As he is fond of telling women while in college, a story about Stewart's brother appears in a book called More True Tales of the Weird and Supernatural. In a tiny Nebraska village, the writer claims, train engineers often saw a tall, muscular boy on the tracks, felt sure that they had hit him, and then found nothing. Two years later, the boy really did die in front of a train. The boy was Del, Stewart's brother. A year earlier, he and Del were repairing the roof of a silo when he slipped. Del caught him, which saved his life, but out of fear of his father's wrath, he told his parents that Del pushed him. They barely spoke again, and Del, always a troublesome boy, quickly returned to his old delinquency. Afterward, Stewart left for college and distanced himself from his parents. Indeed, their father believed the lie because Del had nearly killed Stewart multiple times, once intentionally. They didn't revisit the issue until ten years later, when Stewart brought his wife and newborn child to visit his father and mother, who was now deaf. His father, whom the years had mellowed, admitted that he was too hard on the two boys and hinted that he might blame himself. He was not an evil man or a horrible father, Stewart thinks—just a bad-tempered, extremely harsh person. Stewart recalls the last months of Del's life. After the silo incident, he retreated into himself; he had turned a new corner after a program for juvenile delinquents, but the fall caused him to spiral again. Several months afterward, he parked himself in front of a train.