Nevermore: The War (Part 2)

The next morning, Jack awakens with the worst hangover he has had in ages. He does not get hangovers very often because he usually cannot manage to get drunk enough to have one. Jack spends the morning throwing up everything he had eaten and drank in the past three days, and he spends the afternoon sleeping it off after drinking some more. Around four or so, Kerrigan comes to check on him. When she walks in and sees the state of Jack, a disheveled mess on the couch with a pillow over his head, she feels that she can safely assume that his pet sheep have not been fed, so she journeys to the barn, and finds that her assumption proves itself correct. She feeds the sheep and returns to Jack in his living room.

"Jack, are you all right?"

"Mmm," Jack groans in response.

"This is totally your own fault, Jack. You've got no one but yourself to blame for this, however, it's happened to all of us at least once. It's not the right way to deal with your divorce, Jack, and you know it. You'll wind up killing yourself if you keep going on like this."

"Mmm...suppose you're right."

"Jack, everything was going so well for you. You made your money; you bought a house, two, in fact; you had a wife and son. What went wrong?"

"I dunno."

"I think you do, Jack. I think you do."

"Was it the drinking or the whoring?"

"I think it was the whoring, Jack. You really shouldn't do that when you're married. Look at me and my husband or my brother-in-law and his wife."

"So, if I stop whoring and apologize, do ye think that Maire'll take me back?"

"Probably not, Jack. You screwed that one up beyond repair."

"Oh, for fuck's sake, who am I kidding?"

"Only yourself, Jack. Only yourself."

Kerrigan sits on the sofa by Jack's head. Jack is curled up under a woolen blanket. He rearranges the couch so as to rest his head on Kerrigan's ample chest, quite thankful for the much-needed comforting that she so often provides.

"You're a good pillow."

"If you're going to be a jackass, I'll leave."

"Shutting up."

"Poor Jackrabbit. Always needs Kerrigan to solve his problems."

"You kick me arse more than solve my problems."

"I only beat your ass once, and you deserved it."

"Suppose I did. Left a rather nasty scar though."

"Well, you deserved that too."

Kerrigan?"

"Yes?"

"What's it like?"

"What's what like?"

"Havin' a family that loves ye."

"You do have a family that loves you. You have three brothers and a sister."

"Me brothers are always busy and me sister's mad at me."

"This is the first I have heard of your sister being mad at you. Why?"

"Maire."

"She has every reason to be, Jack. You really hurt Maire deeply. I am close to her as well. She thought you were a better man than you proved to be. Once again, you have only yourself to blame."

"Suppose you're right."

"Jack?"

"Aye?" he whines like a dejected dog.

"One, my hand is falling asleep, so could you please refrain from sitting on it, thank you, and two, my advice is to stop feeling sorry for yourself and do something about it."

"I need time, Kerrigan. She moved out, what, a week ago?"

"It has been three months, Jack. You've been drunk off your ass this whole time."

"Oh."

"You have had time, now I suggest you make amends, or try to, at least. Even in Hell, not everyone is willing to forgive."

"But I love Maire."

"I am sorry, Jack. It is too late. Come on; let us get you cleaned up."

"What for?"

"Your friends want to see you. Most have not seen you since Maire left. They've been asking me left and right if you're all right."

"Do I have to?"

"Yes."

"Says who? I'm a grown man. I can stay here and sleep and drink forever."

"Says me, and you are more of a child than a grown man, Jack. If you were a grown man, you would realize what you have to do without me telling you."

"Which is?"

"Get your arse off this couch and get ready to go."

"I was afraid you'd say that."

Kerrigan Sheehan and Jack Shepherd. That is a conundrum for the ages. Kerrigan is, more or less, happily married to the heir of Hell, the Devil's fifth child, Morietur. Jack is, more or less, a bum with a lot of money. Still, they are the best of friends. Kerrigan's paranoid husband is the only one aside from the two of them who knows that there is nothing going on between the two of them. Kerrigan sees Jack as another one of her sons who she must take care of. Kerrigan has been married to one man for over nine thousand years. Jack has only been around for about two hundred and has been married more times than he can count already. Kerrigan is short; Jack is tall. Kerrigan is deathly pale. Jack has a gaunt, yet slightly reddish face. Kerrigan has black eyes, flecked with red. Jack's eyes are ice blue. Kerrigan has black and white hair. Jack's hair is fire orange. Kerrigan loves her father. Jack once swore an oath to destroy his father. Kerrigan was created in Hell. Jack was born on Earth. Kerrigan always wears black. Jack always wears green. Kerrigan's hair and clothing are always neatly placed. Jack's hair is a mess. He has not shaved in weeks. His clothing is far too large for him and is covered with holes, patches, whisky stains, and cigar burns. It has not been washed in what smells like years, but, in reality, has probably only been about a month. Kerrigan is many things, a Vampire, a former Werewolf, a Banshee, but foremost, a Demon and goes by many names. Jack has only ever gone by Jack Shepherd and is only a Vampire.

