy," he said. "No more missing moments like those."

"What do you mean?"

He opened his arms wide. "They made me head writer at the newsroom."

Her face bloomed and she nearly launched herself at him. "Oh, Jack!" She kissed him. "Jack that's wonderful. You deserve it. You're the best news writer in that building."

"No more squinting my way through broadcasts."

"You love the broadcasts."

"And no more driving that silly shuttle."

"But don't you remember?" With her arms around his neck, she put her face inches from his. "That's where we first met."

They held there, his arms now around her waist.

"I'll tell you, honey, it's been a long time coming. Thank you for putting up with me for so long. Six damn years of driving and stocking shelves. I'm surprised Mr Johnson let me stick around that long among all the teenagers."

"I'm glad you did."

"Well, no more. And no more dropping silly women at their street corner. _We'll take you to your door, that's the Motor Mike promise_. Motor Mike can go to hell. I'm the head writer. I tell this town what's news and what's not."

Lisa slipped her hands to his chest. "So what does that mean? Is that what you wanted?"

"Well, not exactly. It means that – well it means a steady paycheck and normal hours."

Lisa Chapel slipped back and shrank a little, her face deflating some. "Is it as exciting?"

"Sure it is," Jack said. "Writing the news that the reporters pick up on. The wires that come across the desk and the phone calls every other minute. I'll be the first person in that building who knows what's going in the world. Why it's just as good as being in front of the camera. Maybe better."

But it wasn't and Jack Chapel knew it. Sitting in the back room with no windows, writing headlines and releases. Rewriting the reports for the hotshots who went on scene. Picking through words so Mark Polvis could take credit for it and nod woodenly into the camera. It quickly became a drudge and he couldn't wait to get out of there every night. But it gave his wife a husband who didn't disappear from the family room for a much needed nap, and one who did not slip out of bed just after midnight for a job he hated.

The air cooled and the Midwest sunsets came earlier, a wavering, ripe orange rolling slowly off the earth. The grass began to crisp and stall, the air took on a clean, cool smell that promised snow.

The brothers Chapel started the school year with a father figure who was not always exhausted, moving slowing through the weekend with a cup of black coffee. He drove the boys to their first day of school and dropped them at the curb in front of the big concrete block that rose out of the parking lot, _St Augustine Catholic School_.

"Boys," Jack Chapel said. He twisted to face them, his arm draped over the passenger seat. They all sat together in the back seat, their tired heads leaning back. Fighting over the front passenger seat never seemed to cross their minds, and they always went one-two-three across the back. Jack struggled to find the right words. He was proud of his boys, but the word 'love' could never roll off easily. It sounded forced and he hated that. Finally, he said, "I'm very proud of you. Study hard, okay?"

"We will, dad," Rudy said. And out they went.

Wade scooted across the seat. Graham and Rudy were already halfway to the school door in a clumsy sprint, their backpacks jumping off their backs with each step.

"Dad?"

"Yeah, Wade? Do you have everything? Have your lunch?"

He slid down to the curb and turned, his backpack bulging with every book and too many binders. He steadied it on the seat and slipped into it like a soldier, leaning forward with the weight. He took a wide stance and slammed the door.

"Dad, is school gonna be fun?"

"Of course it will." Jack leaned out his window, a trucker's arm on the door. "You make new friends and learn new things."

"I don't want new friends. Graham and Rudy are my friends."

"What's wrong? You're not ready for school yet? You want to stay home with mom and Tee-tee?"

"No," Wade said. His legs were staggered, the backpack huge on his back. He couldn't figure out what his hesitation was, and at last he said, "I wanna go wherever Graham and Rudy go."

And he lumbered away to disappear behind the heavy front door, dragging it open as wide as it could go, then getting in front of it, holding it open with his palms, readying himself, then giving it a hard shove and jumping inside.

The large brick school building was not so large as long as his older brothers were in it somewhere. There were times when he'd take the hall pass and wander around the pencil smell of the school levels, walking the glared floors and huge echoed walls, looking for their classrooms, hiding behind corners whenever an adult came by. He stood on his toes and peered in each wired window on the classroom doors, the murmur of disorder behind them, looking at each student's face until he found Rudy, reaching out of his chair with a raised hand. Then he'd go to another classroom to find Graham, usually pouring over a drawing, listening with half an ear to the lessons.

Wade couldn't decide which vision he'd rather be like. Rudy was eager to answer every question and lead the class, while Graham seemed content to answer only when called upon. The teacher would take his drawings away and he'd start another one a moment later. Not out of defiance, but out of boredom, having forgotten so quickly that the teacher tore up his last masterpiece.

Wade took his own position in the classroom. He read the textbooks while his teacher spoke and called upon students around him. He hid behind the student in front of him and avoided eye contact with the teacher. He quickly found if you caught eyes with the teacher, they'd call on you. And if you got the answer wrong, they'd keep calling on you until you got one right.

He was smaller than his classmates, and shy. He disguised his voice to blend in with the other students during the Pledge of Allegiance. There was nowhere he was more alone than in the corner of the classroom, listening to the drone of the teacher's voice. After school, he'd quickly find his brothers. Rudy was usually reading a book against the side of the building, and Graham was usually running away from something with a suspicious look on his face.

But it was at school where Wade first witnessed his brothers' loyalty.

Cody Barnes was overweight and tall. He was the largest child in the first grade, as tall as a third grader and knew it. He had freckles all over his face and dimples in his cheeks and knuckles.

"You're stupid," he told Wade in the echoed noise of the cafeteria. "And you look funny. We don't let stupid-funny-faces sit at this table."

The other students at the table laughed. And when Wade tried to ease onto the corner of the bench, hoping to be unseen, Cody Barnes reached over and pulled at his lunch tray. Wade pulled back and ended up spilling spaghetti and salad across his white uniform shirt and navy blue Dockers. The table erupted again and Wade's eyes filled with tears. He held it together, sitting there, taking long breaths, his face scrunched.

"Aw, little piggy's gonna cry," Cody Barnes told him, and he pushed his nose up and snorted. He leaned closer, one hand on the table, and Wade could see up his nostrils. Cody shoved again, and Wade rolled his shoulder, his outside arm coming over in an arch, and stabbed at the dimpled knuckles on the table, breaking his plastic fork in two, but drawing enough blood and pain to make Cody Barnes yell.

"Ow, you shithead! Ow, ow, I'm bleeding. _I'm gonna kill you_."

The students pounded the table, roaring like a prison fight. Cody was up with Wade in a headlock, pulling him backward from the bench, his legs and feet dangling, searching for ground. Wade felt his head bulging with blood and he struggled for air, beginning to panic in a flail of arms and kicks, when it all came back in a rush and he found himself alone on the floor. The yelling students moved to where something better was happening. Cody Barnes' screams were louder than the surrounding students' chants for a fight, and when Wade recovered enough to look, Rudy was on top of the fat boy with both fists swinging, and Graham was twisting one of the chubby arms at a terrible angle.

"We have zero-tolerance for fighting at this school, Mr Chapel," principal Hoover told their father.

The boys sat outside the office, Wade's shirt still streaked with spaghetti sauce, the adult's voices muffled behind the doors. Cody Barnes sat sniffing back tears across from them. Rudy and Graham, although smaller than Cody, sat glaring at him, daring him to say a word, but Cody kept his eyes at one spot on the floor.

"If it was a normal fight," the principal said, "a normal scuffle, well, those happen. But the use of fists – they knocked that boy silly, Mr Chapel."

"If that's the way it's got to be," Jack Chapel said. "You know as well as I do they were in the right. If a boy can't stand up to a bully in this world, then you can count my boys out of it."

"Now just a minute–"

"Minute nothing. You see how big that kid is? I know a full-grown man that size."

"Jack, now you do not," Lisa said.

"Roy Gibbs at church. Sits in the front row."

Lisa looked away before she broke out in a smile.

"If he's going to throw that kind of weight around," Jack said, "he better be prepared to get pushed back once in a while. In fact it's good for him and I'm glad it was my boys who did it, oh, hell–"

"Jack, calm down," Lisa said, only half interested in calming down herself, but interested in keeping their boys enrolled. Hannah squirmed in her lap, reaching for a framed photo on the principal's desk. "Mr Hoover, you see, they're good boys–"

"I said you can count my boys out of it." Jack stood. "If a boy can't teach another a lesson about civility in this world, then count mine out of it."

"Count them out of what?" Principal Hoover said, moving the picture frame out of reach. "Count them out of this world? I'm just saying there'll be no fighting at this school."

"Yes, count them out of this world." Jack knew he was making sense in a roundabout way. "We'll go and make our own world, a world were bullies are reformed not by the shy hand of a principal, but by the rules of the playground. That's the way it's always been and always will be."

Jack Chapel held down a smirk as he strolled across the parking lot, the boys in a line behind him. A smirk at his own reasoning in Mr. Hoover's office, and a smirk proud of his boys for fighting back against that fat Cody Barnes. Yes, the fork was a correction he'd have to make.

"Come in close like this, and use your fists in here like this," Jack instructed his sons. They stood in front of him on the grass that afternoon with their hands behind them, and one by one brought them out in front as fists. Even Hannah stood with them and made her tiny fists, putting them under her eyes as if she needed to aim her strikes. Jack made slight corrections.

"See, if you get in close, they can't hit you as hard, and you have the advantage under his chin like this, or at his belly right here. You can knock his wind out. If he grabs a hold of you, and he's the size of that Cody Barnes, well, just go with it and pull him the way he wants to go, and just roll him, see. Then you have him."

"What if he hits me first?" Wade said.

"That's what I'm teaching you this for. Sometimes you can make a joke and avoid a fight altogether. All Cody Barnes wants is a reaction from you. If it's not the one he wants, he'll stop."

Wade put his fists up again under his chin, bounced for a moment, then lowered his arms. "I don't know any jokes. He's gonna hit me again."

"Not after what your brothers did to him." Jack Chapel smiled. Then he leaned in close. "You just have to make sure he doesn't hit you last."

They were words the boys would remember for a long time.

"You mean don't let him beat me?"

He reached out and touched his boy's nose. "Give that man a pink cigar."

"I don't want to hit anybody in the face."

"You can also hit him here if you don't want to go for the face." Jack made a knocking motion to his groin. "He'll go to the ground in a second and the fight's over."

And he made a painful face, his eyes crossed and cheeks bloated. The boys laughed at this and wrestled with their father on the drying grass.

They used to follow their father across the lawn when he mowed, spreading any clumps of grass out. Fresh cut grass was always best for wrestling in. They crept in close, shirtless and stained and itching as their father watered the small trees and plants. They giggled with anticipation as their father looked around at the sky, pretending to be oblivious, before flipping the hose on them and sending them running. Lisa Chapel remarked again and again at the washing machine about the stained clothes, but Jack Chapel took every opportunity he could to play with his boys.

He had a good, distinct smell to him, they always caught it on his coat, and it swirled around the front door when he left in the mornings. A leathery, cottony, masculine smell. Maybe it was the detergent their mother bought, or the way his newsroom smelled, or the sun-cracked leather of the seats in his car, or the hard drink he liked to have when he came home. But it was their father's smell and it was only around when he was.

"What'd you guys come and fight Cody for?" Wade asked that night.

Bedtime was a time for reflection. As a child, Wade would lie in the darkness with his arms behind his head and recount his day from sunup to sundown for anyone who was around to hear. Everything from what time he woke up to what vegetables were on his plate at dinner. Sometimes Lisa Chapel stood by the door just to listen, holding back a laugh that would surely end the lesson.

He grew out of that routine, but he did not grow out of talking his thoughts out at bedtime.

Graham was the head in the darkness, hanging over from the top bunk. Wade remembered him this way later in life. "Because we're brothers and that's what brothers do. Now go to sleep."

"Are brothers best friends too?"

"Sometimes. Unless something bad happens and they hate each other."

"Like Cain and Abel?"

"Yeah, like that. I'm tired."

"You're my best friend," Wade said. "And you, Rudy."

"Mm." It came from the single bed in the darkness across the room. Wade heard the sheets rustle as Rudy rolled over.

"Did you know Craig in my class has no friends?"

There was no answer.

"I think it's because he has big glasses." Wade yawned and continued. "They make his eyes funny. And he talks a little weird. He talks like a baby."

The silence insisted, and a pair of headlights came through the window blinds and crossed the bedroom wall, disappearing.

"Graham," Wade said. He heard Graham toss his covers back.

"What?"

"Can you teach me some jokes?"

The Chapel boys stayed at St Augustine's. Cody Barnes became a much quieter student. Craig Waldo did stand behind a large pair of glasses, and he did talk like a baby. The reason he had no friends was that he had an odd way of socializing. As if the first grade was his first opportunity for it. But Wade associated the large glasses as the social hurdle and was horrified when he found out he needed a pair himself.

"There," Lisa said, leaning over him at LensCrafters. "You look just your father."

"Dad doesn't wear glasses. Do my eyes look huge?"

"Do your eyes look what?" Lisa stood. Wade's eyes were wet and frightened and a little big. He concerned himself with the funniest details in life.

"Huge," Wade said. "Craig's eyes look like frog eyes and he has no friends."

"No. They're normal. And you already have friends. You look smart."

"I don't want to be smart."

Lisa knelt next to her youngest boy. "You _are_ smart whether you look it or not. You'll thank God for those smarts when you're older."

Lisa Chapel made sure her boys were aware of God always. She credited God for everything. A bright, soft cloud stretching across the sky like wings.

"It looks like a dove," she'd say. "It's the Holy Spirit."

Even small things, like the pale underside of the leaves on the large tree in the backyard.

"Who else could have known to make them that color?" she'd say. "You get bored with seeing one side and God sends a breeze along to flip them over."

She sprinkled holy water on everything, walking into their room late at night to flick a blessing upon her sleeping boys. On the drive to school they said the St Michael's prayer and the boys rotated the lead.

"Who's turn is it today?"

They sat quietly, looking out the windows.

"Boys," she said in the mirror. "Rudy, you lead us."

"I did yesterday."

"Okay. Graham..."

"I'll do it," Wade said. He crossed himself carefully and closed his eyes. "St Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against..."

Prayer was as effective a tool for the world as anything was, and she made sure they could recite every one she had ever learned. At night they prayed the rosary together. It was an inconvenience to the boys, having to stop whatever it was they were doing and sit around the living room. Jack usually had a drink in his hand, the ice clicking as he walked in to join them. Lisa held the rosary and kept track, and the boys each sped through leading a decade of the prayer. Rudy always started.

"HailMaryfullofgracetheLordiswiththee–"

"Aht," she'd stop him. "Slow down."

After saying his portion, he'd turn his back and sit quietly through the rest of the prayer. Lisa couldn't help but to smile at the holy image of her oldest son, hunched in quiet prayer. He did his best to keep his book pages from making noise as he turned them on the other side, preserving this image for his mother. After saying his portion of the prayer, Graham took the rest of the time to do pushups.

Lisa made Rudy an altar server at St Augustine's. She dropped him off at the church for orientation one Saturday morning. To her surprise he stepped out of the car without protest, and Graham and Wade watched from the backseat as he walked proudly into the church. Father Cormac, already in the orientation, looked up at the bright sunlight and the banging door to see Rudy walk down the center aisle and take a seat with the other new altar servers. All their heads slowly turned as he came near.

Graham decided he too wanted to be an altar server and not wait until next year, much to Lisa's delight, and a moment later he joined his brother inside. Finally, when the church door banged shut a third time and Wade came sauntering in with a big smile, Father Cormac folded his lesson papers and stood silently with his hands behind his back.

"How many more of you Chapel boys are there?"

Wade was happy with it. Many of the boys at school were altar servers, including Aaron Woodard who had many friends. He had kissed Krissy Taylor at the top of the slide once. Rory Huder had been an altar server since the first day of school. He once fell asleep on his feet at a Friday mass in front of the whole school. Fell straight backwards in the after-communion silence and hit his head on the chair. It made a dull boom in the church, one that made Father Cormac look over at the recovering boy. Rory gathered himself, rubbing his head, and Father continued with the prayers. It was funny afterward and Rory Huder didn't lose any friends because of it.

So being an altar server was not like having huge goggle-glasses. It was almost a club to belong to and Wade made sure he knew all the queues and where to stand. He held the crucifix as high and as still as he could when he led the opening procession.

"The first time you went down the aisle so fast," Graham told him.

"I did?"

"You practically ran." He shot his hand out and made the accompanying noise. "Shooo. Left everyone way behind you."

But he made sure to correct that and counted Father Cormac's steps so he could time his own perfectly. Lisa Chapel watched her sons from the choir steps. She fought smiles out of her face, proud of her boys. Smiles made the words sing differently.

It was difficult not to laugh. Wade was the most disciplined server in school and he stood at the altar like a soldier at inspection, a serious face. Only Krissy Taylor looking back at him from the pews could make him forget his marks, and he imagined being the boy to kiss her at the top of the slide.

She was the prettiest girl in school and basked in the attention the little boys gave her. It was more an attention of curiosity, the way little boys are drawn to pretty girls just because they're pretty like their mothers. They have an automatic trust in them. She was dark haired and blue-eyed, and was conservative with her smiles. And Aaron Woodard was not the only boy she'd kissed.

"Krissy will kiss you if you let her," Rory Huder told him after mass in the sacristy. Wade had missed his mark and Rory caught him staring into the pews instead of bringing Father Cormac the chalice. "All you have to do is ask her. She even kissed Emily in the bathroom."

Wade pulled the white smock over his head. "Sick."

But it was true. Emily Pruttman said so and she even smiled about it with enough enthusiasm to make Wade think she was going to lean forward and kiss him.

"Why does she do that?" Wade asked during recess.

Emily shrugged. "Because it's fun."

"Well, it seems weird if she does it with everyone."

And sure enough she tried. Wade drew back and left Emily standing on the blacktop with her lips puckered out like a fountain statue. Then she chased him.

He watched Krissy Taylor in class. Everyone hunkered over their spelling tests as the teacher roamed the room. It was a habit of other students to put their hands over their answers to hide them from wandering eyes. But Krissy didn't do that. She carefully wrote each letter, the tip of her pink tongue pushing out the corner of her mouth, and she seemed to lean back and dare anyone to look at her answers. Wade thought maybe she wouldn't be so bad to kiss even if he was going to be the last boy in school to do so. She caught him staring at her and he averted his attention quickly so she wouldn't see his magnified eyes and think him a nerd.

That night he whispered Rudy's name a few times. He paused a long while before speaking again.

"Graham, are you awake?"

"Yes."

"Have you ever kissed a girl?"

"No, but I've seen Logan do it."

"Which one is Logan?"

"He's tall with the hair. He cuts it short everywhere except in the front and it flops around."

"Oh, the skinny boy?"

"Yeah, he's skinny. With the hair."

Wade licked his lips and swallowed thinking about the next question. He took too long and he heard Graham's breathing even out. He whispered Rudy's name once more and waited.

"Graham... _Graham_."

"What?"

"Who did Logan kiss?" And he pulled his covers tight over his chest, hoping he would not say her name. He didn't answer.

" _Graham_. Who did he–"

"What? He kissed Amber Tantanella. Go to sleep."

His final question came a half minute later. "Which one is Amber Tantanella?"

He saw the black silhouette over the side of the bed. "She's the fat one. So shut up."

Wade imagined tall Logan Whatshisname leaning over to kiss Amber Tantanella. Wade stood behind her in the lunch line once and remembered being taller than she was. Logan would have to bend down and Amber would have to get on her tippy toes. They were just about to kiss when Logan's hair-flop tumbled in the way. Wade laughed to himself and rolled over to face the wall and go to sleep.

So he hadn't seen how Logan did it. But he had seen his father kiss his mother many times, and the next morning he stood around waiting for it to happen. Jack Chapel had a cup of black coffee and was leaning with his hips against the sink, quietly eating a bagel between sips. He winked at Wade once.

"What are you thinking about?" Jack asked.

"Hmm? No, nothing. I was just – watching, I guess."

"You were just watching?" Jack said, amused. "Well, okay then. We got a watcher." And he gave him a show, chewing with his mouth open, and slurping his coffee instead of sipping. Wade laughed and nearly forgot what he was there waiting for. He was about to turn and run out the door – Graham was in the yard flipping over stones – when his mother came into the kitchen, her purse around her shoulder, her keys in her hand, and Hannah on her hip. He watched them kiss. There was nothing to it. All you had to do was get close enough for your lips to touch, and you had to make a small sound with them. She even put her hand on dad's chest a little, which might be nice, and he slipped his hand around her waist. That might be too much. Anyway, it didn't last long, so if he messed up, it'd be over quickly and maybe nobody would notice.

"What are you doing?" Rudy asked in the car ride to school.

Wade realized he had been pursing his lips while he daydreamed about it with his forehead against the window. "What? Nothing."

"You look like a fish."

It wouldn't happen, though. He was never going to approach Krissy Taylor about it and she had never spoken more than a few words to him before anyway. Still, he was curious about how to do it the rest of the year, practicing his lip pucker, not too hard or soft, and in the second grade, when they were told they had to play an instrument in school, he chose the trumpet. Girls probably wanted to kiss a guy who played the trumpet.

He practiced often and got pretty good at blowing long, steady single notes. He would turn out the lights and hide behind the bedroom door to surprise his brothers with a sudden burst when they came in. He crept into the hallway early on Sunday mornings and woke the family with an extended B-flat.

"I say we suggest a different instrument to him," Lisa Chapel told her husband. Then she put her head under the pillow.

"Anything's going to be loud, and little boys go up the scale, not down. If it's not a trumpet, it's a tuba or a saxophone. Or the drums. We have no room for a nice piano."

"I haven't slept in on a Sunday in years."

"What?"

She pulled the pillow down. "Ever since we had children, I haven't slept in. And Rudy is ten now. Tee-tee will start school in a year. Life goes too quickly."

"How about a dog whistle?" Jack smiled. "We could have his lungs removed."

Lisa had Wade practice outside. He stood in the center of the front yard while she sank into the living room chair with her hands on her temples. She could hear the faint blurbs of the trumpet through the door. Then it stopped and she brought her head up. A second later she heard the clang of the trumpet on the sidewalk and Wade burst through the door, slamming it shut behind him.

He appeared slowly from the hallway, "The neighbor's dogs came after me."

He showed talent in music, but it all came to a halt one afternoon when he marched around the house with the trumpet up in the air, blaring nearly perfect notes.

"Stop it," Rudy said. "It's annoying."

Wade blasted one more note, and was prepared to do another when Rudy put his hand to the end of the trumpet. It bloodied Wade's lips and knocked out a baby tooth. His glasses fell off and he stepped on them. Then he dented the trumpet by swinging it at Rudy but hitting the countertop instead.

"That's enough of that trumpet anyway," Jack said later, relieved to be able to hear again. "You don't want to concentrate on one thing all your life. You want to be a jack-of-all-trades." Then he laughed. "Like me."

"Read a book," Rudy told him. "You get smarter and they're quiet."

"But Graham is smart and he never reads."

It was true. Graham and Rudy compared report cards each quarter and usually came out even. Wade kept his report card to himself.

"Let's see yours," Rudy said.

"Miss Warner hasn't passed ours out yet."

But she had and he knew his grades wouldn't match up. They were good grades, but to a younger brother the difference between straight A's and straight B's is the difference between smart and dumb.

It was a wonder Graham found the time to put towards schoolwork. He wore a deep tan far into autumn, and always had a stick in his hands, or a shovel or hammer, a baseball bat, and his forehead always beaded with sweat.

"How do you get good grades?" Wade asked him. Graham was tossing a baseball and taking swings so hard they turned his body a full circle. He spoke between swings, his eyes never leaving the baseball.

"I don't know," he said. "I just do."

"Rudy reads and does homework. That's how he gets good grades. He does the whole page of homework, not just the numbers the teacher tells him to."

"That's because he does it before it's even assigned." He took another huge swing. The ball made a soft thump in the grass each time, and Graham cracked a smile each time he missed. He must have known how silly it looked.

That was the single most charming quality in Graham. Somewhere he had gained the confidence of an adult at a very early age. There was nothing for him to prove to anyone, nor did he care of people being impressed with him, and so he was able to make himself the butt of many jokes, even the jokes that were known only to him.

"Why does he do that?" Wade asked.

"I don't know. Because it's easy for him."

He took another swing and connected, the type of crack you hear at a ballpark, and the ball disappeared over the fence. They stood watching, then listening. There was a metallic thump and a car alarm went off. Graham put the bat in Wade's hands and made himself scarce until dark. He came strolling in as dinner was set on the table, saying only a few words, eating quickly, and Wade didn't see him again until they were getting ready for bed.

"Where do you always go?" he asked him. They stood in front of the bathroom mirror, dribbling foamy beards of toothpaste.

"To the lake."

Wade turned and dropped a glob on the floor. "Horseshoe?"

Graham shrugged.

"We're not supposed to go there alone."

"We can if we can swim across it. Dad said."

It was Jack Chapel's swimming test. "Swim across it and you can take your life-jacket off," he had told them on many family outings to the reservoir.

Horseshoe Reservoir was not a small swim. From the chugging dam to the lapping shore, it was with strained eyes that one would look across. Such a severe swim, the English Channel to a little boy, that Jack knew they would never try it until they were much older and stronger. He had said it as an impossible achievement, not as a challenge. It was a way to keep the boys in life-jackets. But a little boy's mind works in challenges, not in warnings.

"Can you swim it?" Wade whispered to him.

Graham spat into the sink. "Not yet."

"Have you tried it?"

Graham stuck his face under the faucet and swished a mouthful of water. He spat and wiped his mouth.

"No."

Then he popped the button and zipper on his jeans and marched them to the ground.

Wade began to read more. He picked up everything Rudy left behind. It took him three months to finish _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_. He had difficulty keeping the letters on the page. But he didn't recognize it as trouble, and he never complained about the difficulty of reading, thinking the book pages might do this for everyone.

"I like the picture of the horsey."

Wade looked up from the pages and saw Hannah sitting across, looking at the book cover.

"You wanna learn how to read?"

"Yeah." And she crawled into his lap with a smile.

Hannah was almost five years old, pointing to every picture of animals she saw.

"You know what sounds the letters make?"

She recited the alphabet. "...next time won't you sing with me."

"Now you just put the sounds together. It's easy."

They read together until they both fell asleep, and in the morning Hannah was in possession of the book. Every night after, she knocked softly at the boys' door and peeked in, _Huckleberry Finn_ under her arm, and she and Wade didn't skip a night until they finished. The pages gave Wade headaches anyway, and without Hannah's nightly insistence he might have given up early. He often woke to find her asleep next to him, the book in her hands, and he tried to ease out without waking her. He'd spend the rest of the night pillowless on the floor.

She was closest with Wade because of that. She read many more books after, and it was Wade who gave her the gift to be able to read them. She followed him more closely than she did Rudy and Graham. She whispered her secrets to Wade, they kept them from their brothers, and in the car she always sat next to him.

Hannah's one chore every night was to set the table. The boys rotated washing the dishes, a chore that took them much longer than it should have. With their hands in the water, they couldn't resist playing around, or their minds wandered and they forgot the task at hand. They would get distracted and Jack would walk through the kitchen to find one of them pumping water from their palms, or splashing a spider down from the window. It didn't matter which brother was at the sink, there were always pools of water on the counter and floor afterward.

Hannah's chore was much simpler. It took only a couple minutes to set six sets of plates and utensils. The hardest part was getting them down from the cabinet. She had dropped several plates in the past and stood over them with tears in her eyes. But it was easy when she set the chair next to the counter, instead of climbing up, and yet each night she avoided the job, despite her mother's reminding, until dinner sat steaming at the table's center, and plates and utensils became urgent.

Rudy and Graham were hungry all the time.

"Those hollow legs don't stay filled for long," Jack would say. He was impressed with how his two oldest boys managed not to starve to death between meals. Equally impressive was their ability not to choke to death on food they barely gave enough time to chew properly.

Graham was so active he burned anything he ate almost instantly. His feeding was a refueling, while Rudy's was more of a pre-fueling. A topping off of the tank. Graham sat patiently above his growling stomach, like a sprinter listening for the gun, waiting for Hannah to set the table so he could begin serving himself. Rudy was much less forgiving, coming up with a simple, but effective chant.

"Hannah, set the tay-bull. Hannah, set the tay-bull..." and he pounded the table with each word while Hannah's face went from simmer to boil.

Graham joined in the chant every night, which only got to two lines before Jack Chapel told them to knock it off right now or they'd go to bed hungry. Sometimes he'd reach over and pop the dull end of his knife against Graham's knuckles. Rudy sat at the end of the table, out of reach. Wade never joined in. Instead, he helped Hannah reach the cabinet shelves.

On her first day of school, Wade walked her to her classroom door and told her where his classroom was if she needed him – "It has a poster of Ollie the bookworm on the door." – but she never did. It was enough to know he was in the same building, and after school he stood by the main door so they could walk out together.

It went like that until the last month of the school year; he stood waiting, only to watch Hannah walk past him, holding hands with Gus Patterson.

"He's my boyfriend," she told Wade. "And I think I love him and want to marry him."

"Okay," Wade said, and they stopped reading together. She stopped coming to his room.

She didn't even look at him at the school door. Just walked past as if he was a stranger, holding hands with Gus Patterson. Later, Wade joined in the dinner table chant and Hannah's eyes filled with tears and her mouth trembled.

"Enough, boys," Jack said and raised the knife. Graham pulled his hands off the table. Hannah's eyes bubbled, ready to spill, but Wade couldn't stop himself.

"Hannah. Set. The table!"

She burst into tears, and Jack pulled Wade from the table to the living room where he pulled his belt, sat in his favorite chair, and put Wade over his knee. Hannah and Wade both went to bed tear-streaked and hungry while Rudy and Graham licked their plates clean.

The next morning Hannah came into Wade's room while the house was still dark and quiet and the room still breathed with the boys' sleep, before Rudy's alarm went off. Wade blinked awake to see her standing above him. She had a calm expression. He reached for his glasses, planting them into place on his nose and ears. He was about to apologize for making her cry when she lifted _Huckleberry Finn_ high above her head and bashed him in the face causing his glasses to cut his nose. He ducked under the covers, trying to catch her punches in the fabric when out came the claws. Rudy muttered for them to be quiet, and Graham stuck his head over the bunk and encouraged more, catching first-light glimpses of Wade in the sheets with his glasses bent on his face.

Wade destroyed _Huckleberry Finn_ that night, tearing each page out of the spine and scattering it over Hannah's bedroom.

Although Wade was slight in build, outweighing only a precious few in his class, Hannah was half his size. She was tiny. Without a second-guess, the smallest of her classmates. But she had a fearlessness that frequently brought Wade to his knees. She wasn't concerned with hurting Wade, she knew he could handle anything a little girl could give, and she gave him her all, going at him with fingernails and teeth. She pulled hair and gouged eyes and hooked nostrils, never once feeling sorry for drawing blood. He deserved what he got.

It wasn't rare of her to grab whatever was closest and use it as a weapon, and Wade began to recognize the signs of when it would happen. Her brow creased impossibly and she blinked around, and he had to race to beat her hands to a chunk of firewood or a flower vase.

He woke earlier and earlier, afraid he would find her standing over him with the fireplace poker. Finally he figured out how to jam his entire shoe under the door to keep it from opening.

She once threw a cup across the table and clipped Wade in the eye while their parents were still in the kitchen. He threatened to throw his plate, but had to use it as a shield when Graham re-armed her with his spoon.

They went that way, glaring at each other across their food for days, flicking vegetables when their parents weren't looking. Rudy looked up.

"If you guys hit me, I'm going to kill you both." Then he nestled back over his plate.

It was at recess when something happened to smooth things over. Wade turned away from the tetherball in time to see Gus Patterson shove Hannah off the slide. She landed on her stomach in the gravel, the wind knocked out of her. He saw her face tighten and struggle for air from across the playground. Little pieces of rock stuck to her palms as if glued there. Gus Patterson went down the slide and walked away without looking back before she even gathered her first breath back.

Wade charged. He ran through the pendulum of students on the swings, and hurdled the balance beam, never taking his eyes off his target. He was going to pound that Gus Patterson, even if he was three grades older than Gus.

Gus Patterson, walking off the playground toward the school doors, as if he had nothing left to do with recess, must have heard the crunching gravel of Wade's sprint, because he looked back once and began his own. But he didn't go in the direction Wade had expected. He circled around in a crescent, before falling into the fetal position and screaming out. Rudy and Graham were on him from both sides and Wade got there last.

"I know what you're saying," Principal Hoover said. "I hear what you're saying, Mr Chapel, and I can't say it is fair in this case either. But I have zero-tolerance for fighting in this school."

"Just say the word," Jack said, easing back into the chair. "Tell me again how zero-tolerance your school is and that you have no other choice, so I can withdraw them myself."

"I don't want that," Principal Hoover said. "I don't want that all, and you know it. The truth of the matter is that your boys have a very mature sense of justice. Thirty years of watching children play at recess, I know it when I see it."

Jack adjusted in a leathery creak. "Don't do me any favors. I'd rather withdraw them."

"Jack," Lisa Chapel said. "Can you drop your pride for one moment? If not for the boys, then do it for Tee-tee. We'd have to remove her too." And she glanced across the desk to see Hoover's eyes move from her to Jack again.

"I understand the way a man's mind works," Principal Hoover said. "I don't blame you for feeling the way you do. If they were my boys, I'd feel the same way. As I said, they have a good sense of what's right and what's wrong. You can be proud of that. That's good parenting." He tilted back in his chair and looked out the window. "That's more than I can say for most children at this school. It's the sentence they carry out for the crime that has us in here in the first place."

"What then?" Jack said.

Principal Hoover leaned over his desk, his hands clasped together. "How would you feel if your boys had a job to do?"

Jack and Lisa Chapel left the principal's office in silence. The boys followed, leaving Gus Patterson to sit alone outside the office, squinting through tears and wincing at bruised ribs.

