Violent Ends

  He holds me out in cold hands, just over the edge, but I know he will not drop me. There is a wild excitement in him, but behind that is that pain I feel every time he holds me. It’s stronger here. Unbearable. I want to deny it and exist in his excitement, but I know I can’t. The two emotions go hand in hand.

  Then he kneels down and looks over the edge of the building. A supermarket is across the way, where dozens of shoppers move to and from their cars, carts rattling.

  He takes aim at an old man making his way across the street. He pulls the trigger.

  Click.

  “Take that!”

  The man continues across the street, none the wiser.

  Kirby aims again—this time at a teenage employee struggling to wrangle carts.

  “You’re toast, asshole!”

  Click.

  My clip is empty. All my bullets are back in the drawer. And I am glad. I am glad that this game can ease Kirby’s pain.

  Next, a middle-aged man fumbling with his keys:

  Click!

  Three teens sneaking beer out of the market:

  Click! Click! Click!

  “Serves you right, shitheads.”

  Yes, the game eases his pain, but not enough. It’s like trying to bail water from a sinking, shotgun-blasted boat. With each pull of my trigger, there’s even greater longing in him. Greater need to carve some sort of retribution out of the world.

  “Hey! You can’t be up here!”

  A security guard has come onto the roof. He doesn’t see me at this angle; he only sees Kirby standing there. I feel Kirby’s sudden wish that the gun was loaded. I feel his intent. I feel him cursing that he did not bring bullets, and I feel myself being quickly stuffed back into his jacket as Kirby turns around in one fluid motion.

  “What’s the problem? I’m just taking in the view.”

  “You gotta get down from here, son. You’re not allowed up here.”

  “Screw you. My uncle works for this company.”

  “I don’t care if he’s the president. Now get the hell off this roof before I call the cops.”

  I feel a knot of fear in Kirby’s stomach. He takes off, and soon I am home, once more nestled among white socks.

  Alone again, I have time to ponder what Kirby has done with me today, what it all meant. I have been in human hands enough to glean more than just the powdery residual of right and wrong. I have grown to feel things beyond what was intended. A gun should feel a need to be fired, nothing more, and yet I find myself feeling a growing concern for the boy who wields me. If I had been loaded with bullets, would he have shot the guard? Would he have shot the shoppers? Or is it truly just a game to him? A reality game. When does reality start for him? Is it when the bullets go into my chamber? Is that when it becomes real for him, or will it still be just a game? I see in my mind’s eye the security guard lying dead in a pool of blood, and Kirby standing over him, holding me to the side. I see him dropping me and running off. I do not want to be abandoned. But I also don’t want to abandon him. There must be another way this can end. There must be, but I’m not wise enough to see it.

  * * *

  For seven days he keeps me in the back of his sock drawer, ignoring me, perhaps denying my presence. I wonder if his own actions spooked him. If he has come to terms with what had happened on the roof. I picture him growing older, keeping me as a trophy. Firing me at a shooting range. Years from now, teaching his children about me, how to use me, what I am. How dangerous I can be in the wrong hands. But even as I think about this, I know the wrong hands may be his. I bury my thoughts in a casing of denial, and when he takes me out again, I realize he’s encased himself in denial as well. A denial of what happened on the roof, of his own self, his own future, and an inability to find a new one.

  Today he does something he’s never done before. He offers me to someone else. A girl with a boy’s name. A friend. I didn’t know he had any. I am relieved. I am jealous. I am ashamed of my jealousy. He would have her use me to defend herself, and I think for a moment that I will change hands once again. My destiny will rebound onto a different course. But no. She refuses. He puts me away. He takes me home.

  But the following day he takes me out again, and this time he does something else he’s never done before. He loads me . . .

  . . . with a single bullet.

  Something happened today. I don’t know what it is. Something to his friend perhaps? Whatever it is, it’s tipped the boy off his delicate balance. I can almost feel him falling as he loads that bullet. I know what he plans to do. There’s only one reason to load a single bullet into the chamber of a handgun.

