The Shooting

by James Boice

  Iceland. After Howard leaves they look up Iceland on Clayton’s computer. Last year in Iceland, another country with plenty of firearms, there were seven gun deaths. Seven. In America there were 32,179. In Iceland they do not have whatever it is inside Americans that kills. They do not have the myths about themselves. They have myths, in Iceland, but they are not American myths. America itself is a myth. Iceland is just a country. We will live in a country, not a myth. In a country there is life, in myth, death. So we will go to Iceland. Right? People like us go through what we did to get here only to find it does not exist and never has, that what does exist is a meat grinder into which they feed people like us. There is no freedom, no opportunity. Not really. For them there might be. For them. Do we not understand it yet? Haven’t we learned? Can’t we admit it? Won’t we? The country we love and gave everything to does not exist. Myths are what they want here, even if they kill them and their children. And nobody changes because in order to change they would need to admit the truth: that it is all a myth. So they keep choosing myths over people. They choose everything over people here. Whatever it is, if they can put it before people then they put it before people. This country kills its own so it can remain the same. They would rather there be death and horror than there be change. So why would we not run for our lives? Why would we choose to be victimized again? Why don’t we go, why don’t we protect ourselves?

  (Sheeple XII)

  When she is seven years old she writes in her diary:

  I love my husbin I will mary my husbin I will not mary Steven Mcdoogl he is not my husbin! Who is my husbin? I doent no! but i love him!

  When she is fifteen years old she writes in her diary:

  Clayton, I love you so much. You are the man for me. My soul mate, my rock, my better half. You cheer me up when I am depressed. You always know how to make me laugh. Oh and you are sexy as HELL! He he! I can’t wait til end of summer. I will definitely make it worth the wait for you. Let me just say 1 word: surfboard. HA HA! When we are finally alone and joined as one on that magical night it will be soooooo beautiful. I love being your girlfriend. We are not just a silly high school relationship are we? We are for real. Baby, I cannot wait to be 16 with you. We’re gonna have our licenses! You can drive out here to the boonies. And we can think of some other things to do in the car too (tee hee!). Muah muah MUAH! Next year will be AMAZING, I cannot wait. I love you, Clayton, I love you I LOVE CLAYTON. STACEY ♥ CLAYTON. SM ♥ CK.

  When she is sixteen years old she writes nothing in her diary.

  When she is seventeen years old she writes in her diary:

  A bad day. Sucked dry & numb. Cannot sleep eat shower. Grades fucked. Mom saw my legs, she knows. Meds not working, make me fat and jittery and not sleep. New psych tmrw. Keep seeing him. Saw him at mall today. He never sees me.

  When she is eighteen years old she writes nothing in her diary.

  When she is nineteen years old she writes:

  Finally saw the movie last week. had to turn it off. have not gotten out of bed since.

  When she is twenty years old she writes:

  David told me he loves me. I could only stare back at him and say nothing. He cried and said I was breaking his heart. Then he left. I felt relieved, I felt free. I could be alone again.

  When she is twenty-two years old she writes in her diary:

  Driving to work today I saw him walking down the street. It was him. This was the first time I had seen him in a few years. My heart turned cold, so cold. I had to pull over. It was so startling. It made me realize how much he has become a memory of a memory. I had not realized how warped and calcified he has become to me—until I saw him today. Have I made him that way? Can we do this to each other? It is like all the gray amber in my heart in which C has been locked suddenly shattered—and out he stepped, gleaming and real yet different because it is him and not the memory, it is the real him who I had forgotten in favor of whatever I have turned him into, whatever it is I remember when I remember him. It all came back today. How his voice sounded in my ear in that bed, his scent. How his lips felt. What he felt like. That was so long ago. Why am I not over it? I thought I was but I am not. I called in to work. They gave me a hard time but I don’t care. I have not cared about anything, really, since C. How many times have I been fired or just left a job without saying anything to anyone? What is there to care about? I am supposed to be on the way right now to Brian’s family lake house, with Brian. I called him and told him I could not go and he said why. How could I explain? I told him I had never been in love with him, that every time I had told him I was I had been lying. I could hear him dying on the other end. "How could you say that?" he whispered. "It’s just the truth," I said, "it’s just what people do, there is no love." He said, "I don’t believe you." I said okay, whatever, and hung up.

