Native Son

He told Lena not to cry and that he'd be okay. "We beat them Iraqi son-of-a-bitches before. The odds of me getting blown away are slim to none."

The Iraqis beat the odds when it came to Corporal Charles Clementine.

It was sleeting like a bitch when Chuck made his last phone call. The cold wind blew through Brett's crumbling old house as he listened to his brother talk. Chuck was a little drunk; it was his last night at Benning before flying out for the war.

You take care of Lena and my boy.

Chuck had no idea Lily was on the way--and he never knew what hit him when the IED blew him in half.

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Brett helped Lena sell her small house, a clapboard fixer-upper on the edge of town. Chuck had made the down payment with his enlistment bonus. No way she could afford it now, not with a job as a receptionist and records clerk at the free clinic. She settled in an apartment not too far from Brett's place.

She spoke little of her lost husband, and refused to display the framed photo of him in uniform--the one with the black ribbon on the frame. Brett had an identical one hanging at the garage.

Lena's fall from the precipice into oblivion was a brief one. She started smoking the crap shortly after Lily was born--her connection courtesy of a patient at the free clinic. She graduated to shooting up soon after.

Jokes about long-sleeved shirts in 98-degree heat and Richie's accounts of "Momma acting funny" never registered--not until Brett called the clinic a few months ago and learned she was sick. He brought a burger from Sonic to her apartment. She loved Sonic burgers--craved them when she was pregnant.

The door was open and nobody answered when he knocked.

Lily lolled on her back in the thrift store-bought pack-n-play in the living room.

"Hey little girl," Brett said, kissing her head. Lily smiled toothlessly. He put the bag of burgers on the dish-strewn counter and walked to Lena's bedroom.

A skinny, pockmark-faced man lay in his underwear in bed beside her, a crack pipe rested on his bare chest. A nude Lena lay on her side, facing the wall.

"What the--?" Brett said, a familiar heat rising from beneath his collar, radiating out his ears and eyes.

"Huh?" the man said, stirring.

Brett grabbed the man by the neck, pulling him out of the bed. He shoved him against the wall and rammed his fist into that pockmarked face until the man's nose burst like a ketchup packet from Sonic under a car wheel.

Lena stirred, rolled over and pointed weakly at Brett. "Brett get out of here," she said.

Resisting the urge to slap the shit out of Lena, he dragged the man outside, threw his clothes after him and crunched the crack pipe under his boot heel.

"If I ever see you again, I'll shove that pipe up your ass before I step on it," he said, slamming the door.

Lily screamed in fright, he picked her up and sat on the battered sofa, his hand throbbing. "It's okay," he said.

You take care of Lena and my boy.

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A few hours later, Lena walked into the living room, naked. Her skin was angry about her arms where the needles met her veins, and there were faint traces of stretching on her navel. The once lovely V of hair between her legs was wild, overgrown and careless. A mat of hair grew on her legs, which were marked with dark green and purple bruises on her inner thighs and knees.