The vein in Jason’s forehead thumped, and his mouth tasted small and sour. He looked away. He didn’t often think about the
day Dad left, mostly because for practical purposes the guy had been gone years before he bothered to move. It was something
that Jason had always sworn to do differently, if he ever had kids.
‘You understand where I’m going?’ Washington’s voice gentler. ‘What I mean by commitment?’
Jason nodded. ‘So what do I do?’
‘Talk to him.’
‘But…’ He fought a twisting in his gut. ‘What do I say?’
‘How should I know, son?’
He found Billy in the dark corner of a sunlit room, laying on the floor with his legs flung out, using a red crayon to draw
on a brown paper bag. His tongue stuck a flicker past his lips, a wet snail. When he heard Jason’s footsteps, the crayon stopped
moving and his body stiffened.
‘Hey, buddy.’
Billy didn’t look up. He pinched the crayon harder, the tip of his finger bloodless, and started stroking fast, hard lines.
Jason took a tentative step forward. ‘What are you drawing?’
Silence. Jason felt an acid shudder in his gut, like he’d put away a pot of coffee. He had no idea what to say to an eight-year-old
who’d lost his father. Hell, he had no idea what to say to an eight-year-old at all. He thought of Michael, could almost conjure
him up amidst the dancing dust motes, his brother shaking his head. Jason sighed inwardly, thought,
Couldn’t I just go back and break into the Disciples drug house again?
But Washington was right. He had to be more than just a soldier.
If only he knew how.
‘Are you mad at me?’ Jason spoke softly. ‘It’s okay if you are.’
Billy hunched further over his drawing.
‘I know how things must seem to you right now. How…’ He faltered. ‘Confused you must be. And sad, too. It’s okay if you feel
like that. It’s normal.’ He tried to do what Washington had said, put himself in the boy’s shoes. At that age, how did you
conceive of death? Did he understand he’d never see his father again? Or was that too big an idea?
Michael.
They would never again sit at the kitchen table drinking coffee through till dawn. Michael would never again greet him with
a smile and a nod and a pint of beer. And Jason would never get to apologize for the way they’d left things, or to thank his
brother for always being there, even during the times they wanted to tear each other’s heads off. Loss was a cold stone aching
in the center of his chest.
How much worse, then, must this be for Billy?
Jason squatted in the sunlight beside his nephew. A neat terminator divided his forearm into sunlight and shadow as he reached
out, touched Billy’s shoulder. Set his hand there, feeling the warmth of the skin, the motion of his breathing. Just held
the moment, the connection, trying to put into it what comfort he had.
‘What’s going to happen?’ Billy spoke to the floor.
Jason sighed.
I don’t know.
‘Things are going to be okay.’
‘How?’ The boy whirled, jerked back from his hand. ‘
How?
’
‘Well…’ The truth was that he had no idea. The
truth was that all he’d done so far was make things worse. The truth was that there were people out there who wanted them
both dead, and Jason didn’t have the first clue how to stop them. But what he said was, ‘I’m going to find the guys who hurt
your dad, and I’m going to make sure that they can’t hurt you.’
‘Then what?’ Billy’s eyes were wide and wet. ‘What happens after that? Where will I live? Do I go to school? What
happens
?’
Jason stared at him. Right, he thought. Sure. The boy was eight. He wasn’t concerned about gangsters. If an adult told him
he was going to take care of something, Billy’d believe it. His grief would manifest other ways: anger, depression, fear of
abandonment. With his father gone, the world he knew had ended.
Of course
Billy was wondering where he would live.
And it was a pretty good question.
Panic flashed through Jason, quick and hot as lightning. The thought had occurred to him a hundred times in the last few days,
and every time he’d shoved it away, told himself he needed to focus on action, on finding out what was happening. But now
it couldn’t be denied any longer.
He was the only family Billy had left, and like it or not, he was responsible for the boy.
Jason felt his chest tighten. He wasn’t ready. Not for anything like it. He could hardly take care of himself. To promise
Billy anything would mean giving up everything. He’d have to make choices about his own life, stick to them. Pretend he was
a sensible adult
with his shit buttoned up, instead of a lost child nursing wounds only he could see, feeding the Worm he claimed to hate.
