What Can I Tell You about My Brother?

Winner of the 10th Annual Playboy College Fiction Contest

The University of Iowa

On his third night home from boot camp my brother killed Rob Dawson's black Labrador retriever with a Phillips-head screwdriver. He'd gone mad, is how he explained it to me later, and his madness had to do with Bethany Anne Armstrong, a beautiful brown-haired junior at Edgewood High School. Before my brother had joined the Marine Corps, Bethany Anne had been his girlfriend. They'd been crazy in love for a year and a half. Then, during his sixth week of training, my brother received a letter that told him Beth now went out with Rob Dawson, the senior quarterback of my football team at Edgewood High. Victor killed the dog in the backyard of the Dawson home, a three-story mansion in Hillside Heights that overlooked our whole sleeping town. He left the body in the lighted blue swimming pool, disappeared under the hedges and didn't come home until the next afternoon.

•

Late that night I heard the chirp of tires through my open window, the idling of a smooth, unfamiliar engine. A car door slammed. I heard footsteps, and then Rob Dawson was screaming at my father through the screen door, banging his hand against the jamb. My father's voice was thick with sleep or drink. I lay in my dark room, ten feet away, underneath my open window.

"You let me talk to Victor!" Rob said, his voice high-pitched and loud. His sneakers scraped on the wooden porch.

"Victor's not home," my father told him. "What the hell is this now?"

"He fucking killed my dog!" Rob threw a fist at the screen so hard it rattled my window. I was sure he'd bust into the house.

"Just settle down!" my father pleaded. "You're wrong here. No. Victor didn't do that."

"Bullshit, man. It was him. I know he's back in town."

Kneeling on my bed then, I peeked out the window. It was dark, but my room looked out on the porch, and I could just make out Rob's face and his blond hair catching yellow light from the porch lamp, shoulders rigid and neck bent forward. I didn't know him well. A sophomore at Edgewood, I was two years younger and had spoken with him only a few times. "Just tell me where the bastard is!" he yelled.

"He's gone," my father said. "Not here."

"I swear I'll kill the son of a bitch!"

Something else was said that I wasn't able to make out, and then Rob stopped shouting, just suddenly. His mouth came open and he stared at my father through the screen.

I realized that my father was crying. "Oh, Lord," he cried. "Oh, my boys."

For a moment, standing in the light, Rob appeared to be unable to move. Then he swung around and ran back to the street, where he got into his Jeep and laid a strip of rubber down the blacktop.

I heard sobbing from the doorway still, a muted noise almost like laughter. Then the screen creaked open and I watched my father step out onto the lawn, where he stood in his bare feet looking slowly up and down our street. After a moment he turned back to the house. There was a time, I knew, when he would have waited for Victor to come home to beat the hell out of him. But he was old now; his heart was bad. There wasn't much he could do.

•

The next day after practice I showered and changed, then went back to the field to look for a lens that had popped out of my glasses during drills. I crawled on hands and knees around the blocking sleds, worried because my father could get ugly about buying new glasses every fucking second if his mood was bad. It was a day of cloudy light that made you squint, October but still warm, and as I searched I couldn't keep from thinking about my brother. I imagined him standing in the dim light up in Hillside Heights, his hair shaved off for the Corps, fists clenched and darkened with blood.

I was still looking when Rob Dawson came out of the locker room, shirtless, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. I'd seen him in practice earlier and had been afraid of what he might do, but our eyes had not met then. I'd gotten the feeling he wanted to avoid a confrontation. Now he came down the asphalt strip that led to the practice field, right toward me. He stopped a few yards off, stared at me, then looked away at the high clouds scattered to the west, picking at a scab on his elbow. "What are you doing?" he asked. My voice cracked as I explained.

Rob nodded. He started to search for the lens, not on all fours but bent over just slightly, his hair still wet and combed back in rows.

"It's no big deal," I said. "I can find it." I wanted him to leave.

Rob bent down and parted the grass with his fingers. The lens winked in the sun as he held it up.

"Oh, man," I said. "Thanks, I guess."

Rob tossed me the lens, then sat down on the grass beside me. He didn't smile. On his face was his usual expression--a faint smirk, almost nothing at all.

It would have been awkward to leave at that point, though it was definitely what I wanted to do. The day had gone on too long. All day people who had heard about what happened had stared at me as if I'd killed Rob's dog myself.

