Chapter 1

It started out innocent enough. We were drinking beer, like old times, eyeballing each other across the end of a long narrow table in a bar we used to call the "Fist Fight Inn" back before we were old enough to get served there. It was on the sleepy side of noon and most of the chairs were still turned legs up on the table tops. The morning light cut through the dirty wondows, lighting up the dust on the floor and the covered pool table. The place was quiet. I was trying to make Jr. laugh like he used to four years ago. I was looking for some sign of life, anything at all. I wasn't picky.

"So what you been up to?"

"Not a whole heck of a lot."

"Same-o, same-o?"

"Yeah. Sorta."

"So where is everybody?"

"Around."

"Around where? Let's go check 'em out."

"Naaa, they're probably working."

"Then let's go cruise the dual."

"What, in the morning?"

"Yeah, I haven't been up and down that strip in a long time. We used to be up and down that baby twenty times a night. Remember? Come on, man."

"Naaa."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. Let's stay here for awhile."

But he kept on sitting there watching me with that cruising-for-burgers look of his, not saying much, just sitting there. It was like his eyes had receded into his head or something and left him almost too blind to move or do anything more than look at his eyebrows. The more I tried to get him to talk to me the harder time I was having with him. It was getting kinda strained all of a sudden. So to keep from feeling weird about being home and not knowing what to say, I started telling him about the army, and Germany and all, not that he acted like he cared much. But that was Jr. for you, checking me out, suspicious as ever when it came to outsiders. Except I wasn't no outsider. This was a hometown boy.