Where all life dies, death lives, Nature breeds,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
These yelling monsters
—MILTON, PARADISE LOST 2:624, 795
SHE CAME IN a large black car with candy bar wrappers all over the passenger seat. Her breath smelled like Butterfingers. Her shirt had coffee stains. Her gold bracelets dangled over the clipboard and her fake nails, in radioactive green, scratched the paper as she put the little checks in the little boxes. She was children’s services, and she spoke mostly to Mom and Dad. She did ask me and Grand things like, Do you get along with Sal? Would you mind him staying with you for a while? Is there any reason his staying would be a bad idea?
Yes, we answered. No, we said. And if there were any reasons, we couldn’t think of them. We fibbed on that last one, but Dad had said we were not to bring up Dovey or the runner with the gone spine.
She and her clipboard went through the house, wanted to see where Sal slept, things like that. At the end, she gave Dad and Mom some papers to sign. Temporary is what the papers said, though Dad still kneeled in front of Sal and said he was one of us now.
“Did you know that before you came along, Sal, our four-person family was too small to own our name?” Dad held up the piece of paper he’d written our name on so he could illustrate his point. “I had the B, Mother there had the L, Grand had the I, and Fielding had the S. But this second S here has been waiting to be claimed this entire time. You, Sal, you are the last S in our name. You are the wholeness of our family.”
So we were, suddenly a family of five, and June wasn’t even over yet. By that time, sweat lived on us, leaving our skin stuck between the sensation and the response to that unbearable heat. While the sweat dripped, dropped, and flowed, it seemed at times to press upon us like dry twigs threatening to spark.
Owing to that longstanding advice on how to stay cool, an aerial view of Breathed would have captured a town of pastel seersucker and beige linen. No one wore anything heavier. There were those who dared to free themselves of clothes altogether and nap quietly bare on the banks of the river or stretch out in their backyards with the garden hoses. At first those who went naked tended to unintentionally build fences of young masturbators, but soon orgasms, even the most triumphant ones, became too minuscule a wage for the labors of the hand in such a roasting heat.
At that time, not many homes, especially the older ones like ours, had central air, so we had air conditioners sitting bulky in windows for rooms like the living room and the kitchen.
Even with air-conditioning, we relied on electric fans. We had a couple stored in the attic. Dad bought more at the hardware store before they sold out. He did then what others did, which was to drive to the surrounding towns to buy what fans they had. Fans became the statement of our house and their steady hum-buzz was like living in a beehive. To influence the temperature of their flow, Dad would place bowls of ice water in front of their blades, which brought a cool, though not cold, relief.
Even now, I sweat from that heat. People think it’s Arizona that makes me sweat, but it’s always been Ohio.
Did I tell you the neighbor boy brought me over a fan the other day?
“I just thought you looked awful hot,” he said as he set it up on the table. “Do ya like it?”
“It’s not going to help.”
“Sure it will. And I got somethin’ else that might help ya.”
He ran out of the trailer, returning minutes later with a cane.
“I just worry you’re gonna fall down. I used my allowance to get it. It’s not new. I got it at a yard sale, but I think it’ll work just fine.”
I slapped the cane down to the floor. There is nothing more angering than being told you’re old, and nothing tells it quite like a cane.
“Don’t you know I was friends with the devil once?”
As if that will make me greater than just another old man.
“I’m awful sorry, Mr. Bliss. I just thought it’d help.”
Good intentions slapped down to the floor is a hard scene to come away from. I sighed and did my best.
“Listen, kid. My shoelaces are untied. That’s why I look like I’m about to fall. No cane can ever help me with that.”
“But, Mr. Bliss.” He looked down at my bare feet. “You’re not wearin’ any shoes.”
“That doesn’t matter. The laces are still untied.” I pointed down at the old pair of dirty tennis shoes on the floor.
“But how can they trip you up if you’re not even wearin’ ’em?”
“Because those laces are everything, and when everything gets untied, you don’t stop tripping just because the shoes are off.”
He stepped over to the shoes, where he bent down and ran his fingers over the eyes threaded into the backs of their heels. “There’s somethin’ on the laces.” He grabbed hold of them and looked closer.
“Blood,” I answered as if I were carrying armloads of it, exhausted by that very thing.
I thought he would let go of the laces. Instead, he tied them.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I found myself not stopping him.