Rob plucked grass with his fingers, seeming to find interest in something behind me. After a while I turned to see what was there--only the goalposts and a line of oleanders--and when I turned back Rob's eyes had gone narrow and were fixed on me. "So, what can you tell me about your brother?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

Rob tossed a pinch of grass to the wind. "So far I've only heard he's an asshole," he said. "And I've got every reason in the world to believe it." He frowned and looked away for a moment, then looked back, his eyes surprisingly calm. "What I want to know is if there's anything good about him. Most of the time there's something-- some good thing--about everyone."

I nodded, turning the lens in my fingers. Rob kept his eyes on me, serious, waiting. There were good things, I knew that, but there were bad things too. My brother had beaten me up and embarrassed me, had done things that would have made me hate him if he were anyone else. But he had also protected me. He was my brother, and what I felt was complicated. I had no idea how to explain it, especially to a guy whose dog he had killed.

"He's an asshole," I said finally, just wanting to leave.

Rob nodded. Then he stood up and brushed dead grass from his Levi's. "That's too bad," he said. "Come on. I'll give you a ride home."

"All right," I said.

But as soon as I said it I wished that I hadn't.

•

When I was 12, and my brother 15, I knocked the iron off the ironing board and burned a hole in the carpet, and my father completely lost his head. Holding me down, he touched the iron to the back of my neck, blistering the skin. I ran out into the empty street, screaming, and saw curtains part in the houses all around. After a moment my brother came out the front door, leaving it wide open, his arms full of bottles as he walked with determination across the lawn. "OK, now," he said to me. "OK." As he set the bottles on the side-walk one of them broke and he said, "That's my point. Right there's my point." He grinned, his eyes small and strange. Then he picked up a bottle and threw it end over end so it shattered against the side of our brick house.

He handed one to me. "Do it, bro," he said, nodding with his long dark hair in his face. I threw the bottle. When it exploded against the carport, Victor laughed crazily. My father came into the doorway in his work clothes, navy blue Dickies and steel-toed boots, looking suddenly old and frail. He nodded, then went back inside. Victor kept handing me bottles. I couldn't stop laughing, though I was crying still. Wiping a forearm across his face, Victor said, "Yeah, bro! Do it! Do it!"

This might have been the kind of thing that Rob wanted to hear--a good thing about my brother. But I didn't think he would understand it. I kept it to myself as we walked across the parking lot.

•

The inside of Rob's Jeep looked as if it had never been spilled on. Leather smell came from the upholstery and the clash was shiny black. I wondered if Rob would ask for directions, and hoped he would, hoped we could pretend he had not been to my house the night before. But he drove east down Benlow Drive, toward the poorer section of town, without speaking. Rob lived exactly the other way. If you looked you could see his house in a cluster on the wooded hill behind us-- Hillside Heights, brown and white squares between the oak trees.

"I watched you in practice today," Rob said. "You run a quick pattern. You should get some playing time."

"No," I said, "I don't think so." I was one of the fastest players on the team, it was true, but I was only a sophomore, and small, a second-string flanker brought up from JV.

We came to a red light and Rob looked at me. Behind him were the wrecking yards--rusting cars stacked in tows. "How would you like to get in the game against Galt on Friday night?" he asked.

"How?"

"Don't worry about that." The light changed and he accelerated through the intersection.

"I don't know," I said. I hadn't expected anything like this. Galt was our biggest game of the season, both teams coming in undefeated. I didn't want Rob to do me any favors. Still, I wanted to play, I knew that much. "I'd like that, I guess."

"I bet," Rob said, adjusting himself in the seat.

I looked out the window at the empty lots where Indians sold painted pottery and statues. Then we came into the rows of flat houses. We passed the street where Bethany Anne lived with her mother and her stepfather, who worked at the paper mill where my father had been a lineman before his heart attack. Rob looked down the street as we passed. A police car was angled in front of one of the houses.

"Did you wonder why I didn't call the cops?" Rob asked.

"I didn't know you didn't."

"That's not how I do things," he said. He gave me an even, arrogant look. But then his face went soft and he glanced away, holding tight to the steering wheel. He seemed less confident now, and that made me nervous for some reason. I got the idea he was thinking about his dog.

"I'm sorry it happened," I said.

"Hey," Rob said. "This is not your problem, all right?"

