down our father’s cheek. Whenever he got drunk, he’d tell us the same story: The enemy had surrounded “the hero,” he valiantly defended himself, shooting at them until he was down to his last bullet, which he’d saved for shooting himself in the heart…At that point in the story, my father would fall over cinematically, catching the leg of the stool with his foot, which made it topple down with him. That was always really funny. Then my father would suddenly sober up and turn stern: “There’s nothing funny about a hero dying.”