“I’m tyin’ them. So they won’t trip you anymore.”
It was the kindest thing anyone had done for me in years. It was so kind, I had to sit down.
After he tied both shoes, he stood and walked around the trailer, staring at the photographs of chimneys and steeples framed on the walls.
“That one over there was one I did in San Francisco,” I told him from my lawn chair. “That one beside it is from a small town called Sunburst—that’s in Montana, in case you don’t know. The big one there is from Baton Rouge, and—”
“You haven’t got any pictures, Mr. Bliss.”
“What do you call those?”
“I mean you don’t have no pictures of family. Of friends.”
“They are my family. They are my friends.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Bliss.” He lowered his eyes. “I didn’t mean to make you sad.”
“I’m not sad, for Christ’s sake.”
“Do you want me to leave?”
“I should kick you out. The disrespect you have for your elders. I’m a man, goddamn it, you respect that.”
He stood there, watching me scratch my chin through my beard. I stopped because he began to look worried I may have fleas.
“You want some ice cream, kid?”
He quietly nodded.
“Help yourself. Lord knows I won’t eat it.” I gestured toward the freezer, directing him to move the frozen dinners out of the way to the carton of chocolate ice cream in the back.
“This carton is all banged up, Mr. Bliss.” He read the expiration date on its side. “This ice cream is from 1984. I’ll throw it away.”
“No.” I flipped the flimsy chair back as I stood.
“But it’ll make you sick. You’ve got to let it go.” He stepped away with the carton.
“You give that to me. Right now, boy. I said give it to me.” I grabbed hold of the carton, trying to yank it from his tight grip.
“Mr. Bliss…” He held on.
“Goddamn you to hell.”
“Mr. Bliss, no—”
I didn’t realize I’d slapped him until long after he left. I stood the lawn chair back up and sat there, holding the ice cream carton to my chest. At first, it was freezing, and burned my skin through my thin shirt in that way all frozen things can. Eventually, the freeze left. The carton was just cold then, until it wasn’t cold at all. It sweated and dripped down onto my lap. I must have sat there for hours like that, holding onto all that melt.
“Mr. Bliss?”
I raised my eyes to the boy. “My God, kid. You came back?”
“I just wanted to give ya somethin’.” He laid what he had down on the table by the door before leaving.
With the carton still pressed against my chest, I left the chair and hurried to the table. There was a photograph of his smiling face, a saguaro in the background, the sky yellowed by the sun rising behind him.
“Damn kid.”
I opened the carton and stared at the melted ice cream. Before I knew it, I was at the sink and pouring it down, some of it splashing on my shirt, little dark drops of chocolate that splattered like blood.
I balanced the carton on top of the pile of trash before going to a wall of photographs. I took down one of the frames and replaced the photograph of the steeple with that of the boy. It felt like maybe I was reaching for one of those hands Sal talked about. That whole second-chance hope sort of thing.
I spent the rest of that night in front of the fan. It was the first time in years I had tried to cool off. I even thought about putting my clothes in the freezer. That was one of Sal’s ideas, to put our clothes in the freezer overnight. By morning, they would be crisp and chilled.
Word on the cooling regime hit the town, and freezers became a second dresser for many. Everyone had their own ideas on how to stay cool. Mom kept her lotions and creams in the refrigerator so they’d be cold when she put them on. Most everyone carried little spritz bottles of ice water they could spray on their face or back of the neck, though the ice melted too fast for it to make any real difference. A couple of people even went so far as to paint their roofs white under the knowledge dark colors draw heat in.
Then there was my great-aunt, Fedelia Spicer, who made a habit out of visiting our house in the afternoons to spend time with her only surviving family. Mom was her niece.
Old Fedelia’s way to cool down was by licking her forearms. There she’d be, the shades of her eyes pulled half closed, her tongue amphibiously long and aggressive.
“Kangaroos, you stupid boy. Kangaroos.” Her amber eyes lit with rage as she shook her forearms at me when I asked why she licked them.
It was Scranton who had made Fedelia so angry. He’d been her husband before running away with a blonde in fishnets. Through their marriage, Scranton was the sound of a motel bedspring squeaking.