There's nothing more unnerving than a silent car ride with an angry father. From the backseat the boys could see Jack Chapel had a more serious expression than they had seen before. One torn between pride and – well, pride and something else. But the boys mistook his silence. There was no disappointment in their father's face.

In the driveway, everyone sat after the engine stopped chugging. The car clicked away and Jack put his hand on the passenger seat and turned.

"No more fighting, boys. I saw what you did to Gus Patterson. You can't do that, understand? You can stand up to someone without slugging them silly."

"Even if they hurt Tee-tee?" Rudy said. "Or Wade?"

"Even if–" Jack tried to figure out playground justice in his own mind. "No, that's not what I mean. You stand up – I want you to stand up – If a bully hits you, well, then you hit them back twice as har–"

"Jack."

"But it only goes so far before _you_ become the bully."

"That's not fair."

"I know it's not, but that's life. Life is not fair and you have to know it. No more using fists." Then he added without meaning to, "Unless, of course..."

Nobody moved, unsatisfied with the rules, but waiting to hear Jack's caveat. The car made a few more clicks. "Tell you what," Jack said. "You only use fists if you have to, and by that I mean if someone is using fists on you or one of your brothers. Or your sister. Otherwise, you only do what they did to you."

"Like shove their face in the gravel?"

"Yes." Jack cleared his throat. "No. That's not – listen, Principal Hoover has job for you tomorrow."

Lisa gave him a look over the car as they all got out. She didn't say anything about it again until they were getting ready for bed that night. Jack stood at the mirror in his shorts, and she walked around the bed in her slip.

"Are you afraid of confusing them?"

"I'm a little confused about it myself. And, no. They're smart. They'll figure it out soon if they haven't already. The Gus's and the – what was that boy's name – the Gus's and the Cody's at that school will figure it out too. That's fair. That's fair in life and that's fair on the playground."

He saw in the mirror, in the dark corner of the room, his wife drop her slip to the floor in a silk cascade, her shoulders and back flexing, then quickly hop into bed and pull the covers over her. He continued in the mirror.

"It's true, you can't go around battering everyone who does you wrong. When you're old there'll be no one left to batter. But the playground is different. Don't you remember?"

"It's different for a girl. I never got pushed around."

"Well, you're beautiful. But so is our Tee-tee, and she was pushed off the slide today. So the boys can push back but no more unless they need to. Well, I guess that doesn't change much of anything. But this way they're aware of both sides of justice." He smiled at her in the mirror. She was propped up on her pillow, holding the covers at her neck. "Say," he said to her reflection, then turned to complete his sentence, "you married a pretty smart fella."

"I know I did," she said with an identical smile. He hurried though the rest of his nightly routine and ran to the bed, his wife lifting the covers for him to slide in next to her. They were together, face to face.

"If you ever leave me," he said, adjusting closer. "If you ever leave me, well then I'm going with you."

She smiled and touched his cheek. "You're not at all worried about them?"

"No," he said. "I'd say they're doing pretty good. I'd say _we're_ doing pretty good."

"How'd you get that scar?" She pointed under his eye to the only hint of him ever being a boy. She loved to hear his answer, which was the same every time. She could almost mouth the words as he said them.

"Popfly," he said. "Lost it in the sun."

Across the house, Hannah gave a little knock on the boys' door, a new book under her arm.

The brothers Chapel stayed at St Augustine's. They became recess monitors for Principal Hoover, carrying on as usual on the playground, but with an eye open for bullying or teasing, and during the first recess shift the Chapel boys were kings. It was true that the Gus's and the Cody's of St Augustine's figured it out pretty quickly. There were very few playground incidents, and it lasted that way through to the last day of school.

"Wade... _Wade_. C'mere."

Cody Barnes was leaning out of the boys' bathroom door.

"What?"

"Sshhh..." He looked both ways and said again. "Just c'mere."

Cody Barnes had not said a word to him since Rudy and Graham sent him home that one day with an assortment of bruises. He wore his arm in a sling for a whole week after that, mostly for playing up sympathy and planting guilt, and Wade gained a new sense of confidence. He knew how and when to use his fists, and dad showed him how to use his opponent's weight and momentum against him. If Cody Barnes put a hand on him now, he saw himself tossing him through a stall door or into one of the urinals, which reached all the way to the ground.

"Ever seen a Playboy?" Cody Barnes said, thrusting a glossy magazine. "Look at her."

Wade had never seen a Playboy. He had once seen a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader on a cardboard advertisement for sports drinks at the grocery store, but mom moved them along before he could stop and study it.

He held the magazine wide open the tall way. The lady on the page stood with nothing on but a blue scarf around her neck and pink slippers on her feet. She had long blonde hair and a tiny squint of a belly button. Next to her was her name and stats:

Jennifer Chapman.  
Height: 5'5"  
Weight: 115 lbs  
Loves: silk pajamas and football.  
University of Iowa.  
Jennifer is studying for a degree in biology. "I love working with animals. They bring out the best in people, and I always find out if a guy is worth dating by asking how many pets he-"

"Don't read the words," Cody Barnes said. "Who cares? You just look at the pictures."

There was page after page of ladies wearing about the same amount of accessories, but in different poses.

"What's she doing?"

"Posing. What's it look like?" Cody Barnes grabbed the magazine and held it close to his face. Wade thought he was going to smell the pages. But he just shook his head and said, "Jennifer Chapman."

It was the first time Wade had seen such a picture. Jennifer Chapman didn't seem real. Girls like that didn't exist in real life. They were made up for magazine pages, and this was the first evidence he'd seen that even those pages existed at all. She looked so happy to be in it. What kind of girl grows up to do that type of thing anyway? The Krissy Taylor's of the world?

He would not see Krissy Taylor again until next school year. He had thought many times of propositioning for a kiss, or at least being around her so if she ever got the feeling for one, he would be the first boy she saw when she looked around. But it didn't happen and she hardly looked his way. When she did, a look from across the classroom, it was with such power and focus that he shuffled his hands through his desk, pretending to search for something so deep inside that it required him to break eye contact to find. Krissy Taylor had a way of looking at people, a recently discovered power for her. Even as a grade-schooler she had the ability to freeze adult men with a look well beyond her age. It frightened and confused many people. It was the same way that Jennifer Chapman stared back in Cody Barnes' magazine, an image that carved so deep into the walls of Wade's skull it would never wash away, no matter how many times he scrubbed at it in the confessional.

"Mom, when I'm old enough, I'm going to marry you," Wade told her once. "You're the only girl I can trust."

The next time, he thought, sitting in the final class of the year, the next time get close to Krissy Taylor, I'm just going to do it. But the bell rang and the parking lot became a colorful stampede of freed students, hysterics and shouts. He caught one final glimpse of Krissy, climbing into her stepdad's truck with an unhappy look on her face. As soon as she closed the door, the truck roared off with her face in the passenger window. It was not the look she was used to giving.

It was officially summer then, and it didn't take long for Graham to start it.

"Look," he told Wade, looking back at him from a squat in the lawn. "Look closer. C'mon, a little closer."

Graham huddled so close over the grass that Wade had to squat next to him, and still he had to peel away Graham's hunching shoulder to see. But before he could see he heard the scratch of something, the sizzle of another thing, and Graham took off running. Summer had started, and it started with a bang.

"Where did you get a lighter?" Lisa Chapel asked, standing in the door. The firecracker was the lesser crime. "You're not smoking cigarettes are you?"

"Nope," Graham said, still smiling as he walked in. He gave up the lighter easily, wiping his hands on his shirt and walking past to rummage through the kitchen for food. Beans and rice were always readily available, simmering all day on the stove, and Graham filled his bowl. He soon set to work over it with a large spoon. Lisa Chapel was frightened her boys were growing so fast they spent half the day starving. Beans and rice, she figured, expand and fill a growing boy's stomach better than anything.

It seemed that Graham only came inside to eat. After replenishing his exhausted body, he would disappear behind the backyard door again for another few hours. From the kitchen window Lisa watched him pass, pushing his bike from the shed to the front yard, mouthing some silent words into the sun as he moved. Wade often followed where he went, chasing after him on his own bike, pedaling fast down the sidewalks, frightened half the time of letting him get too far ahead and finding himself lost among street signs he didn't recognize. No matter how often they went, the cutter roads to Horseshoe Reservoir, with identical curbs and hedges, and fire hydrants in the same places, were a maze in between, a maze where Wade just tried to keep Graham's shirtless back in view.

"We're not supposed to go in."

Graham waded in up to his waist. Wade was afraid his brother would try for it then. He could see him pondering the swim in his head, looking out at the choppy water and gauging its difficulty. People were dots on the opposite shore. Dots that moved along the water's glimmering edge. It was a swim even a prison escapee with freedom on the other side would think twice about.

"Don't do it. Graham, don't." Wade tried to keep his voice steady.

"I could."

Those were the single most frightening moments for Wade: watching the top half of his brother contemplate an Olympic feat that would leave Wade standing alone on the shore with the responsibility of telling everyone that Graham tried to swim across but drowned. The bottom half of Graham needed no encouragement, and he'd stand, turned in the water, until the tears rolled down Wade's face. He plunged his knees back to shore.

"I'm not going to do it."

They came home to find Rudy either submerged in a book, or gluing delicate pieces of model airplanes. Soon so many hung over Rudy's bed that they began to spread across the entire bedroom ceiling. Rudy's skin had a pinkish pigment to it, especially noticeable when he grappled with Graham on the floor. Those where usually even matches, ending in a pink and tan stalemate of twisted legs and arms.

Wade once came in the room to find Rudy reading a book on oceanography. Then the model planes switched briefly to model ships. He never caught him reading it, but there was a geometry book under Rudy's pillow. He figured that was what Rudy read under the glowing covers while he and Graham discussed the real world.

"Do you believe in God?" Wade asked.

"Sure," Graham said. "That makes sense to me. How else do you explain people being on earth?"

"I don't know. Science."

"If science is all there is then how do you explain miracles? Like statues crying and stuff?"

"I don't know. You think God knows everything?"

"I guess so."

"Even what we're going to do tomorrow?"

"Of course He does."

Rudy flipped a page.

"What are we going to do tomorrow?" Wade asked.

"Oh, I don't know. Dig a hole."

"How deep?"

"Until we can't dig anymore." Graham yawned, and the sheets rustled.

Rudy clicked the flashlight off. He moved around until he was comfortable. Then in the silence he spoke.

"A three-legged stool won't rock. It's all on one plane."

"What's a plane?"

"That's a level of existence, you idiot. Like a piece of paper. A four-legged stool is on two planes. So it rocks. I don't know why they even make them like that."

Wade did not offer his speculation. Certainly not out loud. Rudy would have found the fault in his explanation and let him know that only an idiot would think that way.

Whenever Rudy did put his books down and wander outside, he displayed a natural athleticism. He was unbeatable in a sprint and Wade wondered why he did not spend all day running. Graham developed a muscular body, even as a boy, through countless hours of physical activity. Rudy was pale and his ribs showed, but he could do an equal number of pull-ups as Graham, and he could probably climb the backyard tree as high as Graham could if he did not stop to think through the physics of his body mass balancing on the twig at the top.

Lisa Chapel had a lot to worry about during those summers. During the school year she could relax knowing her boys were safe in a classroom. In the summer, it was all she could do to keep track of their whereabouts. She constantly found them crawling out windows or zipping past the house on bicycles towing a skateboard. The boy on the skateboard was lying flat with his arms out, his face inches from a bloody disaster on the asphalt.

"Don't you know how badly you can get hurt?"

It didn't stop them, although the next time she saw it the boy on the skateboard wore a football helmet she'd never seen before, and his shirt was stuffed with cardboard armor.

She once spilled a pot of beans on the kitchen floor in a frantic rush to the backyard. She had seen out of the corner of her eye one of the branches on the tree flutter and bend, the way you see a twig bounce when a squirrel jumps from one to another, and she ran out the back door to find Graham dangling high off the ground by his fingertips.

"Graham! Graham, tuck your legs back over. _Get down right now, all of you_. Oh, ohh...please God..." She paced beneath him with her arms ready. Hannah stood on the grass, looking into the leaves in a squint, her playdoll hanging over her arm.

Graham looked down between his arms, releasing one hand to dramatize his dangle a little more before monkeying his way back on top of the limb.

"Geez, mom don't freak out," Rudy said, straddling a limb. "He's not going to fall or anything."

"They were jumping from branch to branch," Hannah told her mom later. "They called it the flying squirrel."

When their father came home, Lisa insisted he take the boys camping as he fixed himself his evening drink.

"They need to burn off energy. They're hanging off the branches like–like–"

"Like boys?" Jack smiled into his cup.

He did take them camping. To Lake McConaughy. The road trip out there was hot and exhausting, and the boys hung their heads out the windows, watching the trailer trucks pass by, wheels whirring under Yosemite Sam mud flaps. They had to yell over the sound. But it gave them another chance to see their father in charge, and it started with the image of him with one hand over the wheel, his hair waving in the wind above his sunglasses. Rudy sat in the front seat, testing the wind resistance to the different angles of his hand out the window. Wade sat up and squeezed forward from the back seat.

"Dad, where do the girls in Playboy Magazine live?"

Jack put both his hands on the wheel to keep the car in his lane, glancing in the mirror several times. He turned down the radio volume and cleared his throat, and he noticed then that Graham had snapped out of his window-gazing stupor and Rudy had brought his hand in.

"Well, they live...I guess they're just like any – you know I don't know. I never knew any."

"Why do they take all their clothes off?"

"Where did you–" Jack sat up, glancing at the mirror again. "They do it because they don't know any other way to get people to like them. They do it because they don't – because they can't carry an interesting conversation with anyone. And they don't care about breaking the rules. A good girl who respects herself would never–"

He shook his head and looked out the window, and had to laugh. "Hell, they do it because they like the attention."

Jack wondered how old he was when he first saw a picture in a dirty magazine. That's right, it was in the fifth grade and he had been walking home from school. He passed a bar, where an early drunk blinked his way from the door to the sidewalk, blinded momentarily by the sudden sun in his dark day. He handed Jack a wrinkled page with a woman lying on a fur blanket.

"There you go, boy," the man said. "What do you think about that?"

"I don't know."

"It will do you a world of good to learn these things early in life and make an educated decision about such things. She's nice to look at, right?"

"I don't know."

They were the words of a man with his own problems in life, and maybe he was too young to see such things, but it didn't make a difference to Jack then. He had seen what many boys his age would not see for another few years. And now, with his own boys wondering the same things that he wondered back then, he used the opportunity to hand the decisions back to them by being honest with them instead of trying to teach them a lesson about it. It was easier this way, and seeing Wade's head bob in sleep on the backseat, he wondered if he should have done otherwise.

Explanations were a struggle for him, as difficult as expressing emotion. This sentence of truth in the confines of a car, he considered, was equal to the birds and the bees lecture. They probably have already figured it out, he thought.

The boys dozed off in sweaty exhaustion. The car ride ended in cruel silence, crooked on the highway shoulder, everyone upset with each other. It started when Rudy woke to a knuckle rapping the top of his head. He spun around, rubbing his head, to see Wade blinking himself awake and looking straight at him. Rudy reached back and gave him a Charley-horse.

"Ow. Why'd you–" and he leaned forward and slugged Rudy's arm.

Rudy flinched, then stayed still in the passenger seat for a moment, then turned again and leaned far between the console. Wade had his hands up this time, but Rudy went until he found a soft spot, burying his knuckles in Wade's chest. They see-sawed back and forth between the front and back seats, taking vicious swings at each other, not even hearing their father yelling for them to stop until he pulled off the highway and slammed on the brakes.

"The hell are you boys doing?" Jack said, peeling the boys apart. Rudy was seething red, and Wade was nearly in tears. "What's wrong with you, huh?"

"He hit me," Wade said.

"You hit me first, you idiot."

"I didn't. You woke me and hit my leg again for no reason."

"Because you hit my head."

They looked at each other, trying to figure it out. Graham kept his face to the window, holding down a smirk.

Later, Rudy helped Wade gut the fish he caught. They held it up together to show their mother the next day, reeking and bug-bitten, standing in the living room proudly dangling a curled trout.

There were plenty of fights between the brothers. No more or less than usual. But they always ended in an understanding: these are your brothers – you love them, and they love you. Things like kneeling together over a freshly caught fish were the substitutes for saying I'm sorry, or I love you. And they were fine substitutes.

The worst fight of their childhood began from a minor comment, something that would repeat itself in adulthood.

Graham stood on Rudy's bed with a pair of scissors, snipping the strings to the model planes and handing them down to Wade.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Rudy said from the door.

"They make shadows all over the room," Graham said. He snipped another.

"Well, then tell me so I can move them, don't take them all d– don't touch the P-38." Rudy stood over the planes on the floor, kneeling to sort through them. "You better not have broken any."

Wade held one. It was the F-16. His comment would tip the iceberg, sending the delicate waters into uncontrollable waves.

"I like the old planes best."

"What do you know about anything?"

Rudy tore the model away from Wade and shoved him sprawling on the floor. Wade sat up, rubbing his elbows, looking for something to throw, but Graham had already sought justice. He held Rudy in a headlock and Wade broke the P-38 across his forehead. It crumbled like an eggshell and kicked the situation into high gear.

"Let go of me." Rudy's words were a hiss through his teeth. His head was red and getting redder, his forehead lumped with veins.

"Not until you calm down." Graham held him tight, afraid of what might happen if he let him go. Rudy buried his fingernails in Graham's arms.

" _I am calmed down_."

Wade stood back. Rudy had a look in his bursting red eyes that had nothing to do with model airplanes. When he finally managed to spin his way out of Graham's hold, Wade took off running, out the door, moving low in the hallway, his hands pushing off the walls at the turns. Rudy didn't catch him until they made it to the backyard, where Wade fended him off with a rake, taking a swipe across Rudy's face that would leave him with a lasting scar under his chin. He tackled and held Wade in a terrifying choke on the grass, dripping blood on his face, when Graham tore him off.

Hannah had been playing with her dolls on the patio. She saw the entire horrible thing, standing nearby, frozen in fear. She didn't run to find their mom until she saw Rudy gritting his bloody teeth over Wade.

Lisa Chapel kept her boys separated for the remainder of the day. Wade stayed in their room, where he pieced together the broken model pieces through teary eyes, and cut new strings for his brother. Graham disappeared on his bike. He was shirtless again, not because he removed his shirt, but because it had been torn away. Rudy was told to mow the yards.

"Dad mowed yesterday."

"I don't care. You need to burn some anger away." Lisa Chapel sat on the tub's edge and patched Rudy's chin in a big white bandage. "You think of your brother while you're mowing. You're supposed to protect your brothers not kill them."

"I do protect them. I protect them from their own stupidity."

The front door slammed and Lisa Chapel rubbed a long sigh from her face.

Rudy woke every morning angry. Even in the summer. He lived in a world of morons who did everything wrong. If they stumbled into something right, it was an accident, and they should at least understand why it was right.

He stalked around the house in the morning light, and everyone avoided him those first few hours. But it was an anger within himself, not directed at anyone in particular, unless you got in its way.

He was thankful for his brothers. They were his brothers and they were the closest things to him in intelligence. He knew their father was a kind and loving father, and their mother, a loving, beautiful mother.

It was strange, awkward to everyone but him when it happened, but he was capable of sudden outbursts of compliments.

"You would be a good quarterback," he told Wade, tossing the football in the backyard. "You throw a good, tight spiral. That's good for accuracy."

Wade stood blinking at him for a moment, the ball in the crook of his arm. He toed the ground until Rudy clapped his hands to bring his head back up. Rudy had his hands together in a nice target, and Wade tossed the most accurate ball with the tightest spiral he could manage. He wore a big smile.

"You sound just like Kermit," he told Graham once when Graham was doing the impression in the living room. "I wish I was as good at impressions. Do it again."

Graham paused, studying his older brother. Then he said in a froggy voice, "Excuse me, but do you, um, mean me?"

Compliments came naturally from Rudy's mouth, and in good nature. Fighting was expected, it came with the territory. As the oldest, he had a responsibility to knock his brothers around every now again, but at the end of the day, with the lights out, he pulled the covers over his head and thanked God for them.

And he was thankful for Hannah.

After church one Sunday, the family drove out to a hog farm they'd seen in the classifieds advertising a litter of puppies. The tires went from clean asphalt to pulling up red billows of dirt, and Rudy let Hannah crawl onto his lap so she could press her face to the window.

"There they are, I see the puppies! I see 'em!"

It was a large litter of German Shepard pups, pouncing through the rolling field as they drove up. The children went straight into the swishing grass, chasing the puppies, bent over like hermits in the sunlight, while the adults watched and spoke.

Graham went after the most active pup of the bunch, chasing him through the grass, the grasshoppers parting as they ran, before cornering him against the barn. Wade came trudging back with another, lifting the tail and looking between its legs as he walked, the pup struggling in his arms.

"No," Rudy said. "I think we should let Hannah pick one out."

Hannah sat in the grass with her Sunday dress spread out and let the curious pups come to her. One quickly fell asleep in her lap, and she was stroking it from ear to tail when Rudy stood over her and spoke for everyone.

"We think you should name her too."

Hannah tilted her head to put Rudy in front of the sun, the still-new scar glowing on his chin. She put her face to the pup's nose, nuzzling it close, then moved the dog around on her lap and stroked him further. After a moment she looked up.

"Painty."

It was a good enough name and, because Rudy immediately gave it his stamp of approval, Wade and Graham agreed on it. By the last month of summer the pup had tripled in size.

Hannah spent those days lying on the soft backyard grass, her head rising on Painty's ribcage with each breath. Wade liked to feed Painty, insisting that he be the one to dump the dinner scraps in her bowl. Graham walked around the yard, holding Painty over his shoulders, playing as if he was some sort of Bible shepherd.

Rudy had his own secret moments with the dog. He sat around the corner of the house, invisible unless searched for, and he let Painty curl up on his lap. He hummed songs to her and scratched her ears, both content to be with each other only, until the sound of the back door opening lifted them both from tender hiding.

"I think we picked the right one," Jack said.

Lisa leaned over the sink to the kitchen window, her hands still holding wet dishes, her head close to Jack's. Painty was circling the children, running through their outstretched hands and sprinting across the backyard.

"Did you ever think Rudy would do something so nice for Hannah?"

"Of course," Jack said. "He has his mother's kindness." He swirled the ice in his glass and laughed softly. "No, I never thought he would do something like that."

"I'm just so proud of him. All of them."

"Well, if they don't kill each other off before they leave home, I'd say we did all right as parents." He put an arm around her, and she rested her head on his shoulder.

"I hope they never leave home," Lisa said. "My babies."

Jack put his glass on the counter and used both his arms, nuzzling his wife's neck. "Hm-mm. Maybe we should make another."

"Jack, aht – Jack, don't–" She giggled the way young girls do at their first necking, surprised and embarrassed by the attention.

"Oh, get your hands off me you handsome scallywag," Jack said in a high voice. "Unhand me, you irresistible, gorgeous man you. We could lock them outside and chase each other around the house all night."

"Ah! Jack. The dishes, Jack, I'm spilling water."

The door opened and the children saw the water on the floor and their father and mother standing in a loving embrace, kissing long and good by the sink, ignoring the interruption. A burglary couldn't disturb them.

"Do you think mom and dad ever kiss at bedtime like in that show we saw?"

"Sure, they do. That's what adults do. Go to sleep."

"Yeah, but they're not like the people in the TV shows. Is it bad to do that?"

"Yes. That's why mom turns the channel."

"Is it bad even for moms and dads?"

"No. That's what married people are supposed to do at night. How do you think babies are made, anyway?"

"Because God plants a seed in mom's stomach and the seed becomes a baby."

"She told me that too, but it's when they kiss enough times and that makes a baby."

Mysteries in youth need only a slight explanation to be reality.

"Graham... _Graham_."

"Shut up. I'm sleeping."

"What is – what is a sex?"

"It's when mom changes the channel." Then he said. "I don't want to say."

From the other side of the room, Rudy explained it in great scientific detail the way he read it in a book.

"But only married people can do it?"

"Anyone, I guess," Rudy said. "I didn't read anything about being married to do it."

The idea simmered in the darkness before Wade spoke the last words about it that night.

"That sounds weird."

As they were brushing their teeth one night, Graham spoke through the white foam.

"You have Miss Russette next year."

"I do?" Wade spat and came back up. "I don't know."

"She's pretty. You can see through her shirt right here where it buttons. You can see her skin and her bra."

Wade's eyebrows pulled together and shrouded his eyes. After a pause, he worked the toothbrush harder across his molars, working up more foam.

"It's true. You can see her skin if you look. Her buttons don't close all the way because they're so big."

Wade spat. "I don't care."

They took Painty on long walks, along the neighborhood sidewalks, along the path by the Platte River, and all the way to the shore of Horseshoe Reservoir where they reached over and pulled cattails from the water. Rudy ran ahead while Graham and Wade traded places sitting in the wagon with Hannah, or pushing from behind. The wagon bounced along at full speed on the sidewalk cracks, bringing people out to their front yards to look left and right.

Jack Chapel bought them a harness so Painty could pull more easily. When he brought her in for her shots, the veterinarian examined her with wide eyes.

"She is the strongest dog I've ever seen. She could drag you out of this office if she wanted to."

"Well, she gets a lot of exercise. I walk her five miles behind my car every day to keep her active."

The veterinarian blinked a few times.

"She pulls my kids in a wagon a lot."

Painty was a quiet dog, only barking when stressed or alarmed. When neighbors walked on the other side of the fence, she quietly found a hole in the slats to press her nose in. She sat in the yard and watched the boys in the tree. Hannah stood by, scratching the dog's ears and watching her brothers. By then they had built a treehouse from two-by-fours they took from a nearby homebuild. It nearly resembled the blueprints Rudy sketched out beforehand. The window was in the right place.

"You guys didn't follow the plans correctly." He pointed up. They stood in the fluttering shade under the tree. "It's not even level on your side."

Graham shrugged and threw the lawn darts. Wade sat under the window in the tree, counting the thumps of the darts in the wood. One made it through the window, a rare thing, it didn't make the thump on the wood, and it threw Wade's count off and he stood just as the last one came through the window. It stuck his ear to his head.

"Stop yelling or mom will come out here."

"I can't pull it out, it's stuck. _Get up here quick_."

"Shh...she'll take the darts. Climb down here."

Graham yanked the dart out and they went back to their game. Hannah had seen her brothers bleed before, but never from the head, and never in such a focused spurt of bright blood. Wade was rubbing the spot dry when Lisa came out, Hannah behind her, and took the darts. They passed them to each other behind their backs until their mother had them all.

But she couldn't take the tree and the Chapel boys found other things to do in its branches. Rudy hammered railroad spikes into its trunk to make it easier to climb. Wade once shimmied across a tiny limb to knock a hornet's nest down. He received three stings on his way down, running across the lawn to the house, where Rudy and Graham stood behind the crack of the backdoor opening.

For his birthday, Graham requested an audience instead of presents. Lisa watched her son climb to the top. He kept inching his way further up, until the trunk thinned into a twig, and the slightest breeze tossed him around. She watched with her hands on her face, calling for Graham to come down. Wade thought she was going to faint right there against the trunk. But no amount of danger could wipe away Graham's smile. When another slight breeze put Graham horizontal, Jack stepped in and called him down.

"Pass the salt, please. You might be a daredevil when you're older."

Lisa put her fork down. "Jack, don't encourage him. That was stupid. And you don't need more salt than that. Do you want to be killed, Graham? Do you want your sister to see you fall?"

"No," he said, leaning close to his plate, shoveling beans.

"Here I worked so hard to bring you into the world and you're just going jump out of trees like a dummy."

"I wasn't going to jump."

Late at night, Graham burned small bits of paper in the corner of the treehouse to keep warm. He stamped it out and put a brick over it. Painty's barking woke the family a few hours later, then a firetruck siren, and they stood in the backyard watching the firefighters dismantle the treehouse.

"That's what I said," Jack said. "Take the whole damn thing down."

The boys stood from tallest to shortest, watching as if a piece of themselves was being torn down.

"Let's leave the daredevil population alone," Jack said when the night was dark again. He rubbed the top of Graham's head. "The only thing you'll get from tempting death is an early one." Then he added as he stumbled off to bed, "And fame and fortune and loads of beautiful wom–"

" _Jack_."

The summer became shorter and shorter and the boys appeared frantic to fill it before school came around again. They ditched the wagon and replaced it with a shopping cart they found somewhere. It made more noise on the sidewalks, but Painty could pull the cart just as fast, there was more room in it, and the pusher had an easier time running behind it and hanging on when it coasted downhill.

"I don't even know where they found a shopping cart," Lisa Chapel told the police officer.

Without Hannah in the cart, the boys went faster, Painty went full speed. A sudden change of direction from Painty sent the boys spilling into a neighborhood intersection, sending an oncoming car, the police cruiser, to swerve onto the sidewalk, knocking a mailbox off its post. The boys, scraped and bleeding, were up and running before the last letter from the mailbox floated to the ground. Rudy had little rocks stuck in his skin as if he slept on the road. It left him with another small scar on his face, above his left eyebrow.

Whenever they got haircuts (Jack like to keep them all short) all the little scars showed up on the back of their heads. It was as if most of the things that could leave scars did so as they ran from it.

"I can't let them do anything without them figuring out how to get hurt by it."

"You couldn't stop them if you tried, honey. Boys will be boys, and you don't want to stop that."

"One of these days Hannah is going to follow them too far and get hurt."

Hannah was too smart. She stood around her brothers and watched them hurt themselves. Wade shimmied out on a limb over the house until it slowly lowered him to the roof. He had a bedsheet in his arm. Hannah stood in the yard as Wade prepared. Painty sat next to her. To an unsuspecting mother inside, it was a nice image of a little girl on the green grass with her dog. Lisa put it together too late, when Wade fell past the window, a worthless parachute drifting over him, that they were there to watch something stupid happen. He landed on his feet, but his knees went into his face.

"I told you it wouldn't work," Hannah said, squatting to pet Painty while Wade held his bloody, numb mouth, touching his fingers over his teeth.

But when the opportunity to get involved in less dangerous participations presented itself, Hannah took it. On blazing hot days, a simple drink of water became a contest to the boys. They stood in the kitchen, each with the largest cups they could find, and Hannah stood under their elbows, umpiring. Standing in a puddle on the hardwood floor seconds later, she'd declare the winner.

After a trip to the grocery store, Hannah distracted her mother on one side of the kitchen while the brothers rummaged through the paper bags for the tub of Cool Whip. They slowly disappeared from the kitchen, one by one, to the boys' room where they each got their share and a stomachache.

She was not afraid to break the rules with her brothers, although she had paid the consequences many times. Wade put on performances to make her laugh while she served her time in the corner. Graham helped her pull weeds in the flowerbed, her punishment. Rudy slipped notes with jokes on them under her door when she was sent to her room.

All her time in solitary confinement and hard labor did not crush her desire to stand with her brothers in mischief. Their willingness to help her serve the sentences encouraged her more. Graham showed her how to fiddle with the hot water flow when Rudy was in the shower. He'd yell behind the door, and they pushed it until he started pounding the wall, or came out in a towel searching for the guilty party. There was no doubt who the instigator was, and more than once Graham had to fight off Rudy in laughter when the towel fell off.

Hannah saw her intangible rewards as her brothers' protection, and their unspoken affection. Her inclusion in their activities, and their instructions on how to do boy things.

"The secret to baseball is keeping your eye on the ball." Rudy demonstrated a pitch. "Take a step with this foot, then you just let it roll off your fingers when it's right here."

Hannah tried it.

"No, don't look at your hand as you throw it," he said.

"I'm looking at the ball."

"Look at your target, look at me. There, see."

There were things she wouldn't do. She followed them only so far on their bike rides before turning back. They went too far, too fast, Rudy leading the way, Graham taking the shortcuts, often coming back home drenched in sweat and growling with hunger.

"Dad," she said on his lap. "Why wasn't I born a boy?"

"Because I didn't want another stinky child running around. I wanted a sweet little girl who picked flowers and smelled like chocolate."

"Do I smell like chocolate?"

She let him breathe in deeply off her scalp. "Just like chocolate and strawberries," he said.

"I like being your only girl."

School was just around the corner, where summer and fall came together too soon. Wade counted the days. He thought of Miss Russette and her bursting shirt buttons. He fell asleep with her translucent figure above him, teaching a lesson. She looked as pretty as could be, and her shirt looked just fine. Graham nudged him awake.

"Come on," he whispered. Wade slid from his bed.

Rudy sat up, his sheets rustling. His cutout set black against the gray wall. "What are you doing?" he mumbled across the room.

Graham's head turned left then right in the darkness. "We're running away."

Rudy pulled the covers back up in a swish of movement and went back to sleep.

As far as Wade could figure it was early morning. A faint light from a hidden sun was just now making the walls gray, although it was still dark, and he had to shuffle his feet to make sure he didn't step on anything sharp.

He followed Graham, creeping through the house like burglars, Painty suddenly beside them, yawning in the dark, up to the front curtain, where Graham peeked out the blinds. Wade didn't know where his brother found a match, or why he needed one, but he heard the scratch and Graham's face appeared, every detail, every crevice and hollow exaggerated like in a television prison escape.

"Tonight is the best night for this. I've been planning this all summer."

"I don't want to, Graham."

Graham grabbed a handful of Wade's shirt and jerked him close. "This is our only chance. We take it."

The dramatics of it all were too much to pass up. Wade had seen it in the movies their father watched on Saturday nights. He couldn't figure out Graham's intentions, they were too active with imagination, but he liked the possibilities of the night and waited for instructions, crouched against the wall, just like one of the Saturday night movie characters. He imagined himself nudging Graham's elbow, and Graham handing him a match, no words exchanged, and scratching out his own light under his face to squint through.

Excitement soon gave way to sleepiness, and Wade closed his eyes against the wall. He finally managed to find Miss Russette, leaning over his desk, when he was jolted from her.

"Damn it, go now," Graham said.