Kerrigan brings Jack to Mc Finn's. Jack's brothers are there. He had been the first-born, but not the first to die. The twins, Shaun and Shameus, although the youngest, had died first. Jack had been next to go, then the second brother, Shane, had died, and, lastly, their only sister, Shannon.

Jack's closest friends are there as well. His oldest friend, John Murphy, stands up to greet him. John is a black-haired, blue-eyed specimen from Jack's youth who joined him in the British Army. They grew up together and would have made communion together, had Jack not been a bastard son. John's father had succumbed to illness and died before John reached the age of five. He had been a sailor in the British Navy. John was one month older than Jack was, and they, along with another friend, Mick McMahon, had gone to a pub at the grand old age of eleven just to see what being drunk was really like. They stumbled home together and ended up halfway back sleeping in a ditch on the side of the road. Jack, although technically the only known son of his father's to survive, was treated as the oldest of the five children living in his uncles' house, the rest having been his uncle and aunt's legitimate children, and John had been the oldest of six and the only son. When the Army came for John upon his sixteenth birthday, Jack and Mick had followed. They saw the horrors of war together for eleven years, through sword and club and arrow wounds, through starving and freezing and illness, they saw each other through it all. When they deserted due to the untimely death of Mick McMahon, they returned home together, and they received the news of the plague together.

They then went to see old Mr. Harte, the town's gravedigger. When they had left, Mr. Harte had been a fairly young father of six children. Eleven years later, upon their return, Mr. Harte's children had all died and he was getting up in years. He had a son of six years who was born while Jack and John were off to war. When Mr. Harte became confined to his bed from his joints freezing after years of making headstones and coffins and digging graves, Jack and John helped Mrs. Harte raise that son. When Mr. Harte died, it was Jack and John who helped that son to dig his father's grave. When Jack died, he had his brothers to turn to in Hell. When John died, several years later, he was glad to find his old friend Jack. The very boy that they had helped to raise is also sitting at the table. His name is Logan Harte. He has dark hair that almost looks deep red in certain light and eyes that are a hazel-blue color as if he could not decide to take his mother's dark features or his father's light ones. Aside from his brothers, sister, Kerrigan, and Messrs. Murphy and Harte, Jack knows very few people whom he trusts, although he knows plenty of prostitutes. Jack only ever drinks at Mc Finn's, which, be it for better or for worse, makes him a very easy man to find.

Kerrigan shares a love of whisky with the men with whom she is currently drinking. In Hell, it is not uncommon for children to be fed whisky instead of milk from infancy. Kerrigan was one of those children. She had always had a love of whisky. Jack had been mesmerized by Kerrigan's voice from the time he was a little boy when she had gone by the name Mrs. Harte, the mother of the Logan Harte at the table with them. She had been thirteen when she had married the eighteen-year-old gravedigger. Jack had been a year old at the time. From the very moment she moved in next door to his aunt and uncle's house, he would sit in his cradle by the window and listen to her singing over making breakfast. As soon as he was old enough, he would follow his aunt to the stream on washing day for the sole purpose of listening to Mrs. Harte sing.

Jack had always been a bit too wild to stand around all day and watch sheep. He liked woolen blankets just as much s the next person who had been forced to sleep in an army camp for eleven long years, but he did not particularly enjoy staring at a bunch of white lumps. If he had an interest in white lumps, he would have looked at the clouds. Mrs. Harte had only been fourteen the first time she became pregnant, but, being overall too young to bear the child, she lost the baby. Her first child was born when she was eighteen and Mr. Harte was twenty-four. Jack remembers that Mr. Harte had forbid his wife from leaving the bed for months, and, although she sang alone while her husband was away, Jack's aunt had done the cooking and cleaning, and Jack heard no singing. That child would die before Mrs. Harte would reach the age of twenty-nine.