I’d seen photographs of Fedelia taken long before Scranton’s infidelity. All that beauty and life. Too bad she didn’t inoculate herself against the disease that was Scranton. Because of him and the anger she held onto, her features reached home to their bones, causing cave and shadow. Her face thinner than her body where the weight collected in the abdomen, hips, and thighs. She ate the comfort she couldn’t find anywhere else. Padding piled upon her as defense for the hard in life. She looked even larger because she wore clothes too big. The woman in bags who wore costume heavy makeup because her face was afraid to go into the world alone, lest she be seen. Lest she have to see herself.
Over the years, her anger piled her hair atop her head in a ratty heap of tangles and frizz. Looking to recapture the color of her youth, she would spray her hair with dye in a can that was supposed to be auburn but left her with an orange that cost all who saw it their respect of carrots. Her roots somehow managed to escape the dye and were such a bright white, they always looked like the start to something holy.
Amongst the orange were tied ribbons, a dozen in all. Each a different color, though faded, and representing a different woman Scranton had shared betrayal of Fedelia with over the long years of their union. She’d tell how the tattered teal ribbon was for the woman who waddled, while the dull fuchsia was for the woman with the feather boas.
She never removed these ribbons, so over time her hair wrapped around them. The way they wove, they could sometimes look like slithering in an undergrowth. It was as if she were the infected Eden, the snake still turning through Eve.
She would reach up to the ribbons, making sure they were still there as if she was afraid they would fall out or leave her like Scranton. On occasion, she’d pull one tighter, just for insurance.
Outside of Scranton, Fedelia’s conversations with Mom that summer centered on the heat and that new disease that would come to define the 1980s.
As Grand came into the living room reading the newspaper, Fedelia jerked it out of his hands to read the front page.
“This new goddamn sickness. AIDS.” She held the word for a long time. “Unusual fuckin’ name for a disease. You know, I wonder what it’ll do to Ayds? You know, them appetite-suppressin’ chocolates I’ve been eatin’. Goddamn.”
Those appetite-suppressing chocolates that did not work. That did not keep the lonely woman from eating the company of food. Bandages on a plate for all the wounds inside.
She continued to read the newspaper. “I wonder if Scranton will get AIDS. They say it comes with the fuckin’, you know.” She seemed both pleased and distressed by the thought, though it was hard to tell with the heavy black liner she drew across her white brows. “That old rat bastard. If anyone deserves it, he does.”
Grand tried to swipe the paper back from her, but she began to bark and growl at him like a dog. He backed, along the way grabbing up his baseball glove from the table.
“I’m goin’ to practice.” He pecked Mom on the cheek.
He made a last attempt for the paper but this time Fedelia bit him on the left forearm, leaving behind her red lipstick that smeared across his skin like blood.
“Goddamn, Auntie.” He grabbed his arm.
“There’s more where that came from, you piss-ant.” Fedelia rolled and pointed the paper at him, her cruel smile made even more monstrous from the lipstick having been smeared around her mouth, spreading so far from her lips, it reached her cheeks in claw-mark strides.
“Cука,” Grand mumbled out the door.
Fedelia threatened that when she found out what that meant, she was going to kick his ass good. Then in a sudden turn of emotion, she looked toward Mom. “Before I forget, have you heard about Dovey?”
Fedelia, the wheel of gossip.
“She’s still in the hospital up in Columbus, ain’t she?” Mom picked up her crochet hook and yarn, pretending to be more interested in finishing the crocheting of her afghan square than anything else.
“Oh, my, yes. Might lose that baby. Fall really done her in. Or was it a push?” Fedelia puckered her lips, the wrinkles emphasized and parading around her mouth like thorns of flesh.
A push. That was the idea laying pipes through town. Elohim did as he told the sheriff he would, which was to clear Sal’s name. Still, the thought was too hard to abandon for some, and once it was said, it became like most gossip, drama that ruins.
As Fedelia kept chatting with Mom, someone knocked on the front door. It was the sheriff come to speak to Dad. While Sal stayed in the living room, staring at Fedelia’s hair, I crouched down in the entry hall, at the side of the screen door so I could see and hear the sheriff and Dad out on the front porch.
The sheriff spit over the railing. The glob colored red from his cherry hard candy. He wiped his mouth on his arm before saying, “You know how I’ve been lookin’ into some of the surroundin’ counties for missin’ boys? Well, now, I’ve come up with somethin’ quite interestin’.”
“What’s that?” Dad asked.