The swear, awkward as it was, a boy trying out a curse word, added to the urgency, and Wade soon found himself, still groggy with sleep, chasing Graham out the front door and across the cool grass. The neighborhood set still black in the night and unknown things grew from the earth to sway in the darkness. He ran with his hand on Graham's back, afraid to lose him in this anonymous dark, and he fumbled his way onto the back of the milk delivery truck. He had stayed up to see it a few times before, running from the window shades as the driver stepped onto their porch with his gallons of milk. He recognized it, but he had never been on the back of it in a getaway plan. They crouched on either side of the bumper, gripping the cold handholds as the tailpipe grumbled beneath them. Painty watched from the grass.

Then the truck started to move and Wade wondered how far they would go before Graham decided it was enough. He was thinking of jumping off while the truck was still crawling through the night, leaving Graham alone in his plan, when the truck stopped a few feet later, at the neighbor's house, and the driver stepped out with two gallons of milk. They rode to one more residence before hopping off and sneaking back inside and into bed.

In the mornings, Jack Chapel took his time sipping coffee before leaving for the station. He had a way of leaning against the counter with his hip, his feet crossed beneath him, one hand gripping his handleless _Best Dad_ mug, and squeezing the other hand into a tingling fist and uncurling it under supervision, deep in thought, or deep in no thought at all. When he finished, he shook his hand out, pulled on a blazer, brushed his hand through his hair, kissed his wife and children, and wobbled out the door with an impossibly heavy briefcase and a curved back. The children laughed from the door when he straightened up as if inflated at the foot, as if his struggle down the driveway was due to low air pressure.

Wade helped himself to the remaining coffee in the pot.

"You know that will stunt your growth," Rudy told him.

"I don't care. I like the taste." It was equal parts milk, sugar and coffee, and the coffee spoon rang like a dinner bell.

Lisa Chapel bought new uniforms for the school year. The clothing that was not grass-stained, torn, thinned, or missing was handed down. One shirt made it all the way from Rudy to Wade, but the pants usually wore out under Graham's knees. Rudy grew so fast during that last week of summer that he started the sixth grade with his ankles showing.

"I just bought those," Lisa said, looking at the gap above his shoes. Rudy stood with his hands in his pockets. "We just sized you at the store."

The pants went to Graham who had trouble fitting into his new pants too. He'd pull his stomach in so far his ribs showed, and taking a deep breath so he was all upper body, he'd snap the button closed. After a few comic steps around the room, he'd lower everything he held up, like an old man whose girdle burst. The button popped open and the zipper lowered under his pushing belly.

That last week held an impending doom, like a criminal's final meal. They couldn't enjoy it. They dug a hole in the backyard out of the need to do something. Each boy took a turn with the shovel, and when it was four feet deep they filled it back in.

They ran outside in a hailstorm, they stayed up late to count the stars. They crawled into a comfortable thicket under the front bushes.

"I think it's a snakepit," Wade told Hannah in their secret spot. "We just need to cut back the bush a little more and it would be a good hiding place."

They counted down the minutes from the view of the tree branches. The night skies began to flash regularly in the distance with the final grumblings of summer, small detonations in the smokes of remote miles.

"Graham...Graham... _Graham_."

"What?"

"Is fourth grade hard?"

"No. Go to sleep."

"Did you keep any of your papers from last year?"

"Nope." Then he added. "But I bet I remember it all."

Each new grade was a frightening proposition. Wade could walk the school with his eyes shut, he knew all his classmates, but each new school year churned inside him with a million unknowns.

"Graham? Are you asleep?"

"Yes."

"Where were we running away to?"

"What?"

"When we jumped on the milk truck. I don't want to run away."

"Oh...I don't know. Nowhere. I would have come back."

Every final storm of the season shook the house with uncertainty. Whenever the windows gave their first rattle of the night and began to weep, Wade tiptoed down the hallway to find Hannah in silent tears under the flashing windowlight. He sat at the foot of her bed and sang _Amore_ to her in a low voice, acting it out as best he could.

_When the moon hits your eye_ – he'd fake a punch to his eye – _like a big pizza pie_ – he'd take a large bite from an imaginary slice – _that's amore_.

When Hannah's tears dried to laughter, he stayed next to her on top of the covers until she fell asleep.

Summer dwindled to nothing, every minute another loose rope slipping from its knot, until the whole thing floated away with one final breeze, the remaining hands of summer grasping at the treetops for more time. Everything became a far memory: kinking the water hose, crouching through a cracked fence slat. The glow of the fireflies grew sparse, the darkness came earlier. The important things of summer – the races to the ringing beige phone, the mailbox, the doorbell – first-place held less and less importance until none at all, and they found themselves sitting silently in the final hours.

"Dad?" Wade said. "Do we _have_ to go to school?"

"That's right," Jack Chapel said. He was rubbing his arm and rotating it, as if it were numb. "Give that man a pink cigar."

"I don't like school."

"Well, I don't like work."

It was a brutal admission that Jack let slip. As good as he was at his job, now a senior producer in the newsroom, it was a desk job he sat in for the sake of his family. If he was a single man he would have stopped his climb and held a microphone in front of a camera for as long as they let him.

He excused himself by clearing his throat, leaving his boys to wonder about life and happiness.

Then school started and the air changed. They sat in the car waiting for their mother to come out and take them to school. Graham tossed something into the car, some sort of live thing he found during the wait, and the car emptied. Life became a long drawn out moment of staring out the window of a noisy elementary classroom, that sad moment of a hard day's relief in the backseat of a car, forehead pressed against the cold window. Almost home from school.

Jack Chapel was dead before Rudy graduated high school. Heart attack as he drove home one night. Wade remembered his mother collapsing by the phone and sitting with her face in her hands for some time. There was no composing herself. The children gathered around with crossed arms, unsure, Hannah with tears in her eyes. Each time Lisa Chapel gathered herself to stand, her legs gave out and she stayed down for a few more minutes in wrenching sobs.

It wasn't long ago that Jack was turned in the creaking leather seat of his old LeBaron, smiling back at the boys as they bounced out to the school curb. He had that engulfing scent that was only available when you got close to him.

"Remember he used to rub his stubble against our faces like sandpaper?" Wade said. "When we were going to bed." They stood in the driveway, tall and awkward, leaning against the car. "He was funny like that, remember? He would grab our faces so you couldn't get away and he'd sand down our faces until – until I'd yell for him to stop."

"I don't remember that. Sounds like dad, though."

"Yeah, he'd put his stubble against us and pretend he was some sort of—"

"I don't remember."

Rudy couldn't remember. He put a finger to the small scar on his chin, a little habit he developed when he was uncomfortable. It had a small, smooth lump to it that he felt everyone looked at. The scar on his eyebrow, from the shopping cart accident, stood out less and less and he never touched it. Huddled in his coat in the driveway, his face had developed more scars. There was a nick in his left ear – he caught it on a shelf in the garage – and another just at his hairline where he caught the same shelf.

Graham miraculously entered high school unscarred. He stood there silently, his toes gripping the edge of the driveway, his hands in his coat pockets. He had never even broken a bone. The boys all grew into Jack's news-anchor chin, Wade's was more pronounced than his brothers' were. Graham took after his father in looks the most. He looked older than he was, he had to shave every morning and he combed his hair in a mature way, not the mussed curls that hung over Wade's heavy glasses, or the short, dry look that Rudy allowed to grow atop his own head. The most charming aspect of Graham was that such playful pranks came from a young man who looked destined for the Ivy League.

"Remember he used to take us to the edge of the trees and put us on 'monkey watch'?"

"Mm," Rudy said. Graham stayed silent, his face drawn and expressionless, his frozen breath the only indication of life.

"I used to take it so seriously." Wade sat on the hood, his legs lightly swinging above the tire like a reflex in a doctor's office. "Did he ever tell you he loved you?"

"Yes. In lots of ways. Didn't have to say it."

Wade took a moment to gather his voice. "Remember when—"

"Remember when your voice cracked for good at the school play?" Rudy said. He smiled. "And dad stood up in the seats and applauded. Right in the middle of your Silent Night solo."

A puff of frozen laughter escaped Wade's nose. Graham's stone face found some expression at the memory.

"And you couldn't get back into the pitch you were at." Rudy leaned against the car, trying to stifle his laughter before their mother came out. "You had the best singing voice in middle school, all gone from one syllable to the next, in front of the whole school. The piano kept playing and you just stood there, and then dad stood up and applauded. The whole audience joined in."

The front door opened and Lisa Chapel came out in black with Hannah behind her, an exceptionally beautiful girl who grew too fast too early and slumped against it. Lisa had aged in a day, suddenly the small wrinkles and drawn angles showed without a smile to hide them. She dabbed her nose with a balled tissue. The boys straightened up and Rudy drove the family to the funeral home.

He didn't cry during the ceremony. As pallbearers, he looked across the casket and saw tears make their way down Graham's face, and he saw wet streaks flowing under Wade's eyes, but thinking about his father's silent ways of expressing love satisfied him in a way that needed no tears. That and when the procession to the altar started, Graham whispered _don't drop him_ from the side of his mouth over the black, polished lid in a way that made Rudy concentrate on holding back laughter instead of tears. He had to clench his jaw. It would be confusing to the packed church of friends and family to see the oldest son grinning his way through the funeral.

Rudy sat on his bed later, feeling guilty for not having cried. He saw his mother and Hannah both weeping in the front pew, and he thought of them to try to help his tears come, squeezing his eyes shut to force it. He tried to draw from memory, pinpointing a specific time with his father.

Driving lessons in the empty church parking lot. Jack Chapel circled around the front of the car and climbed in the passenger seat and clicked the seatbelt over himself. He put his hands to the dashboard.

"Alright, punch it, Chewy!"

This wasn't going to make him cry, so he kept going, trying to remember the whole picture.

Jack Chapel leaned over, "Here's the turn signal, here's the wipers, here's–"

"But it's sunny out."

Jack looked at him. "We're also not moving yet, but there's the brake pedal for when we are."

It made him laugh, and he stopped squeezing his eyes shut.

"Okay, we're six minutes away," his father said. "Take us home."

"Five minutes if I don't hit the light."

"Well, try not to hit anything."

Then Graham came in the room and Rudy stood up, wiping the smile from his face. His brother's presence brought on new memories to conceal. In a split second his mind traveled to see Graham stuffing paper down the seat of his pants while their father waited in the other room.

"What?"

"No, nothing," Rudy said. "Just thought of something funny."

"What?"

"Nothing. No, we're supposed to be sad. We're all sad."

"What's so funny? Tell me."

Rudy shifted. "Well, you were probably the only kid in the world who actually pulled off the magazine-in-the-pants trick."

Graham's face held steady.

"You know, when we got in trouble as kids and dad pulled his belt. You'd run off and come back with a magazine shoved down the back of your pants, faking the yelps each time he swung the belt."

Graham crossed the room and sat on the lower bunk. Rudy watched him rub his forehead and drop his hands about his knees and nod. Rudy shifted again, and leveled any smile his face might be betraying him with. He put his fist to his mouth and was about to clear his throat when Graham smiled.

"Wade was lucky dad spent his arm up on my ass."

Graham's natural ability to enjoy life made him popular with the girls at school. Girls in Wade's class asked about him – He's your brother, right? How old is he? It was a humbling conversation to be a part of, but one that Wade understood.

The one girl who never asked about his older brother was Krissy Taylor. Even as a sophomore she was the prettiest girl in the entire school, and she knew she had something the other girls didn't. That look she gave that made boys uncomfortable, she brought an improved version of that with her to high school. She rarely used it, enjoying instead the hormone-soaked pursuits boys gave for her other looks. Perhaps the reason she didn't ask Wade about his older brothers was because she hardly spoke to him at all and was too busy fending off the boys in her own grade to worry about anyone else. As far as Wade was concerned she didn't even know about the existence of his older brothers, and he wasn't about to tell her. If she found out and asked, he would point out that neither of his brothers were driving their own cars yet. Old daydreams of Miss Russette's buttons were replaced with tame thoughts of Krissy Taylor.

He heard rumors about her. She did more than just kiss boys beneath the bleachers these days. Yet he could never make her do anything in his mind. Up there she was innocent and virgin and guys walked past her, and yet he still hid behind his thick glasses. Bad vision was present even dreams.

He wore sports goggles under his football helmet. The Chapel boys all played football. Jack Chapel had been present at all their games, showing up under the glare of the stadium lights just as the game started, tugging at his tie and rolling up his sleeves with a smile to run the chain gang. He had a front row seat that way, and he had done it that way since Rudy ran his first ball across the little league end zone. There were games where Rudy still looked to the sideline for their father, running with the orange stick to mark the new line.
They used to watch the Sunday games with him, and as small boys they took their father's claim to high school football to mean that he played professionally. Jack did not correct that mistake, leaving them to sort it out for themselves as they grew older. They asked what team he had played on.

"The Booger Bears," Jack said. And the brothers spent the day watching the television for the Booger Bears name in the highlights.

They were all good players in high school, though Rudy and Graham were not the ones that received the attention. There was always a player in both their grades whose name blared out on the loudspeaker, echoing across the field. There was always a better player named as team captain who led the team in the Our Father as they knelt with hands connected and heads lowered in the locker room.

Wade had a talent for sniffing out a play, but he spent far too much time bouncing off the blur of his own players before finding the ball carrier. Coach Horton had long ago considered him a second-team cornerback, as much of an obstacle to his own players as to the opposition. He had a growth spurt, was moved to linebacker, could now see over the linemen, he now weighed as much as his brothers, and the day he put on his sports goggles, he was hitting the running backs for losses.

"Who is that?" Coach Horton called across the practice field. This second-team cornerback was now the biggest linebacker, shedding blockers and burying his all-league runner. "I'm going to call you Chargin' Chapel."

He had a way of tackling that made opposing players take notice. As often as he could, he'd wrap his arms around the ball carrier and wrench him off the ground as high as he could before driving him into the grass. He wasn't out there to bring a player down. He was out there to make a point. He was out there to punish people, to make ball carriers gasp for breath and grimace through pain, to glance back from the huddle to take note of his jersey number. He stood with his shoulders parallel so his jersey was easy to see, and he always got them to look back.

But he left that all on the field. In the classrooms of Our Lady of Perpetual Hope he was not a football player. He was not a sophomore who played with the seniors on the varsity squad. He was quiet and he stood waiting at the curb after practice until he and his older brothers were the last student-athletes picked up. Their mom drove up usually an hour late, her face red and puffy, as if she cried at the stoplights on her way over.

"Can I please get my driver's license?" Rudy asked.

"Whenever you're ready," Lisa Chapel said. "But we still only have the one car."

He was going to remind her that practice let out at five in the afternoon, but he could see she would take it as roughly as possible and he didn't want to risk her welling up into tears. So all he could do was swallow his words and stare out the car window in silence, hoping they caught all the green lights so he could get home in time to eat and shower before heading to his job at Johnson's Pick-n-Save Grocery.

"Oh yeah. You look just like your father," Mr Johnson said. "I don't think he missed a day in the six or seven years he stocked shelves here. I remember. What was that, ten, twelve years ago?

"Something like that, yes sir."

"You're nearly a carbon copy of him. You know that?"

"Yes sir."

"Well, if you're a carbon copy of his work ethic too, you and I'll get along just fine. How's Jack doing these days?"

"He's – he's fine, sir."

His paycheck went to the family. He would have liked to buy himself a car, a five-hundred dollar junker to drive around, but Lisa needed a second income to pay the mortgage, fix their current car, pay the gas and water, and buy school clothing for everyone. And that still left the grocery bill, which Rudy received an employee discount on.

"You take advantage of that discount, okay son," Mr Johnson told him every month from his small office at the rear of the grocery store. He sat turned in his chair so his belly pulled in with every word. "Lord knows I do," he said, taking a moment to bounce his belly with both hands. "I'm a well-balanced man. The bubble's in the middle."

Lisa Chapel took a job as a secretary at a legal office after Jack died. She answered the phone all day long, potential clients calling for divorce, calling for custody, calling for alimony, for child support, for half of the marriage property, spending the majority of the phone call unloading their marital problems on her.

She answered the phone that morning, "Dawson and Dorman."

"Yes, I'd like to speak to a lawyer about a divorce." It was a female voice on the line, sounded young.

"Okay," Lisa tried to sound steady, indifferent, almost cheery. "Let me take down the situation and speak with Bob Dawson about it. He would decide if we could help you. He's our family law."

"Well," the voice took on a snippy tone. "It's been happening for a while now. My husband spends all night out with his pals, playing cards, or whatever it is he does with those stupid men of his. I tell him not to go, and he goes anyway, comes home smelling like cigars and bourbon, he says, I don't even smoke dear, but I can smell it on him when he speaks and our car smells like cigars and farts now, and he comes home once a week like that. I said, I didn't marry you to be some silly little housewife. Then get a job, he says. I said, you know I've been looking and in the meantime I don't want some drunk husband coming home after midnight–"

"This happens every night?" Lisa interrupted.

"No. No, not every night. Every Friday night. Often enough to make a statement about his philandering and his–"

"His philandering?"

"Yes, philandering. Adultery. Grounds for a divorce. That's the whole reason I'm calling."

"For family law to take the case you would have to have supporting evidence, or grounds for suspicion."

"Of course I do. I know that. And he's taken away my rights as a woman and tells me I have to–"

"What are the rights he's taken away?" Lisa asked. "Bob Dawson, family law, will want to know that."

The phone was quiet. "My rights to my own body," she said at last. "He wants me to have a baby."

Lisa put down her pen. "Well, that's not so bad, is it? I thought you meant he – I thought you meant he physically hurt you or something."

"I'm too young to have a baby," the voice solidified its tone. "I'm proud of my body the way it is, and a baby will ruin it. I'm not going to do that, especially not for this caveman. This boozing, cardplaying slug, this adulterous –"

"And you said this has been happening for a while now? How long did you say?"

"For almost...well, since summer."

"Do you know about when?"

"In August is when I started keeping track, marking it down, I mean, but he's been doing this since we've been married."

Lisa counted backward to August. Three months. "And, for the files, how long have you been married."

"We were married in June."

"June of last year?"

"No, June of this year."

She switched the phone to her other ear. "Back to the – the philandering. Can you tell me what suspicions you have for that? Bob Dawson, family law, will need to know that to take the case."

"I told you, he stays out past midnight every Friday night."

There was a pause. "And?" Lisa said. "And what else?"

"That's all I need. A wife knows best, doesn't she? And he comes home and tells me if I don't get a job then I need to have a baby, well, I don't care to have a baby right now, and I'm tired of him disappearing every night with his moron buddies, so I want a divorce."

"Every night? I thought you said only Friday nights."

"Every Friday night, as if it matters how often. Once is enough."

"So you want a divorce?"

"Yes, I want a – can you hear me or not? I said I want a divorce. That's what your office does, doesn't it?"

Lisa reviewed her notes. "So, your husband has the single income of the house, works all week and likes to go out with his buddies for a drink on Friday nights. He married you, hoping to start a life and family with you, but you don't want a baby because you won't fit into your workout spandex for a few months. You stay home with no job, no baby, spend the paycheck, hover over his every move, claiming infidelity because he has a bourbon in his old pal's living room after a hard week, and you want a divorce because he doesn't roll down the windows when he passes gas in his own car. Right from the start, your marriage has been five months of unexpected hell. Does that sound about right?"

The woman breathed across the phone on the other side.

"How old are you, ma'am?" Lisa asked.

"I'm twenty-three. And if you think I called for–"

"Twenty-three," Lisa Chapel repeated. "Twenty-three and ready for a divorce. You know a lot of twenty-three year olds would be happy to be married and having babies, having a life, a future, or whatever it is you want. Happy to have a husband who lets you do what you want. Who lets you go for your passion, whatever that might be, whether its politics or writing or – when I was your age I graduated with a biology degree and went to work as a scientist. I could have done that for my entire life, I could have taken that as far as I wanted, but I met my husband who worked three jobs at the time, and my first child was the best thing that ever happened to me so I had three more and I respected my husband and what he did for our family and what he wanted in his life and let me tell you one more thing–"

Bob Dawson, family law, was standing at the end of her desk, his face in confusion and shock.

She left the office early that day and cried in the car. Every time she put the car in gear a new wave of tears came gushing out. Finally, she made it out of the tiny parking lot and across town to where her boys sat alone on the curb of Our Lady of Perpetual Hope, idly kicking rocks in the empty high school parking lot.

So she took a job at St Augustine's, in the church office. It was less stressful than the law firm, and she worked until two-thirty every day, when classes let out. Hannah walked across the street from the school and joined her mother in the church for a few minutes of prayer. The altar was draped with its colors, draped like the shoulders of the priest, and the Eucharist sat in the center.

"Just a few minutes," Lisa whispered to Hannah in the silence of the church. "A few minutes and we'll go home. Your brothers get out of practice at five."

But she went longer than a few minutes. She went a few hours, and she didn't have time to go home, and was still late in picking up her boys most days.

"We get out at five, mom. Practice ends at five. Five in the afternoon. Five p.m."

"It's Eucharistic Adoration," Lisa said, "I can't leave the altar unattended. There has to be someone there to take my place."

"Then get someone to take your place on time," Rudy said. "I'm tired of getting home at six-thirty every day. I go to practice, shower and eat and do my homework and go to Johnson's for a few hours and go to bed. That's what I do. That's my life."

"Well, I didn't have such a nice day myself. And things would be different if your father was still here."

"Then can I get a car so we don't have to wait?"

"We need that money, Rudy. You're helping your brothers and your sister. And me. You're a big help. I appreciate it."

"Then will you please let us ride home with someone?"

"No, I don't want you in a car with a new driver. You know how many wrecks happen to high school drivers? When I was at the law office–"

"Just from practice to our house. We'll take the back roads."

"I said no. Practice gets out at rush hour. You can walk if you don't want to wait."

"It's probably three miles, mom. Can you at least _try_ to pick us up on time?"

"I do try. But you're not supposed to leave the Eucharist alone in the church during adoration."

"Then let me drive myself. Just a five-hundred dollar piece of junk car. Just something that runs so we can get home on time and not sit in the parking lot all night waiting for you."

She held it together as they pulled into the driveway. The boys got out in the twilight, tired and cranky, Hannah slid across the backseat and trudged across the grass to where Graham and Rudy waited at the locked front door. Lisa sat behind the wheel, her eyes straight ahead. Wade waited, leaning against the car watching his mother's trembling face for tears. But they never came. She lifted her chin and pressed her lips together, the big heavy rusted door squealing as it opened.

Inside she made a deal with the boys. "We'll put a little aside each month and you keep your eyes open for a decent car. Make sure you check it out with a mechanic before you buy it because if it breaks down it'll sit until we can afford to fix it."

It was a good enough deal. Rudy pulled fifty dollars from every paycheck. Graham raked leaves in the neighborhood. Wade stayed after church on Sundays to wipe down the pews, close the stained-glass windows, and vacuum the carpet.

Lisa Chapel stopped singing in the choir. What had once brought so much joy to her now brought sadness. Looking at her sons in the pew from the choir steps, she saw Jack Chapel in each of them. Their posture, their faces, their shoulders, their voices. The way Rudy made the sign of the cross as he searched with the other hand for the kneeler. Even Hannah made an expression when offering a sign of peace around her. It was all Jack, and Lisa could not keep it together on the steps, her voice wavered and cracked. The congregation noticed her voice missing from the hymns, her smile gone from the steps. She softened her voice to blend in with those around her, the same camouflage Wade used in grade school.

Wade earned ten dollars every Sunday. It wasn't much. He used the first twenty to buy a second-hand guitar. He hid it under the bottom bunk, and when he practiced, he strummed the chords so lightly they barely made a sound.

"Why'd you buy that?" Rudy asked. "We're supposed to be saving for a car."

"It was just this once. Don't worry about it. The rest goes to the car."

"I think I found one." He handed Wade the Thrifty Deals and Wade found a circled _Chevelle, 1962, Canary Yellow, New Tires, Needs Minor Repairs But Runs! $450 OBO._

"We're still a few months away from getting it, though," Rudy said. "At this rate, it'll be gone by the time we've saved enough."

"I don't want to drive a Chevelle around," Graham said from the top bunk. "Get a Maverick or Comet or something. A Torino."

"I'm not looking at the car, I'm looking at the price. There are not too many high schoolers selling junker cars."

"I'm just trying to get you some points. You might be a little cooler in school if you're not lunging around the parking lot in a rusty old boat with bad steering. I'd have to park it a block away and walk to school just to avoid the embarrassment."

"Do whatever makes you happy," Rudy said, laying the paper over Graham's face. "Here, take a look yourself. Circle any you like."

Graham made like he was suffocating under it, then sat up. "Are you going to play something sweet for us or what, Wade?"

Wade put his hand flat on the guitar strings, silencing them. "I guess not."

"Oh. Darn."

It was a mystery to the boys how Wade grew so large so quickly. He was a head above his classmates in the school hallways, mistaken as a senior, you could spot him from one end to the other, and he was wide. Football was the first thing that came to mind when you saw him trudging around the school corners. But at home, no matter how much time he stood in front of the foggy bathroom mirror, flexing until he found the most flattering angle, he would always be the youngest brother.

"Don't have too much," Graham told him one morning at the breakfast table. "Remember, it'll stunt your growth."

Wade laughed with a mouthful of coffee.

The previous year Wade was undersized and slow. When the team circled around, bouncing on their toes, and did player-led hit drills, one man in the middle, they used to call out _little Chapel_ for the hit and he'd come sprinting to be the center-man. Wade had no fear, even as a small freshman, and may have thought he was bigger than he was. But physics doesn't account for heart, and some of the big players sent him flying backward in the grass. He never stayed down, and it became a game to see how many hits it would take before Wade quit.

He would have gone all night if practice didn't end so early.

Wade was still picking himself off the grass when the big fullback called out _little Chapel_. Rudy stepped in for him, sprinting across the center, and blindsided the fullback, knocking his wind out.

"I said _little_ Chapel," the fullback squirmed on his back, his voice sounding like a little girl's, his face pinched in pain.

"I heard _Rudy_ Chapel," Rudy said. "Try it again and I'll see if I can hear better this time."

He didn't try it again. Wade hit his growth spurt over the summer and there was no more 'little' Chapel. While Rudy and Graham sat curbside in the evenings waiting for their mom to pick them up, Wade spent that time inside the weight room. And whenever an upperclassmen player called out a freshman in the hit drills, Wade came charging out from the circle. They soon stopped calling out the small players.

He became a force at middle linebacker. A disruption that opposing coaches planned their game around. Every Friday night he was the first player to burst through the paper banner, tearing pieces of it with him and screaming down the bright field to electrify the home crowd or menace the opposing one. He stalked up and down the other team's sideline, staring into the young faces under the helmets.

In the classrooms he whispered.

After the games, exhausted and dirty, he dressed silently. He put all his energy between the sidelines and had nothing left in the locker room. A room where the star linebacker was supposed to stand hollering in the center in a jock strap, elbows stained and bleeding, face smeared with paint. Wade sat within himself, in the humid bellow of cheers, the slamming lockers, moving a sagging arm to untie one cleat at a time. Another player took his place as the center of attention, leading the half-naked chant.

Win or lose, Wade went home in a quietness that could be mistaken as somber. Only when someone else piped up and slapped him on the back were there signs of victory within his body.

"Come on," Graham said. "We're going out with friends."

"Who?" Wade said. It was a Saturday, and they had won the game the night before. Wade poured himself a tall glass of milk in the kitchen.

"Friends. Brandon and Smitty."

"Where?"

"I don't know where. Just out. Come on. Smitty said there will be girls there."

"Upperclassmen girls? They won't talk to me."

"I think from another school," Graham said. "He didn't say."

That was a more exciting proposition. Wade was shaving every day now, he stood as tall as Graham and outweighed him by ten. He looked older than he was, and could pass for a senior. Certainly a junior.

Talking to girls he had gone to school with since the first grade made him nervous. They knew him, they knew how quiet he was. If he acted out of character, like walking up to them and speaking, they might find it odd. If he messed up, if he slurred his words in nervousness, or stuttered, there was no escape. They sat with him under the same flickering fluorescent bulbs at Our Lady of Perpetual Hope. He had always been slow to pick up on games with girls.

"When you _go_ _out_ with a girl," he once asked, "where do you go?"

But girls from another school entirely was a safer bet. He stood in the refrigerator door, thinking it over. Finally he put the milk carton away and turned.

"Okay."

The glass of milk sat empty on the counter, the filmy glow of bubbles slowly settling at the bottom, and Graham was walking out of the room, exhaling in satisfaction.

"I'm staying in tonight," Rudy said. He was balancing a book on his fingers. "Smitty's a moron."

"Of course he is," Graham said. He stood at the front window, looking out. "That's why I'm going."

"Smitty's coming here?" Hannah asked. Lisa and Hannah went to all the boys' games. Hannah knew all the player's names and had seen Smitty with his helmet off on the sidelines. As a seventh-grader, still blooming, she developed a new crush each week. She joined Graham at the window.

"No, Tee-tee," Graham said. "Smitty really is a moron. As smart as a brick."

"Oh, I don't care about your stupid friends."

"You don't want to crush on someone who can't think alongside you," Rudy said. "You'd have some awful one-sided conversations."

"Who cares about him?" Then she added. "What car does he drive?"

Graham let the crack in the window blinds fall shut and turned. "If he was half as smart as you and you were half his age, I'd introduce you."

"I'm more than just half his age." Hannah crossed her arms.

"You know what I mean. A girl like you doesn't need to be hanging around grunting gorillas like Smitty."

The thump of the car radio pounded around the corner, then its tires came to a screeching halt in front of the house. Painty came running to the front door, whining and sliding on the hardwood. Graham ushered Hannah through the hall to her room, his hands on her shoulders. She resisted with plodding, stiff steps, but soon she was in her room.

"I'm just looking out for you, Tee-tee." And he shut her door.

They drove with the top down, huddled in coats, tires squealing around the empty corners. Brandon drove and Smitty sat in the backseat with Wade. He offered a sip from a bottle. He held it low, at their knees. It was a glass flask and the label had been peeled off. A reddish liquid sloshed inside. Wade refused it.

"You need to get a buzz going tonight, Wady," Smitty said, unscrewing the cap and tipping it up. He held it up and put his finger to the glass. "Here, I'll save this much for you."

"How much have you had already?" Wade asked. He had to yell over the wind and hum of the tires. "Did that bottle start out full?"

"Of course it _started_ _out_ full. They don't sell half-empty bottles."

Graham spoke over his shoulder. "Do they sell half-full bottles?"

Smitty sat blinking.

"How much has Brandon had tonight?" Wade asked.

"I'm driving," Brandon said. He adjusted so he could see Wade in the rearview mirror. "I wouldn't have more than a shot or two behind the wheel.

"I'll get out here." Wade sat forward and yanked at his seatbelt.

"Relax." Smitty put a hand on Wade. "There's no traffic and we're almost there."

Wade felt square for refusing the sip. They pulled off the county road and onto a dirt road, the back end of the car sliding a bit and throwing up a rooster tail. The cornstalks grew black around them, waving against the starlight, and the constellations seemed to adjust as the car curved around corners, a separated sky from the earth.

Something crossed the road, a flash in the headlights, and Brandon hit the brakes, steering to keep the car on the road in its slide.

"What was that?"

"A dog," Smitty said. "Or a deer."

Brandon got out and ran to where the animal had disappeared in the cornstalks, the car dinging behind him as the keys still hung in the ignition. The dust cloud caught up with them, sweeping over the car and covering them in a film, then flickering in the headlights. He stood at the edge of cornstalks.

"I can hear him moving," he called back, and charged in, the cornstalks shaking against the sky, crackling like burning wood as he moved deeper into his chase. Smitty stood on the backseat and stepped over the side.

"What are you going to do when you catch him? Ride him?"

The rustling cornstalks stopped, then started again shortly after and Brandon came walking out. He unzipped his fly and stood next to Smitty who was relieving himself on the side of the road.

"Give me that bottle," Graham said. But he leaned back and helped himself to searching for it on the floor. He took a quick shot.

"What are you doing?" Wade said. "I'm not having any."

"I'm not offering," Graham winced. "You can decide that for yourself and I'll back you up on it. But me," he took another shot. "I guess we only live once and not long enough."

"Here," Smitty pulled another bottle from his coat and hopped in. "Here's a fresh one."

The dirt road connected with a paved one, and a few buildings rose black from the road ahead, under the paper outline of a water tower. All the buildings were quiet and dark, except one, which attracted the night owls who crawled to it from the darkness like bugs to a light. It sat windowless, purring with purple neon border lights and muffled music. The gravel popped under their tires as they moved through the humps of cartops in the dirt lot, their purple faces turning.

"What is this?" Wade asked.

"Nothing. Just a bar."

"I'm not going in."

"Suit yourself," Smitty said, and he hopped out. "You're missing out. I hear some of them climb all over you."

"Some of what?"

"Girls. They'll get right in your face. Don't worry, though. They'll be too busy pestering me to worry about you."

"Won't be long," Graham said.

Wade sat in the convertible wishing they had put the top up before they went in. It was cold. He tried wrenching the canvas closed, but soon hunkered down in the backseat out of sight. From his vantage point he could study the black outline of the water tower against the night sky. A blot over the stars. Every so often someone or a group of people came stumbling out the blackened door of the building. Each time he could hear the music inside. He guessed at what Graham was doing and decided he was sitting alone in the corner waiting to leave.

Of the brothers, it would be Graham to walk into a place like this, although more out of curiosity than of participation, Wade thought. But in past experience, Graham was not the type of person to stand by and watch.

A man came out and crossed the parking lot, his steps crunching. He went toward the convertible and Wade sank lower in the seat. The man stopped at the next car over and put his hand in his pocket, moving around, searching. He cursed softly and mumbled, climbed in the car, and drove off, radio blaring. Wade felt something sticking him in the ribs from the seat. It was the bottle. It sloshed with plenty. He took his first sip and screwed the lid back on in a grimace, dropping it to the floor. Later he picked it up again and as time passed, less and less sloshed in the bottle until it only gripped in the corners.