  And for all the power I have, I know I cannot stop him—and for once I wish I truly were defective. That my hammer would miss the mark, or shatter before striking the shell. I am powerless within my power.

  His hand is colder than it was on the day he bought me. His hand shakes. His chest heaves with sobs. Lay me down, I plead. Lay me down and walk away. Call your parents to the room. Let them see me. Let them know. There is nothing ambiguous about a gun! If they see me, they will finally tear through their own denial and pull you in from this icy edge.

  But he calls no one. He just closes his eyes. Then he presses the end of my barrel to his temple. I feel the pressure on my trigger, and I try to resist even though I know I can’t.

  We stay like this forever.

  And then he jerks my barrel from his head, the bullet still in the chamber, unfired. His breathing heavy and uneven, as if he has just come up from deep underwater. He places me down on the table, staring at me as if I’ve somehow betrayed him. Then he quickly puts me away. Not in the sock drawer, but in another shoe box, in the closet underneath a dozen other things. He hides me not just from others this time, but from himself.

  And I am grateful.

  I think it’s over.

  I think whatever crisis brought him to the brink has subsided, and his climb to a better place has begun. He may forget me, I think, or sell me, or save me for some nobler purpose, in a nobler time of his life. I can wait for that. Guns are notoriously patient.

  But I am not forgotten.

  The next day, he comes for me once more. To hold me. To ponder me, this time in an opaque sort of numbness. I cannot see through the veil of his thoughts today, but I do know that his intentions are no longer turned inward.

  I sense such a weariness in his soul now when he holds me. I channel from him a hopelessness heavier than all the weapons in the world. I want to tell him that this pain will pass, as all pain does, but even if I could tell him, I know he would not believe me, and I think that perhaps I am damaged after all, for the pressure of his despair is breaking me. But I hold together for him, for if I can hold together, perhaps he can too.

  Fire me, Kirby, I silently plead. Take me to target practice. Expel that pain with my bullets, shredding a paper target. An effigy of the world you’ve come to despise.

  Or hurl me into the sea! Let that singular act of rejection free you. I can rest forever satisfied, even as I rust on the ocean floor, if I know you are saved. If my true purpose is to fly from your hands in an affirmation of your own life, so be it. I can accept the sacrifice.

  But no. My purpose lies down a darker path, somewhere in the realm of the unthinkable. Now when he holds me, I sense a decision has been made, for he grasps me with firm resolve. He loads my full clip. He slips me into his pocket. He says no good-byes as he leaves the house this morning. He doesn’t even turn back to look at it one last time.

  He picks up a girl who I don’t know, because he’s never had me with him in her presence before. He keeps me concealed, but only inches away from her. He tells her to bring him coffee, but then he leaves her, and drives off. Now he heads for school with the single-minded determination of a torpedo. Then, parking his car, he walks toward the building with ballistic focus, his footfalls steady, measured, and relentless.

  And I know beyond the shadow of any doubt, that on this day, in this plac
e, in these hands, I will meet my destiny.

  And I am terrified.

  THE SECOND

  Dad selects a piece of bacon from the pile on his plate and balances it on Hound Dog Griselda’s nose. Griz freezes.

  “Someone has to take that hellhound to the vet,” says Mom.

  Griselda stares at Dad. Her eyebrows crumple at the sound of the word hound. It is one of many words that interest her. She is concerned, but her attention doesn’t waver. She doesn’t drop that bacon.

  “All her shots need to be up-to-date, and she needs to be licensed, and it has to happen soon. Before she eats one of the neighbors’ cats,” says Mom.

  “I’ll call around today,” says Dad.

  “Seriously, Doug. Do it this morning, before you go to sleep,” says Mom.

  My Dad is a day sleeper: nine a.m. to five p.m., the man is dead to the world. This is not the only way he is contrary.

  “Cross my heart,” says Dad. “Griz will be a law-abiding canine citizen by the end of the day. Won’t you, Griz? Won’t you just be all legal and registered? You are still going to eat a damn cat, though, aren’tcha?”

