he day Roger Lasky died, my brother, who shared both Roger's name and his enduring affection for the game of baseball, climbed atop the scoreboard on the blue left-field wall of Lamentations Field, an abandoned minor-league baseball park on Interstate 5, just between the small towns of Belmont and Sweetville, Washington.

He said not a word when I asked, concerned, "Roger, what are you doing?"

I stood on the grass, which looked as though it were yellowing in the burning July sun even as I spoke, and watched Roger clamber slowly up the chain-link. Minor-league fields are often badly cared for, you see. What at first glance looks like an imposing blue wall of plywood is really nothing more than a cheap fence with a too-short gymnastic mat folded over the rail.

The scoreboard sat atop the fence railing, with four long rods supporting it, one firmly planted in the ground beneath each of its four corners. There was a plastic sign fastened to one end of the board, advertising a local café that had gone belly-up twenty-eight years ago, when I was just two years old. That was the year Sweetville died - a harsh summer, surprisingly hot for Texas, let alone Washington, drove away families in tightly-knit, co-dependent clusters, and even when the winter settled in, and then a cool spring and the following year's mild summer, they never returned. Roger was born that year. We used to joke that he chased everyone away.

I repeated myself. "Roger. What are you doing?"

He still said nothing, his face drawn long and emotionless as he climbed and climbed. I watched as he crawled atop the scoreboard and, planting his skinny arms, maneuvered into a sitting position, his ratty old Nikes and threadbare socks dangling from the cuffs of what might have been the dirtiest blue jeans ever seen by human eyes.

oger Lasky moved to Sweetville in 1986, the year my brother (whom I'll call Roger Two, to avoid confusion) saw his first movie. I was eighteen years old and home on my first leave from the Army. Dad and Mom were having a blow-the-walls-down fight that evening, so when the bus dropped me at the end of our driveway, I found a note on the front door that said Welcome home, Sean. Take the car and your brother and go have some dinner. Don't come home too soon. It was signed in my father's looping, jagged handwriting.

I picked up the note and the keys, which were dangling from the lock, and looked to my left. Roger Two was sitting on the porch swing, rocking slowly back and forth, again and again. He didn't look up when I said his name, so I sat beside him.

"They're doing it again," he said, as though I'd never left.

"I know," I answered. I could hear them going at it through the walls - Dad's voice a soft, baritone mumble, and Mom's high-pitched and screaming. They had been this way for years. She was always losing her mind over something, and Dad always tried to calm her down, but it never worked. She'd scream for a few hours until she was so worn out she'd fall asleep, and Dad would carry her to bed, then quietly clean up the broken glass and dishes, push furniture back into place, and finally, exhausted and beaten-down, go to bed as well.

"Why do they do this so much?" Roger Two asked.

He asked me this every time Mom snapped, and I wondered briefly what he'd done during the last three months, when I was cleaning toilets with toothbrushes and he'd had nobody to cling to when the rug was yanked out from under him.

Every time he asked, I said the same thing: "I wish I knew." But this time, when Roger Two asked why things were the way they were, I figured he was old enough to cope with it. So I told him. I told him about Mom's condition, something they called Tourette's. Naturally, his childlike curiosity interrupted, and, carefully sounding out syllables, asked, "What's too-rets?"

He didn't like the answer, didn't like knowing that Mom was always out of control, but that sometimes she was just more out of control. Roger Two jumped up from the bench in that hunched-over way of his, and ran, legs knocking into each other, down the driveway toward the farm road, yelling nothing intelligible and crying.

I caught up to him a few minutes later, letting him run it off. He was curled beneath a patch of mulberry bushes beside Sweetville Creek. He looked up at me as I crouched beside him. "Do I have too-rets too?" he asked.

"No," I said, anticipating the question. "You're just like me."

Roger Two nodded, content with the answer. I reached out a finger and wiped away a dirty tear from his eye, then patted his shoulder.

"What do you say we do something crazy tonight?" I said.

He brightened. "What?"

"It's a surprise," I said. "But let's go get the car and hit the town. I'll show you."

oger Two was fascinated by the drive-in, and sat in the front seat of Dad's '55 Chevy with his eyes glued to the eighty-foot screen towering over the car. It was Top Gun, and I'd seen it with a few buddies on a weekend pass the month before.

He was captivated, so I got out of the car and went for popcorn, something else Roger Two had never had (between my mother's and Roger Two's conditions, my father rarely took the family out).

There was a line, of course. Boyfriends, husbands, lovers, fathers, uncles, grandfathers, all stacked up like dominoes to get Cokes and cheap hot dogs and candy for their girlfriends, wives, daughters, nieces, granddaughters. I fell into place at the rear, casting a glance back at the Chevy. Roger Two had moved and was perched on the body of the car, his legs hanging into the back seat.

"You a Big Brother or something?" someone asked, and I turned back around to see a young man I'd never seen before.

"A what?" I asked.

He was the kind of guy they made movies and TV shows about - the prom king kind of guy. The football captain kind of guy. Tall, with shoulders that could probably balance a petite girl on each side, and a face carved from granite. His smile was hesitant and bright.