He fell out of the convertible and lay in the gravel until he finished counting rocks. Looking under the cars in the row, he grinned. He stood and walked through the parking lot, looking at each of the cars, peering into ones with tinted windows. He sat in the driver's seat of a Ford pickup and pushed at the radio buttons.

"Some old-timer," Wade said. "Old-timers don't lock doors."

He reached for the handle on the blackened door of the building. He managed to grab it and catch himself as he tipped backward. He yanked several times to no avail, and put his foot on the door and pulled at the handle. There were words on the door, white letters. Wade blinked several times, shook his head, looked into the distant darkness for some focus and tried reading again. He gave the door another yank. The music still hummed inside. He pounded on the door and, to his expectations, he heard the bolt lock slide. A heavy man with a shaved head stuck his head out.

"Quit punching the door."

The music bounced behind him. Wade tried to squeeze past the bouncer.

"You're too late," the bouncer said, pushing him back with one hand. He tapped the white lettering. "Closing time. No more entries."

"I've been here for some time," Wade said. "In the parking lot."

"Well, the action's inside."

"I know that. 'Swy I'm going in."

"Not tonight. And you're drunker than hell."

"I'm not."

The bouncer stood there. "How old are you anyway?"

"Old enough," Wade said. He tried to squeeze in again. "How many underage people are in there tonight?"

"None by my estimation."

"Your 'stimation is off. I know of three. And I've been in the parking lot all night."

"How old are you?"

He paused. "Ninety-six."

The bouncer cracked a smile. "You've aged well. But now you're too old. Beat it, we're closed."

Wade gave the door another tug, turned and looked around, then went to the water tower. After a search, Smitty found him on the ladder, asleep, dangling by his belt like some sort of senior prank.

"Didn't get too far up, did I?" Wade said.

They pulled over once on the way back, but that was for Smitty's benefit, not Wade's. He lay with his head back, watching the stars, a blurred time-lapse of night in his bleary eyes. Graham had to walk Wade to their front door. Smitty gave a whoop as the convertible peeled away into the predawn. Graham tapped on the window until Rudy opened it.

"Hello, brother," Wade said.

"Shut up."

Wade raised his foot to the window. He missed several times. He stood and hitched his pants.

"I'll be quiet when I'm dead. I've got too much to tell while I'm living."

"What's wrong with him?"

"Drunk," Graham said. "Did you drink that whole bottle?"

"I did." He swayed and tried to focus on the ground. "Don't think I'll do it again, though."

"Hurry up and get inside."

"Well, then quit asking questions. That's what I was trying to do."

"Get him in, Graham. He can't even get his foot high enough."

"I can too. I'm a fleet-footed burglar when it comes to windows. A regular ol' Santa Claus in the dark, is what I am."

Graham ended up shoving him in from behind. Wade hit his head on the window frame, but made no mention of it. Graham stripped him of his coat and shirt, and Rudy pulled his belt. Wade stood with his arms out as if he was being tailored. He teetered and laughed, and the brothers had to put him in his bed. He fought them off, laughing, until Graham grabbed Wade's legs and swung him into position.

"You shut up," Graham said. Wade's face pressed against his sheets, his mouth open and his nose up. Graham fixed him. "If mom sees you like this it will be the last time you socialize."

Wade did not speak much the next day. He slumped pale skinned in the pew. He insisted he have an aisle seat, and several times he sat up and paused in a half-turn for a moment, but sank back to a slump as his color returned.

He did not ask Graham about the purple neon building, it was an awkward topic to approach, but he decided he knew what was inside. He could not decide whether Graham was ashamed or proud of going in. He seemed indifferent about it. It was the makeup of Graham to show neither. He did not talk about experiences before or after, he simply did them. Much of his experience seemed impulse decisions.

Lisa Chapel quietly flicked holy water through the door crack soon after. It may have been motherly intuition, it may have been written on Wade's face, but it came in a timely manner after their night out. She slipped in and sat on Wade's bed.

"Boys, drugs and alcohol will destroy your life."

"Wha?" Rudy turned over in his bed, straining to see in the darkness. "It's two in the morning, mom."

She continued. "People try them out of curiosity and get hooked. All it takes is one try and your life is over."

"I'm trying to sleep," Wade said.

"Well, I'm trying to tell."

"We know, mom. We're not stupid."

"There are plenty of smart people who have fallen to addiction."

"Mom. We know. Don't worry."

"It's my job to worry. I'm the mom."

She carried that worry with her everywhere. Worry that her boys did not have their father any longer, worry that Hannah did not have that strong male example to search for in her dates in the future. She worried that if the boys ever saw her in a conversation with a male friend they would think the worst of her, so she spent her days without the companionship of men, giving a clear signal that she was a widow and unavailable. She worried that her withdrawn example would keep Hannah's social life back. She worried that her participation in the mass had dwindled so low that her children would not take God seriously. She began to doubt her own beliefs.

Then Wade did something that resurrected her faith. As they found their usual spot in the pews, a spot that had slowly drifted to the back of the church each Sunday, Wade stood and left. When he returned he walked past with a guitar in his hands, and stood with the choir.

"This church has never been without a Chapel in the choir, mom," he told her later. "If you can't do it, then I'll fill in for you until you can."

Lisa Chapel looked on with her hands folded under her chin. Wade had been practicing the chords for the better part of a month. He missed a few notes, but overall he hit more than he missed.

"I've never seen you so concentrated before," Graham told him. "Looked like that vein in your forehead was about to burst all over the music sheets."

"I can't say I was confident that it wouldn't."

He played every Sunday at church. Lisa watched him from the pews, unable to join him just yet. Her eyes welled up every time she saw him up there, staring at his music sheet, unblinking. Their seat in church began to move forward again, and her voice began to rise in the congregation.

Wade practiced a little each night, strumming until he could get through a song without error. Rudy and Graham did not protest the noise unless he went too long and overlapped their sleep.

"Would you quit flicking those wires and go to sleep," Rudy told him.

After that Graham called it 'flicking the pig whiskers.' Every time Wade picked up the guitar Graham would say it in a folksy accent. Gonna go flickin them pig whiskers again? he'd say.

The boys often brought their annoyances with each other to the edge of the cliff, just before it went too far. There was an uncertainty among them as to who would win in a fistfight. Wade could see over his classmates, but he was almost equal among his brothers.

Each of them had the strength to push the car from the stop sign to the house, a training exercise they said was for football. Lisa Chapel suspected it was a challenge of strength with which to test each other. They tried again, two of the brothers sitting on the hood while the third pushed. They all passed.

On the practice field the coach split them up so they never went against each other in drills. It was done to avoid a fight. He had been coaching long enough to see brotherhood wrecked in a simple tackling drill.

"Wade," coach blew his whistle. "Back in line. Next up."

Rudy stood on the other side, digging his toes into the grass.

"I'll face him, coach," Wade said, not about to give the ball up.

"Back in line, Wade."

"Let him go, coach," Rudy said. "We're adults about this."

Coach looked from one to the other. He blew his whistle and the boys collided. Normally the ball carrier makes a move to fake the tackler out. It was as if neither of them carried the ball. They went straight at each other, their shoulder pads cracking together hard enough to make the team react.

"If you hit like that in a game," coach told them, "I might call ahead to reserve a few cemetery plots."

So they were about even on the practice field. They were about even in backyard wrestling too.

"That hit on the field didn't really prove anything," Graham said. "Except that both of you are dumb enough to run straight into brick walls. You didn't even make a move."

They were grilling chicken in the backyard. Random snowflakes fell around them, the sky darkening. Graham was eating a drumstick with one hand, holding a plate of beans with the other. Rudy flipped the chicken.

"I don't know any moves," Wade said. "I like going for a big hit anyway."

"Yeah, well you'd be the first running back in the history of football to be in an open field breakaway only to turn around and come back for a hit. And you weren't going for any hit."

"I wasn't?"

"Are you kidding me?" Graham said. "You were looking to show Rudy you could run him over. Flat out truth."

"He almost did," Rudy said, pointing with the pinchers.

"Neither of you proved anything," Graham said, trying to speak around a hot bite of chicken. "I would be mighty curious if it was me. And Rudy, you should be out to right your name. Your little brother smacked you just as hard as you smacked him. The whole team is wondering now, I bet. You've spoiled your name."

Rudy and Wade caught eyes and Rudy grinned and motioned his head at Graham.

"If it was me," Graham continued, holding the plate just under his chin, his breath a quick flick of frost. "I would want to find out more than anything. There's a nice open yard here, big enough for just that."

"You know," Rudy said. "You're right."

Rudy caught Graham at his waist, plowing his shoulder into him, and Wade hopped on top. Graham's plate went out of his hands, the beans flipping upward to mix with the snowflakes and land as small dots in the snow. They scuffled around, all about even in strength. There was no victory, nobody pinned anybody, and the chicken would have burned had Wade not been flung onto the patio and knocked the grill over.

"You did a great job with this chicken," Lisa Chapel said at the table, picking a perfectly browned piece from the center. "You boys are so funny. Grilling in the snow."

Hannah sat eating contently, her legs swinging beneath her.

"I guess we know less now than we did before," Graham said. A blade of dried grass hung from his hair. "Except that Tee-tee will eat just about anything off the floor."

"What's that supposed to mean? No, I won't."

By Christmastime the boys had earned enough money for a car. Rudy scoured the pages for the perfect one. One that ran and could be had for less than five-hundred.

Lisa Chapel decorated the house. The tree was up, the ornaments on, the pictures out. She sat on the floor with her legs tucked under her, going through the box. An old Christmas tape played, Bing Crosby, Jack's favorite.

"You know I met him once at a college fundraiser."

"Did not."

"I did. A guy introduced him to me."

"Did you get his autograph?"

Jack shook his head. "I didn't believe him at the time."

The ceiling thumped again above her and she shook her head. She ran her hand over Jack Chapel's stocking, and hung it with the others. She set out a picture of him she'd taken on their first Christmas with Rudy. Jack was standing by the back door, the sunrise slanting in just enough to light him but nothing else. He stood in pajama pants and a tshirt, a fake white beard on his face, and newborn Rudy in his arms wearing a red baby Santa hat.

Under the Santa's beard it could be any of her sons. They all had the same hooked eyebrows, a very distinctive feature Jack had passed down. And, of course, the chin, which was unfortunately hidden. For a moment the light in the picture seemed fresh and clear, with dust particles floating through it, and Lisa wished Jack would pull away the beard so she could see his face again in that captured morning light. The ceiling thumped again, just as a teardrop fell on the picture glass, freezing it again to a memory, and Lisa Chapel stood and wiped her eyes.

Her boys were on the rooftop, hanging lights. When she stood in the lawn to see what the thumping was about, she saw the three of them in handstands on the roof peak.

"Have you put the lights up yet?"

Graham and Rudy dropped their feet, thumping the roof once again. Wade rolled backward the other way, and disappeared behind the peak.

"We've almost started," Graham said.

Rudy bought the car. It was a station wagon. He drove up to the curb with his arm dangling out the window. Graham and Wade stood in the yard.

The bumper was missing, one of the doors had no handle. It had to be opened by leaving the window cracked and reaching inside. The windshield had a crack across the bottom, and the entire body of the car seemed mossed by rust. But it runs like a dream, guys.

"A nightmare maybe."

"No, I had Halford check it out," Rudy said. "It's solid. I wouldn't have bought it otherwise. I even talked the seller down by fifty bucks."

"It looks worth every penny," Graham said. "What's his return policy?"

Rudy turned the key, killing the engine. He stuck his head out. "His what?"

"As long as it runs fine, I don't care," Wade said.

"It runs perfect, trust me. This will last you through your senior year, easy."

Graham patted Wade on his back. "Sorry, Wade."

No longer did the boys wait for hours after the final bell. They drove home directly, ate as if they were starving, did their homework, then Graham and Rudy both went to Johnson's Pick-n-Save Grocery, where Graham had taken an after school job as well.

"You know you look just like him," Mr Johnson said. "Even more than your brother does. I thought that'd be impossible."

"Yes sir," Graham nodded.

"How's Jack doing these days, anyway?"

Graham looked at him. "He died last year, Mr Johnson."

Mr Johnson sent the boys home with a month's worth of groceries that night.

"Anything you need, just pick it off the shelf."

"You don't have to, Mr Johnson."

"I insist that I do. Don't you dare leave without it, you hear me?"

Both their paychecks, small as they were, working two hours a day, went to the family account. It was a much needed boost, and Lisa Chapel didn't know how she would get by without the help. She balanced the bills and income, made her adjustments. The money always seemed to break even.

Rudy took Judith Clark on the first date in the station wagon. It was to the Valentine's Day dance at the school gymnasium.

"You're taking a girl named Judith?" Hannah asked, as she always did whenever any of her brothers mentioned a girl's name. Then she'd find an excuse to stay around and ask questions.

"Rudy and Judy," Graham said. "Judy, Judy, making Rudy moody."

"She asked me," Rudy said. "She sent me fourteen candygrams today and then asked me at the end of the day. What was I supposed to do?"

"I don't know. I bet she floats well."

Rudy shrugged.

"What does she look like?" Hannah asked.

"She's plump," Graham said. "Did she ask for the candygrams back?"

"I didn't want to hurt her feelings."

"You're an angel," Graham said. "You know the car has no spare."

Rudy just looked at him.

"I mean, the shocks are about worn out."

Rudy cracked a smile.

"Well, you get yourself nice and prettied up. I'll top off the tires."

Graham left the room and Rudy held in his laughter under the dim dining room light.

Hannah looked at him. "Is she really that big?"

He shrugged and leaned back, smiling. "Even bigger."

Hannah watched out the front window as the station wagon drove away into the cold night, exhaust licking out the tailpipe. The car coughed and stalled, and the taillights beamed for a short moment before the tailpipe exhaled a smoker's cough and the car lurched again. Hannah dropped the curtain. Delighted as she was, learning that Rudy was out with a girl, she couldn't imagine Judith Clark being anything but beautiful. All her brothers were handsome, she knew that. Whenever her friends came over all they wanted to do was talk with them. She supposed she could see it. Each of them resembled daddy in their different ways, and she couldn't see them with any girl who had any flaw whatsoever.

Rudy lost his virginity in the back of the station wagon to Judith Clark. They struggled to make it happen, and Rudy wasn't sure if it should count, but he drove her home in a silent car ride and came home himself indifferent about it. It simply happened that night, much due to Judith's insistence, and that was that. Hannah stayed up and was peeking around the wall when he walked in the door. She smelled perfume on him and tried again to imagine all of Judith Clark, but nothing came except a slender girl hanging on Rudy's arm, flashing a perfect smile.

"When you like a boy," Rudy told her. "Never send him more than one candygram on Valentine's Day, and don't let him drive you to the dance. Meet him there. I'll even drop you off if you need me to." Then he added. "And I'll pick you up and drive you home. You call me."

The station wagon saw no more dates after that. It was a sleet-filled shiny night coming home from the grocery when Graham broke through the ice and clogged the engine beyond repair. They turned the corner and the headlight triangle glistened over the dark ice of Horseshoe Reservoir. At that small alcove the water was only knee deep in the summer, and at this time of the year it would surely be ice to the bottom.

"We're going in the cattails," Graham said, and kept the wheel straight. Rudy grabbed a hold of whatever he could as the car bounced along the dirt and grounded out at the shoreline, split the cattails that stood out of the ice like toothpicks, and the car was on the ice, sliding sidelong. For a brief moment Rudy thought they would be able to drive all the way across, but the cracking of the ice was as loud as hammers, and he thought about hopping out before the car broke through. Then it was too late. It sat there in the shallow alcove, a perfect cutout in the ice, as if dropped from above. Water came in the doors and soaked their feet up to their ankles.

They got out and fought on the ice until they were too cold to grip.

"I thought it would be stronger than that," Graham said, sitting on the ice, catching his breath.

"I don't know how many 'do not walk on the ice' signs I've seen on the reservoir over the years."

"We weren't walking."

They fought once more and walked home.

They were back to sitting curbside well after the final bell, waiting for their mom to pick them up. Lisa Chapel, it seemed, could not figure out how to leave her office desk on time. She worked now at a printing company, answering phones and running errands for the ink-covered Gregg Hoskins. It paid two dollars more an hour and offered benefits. She came in an hour and a half early every day with the understanding that she would leave an hour and a half early so she could pick up her boys. At about the time she should have been packing up to leave, Gregg Hoskins would emerge from the voices and the machinery in the printing room, his hands black and his apron smeared, wiping his fingers in a rag like some sort of mechanic, and request one more thing of her before she left for the day.

"Mom, can we please get a ride? By the time we get home every night there's nothing to do but eat and homework and sleep."

"I don't want you riding with a new driver. I've seen the way students drive out of the school parking lot. No way."

"Then how about we take the car to school and we pick you up after work?"

She looked at him, thinking about it. Besides being in good shape, the way Jack left it, the old Chrysler LeBaron had sentimental value to her. "No. I don't need our good car ending up in the lake, and besides, you'd just be waiting in another parking lot until I get out of work."

It was one of those evenings, as Lisa Chapel was shutting down her desk, answering one more phone call, when Gregg Hoskins approached her desk. She put on a faint smile, waiting for him to request a final task of her. He fumbled around a bit and then asked her on a date. Being a widower himself, he felt he had an understanding with her, at least a feeling of what she went through. It soon turned into an attraction, and Lisa Chapel was still an attractive woman.

He walked out from the back room, dressed in a clean shirt and slacks, adjusting his glasses and combed hair. It was the first time Lisa Chapel had seen her employer without a days' work all over him.

"I mean, if you're not doing anything this weekend, of course. If you don't already have plans is what I mean. You probably have your weekends full with your kids, but I thought..."

Lisa stood with one hand on the desk, the other on her heart as if she'd just been frightened. It was a shock, and being soft-hearted as she was, there was only way to respond.

"Sure, Gregg. That sounds like fun."

Gregg, in equal shock, stepped forward. "Oh, well only if you want to. I guess I should figure out where we should go. I hope it matches up to your expectations of fun."

"What I meant was the idea sounds nice." She could not break his heart now. "A date."

"How about a dinner and a movie?"

"That sounds like a classic."

She sat up the night of, wringing her hands and sliding her wedding band on and off. Gregg Hoskins was a nice man, a decent man, but he was not a man like Jack Chapel. Or more simply, he was not Jack Chapel. She told herself over and over, it was not a date, just two friends with similar pasts getting together after a long work week. Gregg, being a widower, would understand her situation and would stay back. She slid her wedding band firmly in place and freshened up in the mirror. She insisted to Gregg that they meet at the restaurant, and she told her children she was going out with friends.

"You don't get out on dates much," Gregg Hoskins told her over the table, pressing his glasses up with a finger.

"I don't at all, actually. Is it that obvious?"

"Just tonight it is. You wore your wedding band." He raised his hand. "I did too."

"I felt bad without it."

"No, no. Keep it on. I would be worried if you took it off. I was told once that it is proper to leave it home on a date. The other person might find it intrusive. Personally, I think such talk is insensitive hogwash."

"I didn't mean it like that. I just felt that you and I having gone through similar – you know..." She fiddled with her spoon and asked. "Was it a woman who told you that?"

He nodded. "I had to take it off just to get through the date comfortably. There was no second date. I don't get out very easily myself."

"Well, it's nice to get out, isn't it? Thank you."

Lisa Chapel sat quietly through dinner, smiling as Gregg Hoskins talked about himself, his hands playing shadows over his plate. She fidgeted in her purse and looked around. The lighting, the tables, the dressed up waiters floating amongst the soft music.

"This is a nice place," she said, leaning close in a sort of whisper.

"You sound surprised. I know the print shop is nothing big, but I do all right. I can take care of myself and another pretty easily if I needed to. I mean if that ever happened out that way. At anytime in the future. Anyway we deserve a nice break, don't we?" He raised his wine glass and tapped it once on her water glass. "To us."

"To us." And she took a sip.

At the movie he put his hand on hers and she jumped and pulled away. It was unexpected and it shocked her, but she tried to cover up her surprise. She thought of patting his hand on top, just to ease any embarrassment, but she could not bring herself to touch him. They sat awkwardly in the theater chairs for a moment, the big screen flashing bright and dark on their faces. It seemed too long of a pause, but she reached over and touched his knuckles with her pointing finger, the way a child pets a caterpillar. It wasn't enough, so she smiled at him. He took her hand and held it through the movie. It was both painful and horrifying for her to do, and she could feel her heart beating in her chest, and she wondered if Gregg Hoskins could feel her pulse in her fingers. He just sat there with a smile on his glassed face, the contours of which changed dramatically in the movie light, like some sort of identity struggle in a horror picture show. She could not watch the movie, and she wanted to be home.

In the parking lot, he walked her to her car, holding her hand all the way, talking the entire time about how he knew the twist in the movie plot was coming and how he figured it out. She walked fast and tried to say goodnight as they approached her car so to avoid a goodnight scene at the door. But then they were there and he was still with her. She put the key directly in the car door, not knowing how long she had had it ready in her hands.

"Thank you for a lovely evening, Gregg." She turned to face him. "It was so nice to get out for a chang–"

He kissed her and she drew back so fast she stumbled. He stood there, his face half shaded in night, and it was her that did the apologizing.

"I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to react the way I – I mean I wasn't expecting anything."

But he stood there, not embarrassed at all, just looking at her, and her taking all the embarrassment that was available. She could not see past the two ovals of his glasses reflecting the city lights, but his smile stayed put. She stepped forward and slapped him.

The next morning she cleared her desk. It was a Saturday and the office was closed. She hunted around in the strange quietness, rid of ringing phones and drumming machines, for an empty box to use. There was always a stack of them in the machine room. When she flipped on the light she screamed. Gregg Hoskins was standing against the printer.

"Sorry," he said, holding a hand up. "It's just me. Didn't mean to frighten you."

She stepped out and closed the door halfway, then opened it. "What on earth are you doing?"

"I heard you coming in and I didn't want to get in the way. I thought I'd wait it out back here. I wish you wouldn't go."

"Where is your car?"

"I parked on the street, came in the front door. I didn't expect you here today. Don't get upset. Listen, last night I – I wish you wouldn't go."

She was so embarrassed by now, being kissed and being caught, that she had no choice. Staying would involve a great swallowing of pride. She packed up her desk quickly but neatly. Gregg had moved in from the back and stood against the door, trying to work out the words to make a case, but she hardly heard a clear word. Then she walked out the back door, box in hand, locked it, and slid the office key under the door. She saw his shadow on the other side bend down and pick it up as quickly as she put it under, and she hurried to her car before he came out and stopped her.

The church business office might have her old position available. It was less money, less hours, but it was comfortable, she would not be asked out on a date, and she could fill her time with prayer.

Father Cormac sat opposite of her. He had just said the Saturday morning mass. She had her box of desk supplies at her feet.

"I don't know how long we'll have a spot for you, Lisa. In the office, I mean. You're asking for a position we closed some time ago."

"I understand. Just the kindness of allowing me to work is enough. I'll take care of the next step."

She did just that. Lisa Chapel took the reins of parish fundraising and donations, food drives, homeless drives, Knights of Columbus breakfasts, Operation Rice Bowl, The Giving Tree. St Augustine's became the leading parish in donations in Douglas county, then in Lancaster county and two other connecting counties.

Parish participation would steadily rise over the next year, and Sunday mass would fill the pews as if it were Easter or Christmas every week.

"How did you do it?" Father Cormac would ask her.

"By including the congregation," she said. "By giving the church to them."

She did it because she had a family to feed, and a job to keep. She cut nearly every item from the church budget and found new ways to collect, found new ways to invite participation. She attended Eucharistic Adoration every day, and was no earlier in picking the boys up.

"Honey, I can't leave the Eucharist unattended, I've told you that."

Hannah rode a carpool home and wandered through the house alone after school, picking her way through the food pantry. Lisa Chapel read the bible more. She became more trusting of God and yet she worried more. Her midnight talks with her sons became more frequent. Her joyful sense of humor became preoccupied and she missed punchlines and story climaxes.

"...we've stayed after school for so long that I've counted everything in sight out of pure boredom," Wade was telling a story. "So Gianna said in the classroom, 'What's over your head, Mr knowitall?' and I knew it was a model Spitfire that Mr Ruzecka had in his room, so I said so. Then outside she comes up to me again and says, 'How high is the school building?' and I knew that too, so without looking I said 'It's thirty-two bricks high.' Now she thinks I'm psychic."

Lisa blinked at her chuckling boys, put her fork on her plate, and waited for more. "And what did she say next?"

"Nothing, mom. That was it."

Graham went to Horseshoe Reservoir often. Many times with a fishing rod sticking out over his handlebars. The warm spring air had melted the surface and little waves chopped out. He had become a skilled fisherman, often hauling in twenty pound catfish.

"They like to hide in the holes near the water dam," he said. "When they turn the water on sometimes I can see the big ones in the current."

Wade hooked his rod and watched as Graham slid three shad baits on his hook for him. "Why don't you ever go after trout like we used to?"

Graham glanced up, then back to the hook. "I don't know. Sometimes I do go after trout or bass. But as soon as I cast the line I start thinking about the cats on the bottom, and I reel in and go after the big cats."

"But you always throw them back."

They cast their lines and watched them sail across the dusk, Graham's landing exactly where he had intended. The opposite shore was lost in darkness. Graham wiped his palms and waited. He reeled in to tighten his line.

"What is it that you like so much about catfish?"

Graham blinked a few times and wet his lips. "Because they get big and they pull hard." And Wade realized his brother's simplicity of things.

Wade sat on the shoreline in the failing light. Squinting, he made out the white rocks across the water. Somewhere a bird called it sundown. "How far is it to the opposite shore?"

"Farther than you think."

Wade looked over but could not make out Graham's expression. "Remember dad's swimming challenge?"

"Yeah." Graham picked through the rocks at his feet. "I did it."

"Did what? You did not."

"I did. All the way across."

"No you didn't." Wade adjusted his squat. He looked out at the water. "When?"

"Last year."

It was much too far. The white rocks, hardly visible, lost now except in peripheral, seemed to be a mirage, the type of vision that leaves thirsty travelers face down in the desert. It could happen the opposite way too, he thought. Facedown in the water chasing land.

Wade went to Horseshoe Reservoir the next weekend. Shading his eyes he could hardly make out any features. A man walked on the other side, small as a dot. He saw the flash of a leash and saw movement at the dot's feet. He may have been walking a mouse.

"There's no way you swam it," Wade told Graham. "It's got to be almost...I don't know, plus you have a current to fight against."

"I swam it. Hand to God."

So it was true. One thing the boys would never do was tell a lie with their hand to God. Wade went to Horseshoe twice the weeks after with the intention of swimming it. Each time he stood to his knees in the water. He swam a short distance out and came back, just to test his endurance. He decided a human body would fail and drown on the other side of halfway. The distance was too great and the water was too cold.

After school one day, Wade changed into shorts and a tshirt. He gave Graham his backpack.

"I'm running home."

"Why? You know how far it is?"

"Because I want to get in shape enough to swim Horseshoe. I'll probably beat you home."

And off he went, out of the school parking lot, running the sidewalks and the shoulders of the main roads. It didn't take long before he stood bent over the swaying roadside grass in a dizzying sweat as the cars buzzed behind him. He had a cramp under his ribs and had finished his water bottle long ago. He had no watch to tell the time with, his frequent cramping often slowed him to a walk, and the light steadily dimmed into a rose sunset. He thought about hitching a ride or stopping at any random door to request the use of their phone. On one stretch of road he saw a discarded water bottle that sat on its side, halfway full with discolored rainwater, in a drying puddle. He closed his mouth and looked around, then opened it again, looking at the water bottle.

When he got home in the dark his dinner sat cold and solitary on the table and he was so tired that he could only manage a few bites before he collapsed in his bed, still in his shorts and sweat-drenched tshirt. Graham came in the room and nudged his leg.

"Bright idea, huh, Wade? You've been home for so long you probably got bored without us and went to sleep."

He shook his leg again, and his arm, but Wade would have slept through an amputation.

Wade ran home the rest of the week, once falling over in exhaustion in the neighbor's front lawn. Oscar, the old man who lived there, rang the doorbell while his wife tried to stir Wade back to life.

"I bet you made his day," Graham told Wade. "That old man is just happy he wasn't the first person to die in his front yard."

"I'm getting better," Wade said. "I made it home this time."

"I'd say you came up about ten yards short."

"Close enough."

"They don't give touchdowns at the ten yard line."

"Well, I could have made it all the way."

"You ever notice how big Mr Oscar's nose is? He could win a race from ten yards out."

Wade just sat there, breathing up and down.

"You know you might try riding your bike."

Wade waved it away. "Not hard enough. I could ride my bike that distance when I was a kid."

The summer heat pushed in, the humidity made it impossible to run such a distance without the possibility of heat stroke or dehydration, and Wade once found himself sitting at a bus stop at an hour and street he didn't know, his head perfectly conditioned to do some swimming of its own.

He ran home three days the following week and only one day the week after that. Soon, swimming Horseshoe Reservoir rolled from the front of his brain to the back. School would be out soon, and he knew he wouldn't be doing any running then.

Girls walked around school, trying to make a final impression on the boys, one that would last the summer. The school reprimanded Krissy Taylor for tucking her shirt up to reveal her midriff during one sweltering lunch break. She took it in stride and did it again the first chance she got, enjoying the glances and outright stares the boys gave her. Wade noticed she had a perfectly formed stomach, one he didn't mind looking at, and one that the other girls talked about behind her back. A slut, they called her.

Her figure had developed in the right places, and Wade had spent most of middle school and now high school avoiding her for reasons he tried now to figure out. Because she knew about herself. She had known about herself since the first grade, when little boys raced to sit next to her. It is an instinct of little boys to sit next to pretty girls. The instinct only grows stronger, and Krissy Taylor had been aware of it well before she ever sat in a classroom.

"Could I borrow a piece of paper?"

Wade looked up and Krissy Taylor was standing over him as the classroom still murmured from lunch break, pulling her hair into a messy bun, her elbows stirring in front of her. He tried to not look at her shirt for he had seen the stomach behind it. She had to repeat herself and he realized later that he had handed over his entire notebook for her to take as many pieces of paper as she wanted to. She said thank you, and gave him a smile that seemed to look right past him. Then she sat in the center of the classroom and crossed her legs while John Baldinger, the second-team quarterback, leaned over and whispered to her.

Baldinger was the male equivalent of Krissy Taylor in that he knew girls looked at him. He'd stroll in late to class and take his time picking a desk to sit at and ruffle his hair and look around while the teacher spoke. Eventually, he would lose his concentration and stare straight ahead with his mouth open. Wade caught him in this pose often, and imagined him catching a fly.

Krissy Taylor never lost her casual concentration, always appearing perfectly poised in her seat. But it was too perfect. Despite being in the same small classrooms for the past ten years, Wade thought Krissy Taylor would not be able to recall his name if she was put on the spot about it.

Rudy graduated high school as the co-valedictorian. In reality he was the valedictorian, but Our Lady of Perpetual Hope wanted to graduate numerous distinguished students. It did not go over Lisa Chapel's head easily and she argued with the principal about it on several occasions, setting up appointments with him on weekends with the clear intention of raising her voice and arguing. Rudy earned his grade-point average, he earned the distinction of valedictorian, and he should not have to share that just because the school wants to honor a teacher's daughter who was three spots down the list. But the school stuck to its plan and gave co-valedictorian status to four students.

At the graduation ceremony Graham stood in his seat and howled his support when Rudy's name was called. Wade clapped silently, Lisa clapped loudly and dabbed her eyes, and Hannah stretched her neck to see the upperclassmen.

Graham sat back during the slow graduation song. "Boy, I hate this song. I've heard it too many times."

Then he pulled a red-capped bottle from his pocket and held it in the air. It turned out to be an air horn. The school band lost its place, and after a short pause, started again from the beginning.

Rudy received a full-ride scholarship to The University of Nebraska at Lincoln.

"The Bug-eaters," Graham said.

"The Cornhuskers," Hannah corrected.

"You won't be so far from home," Lisa Chapel said, fixing his collar. "I'm so proud of you, Rudy. You look like your father."

During the summer he and Graham worked full days at Johnson's Pick-n-Save.

"You save what you earn," Lisa Chapel told him. "We'll keep it in your own account."

"I got a full-ride, mom. I don't mind."

"No, you earned your own money just like you earned that scholarship. We'll be fine and you're going to wish you had it."

Wade worked half nights at a fly-by-night carnival that set up in a dirt lot across the street from the Pick-n-Save. Summer nights were all blinking lights, bells, slide whistles, funny mirrors, cotton candy, fireflies and pretty girls with tanned skin.

He operated the Gravitron, a flying saucer looking ride that spun in place like a top, giving the riders a sense of weakened gravity. And weakened stomachs. Wade's job was to count the riders, close the hatch, and pull a lever that sent the top spinning. A small turbine spun directly behind him, with holes in the metal cage for the air to escape. At two minutes, he pulled the lever again and the ride came to a stop and the turbine stopped humming. The riders exited wobbling out the back, sometimes stopping with their hands on their knees to inspect the grass.

After work Rudy and Graham would walk over to the little circus and find Wade distracted by pretty girls with ice cream cones who came up to talk to him. He went well over the two minutes, and the riders who exited the Gravitron nearly fell out when the hatch opened. One poor boy with a pimply face held his shirt apart from his chest, soaked in pink cotton candy vomit, which in the Gravitron was like spitting into the wind. He looked ready to add another shade to his shirt.

"Want to take me up on the Ferris wheel?" one of the girls asked.

"I can't," Wade said. "I have to run this ride. It's my summer job."

The girl turned her head as if she saw something out of the corner of her eyes. And she did. It was Graham, watching the interaction. For a moment it looked as though Graham would step in and take the girl above the trees to see the city lights, and in that same moment it looked as though the pretty girl wanted that to happen. Instead, Graham stepped in and took the lever and the stopwatch, and pushed Wade along.

"Who is that?" the girl asked, looking over her shoulder.