I nodded, though I couldn't help thinking it was my problem, that I had to share the blame in some way, though I didn't know how or why. We were turning onto my street and I looked out the window again, at yards with cars on concrete blocks, toddlers in their underwear playing on the sidewalks.

And that's when I saw my brother. Victor lay on a towel on our yellow front lawn, bare-chested and wearing cutoffs. Rob saw him too, and cocked his head up like a startled animal.

"All right," Rob said, and pulled the car to the curb. "Here we go now." When he had come to a stop he looked at me, a strange expression on his face. He was almost smiling, but there was tension at the corners of his eyes. "If you think I know what to do here, you're wrong," he said, and pulled the brake handle back. "I haven't decided anything." He got out of the Jeep slowly, walked around the front and paused there for a moment. He banged his palm once on the metal hood, staring at my brother. "OK, fucker, let's go," he said. And then he bolted into the yard. I got out of the car and froze with my hand still on the handle.

My brother was not quite standing when Rob hit him the first time, on the temple. He ducked away and lifted his hands to his head like horse blinders, and Rob popped him again. Victor, still hunched over, tried to swing his back around, but Rob was moving quickly, staying in front. He shuffled with his legs spread, rotating his chest to swing with both hands, and I heard the sound of the punches--dull thuds at the back of my brother's neck and shoulders. I was about ten yards away. (continued on page 122) What Can I Tell You?(continued from page 118) My brother was bigger than Rob and had been in a lot of fights, but he wasn't even trying. He slumped around, and his head jerked down each time Rob connected.

"Fight me!" Rob said. He tried to lift my brother, his fingers going into Victor's face. "Fight me, you lame fucker!"

Victor pulled away and stood up straight, taking a step backward. He sucked in air, his hands held up as if surrendering. Then he shot me a nervous glance and turned back to Rob. "Fuck it," he said, "hit me." A line of blood came down from his eyebrow and his eyes shifted quickly. With his hair shaved off, he looked ridiculous somehow. His head was too small and his nose too long. And then he started coughing and couldn't stop. He bent over with his fist at his mouth. It was depressing.

Rob stared at him for a moment, then backed away, panting. He leaned over, hands on his knees. "You're an asshole," he said. "Everyone's told me that, even your brother here."

I turned my head as Victor looked at me. A few houses down a lady in a yellow sundress peered at us, holding a hose over her dead lawn.

"You're pathetic," Rob said. He looked at Victor closely, as if to make sure he'd heard what he said. "Do you have anything to say for yourself? Huh?"

"I don't," my brother said.

"Is something just the matter with you?" Rob said. "Are you completely fucked-up?"

My brother closed his eyes and opened them again.

Rob made a noise then--"Hah!"-- just a small laugh that got out of him. He looked at me, shaking his head. Then he turned and walked across the lawn. He got into his Jeep, which was still running, and drove off looking straight ahead. I watched him disappear around the corner.

"Jesus, Tommy," Victor said, almost whining. "I really needed that." I was afraid he might start to cry.

"I didn't think you'd be here," I said.

"You brought him home," he said.

"You brought him right to our house." And, letting himself fall onto the towel, he buried his face in his hands. He coughed again, just once. We were both quiet for a while. I looked up and saw a jet pulling a line of white across the sky.

Then, holding his arms out and attempting to smile, Victor said, "Check out this tan." His arms, face and neck were brown, while the rest of him was bone white. Blood was drying on his collarbone. "It's embarrassing."

I didn't say anything.

Victor said, "Tiny O'Smallessey here."

This was an inside joke between us, from when we were kids. To be Tiny O'Smallessey was to be as low as you could be. Victor looked at me and the weak smile dropped from his face. "You probably think I'm crazy," he said.

"I think you're stupid."

"Fair enough," he said, nodding. "I'll catch shit for it, though. More shit."

"He didn't call the cops," I said. When Victor looked at me I said, "He told me that."

He nodded again, looking unrelieved. "He should have." Then he narrowed his eyes and said, "Do you think it's something I don't feel bad about?"

"You probably do," I said.

"Would you believe it was like something I couldn't control?"

"I don't know what I'd believe."

"That's how I'd describe it," he said, "something I couldn't control. Though it seems like bullshit, even to me."

It seemed it to me, but I didn't say so. I sat down beside him.