"Big Brother," he said. "You know, that company that assigns needy kids to someone that can be a friend?"

"Oh," I said. "No, I'm really his big brother."

"Oh. Sorry."

I shrugged and took a step forward as the line shuffled on.

"What's wrong with him?" he asked.

That was another question I could have told you was coming. Years of hearing it, and just as many years of answering it, had formed a perfectly recited response in my head. But then Perfect Guy said, "No, never mind. It's none of my business."

"I'm Sean Bottoms," I said.

"Roger Lasky," he answered, and we shook hands, my still-puny one disappearing in his.

Yeah, you just wait six months, I thought, and my hand will be as big as yours.

"You're in the Army, huh," he said, and I caught a slight speech impediment. The word 'Army' sounded more like 'Ahmy,' the way a New Yorker might say it.

"Two months in."

"Like it?"

I shrugged again. "It's alright. Nice to be home, though."

"I'll bet. But then, there's not much to do in this town."

"My brother," I said, thumbing at him as though we'd never discussed Roger Two, "hasn't ever seen a movie before. Watching him is entertaining enough. For now, at least."

Roger's eyes widened. "Never?"

"Nope," I grinned. "Amazing, huh? My dad never-"

I broke off, realizing that I was rambling, and even worse, about to dump on this Roger Lasky all of my family's imperfections and fallacies. But there was nothing more than curiosity on his face - not that greedy curiosity that people who love hearing about other people's problems display, either. Just interest.

"See, my mother has Tourette's syndrome," I said. "And Roger, back there, has an IQ of about forty-seven. He's Mongoloid."

Roger nodded at this, but said nothing.

"So you can understand why my father doesn't get out much. That's why Roger's never seen a movie. Or even had popcorn."

His face softened. "Hard life," he said, and then his eyes lit up. "Tell you what. The popcorn and Cokes are on me. I'd like to meet your brother."

I was suspicious. "Why?"

"I don't know, really," he answered. "But I'm amazed by seeing new experiences. Like my sister just had a baby, and I took care of the kid - her name is Jennifer - while my sister and brother-in-law went out for dinner. And while they were gone, Jennifer turned over for the first time. Just rolled right over in the crib. And I saw the little girl's eyes just get wide, and then she smiled and started laughing, just laughing her head off. I didn't know what was so special, of course, 'till my sister told me that babies never roll over that young."

I hesitated, and we each stepped forward as the line advanced a bit more.

Roger put a hand on my shoulder, and said, "My parents are dead."

This stopped me in my tracks, and the man behind me crashed into me and I stumbled. "Watch it," he grumbled.

"Last year," Roger went on, "I got a call from my aunt. My grandpa hasn't been doing good at all, and she's so wrapped up in what she does - she's a fashion designer or something - that she couldn't come back home to take care of him. And with my folks dead, and Sarah with her new baby and all, I was the only logical choice."

"What's wrong with your grandpa?" I asked.

"Alzheimer's," Roger said. "He doesn't know who anyone is, and has a terrible memory. He's the same way. The small things, like remembering how to tie his shoe or what a soda tastes like, just set him off like a Roman candle."

"Alzheimer's," Roger said. "He doesn't know who anyone is, and has a terrible memory. He's the same way. The small things, like remembering how to tie his shoe or what a soda tastes like, just set him off like a Roman candle."

oger swung his legs back and forth, the heels of his worn tennis shoes thumping against the sheet-metal scoreboard with a wavering crash. I sat down in the grass and looked up at him, his legs like clock pendulums going faster and faster.

He opened his mouth and yelled in the same fashion he'd yelled when I told him about Mom, and I watched patiently. Time drew by slowly, and eventually, he stopped. Then he was silent for a good half-hour, staring off at the mountains and never looking away.

"You okay, Roger?" I asked him.

Of course, he ignored me.

oger Lasky became, in essence, me, after I returned to Virginia and to the toils of boot camp. He often wrote me short letters telling me of his adventures with Roger Two. He took my brother to the Seattle Zoo, and made the long drive in Dad's Chevy, with the top down and Roger Two's tongue flapping in the wind. The two of them went swimming in the duck pond behind Mr. Fleming's farm, and Roger Two fed the ducks old bread while they swam. They went sledding in the winter, and rode jet skis in the summer. More often, though, they would end up watching the Mariners get murdered by the visiting team, with my brother standing by the railing in the cheap seats, yelling his head off at the players.

I stayed in the Army for twelve years before I finally came home. During this time, I have no idea if Roger worked a job or went out with friends or even had a girlfriend. All I know is that he devoted his time to caring for his grandfather and Roger Two - the two of whom actually got along great, when each could remember who the other was.

I got off of the bus in town this time, and both Rogers were sitting in lawn chairs under the shade of the Texaco awning, drinking A&W root beers from condensating bottles and waving at me with lazy arms. I smiled, walking closer with my duffel bag slung over my right shoulder, and I saw immediately that something was wrong.