Mr. Harte was thirty-five, and Jack and John were off at war when it hit. Had he been home, Jack would have died of the plague, so, in truth, the army saved him, and having seen the twins die when he was eleven years old prepared him for the sight and stench of dead bodies. Jack returned home at the age of twenty-seven. When he returned, he found Mrs. Harte at the age of forty, which was far too old to raise a child, and Mr. Harte was forty-six and definitely becoming worse for wear. Burying six children had taken its toll on the both of them.

When Jack and John came back home, they had expected to see the oldest of the Harte children married and about to take over his father's trade, possibly with a young child or two of his own. The second oldest, a girl, should have been married or, at the very least, hand fasted to some gallant gentleman from the village, if not the son of the great Baron for whom Jack's own poor mother had worked. They expected to see the next girl playing in the garden with the other three younger children or, possibly, hand fasted like her sister, and, certainly, there could be more than just the six of them.

Instead, they saw only the one, a boy of six, and his mother singing lullabies, the very same she had sang to Jack by the stream with his aunt all those years before. Jack ran up to the house, upsetting Mrs. Harte's mending, frightening all of the chickens, and making the boy become defensive until Jack explained who he was and Mrs. Hart told her son to back away and calling her ailing husband from inside.

Mr. Harte, his vision, lungs, and bones beginning to fail him, hobbled out leaning on his cane. He was not a frail man by appearance, however his joints had begun to ache and creak, and the cough woke him up almost every night. He did not recognize Jack upon sight, but, upon closer inspection, he saw him and, despite the pain it caused him, stood up to his full height so that he might look Jack in the eyes, smiled, and said "I'm glad to see that the plague and the war passed over ye. Is iomaí lá sa chill orainn. Tell me the mindless British Army didn't make ye forget Gaelic or how to write."

To which Jack had replied, "No, sir, it did not. John Murphy and the late Mick McMahon and myself conversed in Gaelic, and, sure enough, I taught them a little about writing, just as you taught me."

"Good boy. Good boy."

Jack never thought that he would find Mrs. Harte again in Hell, even though she had come to him at night three days after her own funeral. She had turned him. She had made him into a Vampire so that he could hunt his father in death. His younger brothers re-introduced him to her. They need not have. He recognized the singing. Kerrigan always sings as she had always sung. Jack decides to start a rather loud chorus of a drinking song when, all of a sudden, who should appear but the Devil himself looking for Kerrigan. Jack fidgets with his black wool ivy cap. Like his green suit, his black wool ivy cap and pea coat are covered in cigar burns. Jack lights a cigar. He cannot help but overhear his name in the conversation between Kerrigan and her father.

"Ah, there you are. Child, you should not be wasting your time trying to save Jack Shepherd. He won't amount to anything more than a senator."

"He has something to finish, Father. What if he's the one?"

"He's naught but a wild rover."

"Father, he seeks his own father to destroy. Do the prophecies not say that the one we seek is a pupil of your daughter, yet shares a story with you? Does he not fit that?"

"Every Banshee you teach fits that also."

"His father is not in Hell. If he isn't here, then where?"

"Purgatory, Heaven, Evermore, Nevermore. He could destroy Nevermore. It would create a vacuum and destroy all of Hell too. He's too dangerous."

"What if his father's in Heaven? Have you not wanted to destroy Heaven since you fell?"

"Yes, child, but Jack Shepherd simply cannot be the answer to destroying Heaven."

"Why not, Father? Was I not the unexpected answer to what Morietur wanted?"

"Because Jack Shepherd is lazy fatass and a freeloader."

"Does he look like a fatass to you?"

"Hmm...I suppose not, any more, at least, but he is still a lazy freeloader and a rake, and you are still a woman from a reputable family, noble of both birth and marriage."

"Father, there is nothing between Jack and myself, I assure you. I am merely trying to keep him from winding up in Nevermore after his divorce, and you already knew that."

"I doubt that he will amount to anything, so go home, child."

"I am home as well, father. For, can I not split myself and be at least as tricky as Morietur can?"

"Child..."

"Father, I can handle myself. The twins are former students who have known me since they arrived here, not to mention on Earth. Jack and Shane have known me since he was a child, as has John Murphy because of Jack, and Logan Harte is my own son."
"Fine, all right, but your husband is not happy. The drink is upon him as well, and you know, better even than I do myself, how my son can be with the liquor."

The Devil leaves and Kerrigan buys everyone at the table a round. Everyone at the table wears some manner of green suit, save for Kerrigan, who wears her everyday black corset, a long, wide skirt, and a cloak. Each man's suit is in a different state of disrepair and uncleanliness from those of his comrades. The men all try to match Jack's pace.