“An abundance of missin’ boys. Not much ruckus has been raised about these disappearances. Furthermore, these vanishin’s have happened over the course of years. I can’t say they’re all related, yet I can’t say they ain’t. I mean we’re lookin’ at boys disappearin’ at exactly thirteen years of age. Same as the boy you got in your livin’ room. Boys from poor families. Judgin’ by the clothes he showed up in, he ain’t no Rockefeller. I’d say he’s some farm pup. Plus, all these kids, they were all black, Autopsy.”
Dad wiped his hand over his mouth. “Any suspects?”
“No sir-ree Bob.” The sheriff leaned back into his heels, causing his bulbous stomach to lead out. “Most folks ain’t gonna pay a lot of attention to a kidnapper if they ain’t even aware there is one. These stories of these kids, only two were even mentioned in their local papers. The rest were just police files. And most of ’em was put down as runaways.”
“No linking evidence?”
“Nothin’ hard. There was one thing. A shirt was found belongin’ to one of the boys. Found by a series of railroad tracks. At first they thought the spots on the shirt were bloodstains. Tests proved it chocolate. Better chocolate than blood, I reckon. Gave the momma hope her son was still alive. I imagine the truth will eat her up sooner or later though. It’s a thing to eat any parent up. Losin’ a child is a thing with teeth.”
“Were there photographs in the police files?”
“Some.”
“Any of these boys, the recent ones to go missing, any of them look like Sal?”
“A bunch of little black boys?” The sheriff’s laugh reminded me of Elohim’s. “Sure they looked like him.”
Dad sighed and wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. “Be fair.”
The sheriff spit over the porch rail and cleared his throat. “Listen, there were three possible cases reported that fell in the timeline of when that boy arrived. One of ’em was that boy Amos. The other two cases had photographs supplied by the parents. They had their likenesses to that boy in there. But they ain’t him. Shucks. Never found those green eyes of his in any of ’em. That’s not sayin’ much.
“I mean maybe the family he disappeared from just never filed a police report. Or maybe they did, but who knows what state they did it in. Maybe the kidnapper ain’t just in Ohio. Maybe he’s done this all over. I’d like to talk to the boy. First, I gotta tend to some issues over at one of the farms. A shitload of cows have just died.
“These animals ain’t built for such heat. We ain’t either.” He used his sleeve to wipe the sweat from his cheeks. “You know, I could use some help puttin’ flyers on cars. Remindin’ everyone not to leave pets and children in vehicles. Already had an infant had to be rushed to the doctor with heatstroke or heat rash or some sort of heat sickness after bein’ left in his momma’s truck.”
“I’ll help you hand the flyers out.” Dad said so without much care. He was still thinking of all those missing black boys.
“Listen, this evenin’ is clear for me. Would you bring that boy by later, Autopsy? Not to the station. We’ll question him at my house. Make him feel comfortable, at ease. He’ll talk, I’m sure of it.”
I slipped back into the living room. Fedelia was reading aloud the articles in the newspaper about the fields drying up, livestock collapsing, and the recent infestation of flies. As she got to the article about home remedies for heat rash, Sal sat at her feet and stared up at her hair.
“Can I ask you something, ma’am?”
She folded the paper and smacked it down hard on the table. “Devil gonna ask me a question? Shit, this oughta be good.” She sneered, showing how the bright lipstick had smudged across her yellowed teeth. “Shoot, green eyes.”
“Do you count your days well spent?”
She batted her eyes, the false lashes about to fling off. “Are you offerin’ to buy my soul? Goddamn.” The sweat on her face was little beige droplets, colored by her heavy mask of makeup. “Do I count my days what now?”
“Well spent.”
“Well spent? Fuckin’ philosopher here. Why don’t you tell me?”
“You do not count your days well spent. How could you? Not with all the anger you have. Why have you built infinity for your husband’s mistresses upon your head?”
The circles of blush bounced as her lips twitched like boiling water. “You little shit. How dare you.”
“What else would you call it but a place for them and their damage to live forever upon you?”
“It is none of your damn business anyways, boy.” Her roar shook her dangling earrings.
“Have you ever heard of the paradise shelduck?”
“Fuck you,” she whispered through clenched teeth, her hand beating at her chest as if she couldn’t quite catch her breath.
