Mike thought she wasn’t afraid at all, that she only said this to make their father feel guilty for going out.

The last shot on the roll was of Mike’s mother aiming the rifle into the camera. Mike thinks he’d like to see those photographs again but they were all burned up in the fire.

75

Mike’s father carried a silver flask and Mike grew up thinking it was not an outlandish thing to do. Engraved on the flask were his father’s initials, which were also Lyle’s initials. Lyle, oddly, had the flask on him when he ran out of the burning house. It traveled to Pine Hill as his sole personal effect. Mike was surprised when Lyle took it out of the bedside table in the hospital.

Mike was visiting less and less because they expected Lyle to be released soon. It was a cold, rainy afternoon and the rain fell in sheets along the windows.

“I said I didn’t want it when he gave it to me,” said Lyle.

“He gave it to you?” Mike was surprised again.

“Just before the fire.”

“Strange.”

“I said he ought to give it to you when you got back.”

“Wrong initials,” Mike said. He was turning the small burnished flask over in his hands.

“He said it didn’t matter.”

Their father, after he took a swig, would twist the cap back onto the flask and return it to his pocket, and then would always slap his hands together, as if he were brushing off a day’s worth of work. But the brothers rarely saw this. Their father was careful about not drinking from it in front of them. Mike didn’t know if their mother had known about the flask at all. Lyle said she knew. They were in on everything together.

Mike and Lyle looked out the window at the rain together, thinking about their parents. The grounds were very well kept, and beyond Lyle’s window they could see New England woods, darker for the rain. Mike tried to hand the flask back, but Lyle wouldn’t take it.

“Keep it,” said Lyle. “Last thing I need in here.”

“He gave it to you.”

“You know how a weeping willow works?” asked Lyle. “They need lots of water, so they grow close to rivers and ponds. The roots work right into the riverbed or whatever. The roots are wild. Apparently if there’s a water pipe nearby they sense the water through the pipe and wrap themselves around it to suck off the moisture. Then you have to dig them up, because eventually they squeeze the pipe so hard it breaks. Or so Jeff the orderly tells me.”

“This is half full,” said Mike, opening the flask. “Have you been drinking this stuff?” he said, smelling it.

“Yeah. It was full when he gave it to me. No one emptied it. Hey, man, what are you doing?”