"I can only carry one of you home tonight," Kerrigan says.

"Awww....Kerrigan, don't be difficult. I'm sure there's some room at your palace," says Shameus, the younger twin.

"There are beds, sure enough, but you're not bringing whores there. Especially with Morietur being the way he is."

"Why not?" asks Shaun, the elder twin.

"If it was only my place, I would not mind, however, I do live with my husband, and he dislikes visitors and noise, and you lot are the loudest band of misfits anyone could find."

"Thank you," says John.

"Don't forget, Kerrigan, we're your misfits," says Shameus.

"Your husband could use a round or six. Might calm him down a bit," suggests Jack, finally speaking.

"Jack, my husband is as much of an alcoholic as any of you, but he drinks at home. He most definitely does not need a round or six."

"I've met the man. He could really use the company. What do you boys say?" asks Jack.

"Let's grab a cart o' poitín an' bring it by Kerrigan's place," suggests Shaun.

"We can get him really drunk," says Shameus.

"Let us not. I do have to sleep in the same bed as him."

"All for?" asks Jack.

"Aye!" exclaim the men.

"And me," says Jack over Kerrigan's protesting, "All against? No? Well then, to Kerrigan's."

"I have to warn him," Kerrigan says. "And we have poitín. You won't need to bring as much as you think, but keep your paws off my bottle."

"I resent that," Shane pouts.

"I didn't mean it literally. If anything, you're the most civilized of the lot."

"I'm testing you. Knew what you meant. I think."

"I'll toast to that!" Jack shouts.

"You'll toast to anything," remarks John.

"I propose a toast to me arse..."begins Jack.

"Ye would ye oul' ejit," John jests.

"Here's to a temperance supper, wi' water in glasses tall, an' coffee an' tea to end with, an' none o' us there a 'tall!" toasts Logan Harte.

"Here's one for ye, brother Jack," starts Shane. "I drink to your health when I'm with ye; I drink to your health when I'm alone. I drink to your health so often; I'm startin' to worry about me own!"

"Here's to women's' kisses, and to whisky, amber clear; not as sweet as women's kisses, but a darn sight more sincere!" Shaun remarks.

"I've got one," says Shameus. "An' 'tis another for ye, Jack. Here's to bein' single, drinkin' doubles, an' seein' triple!"

"Here's to our wives and girlfriends, Jack! May they ne'er again meet!" teases John.

"Health to the men, and may we women live forever to clean up your mistakes!" Kerrigan chimes in with a bit of fire aimed back at her drinking companions.

"Me friends is the best friends, loyal an' willin' an' able, now let's get to the drinkin'! All glasses off the table!" Jack says, poetically pausing and looking around in all of the right places before downing his drink and putting on his coat.

The group trudges off into the snow homeward bound. The twins, who live in the Banshee Quarter close to Mc Finn's, depart first. Shane is the next to depart, taking the road for the Werewolf Territory. Logan Harte and Kerrigan live in the Demon Lands, which Jack and John must cross through to get home. Logan Harte hugs his mother good night and she gracefully stands on her tiptoes as he bends over so that she may give him a gentle kiss goodnight on the cheek. John Murphy moans that they should just take the main road back into the Vampire District, but Jack insists upon seeing Kerrigan to her door. The snow sticks in her hair, on her clothes, and on her long eyelashes. She does not trudge, as John does, nor does she march like Jack. Instead, Kerrigan dances gracefully in her high heels through the snow, which has accumulated up to at least her waist on the lawns, but is only ankle-deep along the well-kept streets and walking paths.

Jack accompanies her to her doorstep; however, John remains at the street, far off from the house itself. From a second-floor window, Morietur sees the group approaching and rushes downstairs to beat them to the door, lest Jack and John form any ideas.

"Inside, woman. Thank you for bringing my wife home, Mister Shepherd."

"No trouble a 'tall, sor, and, please, 'tis jus' Jack."

"Thank you, Just Jack, now, leave me to my wife."

"This'd be for you, sor," Jack says, tossing a bottle of poitín to Kerrigan's husband.

"Thank you, Jack Shepherd. Now, kindly, leave me to my wife."

"Night, Kerrigan!" Jack calls.

"Bye, Jack!" returns Kerrigan.

Jack turns his back and leaves with John into the crisp snow of the winter's night in Hell. Behind him, he can hear Kerrigan's husband shouting clearly despite John Murphy loudly babbling in his ear.

