I saw in my father’s eyes a deep and abiding pain, and understood why he might feel that way. In the church of Don’t Be Like Your Brother, he was a high priest. But what I’d learned from Darzell changed everything I’d once believed about Jason. Three years after the massacre at My Lai, a platoon of U.S. Marines went as war-mad as Charlie Company had at that small village in the Sơn Tinh District of South Vietnam. The village was smaller than My Lai, little more than a clutch of huts gathered along a tributary of the Bến Hải River.

Darzell didn’t know what triggered the slaughter, but Jason and his crew were five miles out of the DMZ when the first body appeared, faceup in the river: a young girl, according to Darzell, a tiny thing, shot four times through the chest. By the time Jason’s gunboat arrived at the village, that platoon of marines had already spread thirty-three bodies along the muddy banks, or left them bobbing like corks in the reeds along the river’s edge. The ARVN troops used the gunboat to carry off what survivors they could find, but for Jason and the master chief, that wasn’t enough. Guns were still firing, people screaming; so they went in alone to stand down an entire platoon of red-eyed, raging marines. Jason took three bullets before the madness broke, and even then beat the commanding lieutenant within an inch of his life.

“We never listened to him,” I said.

“What are you talking about, son?”

“He saved three hundred people that day…”

“A remarkable thing, I know.”

“You didn’t let me finish. He did that remarkable thing, and when he came home hurting, we never listened.”

“Jason didn’t want to talk about the war, not any of it.”

“We didn’t make it easy, though, did we? Mom, like an eggshell ready to break, and you so certain of right and wrong.”

“We did some things wrong, yes. But your brother’s no saint. You can trust me on that.”

“You mean the drugs.” I laughed harshly. “Of course you mean the drugs.”

“Heroin is tearing the city apart. I see it every day. Whatever your brother did in Vietnam, he ended up a user, maybe even a dealer. I can’t condone that. And I can’t have you near it.”

“Whatever your brother did in Vietnam.” I threw the words back. “You talk about a DOD file. Did it include the terms of Jason’s discharge?”