In the west the clouds had come together and stood there like a dark gray mountain. The air was wet and getting colder. My brother told me what had happened, that he had gone to Rob's house with a screwdriver and a bucket of sand to sabotage the pool pump. But when he got there the idea suddenly seemed pointless. The houses on the hill were so big, the people in them had so much money, that they could just have the pump fixed and be swimming the next day if they wanted. You would have to do something serious to get to them, is what he thought. In boot camp he'd heard about North Vietnamese soldiers leaving the bodies of babies outside fortified U.S. camps, to break our soldiers down mentally. "I don't know," he said. "I saw the dog, you know? He was barking and making a lot of noise. Something clicked in me. At some point I realized what I was doing, but by then he was already dead. I was just crazy. I was crazy, Tommy, the whole time, I swear. When I put the dog in the pool I felt almost like me, but I still wasn't quite me." He looked up. "Do you have any idea what I'm talking about?"

"I wish I did," I said. "But then again I'm glad I don't."

"Yeah, right," he said. "Bingo."

•

At practice on Thursday coach Harding worked me in with the first-string offense in scrimmage, but I was nervous and bobbled passes. Everyone had a reason to be mad at me. If it wasn't because I was a sophomore taking playing time from a senior, it was because of what my brother had done. The defense knew which plays we would run before we ran them, and was supposed to compensate by not going full-out. But on four straight slants I got my clock cleaned. After knocking the wind out of me, Tim Zucher pointed at Rob and said, "That one was for you, buddy."

Rob pretended not to hear him.

In the locker room Rob avoided me, but he caught up to me in the parking lot. "Don't worry about today," he said. "You'll be fine tomorrow night."

"I got killed," I said.

"Don't worry about that," Rob said. "You can take it."

I touched a rib that felt broken. "Oh, fuck you, man," I said.

•

Victor wasn't around when I got home that night. My father was watching a hockey game in his bedroom, and I sat on the couch in the living room, going over my playbook. My father and I never talked much anymore, which was the way both of us sort of wanted things. We had fallen into that routine after his heart attack.

As I studied I worried about Victor--thinking of him out somewhere with his stupid haircut, schizo, doing God knows what. It made it hard to concentrate. After a while a pizza man came to the door and my father went out and paid him, then took the pizza into his bedroom. Twenty minutes later he came back and dropped half of it on the coffee table.

"Where's Victor?" I asked

"How the hell do I know? Isn't he gone back already?"

"Not till tomorrow."

He shrugged. Then he looked down at me, arching his eyebrows. "Listen," he said, "is he in some kind of trouble now? There was a kid came by the other night looking for him, looked like he meant to give Victor a hard time."

"I'm not sure," I said.

"This kid was nuts," my father said, shaking his head. "I told him to get the hell out or I'd bust him a new hole."

"I don't know," I said. "I haven't (continued on page 158) What Can I Tell You (continued from page 122) heard anything about that."

My father stared down at me, knowing I was lying, probably, "All right," he said. "You hear anything, though, you let me know. All right?"

"All right." I went to the kitchen for some paper towels and he followed me with his eyes. "Hey, I'm watching the Kings," he said, jerking a thumb behind him, "if you're interested. They look good this year. They're beating the crap out of San Jose."

"I've got to study my plays," I said. "I'm going to get into the game on Friday." As soon as I said it I wished I hadn't.

My father smiled, suddenly awkward. "That right?" he said. "Hey, that's great." He looked like he meant to say something else, rubbing his palms on his robe. Then he turned and went back to his bedroom and closed the door, and I heard the noises of the hockey game.

•

Victor came home the next afternoon, when I was there to pick up my playbook. His clothes were a mess and there were bags under his eyes. There was a dark line over his eyebrow where he had been cut in the fight with Rob.

"Where have you been?"

"Out," he said. "But I've got to get to the bus station now."

My father was asleep in his bedroom. Victor hurried to his room to change into his uniform, and when he came back I found my father's keys and we walked out to the truck.

It was a crisp day, the sun cool and white. We drove through town and out Willowpass Road, which led to Downy and the bus station there.

"So where did you go last night, anyway?" I asked him.

Victor laughed, more relaxed now in the truck. "Nowhere," he said. "Well, actually, right up this road here. I hitchhiked. I got a ride halfway to Downy and then changed my mind."

"You walked back?"

