When he wakes he’s alone in John’s study. Sound of rain outside, dark even though it’s day. He feels some panic about what time it is and rushing to his appointment with the therapist, but he also doesn’t care. His knees are sore from sleeping on the carpet, and his neck hurts despite the small pillow John brought, but the sinus pain is of course always the worst thing. Acute whenever he wakes, all the pressure built.
He rises, looking for tissue, and finds a box on the desk. Blows and it’s like trying to move rocks in a quarry with a hand fan, one of those bamboo folding jobs that a lady would take to the opera. That against boulders the size of houses. Nothing is moving. He can see how surgery could start to seem like no risk at all. Just drill a hole right into my forehead. I don’t care how it looks as long as everything drains.
He doesn’t have his watch, and the clocks in here don’t look functional. Antiques, ornamental, disagreeing on the time.
He can’t get over the idea that suicide is now his plan and he won’t be satisfied until he does it. John might be right about that, and understanding this might be the key to not doing it.
His head is throbbing, the inside three sizes too big for his skull, like the Grinch’s heart when it grows. The casing feels like it’s about to break. He sits in John’s chair, heavy thick padding, and wonders what the satisfaction feels like, to be John sitting here knowing all his life is good, that everything worked out, that he can rest and simply continue on. But Jim would find it frightening, and he still doesn’t know the source of that. No closer, even after talking with everyone.
Large windows, like at the therapist’s, but a wider view to oaks and green grass, a small creek running through the back of the property and a hillside rising. Some nice rocks up higher. He’s hiked there with John before. They brought their rifles in case they might spot a buck or an old boar.
The oaks have new leaves just coming in, bright green, a much lighter color than they’ll be later. A gray squirrel bounding up onto one of the trunks and clinging there, hung sideways to the world, pausing in fear, and then another squirrel leaps up and the two chase each other around and around the trunk, going higher. So simple. Joy. Or maybe they’re fighting over territory. He’s never really understood what they’re doing or cared. David shoots them all the time, and they’re not bad eating. That’s as far as Jim’s interest has gone. He shot them when he was a kid, too, along with everything else. Thousands of things he’s killed. All that walks or flies or swims. He should count, maybe even write it down.
He grabs a piece of John’s stationery, gold embossed, suitable for a duke but missing the title, thick bond paper, and a pen. He begins at the top.
Things I have killed: Gray squirrels. He should note how many. But so hard to guess. A hundred?
“John,” he calls. “Come in here.”
Ground squirrels, he adds, wondering if they were supposed to have another name.
“John!” he yells again, and this time John opens the door.
“Sleeping Beauty awakes?”
“Yeah, and my dress was all bunched up. What did you do while I was sleeping?”
John chuckles. “That was Gary. Brotherly love.”
“Gary!” Jim yells. “Get in here too. And take a seat John. We have an important task.”
Gary walks in. “What’s happening now?”
“I’m making a list of everything I’ve killed. I need your help.”
“Why are you doing that? We need to get going.”
“So I have gray squirrels and ground squirrels so far, estimated at two hundred gray and a hundred ground.”
“We have to go,” Gary says. “Just count the big things. Bears and moose and mountain goats.”
“Okay. A little weird to list bears after squirrels, but whatever. I only killed brown bears, no black or polar, so that’s easy. And I know it was only three. How many moose though?”
“About ten?”
“Maybe just list all the species first,” John says. “Then fill in the numbers later.”
Jim has no will, really. Any way is as good as the next. “Okay,” he says.
“So you got mountain goats,” Gary says. “And Dall rams. Caribou, wolverine.”
“Don’t mix families,” John says. “Once you say caribou, we should do all the deer.”
“Okay,” Jim says. “Elk, mule deer, white-tails, antelope, along with caribou.”
“Cats next,” John says. “You got a lynx, just one, right?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s rare.”
“Shot it right in the ass. That’s all I’d ever seen, just the ass of one getting away.”
“Nicest piece of ass in your life.”
“True, actually. Much softer and shapelier. Having fur and having to hunt all day.”
“You two are a bad combo,” Gary says.
“Bobcat,” Jim says. “Mountain lion. And dogs next. Coyote, timber wolf, red fox, stray dogs.”
“Rabbits and jackrabbits,” John says. “I’ve never known if there are more than two species.”
“Yeah just the big ones and the small ones,” Gary says. “And who cares.”
“Birds,” Jim says. His hand is getting sore from scribbling too fast. “Birds are going to take forever.”
“Lifer,” John says, and grins.
“We should have said that each time right before we shot.”
“Start with ducks,” Gary says. “Mallard, wood, blue, canvasback, bufflehead, ruddy, that’s about all we wanted to shoot.”
“But we shot others anyway.”
“Yeah, I guess add wigeons, teals, mergansers, and who knows what else.”
“Move on to geese,” John says. “Snow geese, Canadian, and you shot emperors up on Adak, right?”
“Yeah. And sea lions, seals, and found a dead otter. Not sure whether that counts. If there’s such a thing as karma, I don’t know what kind of solution they’ll come up with for me. No bug is low enough.”
“We haven’t even started on the fish,” Gary says. “And you’ve still got so many birds: quail, doves, pheasant, grouse, turkeys, all the blue and scrub jays, flickers, random songbirds. And snakes, lizards, gophers, moles, bats, insects, maybe other things too. Ever shoot a worm?”