"My brother," Wade said. "His girlfriend's around here somewhere."

Her name was Lori Hylock, corn-fed and cornfield tanned, and as it turned out she didn't mind sitting above the city glow with Wade instead of with Graham. She kissed him at the height of the Ferris wheel, as everyone scurried beneath them like ants.

"Was that your first kiss?"

"Of course not," Wade said. "Why do you think that?"

"Because it was mine. I was kinda hoping it was yours too."

"Okay, maybe it was. Yes."

"It didn't feel like your first."

And she kissed him again and pressed against him, the desperation and fumbling of a long awaited first kiss. It was a moment he'd like to remember forever, and he walked away from the Ferris wheel lights, through the blurry night crowd, with a faraway smile like he'd just been given a secret.

"She kissed you up there, didn't she?" Graham said. He had to talk over the heads of two other ice cream girls. Wade just kept smiling and silently took the lever and the stopwatch and took up his post again.

"You look like you just caught your first fish."

He didn't see Lori Hylock the next night, nor any night that week. He took his spot near the lever each night, just as the bugs primed their lighthouse abdomens and the rose closed its petals on the horizon. He scanned every laughing face near and far, but each was new. He began to wonder if he imagined that night on the Ferris wheel. Maybe she was just visiting town with her family, and went on without him forever, leaving behind that small anxious piece of her with him on top of the world. He stayed after the crowds were gone and the lights were out and the carnival lot looked like a funhouse wasteland after a disaster.

The Gravitron ran right on time after that. Not a second too short or too long. It was right after he pulled the lever to send it motion that she came by again, taking a big step into his line of vision as if from behind a stage curtain, ice cream and a smile held high.

"Hi."

Wade stepped backward and caught the tip of his finger in the spinning turbine. The fan did not hesitate. It just made a quick click of sound and kept going. His eyes welled up and he squeezed his finger into his fist, afraid to look at it but more afraid to blink and have Lori Hylock disappear again.

"Are you mad at me? What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"You thought I left for good, didn't you?"

"Yes."

Lori Hylock smiled and opened her arms. "Still here."

Wade pressed away the pain. He was like a small child who pushes the urgency for a bathroom as far out as possible, until dancing in place is necessary.

"Want to take me up on the Ferris wheel again?"

Wade squeezed his eyes shut.

"You _are_ mad. I'm sorry. I came here with my friends the first time and they haven't wanted to come back until now, and I can't come here alone. My parents want us all to stick together."

He struggled to form a smile, which turned out to be more of a spasm at the corner of his sweating lips.

"Well, at least give me a hug."

"I can't."

"Why not? Is your boss watching?"

He shook his head, his eyes still shut.

"So I can kiss you right here and now and you won't get in trouble?"

He nodded.

"You want me to?"

"Yes."

Lori Hylock stepped close, holding her ice cream out of the way, her lips spreading more into a smile than a pucker, inching closer to Wade's face. She stopped just short of connecting.

"You're sweating. What's wrong with you? Are you sick?"

A guy yelled from the Gravitron line. "Kiss her!"

Wade kissed her. In the same motion he pushed the lever back with his elbow to stop the ride, and he brushed past her, running with his red fist held in front of him like a bleeding heart. He ran until he was out of Lori's sight, then found a chipped ice vendor and stood in line for a snowcone. The line quickly parted and the ice-man gave him an ice bag and Wade shoved his burning hand in, turning the bag red the same way the flavored syrup spreads through the chipped ice. Only one small boy remained in line, a dollar in his hand. His wide eyes would not miss seeing real blood for anything. The ice-man kicked his cart brake, grumbling away to new spot where people still had an appetite for raspberry snowcones.

It was only the fleshy fingertip. It only just grazed the bone. It took a few stitches at the emergency room, but one could hardly tell he had left the tip of his finger somewhere. Rudy and Graham sat outside the emergency room in two waiting chairs in the hallway.

When they went home, Lisa Chapel sat at the table looking over the emergency room paperwork. Wade sat under the table light, his bandaged finger in his lap.

"What's she look like?" Hannah had wandered near.

"Who?"

"Don't you have a girl at the carnival?"

"Why do you say that?"

"Because you look like you do."

"Because I look like I – what are you talking about?"

"You do, don't you?"

"No."

"Well, what's she like?"

"Nothing. She's like nothing. She likes carnival rides and ice cream."

Their mother leaned over the table with her head in her hands. "I wish you would be more careful. I don't know how I'm going to pay for all this."

Rudy put his savings into the family account and paid for Wade's stitches.

"I hate having to do that." Lisa Chapel pulled his head low and stood on her toes to kiss Rudy's forehead. "I know you needed that money. I'll pay you back during the school year."

"It's okay, mom," Rudy said. "I don't need it. I have the scholarship."

She stood back to study him at arm's length. Such a bright, handsome young man without a mean bone in his body. Her eyes pooled. "I'm so proud of you, Rudy."

Wade went back to pulling the lever at the fly-by-night, standing among the silly noises and the smell of cotton candy and funnel cakes, a small cap of white tape on his finger. He pulled the lever and the Gravitron slowed. An Uncle Sam went by on stilts, and there she was.

"I thought you were mad at me."

"No. I just didn't want to leave and miss out."

"Miss out on what?"

"Miss out on you."

He bought the last large stick of cotton candy and they sat atop the rolling hill and watched the lights go out one by one. Then the night was a cosmic fishbowl, looking like the stars were tossed up there by great handfuls, scattered unevenly, some distant, some bright, and they rested with their heads together.

"...and we moved here in the spring because dad's company moved him here," Lori said. "I went to East Bellevue to finish the school year. I hated it because I was the new girl and didn't know anybody. I couldn't wait for summer."

"Are you going back to East in the fall?"

"Yes. I have to admit I wasn't very social. I knew summer vacation was coming up and I didn't make the effort to make friends. Where do you go?"

"Our Lady of Perpetual Hope."

"The Catholic school?"

"Yes."

"Are you Catholic?"

"Yes."

"Are you allowed to kiss girls on the hillside in the dark?"

Wade laughed. "I guess."

"What are you not allowed to do?"

"We can't eat meat on Fridays."

"And if you do?"

"We go to confession every month."

A silence passed. "What are Catholic girls like?"

"Same as any other girls except they wear plaid uniform skirts."

"Did you see that?" Lori said.

"What?"

She rolled on her side and propped an elbow beneath her. "A shooting star."

"Oh yeah. I saw it."

She put her hand up and spread her fingers wide. "Put yours up. There, see? I like when a boy's fingers can curl over mine. Did you see it or what?"

"Yeah, I said yes."

"Then make a wish."

"That doesn't work."

"It might. Make a wish."

The glistening whites of his eyes disappeared beneath his lids for a fraction of a second.

"You didn't wish."

"Does it matter?"

"How on earth are you going to find out if you don't make a wish?"

"What'd you wish for?"

"It was your star, I gave it to you. And now you've taken so long someone else has probably taken it. Something special will happen to them tomorrow and your life will go on as normal."

"Something special's already happened to me."

She leaned close and the starlight raised her curious lips. "What?"

"Don't laugh?"

"Of course not. What? Well, tell me."

"I didn't need a wish. An actual shooting star came right into my life."

Her lips were beaming. "And what?"

"And gave me my first kiss."

"And your second."

"And my third?"

Lori Hylock nodded with a little giggle on the hillside and the shooting stars passed overhead.

He didn't see her again until the summer crickets slowed their chirps and the sun began its sherbet melt on the horizon earlier. Every time he pulled the lever at the fly-by-night he looked beyond the stopwatch he held, and every night he tried to find her in dream. He would sit at the dining table and stare out the back window. Graham came up behind him and put his head next to Wade's, taking in the same vision for a second before Wade shooed him away.

It was at the public pool that he saw her again, with a guy who wore his hair in a mohawk and called for attention from the high-dive before jumping off. She gave Wade a prolonged look, then a glance, but she turned away and offered no apology or explanation.

It hurt like a physical ache in his chest. Like he swallowed something without chewing and could not get it down. It was there on the thick hillside grass among the Midwest stars that he had fallen in love.

He went home and sat on the front step while the bugs hummed around him. A bumblebee buzzed by at high speed.

"What's wrong?" Rudy said.

"Nothing."

"Thinking about dad?"

"What? No."

He took a seat next to his younger brother, easing into with a sigh. "I think about him every once in a while. Every day. I always try to think of some sort of thing that he did–"

"I wasn't thinking about him just now."

"It's okay to think about him."

"Well, I wasn't."

Rudy leaned back with his elbows on the next step. "Well, what then?"

"Nothing."

"A girl?"

"Mm."

"What'd she do, dump you?"

"Nothing."

Rudy sat forward. "Wade, if you let every girl you ever kiss spoil your appetite, you're likely to lose a lot of weight by the time you graduate. We won't even know you. Kiss 'em all and get it over with."

Wade looked at his brother. "Did you?"

Rudy smiled at the dimming sky, blinking. "No. But I know what I'm talking about. You're supposed to get dumped in high school. And you're supposed to do some of the dumping too. Don't let a girl get in the way of that, no matter how nice she smells."

He saw her again at the fly-by-night, with the same guy from the pool. It was as if she went there just to make him jealous, lingering in his line of vision, glancing over her shoulder at him, pointing him out to the guy she was with. But he went about his job with the lever and stopped the Gravitron on the exact second. There were other girls walking around the fairgrounds with ice cream cones at their smiles and white cutoff threads dangling over their sunny legs.

"Are you Wade Chapel?" Up close he looked older. His mohawk was off-center. Lori Hylock stood in the background, twisting a tall grass around her finger, hoping for a fight.

"Yep."

"Did you kiss my girl?"

"She was my girl at the time."

"Yeah, and when was that?"

Wade shrugged. "I don't know. A month ago."

He thought the guy might take a swing at him. Wade was almost hoping for it. They could both look over a tall hedge without their toes, but Wade figured he outweighed this guy by more than just a good sized meal. He pictured the guy's punch bouncing off his chest, but the guy just stood there trying to figure out the timeline in his head. Finally, he said, hell she's been two-timing us, and walked away.

Girls were an awful confusion. He did not understand the way their minds worked. Why go with two guys when one was being agreeable? Rudy's suggestion of kissing them all seemed an unusual one, one he could not figure the sense of, and he believed Rudy would not follow his own advice on that point either. One at a time was the way to go about it. He did however get the first one out of the way, the big potato in the stew, and he could move along to others with an experience that made them seem not so big.

Summer once again tapered off, rushing from a roar of months into a dripping of days, then hours. That familiar swirl of indigestion without the consequences lumped in his belly.

Their dog, Painty, had grown swollen and slow and stopped often to pant and catch her breath on walks. Long gone were the days when Painty held herself rigid with eagerness to pull the children in the wagon or shopping carts. She often loafed around the yard in the shade and didn't get up anymore when someone came out the back door to visit her. She just rolled over for a belly scratch when someone came near.

The last week of summer, Painty sprawled in the shade of the corner of the yard for the last time.

"Of old age," Hannah said with a quivering lip. "She died of old age."

But she didn't cry outright. Her lip trembled every time she thought of old Painty, and her eyes glistened, but she didn't drop any tears. Wade took one large swallow and was done with his mourning, and Graham nodded his head a few times and sighed. Rudy sat on his bed with dry eyes and thought about the poor dog the first time they brought her home. The way the dog never learned to not scratch at their door, the way little Tee-tee would sit on Painty's back with handfuls of fur to hang onto, and Painty trotting across the grass.

He remembered his father, the great Jack Chapel, standing in the yard after work in his white shirt and loose tie, tossing a stick for Painty to fetch. The dog was hard to corral for anyone else who tried, but Jack Chapel could tame her with just the sound of his voice. The clear ha-ha of his laughter. His crouch over the dog then became a crouch over his children who ran beneath him on the grass. Rudy used to love this game. His father always pretended to swoop and miss him once before swooping again to catch him the second time, and he remembered being held close to his father's chest and he remembered the way he smelled. He used to pretend to fall asleep on the couch to the glow of dad's Saturday night movies, well beyond his bedtime, just so his father would cradle him up and carry him to his bed. He would crack his eyelids just enough over his father's shoulder to see his mother following close behind, and he wished he could go back and freeze time and live in that moment forever. Or at least just once more.

It was as if he caught the scent there in his room just then, and he heard his father's voice in the game on the lawn. Then his chest filled up, or his ribs constricted, and he began to breathe the way people do into paper bags to avoid hyperventilating. Big puffing breaths of air and his neck went warm and he felt his cheeks go wet and he realized he was sobbing. He tried to control it but it only served to push more out, grating large breaths that sounded and felt foreign to him, and tears that seemed to come from some untapped reservoir that had been filling for most of his life.

Summer was over. His childhood was over. Both had found a nice shaded spot to lie in for the last time.

One weekend they were in the driveway packing Rudy's things in the trunk of the car for college, and the next he was back, standing on the front step with college dropped to the far back of his mind. Across the United States of America, shrouded in confusion and anger, many young men were doing the same thing. Giving up their current opportunities, their futures, for another one: a chance to serve their country.

"Just make sure you're safe and always have a buddy with you," Lisa Chapel said. "I'm always proud of you."

She did not press her ideas on him. She did not suggest he stay or go. She just wanted him to be safe.

He drove himself to the recruiting office. Another boy sat in a car in the parking lot, his hands on the wheel and his eyes straight ahead, looking like he was waiting for a song to end on the radio. But he sat in silence.

Rudy was glad he came alone. Graham had offered to drive. His mother had offered. He did not want to have anyone try to talk him out of joining, nor did he want someone to see him change his mind if he did. But the rubble in New York was still smoldering and he didn't waver as he thought he might, he kept his anger close to him, and no sooner was he standing at perfect attention in front of the recruiting officer's desk did he find himself in the barracks of basic training, a head taller than most of the short stocky recruits, an odd sensation of anger and homesickness hanging over the bunks.

Each young man there joined for the same reason. Charlie Binkton had the bunk above him, and he used to talk aloud at lights-out as the fans hummed on the side of the building and everyone stared at the same ceiling, the crisp sheets hardly gaining a wrinkle beneath them. The trick was to fold them once perfectly and sleep atop of them so they would be ready when Drill Instructor Rawlings came in early to kick things around with his boots squeaking across the floor because some nasty recruit thought it'd be goddamn smart to cut corners with his bedroll, and that he didn't give a flying clown's ass what time they thought it was, they had better get their goddamn baby asses off those sheets and put a hotel-fold with a fuckin crease sharp enough to shave their sweet little peach-fuzz with.

Rudy didn't even wipe DI Rawlings' spittle from his face. It had dried by the time they were allowed to move about freely anyway, and it felt like real soldiering. As for the sheets, sleep atop them and avoid that whole mess.

"What is a hotel-fold anyway?" a voice in the dark asked. It was Bollers. "Did they even teach us that?"

"The first day," Rudy said. "Here I'll show you."

He and Bollers stood at the bunk's edge, leaning over it, their whites glowing in the barrack's moonlight.

"The only justice in this case is a bullet between his eyes and any fucking beard kicking in the sand next to him," Charlie Binkton said. He sat up on his elbow.

"See, you put the fold in once under and cut it across. Like you see at a Best Western or something. Then all you got to do is put the ends together exactly the way you'd think they'd go, and tuck it all under tight as can go."

"Oh yeah. That's a hotel-fold? What's a hotel putting such a fancy fold in their sheets for?"

"Don't let the edges get out or the DI will find it and make damn sure we all do pushups for it."

"See, I think the US should be bombing their asses out of the desert mountains and send them right into the US Marines' waiting arms. That way we don't go walking into any ambush."

"And we'll round them all up like sheep," another voice said. That was Tolbert. "Jesus, Binkton. You should be CO of this operation. Who sent you here to the barracks with a brain so big?"

"No, Binkton wouldn't want to get that close," another voice said. "Binkton requested a long bayonet."

"Who said that?" Binkton said. "Is that Yassa? You shut up. You're lucky you got past the front desk you Egyptian honky. When we find them we oughta line you up next to them in the firing squad. Oughta lay you down and rototill your brown ass–"

He heard the scramble coming and blinked in the darkness for the glowing whites. He saw them flash once but Yassa was already on him, pulling him down. It was a silent rush, followed by another silent rush, and Bollers and Rudy were up pulling Yassa off Binkton.

"I'm American born and raised. A US Marine same as you and you better not forget that."

"Fine." Binkton held a hand in front, guarding from another blind rush. "Jesus. Learn to take a joke once in a while." He climbed back into his bunk and added, "You made me hit my head."

"I thought all this time Yassa was a Mexican," someone said behind it all.

The barracks went silent again in a matter of seconds, the recruits rushing to smooth out their sheets and get on top before the door burst open with the stocky DI rushing in behind it, which had been the case numerous times before. You couldn't rip a fart without the DI coming in to kick things around and spit on them, not caring whose little candy ass thinks it's goddamn funny to shit Uncle Sam's white cotton so much as why they thought it wise to foul the pure air he had to breathe. We'll get the nastiness out of you.

After a while the hum of the fans became a droning, drowsing sound again, and Binkton ruined it.

"See, that's what I'm talking about," he said. "We got Yassa all the way – Yassa the fine American – all the way over here from Egypt fighting–"

"Binkton."

"What?"

"Shut up."

The fans hummed a second longer, undisturbed.

"All right."

Every night was much the same. The hum of the fans and the slow silence. Once in a while someone's mouth would fall open and hang snoring for too long. It was a startling sound at first, and one that quickly found its way to annoying and stayed there until someone whispered hoarsely in the dark.

"Someone roll that fucker over."

They marched in full field dress all the damn day long. Rudy found if he held his rifle at port arms in such a way where he could catch his top elbow against himself, he found it could pass as comfortable. He locked in and held that position for hours, then the march wasn't so bad. Also, it was a position that he felt most like a Marine. It was real soldiering, or preparing for it, and that's what he signed on for. Once you found a rhythm and gave up all hope of ever actually getting to where you were going, which never turned out to be as close as they thought it would be, the march wasn't a bad way to sweat your life away.

He took pride in marching, and while it was torturous to stomp the feeling out of your feet, there was nothing more satisfying than a five mile trot in full field gear followed by a laying prone on the marksman range, squeezing off shots at targets six hundred yards away.

_Range is hot_ , DI Rawlings yelled, putting all the recruits in motion, grabbing their rifles and sliding a round in the chamber. Then the range turned into a battlefield, puffs of dust rising six hundred and one yards away.

"You're up three inches," Binkton said.

Rudy made the adjustments on his scope and pulled the rifle butt against his shoulder. He shook his head, and put the scope adjustment back as it was. He took a deep breath and squeezed off a round.

Binkton dropped his binoculars, pinched his eyes, and looked again. "You're two inches low."

"Damnit, Binkton," he said over his shoulder. "It's six hundo on the dot. High or low, which is it?"

Binkton shrugged. "You went too short. Two inches low."

He went back behind his scope, giving it an inspection as if it had malfunctioned. He propped the rifle against his shoulder and took aim. He found dead center on the target. With the rifle still on target, he adjusted his wrist, wringing it, and popped the knuckle on his firing finger, flexing it a few times. Then he took careful aim and gently squeezed the trigger until the rifle jumped against him. He waited for Binkton's survey.

"One inch left."

"Bullshit."

"It's left."

Rudy stuck his head up, rising just enough to see over his rifle scope to the target downrange. He smarted his eyes and dabbed his sleeve to his face. He rose again, his head rising like a groundhog, when Binkton gave a short psst-whistle for only him to hear. Rudy looked back and reacted in time for the DI's foot to bounce across the back of his head. His helmet went rolling.

"A sniper bullet kicks much harder than that..." Rawlings stood over him. Rudy looked different with dust caked in his sweat, and no helmet. Rawlings searched the equipment on the ground for a name, lifting only his eyes when he found it, speaking over the other rifle shots. "Chapel. You just gave away position for the entire company."

"Aye, aye, sir."

He turned to Binkton. "And you with your whistle, you drew every camel-humping sandpiper within eight miles."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"What'd you think only dogs would come running?"

"Aye, aye, sir."

DI Rawlings glanced and stopped to take a long look downrange. "What are you putting your head up for anyway? You're dead center, Chapel."

Binkton looked again, wondering how DI Rawlings could see that far without binoculars. His target had shots all around the red, but nothing dead center. Then he felt Rawlings' breath on his ear, and lowered the binoculars.

"Which target are you looking at, Binkton?"

"Straight ahead, sir."

He pointed and Rawlings followed his finger downrange. Rawlings adjusted Binkton's finger a fraction of an inch to the left and moved on. Rudy shook his head.

"Well they're all so close together."

Other than that, Binkton was a fine man to soldier alongside. Rudy would have it no other way. Eight weeks of boot camp had drained the heroism in many of the soldiers, and the barracks began to hold the same air as the high school football locker room. Binkton was still angry, muttering to himself about justice after lights out. That's what made his soldiering better than those around him. He didn't go in for the barrack's pranks and kept his head clear of distractions. He never mistook another target after that, and became the second best marksman of the recruits.

Rudy, of course, was the best. From day one he wanted to be the most accurate rifleman. While the other recruits blazed away at each new target with the shouldered version of a cowboy hip-shot, hardly aiming, just trying to keep up with each other, Rudy took deep breaths with each shot, calming himself to a nearly nonexistent pulse before squeezing the trigger. He found the soft spot just before his heartbeat, where his body was still and relaxed, and let his finger work in that fraction of a second. He found he could put just as many rounds downrange as the other recruits, but his hit the targets.

All the miles had taken pounds off Rudy's frame. Rawlings put him on double rations, fifty-five hundred calories a day of tasteless chicken, rice, vegetables and porridge.

"That's the nastiness leaving you, Chapel. Get rid of it, you nasty little thing. I'll rebuild you into a Marine."

He received a letter from Wade and read it in his underwear, sitting on the edge of his bunk, trying to catch the sliver of light from the window on the page. It was simple and short, and Wade could not express brotherly love without a few jabs, but Rudy could see what he was telling him.

Brother Rudolph,

Haha. Rudy, it's really good that you're out there fighting the bad guys. I mean it, though. If I was older I might have joined with you. Graham too, I bet. The three of us could lick anyone. Anyway, not much is different here at home. I'm middle linebacker again and we won our first three games, but lost last Friday to Howard High. Graham ran in two touchdowns but it didn't do any good, because Howard had six on us. We were outweighed ten pounds a man, and the youngest guy on their team must have been twenty-five years old. Coach told me we could have used you. I suppose it's true. We could use you around. Well, Tee-tee says hello, and Graham and Mom too. Mom is putting together a care-package. You should get it soon. She's putting in a dozen chocolate chip cookies. The first two dozen were delicious. Haha. Your brother – Wade.

Rudy doubted the coach had said something like that. Wade probably added it just to say something nice, but it was the _I suppose it's true_ that stuck out. _We could use you around_. There was a lot more written there, summed up in a few choice words, disguised as a casual statement from Coach Horton. It's always easier to agree to someone else's sentiment than to say it yourself.

Rudy wrote back, but it was weeks later. He rolled a pencil in his hands over a blank notebook, chewing the eraser for almost ten minutes. There was a lot of Wade in the letter, and the longer he let it set the less of him there was to acknowledge. He sat at his desk and wrote, or attempted to write, scratching out doodles and filling in the white space between the o's on the cover of his notebook. Finally, he went to work putting some words down. But it was nonsense. After weeks of heavy amounts of the same bland food, he could only think in flavors and spent the night writing everything he wanted to eat when he got back home. He went through his mother's pantry, then the aisles at the Pick-n-Save, then went down the dollar menu. It was a thorough list, one he thought Wade would get a kick out of, and laughing at the front and back page of every food he'd ever eaten, a masterpiece of flavors, he stuck it in an envelope and licked a stamp.

Rudy took great care in every aspect of being a Marine, never wishing for two consecutive full field gear marches, but almost enjoying each one as they came. It was sweating in the column of soldiers, licking the dust from his lips, hearing the unison stomp of feet, that he felt most like he was going to do something great for his country. Any flaws in the recruits around him annoyed him, and he often found himself staring it out of them.

"What?" Ruiz said in the barrack's one day, his arm up on the windowsill. "You've never seen an attractive man sit in the sunlight before?"

"Quit tapping your fingers. And what are you wearing a helmet for?"

Ruiz moved to the edge of his cot. "You know what you need, Chapel?" He fancied himself the pontificator of the recruits. "You need to go off post, find a dirty bar, wait for little Susie Rottencrotch to come up and sit on your lap, and not come back until Rawlings comes looking for you."

After a moment, Rudy shook his head. "You know, they're right. When I heard there was an Egyptian in our squad, I thought it was you and not Yassa."

"What?"

"I thought he was the Hispanic."

He shrugged and went back to folding his shirts. A moment later he watched Ruiz lean over Yassa's bunk and hold his forearm against him, comparing the skin tones.

"The hell do you want? Get away, Ruiz."

It was hard to avoid the distractions. On one march, Bollers pulled Rudy's pack open from behind. Everything came tumbling out and was stomped on by half the company. DI Rawlings made Rudy pick it all up and carry it in front of him the rest of the march like a load of dirty laundry. It strained his back and he couldn't sit properly for the rest of the day, and had to sleep with a pillow shoved under his back.

Someone took his pack and hid it in the field one night. Another company found it, the name CHAPEL stenciled on it, and Rawlings made them keep it in their barracks. He then sent Rudy to infiltrate and take it back.

The easy thing to do was to go when that company emptied their barracks for formation drills. But he found they had posted their biggest man inside, waiting for Rudy to come in. He was sitting on Rudy's pack in the center of the room with a smile.

"Hello."

He thought of backing out and finding another way, a distraction, or getting Binkton to join in and overpower the smiling bastard. Instead he rushed the bigger man and put him in an arm lock that made him scream. He found then that they had two men on guard, the other coming in the opposite door just as Rudy grabbed a hold of the missing pack. They overpowered him and gave him a beating. At least it was soldiering.

He watched one morning as Bollers crossed the yard with a watermelon on his shoulder. His strides lengthened as he approached the other barracks, and he hoisted the melon through the barracks window and sprinted away.

"What was with the watermelon?" Rudy asked.

"I drilled a hole in the top." Bollers could hardly say without cracking up. "And hollowed – and hollowed it out."

"So?"

"So? So I put it in the stall and opened it up to contributions. Whenever someone had to go, they went in the hole."

It had exploded on impact, weighing close to twenty pounds, sending men out the doors on both sides as if a live grenade had dropped.

"It was all bricks because of the field MRE's, of course, but it smelled the way you'd expect."

They came back from the rifle range to find a boar's head sitting in one of the barrack's toilets. It took up the entire bowl and had turned the water red, spilling it around the floor. Setting there with an odd look on its face, it looked as if it got stuck crawling out and the rest of it was backed up in the pipes.

"That's about the most brilliant thing I've ever seen in my life," Binkton said. He leaned in close with his hands on his hips, a dozen curious faces behind him. "Where'd they find a boar's head?"

"You can find 'em rooting around here if you know where to look. They must have some Virginia hick with them. I bet it's Corbett. Dipshit looks like he chews everything with his front teeth."

The next day it rained. Rudy stood with the door cracked, waiting for formation drills, while the barracks idled behind him, flipping through magazines or playing cards.

"Just wait until dark and we'll all rush in there with you and take it back," Tolbert said.

"No, I have a better idea."

Tolbert joined him at the door, looking through its window. "You don't like this bullshit, do you? I mean all this dinking around."

"No."

Tolbert wiped his nose. "Why'd you join, Chapel?"

"Because I don't like the idea of other men filling in my spot for me. Because if young men don't defend the country, who will?"

Tolbert turned and put his back to the wall, running his hand over his short hair. "What would you be doing if you weren't here?"

"Going to college."

"Yeah? Where?"

"University of Nebraska."

"No shit? What would you study?"

"Civil Engineering."

"Damn. Civil Engineering. I guess I'd be working in my uncle's garage. He has a car repair business. I never had the brains for college."

Rudy kept his eyes outside. "Sure you do. College isn't so much brains as it is effort. You just need to do the work. If you got through high school, you can get through college."

Tolbert stuck a thumb to his chest. "GED. And I was lucky I got that. Nah, I joined because I had nothing else. A lot of guys did. A 'good enough diploma' isn't really good enough. But you, you're not a grunt, Chapel. They'll see you have brains and probably put you in charge of something."

Rudy looked at Tolbert and punched his shoulder. "You know what I saw in the parking lot the day I joined?"

Tolbert rubbed his shoulder. "What?"

"Guys like me sitting in their cars thinking it over. Crying over their steering wheels."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Some guys don't have what it takes to soldier. I almost went home myself."

"No you didn't."

Rudy leaned away from the crack of rainlight. "It crossed my mind. Where are you from, anyway?"

"Joes, Colorado. Tiny town with nothing in it. They put a traffic light up every year at the intersection, but people keep cutting it down at night."

Rudy turned back to see the company stomping out of their barracks into the rain and mud, ducking under their slickers as if they were expecting lightning. A houseful of druids running in secret ceremony.

"It's recruit led. Can you and a few other guys go out there and taunt them?"

"Hell yeah," Tolbert said, pushing off the wall with his back. He would have charged into the rain alone if Rudy had asked him. Rudy pulled a slicker over his head. "Binkton will go with you. And take Morgan and Bollers. Have Kinkel start it. It will take some courage on their part to go after Kinkel. Guy is downright unpredictable. I only need a second, but get them good and mad."

The other company stood in the yard, one recruit out front yelling orders from under his rain hood. In the barracks' windows, they left two recruits behind to hover over Chapel's pack.

Tolbert and his guys – Binkton, Morgan, Bollers, Kinkel, and a guy named Portis who was built like a brick house – ran out shirtless into the gray, feet sucking at the mud. Rudy was right behind them in his slicker and marching boots. They went left and he went right, around behind the company. It didn't take long to get the other company riled and scattered. Kinkel led the shirtless charge right down the center of the company formation, while Binkton and Tolbert took the lead recruit, carrying him away by his arms like a prisoner. They carried him twenty yards before getting caught, and by that time DI Rawlings was charging at the skirmish from across the yard, a look on his face that would have made a rabid pitbull cower with its tail between its legs.

" _Tetch-hut_!"

Tolbert and his guys beat it back to their barracks, soaking wet, mud running down their bare chests, their shorts soggy. One guy, Kinkel, was completely naked, losing his shorts in the scuffle. The other company quickly reformed, the recruits filing into formation as quickly as they could, no order in mind, just get in line before Rawlings gets you in line. Rawlings stood in front, rain pouring off his face, Kinkel's whites stomped into the mud behind him. He didn't say anything, just stood there seething. You could almost see the rain sizzling off his head and shoulders. The lead recruit barked out the orders and set the company on its scheduled march, faces hidden under rain hoods, stomping like an order of monks. One extra recruit in the formation, unaccounted.

They marched for three miles in the rain, mud caking their boots, making them heavy. By the time they returned it was pouring so hard you couldn't see through the gray across the yard, big pounding drops that felt like hail and rattled the rooftops. All the recruits slowly pulled off their slickers in the barracks, peeling of their shirts and slumping into their bunks to go to work on their boots. Rudy Chapel, still under his hood, walked over to his pack in the corner, slung it over his shoulder, and walked out.

After boot camp, Rudy Chapel put in for the School of Infantry. The staff noncommissioned officer sent him to Marine Combat Training.

"Chapel, your test scores are too high. If you're a grunt, then I'm a gahdam Colonel. You're staying here at Pendleton. Occupational Specialties. Artillery."

He spent his ten days of leave inspecting the sheet folds at a Best Western hotel just off base. He changed rooms each night. A visit home would only soften him, he thought. Or get his mother's hopes up and leave her wet eyed in the driveway. He was a Marine now, and nothing should interfere with his duty.

Chapel put in two more months of schooling at Camp Pendleton as a Field Artillery Officer, learning artillery tactics, gunnery, gun-line drills, communications, maintenance, transportation and logistics. The number cruncher. He had spent boot camp in a state of dampness, wiping either his own sweat or God's rain off his brow, or trying to dry his feet out from a march through the mud. He spent his field time in Occupational Specialties relatively dry, either kneeling behind smoking artillery with coordinates in his hands, yelling through earplugs, or sitting in a classroom with other artillery officers as an instructor wrote on a whiteboard.

The most dangerous action here was when his roommate saw him walking on base, or out for a run. He would steer toward Rudy and brake at the last second, putting his Jeep bumper inches from Rudy's knees. The Jeep had good suspension and could hop a sidewalk curb as easy as a pair of legs could.

Rudy Chapel spent a snowy New Year's Day watching CNN reports on the Middle East in the unsatisfying comfort of an office desk, wishing he were one of the grunts on the front lines, squinting against the wind-whipped sand and sweating with them on Afghan gravel roads that shimmered with heat and felt like an oven.

"If you wanted to be deployed, you would have gone into infantry," James Coker told him. "Or run with those Hollywood Marines in San Diego. Infantry get shipped out the day they graduate."

"I was with the infantry."

James Coker was his roommate at Pendleton OS. They were assigned to the same artillery unit. He shared the same idealistic sense of justice, a sense of revenge that soon wore down to a nub of obligation four months after the towers fell. He brought a case of beer into the room one night.

"What is this, a frat or something?"

"Shh, no. Hey, hey, no. Just some militaristic consorting. Strategizing."

He tossed a wet can to Rudy, who caught it one-handed and slammed it down hard on the desk behind him in the same movement, leaving it there. Rudy glanced back at it, surprised it had not burst. Word got out and a few other soldiers came around, standing around just long enough to drain a can. James Coker stayed up and drank himself deep into the chair against the window. Around midnight he pulled himself out and stumbled to the desk for the final can. He popped it open and couldn't hold it far enough away. He managed a few sips, wiping most of it off the front of his chest.