"This morning," he said. "Last night I slept in a field. It was funny in a way. Hey, do you remember when we went out and looked for that boy who was lost?" He glanced at me.

Before Victor left for the Marines he, Bethany Anne and I had joined a search party to help find a Cub Scout who had wandered away from his pack in some nearby woods. We spent a couple of days searching around Turlock Lake, finding nothing but pieces of bleached driftwood that looked like bones. Eventually, after Victor had left, the boy's body was found washed up on the shore of a river.

"Did you ever hear what happened to that kid?" my brother asked.

"He was all right," I said. "They found him." I was surprised to hear myself say that.

"They did," Victor said, and nodded. "OK, good. I never knew."

We went past rolling hills dotted with oak trees. Up ahead was something on the side of the road, and seeing it my brother leaned forward. "What's that?" he asked.

"No idea."

But when we got closer I saw what it was: a formation of river rocks, set back in a field--a perfectly symmetrical pyramid shape, standing about as high as a man. "Look at that, Tommy, will you?" Victor said. He seemed excited, happy, looking at the rocks, which were all gray and about the size of grapefruit. "Somebody built that, you know?" He glanced at me wondrously. "Imagine doing something like that. That's a job I think I could handle."

We passed it and I watched it get smaller in the rearview mirror.

"You haven't told me much about the Marines," I said.

And Victor didn't look happy anymore, just that quickly. He stared out the window, where the trees had broken to a stretch of green river. "There are some tough motherfuckers. Real tough."

"Do you like it, though?"

"You just deal with it, you know?" He glanced at me. "I don't like it, though, no. I fucking hate it." He tugged at his bottom lip. It seemed he was trying to figure something out, something complicated. "They've got this thing that messes with your head," he said, "where they'll punish everyone in the unit every time you fuck up. You know me, right? I'm a fuckup, I admit it. But I'll pull some bullshit thing, mouthing off or slacking or just doing something wrong by accident, and then suddenly everyone's doing squat-jumps on my behalf. I don't have many friends there, to tell the truth. I'm not a very good Marine." He looked at me seriously. "Though I wish I was. I'd like to be."

We were coming into Downy, past streets of white houses with leaves in the yards, then into the downtown area. I felt like I should say something else, something reassuring, but nothing came to mind. We didn't speak again until we pulled up beside the bus station.

"Well," I said, "good luck, I guess. What is it--Christmas? You'll be back at Christmas?"

He nodded, opening the door. But then he let it close again. "Hey," he said, "how has Dad been lately?"

"All right, I guess."

He looked at me seriously, almost as if he were angry. "How has he been, though, I mean. With you."

"All right," I said. "No big problems."

"OK, good." Then, opening the door again, he set his duffel bag on the sidewalk. He got out, shut the door behind him and leaned in the window, grinning. "I used to always ask you to show me your muscle, remember? To flex? And now it's actually pretty big." He shook his head. "I never thought it would be, for some reason."

"It's not that big."

"It's not bad," he said. "Man, I wish I could watch you play tonight."

"Me too. I'm starting."

"I didn't know that," he said. But he was distracted, looking around the inside of the truck, at the metal dash and the overflowing ashtray, the beer cans scattered on the floorboards. He turned and glanced behind him, his elbows still on the door--there was an old man eating an apple in the bus station doorway, a woman tugging a child along. Then he looked right at me, and his eyes struck me in a way that was strange. He had come back to a place where his girlfriend was no longer his girlfriend, and had completely lost his head. But now he didn't want to leave. I thought he might get back in the truck and make me drive him home. But he turned and slouched away, his duffel bag slung over his shoulder. And as he disappeared into the station I watched him, his head so unfamiliar with the new haircut that he could have been someone else entirely.

•

At the postgame party at Missy Gumble's all the people who had been mad at me were suddenly my friends. We had beaten Galt by 14 points and I'd had six receptions, one of which I'd turned into a touchdown. I drank beer standing by a wall, and people came up and talked to me. Missy lived in Hillside Heights, four houses from Rob Dawson, and mostly there were seniors at the party, 30 or so, almost all Hillside people.

Rob stumbled across the shiny wooden floor with a cup of beer in his hand. He was with Bethany Anne, who wore his blue-and-white letter jacket draped over her shoulders. At first, Beth seemed frightened to see me--she glanced away at a group of people standing in the kitchen. But when she turned again I smiled and she smiled back. "Hi, Tommy," she said.

