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said yourself you wanted me to help drive home our new morality. Fine. Let me start with him. If it were your brother who Seyss killed, wouldn’t you want to do the same?”
    Jackson’s eyes widened—with anger, surprise, and maybe, Judge hoped, even understanding—then he turned and stalked out of the drawing room. “I’ll be back in a minute, Major. Sit down and try not to make a nuisance of yourself. Bob, come with me.”
     
    J UDGE POURED HIMSELF A GLASS of water from a crystal carafe, then collapsed onto a yellow couch, exhaling deeply. Taking a sip, he could hear Jackson’s and Storey’s voices behind the bedroom doors, raised in a not altogether friendly conversation. A frank exchange of views, the papers would say. He just hoped Storey was arguing in favor of his transfer, not against a court martial. Someplace back there, he’d passed insubordination in a hurry. His only consolation was that Francis would have done the same for him.
    Closing his eyes, he remembered the last time he’d seen his brother. August 2, 1943. Frankie’s departure to England. The two of them saying good-bye, alone among a crowd of ten thousand packed onto Pier 4B at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Francis was wearing a GI’s olive drab fatigues, captain’s bars pinned to one lapel, the Savior’s cross on the other. He was staring at ten days of rough seas, tight quarters, and lousy chow, not to mention the Nazi wolf pack breathing down his neck, and he’d never looked happier.
    “Hey, kid, don’t go being a hero,” Judge said, mimicking Spencer Tracy’s rough-and-tumble voice while patting his brother on the arm. Francis couldn’t get enough of Tracy.
Boys’ Town, Captain’s Courageous, Woman of the Year
—they were his favorite films.
    “That’s God’s decision,” Francis replied stoically, “not mine.”
    “Hey, Frankie, I was joking. Whatcha gonna do, anyway? Throw Bibles at Hitler?”
    Finally a smile. “If it would stop the war a day sooner, I surely would.”
    Francis was taller by four inches and outweighed him by a good seventy pounds. If the Roman Catholic Church had mandated a vow of hunger, he’d have never made it through seminary. Judge came in for a last hug. He kissed his brother’s cheek and let himself be drawn close. He knew he should be the one going. Francis was forty-three years old. He couldn’t see past the hem of his cassock without his glasses, and he cried like a baby at the pictures. This was him all over. Drawing the hardest duty and smiling about it.
    “I love you,” Judge said.
    Francis stared at him long and hard, confused by his brother’s sentiment. The fact was, the two had never been especially close. Too much sermonizing on Francis’s part. He’d been talking fire and brimstone since he was twenty-three and Judge thirteen. Repent all sinners, lest ye be cast into the abyss. Love was couched threefold behind expectation, responsibility, and since Judge’s divorce, indignation. As Jackson had said, he was a “Jezzie.” One of Ignatius Loyola’s Soldiers of Christ. What could you expect?
    “Don’t worry about me, Dev. I’ll be just fine.” And then, as if to prove his point or, looking back, maybe his invincibility, he’d removed the leather lanyard from his neck, yanked off the crucifix and handed it to Judge. “Remember, Dev, the Lord looks after his own.”
    Judge opened his eyes, calling back the photographs he’d seen that morning. Francis lying prostrate in a muddy field, a dozen bullet holes his final benediction. Seyss’s boot in a soldier’s back.
No, Frankie, not anymore he doesn’t. Nowadays, you have to look after yourself
.
     
    J ACKSON AND S TOREY REENTERED THE drawing room an hour later. If a solution had been reached, their grim demeanor gave no clue of it. Judge stood, wanting to make a final plea, but Jackson spoke before he got a chance.
    “Believe it or not, I do appreciate your dilemma. You made a persuasive case for yourself. And if I don’t