They marched through specialty school together, Rudy kept his shoulders back while Coker relaxed into the familiar slump of a civilian. Rudy sat up, watching the door when the mail came around, hoping to receive the yellow envelope marked with the seal of the United States Marine Corps. But Second Lieutenant Kintz, calling out the names as he moved closer through the hall, usually walked by without a piece for Chapel or Coker. He backtracked once and stuck his head in the room.

"Your mom called again, Chapel." He sang as he moved away. "Give her a ca-all."

James Coker sat reading under the swivel lamp on his bunk. He folded the artillery manual on his lap. He felt around for a lighter, and held a cigarette in his lips with his head cocked, glancing over the flame a couple times. He lost the lighter again and leaned forward in the smoke, squinting across the room, pointing with the cigarette in his fingers.

"Be glad you're not out there, Chapel. Our guys are getting blown up. I know a guy, Harp is his name. Born to be a Marine. All he ever wanted to do. Walked right over a roadside bomb his first day out and lost his foot. Got sent back and now writes me letters from his childhood bedroom. His mom serves him soup in bed every day for lunch."

After a moment, Rudy looked up. "What kind of soup?"

But Rudy Chapel had not lost his edge. He still held the same anger that he clenched the family car steering wheel with when he drove himself to the recruiting office. He watched unit after unit around him deploy. He volunteered numerous times for deployment with no effect on his location. He requested fruitlessly for a transfer to an artillery unit that had already deployed.

"You'll get your wish, Chapel. Until then don't rush it. You're a Marine, and you can bet the Corps knows where you're at now, and where they'll soon need you."

It didn't happen any day soon, however, and Rudy began to think his unit was the only unit left on American soil. But he didn't get sloppy. He kept sharp creases in his uniform and avoided going to the bars off hours as the rest of his unit did. He never let nine o'clock come without him being in bed with the lights out, and he woke up at four o'clock sharp without an alarm, and was showered and shaved ten minutes later.

So it was a surprise to him and everyone else that alcohol was what kept him from deployment when the news finally did come.

At half past nine o'clock on a Friday, Rudy sat up and let the phone ring a full first time while he rubbed his face awake. He answered after the first, but before the second.

"Artillery Officer Chapel speaking."

The voice came through clear. "Chapel, Captain Rollets."

He swung his feet over. "Yes, sir."

"3rd Artillery ships out on the fourteenth at o-five-hundred. Happy Valentine's Day, sweetheart."

Rudy stood at the side of his bed as if at attention, his covers falling. He repeated it back, not sure if he should believe it.

"That's what I said, Chapel."

If the lights were on you'd see he had a proud smile that made his eyes water. "Yes, sir, thank you, sir."

"Is Coker there?"

"No, sir. He went off post for a Friday night."

As soon as the call ended, Rudy found his mother's phone number. He hesitated with his thumb on the call button. He would tell her the day before the fourteenth. No sense in worrying her. It was three weeks away.

Rory Koernen came running down the hall cheering and pounding the room doors as he passed. Rudy crossed the darkness and stood with his hand on the door, opening it just as Koernen reached it, bursting out of the black and burying his shoulder in Koernen's stomach, taking him down with his head bouncing against the opposite room door. Koernen tried rolling him, then tried putting his elbow in a hold. Before he could get it twisted, Rudy popped up and pulled Koernen up by an arm.

"We're headed out, brother," Koernen said.

"I know. I just got my call."

"You ready?"

He slapped his shoulder. "I've been ready."

He sat by the frosted window, circling his breath off it with the meat of his fist every so often. When he saw the unmistakable wink of Coker's Jeep headlights dragging its sword of light across the rumpled white lawns, he went downstairs, choppy steps on the stairwell, like a child who woke late for cartoons, out the glass doors and onto the sidewalk where he puffed frozen breath through a smile.

"Is that Chapel?" Coker said behind the wheel, a few Marines in his passenger seats, fresh out of the off-post bar. The Jeep swung around the first turn with a wobbled body and put the black ice in light, and Chapel on the curb, absorbing the rest of the light with his hand shading his eyes, the good news on his lips. "That is Chapel."

Coker put the Jeep on ice too fast, going sidelong and correcting it only to hop the curb at the last second and take Chapel at the knees. He rolled up on the windshield and sprung off the hood as if thrown, landing as a rumpled heap on the sidewalk.

He was in the hospital with one leg in a brace and the other in a cast up to his hips for six weeks. His unit deployed without him and he rehabbed for another six weeks, finally walking off base into winter's finishing cold blasts with an involuntary medical discharge and a permanent limp.

Wade Chapel had excelled at football that year. After watching the chain gang of other dads, he often looked into the Friday night stands, hoping for some off-chance that Rudy might show up. He would search until a referee whistle brought him back.

He started the year as an outside linebacker, but Coach Horton soon moved him to middle and anchored his defense around him. It was a hit against the all-conference running back from Omaha West High that made the decision final. Wade knocked the poor kid's helmet into the sweaty dusk and sent him stumbling around searching for the huddle between plays. On the next series the running back took off toward the corner, looking like he might have the speed to make it, but he curled up and went down at the sight of Wade charging across the lines. Coach Horton's laugh went from the far sideline to the other and up the stands to the last row. With his feet wide, his hands on his knees in a squat, squinting under the blistering lights, he called over his defensive coach. Smacking his gum in a smile, he said, "I want Chapel in the center. Don't put any unnecessary yards between him and the ball."

"Yards don't matter, Coach. Wade came all the way from the far side."

He had a nose for the ball, a vision of the blocks developing before they could get in place. It became a common sight to see Wade Chapel take a few hop steps in the middle, watching the play set up, before barreling through the holes to flatten ball carriers before they could make a move.

The student body of Our Lady Of Perpetual Hope roared each time. Quickly came the chant on third and long – _Chapel, Chapel, Chapel's got the Tackle_ – when the away team needed a long pass, and Coach Horton would send Wade blitzing up the middle to bulldoze a pair of blockers and terrorize the quarterback before the receivers could make a break in their pattern.

It was after a lopsided loss to Howard High that Wade nearly choked up in tears. In victory he never let the celebration go to his head. While the other players riled up the crowd with twirling towels, chanting and stomping down the minutes as coach sent in the scrubs to finish out the game, Wade stood calmly on the sidelines with paint under his eyes and his hair matted in sections, his back to the crowd, everything muffled and clamped, his mind a county away. Alternately, in loss he was inconsolable.

Graham ran his two touchdowns in, and Howard High scored their six on them. Their linemen were enormous and had quickness to go with their size. They were up the field and in Wade's facemask before Wade could figure out which way the play was going much less who had the ball. He took it as a personal failure.

His father would have been there with the chain gang, running the length of the field a dozen times throughout the night, jabbing the yardsticks into the grass at a new set of downs and shouting his support. In a loss, Wade had given his father nothing to cheer for, nothing of which to be proud. He sat alone on the bench with the same ruffled hair he had in victory, but the black marks under his eyes ran with tears and his shoulders shook under his shoulder pads.

Late that night, with a heavy burning heart, he sat at Rudy's old desk, flicked on the lamp, and hunched with a pen in his hands. He held every emotion in his fingertips, wanting to pour his heart to Rudy, to tell him how proud he was of him for joining the Marines. But the words were too sentimental, too strange to say, and he curled under the light with the devotion to say it all, but without the ability. He was like a monk who forgot the prayer, so he started his letter off lightly:

Brother Rudolph

And as he put down more useless words, nothing he wanted to say, he got to the part where he told him about the loss, about Graham's two touchdowns and about Howard High's six, and about how coach Horton said he _could have used you._ He put that part in just to make Rudy feel good. _I suppose it's true. We could use you around_ – and he hoped those words weren't too transparent, but not too cloudy either. He licked the envelope, put a stamp on it, then stared at the ceiling and, while he waited for sleep, thought of what a United States Marine must think about when going into battle. He must think only of the man next to him or of someone back home.

A week went by and then another and a quick rifling of the mail yielded no response from Rudy, no slanted, aggressive handwriting among the print that would be the telling sign.

The team won their next game and the following one. Wade thought of sending another letter to his brother, one that came off the uplifted spirits of victory, not the hanging dreariness of defeat. But he held off and still had no response, and soon instead of taking the mail in himself he let Hannah take it from the dim curb to the lights inside, where he leaned over the kitchen counter, a jar of peanut butter in one hand, jabbing a stiff finger to slide each envelope apart to see the print.

During school, in the linoleum halls in the buzzing flicker of bulbs, the aluminum slam of lockers, and the dull ramble of voices between classes, Wade tried to imagine what life in boot camp must be like. It must be difficult to find time to write a letter home. Between standing at attention in the foul breath of a drill instructor and cleaning his rifle, one like many others, there would be little time for Rudy to recover from long hikes under full gear and still have enough energy to think straight enough to put a letter together.

Perhaps he had said too much, there was too much to read between the lines, and a response would be awkward, even difficult for Rudy to send out. Maybe no response was better, and the longer he went without one the more embarrassed he became, and the more he dreaded the day the mailman dropped an envelope in their box with the scratch of Rudy's handwriting scrawled across the front.

The team lost again against Mitchell and again the following week against Dorling. Graham sprained his ankle in the mud at Mitchell Field, and Wade dislocated his shoulder when a Dorling wingback clipped him blindly on a crackback block and sent him straight back on his elbow, the shock sending currents up through his neck.

He went to school on Monday with his arm in a sling, but he had tossed it in a trashcan by lunch, choosing instead to let his arm hang limp and grunt his way through the traffic in the halls. Midway through pre-calculus, he took a hall pass to his locker for pain pills. He held himself stooped over in the empty hall, getting a drink from a water fountain that had weak pressure, when he straightened up, wiped his cheek with the back of his hand, and nearly bumped into Krissy Taylor who stood behind him, waiting for her own sip.

"How's the arm?"

She had her hair up in a messy bun held halfway together by a pencil jabbed down the middle. She did not give a hint of that dangerous look she had discovered long ago and usually wielded as a weapon. Instead she moved past him before he could answer and bent at the waist over the gurgling fountain. When she popped up, she touched her lips with a single finger as she nodded.

"Good? Your arm's good?"

"Yeah, good. Thanks."

And without saying another word she moved on down the hallway with her hair barely clinging to the pencil. Wade found himself staring, hoping her hair would fall and sweep over itself, strand by strand, side to side.

Krissy Taylor had grown in whispers. Classmates expanded and added to her reputation, so that one small thing became an unspeakable act that the girls scoffed at and the boys dreamed about. It was true that she had made out with Nelson Markens multiple times – "She doesn't hold back, I'll tell you that much, and if you think I'd hold back from a pair like hers you're crazy" – but it might have been a rumor, probably spread by Nelson Markens, that she was easily helped out of her shirt on Homecoming night and that a lot more than just making out happened in his pickup truck. It was also true that she and Tanner Grohmann skipped last period study hall together, but it might have been made up that they had a go of it against the dry shower wall in the empty girl's locker room.

It was hard to say what was true and what wasn't, although the way she touched her lips with her finger and moved down the hall led Wade to believe most of what he heard. She played volleyball, had a devastating spike as an outside hitter, and was probably single-handedly responsible for the high numbers of game attendance. The team wore black tights.

"I'm telling you," Smitty said, pulling on a dry tshirt in the football locker room once, "with an ass like that, you know she likes to fool around."

Vince Podoll lifted his head, one hand picking at dried blood on his elbow. "What does that have to do with what she likes or doesn't like?"

"It's the law of attention," Smitty explained. "If you give a girl enough attention over it, soon they act out in fear of losing that attention, or worse, having it pass along to some other girl. Yeah, it's true. You can almost get a girl to do anything you want by just staring at her enough."

Vince Podoll shook his head and went back to picking his elbow.

Volleyball and football, both being fall sports, utilized the school gymnasium simultaneously, the football team charging out of the locker room in pads and helmets, cleats click-clacking on the gym floor on their way out to the field, while the volleyball team warmed up in center court, the ball making that slappy-air sound each time a player spiked it. Wade gave a sidelong glance every chance he got on his way out, finding Krissy Taylor among the other players under the net for an unsatisfying look just as he exited the doors. But it was after practice, waiting on the curb tossing gravel at a puddle in the lot as dusk fell, that he let her drench his mind in every image he had ever had of her, even ones that resembled that glossy centerfold of Jennifer Chapman in Cody Barnes' magazine so many years ago.

Lisa Chapel would have loved for her boys to bring a girl by one weekend. They spoke so little about girls that she was becoming concerned. Maybe they lost a social something or other with Jack gone and all. Perhaps they're just quiet about it, keeping it hidden until they're sure about the girl.

"I wish you boys didn't go out tonight," she said on Halloween. "Three girls rang the door, trick-or-treating. They were all so pretty and dressed up so cute. I wish you were here to meet them."

"There are girls in our school, mom."

"Well, I've never met any of them."

Wade came home one night too tired to eat, went straight to his room to find a white envelope scribbled with Rudy's handwriting on his pillow. His stared at it from across the room for a full ten seconds before it sank in that his brother had written back from Camp Pendleton. Holding it in his hands the embarrassment began to rise in his chest – he had said too much, made his letter too sappy – but here it was, his brother's response, proof that Rudy did not think of Wade as a young boy with too much sentiment.

Wade,

The food out here is plentiful in quantity but sparse in flavor. When I get back make sure to have these on the kitchen table ready to eat: Fish sticks with ketchup, American 2% cheese singles, Cheez-Its, sour cream and onion chips, Chips Ahoy double chocolate chunk, soft-bake Keebler chocolate chip cookies, Oreo's, Snickers McFlurry Shake, Butterfinger Concrete Mixer, Banana Split malt, Twinkies, Heath Bar Blizzard, Neapolitan sandwich, Andes Mints, Whoppers, Milk Duds, Cherry Garcia, Corn dogs, chili-cheese dog, Sonic jalapeno burger, Big Mac with extra mayonnaise, funnel cake from the fly-by-night, Lays original potato chips, Ruffles, Little Debbie oatmeal cream pies, Moon Pies, Baby Ruth –

The list went on, front and back with no paragraph spacing. Wade skipped to the end, after the _Custard filled_ _Dunkin Donuts_ and the _Nuttin Butter Fudge Chunk_ , and saw a single line apart from the gluttonous ramblings of a flavor starved recruit.

Okay, Wade. That's a start. Don't eat all the Cool Whip.

His face flushed red. There wasn't even a mention of how he was doing or how much he missed the family or how he wished to be back, or nothing. Not even a _Hey Wade, thanks for the letter_ or a _Wade, boot camp is good and bad in the following ways_ – nothing. He may as well have sent that letter to the shredder. He wished he had, for now without Rudy's acknowledgement his words were marked red with humiliation. Ignoring it was the meanest thing Rudy could have done.

The next day Wade hammered his teammate, James Baldinger, now the school's starting quarterback, on the practice field, a hit so hard it took the poor kid a minute to get his sense of smell back. Marshall Earton, the team center and biggest player, took Wade by the facemask and yanked him around until the two went to the ground and the coaches broke it up. It was a Thursday practice before the Friday game, a no-contact run through the playbook without pads – only cleats and helmets. Wade didn't let that stop him from unloading on someone.

"Save those for tomorrow," Coach Horton told him after practice. He emerged from his office after everyone had gone home and Wade and Graham were the only students from the volleyball and football teams left to wait for a ride home. Coach Horton snapped shut a briefcase. "I mean it. Madison High has a tailback so big you'll need every bit of it just to get him off balance."

Wade sank into the gymnasium bleachers as Horton walked out the door, Graham following behind him with playbook suggestions – "Coach, I see a lane on those Belly-Give-2nd-Man's every time. If you give me the ball at the A-gap I bet I could take it a full ten yards more downfield."

Coach Horton stopped with his hand on the door and looked at Graham. "2nd-Man is Jordy's ball."

"I know," Graham said. "That's why I'm telling you. You're giving him the ball when I've got a lane to the endzone. And another thing, the Iso-Cradle-Out is too close to the hash. If you make it a toss instead of a give, I could take that around the corner in a flash. Also, I noticed on the–"

And out they went, the door slamming closed behind them, leaving Wade alone in the loud silence, staring up at the hanging lights, flipped off for the evening as dusk began to settle around the building. He would hit Baldinger on a no-contact day again if he wanted. The kid walked with his chin higher than he had earned, and if it took a dirty play on a Thursday drill-day then so be it. He hated the way he showed up to class a minute late every day, strolling to his seat in the middle of the classroom as if he were blessing everyone around him with his presence.

"I don't skip class because I don't want to disappoint anyone," Baldinger said once in the ultimate, yet alarmingly genuine display of conceit. "There are people who would miss me."

So Wade hit him in the chest a full three steps after he had already released the ball downfield. In a real game he would have been called for roughing the passer.

The murmur of Graham's convincing argument was in the parking lot, and Coach Horton's rumbling truck could not put it to rest. Somewhere a door took its time on old hinges before latching, and then came the rhythmic clank-clank-clank from somewhere else. It was slow, like a railroader hammering home a stake from far away. Wade looked at the ceiling beams, every one of them stretching from wall to wall. The hanging lights hung unmoving in the dust of final daylight, and still the metrical clank-clank-clank from inside.

It was coming from the boy's locker room. He discovered it upon bored investigation, finally peeling himself from his slump in the bleachers. As he came closer the noise increased, and he followed it from the court down the steps, until he stood just behind the open entrance to the lockers, the fevered clank-clank and the muffled breathing of teenage experimentation. He knew what it was and who it might be, and he wanted to turn away and leave it as a mystery, as a railroader in another county, but he took another step and moved his head so one eye saw around the corner. It was her all right. Krissy Taylor and Baldinger, his face buried against the lockers, and her between him and the metal, a terrible smile on her lips when Wade met her eyes.

"Tee-tee, when your date rings the door I'm going to answer like this." Wade stood shirtless in the living room, puffing his chest up to comic proportions.

"You better not," Hannah said, watching her brother stomp around the room. "Don't be stupid. I hate you."

Wade stopped in mid-step and looked at her. "No you don't."

"Yes I do. Why do you have to be stupid to every boy I meet?"

"Because I'm your brother," he said, and he jumped at her with his arms opened wide, pulling her off the ground. "What would you do without me?"

"Stop, you're wrinkling my dress. Stop it."

It was the night of her eighth grade Valentine's Day Dance at the school. Lisa Chapel stooped over her in the bathroom to apply her makeup.

"The trick is to not put too much on. I've seen some of the girls in your class rub it on by the handful. You want it to look like you're not wearing any. There, what do you think?"

Hannah stood and blinked a few times in the mirror, touching a corner of her eye lightly and breaking out in a smile. "I look pretty."

"Of course you do." Lisa gathered her makeup things together. "You always do whether you wear makeup or not."

And Lisa reminded her daughter casually, in little detail, and less explanation, of tendencies boys her age may have.

"Don't let them hug you tight. Holding hands is okay, if you have to, but don't let them pull you in for a tight hug." It was not the hug the boys wanted from a budding girl, Lisa knew that, but she left it at that and Hannah wondered what was so bad about a hug.

Hannah practiced batting her eyes, watching her reflection at different angles. "I'm going with Pete Sable, mom. He's a nice boy."

"Peter is a nice boy, I know that. He probably doesn't know what the other boys do about girls anyway. It's the other ones I'm worried about. What was that one boy's name? The one you liked? Jamie Hamon?"

"He's just James now, mom. And I don't like him anymore. He asked Jackie to the dance."

Lisa had the things away, but after a quick look she rearranged the cabinet as she spoke. "I don't understand why you need to ask anyone to a dance in the eighth grade anyway. Parents drive everyone to the school and the boys are too shy to dance, staying on one side of the room near the punch bowl like they're thirsty or something. All except boys like Jamie. Don't let him hug you tight and don't let him stick that thing in you or you'll wind up pregnant."

Hannah turned to see her mother with her hand to her mouth. Lisa walked out the door, her dress whipping against the wall as she went.

What thing in where?

The doorbell rang and Wade went running from the back room. Hannah dropped her hairbrush and jumped into the hallway, reaching the front door before her brother, keeping him away with her back against him.

"Get away, don't be so stupid. Get back. Go hide. Please, Wade. Wade, please."

"Okay, okay."

Hannah waved for her mother to stand behind the wall, then she straightened her dress, cleared her throat, and finally, opened the door.

Peter Sable stood on the doorstep, his father standing a safe distance in the background with car keys and a book in his hands. Peter looked safe enough in Lisa's eyes as she peeked from around the corner. All teeth and freckles, an inch shorter than Hannah, a corsage in his hands. Hannah spent her time at the dance looking over Peter's head, across the floor at Jamie Hamon.

But it was Peter Sable who surprised her after the dance that night. With his father safely out of sight in the car, he walked Hannah to her door and kissed her outright in the moonlight with predetermined intentions, sticking his tongue between her tight lips. It was a first kiss for both of them, and not even Peter Sable thought much of it later, having practiced and practiced on his hand that day only to find the real thing was much more involved and necessarily mutual to pull off. Hannah was half mortified, staying up tossing in her sheets, sick as the tiniest seed of uncertainty grew in her mind, wondering if that was what her mother meant when she warned _don't let him stick that thing in you_.

Uncertainty shrank the next day and vanished the following week. Hannah had figured out what must happen for her fears to be real, and it involved much more than Peter Sable's confident tongue.

It was Lisa Chapel who took up the nervous pacing. She finished one chore and moved to the next without a break. Finally she stood at the back window with one hand on her hip and the other up to her brow.

"I just wish he would call."

"Who?" Hannah said. She was curled unnoticeably on the couch wrapped in a book.

Lisa turned and her hand fell to her chest, caught in her worries, unaware she had spoken aloud. "Your brother, that's who. Oh, I know I'm not supposed to worry and I'm not supposed to call. I can't get past the front desk anyway. All Marines are like talking to a brick, especially the one who answers the phones."

"He sent a letter."

"That wasn't a letter. That was a menu."

She fell back into long silences, standing just outside the sudden winter sunray that pierced the cold carpet in the front room. She saw nothing, the world was a thousand miles away through frosted windows, a place she hadn't visited so deeply since Jack had passed. With no word from Rudy, and no way to follow any military progress or predictions from the news, she began to fall mute in church again. Wade watched from the choir steps as Graham and Hannah stood on either side of her and filled in the hymns for her.

When the yellow cab stopped in front of the mailbox marked CHAPEL on a glistening cold night, the figure that limped toward the front door paused on the steps to take a few deep breaths and swallow a hard lump.

On his final night in the hospital, Rudy had climbed the maintenance stairwell to the roof, where he leaned over the edge, five stories over concrete, and dared God to give him the final push. I know you're there. I know you're up there somewhere. I have no reason to believe. I've never seen your presence. But I've seen your absence a hundred times. And yet, I do. I don't know why. Well, if you are up there, show me now or stay the hell out of my life forever.

In the cab ride over Rudy felt guilty for calling God out. Under each yellow streetlamp they passed, his lips moved a silent prayer of forgiveness in the backseat window. He was relieved of God's absence that day on the rooftop, or at least His ignoring the challenge. He would see his family again. He rubbed his face, pulled his shoulders back, and reached for the doorknob to take one final step home. Locked. He had to step his face and chest away from the door and knock.

"Rudy." It was Graham who answered the door, opening it much wider than the crack Lisa Chapel would have given it at that late hour. "You remembered where we live." And he put his arm around his silent brother and walked him inside where the late night glow of lamps from the corners of suburbia were harsh reminders that he was a civilian again.

"There's no reason to be ashamed." Lisa Chapel said later, sitting on the sofa cradling a pillow. The past few days she had observed her oldest son's behavior, his rubbing of his bad knee when he sat in the heavy chair, crossing his legs as his father had. He moved his kneecap around under the skin, his face blank in thought, until he rubbed it enough and snapped to the present, leaning forward with his feet flat in front of him to clear his throat and fill the room with one large sigh.

He said he was fine, but he also slumped in silence over his dinner plate, he said only a few words to Hannah, and he hardly spoke to Wade or Graham. He stood in the center of the family room, with those tilted sunrays on his military shoes, laces of equal length, staring out the front window as if expecting a black, tinted car to pull up and a cropped Colonel and a trim Lieutenant to get out and march to the front door to announce that the Marines made a mistake and we want you back in uniform, son. Rudy turned his head, his hands on his hips.

"I'm not ashamed, mom. I'd be out there if it was up to me."

"I know, son. I know that." She sighed with a mix of her own relief and Rudy's disappointment. "But I'm glad you're home."

He faced the window again. "I'm not."

Wade withheld eye contact with Rudy for a few days, giving only short glances, his heartfelt letter practically written on his face. Rudy had forgotten the letter, and figured Wade's behavior was to hide his shame of having a Marine washout as a brother.

"I was top of my class in Occupational Specialties," he told Wade once.

He sat at the dining table late at night, eyeing the bar cabinet, still filled with a colorful assortment of Jack Chapel's favorite drinks, arranged behind the glass – the skyline of a liquor metropolis. Rudy approached the cabinet eventually, staring at it as if making a decision. He ran his hand down his mouth the way mimes erase their smiles, finally reaching for a dusty Tennessee Sourmash. The bottle and he sat opposite of each other, staring each other down over a dry glass for the better part of the night.

"At least you went out there." It was Wade's voice, and Rudy gave a jump. Slowly, Wade emerged from the dark hall into the dim lamp light. "That's all that matters. Not if you get or hurt, or whatever. You just have to go out there. Look at me, I didn't go."

"You're seventeen."

"Eighteen in September. Look at Graham. He didn't go either."

"And I'm glad you didn't go. You're a kid, Wade. Go to bed." And he put his hands out on the table, but the cork kept its place.

Without any morning bugle to wake to or shouting DI to nod and shout back to, Rudy quickly became overwhelmed with the dullness of civilian life, especially knowing he would never serve as he had intended. It was like crawling out of a bomb shelter into the after-blast silence. All the action had swept over while he was stuck in a hole.

On one especially cold afternoon it all came bubbling up. Graham was in the backyard pulling a hammock together between the tree and the fence post. He had been using a dull hatchet to cut the rope. It was cocked in the dirt at an angle, the way lumberjacks sink their blades in the trunk after the wood's been cut.

"You're going to pull the fence down," Rudy said.

"No. See all the weight is here against the tree. I made the loop higher on the trunk. It's physics."

"I can see the fence post bending."

"It was like that before. It's always like that."

"Look, it's pulling away from the – look, right there. Look at the nails."

"All right, let's see how it holds first." And Graham put one last yank in his knot and eased himself into the hammock. "There. Look at that." And he swung above the ground, above the hatchet in the dirt, his breath coming in frozen plumes, his coat swishing against itself as he pulled his arms behind his head. "Ahh...relaxing."

"It's twenty degrees out here."

"It's cold." Graham looked over and nodded. Rudy had his chin tucked and shoulders back, his hands together behind his back and his feet shoulder width apart.

Graham smiled. "At ease, soldier."

And that was it. "I _am_ at ease!"

Each word went louder than the one before, and he tipped his brother over. Graham held onto the ropes, clinging to it like a fly in a web, eventually landing awkwardly with the hatchet handle in his belly. He tore it away from under him, realizing as he swung it that Rudy was on top of him, shouting and grabbing handfuls of coat. Rudy caught the dull thump of the blade in his elbow and turned it around in his hands faster than he knew, swinging it crossways into the dirt above Graham's head.

The ground spread dark. Graham went into survival mode, his head in a church bell, he rolled Rudy over and secured the hatchet. By the time he got both hands on it, its handle was slippery, and beneath it on the ground Rudy's face gathered the falling red. Both of them, frightened at how far the other would take it, kept fighting. Eventually came their mother's thin prying arms, then Wade's thick arms – and behind it all, the crying voice of Hannah.

Graham's scalp had been slashed open, a thick bacon flap of it stuck up as if to let the air in.

"I didn't mean to, Graham. I was trying to hit the ground."

Leaning forward in the bathroom mirror after they had cooled down, Graham lightly touched the wound.

"It doesn't even hurt. Look how thick it is."

It required twenty-four stitches. Rudy and Wade sat in the two waiting chairs.

"You could've killed him," Lisa Chapel said. She had withheld any reaction until they returned from the hospital. Now she searched under the backyard tree. Rudy thought she was looking for the hatchet, or looking for clues, footprints or scuffle marks.

"I know. I'm sorry, mom. I didn't mean to hit him."

"You need to be a lot more careful if you're going to live under my roof. This isn't a Marine camp. We don't have money to be throwing away on medical bills. We may as well have patched him up with hundred dollar bills and saved some money. Now, I know you're angry about what happened to your leg and everything, but he's your brother. Oh, just because you have two of them doesn't mean you can–"

Then she crouched and picked up what she had apparently been looking for. A decent sized switch. A twig thick enough it would withstand a solid licking, and skinny enough it would whistle through the air and sting whatever it touched. She went after Rudy, swinging it back and forth. Bum knee and all, he managed to hurdle the fence.

Hannah had seen her brother's fight many times when they were younger. It was not unusual for one of them to walk in the back door with a fat lip and a tale while the other climbed the tree. But the way Rudy went at Graham had frightened her. Even as an eight-grader, mature enough to handle some of the violence the world shuddered with, it sent her into a screaming fit when it happened.

It had been a few days since Rudy returned. He would stamp his foot as if to get the knee to pop. Maybe if it popped loud enough the limp would snap and disappear. After a few kicks toward the ground, he would curse under his breath; words Hannah had never heard or ever thought she would hear, especially from her brother.

In these types of moods she did her best to avoid him. He held in an anger, boiling just under the surface, and getting in his way might be the best way to tip the pot.

He came out the back door, mumbling something, just as she was heading back inside. She took a moment to stand on the back step and pick the little cotton balls from her coat. That was when Rudy raised his voice and she saw him dump Graham over. He had a strangle of madness in his throat, and she remembered how his hands looked when he grabbed at Graham – knuckled and white, crooked and hard. A moment later came the blood.

At first she froze in a terrible scream. When it looked as though they might murder each other, she ran inside.

"He's going to _kill_ him."

The shock of it all sent her to her room where she cried with her hand on the door, wondering when it was safe to come out. And peeking around the corner, not long afterward, she gently closed her eyes and exhaled when she saw her two brothers together, taking turns dabbing at Graham's scalp in the mirror while their mom rushed through the house searching for her car keys.

Each of her brothers she held in different regard. Wade had taught her to read. She remembered being curled up side by side against his shoulder, listening to him explain the sounds of the letters, and she remembered sometimes not caring at all about the book, but enjoying the closeness until she fell asleep. Graham made her laugh. There was never a sadness in her youth that could not be erased by one of his unexpected funny faces or a make-believe stagger. Children don't know any jokes, but they know everything else that's funny.

And Rudy, well Rudy's kindness had always come out unexpectedly and was hard to predict. He was not especially funny, nor was he especially giving of his time or his shoulder, although both of those came out from time to time.

"Hey, Tee-tee," he turned to her once in an odd mood. He was wearing Wade's glasses, his eyes crossed behind them, and his voice went into a higher class. "Can you tell me which way to the theater? I seem to be going around in circles."

He was the smartest person she knew, however as children he was more apt to swing that around as a club rather than share it. If she pointed to the sky and said she saw a pony, he was quick to crush her joy.

"No. Don't be an idiot," he would say. "Those are cirrus clouds and they look more like condensed vapor to me."

But he also had those moments of pure sweetness, infrequent enough to make them all the more tender, if strange. Painty was named in one of those moments, and it was those moments that Rudy had a special quality she felt only she knew about.

So it was during her high school years, when she began to date a regular string of boys, that Rudy's special moments became more frequent.

During her sophomore year of high school she hung around Paul Mitslough, a boy with a dopey head of hair that hung over his ears in defiance of the school dress code. He smelled a lot like covered-up cigarette smoke and if he showed any regard for Hannah at all it was with a lazy arm tossed over her shoulder where his hand dangled in front of her, casual to everyone except Rudy, who knew exactly what Paul Mitslough's hand was doing.

Lisa Chapel had taken on extra hours on Mondays, leaving the church office well after school let out. Rudy made sure to pick Hannah up on time, usually waiting in the parking lot with the engine running when the bell rang, signaling the juvenile flood from every school door. It was during one of these floods that Rudy saw Paul Mitslough's hand dangling in front of his sister, and it was with the front of the car that he bumped him hard enough to knock him down.

"That guy is a sleazeball, Tee-tee," he said as they drove home. "Are you kidding around with him or what?"

Hannah was doing her best cross-armed sulk in the passenger seat. "I can't believe you did that. I can hang out with anyone I want to."

The special moment came later, when Paul Mitslough dumped Hannah during lunch hour, leaving her crying in the parking lot of a Classic Burgers, a 1950s themed hamburger drive-thru where cute girls rolled around on skates with trays of burgers and shakes. He flirted with one of the girls, and when Hannah said something, he told her ah, it's harmless, I'm just having fun. Then he told her to get out of his car, and he drove away, leaving her to pay for the burgers and drinks. She had called her mom, but Lisa had a diocese meeting to present. She called Rudy. He left work and circled the burger lot in a blue 1965 Ford Mustang convertible with the top down until Hannah recognized him and came running.

"I didn't see you. I thought this was part of the burger theme. Whose car is this?"

"Gary's. From the Pick-n-Save. Let me borrow it if I took his Saturday shift."

Hannah wiped her eyes. "Why?"

"Why not?" he shrugged. "Because you were crying and I thought this might cheer you up."

She smiled and showed him the receipt. "Do you have seven dollars, sixty-three cents?"

It did cheer her up. With the top down, the wind dried her tears and blew away any silly thoughts of Paul Mitslough spreading rumors of why he dumped her. Because she was a prude. Thoughts of never being able to step foot in those school hallways again vanished over her shoulder in a parade of wavy hair as that Mustang rumbled beneath her.

"Don't worry about boys, Tee-tee. They're just a bunch of morons in high school. Every one of them. People don't meet the love of their life in high school. Can you imagine having to marry that Paul Mitchell? You're lucky he's not sticking around, I say."

"It's Mitslough. I know, but it still hurts."

"Well you make sure to dump the next one before he dumps you. Because he will dump you if you don't."

