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flowed freely made it all the easier. This evening's had been brought by Rudy, three different California Cabernets, to be drunk (naturally) in a meticulously prescribed order.
    By the time the third bottle was opened, Nick, the natural and uncontested focus of family gatherings, was in high gear with reminiscences of his days as a young soldier in the South Pacific—he had illegally joined up at sixteen—during World War II.
    "Then there was this miserable, no-name island in the Solomons,” he was saying expansively, hands clasped behind his neck, “all of about half a mile square, but, God, did the Japanese put up a fight.” He shook his head, remembering, and after half a moment went off on a slightly different tack.
    "We used to do a lot of gambling, you know? Poker, craps...I mean, what else was there to spend your money on? And I had this natural talent I didn't even know I had. I don't have it anymore, but I had it then. Well, a lot of money used to change hands and a few people won big, including me. I had over ten thousand bucks at one point. Well, with everything going on, you'd have to be crazy to carry all that money on you in one place. So we used to split it up and give it to ‘carriers'—these would-be buddies who'd keep it on them for you for fifty bucks a day. So—"
    His blue eyes swung around the table. “Did I ever tell you this story?"
    Maggie laughed affectionately. “Once or twice."
    "You never let that stop you before,” John said, pouring him some more wine. Everybody enjoyed hearing Nick tell his stories. Even Nelson was wearing his pinched smile.
    "Well, I haven't heard it,” Marti said.
    Which was all the convincing Nick needed. “So. This one morning I've got maybe three thousand dollars on me, and another seven thousand split between two carriers, and my unit's out on patrol, and suddenly everything around us is splintering with machine gun bullets. We all jump into the trees and most of us make it, but I see one guy hit in the leg and pinned down behind this tree trunk. Well, I panicked because this is the guy with four thousand dollars of my money. So I make a run for it under fire, I get to him, and I actually make it back with him with my heart in my mouth, and the first thing he says is: ‘You gotta go back. They got Julio too.’ What are you laughing at, John?"
    "I'm out ahead of you, that's all."
    Marti was grinning too. “So am I, I think. Go ahead, Uncle Nick."
    "Okay, you're right: Julio is the other sonofabitch with my winnings. Isn't that something? Two guys get hit, and they're both carrying my money. I practically had a heart attack. Anyway, back I go—by now I have some covering fire—and somehow I get him out of there too. Both of them."
    "Holy moley,” Marti said.
    "Wait for the punch line,” John instructed her.
    "And not only that,” said Nick, who was too good a storyteller to let anyone throw his rhythm off, “but the lieutenant, who didn't know his ass—well, he didn't have a clue, period—he couldn't believe it. He said it was the bravest thing he ever saw. He put me up for the Distinguished Service Cross, and damned if I didn't get it!"
    The telephone chirped just as he got the last words out, and with Marti sitting there laughing helplessly John got up and went to the wall phone in the kitchen.
    "Hel—"
    "John, it's Brenda."
    Her tone snuffed out the last of his own chuckle. “What's wrong?"
    "I just got off the phone with Therese. It's Brian. He's dead."
    * * * *
    His body had been found three days earlier on the mountainous, barely populated island of Raiatea, where he'd gone for his annual camping trip. A pair of backpacking New Zealanders had smelled something unpleasant and had discovered him in a thicket at the foot of a rugged, two-hundred-foot bluff near the base of Mt. Tefatua. According to the police, some of his camping gear had been found on the plateau atop the bluff. Apparently, the police said, he had gotten too near the edge,