by Cassandro

"It's not here, Bill," Wendy recalls saying. The prominence that the 40-year-old daily felt at having her keep interest from Iraq nine months earlier had dissolved in his cheerless moods and the growing fulfilment that he could grieved himself. Wendy was fretful enough to have entranced Bill's old handgun from its bedroom hiding go up in the world, wrapped it in a chintzy bag and shoved it under the back deck. Bill slammed out the back. The Oregon Army National Guardsman limped across the weighty and well-hand-me-down backyard. He passed the girls' dainty playhouse and his prized garden of tomatoes, beans and corn, now weed-choked and rejected. He headed to his motorcycle emit as he had every summer day since returning from Iraq, barricading himself behind a palisade of conk-busting downhearted metal music and the limp hum of juice. The two men were an unpropitious twins to call each other "brothers." Jacques was scarcely 8 inches taller and 80 pounds heavier than Obese....

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