My big brother Ben was still waiting to hear from the University of Hawaii the week before our high school graduation. We were both seniors because he'd been held back. Ben's grades were poor but rumor had it that UH never turned away Punahou grads. Still, there was that element of doubt. I knew the pressure was getting to him because he worked out like a madman, usually when my father was at the firm. Ben always lifted weights barefoot.

"I thought you were supposed to lift every other day?" I asked while he curled forty pound hand weights out on the lanai.

He studied the biceps flexing under his skin. "Not if you wanna get big, Jeff."

"How big do you wanna be?"

"As big as a Dallas Cowboy."

Ben slept on a bed without sheets, pillow, or pad. "They just get dirty," he would say. The wall beside the bed was stained with strands of dried mucus. There was no rug covering the asbestos tiles in his room. He'd tacked up a poster of a rifle-toting skeleton sitting on an American flag; the flag was spread over a chair of bones. There was a goat's head on the wall above his desk. Ben had shot the goat point blank on Moloka'i with my father's .3006 from the war. He'd wounded three goats that day, but two managed to crawl into an impassable gully. "Caught 'em completely by surprise," he'd said, "musta bled to death in that gully." Because Ben had used the rifle without permission, my father took it to work and gave it to a partner who collected wartime memorabilia.

The only books on Ben's bookcase were a manual on isometrics and an autographed copy of Pumping Iron. His textbooks for Physics, French, and Geometry were thrown in the far corner of his room—their spines were cracked and their covers inked with graffiti. He had bottles of Sun In and Lady Clairol's Honey Blonde on the bottom shelf of his bookcase. On the top shelf was a trophy of a gold soldier aiming a gold rifle. Ben had won it before flunking out of ROTC. He'd taken close-ups from different angles and sent glossies to all my mother's relatives in Boston. ?

The high point of Ben's last semester in high school was buying a shotgun on sale at Honsport Gun & Tackle. The deal included ten boxes of double lot shells. He started shooting skeet at Koko Head Crater, a volcano that had been converted into a rifle range. He spent less and less time bodysurfing at Makapu'u Beach and more and more time at the range. He claimed he could hit two clay pigeons with a single pass.

"Can I go sometime?" I asked while he cleaned his gun.

"No tenderfoots."

"Come on."

Ben worked the pump action and ejected a shell. "Do what you do best."

"What's that?"

He puckered up. "Kissing the General's ass."

Ben was in a poor mood the week after the prom, mainly because I'd gone and he hadn't. One evening, while my mother was out shopping at Ala Moana, Ben took the transistor radio out of the kitchen and plugged it into an outlet on the lanai. His bench was on the cement and he pressed one hundred pounds over and over. Tina Turner sang "Proud Mary" as winged termites circled the ceiling's recessed lights. I found an old Ping-Pong paddle and swung at the termites. The night was hot and humid and I could see my father through the glass doors watching TV. After knocking the wings off a few termites, I put the paddle on the cement and sat on the ottoman. My father had covered it with sheets of plastic because he said the oil from Ben's body was staining the fabric. ?

Ben grunted as he did his reps. He wore a Dallas Cowboys tank top and white sweat pants. His blond hair was down to his shoulders and I could see the roots. His hair length violated the dress code but administrators were going easy on seniors. Some of the guys had even grown mustaches and beards. Ben moved the bar up and down and finally rested it on the arms of the bench. He sat up and grimaced. ?

"Something wrong?" I asked.

Ben did windmills with his arms. "Stupid UH turned me down."

"No."

"Wanna see the letter?"

I leaned back and the plastic under me crinkled. "I'm sorry."

Ben stopped doing windmills. "High school with ashtrays."

My father opened the sliding screen door. "Turn that racket down!"

"Thought you loved Tina Turner?" Ben asked.

"You heard me, Ben."

Ben nodded at me and I got up and turned it down.

My father walked out holding his martini in a water glass. He was a thin-lipped man with a ruddy complexion. He wore leather slippers, a V-neck undershirt, and gray pants. There was a black mole the size of a quarter below his collarbone. He pulled off his bifocals as Ben added more weight to the bar. "Now, Ben," he said, "no lifting weights out here."

"Why not?"

"Because you'll drop 'em and bust my cement."

"I won't drop 'em."

"Bullshit," my father said. "Now do as I say."

Ben saluted. "Aye, aye, General Gill."

My father returned to the house. I could hear him digging for ice.

"Someday," Ben said, "that kanak's going to get his. Let's move my bench out."

I helped Ben carry his bench and weights out to the lawn. We set the bench up next to the stump of what had been a fifty-foot breadfruit tree. My father had hired Tongans to cut the tree down a week earlier because he was sick of Samoans coming by asking for fruit. The night sky seemed naked without the leaves covering it.

"Can't hear the music," Ben said.

I turned the radio up and Ben did curls with hand weights. When he finished, he dropped the weights on the grass and returned to the bench. He put on two hundred pounds and squirmed under the bar. He studied the weight until Santana started singing "Black Magic Woman."

Ben locked his hands around the bar. "I love this song," he said. "Crank it, Jeff!"

I turned it up and he benched the weight like it was made of foam.

"Way to go!" I said.

Ben rested the bar on the bench and pressed again.

My father whipped open the screen door and shuffled out. His slippers slapped against the cement floor of the lanai. "Now, Ben," he said, "no throwing weights on my grass."

Ben rested the bar on the arms of the bench. "Big deal."

"You're destroying my roots. Wanna re-sod this whole god damn backyard?"

"You never know when to quit, do you?"

My father pushed the bridge of his glasses back with his thumb and straightened his back. "You heard me, Ben."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah."

My father shuffled back and slammed the screen door.