He cast about for something to say. Looked at the wall, the window, the sun, his eyes dancing. Coming to rest on the drawing
in front of Billy.
‘Can I see?’ He reached for the paper bag, hoping for something to distract him, to distract them both.
The drawing had started simply: a door with a four-panel window on either side, and in front, a lumpy, out-of-scale tree.
The same house drawn by generations of children, the lines rough and hesitant, a kid’s clumsy attempt to conjure something
from his mind.
But darker lines grew out of it. Horizontal and vertical slashes that framed boxes. Each connected, spouting from one another.
Doors between them, and windows. A series of rooms, he realized, like a twisted mansion. Space piling on space, higher and
further. An impossible, unwieldy labyrinth. A sorcerer’s lair. And in the smallest room in a forgotten corner, lost in the
maze, stood a stick figure with big hands and wide eyes.
Jason stared at the drawing, his fingers trembling. Stared at the red world Billy saw himself in. Not just lost.
Alone.
‘I’ll tell you the truth, kiddo.’ He passed the drawing back, then swung his legs out to lay on his belly beside Billy. ‘I
don’t know yet. There will be a lot of
things we have to figure out. But everything will be okay. I promise.’ Realizing, as he said the words, that he meant them.
That he would do what ever it took to make them true.
Billy wiped his nose with the back of one hand, unconvinced. ‘I was scared last night. You didn’t come back.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’ He reached out and picked up the crayon Billy had abandoned, twiddled it idly between his fingertips.
‘I was… well, I was trying to get the bad guys. If I could have, I’d rather have stayed here with you.’
‘You would?’
‘Definitely.’ He nudged Billy with his shoulder. ‘You’re my man.’
They lay there in a silence a moment. The crayon’s tip had been worn to a broad spade, and Jason sharpened it with the edge
of his thumb. The red wax jammed under his nail like blood.
‘Uncle Jason?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Do you need to go to the hospital?’
‘Huh?’ He cocked his eyebrows. ‘Why do you say that, buddy?’
‘My dad said that you were sick.’
‘Sick?’
Billy nodded. ‘He said that when you went to war you were okay, but that you came back sick.’ His eyes were egg whites sizzling
in a pan. ‘I don’t want you to be sick. I don’t want you to die, too.’
Jason stared at him. Opened his mouth, closed it. He could feel the Worm tensing inside of him, like it hoped to burst through
his chest. When he spoke, his voice came out soft and measured. ‘Your dad’s a smart man. I guess I did come back sick. But
it’s not the kind I can die from.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’m not sure how to explain.’ He blew air through his mouth. ‘You know how sometimes you make a mistake and it’s not a big
deal? It’s wrong, but nobody gets hurt. Like when you screw up a homework problem.’
Billy nodded.
‘Well, sometimes you can make a small mistake that
is
a very big deal. It can be something really simple,’ seeing the stranded ambulance, a target under skies of flame, ‘something
that seems like the right thing to do. Except if things don’t go the way you expect, something bad can happen. When it does,
it’s easy to feel like you’re to blame.’
‘Something went wrong?’ Billy’s voice was just a little louder than a whisper.
Martinez clutching his throat, blood squeezing through clenched knuckles.
‘Yeah.’
‘It was your fault?’
‘Well, what went wrong wasn’t my fault.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Billy stared at him. ‘It wasn’t your fault?’
‘Sort of. I made a mistake that let somebody else do something bad.’
Billy wrinkled his brow. ‘But you said you were doing the right thing.’
‘I thought it was.’ Seeing the wounded Iraqi child in the back, his eyes wide and scared. ‘I was trying to save people’s lives.’
‘Did you?’
You killed Martinez
, the Worm hissed in his belly.
You took a twenty-year-old kid off mission against explicit orders, in an area you knew was full of insurgents and snipers.
You killed him.
‘I think we might have,’ he said. ‘But my friend died, too.’
‘That’s why you got sick?’ Billy looked at Jason with the unblinking directness of a child.
‘I –’ He hesitated. Was it? He’d walled this part of himself off for so long. Hadn’t questioned his guilt, hadn’t let himself
even look at it. And now that he did, he found things weren’t as black and white as he pictured. Yes, Martinez was dead. But
soldiers died. It was part of the job description. And dying to save the life of a child, that made you a hero, didn’t it?