My brother was excited to see me, dropping his bottle in the chair and launching himself at me. I watched Roger Lasky pick up the bottle and wipe the chair dry with a handkerchief as my brother's arms went around my neck. Over Roger Two's shoulder, I noticed that Roger was unusually pale, and sweating as though he'd just had Niagara Falls installed just under his hairline.

The three of us walked home, Roger Two skipping ahead and hurling rocks at geese flying a good half-mile overhead. I hung back.

"I know what you're thinking," Roger said, watching my brother stomp in mud puddles. "And I know it's obvious. It's good that your brother and my grandfather aren't that observant, or I'd have to explain to them, too."

"What is it?" I asked, handing him a clean handkerchief.

He mopped the sweat from his skin. "What do you think it is?"

"Cancer."

He nodded. "I've got a tumor the size of a basketball in my head, or that's what they tell me, at least."

"How long have you got?"

"Well, they diagnosed me last summer-"

"And you said nothing?" I exclaimed.

He paused, then went on. "-and the doctor said eight months, tops. My time's just on loan now."

I didn't know how to respond to that, so we kept walking, watching Roger Two play.

"The hardest part is going to be explaining to him, you know," I said finally.

"I know."

ut we were wrong. A week later, Roger fell in his front yard, and his grandfather, in a fit of clarity, called 911, then lapsed when the operator answered. They sent an ambulance from Belmont anyway, and the paramedics, undertrained and confused by two obviously needy men in the same yard, took both Roger and his grandfather to the hospital.

My brother and I drove out to see him the next day, taking Dad's Chevy again. I put the top down, but Roger Two shook his head at me, and I raised it again.

"You always like the top down," I protested.

"Not anymore," he answered.

"Is there a reason for that?"

He didn't answer, just turned on the radio and began randomly spinning the dial.

"Looking for music?" I asked, reaching over to help him with it.

"Baseball," he said, slapping my hand away. "Colonatti is playing Seattle. Me an' Roger were going to go see."

Roger Two's pronunciation of 'Seattle' was warped, but it was the other name that threw me. "Colonatti?" I asked him.

He nodded. "The Colonatti Reds."

I suppressed a laugh. "Cincinatti Reds," I corrected.

"Right, the Colonatti Reds."

I left it alone. "You probably won't get the greatest reception out here," I said. "The mountains get in the way."

"I can try."

oger was sleeping when I led my brother down the hall, and the doctor would only let us look at him through the tiny glass window on the door. "He needs his rest," the doctor said.

"What's wrong with him?" my brother asked.

"Roger's a little sick, that's all," I said. "And they don't want anyone else to catch it, so he gets to sleep in this neat little room for awhile."

"They should give him Pepto Bimbol," Roger Two said, hands pressed against the door, staring into the room. "That's what Mom gives me."

"They already did," I said. "Lots of it."

"Not too much!" he said. "Sean, what's all those things by his bed?"

"The machines?"

"Yes."

"They keep him comfortable," I said. "They're air conditioners and heaters."

"Does he run them all at the same time? Because air conditioners are cold, and heaters aren't."

"No, he runs them by themselves."

We left a few minutes later, after my brother kissed the glass to say goodbye, and returned home. Dad was on the porch when we turned down the driveway, laughing, in a puff of dust. In a display of insensitivity that stunned me, he announced to both of us as we got out of the car that a doctor had just called, and that our friend Roger died twenty minutes ago. Then he turned on his heel and shuffled back into the house, a beaten man. Mom's profane screams vibrated the windows as he let the screen door bang shut.

When I turned and looked at Roger, he was already gone, running like mad. This time I had to follow him in the car. I'd never seen him run so fast.

oger stood up on the scoreboard, waving his arms around for balance, and looked down at me. "There was a baseball game today," he said, finally. "I wanted to go with Roger."

"I know," I said to him, getting to my feet and beginning to worry. "Roger, why don't you come down from there?"

"I will," he said.

"Come down now."

"I think that King Griffey was playing today. I like King Griffey. He hits the ball far."

"He really does?" I asked.

"Uh-huh. Far like a gun."

Roger leaned back a bit, and then pinwheeled his arms and caught himself.

"Roger, come down right now."

He looked at me sadly. "I have to do this," he answered.

"Have to do wh-"

Roger jumped.

Twenty feet later, he landed on his feet and looked up with surprise in his eyes. "That hurt," he said. "My feet hurt now."

I watched him go to his knees and pull up a handful of corn-colored grass, flinging it into the air as though spreading ashes. "I was sad," he said, "so I had to commit suicide."

It came out shoo-uh-side.

"Are you all done now?" I asked.

He nodded, then put a grimy hand into my own. "Yes. Can we go home now?"

I pulled him to his feet. "I've got a better idea," I said. "How about we go see Ken Griffey play. And we'll get an extra hot dog for Roger."

My brother clapped his hands, and then we headed back to the car. He fell behind for a brief moment, and I thought I saw him pick something up from the ground. I opened his door for him, and he said, absent-mindedly, "It's King Griffey, Sean, not Ken."

We started off, and Roger asked me to put the top down. With the Washington winds whipping through our hair, he lifted his hands to the sky, opened them, and let his secret handful of grass catch the breeze and soar.