"That's a mean thing to say."

"Mean but true. You won't meet the right guy until you're out of school. Mark my words. All right, I'll stop here. Just don't hit anything."

It was around the corner from the school parking lot. Rudy got out and walked the rest of the way so Hannah could drive the Mustang by herself under the jealous gaze of her classmates. Even Paul Mitslough would wish he was sitting next to her again.

By the time she was a senior she was dating Neil Milliken, the varsity quarterback. Rudy was still at the Pick-n-Save, still attending classes at Omaha Community College, the same as Wade. Hannah was getting ready to go to the movies, leaning toward the mirror, applying eyeliner. Rudy stood in the doorway, eating an apple.

"What's the guy's name again? Neil Milliken?"

"Yes. And don't you go answering the door for me, please, Rudy."

"Okay. I'm just asking his name. I'll put it in my notebook and strike a line through it."

Hannah didn't answer. She was too concentrated on her eyeliner.

"Don't put too much on. Guys will think you're an easy lay if you wear too much makeup."

"Oh my – would you please stop talking."

"It's true. Make sure to bring a dime with you on this date."

She looked at him in the mirror. "What for?"

"Put it between your knees at the beginning of the date and don't let it drop."

"Get out of here! Close the door."

Johnson's Pick-n-Save Grocery would go through a management change. Mr Johnson began forgetting to put in his orders. Sometimes he ordered too much of one item. Sometimes not enough. Rudy stood too often in the coffee aisle, the shelves bulging with too much Folgers, and him with another month's pallet to stock.

"Mr Johnson?" Rudy stuck his head in the cramped office in the back. "I think you ordered the same item twice."

Mr Johnson, slouched in his roller chair, holding papers in both hands, comparing numbers, turned from his desk and looked at Rudy over his bifocals, exhaling through his mustache.

"I know. That's what I'm looking at right here. How did that slip through my fingers?"

"You want me to put the Folgers in the back near the loading dock?"

"No, no. There's too much to fit there. You won't be able walk through the door without a caffeine high. Take some home, would you?"

It happened again a couple weeks later, this time he did not order more cereal. The shelves held only a few boxes, looking as if looters had swept past it. In the absence of sugary cereal, shoppers were buying the Rice Krispies and Corn Flakes.

"I can't figure it. I can't – I run this place the same way I always have. I can't figure it."

Mr Johnson shook his head, walking back to his office. He took one last look down the dim aisle, across the reflecting linoleum to the young man leaning against the shelf. It would be the last time he looked down the aisles he had spent so much of his life shuffling through, like a mouse in a maze, reaching out to straighten an item, or stopping to take the pencil from his ear and make a note.

He stepped down officially from his management position when Rudy caught him taking each egg from the carton and placing them under the lights for individual sale. There were sixteen dozen empty cartons in the aisle, almost two hundred eggs rolling and shivering under refrigeration.

"I think he has Alzheimer's, mom. He's been calling me dad's name."

"Oh, it's a shame," Lisa said. She stood under the dim light in the kitchen window, drying the dishes. She said his name again while staring into the black window, the way one does when remembering an old friend. "Mr Johnson." Then she shook her head and went back to the dishes. "Mm-no, I guess everyone gets old. Things start to fall apart."

Rudy played his finger along the counter edge and spoke softly. "I told him dad would have liked to have been there for his last day. You know to see him off, sort of. Well, he just blinks at me. I don't think he actually remembers dad. Just his name. And somehow he puts that name on me. I don't know."

"He remembers him. Just not _that_ time he didn't."

"Well, yeah. Just not that time. Sometimes he's as sharp as he's ever been."

"Come into my office, Rudy," Mr Johnson had said one day in a moment of pure clarity. And setting his glasses down carefully on his desk, he spoke softly.

Mr Johnson had no son, no daughter, his wife had passed on years ago. He offered Rudy the job of sitting in the cramped, stuffy office, leaning over the desk to figure out the scattered papers. He threw in partial ownership of the store, and full ownership whenever he retired for good. He didn't want to sell it away to be bulldozed and turned into an office complex.

"What did you tell him?"

"I couldn't say no, mom. But I don't know. There's no moving up in a position like that, and it's got to be stressful running the place, small as it is. He drives the same old Buick he always has. I doubt it's a huge money earner. It is what it is and that's all it'll ever be."

"That store is everything to him. I know it's not what you want. Just tell him. He'll understand."

"Mm. And I'm not done with school yet. All these classes and nothing to show for it."

She put away one last cup and looked at her son. Studying his face, his drawn lips and creased brow, she started laughing. Holding her lips shut, her nostrils flared and her eyebrows lifted, a face she finally hid with the dishtowel.

"What?"

"Nothing. You – you look like dad is all. It was this one – this one time – I used to help your father at the store with the plastic wrap on the shipments. I was nine months pregnant with you and trying to earn every dollar I could before you arrived."

"So?"

"The truck drivers used to unload these huge crates. Mr Johnson paid them extra to tear down the crates into manageable pieces of wood. About this long. Jack thought they'd make good firewood so he asked the guys to load them into the back of the car. That old LeBaron."

Rudy nodded, reflecting his mother's smile.

"So Jack and I spent the day inside stocking the shelves and tearing plastic wrap off the pallets. At the end of the day we walked out to find the car buried in the wood slats. So much more than we thought it'd be. Jack was so mad. They piled every piece they could in the backseat and in the trunk and tied the rest on top."

She hid her laughter in the dishtowel again. Rudy stepped forward and hugged his mother there in the dim kitchen silence. It was good to see her so happy again, even if it lasted only as long as the memory held together that night.

"The tailpipe made sparks on the road all the way the home."

Shortly after, Mr Johnson went out for a lunch break and couldn't find his way back to the store. He took his retirement, making Rudy's mind up for him. He became the owner and operator of the little Pick-n-Save Grocery store on 36th and Sahwatch, getting an early start on balancing the delivery schedules, his employees' schedules, and getting to know the frequent customers.

Mrs Calvert was the most frequent, pushing a cart around the grocery aisles, pulling her sweater up around her shoulders and striking up a conversation with everyone she passed. Rudy came down the aisle in a hurry and she was there, turning to see who it was behind her. Rudy pivoted but it was too late.

"Oh, Mr Johnson," she said to Rudy in her shaky voice. "I hope the best for him. I'm getting to be as old as he is, but I do the crossword puzzles in the paper every day. It keeps me sharp."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I like to put together chives and honey and boil them in water to make my own humidifier and it's healthy for your lungs."

"I bet that smells good too."

"It does. Makes the house smell like Christmas, only Jerry doesn't like it. He opens the windows and lets the cold in. He says, no, I'm letting the stuffy air out."

Rudy dropped out of college for the semester and picked up only a half schedule of classes the next.

"I don't know. How am I supposed to balance everything? It takes more hours than you'd think."

But he took hold of the store with both hands, mostly just trying to keep it the way Mr Johnson had it through the years; clean and orderly, leaving the mess to the desk in the office. He hand painted the letters back on the sign on the front porch and dusted the chairs out there every morning.

Graham found a railroad spike with a head the size of a quarter. He hammered it into the porch just outside the door one night. Whenever he came to the grocery store he took a moment to sit outside and watch customers bend over and pick at it. Rudy hit him with a broom for it, and he disguised the spike with a brown sharpie, but it wore off quickly and was back to reflecting sunlight a week later. He was mad, but every time a customer disappeared behind the door to pick at it, he shook his head and held in laughter.

The Pick-n-Save was a hole he had stumbled into, one he thought he'd never get out of, but it gave him a secure job. Not a glamorous one, but a secure one. It gave the family a discount on groceries. For the last twenty-five years the Pick-n-Save had a pair of Chapel hands pushing around cans on the shelves, and it looked as though it would be that way for the foreseeable future.

Rudy moved out shortly after ("I'll still help with the bills if you need me to, mom. But it's a little silly me being in the house still, don't you think?"), and spent his nights flicking matches over the balcony of his one-bedroom apartment. Here he was, a high school valedictorian, holding all the promise in the world at one time, holding a full-ride scholarship to the University of Nebraska at one time. He was a promising United States Marine officer what seemed like only a short time ago, ushered to the front of the class at Camp Pendleton. Now he was a small grocery store owner with a limp and no future other than what he already had, watching smoking matches sail one at a time into the night.

Graham had moved out of the house and into the University of Nebraska dorm rooms. He breezed his way from campus parties to the classrooms, sometimes with no sleep in between. In his junior year he moved off campus into a small house with several roommates who kept the party going throughout the night. They had an enormous electricity bill.

Although he had never dropped below a 3.7 grade point average, that was when Graham became serious about his studies, turning off his bedroom light when the rest of the house continued to thump. Some nights, lying awake, Graham thought the floor would cave in.

In the summers he came home and worked a construction job, chipping away at roadway potholes with ten feet of heavy iron rebar or knocking down cinderblock walls with a sledgehammer. By the end of August his arms looked like those of a carpenter. He arrived at the jobsites at the crack of dawn with a big brown bag of lunch and didn't leave until after the sun went down and his orange vest burned with floodlights. The morning foreman and the evening foreman got to know him.

"You might leave some hours for the rest of us." The foreman thumbed his hard hat up in the twilight. "What'd your mama feed you as a boy, anyway? You look like a lumberjack."

Over the course of a week he'd put in over seventy hours, coming home covered in powdered concrete, streaked where drops of sweat ran, staggering through the kitchen with just enough energy left in his legs to eat and shower before collapsing into bed. Sometimes he'd fall asleep on a Friday and wake up on a Saturday night. It was all to save enough money so he could earn a degree from the University of Nebraska. He had always had his eyes on the University Honors Civil Engineering program. Engineering came to him easily enough, studying between beers and bars and football games. He somehow aced his classes by speed-reading the textbook chapters. He didn't take particularly good notes in class. He once brought a squeeze bottle of vodka to a 10a.m. class.

Although it didn't derail his momentum, and his grades never wavered, his first upper-level class spurred him to leave parties early, lay off the drinks, and get a good night's rest.

"I think you met a girl," Nate Van Hornsby told him. He was sitting on the front step of their rental house with a beer in his hands. The orange Nebraska sunset boiled at the edge of the earth. "Nothing would stop the Graham I know from partying with us except a girl. I bet she's a smokeshow. You met a girl, huh?"

Graham gulped down a glass of water. "Nope. You know if you wear a tshirt without holes in the collar you might just meet a girl yourself."

He put a thumb in his shirt. "I've had this shirt since grade school."

"It shows," Graham said over the rim of his glass.

"It's good luck. How do you think Nebraska won the championship in '94?"

"I bet that shirt had everything to do with it."

"You're damn right it did." He raised his beer, then lowered it, staring into the distance. "Damn right it did."

As Nate Van Hornsby turned back inside, Graham hooked a finger in one of the gaping holes. The shirt nearly fell off his chest, and he spent an hour chasing Graham around the cul-de-sac, so angry he had tears in his eyes.

A girl did come along, however, as summer came to end and school started again, wandering into Graham's peripheral vision as he stood in the pastels of the Dwire Engineering building, waiting for the elevator light to come on. Her figure showed up in the silver of the elevator door – a gray and white blur, the gray of her books showing under her arm, and she moved one arm above her, fiddling with her hair or something. Graham moved his eyes sideways, trying to get a glimpse, keeping his face to the dim light cover above the elevator. The figure stepped forward, making the gray and white blur appear larger in the door, but still unclear.

"Is it working?" she asked.

Graham swallowed before speaking, and realized his mouth had been hanging open. "I pushed the button," he said, taking the opportunity to look. Aubrey Miller stood there very confident in herself. She had reason to be. She was tall and thin, with blonde hair and a friendly smile. All that was fine, but she had also graduated top of her class since kindergarten, and now she was a young woman taking large strides in a man's degree.

"Are you going up?"

"Yes. Of course. I mean, we're on the first level. "

"I'm going to the Metro Transportation class." She read off of her schedule. "Room 402."

Graham swallowed again. "Professor Doyle? So am I. Have I seen you there before?"

"Mm-mm. I just transferred from Chadron State."

"In the middle of the semester?"

"Well, long story. Yes. Nebraska has a better accreditation. I thought it was important."

"I'm glad you did." Somewhere in there Graham had turned and was facing her. He shifted a step backward, realizing he might be in her personal bubble. "I mean, I just didn't expect to see you here."

"No. Why would you?" Aubrey held a smile beneath her lips.

"I mean I wasn't expecting a transfer student is all – that's what I meant. I'm Graham, by the way."

"Aubrey Miller."

After a moment of silence he turned to her again and cleared his throat. "You want to get a coffee or something?"

She shifted on her hips and tilted her head, a that's-nice-but-no-thank-you maneuver she had probably used before on other guys. She forced a laugh. "I'm – it's the first day of classes here for me."

"Yeah, I'll show you around."

"I need to study hard. I have to go to these classes."

Graham stepped to the elevator and knocked three times, taking the briefest of seconds with his ear cocked for an answer. "There doesn't seem to be anyone home."

She spoke quickly to hide her smile. "That's very nice, but no thank you. These classes are important to me."

"I'll fill you in. Or after class. I can wait."

He did have an exceptional face and kind eyes. When he smiled, which was always, a little dimple creased his chin. "Really, that's sweet of you," Aubrey Miller said. "Thank you, but I just moved here, and I want to concentrate on school. Thank you, really, though."

The next week of class, Graham sat at a bench on the campus lawn, glancing at his watch every minute. He arrived at the Engineering Building at the exact same time as before, strolling in the door and letting his eyes roll around, searching without turning his head. He paced the hall, stopping to stare at the wall posters without reading them. He glanced at his watch again and again, before stepping up to push the elevator button. No gray and white figure appeared. The light above the elevator door beamed on and dinged. He stepped on, blocked the door from closing once, then pushed the 4th floor button.

That's when he saw her from his angle in the elevator, hurrying across the lawn with a coffee in one hand and her books in the other, her hair bouncing. "Hold the door, please." He stuck his foot in the door again, then leaned against the wall and waited. She came in with a swish of good-smelling air.

"It's you."

"It is me. Well, I was just waiting for the door to close, but – well, there it goes."

Graham straightened up near the buttons, looking over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow.

"Oh, fourth floor, please."

He stuck his finger out to the button he had pushed nearly a full minute ago, the '4' still illuminated, but he curled his pointer back under and looked over his shoulder again.

"Fourth floor is already taken, miss. Would you like to make another choice?"

This time she didn't hide her amusement. They went for lunch one day after class, after two weeks of Graham's insistence, around the corner at a sandwich place called Jane's Plain. They sat near the sun-warmed window, among the tinkling spoons and glasses, Graham with both hands on the table around a tall sweating glass. Aubrey sat on her hands and leaned over the menu as a waitress went by, bringing Graham's eyes up.

"Are you cold or something?"

"No, just my hands. I think I have bad circulation."

"I'm hot. It's the humidity. You can't step outdoors without needing a shower afterward." He wiped his brow and took another long drink.

"So, what are you studying?" she asked.

"Civil Engineering, right. What are you? There aren't many – you know, you're the only girl in that Metro Transportation class."

"I noticed that. I thought I was in the wrong classroom at first."

"I would have left my seat and gone after you if you were."

She smiled and looked away, and spoke looking out the window.

"I _was_ going for psychology, but it seemed too obvious for me."

"Too easy?"

"No, I mean, as if it were the obvious choice for me. I had never really looked at any other degree, and I wanted to surprise my family. And myself."

The waiter came to take their order. It was such a hot day, and Graham being dehydrated, he ordered six Arnold Palmer's by the time they were done. He had asked Aubrey Miller every question from if she was a natural blonde to if she enjoyed sledding in the winter.

"I know this great hill. It's so fast you can almost go halfway up the opposite side. I'll take you."

And she quickly let down her guard, her shield she carried with her to the University to help her focus on school, finding herself interested in this quick young man with the handsome face and sharp brains. So she kept asking questions.

"How many brothers and sisters do you have?"

"How do you know I have any?"

"I can just tell. I have a quick first impression of people, and sensing things about them is part of it."

"Oh, what else do you sense about me?"

"Mm, you're avoiding the question about your siblings. But I don't think it's because you dislike them."

"Then what do you think it is?"

"There you go again."

"No, I love my brothers and my sister. I have two brothers, Rudy and Wade, and a sister, Tee-Tee – well, Hannah is her real name. And I love my mom and I love my dad too. He passed away five years ago."

Aubrey had her hands on her neck then, still trying to warm them, and at this admission she put one hand on the table, stopping herself just short of reaching for his fingers.

"That's what I get for being nosy and thinking I learned something in those psychology classes."

"It's fine. But, no, he was fun and all that. A good-looking guy."

"He looked like Cary Grant, I bet. Because you do."

"Because I do?" Graham leaned away. He flipped his hand palm-up on the table. "Do you even know what I look like?"

"Yes," she shook her head, smiling. "I'm looking at you right now."

Graham put his hand up for one more Arnold Palmer. He had managed to turn the conversation to her for the moment. She had one brother, a year and a half older than she was, and her parents were west Nebraska farmers.

"The mid-west farmer's daughter," Graham said. "Why is it farmer's daughters are always so pretty?"

Anyway, she continued, her brother was, well, _impulsive_ is probably the best word for him. He won the state lottery, but it was the smaller prize, the second prize – thirteen-thousand dollars – he thought it would last him forever so he quit school and work. He didn't even put a cent of it into the bank, took it all as a lump payment. I knew he was going to blow it. He took a year off from everything, and now he lost his girlfriend, can't find a job, doesn't want to go back to school...it's a mess, Graham, he's a total mess right now.

"What's your dad like?"

"Oh, he's funny. And he's very handsome."

The drink came sliding across the table a moment later. Aubrey watched it, the drops already streaming down the glass to make a ring on the table. She spoke while Graham lifted the glass.

"And what are your brothers like? What is Rudy – and Wade is it? – what are they like?"

"Well, Rudy is smart. He joined the Marines a few years back. I was too young. That's what I tell myself, but I don't think I would have gone. He's brave. He knows injustice when he sees it, and he'll fight for what's right. It's funny, I can sometimes see his brain thinking beneath his skull. But, no, he's quiet, I guess, and curious. Interested in a lot of things. He owns a grocery store of all things. In Omaha. And Wade is – oh, Wade is just nice."

"Just nice. And your sister? Why do you call her Tee-tee?"

"Just a nickname. Wade used to say 'Tee-tee.' It stuck around. Dad caught it and kept it. Tee-tee is a regular girl, you know. She's all about boys right now."

He lifted his eyes from the table. "And now you want to know about my mother?" he smiled. "She's beautiful. She works at the church office now. She has for a few years. I'd say she's a devout but struggling Catholic."

"Aren't we all? And your father?"

"Dad? He was a news writer. Dad was...dad was the best. I always wanted to be like him, although I never told him that."

Aubrey Miller leaned back from the table, sitting on her hands, taking a moment to let it all process. "I like your family," she smiled like it was a secret.

They paid their ticket and stood to go. Aubrey instinctively reached out for Graham when he stood, the way a mother readies herself around an unsteady toddler.

In the parking lot she said, "Are you sure you're all right?"

"Am I all right? Sure, I'm all right."

"I mean, you – you had so many. Can I drive you home?"

"So many what? Arnold Palmer's? Oh, you thought–" Graham steadied himself. "You thought those were...No, they're just lemonade and tea. I was thirsty."

Aubrey Miller broke into a blushing laugh. Her eyes closed, and she closed her lips around her smile. Graham liked to think it was love at first sight, when he first saw her blurred gray and white reflection in the elevator door, but it was there in the doorway of Jane's Plain, with her hand on her face, when his feelings turned into something that would have to be broken if he was ever to forget her.

"She's so pretty," Lisa Chapel whispered to him at the kitchen sink. Aubrey was sitting in the living room with a glass of tea while Hannah sat across from her, wide-eyed and leaning forward, asking as many questions as she could, gaining as much worldly knowledge from this pretty college girl, and prying into her brother's love life. Wade sat in the armchair, mostly listening, but taking quick glances at Aubrey's lengthy crossed legs jutting from the couch when her eyes were busy. It was the first time Graham brought her home to meet the family. At Thanksgiving dinner.

"I didn't think you'd like blondes as much as you do."

"What? I like every type."

"Well, but I thought Wade would be the one to go after the blonde cheerleader girls."

"She's not a cheerleader, mom. I don't _think_ she ever was, anyway. I met her in an engineering class. How about that?"

"Engineering." Lisa paused with her hand in the turkey and said each syllable as slow as it could be said. The wrinkles around her eyes had become merry again, as if she were a statue that just smiled for the first time and broke the stone.

Rudy came in the back door to the kitchen from outside, fumbling the doorknob with his pinky and then his elbow, hunkered in a coat and holding flowers in one hand and a pumpkin pie in the other. His limp seemed to have worsened, or it might have been the change in weather, and the way he brought the cold in with him, a big fragrant swoosh of it that could be felt across the room, it reminded both Graham and Lisa of Jack Chapel. They stood watching him.

"I got the last one." He slid the pie on the counter and approached Graham, taking him in a hug, mother's flowers in one hand.

"Brother," he said. "You look smart."

"Nope. Still me."

"And these are for you, mom."

"Roses."

When Rudy moved away to the living room to meet Aubrey Miller – "I have to see with my own eyes. I think Graham has been talking about a dream all this time." – Graham leaned over the pie on the counter, picking at the still cold plastic container it sat in, perfect crust and all.

"You don't make the pie anymore?"

She looked up, setting the roses on the table. "Oh, Graham, no. I'm sorry. It takes too much time and I'm too old."

"You're not old."

"I'll probably start ordering the turkey next year, already prepared." She stopped her hands and looked at Graham picking again at the container, as if unsatisfied.

"I'm sorry, son."

"No, it's fine, mom. It's perfect."

But he missed the old days, and now the house seemed smaller and Raspberry Lane seemed shorter. It was the little changes – like homemade pie slowly slipping away, replaced by one of the many thousands of pies made in a factory, with twelve apple slices each and two cups of sugary filling, punched and slit by a machine and packaged in bright plastic containers and shipped away – these little changes were the chisels that chipped away at the remains of his childhood, until it became only a blurry memory. Family became more about the girlfriends and the boyfriends, and the long stretches of time that went between everyone being together once again to eat store-bought pie and catalogue-ordered turkey.

Hannah spent high school near the top of her class, but she spent her free time clinging to Evan Krause's arm and breaking curfew. Evan Krause had purple fingernails. Instead of doing homework he worked on his 1984 t-top TransAm and rarely washed his hands afterward. Rust was a main ingredient of the car, it left a puddle of oil and transmission fluid everywhere it went, and the shifting slammed the passenger's head back. But Evan Krause drove it slowly through the parking lot, edging close to the small groups of girls who stood around talking after the bell, and then he'd race it back across the street in front of the school with a black cloud of exhaust behind him, looking like a crop-duster, squealing the brakes at the curb for Hannah to jump in.

After classes he whipped around sharp curves, merged onto tight roads without looking, and blew through stop signs, all with Hannah in the passenger seat. They spent evenings in cornfields, driving that beat up TransAm over the cornstalks until they were hidden from view. When the snow came, the icy streets didn't slow Evan down much, and he still drove into the cornfields. The stalks were thin and the patchy blue paint could be seen from the road, but Evan didn't care as long he could crawl all over Hannah until she pushed him off.

Rudy gave her a dime once. She smacked his hand away in embarrassment and stomped down the hall to her room, but Evan Krause was persistent and mean, and she became nervous of his reactions if he didn't get his way.

"Fine, just get out," he'd tell her after she wouldn't let him go any farther, squirming so he couldn't grab what he wanted to. His voice carried just enough irritation to show he was frustrated but not enough for Hannah to think he was serious about her getting out. "Just get out. God. I wonder what Jen is doing tonight."

"Jen?" Hannah said, pulling her sweater back up over her shoulder.

"Jen Brewer. You know Jen. Are you getting out?"

And he'd sit there behind the wheel, staring off into the cornstalks. Hannah wondered how long he'd sit there if she did get out, and if he'd come back around or change his mind and reach over just as she was opening the door to tell her she should stay.

On those nights he usually flipped the radio knob up and did nothing but recite lyrics in his bobbing head, his mouth moving, but barely speaking. Hannah sat in the passenger seat, looking out her window at the stars, waiting to go home, or waiting just to get the car running and the heater blowing again, feeling bad about not giving Evan Krause what he wanted and making him mad. And thinking what Jen Brewer might do with Evan if he did call her up one night.

So she relented. But there were many nights when she wished for that dime between her knees.

"You don't have to go to college, you know." Evan had the t-tops down on the way to the auto store. Snow was forecasted, but not until evening. "You don't have to go just because your brothers go. They're wasting their time."

She shivered in the passenger seat with her hands between her legs and her head pulled into her jacket. She tried to say something but her lips were numb and the words spilled out as mumbles. Then he whipped into a tight parking spot and killed the car, the sudden absence of the radio leaving a dull buzz in Hannah's ear.

"What?"

Hannah cleared her throat. "Nothing. I was – I was thinking of going for a teaching degree."

"Teaching? Now there's a royal waste of time. Today's youth need realism, Hannah. Realism. They need to learn on the streets. They need the Church of Rage. Nobody learns anything worthwhile in a classroom. It's all out here. Are you cold or something?"

But she shook her head and followed him around the greasy aisles, the sweet and bitter mix of sprays and oils creeping up her nostrils. And when he had the hood open in the parking lot, leaning in to add a quart of something to some small pipe opening, Hannah spoke up.

"The Church of Rage?"

"Yeah. It's something I made up. Rage. Live your life the way you want to live it. Don't let anybody's expectations make up your mind for you. You don't need to go to church. This is church. This engine rattling on the road. The radio as loud as it goes. Rage, you know? Just... _rage_."

He slammed the hood and muscled his way back into his jacket, leaving smudges around the zipper.

He would hold up a large energy drink and call it rage juice, but Hannah knew what he meant. Be in the present. Evan Krause was as in the present as anyone she had ever known, sometimes so into his car and music that he didn't realize it was dinner time, or that Hannah's stomach was growling with hunger in the passenger seat, until he sped past the neon signs of fast food. He'd pull a U-turn and cloud the drive-thru window with exhaust.

"Does Evan go to church, Tee-tee?" Lisa asked. "That's important. I once dumped a guy because he didn't go to church."

"Yes, mom. He goes to church. He has a deep faith."

"You know, I almost passed over your father because he didn't go to church. But then nobody's perfect. He went the first time with me, and he never missed a mass the rest of his life."

She paused a moment, smoothing out the hems of her sweater. There were no crumbs, but she smoothed and smoothed until it was as straight as ironed.

"And look, all your brothers go to church. There are good men out there, Tee-tee."

"I know, mom. Evan goes to church."

"Good. Good, I'm glad." And she stood and stopped at the doorway. "I hope he scrubs those fingernails before communion."

"Mom."

Wade did like cheerleader blondes, but he was shy and humble, having left any cockiness or outward confidence on Omaha's frozen football fields. His confidence was inward, but visible in the way he carried himself, the way he stood and leaned forward, the way his voice carried across a noisy room, or the way he sat in his chair with his knees wide or his arm over the back of another, taking up space unconsciously. Girls glanced at him, catching eyes with him, but he seldom approached girls for a conversation.

After high school he turned down a partial scholarship to play football at Wayne State College.

"It's too far, mom. It's farther than Graham is. I might as well go to another state if I'm going to Wayne."

"It's not that far. Just a couple hours. And a scholarship, Wade..."

"Partial. It's cheaper to go to OCC. And I'll be here, I'll be close."

"And what about football?"

"Ah, so what? I can't play forever. No, it's fun, mom, but I don't need to play football. Besides, Rudy and I can carpool to class."

They never did carpool. Rudy's schedule was inconsistent what with his hours at the Pick-n-Save being so demanding. He registered and dropped and re-registered so many classes Wade could hardly read through the crosses and scratches of ink in his schedule book.

"Look here, I have a class at eleven on Wednesdays same as you. We could go together then."

Rudy leaned over the page and pointed. "I had to cancel that one. Wait–" he took the schedule book and held it close to his face – "Yeah, I cancelled that one."

Sometimes Wade saw his brother running down the campus sidewalks, late for class, or late for work – if he was late for class he always had his books in his hand, ready to flip open to a page as soon as he sat down; if he was late for work his books bounced in the bag at his side. Wade could spot him from far because of his noticeable limp, which looked like it might never slow him down. He once saw Rudy sitting on an icy bench under a newly frosted tree, his knees together to hold the wrappings of a sandwich, his shoulders hunched as he took a bite.

"Is it thawed out?"

Rudy looked around. "Oh. I thought I'd eat before class." He glanced at his watch and took another bite.

"Are you sweating?"

He shrugged and took another smiling bite.

"Why is your brother so serious?" Kelly Short asked as they gathered their coats at the door one night. Wade met her at community college and had been seeing her long enough that she was a frequent visitor home. Lisa Chapel always had dinner ready.

"He's not as serious as he looks," Wade said. "He jokes around and all that. He's just tired a lot. You know the Pick-n-Save? He's the owner now. He works too much."

Kelly looked up, balancing on one leg before stomping into a boot. "My grandmother _loves_ Johnson's Pick-n-Save. She gets the best peaches there."

"Yeah? He'll be glad to hear that. He says, 'Of all the things people go to the store for, it's good fruit that keeps them coming back.' Hey, you ever notice how raspberries look like cold sores?"

"They do not." Kelly gave his arm a playful slap.

"Yeah, they're all bumpy and hairy."

As they walked out the door, Hannah came out from behind the living room wall and peeped through the blinds to watch them down the driveway. This girl Kelly Short was flirty, she dressed nice and wore knee high boots, and she gave Wade little tugs on his scarf before knocking his hat off and running to the car door in laughter.

"Oh, Evan, don't be so silly," Hannah said quietly in her room one night. "You know everyone is watching us." She knelt and pulled a box of old boots. They weren't knee high and they fit a little too tight. She brushed her hand on the boot and stood for the mirror. She turned her shoulder and practiced a mysterious look. "Oh, Evan, you make me laugh so hard."

Wade took Kelly to the putt-putt golf course. He watched her on the green, among all the other young couples, taking putts at an orange ball. The arms of the windmill kept knocking her shots away.

"You're hitting too hard."

"I don't know how to do it."

"Just give it a small push, and time it with the windmill."

She hit it again and it bounced right back.

"Oh, gosh. So embarrassing." She danced in place with the putter in one hand her other hand pushing her long hair back over her shoulder. "I'm no good. Am I holding it right? Teach me how."

Wade stepped up behind her, smiling, and put his arms around her, his hands on hers, holding the putter. Her hair fell again and she pushed it back over, brushing Wade's face with it. They leaned over the green.

"Like that?" She was laughing, hardly interested in golf at all.

"Yeah, now you just push it. Don't even hit it, just push it. Wait for the arms. Ready...and now."

Later they went to get sandwiches and sodas at Oliver's Deli. Kelly Short held a potato chip in her teeth, and leaned forward. Wade took the dare and kissed her over the table.

It wasn't all fun and laughter for Wade and his girlfriends. Like many of them, Kelly Short was interested in boys, and Wade was just one stop of many. Girls liked him, they liked to be under his long arm on the walk to the theater window, but in the world of youthful flings, nobody is searching for the long-term.

"Maybe there's something wrong with me."

"There's nothing wrong with you, son. Girls are fickle until they grow up. Trust me, you're a nice boy and you'll wind up with the perfect girl to match. And besides, that Kelly Short was too – she was too promiscuous. She wore too much eye shadow."

Hannah came around to the kitchen and stopped in the doorway in front of two curious sets of eyes. They heard her coming as soon as she set foot on the hardwood floor.

"What?"

Lisa Chapel rubbed her hands on her apron. "Don't you look nice, Tee-tee."

"Are you wearing horse boots?" Wade asked.

"They're fashionable."

"No need to call out and let us know you're coming. Did Evan get you those?"

"No, I bought them."

"Of course. Evan wouldn't buy you lunch, much less a gift."

"That's not true. He got me – he gets me things."

"Okay. I'm just saying you might be better off dating that tree in the back. At least it'll drop a little golden leaf on you once a year. Might be a better conversation too."

Hannah didn't say anything. Wade was right. She put her arms on the kitchen counter and leaned over them, sinking onto them like a spill, and resting her head. Then she began to cry.

"Tee-tee, don't cry."

"I'm not crying."

"Wade, look what you – get out of here. Go get some peaches from Rudy."

"I didn't mean anything, Tee-tee. I was just kidding around." And he took his baby sister up in a bear hug and squeezed her until she couldn't keep her annoyance from turning to teary laughs that burst out each time Wade squeezed.

Early on Saturday mornings, before opening the Pick-n-Save, Rudy stood in the back alley and inspected the produce on the delivery truck.

"Wouldja just take a box already?" the driver said, looking into the cargo bed. "I gotta few more deliveries."

Rudy popped up from his squat behind the peach crates. "You know what keeps people coming back to a mom and pop store like this, don't you?"

"It ain'tya prices."

"It's produce that's not bruised or moldy. Get the best produce section in town and you'll keep customers forever. All right, I'll take these two as well."

He unlocked the front door a minute early, gave a short pep talk to his cashiers, and went to make a few final adjustments to the cantaloupes. The bell on the door jingled above his first customer. When she came around the corner, Rudy nearly choked his words.

"Good morning," he said to her. "Can I help you find anything?" He stood staring. A cantaloupe fell and rolled away.

"Can you what? Oh, find anything? No, I don't think so." And she nodded. "Is that going to bruise?"

There was a short pause and Rudy wet his lips and cocked an ear. "Going to what? Bruise?"

"Your cantaloupe. Where do you find cantaloupe this time of year? Not even Wal-Mart has them out."

"That's right," Rudy smiled. He had to keep his fist from moving in an aw-shucks way. He went after the escapee. He stood and smiled, hefting it in is palm. "That's right. Too expensive to ship across country. No, I have to special order them. I don't make a dime on them for about two months, selling them at cost, you know. But people like their melons and they like it when a store can give it to them. That's what gives me my edge over the competition."

