Dan's Weapon

My brother Dan and I were close. I was three years his junior, but we were nearly inseparable. We also were nothing alike. As an adult he was barely five-foot-five, I grew to six-two. He had a chiseled build, I was scrawny. He loved hunting, didn’t care much for ball sports. My dream growing up was to one day be a big-league shortstop. As children, he was outgoing, I was shy. He was into NASCAR. I was more curious about NATO.

When Dan was born in April 1957, something went wrong. There were differing accounts. All that’s reasonably certain is that if the same thing happened today, it would be the subject of a medical malpractice lawsuit with those differences hashed out in court.

The circumstances of Dan’s birth caused some brain damage that manifested itself in a variety of neurological problems. He developed facial tics and involuntary muscular twitching. His eyelids blinked rapidly and repeatedly, his eyes darted and rolled. This doomed him to unspeakable torment in his childhood. He…