  Griz hears her name. She hears the love in Dad’s voice. The teasing doesn’t register, though; that’s for Mom. Mom is unfazed. We all know cats are Griz’s weakness. If she had a choice between a fluffy kitty and skillet full of bacon, she’d go for the cat first. We put up BEWARE OF DOG signs the day we moved in, but cats don’t read. Sooner or later an illiterate house cat will mosey over the backyard fence and meet the jaws of death.

  “Okay, Griz,” says Dad. Griz’s nose flips the bacon into the air, and her teeth clack together: end of bacon; end of discussion; moving on.

  “This one,” says my mom, and she points to me by tipping her head over her coffee cup in my direction. “She’s failing study hall.” She holds up her phone, where, I’m guessing, she heard from the school.

  “Technically, I’m failing Muskrat Lodge, but, yeah, it’s study hall,” I say.

  “She’s failing a class where all she has to do is show up,” says Mom.

  Says Dad, “That’s quite an accomplishment.”

  I study the coffee in my cup like it is the most interesting thing in the world.

  I drink the last of it before I say, “Well, yeah, I’m going to attend faithfully beginning today. I didn’t know they took attendance. I thought it was more optional.”

  I truly did think that. I’m still getting the lay of the land at Middleborough High School, home of the Mighty Fighting Muskrats. Two weeks in, here’s my honest opinion: On a scale of one to ten, it sucks to eleven. But there is no point in whining about it. Before we moved, my parents said they were sorry for the inconvenience. I said, “No problem. I’ll handle it.”

  Mostly, I am handling it. I signed the student behavioral contract wherein I swore to avoid bullying, hate speech, and illegal substances. The insane rule forbidding yoga pants? Fine. Who gives a shit? I exercise my constitutional rights of free speech, press, and assembly in a manner that does not disrupt the educational process, which is to say, I don’t exercise them. I know my opinions are uncool. I keep them to myself.

  I’m a short-timer riding out the remainder of my senior-year sentence. I’m meticulous about the requirements of homework and the material covered on tests. I consume and regurgitate expectations.

  But I did slip up on the Muskrat Lodge attendance matter.

  It’s just that my study hall is scheduled right after lunch. As a senior, I’m entitled to leave the school for lunch, so I just took advantage of that extra time. I’d walk home, raid the fridge, have a beer, play a little classic Duck Hunt, then return to school fortified and more able to suffer fools gladly. Those long lunches were doing wonders for my mental health. It was a great system while it lasted.

  “I’m passing my actual classes,” I say. “I’m going to have the credits I need at the end of the year.”

  “Yep,” says Dad. “She’s going to granulate.”

  Granulate. Dad’s jokes are always dumb and dumber wordplays at the lowest level, but they are also always his truth-absolute.

  A truth from Dad’s perspective: The function of school is to grind human beings into small, uniform particles, to granulate them. Compulsory education is an instrument of indoctrination designed to produce docile, herd-thinking sheeple.

  His opinion about public education doesn’t mean I’m off the hook. Neither of my parents wants to homeschool a sheltered spelling-bee champion. I attend school. I will earn my diploma because a diploma is a handy thing to have in this imperfect world. It’s like making certain Griselda has her shots and is properly licensed before she eats a cat. It just simplifies things in the long run.

  “One other thing: they can’t use the photo I provided for the yearbook,” I say.

  “I love that photo,” says Mom.

  Me too. That picture captured me at a golden moment.

  “It’s my rifle,” I say. “Me holding it in the picture violates community standards. My skull mount probably does too, since it might be understood to condone animal cruelty.”

  “To some ways of thinking, rejecting that picture is a violation of the First Amendment and an insult to the Second,” says Dad. “You plan to raise a ruckus?”

  “I thought about it—considered it as a matter of principle—but no. The whole yearbook thing? I don’t need it. It’s meaningless.” That’s my truth. It would be different if the yearbook pages were going to be full of photos of friends who mattered to me. It would be different if someone looked at that book in twenty years and said: “That Reba girl? She skinned that buck’s head and simmered it for hours. She dug the brains out with a bent clothes hanger.” It would be different if I were back home, where guns and girls like me are normal, not weird. Back home, what I’d accomplished was understood and appreciated, but I’m pretty sure I’m the only girl in Birdland who ever peeled the face off a deer.