Jason pointed at the drawing. ‘Lemme see that again.’
Billy passed it to him, confused. Jason peered at, made a show of holding it close to his face. ‘Yup. I thought so. You’re
missing something.’
‘What do you mean?’
Jason bent over the paper. Drew a vertical line with four diagonals branching off, topped by a circle with a mop of squiggly
lines. A smile and big hands. Passed it back. ‘There, see?’
‘You drew someone with me.’
‘Look familiar?’ He flipped his bangs.
‘Is that you?’ Billy squinted at the stick figures, the tall one standing behind the smaller one, a hand on one stick shoulder.
‘That’s me, buddy.’ He smiled. ‘That’s me.’
Somehow.
I swear to God, somehow that’s going to be me.
Billy stared at the drawing, then back at him. Then he rolled over and threw his thin arms around Jason, squeezing like that
was all that kept him from being swept away.
‘Shhh.’ Jason whispered, little-boy smell strong in his nostrils, sunlight and sweat. A weird blend of emotions shivered through
him: terror, sure, but also resolve. And something else, too. It’d been so long since he’d felt it that he almost didn’t recognize
it.
Pride.
‘It’s okay, buddy.’ Jason paused. ‘Everything is going to be okay.’ He stared at the ceiling, watched dust burn in a beam
of light. Stroked his nephew’s hair and made him promises, realizing that he had no idea how to keep them, knowing he’d give
his life to.
And then he saw something he never expected.
The gun was made of purple plastic, and for a second, even before he remembered what it was and where it came from, Jason
felt it tug at him like gravity.
‘What the…’ He trailed off, looked down at Billy. ‘Where in the world did you get that?’
Billy pulled away, looked up at Jason, then over to the nightstand. ‘Dad gave it to me. I lost it under the bush when I hid,
but yesterday Ronald took me out to look for it.’ He looked suddenly guilty. ‘It’s yours, though, right?’
Jason realized his mouth was open, so he closed it. Stretched for the Transformer, the toy his brother had gotten for Christmas
in 1983, a robot that could turn into a gun. The toy he had lusted after for months, playing with it when Mikey wasn’t looking,
until he’d accepted his brother’s dare to sprint across the El tracks and won it for himself.
It fit his hand so well he wondered if it was why real guns felt like home.
‘It’s… yeah, it used to be mine.’ He found himself smiling. ‘I wonder where it’s been all these years.’
‘It was in the basement.’ Billy wiped his nose on the back of his hand. ‘Dad gave it to me. But you can have it back.’
Jason laughed. ‘No, kiddo, it’s yours.’
Billy took the gun and began idly toying with it, folding and unfolding one component. ‘I wish…’
The beginning of the question made Jason wince, imagining all the things his nephew might be wishing. All the things he had
a right to but could no longer have. In truth, he was scared to even know what the boy had in mind, but if he was going to
be the man in the picture, the one standing by Billy, he may as well start here. ‘What do you wish, buddy?’
‘I wish we’d never gone down there. To the basement.’ Billy spoke to the floor. ‘If we’d left instead, we wouldn’t have been
there. Everything would be okay.’
Jason cocked his head, wondering if he was missing something. Down to the basement, was that code? Then he realized what Billy
was saying,
Wham!
, like a million volts rattling up his spine. Was it even possible? Could it be? ‘Your dad took you into the basement the
day the men came?’
Billy nodded. Jason straightened, put his hands on Billy’s shoulders to stare him in the face. ‘I have to ask you a question.
It’s important. Can you think about it very carefully?’
His nephew nodded.
‘Did he bring anything with him?’ Jason remembering the last time he’d seen Michael, the guy fidgeting with that briefcase,
moving it here and there. Never able to find a spot he seemed to feel comfortable leaving it.
Billy looked up and to the left. His tongue wormed
through his lips as he concentrated. A long moment passed. Then, ‘Yes.’ He brightened like he’d gotten the right answer to
a quiz. ‘He brought a bag.’
‘A briefcase?’
‘Uh-huh.’
Jesus. Could it be that simple? Could Billy have had the answer all along?
Of course he could. All he’d needed was for Jason to be around to ask. Being an uncle had just walloped being a soldier.
Umm, duh
, he heard Michael saying.
’Bout time you pulled your head out of your ass.