"Let's move to my room," Ben said.

"You got it."

We carried the bench and weights into the house. I scraped the end of the bar against the redwood wall.

Ben ran his had over the gouge. "Terrible kids."

We set up the bench in the middle of his room and I went back for the transistor. I handed him the radio and he stood barefoot in his doorway.

"See ya, Jeff," he said.

"Want me to spot you?"

He shook his head and shut the door. I heard him lock it and turn the radio on.

I started washing dishes. My mother had baked a roasting chicken earlier that night and, after my father told her it tasted like rubber, she left the table and sped off in her Barracuda to go shopping. I could hear music from Ben's room as I scrubbed the burned rice sticking to the bottom of the pot.

My father entered the kitchen with his martini. "Didn't I tell that guy to turn it down?"

"Yeah," I said, "but that was outside."

"Same rules inside and out," he said. He walked back to the dining room and gazed up at the clock. "That bastard's deliberately defying me." He put his martini on the table and proceeded down the hall.

I put the pot down and trailed after him.

My father pounded on Ben's door. "Ben!" he said. "Open this god damn door! Do you hear me?" He pounded while the DJ talked about the big Blowout Sale at Ala Moana. "I know you hear me, Ben! This is my house!"

I could hear weights clinking and grunting behind the door. There was a framed picture on the wall of my father in his helmet and Major's uniform. He stood on the shore of Tarawa Atoll while amtracs struggled over the reef. He held his glasses in one hand and a rifle in the other. His eyes were small and calculating.

"If you can't live by my rules," my father said, "move the Hell out!"

A commercial for Lippy's Used Cars blared.

"So loud he can't hear," my father told me. "Go around to his window and have him turn it down."

"He won't listen to me."

"You heard me, Jeffrey."

"Quit bugging him."

"Want me to pay for the University of Colorado?"

I nodded.

"Then you'd better damn well do as I say."

I walked out the back door. I slipped by my parents' sheets drying on the clothesline and squeezed past the lemon trees on the side of the house. I looked in through the louvered windows of Ben's room—he sat on his bed with his back to the wall. It was the same bed my father had him lie naked on when he'd beaten him as a boy. Ben's arms looked huge sticking out of his tank top. The shotgun rested on his lap. He was loading red shells into the side of the gun. The bench supported a load of weights. There was so much weight on the bar that it bowed in the middle. The radio was next to the trophy on the bookcase and Mick Jagger sang "Gimmee Shelter."

"Ben," I said.

He kept loading.

I cupped my hands. "Hey, Ben!"

He jammed a shell into the gun and didn't look up.

"The General says, 'Turn it down'!"

Ben got up and placed the gun on the bed. He turned the volume down and walked over to the louvers. "You're his li'l yes man."

"Am not."

"You're spying for the General."

"He just wants quiet."

Ben plucked hand weights off his desk. "Know what he really wants?"

"What?"

"To kill the part of me that's still me." He curled the weights and his biceps bulged.

"It's only the radio."

"Don't you see?" Ben asked. "It's not your life, it's his."

"I'm doing what I want."

He smirked. "Run off to college, Jeff. Become a lawyer, you li'l kiss ass."

"You're such a dunce."

He stopped curling. "At least I'm not hard-up."

"What?"

"Didn't you take a slant eye to the prom?"

"You punk," I said.

He held the weights in front of him and began a rowing motion.

"You didn't have the balls to go," I said.

He dropped the weights on the asbestos tiles and I heard one of the tiles crack. Sweat rolled down his cheeks. "Rather not go than be hard-up like you. Mummy's pissed, you know."

"I'm glad I'm going to Colorado."

"I'm glad too," he replied. "Now if the General asks, tell him I'll be waiting with Fred."

"Who's Fred?"

Ben turned the volume back up. He plucked his shotgun off the bed and smiled.

I found my father pacing back and forth in the dining room. His hands were locked behind his back and he glared at the floor. It was the way he got before all his big cases. The music drifting down the hall sounded tinny. My father looked at his Timex, then up at the clock. He was grinding ice the way a horse grinds barley.

"Well?" he asked. "D'you tell 'im?"

"Yeah."

"That son-of-a-bitch." My father walked into the kitchen. He opened a drawer and pulled out an ice pick. "I'll fix his wagon."

I followed him down the hall. The transistor was turned so high that the music was distorting. My father inserted the tip of the ice pick in the lock on Ben's doorknob. The music quit.

"I wouldn't do that," I said.

My father turned the handle of the pick and the lock popped. I heard the pump action on Ben's side of the door.

"Did you hear that?" I asked as I eased my way down the hall.

My father scowled. "Hear what?"

"Fred."

"Who the Hell's Fred?"

"Ben's shotgun," I said.

"On sale at Honsport," I said. "It came with ten boxes of shells."

My father grabbed the knob with his free hand. "He's bluffing."

"It's up to you."

He studied the door.

No sound came from Ben's room.

My father took his hand off the knob. He backed away and shuffled down the hall with the ice pick. I followed him to the living room, where he switched on the television. He placed the pick on the end table and hunkered down on the couch.

I returned to Ben's door and did our special "shave-and-a-haircut" knock.

"What?" he asked through the door.

I could hear weights clinking. "Can I come in?"

"No hard-ups."

"Come on. I'll tell you all about the General."

The radio came back on. The DJ talked about a rock concert coming to Diamond Head Crater.

I knocked again. "Please?"

Ben turned up the volume and the door shook in its frame. "Cisco Kid" blew through the house.

I put my hand on the wall and it vibrated. My father's picture, the one taken on Tarawa Atoll, was above my hand. The eyes under the helmet were cold and they peered into the future. His expression said the battle with Ben had just begun.

   Poetry