  * * *

  When I get through the doors, the announcement speakers are blaring. “. . . starting our day with a pep assembly. After attendance, proceed in homeroom groups to the gym. Go Muskrats! Go-o-o-o Muskrats! Blue and white, fight, fight, fight! Attention all students, let’s get this party started!”

  Damn. I suppose they announced this yesterday—probably in study hall or some other time when I was absent or not paying attention. If I’d had a clue I could have showed up late enough to avoid compulsory enthusiasm hour. Now, though, I’m caught off guard and swept up in the tide of muskrats swimming toward the gym to make merry and frolic and generally assemble in the name of pep.

  From the hallway I can see that the band kids are already standing in a half-moon on the basketball court, squirming in place while they bang their drums and toot their horns. The girls who swing blue-and-white flags are flapping like butterflies. A baggy faux-fur rodent is pacing the sidelines doing weight lifter poses. What the hell goes on inside that giant costume head? What makes a person think: I want all eyes on me while I strut and grab my saggy stuffed-animal crotch?

  I don’t know. What I do know is that this is not my place and these are not my people.

  It’s my last chance, and I grab it. I peel away from the homeroom herd, slither sideways and into the bathroom across from the gym doors. The place is choked with muskrats. Most of them are primarily concerned with the mirrors, so a stall is open. I take it. I slide the little lock shut. I have no business to conduct. I just sit down, pull my legs up, and disappear—or good as. I settle in. I’d rather spend an hour curled up in a bathroom stall than be subjected to mandatory fun with a mob of muskrats. Is that right? Is the word for a bunch of muskrats a mob? I know crows travel in murders and hounds hunt in packs. Maybe it’s a sog. A sog of muskrats. That sounds good—but really? I have no idea, and I doubt I’ll ever care enough to find out; muskrats are varmints.

  * * *

  “Clear the room, students.” It’s a voice of authority. I ignore it, but the muskrats shuffle and snuffle and
obey. I wait another minute before I put my feet on the floor.

  Welcome to my fortress of solitude.

  I haven’t really escaped anything; the rally noise sloshes and flushes down the hall and through the walls. I lean against the side of the toilet stall. According to the scratches on the back of the door, CM+BA, Chad is a douchecanoe, molly rülez—and Suzie? Suzie is a mystery because that part is scratched out, but I’d put good money on slut.

  The screaming and rumbling changes.

  It’s as chaotic as a flood creek, a stampede.

  I look at my phone. The assembly shouldn’t be over yet, but something sounds . . . broken.

  “Lockdown. Shelter in place. This is not a drill. Lockdown. Shelter in place. This is not a drill.” The recorded voice is calm, commanding, and loud enough to cut through the noise.

  When silence comes, it comes thick.

  The phone in my hand hums. It’s a mass text: A baby-blue icon and the words: WEAPON ON CAMPUS. The phone hums again: SHELTER IN PLACE.

  * * *

  The first time I practiced for this catastrophe, I was wearing a pink ballerina tutu. We sat criss-cross applesauce with our backs against the wall. One teacher locked the door. The other teacher closed the window shade. It was hide-and-seek. We had to sit perfectly quiet to win. And we were. We were perfectly quiet while there were footsteps and voices in the hall. Perfectly quiet. Perfectly quiet. And just before we couldn’t possibly be perfectly quiet anymore, one teacher clapped and said we’d won the game, and the other teacher gave us a special treat—something sweet.

  So I know what to do.

  I sit criss-cross applesauce on the toilet seat.

  * * *

  It’s movement and noise that give away the game. The cat that freezes rock-still when Griz approaches? That cat lives. The cat that runs? Griz crushes its spine. The cat that tries to fight? Griz shakes it like a rag until it comes apart.