"What the fuck were you thinking being out so late?"

"I..."

"Don't speak, woman! I told you don't hang around with him. He's trouble."

"He's a senator, and he's my friend."

Jack flinches as he hears the sound of Kerrigan being hit across the face by her husband. At least he used an open hand. Jack cannot save her. He cannot stand up to her husband. She loves her husband as a husband, despite how he treats her sometimes. She does not love Jack. Not like that, anyway. She loves Jack as she loves any of her sons, or like how a man would love his faithful dog. Jack is several large estates away now, but over John Murphy and the crunching of the snow, he can hear the faint conversation in the distance, no matter how much he wishes not to, due to the emptiness of the night street and the echo across the snow and ice.

"Go to bed, woman."

"I'll be up in a minute."

"You belong to me. You go when I say go."

Jack hears, now very faintly in the distance, the sound of Kerrigan being hit across the face again. There is a faint whimper afterwards, and Jack wishes, yet more direly, that his hearing was not nearly so good.

"Look at me, woman. You do as I say. You stay away from that man. Do you understand? I said do you understand? Look at me when I'm speaking to you."

Jack hears the faint sound of Morietur hitting Kerrigan again, this time with a closed fist. There is neither a whimper nor a scream that follows. This time, he hears the sound of something hard, probably her skull, crashing into the stone door frame and a very faint sound like the rustling of her wide skirts and petticoats as if she were falling down.

"Get up, woman, or might I hit you again?"

Jack hears a very faint crack and thud as Kerrigan is hit across the face again and her head hits the stone step. He hears a rustle, this time louder than the last, otherwise he would never have heard it at the distance, as he is certainly far out of sight from the step. Morietur has, undoubtedly picked his wife up and flung her over his shoulder to carry her upstairs. Jack hears a loud, slamming echo, which, he figures, must be the front door. John continues rambling on about anything at all, oblivious to the entire event Jack has just heard.

Men do not cry. For Kerrigan, the tears come to Jack's eyes, but he will not let himself cry. For Maire, the tears come to Jack's eyes, but he will not let himself cry.

John Murphy lives next door to Jack, though the properties are so spread apart, with fields and forest between the two houses that Jack still has a long way to go when John says, "Night, Shep."

"Night, Murph," Jack mutters in reply.

Jack does not look up. Jack's legs carry him home although he is not willing them to do anything at all. Jack pushes through his front door, still oblivious to his surroundings. He does not realize the difference between the cold exterior and the warm house from the fire that Kerrigan had lit before they had left, the embers of which are still burning in the living room fireplace. He trods past his family's coat of arms in the main hall and up the stairs. He reaches his empty room and undresses. He kicks his shoes off. Men do not cry. He undresses totally. Socks, jacket, tie, suspenders, shirt, pants, underwear, and, briefly, Jack considers leaving his wife-beater on, revealing a rather nasty-looking, livid, white set of raised scars. They run deep. It pains Jack to stretch too far still, and it had been fifty years since the injury had occurred. Every time it rains or snows, Jack gets the worst stomachache. He had deserved what he had gotten, and he is sure of it. He reminisces. He had known that Kerrigan was married. He even knew her husband, though not well, however they had been introduced by then. He should never have even asked Kerrigan for her favors. He had been naïve, drunk, and stupid. He had known that she would not do it. Kerrigan has always cared for Jack as if he were her son, but she never has, does not, and never will love him as a woman loves a man. Not that she thinks herself his superior, but his elder, surely. Jack's existence must be like a blink to her. He feels his scar. There are four claw marks, and they do run deep. Jack remembers.

Even when Jack came to Hell, only Demons and Banshees had organized government. An all-powerful king had ruled the Vampires at the time. It did not matter much, as Jack was so poor that he was taxed for everything he had at the time and more, and he did not know any other way. Some of the Vampires did. They had come from other times and places than Jack had. Jack only knew monarchy. Kerrigan had already been married for a very long time. The way of things was, simply, that Kerrigan was the first married woman and will never separate from her husband as long as anything remains. Jack felt a stab of guilt at this thought because, although he knows that Kerrigan will never love him as anything but a dear friend and almost-son, the truth is, that, like so many countless others, Jack needs Kerrigan, and many is the night when Jack has fantasized about her while staring at his bedroom ceiling late on a sleepless night. She owns his soul, so he truly needs her to exist.

