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his front shirt pocket, rubs his fngers along the creased edge. "I'll put my fnger on the trigger and everything. I just need you to pull it." "Jesus, Jack. I'm not doing this," I say. I run my fngers through my hair and look up toward the cloudless sky, an expanse of stars stretched in a panorama above our heads, above our souls. Does God ever regret us? I think. "John, I just . . ." Jack starts. His voice trails away. "I mean, what would this do to Lisa?" I say. "You know she'd blame herself, right? It's not fair, Jack." He clambers of the swing and leans close to my face. "Ten you tell me what is fair, John," he says. "Is cancer fair? Are my eyes fair?" He grips the barrel of the gun and forces it up toward the underside of his chin. "Is it fair that Tyler's not here anymore?" I pull down, but the gun keeps rising. I can't be sure if he's out-muscling me or if I'm willing this to happen. "I'm not part of this, Jack. I'm not gonna help you here." Jack clenches my fst against the gun, pulls me close. His hot breath foats across my ear. "Do it for Tyler," he whispers. And just like that, I fnd my fnger trembling against the trigger. T he waning July sun had begun its descent, resting on the treelined horizon. My three-year-old boy crouched down and used an oversized baseball mitt to dig for bugs in the cracked dirt, the dust of the earth speckled on his bare torso like paint splatter. He had begged for a baseball birthday party, and that's what he got. "C'mon, Jack," said Lisa. "You're up!" Jack sat alone on the community park bleachers eating marbled birthday cake and drinking hard cider. He had learned only a week before that his vision in his right eye wasn't going to come back, and that soon the left eye would be fading. He watched as we played a disorganized game of tee ball with Tyler and his friends. "I'm good over here, thanks," said Jack. He took a messy swig from his cider, which made him look as lonely as he felt. "Oh no you don't, buddy," I said. "You promised." Te kids had lost interest in the game and were zigzagging between the bases in no particular order. Jack was an old college baseball star, even spent a while playing for a triple-A team in Toledo. Lisa had promised Tyler that his Uncle Jack would knock a few out of the park. "Of course I didn't promise. She promised." He motioned over to Lisa. She was chasing the kids from base to base with her glove extended to tag them out. Somehow every one of them made it safely to the bag, just barely evading her touch at the last moment. She threw her glove in the air in defeat. I watched in wonder as she spread joy and surprise like a magic trick, and I couldn't believe she was mine. She made a show of collapsing to the ground, the kids pouncing on her from every side. I watched Tyler scramble to the top of the pile, his auburn curls slipping out from under my old Red Sox cap. His smile was a poem, his eyes blue freworks stretched across the orange-red dusk. I walked over to the bleachers and swiped the cider from Jack's hand. I knelt close to his good eye and talked to my big brother the way he had talked to me all the years before the cancer. I told him that we didn't feel sorry for him, that I was never going to cry because my big brother couldn't see me anymore. I said I would never clean up after him when he went completely blind, and I would never miss an opportunity to pick on him for wearing mismatched socks. I whispered that he'd better get used to doing party tricks at my kid's birthdays, because until the cancer buried him, he was going to be Uncle Jack the hero, whether he liked it or not. I told him I loved him, and I told him to go hit the damn baseball while he could still see one. "Do it for Tyler," I said. Do it for Tyler. I handed him the Louisville Slugger that Tyler had just unwrapped. Jack gave me a playful slap across the face, and then walked to the plate. Te kids settled down across the pitching mound, as excited as if waiting for a clown or balloon animals. Lisa crouched down behind Tyler and whispered in his ear: "Go Uncle Jack! Go Uncle Jack!" Tyler wiped his flthy hand across his forehead, a streak of graybrown dust settling above his eyes like on Ash Wednesday. He latched on to Lisa's suggestion and started chanting, and soon all the kids were clapping their hands, pounding the dirt, shouting at the top of their lungs. "Go Uncle Jack! Go Uncle Jack!" Jack gripped the bat in careful hands. He rubbed the wood along the grain like a pro, and tapped the barrel of the bat against his shoes for showmanship. Go Uncle Jack. He clenched his right eye shut, tilted his head so that his left eye faced the mound. Go Uncle Jack. He planted his right foot in the dirt, slapped the bat against the plate. Go Uncle Jack. I stepped over Tyler's head into the center of the mound, brushed the top of his curls with my outstretched fngers. Lisa wrapped her hands around Tyler's and they clapped together in rhythm with the chant, to the beat of the one heart we all shared in that moment. Go Uncle Jack. I stepped back, gave the windup, and lobbed the ball through the air. Jack lifted his leg, stepped into the swing, and sliced through the air with his entire being, with his soul, as if the sum of his human dignity depended on this one moment, this party-trick that was his life. Jack's bitterness jolted through the bat like an electrical current, and the ball cracked back in the opposite direction. It could have soared over the fence, past the tree line. We could have watched it nestle deep within the clouds, or rip apart at the seams and burn into live coals. Te ball might have broken windshields, or buried itself three feet into the cracked earth. But it didn't do those things. Instead, it shot in a straight line, like a bullet on a string, and smashed into Tyler's dirtstreaked forehead. He fell limp into his mother's arms. And then there was screaming from all around, from nobody and everyone, a chorus of misery ushering in the death of my baby boy. M y fnger trembles against the frail trigger, and I stare deep into eyes that can never stare back. Just keep your lips above the water, I think. I slide the barrel of the gun away from his chin and thrust it into the air. I pull the trigger, and a burst of gunshot rings into our ears, settling the moment. Jack's hands go limp, and he settles back onto the swing. Te discharge that was meant for his brain is now scattered among the heavens, foating back to earth as peaceful shreds of the violent soul they once were. I forgive you, I want to say. But I think it's better to sit with my big brother on the rocking swing, to take a moment to talk about the stars, to make him remember what it's like to sit in the silence of the night with someone you love. By the time I get home, the sun peeks above the horizon like a new promise breaking in the dawn. I stash the gun away in the coat closet and stand in the frame of our bedroom. Lisa's right leg is stretched across my side of the bed, her fame-red hair curled along the middle pillow where a sleeping child might lie between us. I don't regret us, I whisper. I swear to myself that I will someday say it out loud. Nathan Gower, 29, holds an M.F.A. in fction writing from Spalding University and currently serves as an assistant professor of English at Campbellsville University in Campbellsville, Ky. His work has been published in the Valparaiso Fiction Review, Baltimore Review, Birmingham Arts Journal and by the London Screenwriters' Festival. 12.13 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 97