Jim’s list is already too long. He lays his forehead on the desk. “I don’t know why I’m doing this,” he says. “I can’t remember now why I thought it would matter.”
“To take account of your life,” John says. “To see how it all adds up.”
“But it doesn’t equal anything. Adding or subtracting a hundred birds or squirrels has no effect.”
“Did you think it would?” Gary asks.
“Yeah, I did. But only a few numbers matter. Two divorces. Two kids. Two careers. Three hundred sixty-five owed to the IRS.Two nights here so far, long nights. Two men for Rhoda, and I’m not the one. Subtracted. One shot. One empty house waiting. One life and then none.”
“Your life isn’t math,” Gary says.
“I’m so tired of talking about my life. Let’s talk about your life.” Jim raises his head from the desk and digs his thumb under his right eyebrow, trying to blunt the pain.
“We should go.”
“No, let’s hear about your life, your math. And the worst part about being you. And when you’re done, it’s John’s turn. I want to hear.”
“I don’t have to do that.”
“But you’re going to.”
Gary swings his arms, some gesture of helplessness, and sits down hard on a leather couch. How many dark leather couches are there in this house?
“Fine. I worry about money every day, can’t stop thinking of it, because I can’t really afford my mortgage. I think I may sell and move somewhere cheaper, like Wyoming or Montana or Idaho. I’m taking a road trip this summer to check it out. Mary and I are going together. We’d both sell and move somewhere without traffic or crowds or hot summers or high taxes, somewhere teachers can live. It’s ridiculous to try to live here as a teacher.”
“Well that’s good to know. How come you never told me?”
“I think your problem has kind of taken center stage.”
“Sorry.”
“That’s okay. Just all our lives, but that’s fine.”
“Sorry. But what else? What else is bad in your life?”
“I didn’t work hard as a student. I know I wasn’t ambitious. I wanted to be a marine biologist and that didn’t happen. Didn’t have the grades. And I missed my chance in basketball. Maybe could have done more there.”
“What else?”
“That’s enough.”
“No.”
“Fine. I worry whether I can really stay with Mary and not want to fuck some other woman at some point. And I wish she had tits. Happy to hear all this?”
“Yeah.”
“And I don’t know if I ever want kids. She wants kids. And she’s Catholic, expects me to maybe convert at some point, which is something I can’t imagine.”
“Compromise,” Jim says. “You know I never did that for Rhoda. For Elizabeth either. Elizabeth had to go hunting and fishing with me even though she hated it. She was slow and I’d just leave her far behind on the trail. And she never wanted to move up to Alaska, hated it there, the endless rain and snow and nothing to do. Rhoda didn’t want commercial fishing or living on a boat, and she wanted me to accept her daughter more. I didn’t budge an inch with either of them. Just followed my plan. No one else’s plan has ever seemed real.”
“You’re on to something there,” John says. “You do have to compromise and pay attention to someone else’s wants. It can feel good to try to make their dream happen. It feels nice to give, and you might even find you like their idea better.”
“Well that’s great advice five years ago, or fifteen years ago. Too late now.”
“You’re still here, and you’ll meet someone new. Even if it takes three more wives, you still have time to figure it out.”
“Thanks for that curse. Three more wives.”
“I guess we’re done with my story and my life,” Gary says. “Typical level of interest.”
“Yeah, John’s turn.”
“I’ve got no complaints.”
“Well you do today. Even if you have to make them up.”
“Well I can’t say I find pharmacy fascinating or ever have. It’s every day, for the last fifteen years, a lot of hours on my feet, kind of repetitive, more listening to complaints than you would ever imagine.”
“My tooth hurts a little when I chew, or like if it gets cold, if I drink cold water.”
“Exactly.”
“Or at a party. Hey, you’re a dentist, maybe you can tell me . . . blah, blah, blah.”
“I have a new one there, if it’s a party. Hey, you’re a pharmacist, can you score me . . . and then fill in the blank: Demerol, codeine, whatever.”
“Great you two have the keys to the kingdom and can chat about all the little people. But we should go. You moved your appointment. You made it all a rush.”
“Come back for summer,” John says. “Stay here with us for a month or two, settle in. Some nice-looking single women around here, too, because the men are always taking off. Just hang out in the pharmacy with me for one afternoon and you’ll have all the dates you ever need.”
“A month or two?” Jim asks. “I must seem right on the edge. Everyone offering me too much.”
“You’re definitely looking over the edge at this point. And it’s true it’s not going to hurt, and it’s going to be a relief and all that, the end of pain and worry, but it’s also the end of everything, and you don’t know yet what everything could be. Seems a shame.”
“It’s all kind of fucked anyway,” Jim says.
“That’s not you,” John says. “Your mind has changed just recently, angry and negative, but I promise that’s not you.”
“Well this Future Leaders of America convention has me all choked up,” Gary says.
“Yeah, I know,” Jim says. “We have to go.”
“One last cuddle and then say goodbye.”
“Gary can make fun, but I am giving you a hug,” John says, and then his arms are around Jim and Jim feels embarrassed, all too much and too fast, and he realizes this is it, the last time he’ll see his friend.
“Thank you, John,” he says, and he knows he’s about to sink again but he looks only at the floor on the way out and that gets him through.