"Beth," I said. "Hi. How have you been?"

She bit her upper lip and nodded. "OK," she said. She folded her thin arms under Rob's jacket. "Not bad."

Rob leaned into me. "I was right about you," he said, and wagged his head. "How does it feel to be a starter?" He was drunk and had asked me that already on the ride over.

"All right," I said.

"That's right," he said. "Stick with me, Pendcrest. You'll go places." Grinning, he draped an arm around Bethany Anne's shoulders and said, "Look at Beth here. Where do you think she would be if she hadn't met me?"

"What do you mean?" I asked, though I knew what he meant. He meant she would still be going out with my brother. It gave me an idea about how Rob liked to think of himself--as someone who helped people less fortunate than he was. But I didn't like to think of him helping me in that way, and I don't think Bethany Anne did either. She pulled away from him and he followed her, saying, "What? What?"

"Where's Tommy Pendcrest?" Tim Zucher said behind me. He stood by a glass table with a group of other seniors. Looking right at me he said it again, winking, then glanced around as if he couldn't find me. He held a bottle and a shot glass. I walked over and Tim filled the glass, spilling a lot on his hands and the table. "All right, you tough little fucker," he said, handing it to me. I had to turn my head and close my eyes after I'd drunk it.

I wandered away, feeling heat in my face and sweat breaking out at my hairline. There was a crowd waiting for the bathroom by the kitchen, so I found another one on the second floor. The window by the toilet looked out on the backyard, and as I peed I stared out at the lighted pool. Groups of people milled around it, floodlights lighting up a patch of lawn. As I looked I imagined a dead black dog, a dark thing on the glowing blue water.

Below me, people were talking. Rob and Bethany Anne and a few others had gone outside and were standing beside the pool underneath the window. I saw the tops of their heads, all of them holding beer cups, the pool light casting wavy lines across their faces. Carl Mathers came out of the house with a jug of wine and joined the group. "So, Rob," he said, "that fucker go back to the Army?"

"Today," Rob said.

"Man," Carl said, and shook his head, "I'd have fucked him up big time. Somebody messes with my dog. . . ."

"I fucked him up a little," Rob said. "But I don't know." He held his cup close to his chest and looked like he was concerned about something. "I can't waste my time with that shit. The guy's a psycho."

"Got that right," Carl said. "Fucking nutcase." Then he looked at Bethany Anne, smiled and said, "Oh, sorry, Beth."

People laughed.

Bethany Anne made embarrassed glances, and tried to laugh, smoothing down the front of her sundress. "God," she said. "Would it be possible to talk about something else now? Anything?"

I leaned back from the window, my face going hot as if someone had seen me. I had a strange feeling go through me then. It felt something like homesickness, though I didn't want to go home. I just wanted to leave. I opened the bathroom door and walked downstairs, where I stole a brass lighter from a coffee table and went out the front door.

•

Outside, to the side of the driveway, an ivy-covered hill led up ten yards to a line of bushes, and I climbed up and stood at the top, looking down at our town and working the lighter. It was cool out and you could see everything from the hill--downtown and Edgewood High, the paper mill and the park several blocks to the west. I saw the houses of Concord Flats and tried to pick mine out. A full moon shined through clouds, lighting the oak-covered hills.

After a while I started down Hillside Drive toward home. In the house next to Missy's a man stared at me through a second-story window and I stared back, walking, until he went away.

Rob Dawson's house was coming up on the right, all the windows dark, his Jeep parked in the circular drive. Around the side of the house I saw someone in the shadows peeing on a tree, and I knew immediately it was my brother. He tried to duck behind the tree, but when he saw who I was he stepped into the light. He was still wearing his uniform, but it was wrinkled around the crotch and knees. "I just ended up here," he said. "It's not like I have a plan or anything."

"What about the Marines?"

"Well, I'm AWOL," he said, and shrugged. "Probably be in deep shit when I go back. I saw you play tonight, though." He gave me an uneasy smile. "I went to the game and you were great. I was, you know, impressed."

"Thanks," I said.

He cocked his head in the direction I'd come from. "Were you just at that party?"

I didn't say anything.

He nodded. I waited for him to ask if Bethany Anne was there, but he didn't. "I don't know what I'm going to do," he said. "Seems like I should do something, you know? I keep having this crazy feeling that I'm forgetting something."

