“I don’t doubt that. You look exactly like him. Come on. Let’s sit. You, too, sweetness.” He winked at Becky, and we followed him past the bar, and into a booth, Becky sitting beside me with Darzell and his father across the table. “You want to talk about Jason, huh? What is it you want to know?”

His eyes had the same cool dispassion I saw sometimes in Jason. Maybe it was a soldier thing or a war thing. “Your mother told us you and Jason trained together.”

“We did.”

“Have you stayed in touch?”

“Your brother’s not really a stay in touch kind of guy.” Darzell flashed four fingers at the bar, and the bartender nodded back.

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“After the ’Nam and before he went to prison. Three years, maybe.”

“Nothing since?”

“Just what’s in the news. I don’t think he killed that girl, though. Don’t get me wrong now. If Jason had cause, he could kill every man in this joint, kill him and him and him.” Darzell stretched an arm across the back of the booth, pointing at random strangers. “But they’d be good, clean kills, and done for cause, nothing like what the papers are saying. Shit…” The big man shook his head, a difficult expression on his face. “Jason mother-effin’ French…”

“You sound angry.”

“Angry? Nah, life’s too short. But the motherfucker should pick up a phone once in a while.” The bartender came with a pitcher of beer and four glasses. Darzell took the pitcher, and started pouring. “Don’t get me wrong, I still love the guy. Hell, worship the guy.” Darzell lifted an eyebrow, and slid a glass of beer to Becky. “You know about the rattlesnake?”

“Your mother told us.”

“Well, that’s a story, and a story’s just words.” He filled two more glasses, passing them around. “You know how hard it is to carry a grown man for three miles, up all those hills and back down, half the time in deep sand? And not some little man, either, but one my size. Three full miles at a dead run. You think on that.” He gave us a few seconds for his words to sink in. “Did my mother tell you why he did it? Because he was my friend, and those other grunts weren’t. You want to understand my feelings for your brother, then you need to feel that.”

He drained his glass, and poured another. “Why are you asking about Jason, anyway? He’s your brother. You know him better than I do.”

I shook my head. “Not since Vietnam.”

“Hey, if Vietnam is the great divide, sign up for the war. It was still there last time I looked.”

“You mentioned the girl in the papers.”

“I did, yeah. And that was some cold, cruel shit.”