He turns the water as hot as he can stand it. He’s got a deep bruise on his side, the crown of a helmet leaving its mark, another bruise already turned yellow on his right biceps, a scab on his forearm. He doesn’t remember any of them.
The water comes off cloudy at first, deer blood, dirt, the morning in the woods disappearing down the drain. He scrubs at his skin as if there might be more blood hiding there, thinks about the angle of Corson’s neck, the dent in his skull.
He’s huffing now, can’t get air in, as if instead of standing in a shower he is underwater, drowning. The weight of the ocean above him, pushing him down. He places his palms hard against the plastic of the shower stall, willing himself to stay quiet, shaking, sobbing without sound, the running water covering what the thin walls of the trailer can’t. It comes on him like a tidal wave, dragging him under, but he fights against it, swims up to the falling water again, says, whispers, prays, “Our Father, who art in heaven . . .”
He says the Lord’s Prayer once, twice, ten times, twenty, thirty, working the soap like it’s sandpaper, forgive us our trespasses, scouring his flesh, digging his short fingernails into the bar, forgive us our trespasses, turning the water hotter, the steam rising up like an offering, forgive us our trespasses, punching himself over and over in the thigh, forgive us our trespasses.