"It's not crazy," I said.

He laughed and shook his head. "I don't know, man," he said.

We went to the curb in front of Rob's house and sat down with our feet in the gutter. It made me nervous to be there. Victor jerked around suddenly, looking up at Rob's house as if he'd heard a noise from there--the house big and dark, brown bricks and a green metal roof that curled around the edges. "Did you used to think she was in love with me?" he asked, turning back around. "Back when we were together?"

"I thought so," I said, "yes."

"Yeah," he said. Scraping his boots on the blacktop, he pulled his knees in close to his chest. "Like, I think about when Dad was in the hospital and she would go with me to visit him every day. I probably thought more about her than Dad then, which sounds terrible. But I thought about the way things would be with her and it seemed like we would be together, you know, for the rest of our lives. It didn't seem crazy to think that."

"It wasn't crazy," I said.

"I know it's not true, though, now," he said. "I can realize that." He turned away, toward the houses on the other side of the street. "I do want to do something," he said. "I feel like there must be one thing that if I could just think of it, you know?"

"There's nothing," I said. "Doing things is what gets you in trouble."

"True," he said, nodding. "I know. You're right."

We sat quietly for a few minutes. The air had gone thick and dusty in a way that let me know it would rain soon. A car drove by slowly, sweeping us with its headlights. I heard a noise and looked up the hill, where a couple was walking down the sidewalk toward us. I realized with a surge of panic that it could be Rob and Bethany Anne, coming back to Rob's place, though the light was too dim to see well. I stood. "Let's go," I said. "Let's get out of here."

"Right," Victor said. He nodded but stayed where he was. Then he glanced beyond me, narrowing his eyes up the sidewalk. "Jesus, that's them, isn't it?"

"I think so," I said. "Let's just go."

"Jesus, Tommy."

The couple came under the glow of a streetlight, and I saw that it was them. Rob noticed us and stopped. Bethany Anne took two more steps, then looked down at the sidewalk and off to the side, down the hill at where the lights of our town spread out in the valley. She looked frightened.

My brother stood up.

"What the hell's going on here?" Rob asked. He was far enough away that he had to speak loudly, though I could see him well. He stood with his legs apart, holding a plastic cup in his hand.

"Nothing," I said.

Victor leaned in close to me so that I felt his breath on my neck. He whispered, "I've got to talk to Beth."

"You can't," I said.

"Yes, Tommy," he said, "yes."

"What are you two saying?" Rob asked. "What's going on there?"

"Nothing," I said. I glanced at my brother. "He wants to talk to Bethany Anne."

"Oh, Jesus," Rob said. He glared at Victor. "Look, I don't even know what you're doing here. I can't believe I'm seeing you now. You think I'm going to let you talk to Beth? That's bullshit."

"Let me?" Victor said, and took a step forward. "Hey, Beth, can I talk to you, please?" His voice was high-pitched and strained. "I mean it, Beth."

Bethany Anne gave him a pained look, then let her eyes fall down to the sidewalk.

"She doesn't want to," Rob said. "You can see that, right?"

"She does too," Victor said. "Yes. She does." He glanced at me. He looked panicked and that made me afraid. At that moment I would have done anything to make him stop talking, to make him turn around and walk home with me. It seemed almost like he was waiting for me to do that.

"Victor," I said.

But he surprised me. Taking another step toward Bethany Anne he smiled in a natural way that put me at ease. "Hey, Beth," he said. "Come on now. Don't treat me like I'm Tiny O'Smallessey, OK?" He laughed.

I didn't think Beth would know what Victor was talking about, but when I saw recognition flash across her face I realized he must have told her about it. She gave Rob a questioning look and said, "I should talk to him."

Rob blew out an ugly laugh. He was angry in a way I'd never seen him before. "Talk to him then," he said. He took a sip of beer, stepped onto the lawn and walked down toward me.

Victor jogged up to Bethany Anne. I heard him say something quiet, laugh and then say, "OK, I'll make it simple." He stood with his back to me in front of Bethany Anne, so we couldn't hear what he was saying.

Rob was beside me now. "What's the story, Pendcrest?" he asked.

I shrugged.

"Fine," he said, and turned away. "I'll tell you this, though. You better get your priorities straight, my friend."

