“I’m going out to the living room,” Tean whispered.
Jem made a noise of assent.
Maybe Tean could have left it there, but he said, “That’s all.I’m not leaving the house.”
A sleepy “’kay” came back to him before those smooth, deep breaths returned.
Tean cleaned up quietly in the bathroom.He dressed in a pajama set Jem had gotten him—it was plaid flannel, too warm to wear to bed but perfect for being up, in the dark, on a cold night.Slippers, too.Those had been a present from Scipio, and they looked like little Dachshunds.He shut the bedroom door carefully and made his way down the hall by the light of his phone.
He stretched out on the sofa.He pulled a throw over his legs.In the dark, he didn’t have to close his eyes; he could see it like he was dreaming it again.That bottomland cabin.The smell of the tamarisk and the water.And the dead man.
You did what you had to do.That was all anyone could do.
He pulled out his phone.There wasn’t really anything to look at.There wasn’t anything to do.Maybe he could find one of those games that Jem played sometimes.They always had crystals or candy or something like that.A walk was out of the question.He should read, but he’d left his books on the nightstand.And he wasn’t going to sleep because he was too awake.
Awakewas the right word.How had he said it to Jem?Like he’d been sleepwalking.Yes, that was right.Like the last year had been nothing but sleepwalking, and he had only vague memories of it, of moving through space and time in a fog.And now he was awake.
I’d ask you.
That was what Jem had said.He wished he could ask Tean for the answers.For how to help Tean.Which was amusing in an ironic sort of way because Tean couldn’t help himself.But Tean played with the phone in his hand, tracing its edges, his thumb moving across the darkened screen.
He had done it before.When he didn’t know how to live, when he didn’t know how to keep going, he had done this.Once before in his life, he’d lost all his answers.And he hadn’t stopped.He hadn’t let it destroy him.
Why was it so different now?
Because of the guilt.And the shame.Yes.
But in the darkened room, with nothing but the quiet emptiness of the street for company, clear-eyed for the first time in months, Tean could admit, to himself, that part of it was…what?A selfishness?An indulgence?He knew Jem would say he was being too hard on himself.But there had always been a part of him that had relished having the moral high ground.First, because of religion.And then when he’d thought of himself as an existentialist—and, yes, a bit of an absurdist.And, if he were being kind to himself, he could acknowledge that he’d always hated hurting, always hated killing.His grandfather’s hunting.His father’s fishing.The violence and cruelty he saw every day in his work.But that had been a moral luxury too—one that he’d prided himself on.
And then he’d come face to face with reality.Again.Under the right circumstances, he was a killer.Just like everyone else.
Yes, it had been to protect Jem.And yes, he’d do it again.For anyone else, he would have understood the exception.He would have articulated all the reasons that they’d made the right choice—all the philosophical explanations, the fundamental premise that in order for human beings to realize their full potential, to create meaning in a meaningless universe, they had to be allowed to live first, and that entailed the right to defend themselves, to defend others.
Why couldn’t he do that for himself?
He wasn’t sure.But he thought it was time to find out.
For one last moment, he hesitated, holding on to the anger, the bitterness, the resentment that this, too, had been taken from him.But he had done what he had done.No one had forced him to pick up that gun.No one had made him use it.And now, he could either live with it.Or not.
He unlocked his phone and started to search.
Later, when his phone buzzed with an incoming message from Hannah, it startled him out of what felt like a fugue state, and the gray light of morning caught him by surprise.Hannah had sent him a picture that was too small to make out in the notification, so Tean thumbed the message to dismiss it, but another came through on its heels.
Can you believe this idiot?
That one he couldn’t pass up.
He expected something from Ed—a memo, a new division-wide initiative, some sort of bureaucratic maneuvering.Instead, he saw a picture of Joe Neff.Neff was decked out in hunting gear—camouflage from head to toe, with the orange safety vest hanging open in front.On the ground next to him, turned away from the camera, was a furry gray body.
The image was a screenshot from Instagram, and below it, Hannah had included the caption.Want to know where a wolf is?Ask a rancher.
Tean zoomed in on the picture—a feature he’d discovered following Jem’s memorable words,Is that his junk?Then a grin broke out across his face.
He thought about what to text back and settled onThat’s a nice-looking coyote he got.
Hannah sent backSMH, which Jem had explained meantshaking my head.
The sound of bare soles on floorboards came from the hallway, and then Jem said, “You look happy.”