“I’m through doing for you. From here on in, if you piss, you clean it up yourself. Get moving.”

“No,” Edgar says.

Jesse yanks his arm, pulling him to his feet. “Strip the bed and put the sheets in the tub.”

“I’m wet,” Edgar wails. “I don’t want Mr. Sanders to see me.”

“Then you best finish before he gets back. You can wash up afterward.”

Edgar tugs half-heartedly at the top sheet. It brushes against him, and he recoils and drops it to the floor.

“What are you, scared of your own water?” Jesse says.

“I hate you,” Edgar says.

“I don’t care.”

“I hate you for throwing my things away, I hate you for getting me hurt last night, and I hate you for putting the Little Devil in me.”

“You must hate Mama too, then, because she’s the one who made me turn you.”

“She didn’t know how it’d be.”

“She knew,” Jesse says. “And she hears everything you’re saying, up in heaven.”

Edgar shouts at the ceiling. “He don’t care nothing about me, Mama, only his little whore Miss Johona.”

Jesse pushes him, sprawling him across the bed. “Shut your mouth, or I’ll rub your nose in your mess.”

“You should never have brought that bitch along,” Edgar says. “It was bad luck. Now I ain’t got my sword, I ain’t got my soldiers, and my best shirt’s ruint.”

Jesse’s anger gets the better of him again. He leaps at Edgar and slaps him across the face.

“You fucking idiot,” he says. “You’d forget to wipe your own ass if I didn’t remind you. I’ve kept you alive for fifty years, but if not for promising Mama, I’d have ended this a long time ago. I’d be at peace, and Johona would be alive.”

“That girl’s cunny made you cuckoo,” Edgar says. “I’m glad she got killed.”

Jesse grabs his brother by the throat and squeezes. Edgar puts up a fight, but Jesse’s hands are wolves’ jaws, his arms iron bars. Edgar’s eyes bulge, and his face flushes crimson as Jesse forces him onto his back. His grip on Jesse’s wrists weakens, and Jesse watches life leaving him like he’s watched it leave hundreds of others. He’s so goddamned tired of death. Right before his brother’s spark goes out, he releases him, and Edgar draws a rattling breath.

Jesse spies Abby sitting in a corner. He scrambles off the bed, gets the cat by the scruff, and carries it to the door.

“No!” Edgar shouts.

Jesse grimaces against the blast of sunlight when he opens the door. He tosses the cat out onto the hot asphalt of the parking lot, where it spins like a dog chasing its tail, yowls and spits, then collapses into a heap of gray dust.