“The rule is female ducks are less colorful than their male counterparts. The paradise shelduck is the exception. While the male has a boring black head and an even more boring gray body, the female has a head of bright white with a body of chestnut and gold. The female paradise is a rarity in the duck world. She beats the beauty of the male.
“You, Fedelia Spicer, are meant to be paradise. Look at the white hair there at your roots. As white as the head of the female shelduck. But these colors of the other women. They feather you away from paradise. You must let go of them.” He reached up to a ribbon, but she grabbed his arm.
“I can’t.” Her voice tore at the edges. “Don’t you understand?”
She sat there in the chair looking so fragile, I thought if I touched her with my little finger, she would instantaneously break like a plate being struck by a sledgehammer. Mom tried to comfort her, doing her best to keep Fedelia’s false lashes from falling with the tears.
Dad had long returned from the porch and had listened quietly to the exchange between Fedelia and Sal. Now he placed his hand on my shoulder and said, “Fielding, why don’t you and Sal go be a couple of little boys for a while.”
I waved for Sal to follow me outside. Dad stopped him with just a finger gently pressed into his chest. “You are unusual, aren’t you, son?” He looked down into Sal’s eyes, waiting for a big answer. All he got was a small shrug.
“Well,” Dad sighed, “don’t be gone too long.”
We went out the back door, and once we were through the yard and into the woods, I told Sal the sheriff wanted to see him.
“What about?”
“They think you’ve been kidnapped.”
“By you guys?”
“Naw, by kidnappers. Were you?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“I’m kidding. Don’t be so serious, Fielding.”
With a smile he took off, his head start giving him a lead we traded to the tree house. Granny followed, staying to sniff the trees below as we climbed up the slats into the house.
“This ain’t good racin’ weather.” I swept back the strands of hair stuck to my forehead.
“What are these?” He was over by the pair of handprints on the wall.
“That’s my hand on the right, and Grand’s is on the left. We made ’em years ago.” I felt my finger as I remembered the knife and shoelaces.
As he continued to stare at the prints, even placing his own over mine, I began to toss through the board games that me and Grand kept in the tree house. Me and Sal never did decide on one of those games. We got to talking about movies instead, and I found myself explaining the plot of Ghostbusters. Just when I was about to tell him about the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, he shushed me.
I didn’t hear what he did, but still I followed him down the slats and continued to follow him through the woods, the dry shrubbery and briars scratching my legs. As I stopped to wipe small dots of blood off my shins, I heard the low cries. It was then I saw Elohim’s rusty can. A few feet from it lay a pile of gray.
Please, God, I prayed as I ran to her. Already I felt the tearing inside myself, and by fear alone, I knew home would never be the same again.
I fell down by her side, unsure of where to touch her, for she seemed in pain everywhere.
“Oh, Granny. Hey, old girl. How much of the poison you think she got?”
“Enough.” Sal gently fell to his knees beside me.
“What do we do?”
Her tremors became spasms that convulsed her whole body. Sal would later tell me I screamed for God. All I really remember shouting for was help.
He stood, wiping his hands on his red shorts as he walked away. I asked him where he was going, but he didn’t answer. I tried to soothe Granny by saying all would be fine as I scratched behind her ears, her favorite place. It was hard to avoid the thick saliva dribbling from her mouth. Over and over again, she jerked, and in the sharpness each jerk was the corner of so many things I just kept running into.
“Sal, where are you?” A crackle of twigs. “There you are.”
He held up the revolver.
“What you gonna do with that? Sal?”
“She’s dying, so it isn’t a killing. It’s what has to be done.”
“No.” I threw myself over her convulsing body. “She’ll be okay. She just needs to throw it up. Yeah, that’s it, throw up the poison.” I wasn’t sure how to induce vomiting in a dog, so I started to pinch her throat. The sticky saliva clung to my hand. I moved down and massaged her stomach as I pleaded with her to vomit. “Please, Granny. Just throw it up. Please.”
All she did was look up at me with the same eyes she had used to beg for table scraps. Now begging for something else.
“Why force her to suffer when you can take it all away?” He held the gun out to me.
“I can’t kill her, Sal. She’s Granny. Like a real granny.”
“You’re not going to kill her. Death has already started. You’re not initiating anything that isn’t already there. If you’re waiting for God to take care of it, He won’t. He doesn’t do that. By letting her suffer, you risk being God.