Jack remembers the bloody clan war that the Werewolves were involved in when he first arrived in Hell. The centuries-old war was reaching its end, and, their numbers decimated, the remaining Werewolves set up their new government like the Demons had. The Vampires had their revolution. Jack had fought in it, at first just to have a job and an income, and quickly rose through the ranks as his superiors died one by one. It was swift by comparison, and it was bloody, however, it had taken just long enough to be over that Jack could amass a fortune meanwhile lending money to those who suffered under the wartime economy, charging little interest, yet making a huge profit over time.

When Jack had been alive, Kerrigan had been his neighbor, Mrs. Harte. He had grown up with her children, though they were a few years younger than he was. When he returned from the Army on Earth, they were all dead and gone.

When he had met her in Hell, he was a very different man than he is now. Now he is as thin as he had been on Earth and is rarely ever truly drunk, with the notable exception of the aftermath of his recent divorce, though he is almost always drinking. He had been very overweight and constantly drunk nearly to the point of passing out back then.

He had not known Kerrigan for long when he had made the mistake of drunkenly asking her to sleep with him. She is not, nor ever was she, a woman of the night. She has always been a well-reputed member of decent society. He does not know why he asked her when he knew full well that the answer would be a swift, firm, and emphatic "no."

It had been. Kerrigan's infamous temper, feared even by the Devil himself, had come out in full at Jack. Before he realized what had happened, he found himself lying on his back on the floor, doubled up in agony, profusely bleeding out the very blood that kept him alive. As he lay there contorted on the floor, he tried to keep his eyes open, though his vision was blackening around the edges and he struggled very hard to focus. There were four long, deep gashes torn from his left side diagonally down to his right and Kerrigan's right hand was bloody. He remembers the agony. Kerrigan had also saved him, but she had been cruel. She had stopped the bleeding, yet done nothing for the pain.

After that night, Jack had set about getting his existence in order, and, in doing so, had lost a lot of weight very quickly. This had done something truly awful to his scar. To look at him now, it is not possible to tell that he had once been so overweight, but his scar had attached itself strangely to his insides and losing so much weight so quickly had complicated that. For a long time he was in constant anguish. Finally, after what had seemed like an age, it abated. Jack now only feels pain if he stretches or bends wrong or if it rains or snows, although he never walks around shirtless.
Jack studies his reflection in the mirror by the light of the single taper flickering on the dresser. It casts a quivering, aurulent fulgor against the stark tenebrosity of the surrounding room. Jack sees his scars and remembers the agony. The flame dances on the candle, casting a pallid, flickering shadow on Jack's figure. He sees his ribs through the skin and remembers how Maire always tried to get him to eat more because she thought he was too thin. Jack does not care.

He glances at the slightly-more-than-half-empty bottle of amber whisky sitting on his dresser scintillating in the candlelight. He watches the sparkles play around the amber liquid and crystal vessel. They coruscate and glister in the flitting light.
He gazes at his hair and beard, both far beyond control and decides that he may as well fix that as he has little enough respect for being an inadvertent dipsomaniac. Nobody in the senate thinks Jack to have much in the way of brains, save for Kerrigan, who seems to know his true potential better than he himself does, it seems. He does, but the libation to his anxieties, the bitter potation with its sweet effects, benumbs his brain and muddles his speech, causing the others to think of him as belonging to some class of dunce. He decides that he may as well appear presentable. It might ameliorate his reputation, which currently stands stiffer than a corpse at senate idiot and drunk.

Jack looks into his own eyes glittering in the light of the dancing flame and sees that he is crying. He does not know why, even as the blue-gray droplets fall from his face onto the backs of his outstretched hands, which rest on the low dresser. He gives himself his reason. He cries for Maire and their unborn child, and he cries for his little son Jason, but, most of all, he cries for Kerrigan, and he wonders if she is hurt. Is her husband still angry? Is she asleep? Is she sitting up in bed worried? Is she hiding from her husband somewhere? Is she performing her appropriated wifely duties? Is she locked outside, freezing and hurt? Jack wonders. Jack cries. Men do cry. Men hurt. Men cry. Jack blows out the candle on the dresser and watches the blue smoke curl up toward the ceiling.

Jack crawls between the green satin sheets of his spacious four-poster bed with its heavy wooden frame and green velvet curtains, which he draws closed. Above the headboard, his family crest hangs. Jack rolls onto his right side, facing the empty half of his bed and curls all about six and a half feet of himself into a little ball, and, peacefully, Jack sleeps.