I suddenly felt a little sorry for him. He had helped me out by getting me some playing time, and now he felt like I had betrayed him, which wasn't true, really. But I knew that if it ever came down to a choice between my brother and someone else, I would always choose my brother, because doing otherwise would be like not choosing myself. I didn't think Rob could understand that, and it seemed like he could be hurt by not understanding it.

Above us Bethany Anne said, "Oh, no, Victor," and Rob and I glanced up at her. She was smiling, looking down at my brother's hands, which he held in front of him where Rob and I couldn't see them. It seemed as if he were holding something there, but I couldn't be sure. The two of them laughed.

"What a joke," Rob said. "This is idiotic." Throwing his cup of beer on the lawn, he said, "Beth, I'm going inside," and started toward the door.

Then Victor was finished talking and was coming down the sidewalk, grinning, and Bethany Anne was walking across the grass to catch up with Rob. She said goodbye to me and I turned and waved. Rob opened the front door and she followed him inside.

•

"What happened?" I asked after the door had closed.

"It went well," Victor said. He nodded thoughtfully and we walked down Hillside Drive. "It went pretty good."

"What did you say?"

"Well, I told her I was sorry about what I did to that dog," he said. "Jesus, Tommy, that wasn't easy. For a minute I thought she was going to cry." Victor shook his head. "But she didn't. She knows me pretty well. She said she thought I must have just been crazy at the time, which is exactly how I told you it happened. Then I asked if it was all right to keep writing her when I got back to the Marines, and she said she didn't mind, though she thought it wasn't a hot idea to think about her too much."

"Probably it's not," I said.

"Not that I can help it," he said, and smiled. "I don't think she likes Rob all that much."

"Why not?"

"I don't know," he said.

We walked until we came to the point on Hillside where it curved around and heads down to town, and then Victor stopped. There were no houses along the street here, just scrub brush and a few oak trees. It was dark. Victor dug into his pants pocket and pulled something out, something small and silver, and held it in his hands. It was a little snub-nosed revolver with a pearl handle. "Then I asked her if she wanted this back," he said.

"Jesus, Victor," I said. "Where did you get it?"

"Beth gave it to me." He smiled, holding the gun on his flat, open palm. "She stole it from her stepdad's dresser before I went to the Corps." He laughed. "Don't look so surprised."

I took the gun and held it, heavy and warm, in my own hand, then gave it back to Victor. I wondered what Rob would think about this, about Bethany Anne stealing a gun from her stepfather.

Victor had walked a few paces off the street into the scrub brush. "Here," he said, waving me over, "I want to show you something else." He dug into his pocket, and came out with a bullet, which he loaded into the pistol. "This is something Beth and I used to do out at Turlock Lake," he said, and looked at me. Then he turned his back, brought his arm out full extension and aimed at the moon. "Shoot the moon," I heard him say softly. He pulled the trigger. The gun put out a burst of fire and made a huge crack that rang through the valley.

"Jesus, Victor."

Victor turned and gave me a look that was deadly serious. "She heard that," he said. "She'll know what I did here." Then he looked up the street, grinned and said, "We better blaze."

"Oh, man," I said. We took off. Lights came on in houses all around us, making my heart pound, but soon we were so far away that I didn't worry about getting caught anymore. A light mist had started, wetting my face and hair and brightening in cones under the streetlights. I heard my brother laugh and it made me feel good. I felt close to him in a way I hadn't felt for a very long time. I felt I understood something about him, or at least about why the things Rob tried to do for Bethany Anne and me could never have the same effect as what my brother had just done. But that would have been hard to explain. I couldn't explain it to Rob, I knew that. I had nothing against Rob--he tried to help people, which was right--but there seemed to be a lot he could never understand.

I didn't think he'd understand, for example, why I would laugh, running down a hill in the rain, after my brother had done something as dangerous and stupid as shooting a gun at the moon. But I did laugh. I laughed so hard my side ached. Both of us did. I felt so good, in fact, getting wet and closer to home, that I had to remind myself--and it was like a shock, like getting bad news--that I didn't even want to go there.

Rob tried to lift my brother, his fingers going into Victor's face. "Fight me, you lame fucker!"

The second-place winner of this year's College Fiction Contest is Steve Lattimore of the University of Iowa. Third-prize winners are John Hodges of Florida State University, Cortright McMeel of Columbia University and Sidney Thompson of the University of Arkansas.