"I guess that's right."

He looked around him and held a hand up. "You know what the most important part of a store like this is?"

"The produce."

"That's right. People come to expect it, and if they know they can count on you, you'll have them forever. How'd you know that?"

"It was just a guess. It seemed important to you."

"It is," he nodded, and he looked at the cantaloupe in his hands and spoke again a little softer. "It is."

"No, my mom has been shopping here for years. She swears by it. I thought I'd come see if she was right."

"She is right. Who's your mom? Maybe I know her."

"Janet Taylor." She held her hand at an estimated height.

"Oh, yeah. Mrs Taylor. Short, with her hair kinda like this. Nice lady. She always gets a head of romaine lettuce with her shopping. Every time."

She smiled. "Oh, yes. That's right. She's crazy about wraps. Salads."

"She's the reason I keep my lettuce stacked so neatly. I hope she's impressed."

"I'm sure she is. Are you the manager?"

Rudy shrugged. "And owner."

"How'd you come to own a special place like this?"

"Special place? You think so?"

"You're the only small grocer in town. You're all that's keeping that ol' mid-west feeling from disappearing completely."

They moved through the store in conversation as the bell above the door continued to sound with new customers. Rudy kept reaching out to straighten a can or a box of something here and there, and glanced at her legs when he thought she wasn't looking. She was silent for a moment, and he saw a small smile working its way on the corners of her profile.

"You'll let me know if you have any questions. I'm afraid I'm ignoring my work."

"Well, you can't do that now, can you?" She opened an egg carton and ran her fingers along the tops. Then closed it and put it in her basket. "I think a place like this has one more thing above the other big grocers."

"What's that?"

"Customer service," she said. "You're certainly proving it today."

"I know. I'm sorry. I just thought – well, I was enjoying the conversation."

"Me too."

Rudy put his hand out to the shelf and rearranged a jar that couldn't have been straighter to begin with.

"Why do you keep doing that?"

"I don't know. You make me nervous."

"Nervous? Here, I'll take that one. I forgot I needed more. Do I really make you nervous?"

"A good nervous. I mean in a good way."

"Mm. You don't seem like you're the type to get nervous around girls. You're too tall."

"I didn't think I was, either. That type, I mean."

"Where are your chili beans? I was going to make some pulled pork tonight."

"Oh, right around here. Pulled pork, huh? My mom has a killer pulled pork recipe. It's all about the crockpot, though. You can't mess anything up in a crockpot. Okay, I've got Kuner's, Bush's, ValuePick, but they don't have any flavor and they're a little hard, and my personal favorite, Chipper's." He turned and held it at chest level with both hands. "Just add a dollop of sour cream and you've got a specialty."

"Sour cream? On pulled pork?"

"You can put sour cream on anything."

"On beans?"

"Try it." He swept a hand across the air. "You'll love it."

A shaky old voice interrupted. It was Mrs Calvert, asking for a hand getting down a jar of pickles. "Jerry likes the whole pickles, you know."

"I know, Mrs Calvert. Excuse me miss."

The girl nodded, giving them space.

"How is Jerry doing, anyway?"

He looked over his shoulder as he spoke, exchanging quick glances with the girl, who gave him one last smile and disappeared. With the pickles in the cart, and the pleasantries exchanged – Jerry was getting into aviation, books about it anyway, you know, and he likes to drive out to the airfield with a lawn chair and a beer and watch the old Piper Cubs buzz around – Rudy went down the row, his head turning as he passed each aisle. He sprinted down the last aisle, through the smell of deli meat, slowing down at the end to a fast walk. He caught a glimpse of her at the checkout counter, her groceries bagged up and ready to hoist to the parking lot.

"It might be forward of me," he put a hand to the door. "But I wanted to ask if you had any company for your pulled pork tonight."

He cringed as he said it. She held her bag at her elbow. Her laugh allowed him to breathe again.

"You want to know if my pulled pork has company tonight? I'll have to ask."

"What I mean is I'd like to get your number."

"My number? What do you need my number for?"

"I don't know." He readied his phone. "So I can write it on my wall." He closed his eyes and shook his head once. "I mean, so I can call you. Sometime."

"You haven't yet got my name and you want my number. I'd say that's backward not forward, wouldn't you?"

Rudy looked up. "What is your name?"

"Krissy Taylor. Okay, ready?"

On the porch, she came back a step to stay where her eyes were, pulled her groceries close for balance, and stooped over on the porch for a moment. Rudy shook his head.

The dirt lot outside the Pick-n-Save was empty, the dirt hard-packed and smoothed over by thousands of carnival goer footsteps. The fly-by-night came back each year, popped up in an afternoon, and picked up where it left off. Wade skipped a rock side-armed off the shiny dirt top, lumped and cold and reflecting his car headlights. He leaned against the grill, picked out a katydid and held it up a moment, then played his hand in front of one headlight, looking out at the shadow. He had skipped class on this night, choosing instead to lie on the hood of his car and smoke a pack of cigarettes he had bought just for that purpose.

He pulled the plastic wrapping off, held the first one to a cupped match, and managed to inhale three times before tossing it away in a coughing fit, a smoldering red ash on the dirt. He went limp on the hood with his arms and legs splayed as single coughs convulsed his body as they escaped, a show he put on just for himself. He walked, and the rest of the pack he threw in a trashcan across the street in the Pick-n-Save lot. It sailed in an arching basketball shot before bouncing off the rim, and he had to march up to it to place it in the can.

From the hood of his car he could see every cold glimmer in the clear sky. He thought of that blonde ponytail who used to share the view with him on the grassy knoll above the twirling summer lights. Lori Hylock. He thought of her often, the feelings came back again, more powerful this time than before, and he closed his eyes and tried to remember everything about her face, her laugh, her eyes.

It was the same way when he went home and pushed open the door to his old bedroom, standing in the doorway like a father taking one last look at his sleeping newborn before going to bed. It looked so empty. The beds were made up with crisp folds, like hotel beds, there were no toys left out on the floor, no dirty tshirts tossed across the room, no jeans pulled straight down and left in place on the floor. No Cool Whip cartons under the bed. The only thing that remained of childhood were Rudy's model airplanes hanging deathly still from the ceiling.

Their youth had blown away like dandelion spores. Wade stood in the center of the room and wondered where he and his brothers went.

It was Mother's Day before they all came together again, making it a point to make this day special.

"He said he has a surprise for us," Lisa Chapel said. "I think it's a girl. I think he met a girl and they're serious. I can hear it in his voice. Oh, God, I love young love. Look, here's Graham and Aubrey. Look at her. You need to find a nice girl, Wade."

"Hm."

Graham came in with a grocery bag under his arms, the warm spring air on his brow, and keeping a steady, curious look over his shoulder.

"Old man Moss has the biggest nose I've ever seen."

"The neighbor?"

"It keeps getting bigger, look. When the time comes, an open casket funeral may be his only option."

Lisa Chapel did not look past him to verify his claim. She looked her son up and down, taking careful note of the laugh lines around his mouth and eyes. They gave him the look of a man. Graham was so grown up now, wearing collared shirts and tucking them in. He bent to kiss his mother once and was at the counter unloading the bag a moment later, pulling ingredients and lining them up.

"You look so pretty, Aubrey."

"Thank you for having us, Miss Chapel. Graham's been talking about it all week. What can I help with?" She had already put her purse and sunglasses in the corner and rolled up her sleeves.

"Oh, don't you dare." She shooed her away with one hand. "Get comfortable. I just love having all my children – Graham, what are you doing? What did you – don't be silly."

"I'm making an apple pie today. From scratch, mom. Remember? Just for you. Happy Mother's Day. It's going to be the most delicious thing that's ever come out of this oven."

"I doubt that." Hannah came in from one end of the kitchen and left through the other.

"Well," Graham said. "It'll come out of this oven, I know that much. Hey, Tee-tee?"

She stuck her head back in. "What?"

"Is Evan coming?"

"He said he is."

Graham motioned with a finger to the window. "Well, we'll hear him coming, won't we? Mom, where's Rudy?"

"He'll be here at dinnertime. It's a big weekend for him at the store. You know, everyone's celebrating Mother's Day with food. He's bringing a surprise."

"A girl?"

Wade looked up from the table. "That's what mom thinks."

"I'm sure of it," Lisa Chapel said.

Graham leaned back against the counter, holding eggs in his fists. If it had been a cup of coffee in his hand, with the sunlight behind him to guard his face, he might have been Jack Chapel himself. "Ha ha...Rudy's got a nice girl."

The kitchen became the focal point of all interaction. Graham carefully sliced apples and pressed the pie dough, Lisa Chapel poked at the roast in the oven, Aubrey mixed a salad between sneaking kisses with Graham at the counter, and Wade sat at the breakfast table and rubbed his face in his hands.

"They're here." Hannah called from the front room, and everyone moved across the house to peer over the couch out the large front window. Rudy was hopping around to the other side of the car to get the passenger door.

"Oh my, oh my, oh she's gorgeous," Lisa said again and again as she watched her oldest son lead the way up the steps.

"Ha, oh, haha, Jesus, Rudy."

"Wade-Rudy-aht-Graham, you watch your mouth. Oh she's beautiful."

Hannah was against the window, a finger up to part the curtains. Her brother carried himself upright, his limp still noticeable, jerking it behind him the way an old war veteran would. His chin was up and his smile contained a laugh he couldn't wait to release upon his family. And the girl, oh Lord, the girl who skipped up the steps behind him, one hand out in front of her to match the hand he held behind him, Hannah couldn't keep her eyes off her, and couldn't keep her mind from thinking how on earth did the brother she knew ever get the courage to make a peep around a girl like that.

"Mom? Mom? We're here, and I've – oh, you're all here. What, were you watching us?" Rudy laughed, the laugh of a grown man who doesn't laugh to fit in or to courtesy anyone, or to fill any uncomfortable juvenile gaps, but a laugh full of deep joy. "Mom, this is Krissy Taylor."

"It's wonderful to meet you, Krissy. I knew you'd be coming to dinner."

"And this is my brother, Graham, I've told you about."

"Rudy probably already told you, but I'm the handsome brother."

"I think I remember you," Krissy Taylor shook his hand.

"And his girlfriend, Aubrey. And this is Tee-tee. Hannah. She's all grown up and beautiful. And this is – and Wade, do you remember Krissy Taylor? She was in your class at Perpetual Hope."

Wade stood in the background. He smacked his lips together and wondered if his mouth had been open. He had to remember to pull his feet out of their roots for the greeting, but it was a lackluster hello he gave, shrouded in shock, as he shook Krissy Taylor's hand.

"Yeah, I remember you. Hi Krissy, nice to see you?"

"Hi Wade. See, I do remember you. So nice to see you again."

But a girl's face tells all, and Wade could see the reflection in her eyes was a new one to her. She carried herself in a new manner. All the youthful spring that made her so popular in high school was still there, clinging to her. The few years since graduation had only added to her attractiveness, and she spoke in a polite way, and kept the clockwise passing of food at the dinner table going in a natural, easy fashion – but Wade had been an all-region linebacker at their little 3A school, his name had made the papers several times and his blistering hard hits made the KTVM Channel Eleven News highlight reel nearly every week – and there she sat telling stories over the Mother's Day ham of how she and Rudy met in the produce section of the Pick-n-Save, and all Wade could think of was the way she looked him dead in the eye that day against the musty clanging in the football locker room.

"She's great, isn't she?" Rudy asked later in the hallway when dinner was cleared away and the girls sat in the living room talking. "What's wrong with you? You said three things at the table – pass the potatoes."

"I said more than that," Wade said. "Nothing. She's fine, Rudy. She's great. Yes, she's great. Let's go."

"What?" He put his palm to the wall, under the framed family photos from long ago. "You're upset with me about her, or what?"

" _Chh_. _No_."

"Why do you say it like that?"

"No, I'm not upset about her."

"All right. Can you be nice and talk to her like you do with Aubrey?"

Graham came whistling down the hallway. "What's all this? You clog the toilet again, Wade?"

"Nothing. Rudy's being sensitive."

"Just talk nice to her for me, please."

"Okay. I'll talk to her. It'll be the longest conversation I've ever had with her."

Rudy dropped his arm and stood in the hallway's half-light, his face a dead lake of thought, and the three brothers stood together like a secret.

"Atta boy," Graham said, breaking the silence and putting his hands on Wade's shoulders. "You people-pleaser, you. Look at Rudy's face. I've never seen him happier."

And Rudy reached out for an elbow as Wade moved past. "What is it? You don't like her?"

"I like her. She's turned out fine, Rudy." And he added unconsciously, maybe as a warning, "I can tell all the guys from school."

Graham saw it coming before Wade did, possibly because Wade had not realized yet that he had spoken aloud. Rudy pulled Wade back in by the elbow and pinned him to the wall, a move that Wade knocked away by instinct. Then they were scuffling between the walls, a silent flurry of arms and shoves that Graham tried to pry apart, or get between, three mutes trying to figure things out.

At the sound of glass breaking, the girls tensed in the living room.

"What was that? Are you all right?" Lisa Chapel said from her sunny chair, a teacup in her fingertips. She turned halfway and leaned back to see as far into the dark hallway as she could.

A few more thumps, like a klutz trying to move a heavy object through a narrow passage, and Rudy came out, his face flushed and his eyes teary. His shirt buttons had been torn away.

"What's going on? Rudy, what's happened?"

"We're going. Krissy get your things."

"Rudy, hon, what's the matter?" Krissy put her glass on the coffee table while Aubrey and Hannah sat in silence. She stood. "What's wrong?"

"Son, what's – you're bleeding. Your eye is all – _Graham_. _Wade_ , what did you do?"

"Get your things, Kris."

Krissy Taylor gathered her things and slipped out the front door behind Rudy, embarrassed, hoping the quicker and quieter she moved the less noticeable she would be. But she stuck her head back in with her hand on the knob and thanked Miss Chapel for the lovely evening, and she excused herself because she had to go, as if what had happened had been invisible to everyone.

"Wade, are you all right? Son, you're all – Tee-tee get a warm washcloth. Graham what happened?"

"I don't know. I was trying to stop it."

The family photos were lying on the floor, the frames shattered, and the drywall smashed in an imprint as wide as Wade's shoulders. Wade whipped the washcloth out with one fist-shake and held it back to his mouth, sinking into the couch and talking from the side of his mouth that was not swelling.

"Sorry, mom. I misspoke."

He didn't get a chance to misspeak again because Rudy didn't answer Wade's call, and he ignored any messages Wade managed to send.

Rudy skipped his mother's Fourth of July invitation to dinner. Wade set up to grill burgers and hotdogs in the backyard, under the leafy sunlight, nervous about seeing Rudy come through the door. He made sure to turn his back to the house; this way he could steal a glance through the window and see his brother's silhouette move across the house, and his reaction upon turning and seeing him at the door would be prepared.

"You can't stay away from your family," Krissy Taylor said to him as they sat parked with the windows of that old passed-down Buick cracked on the dusky bluff overlooking South Omaha and Henry Dorling Zoo. The lights were coming on beneath them. "Just talk to him."

"Why should I?"

"Because he's your brother."

"Not like that he's not."

"He didn't mean to hurt you, and you know it. Rudy, please, it's important to me."

"What for?"

"Because I like that you have brothers, and that you have Hannah, and I want you to talk to them. Here give me your phone and I'll text him."

"No."

The seat leather creaked as she sat back and folded her arms, then smoothed her skirt. "You're not mad at me, are you?"

"No."

"I was a different person, Rudy." She turned slowly and looked at him, gauging his mood. "I want you to know that."

Rudy sat silently behind the wheel. It was a good sign that his jaw muscles weren't flexing, picking up what light was left in the dusk, and his brows weren't pinched. But his lips were still, as unmoving as a those on a corpse, and she wanted dearly for them to speak, to say anything at all. Then the booms thundered over the car, several in a row, and Rudy leaned over the wheel, his forehead creased and his face changing from glowing red to yellow to blue before fading what seemed to total darkness. Then more thunder came, but Krissy Taylor had her head turned the other way, her tears reflecting the shimmering show of sparks down the side of her face.

"It would be nice to go to church with everyone," Krissy Taylor told Rudy after getting off the phone with Lisa Chapel one Saturday afternoon.

"All of us will be there," Lisa Chapel had assured her. "Graham is back for the summer, and even Tee-tee has her Evan coming."

"You never even talk to them anymore."

Evan Krause, of course, had no intention of going to church. He didn't know about it. Hannah's encouragement for him to go was something he nodded unknowingly to as he ripped around a highway corner with the tops down. Then he turned up the music to drown Hannah out.

But Graham was back for the summer. He resumed his summer construction habit of seventy hours a week when he could manage. He didn't want to take any student loans next year.

Aubrey Miller did not visit. She had gone back to Fall City for the summer to be with her parents. Graham had visited once – Mr Miller said to Aubrey, "That's the kind of man I could count on with any daughter of mine." – but Aubrey made it clear to Graham that he shouldn't visit again.

"I don't have time for a relationship," she told him over the phone. "I feel awful for leading you on and all. And you're a nice guy and everything. But you didn't make it easy for me to keep my mind on my books and I told you I need to work on school."

"Sure, I understand all that."

"But we can still get together from time to time. Still be friends, I mean."

"Of course. I can do that."

Graham stared at the ground, keeping his breaths even.

"You're not okay with that, are you?" she asked.

"I'm okay with it, Aubrey. I want it to be different, you know, I want to be with you, but I understand it."

"I'm sorry, Graham. I mean it. I'm very sorry."

"You said you loved me. What was that all about?"

"I know, Graham. I'm sorry."

After a moment he said, "In the future, you may want to hold that word back. I mean with other guys. In the future."

He didn't say anything, and after a silent passing he took the phone away from his ear and looked at it, and put it back.

"Aubrey?"

Her voice was calm. "You can yell at me if you want to. You can call me a stupid...whatever it is you want to call me."

Graham straightened up. "Why would I do that?"

On Sunday, Graham stood next to his car in the closest parking spot at St Augustine's Church, the teacher's lot, empty on weekends, and watched Wade park across the lot before reversing and pulling in next to him.

"These used to be reserved spots," Wade said as he stood in the angle of the open door, looking at Graham over the car top. "Remember? I didn't want to take a reserved spot."

"Afraid of going to the principal's office?"

The hymns had already started inside. "Did you bring your guitar?"

Wade shook his head. "Just my singing voice."

"Mom and Tee-tee are inside."

"And Rudy?"

"No."

They put a handshake between their hug and Graham patted his brother's back as they crossed that once holy lawn to the door.

"Oh, oh, stay off the grass, _stay off the grass_ ," Graham said, and he walked to the pavement with his hands in his pockets, smiling to himself as Wade ran a tightrope off the grass, looking as if he was trying to dash through a kitchen without making the cake fall.

Father Cormac was still the priest at St Augustine's. His walk in front of the altar during the homily had slowed a bit, and his voice now cracked at inopportune times, a highlight that Graham and Wade held in laughter at and kicked each other in the pews. But his old shining smile was still there, and his eyes were clear and bright to hide his age, despite the noticeable drift of his feet as he walked up the aisle. He would grip a pew to steady himself every now and then. It was nice to have the Chapel boys back in the front pew, and their sister, Hannah, who, despite a shy slump in her posture, had an aura about her. And Lisa Chapel sang again from the choir steps.

"You know, Father," Graham said as he shook Father Cormac's hand at the church doors. "It's so strange to look over the congregation and see all these girls I used to try to date back in school."

"Oh?" Father Cormac smiled.

"They're all grown up now. Some things never change, though. They all still try to undress me with their eyes. They're just having trouble with this top button."

Years ago, Father Cormac would have taken Graham Chapel by the hand and walked him across the campus to the maintenance shed, where he would have filled the lawnmower's gas tank to the brim and watched the small boy push a large mower over every blade of grass on campus. He would have walked ahead of him with a flashlight if he had not finished before sundown. But on this day, he looked at Graham and laughed himself into wheezing coughs.

Lisa Chapel came out of the church doors into the sunlight, stretching as tall as she could while fighting newly tickled sneezes, trying to see if her oldest son might be in the parking lot waiting.

He was not. At home, she held her phone in her hand, hesitating to dial his number before putting it back on the wall, leaving her hand on it while she looked out the back window at Graham standing over the grill while Wade fiddled with the knobs.

"It's out of gas."

"Wait, wait, I think I feel some heat."

"No, you don't."

Graham came in the back door with the tank in his hand. "We're going to get some more propane. Mom? What's wrong? Is Rudy coming? Did you call him?"

"You call him, Graham," Lisa Chapel said, sitting alone in the front room. "He'll come if it's you who asks him."

"I asked him to come by the other times too."

"You did? And what did he – what did he say?"

He put the tank down. "He didn't come, mom."

But Graham gave his brother a call anyway, walking back and forth in the living room with his phone to his ear as Lisa and Hannah sat together on the couch, and Wade stood in the kitchen door. There was no answer.

Rudy had watched his phone vibrate on the coffee table in front of him. He knew what Graham would be calling for, and at this point it would be an awkward conversation anyway; it was not an easy task to say no to Graham.

Wade pulled together the fishing rods and Graham took a pack of hotdogs from the freezer – "Catfish aren't picky." And he grabbed the Coors his mother had bought knowing her boys would be home, a six-pack in the refrigerator. He stared at it a moment before replacing it and took the two bottles of New Belgium that had been rattling around in the bottom shelf of the door for a few weeks.

"But I am."

Wade was in the driveway, putting things in the trunk. Graham came out with a small flexible cooler on his back, tinkling with the promise of beer on a hot day. It had been years since he had fished the Horseshoe with his brother, and thoughts of finally hauling in the largest fish that ever scraped the bottom of the reservoir made him smile.

"Think you can keep up these days?"

Wade looked over the car to see that Graham had taken his old bike from the garage hook and straddled it, looking like a giant, or a clown.

"Just needs a little air in the tires." Graham sat back and worked the pedals with one foot. "Maybe Rudy would come if we asked him to the lake."

"Maybe."

They rode the back roads and the dirt trails that connected all the way to the reservoir, ducking lower than usual under the tree branches that only required a small nod of the head to clear years ago. The trails were much shorter than they remembered, and the steepness of the rolling hills was different too.

Horseshoe Reservoir spread massive blue and sparkling. It had not shrunk over the years, and the water touched the highest point. Graham took to a small trail along the shore, pocked with round white rocks, and wound around until he found the small maintenance platform near the dam, where the water was deep and flowing. He leaned over the edge.

"See any down there?"

"No. I don't know that I've ever seen any. But they're there. Big, strong ones."

He rigged their lines and handed Wade one of them before he cast his own out a short distance. Then he searched the cooler bag with one hand and pulled the beers. They drank in the sunlight with their feet dangling over the edge, a low rumble of water coming through the dam. Wade popped his bottle cap on the concrete, slapping it on the edge. Graham was already leaning back with his head up and his eyes closed. He was tall and took up a lot of space.

"Thank God for Horseshoe."

"Ahh...God," Wade said into the bottle.

Graham lifted an eyebrow his way.

"I mean, you know," Wade said. "Thank God and everything, but goddamnit."

"Well, we just put our lines in, Wade. Give them a chance to find 'em."

"No, I mean...ah, nothing."

"What?"

Wade leaned forward and picked at the mouth of his beer. After a moment he said, "I wish life was a little more concrete, you know. A little more predictable and – well, controllable, I guess. I want to think of God as a kind giver, you know, as a – I don't know. I don't want to pray to Him and not get an answer. I would never forgive Him. You know what I mean?"

"Well," Graham folded his hands on his lap. "Don't go praying for fish and put your line in a puddle."

"I guess."

Wade looked out across the water, the small specks of movement on the other side. "How's Aubrey?"

"Fine. She's good. I'll see her again in the fall."

"You're not going to visit her again? I thought you were pretty serious."

"I thought so too."

Wade turned his head. "What? You mean she..."

Graham shook his head. He clicked the line tighter.

"Sorry, Graham. I thought." Wade went to flicking rocks. In a moment he nodded and said, "Well, see what I mean? If you can't figure it all out then what chance have I got?"

Graham looked over. "I said I'll see her again in the fall."

Wade continued. "I know He's up there and all that. I know He's got a whole plan, right? I just wish He'd let me in on it."

"God's got enough problems. You know how many people down here don't even believe in Him? He's got His hands full. No, He hears your phone call, He'll answer it in the order it was received."

The water sparkled again with sunlight, choppy waves far out, a thousand heavy butcher blades bobbing. Wade smiled and his shoulders bounced up and down, his eyes staying on the water.

"You remember dad used to take us here to see the submarine races?"

Graham put his head back, smiling.

Wade's laugh broke through for a fraction of a second before cutting short, changing completely. He stood and grabbed the fishing rod, the beer bottle rolling on the concrete behind him. Graham was already up and leaning forward, squinting to gain as much vision as he could through the water.

"Boy, he's a big one. Keep the rod high. Higher. And pull him straight in. Don't let him fight. These guys will tear a line whenever they feel like it. Go, go, go."

"I'm going."

The water burst from underneath. Wade was unable to see much of anything except for a splash, but Graham saw him.

"Oh, he's huge. Twenty-five pounder. Keep reeling. Go."

"I am. It's not coming."

The line had stalled, unable to gain any distance.

"He's in the mud. Here, lower it and pull him up again. Go. Get him out."

Wade dropped the tip of the rod and pulled it up again. The rod bent in half once more, the line now straight down below the tip, as if he were pulling up a money safe.

"He's going to snap it," Graham said. "He's got to be thirty pounds."

Wade had the rod up in front of his face, ripping at the reel, his eyes huge. Under the surface a scaleless mass of dark muscle tore at the line. Wade blinked away sweat and stepped to the edge, his teeth showing, his eyes mad in their sockets.

The line snapped, the rod springing upward. "No, God, no." Wade stepped back against the sudden release of tension. It took him a step to regain his balance before he reversed his momentum, tossed the rod, and jumped in, disappearing into the deep mud swirls. Graham stood at the edge looking over. Murky scenes of movement caught slivers of light that penetrated the surface. He scratched his nose. Wade came up cursing. He dragged himself back up and sat, a pool spreading beneath him. Graham moved his beer.

"Get him?"

It took a moment before he reacted. His scowl melted and a spray came from his lips, a smile followed. He shivered once, looking across the stretch of water once more at the dots on the other side, and jumped in again. He started across at a good pace, but conserving his energy. He soon looked small in the distance with a long swim ahead of him, but his pace kept up. Graham stood until he finished his beer. When he took his eyes off Wade it took a moment of searching to find him again. He packed up the rods and the cooler bag, and rode his little bike around the shoreline with his hands full, stopping once to look out on the water again. His eyes danced around, never fixing on anything, and he pushed off and rode the shoreline again until he found a man at one of the docks, backing his boat into the water.

"Can you take me for a ride for a few minutes?"

When they got out to him, Wade was floating on his back, trying to catch his breath. Graham leaned over the side.

"You're not yet halfway."

"There's no way – you swam this thing."

"I did."

"I can't feel my feet. You'd have to be – an Olympian or robot or something."

"Or a fish."

"I don't believe you – not for a second."

"Well," Graham nodded and squinted to the other side. "They had it mostly drained for repairs when I swam it."

Evan Krause drove his TransAm into a tree while Hannah was in the passenger seat. The backend slid sidelong when he floored it out of the Auto Mart parking lot, but he kept his foot on the gas and was surprised when he never recovered control. He punched the dashboard.

"The new tires I ordered won't do that. They're AT-160s with performance grip."

"Who cares about your stupid tires?" Hannah had gathered her things and was fighting her door open. A sweet singe began to replace the usual smell of exhaust.

"I could drive up a wall with the new tires."

"Why on earth would you want to do that?" And she slammed the door.

He stood looking at the wreck with his hand on his head, just a small dent in the back fender, and hardly noticed that Hannah was walking fast, already halfway down the sidewalk with her free arm slicing at her side.

"Hey, wait a minute. Where are you going?"

"Home."

"You're gonna walk all the way? It'll take you all day."

"I don't care."

He put his hands on his hips, looking over the car once more. Then he hurried after her and grabbed her by the elbow. She pushed him away, looking at him dead in the eyes so he could see how angry she was.

"What are you, crying? All right. Go," he said. "You think I care?"

Hannah turned and stomped her foot. "Wade was right about you."

"Wade was right about me? What did Wade say about me?"

She advanced with her finger leading the way. "That you're no smarter than a tree. That you're about as much bark too." And when she said it aloud it made sense to her for the first time. A smile broke her tears and she quickly rearranged her face back to anger by wiping her nose with the back of her hand.

"A tree?" Evan Krause looked around, trying to roll his eyes. "A tree? Who gives a shit? Wade can go to hell. _All_ your brothers can go to hell. A bunch of grinning bastards. And you're a waste of time, you stupid bitch."

"I – I _hate_ you."

But Evan had already exited the argument. He glared around. "A tree? I'll _show_ him a tree."

He stalked back to his TransAm, the driver's door still open and the key dangling in the ignition.

"You're just going to leave me here?" Hannah said.

He yelled something but it came out jumbled. He sat back and slammed the door, started the car and bounced off the curb, ripping a scratch across the tree and popping his fender from the bolts. He passed Hannah on the sidewalk and she watched as the car's backend followed off balance behind him, taking the car slightly sideways on the road. The car drifted to the curb and bumped against it, where Evan tore the door open and stumbled out in anger, a crowbar held at his thigh. He was grumbling something when he got down on his back and made a clanking sound under the car, cursing. Then he stood and went to the driver's door again. It took Hannah a second, standing there with her arms crossed, before she realized what Evan held. She ran at him and grabbed an arm before he could close the door.

"You stay away from me or you'll get the same thing."

She gathered herself off the concrete and went after him again, pulling at his shirt. This time he got out and stood over her and held the crowbar over his head, raising it a little higher, his face blotted with the sun behind it. Then he got in the car and clunked away, a tapping sound coming from under the car as he took off around the corner and disappeared in a roar.

Hannah sat crossed-legged on the curb with her knees bleeding, digging in her purse as the cars went by. Wade was the first call she made, her voice quickly melting into that of a blubbery, scared child.

"Evan has a _crowbar_ , Wade. He's all upset and yelling and he's mad at me and mad at you for calling him a tree with no bark and he's driving over to the house right now."

"Did he hurt you?"

"No, he's going to hurt _you_. He's got a crowbar. Wade? _Wade_?"

"Why is he mad at me?"

She sighed and lowered her shoulders. "Because I told him you called him stupid." Then she added. "And he wrecked the TransAm."

Wade's voice was calm. Flat. "Are you okay?"

"Oh, I skinned my knees. Wade, he's coming right now. Go hide in your room or take a drive or something. What? Don't laugh. He has a crowbar. _Wade_?"

"I'll wait right here in the center of the lawn for him."

"Wade? _Wade_? Why did you have to... _Wade_?"

Pacing in the Auto Mart parking lot, she called a yellow cab. In the cab she called and told Rudy all about it, sitting in the backseat with her skinned knees touching. She glanced at her phone and held it back to her ear.

"Well, _say_ something."

Rudy swiveled in his chair in the little grocery office. "Wade can handle himself. He can certainly handle Evan Krause." Although Evan was large and dumb and wouldn't think twice in anger about harming someone. "Where are you?"

"On Platte and Montgomery. I just left the Auto Mart. Evan was getting something for his – Rudy, you're right around the corner, are you going over or what?"

"No, I'm going to pick you up."

"I won't _be_ here," she put her hand in the air, "I called a cab. Didn't you hear what I – Evan is going at Wade with a crowbar, can't you hear?"

"Wade can take care of himself."

"I won't be here. I'm already in the cab."

"Well, then call Graham."

"Rudy, I – Rudy... _Rudy_!"

Graham was easier to convince. He was home already, installing a new mailbox, a birdhouse looking one that their mother commented on earlier. He put his arm over the birdhouse rooftop as he listened to Hannah tell the story.

"Why is he coming here?"

"Because he's mad. I told him Wade said he was stupid."

"He is stupid."

" _Graham_."

"Are you hurt? Where are you?"

"I already called a cab. I'm calling to see if you can go over and stop Evan before they get in a fight. Wade said he was going to wait on the front lawn for him."

"Where else would he wait?"

"Graham, please. He's going to hurt him. Rudy won't go over. You know how they are right now."

"Because he knows Wade can handle a guy like Evan."

"That's exactly what he said, but Graham, _please_."

"Okay, okay. I'm here now."

When he hung up and looked over, Wade was there on the front lawn, walking back and forth on the freshly cut diagonal lines. Graham tugged at his collar, then put his head down and put the screws in, then put the little mail door on, sliding it into place until it clicked. The red flag snapped on next, and he tested it. He stood and shook the entire mailbox with both hands, wobbling it in the stiff ground, before patting it and walking up the driveway.

"You remember that fat kid at St Augustine's? Cody Barnes."

Wade looked up. "Yeah."

"You think you could have handled him alone?"

He shrugged. "Sure. I guess."

Graham slapped the screwdriver handle in his palm several times and went inside. Wade checked the sparse clouds, the angle of the sun, and breathed in deep. Graham came out a minute later, pulling down the front of an old tshirt.

"No point in putting a nice shirt at risk like that," he said.

A car came around the corner, shining under the afternoon sun. The Buick pulled up to the birdhouse mailbox, shifting into park without a bounce. Rudy stepped out and walked up the driveway, rolling his shirtsleeves as he looked at his brothers on the diagonally cut lawn.

"Your lines are bit crooked," he pointed. It said as much as kneeling together over a freshly caught trout.

Wade smiled. "Didn't want to miss out, did you?"

He joined them in the grass, the Chapel boys standing together again, squinting into the sun.

"That's right," Rudy said. "Give that man a pink cigar."

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This book is a work of fiction. All people and places are fictional and any resemblance to any person, alive or dead, is a coincidence.

Copyright 2014 by David Xavier Pico