“People always ask, why does God allow suffering? Why does He allow a child to be beaten? A woman to cry? A holocaust to happen? A good dog to die painfully? Simple truth is, He wants to see for Himself what we’ll do. He’s stood up the candle, put the devil at the wick, and now He wants to see if we blow it out or let it burn down. God is suffering’s biggest spectator.
“Will you wait, Fielding? Will you wait to see for yourself what happens? If you’re strong enough to watch suffering without laying down the pain, then you’ve no place among men, Fielding. You are a spectator on the cusp. You are a god-in-training.” He kneeled and wrapped his arm around my shoulder.
“Just give me some room.” I shrugged him off. “I need to think.”
He stood back, the gun dangling at his side as if the choice were so casual.
“Hey, old girl.” I scratched her neck, and her tail wagged as best as it could. Only a dog could show such love in such pain.
If only she could’ve told me it was okay to pick up the gun, to end her suffering. It’s having to make the decision all alone and them not being able to tell you it’s the right one. All I could see was the fear in her eyes. The fear of not knowing what was happening to her.
I thought of all the things she had planned for the rest of the day. I could see her almost saying, I’ve got to get up from here. I’ve got to go home. Watch Mom fix dinner. Beg for some table scraps. Watch Dad sit and think. Think with him. Watch my boy yawn and go to bed with him so we can get up in the morning together.
All the things she always did. Looking in her eyes, I could see these were all the things she wanted so desperately to get back to.
I hated the way she looked at me as she lay there. Out of all the world, she looked at me, and I wanted to say, Look at the trees. It’s the last time. Look at the sky. It’s the last time. Look there, at that ant crawl the grass blade. It will be the last time you see it. That you see any of this.
There was something about her eyes that made me see her death as final. There was no place after, her tears said. This was it. Dying animals have that effect. I think because you never see them in church preparing for an afterlife. You never see them wearing crosses around their necks, or lighting candles in Mass. It all seems so final with them. Their dying is not moving on, it’s going out.
I wiped my eyes with my fists before asking for the gun. Sal didn’t say anything. Just placed it in my hand. I wasn’t sure if distance mattered. I placed the end of the barrel at the side of her trembling skull, beneath her ear, just in case it did.
My hand was surprisingly still. Though I don’t know how.
I could no longer breathe through my stuffed nose, so I drew in deep breaths through my mouth. I looked at Sal, so prepared. I hated him for not crying. I closed my eyes and lightly felt the trigger, its slight curve like a smooth tooth, a fang, ready to bite. I flexed my hand. I needed all my muscle. The gun was the heaviest thing I’d ever held up to that point in my life.
When Granny started to whimper, I threw the gun down and ran. It felt like the only thing I could do. On the way, I tripped over the can and spilled the poison. Even with that, I kept running before stopping by a tree. The sound of the gun made me.
As if I’d been shot myself, I fell to the ground, curling up into myself. I closed my eyes and rocked as I sang an old song Mom sang to me over the cradle.
Down in the hills of Ohio,
there’s a babe at sleep tonight.
He’ll wake in the morn’ of Ohio,
in the peaceful, golden light.
“Fielding?”
I opened my eyes to Sal standing over me, the gun held by the smoking barrel in his hand. “She’s still now. Like water healed of its ripples. She’s calm and at peace.”
“I couldn’t do it, Sal.”
“It’s all right, Fielding.” He sat down beside me. I heard the gun plop off to the ground on the other side of him.
When he brought his hand up to his mouth to bite his nail, I saw the blood on the inside of his wrist.
He saw me staring and lowered his hand. “It got on there from when I was checking for her pulse.”
“I don’t want another dog.” I wiped my nose hard on my arm.
“I never said anything.”
“Folks always say that. ‘We’ll get ya another.’ I don’t want another one.”
“All right.”
For a long time, the only sound made was that of me finding my way back to breathing through my nose.
“Sal?” I took a deep breath. “Not doin’ somethin’, am I a god-in-trainin’, like ya said?”
He squinted, and I thought how like Dad he looked when he did that.
“No. You’re just a boy. A boy holds a gun but cannot fire it, even when he knows it is the right thing to do. A god would never hold the gun in the first place. So you’re a man-in-training. And on the day you are asked to hold the gun once more, you will have to decide whether to stay the child … or finally become the man.”