  When she is twenty-five years old she writes in her diary:

  Life is being tethered to the sun & when you are young you are tethered tightly to it. But as you age you lose and you suffer and this is drifting out further from the sun, on a longer tether. And you drift further and further away & you get colder & cannot pull yourself back closer to the sun even though you can see where you used to be, how close to it you so recently were—how warm and good it was. & you do not even know you are drifting at the time. To be alive is to feel/see/experience yourself diminishing. Not as it happens but shortly after. So you will know you have. This guy Ken keeps contacting me about C. This memorial thing. 10 years. Driving me crazy, wishing Ken would just let it go. And leave me alone.

  When she is thirty-two years old she writes:

  I told Ken today that I love him. And I meant it. First time that has been true since C. He knew C too, he was C’s best friend, I sort of remembered Ken vaguely but we did not meet really until C’s 10-year memorial, 7 years ago. Since then he and I have been putting one on every year, to raise money for gun violence prevention. At the 10-year Ken told me how destroyed he was after C, that he wanted to kill himself. He had a plan and everything. After going to C’s the morning after to say bye to Mr. & Mrs. K, he was going to go jump off the Manhattan bridge. But then at C’s house he saw all the people there for C and Mr. K seemed to zero in on Ken, like he sensed something. He came over to Ken and put his arm around him and told him how much C loved him and how good of a friend Ken was to C & thanked him for that and told him that he has a whole lifetime ahead of such great friendships to contribute to, people to give to the way he gave to C, so keep strong and doing good because people will need you & your love. It made Ken see things differently. He thought that was heroic of Mr. K to even think of him at that moment, having just lost C. He didn’t know any man could be like that. It was what C would have done. It made Ken think, the world has people in it like C and Mr. K and I don’t want to leave it, I want to live in it, I want to be a part of it, there is love to be had and love to give, I will keep strong, I will do good, I will live. So he stayed alive. Ken is the only man I could ever love. If Ken were not here I would love no one. I would just spend the rest of my life the way I have been since C: getting colder and meaner and harder and sadder... God have I needed what he has brought back into me life—desperately. He brought life back into it. He has me going to counseling, first time since I was maybe 17, and it’s helping this time. He’s got me back in school, get my degree. After C I did not even apply to college, even though I’d been a straight-A student. Just didn’t care. Everything felt fraudulent and hopeless and meaningless. Not anymore. Being back in school at 32 among all these 18-year-olds makes me realize what babies we were when it happened and how sad that we had to deal with what we did so young. The way I used to deal with it, when I was a baby, was to not talk about it, but Ken makes me talk about it. He opens my heart. He pulls me back toward the sun. And I do the same for him. We anchor each other there, tightly, so we do not drift away from it. I spent 17 years after C isolated and terrified and trusting no one because love was devastating when it was ripped from me so
young. I have gone along trusting nothing and no one, always afraid of everyone and thinking that made me free. I was not free. I was the opposite. With Ken only now am I free. Because I am afraid of nothing. Because I have trust. That makes me have love. He & I are the only ones who understand what the other has lost and the love we have we could have only with each other. We are one. He is my rock, my soul mate, my better half. He was my husband before we married, he was my husband before we ever even met. I write this from paradise.

  When she is thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, and thirty-six years old she writes nothing in her diary

  When she is thirty-eight years old she writes in her diary:

  Ken smiles and says

  As he first holds our baby

  "Let’s name him Clayton."

  10

  SELF-PROTECTION

  After the sleepless night, they leave their home and close their door behind them, most likely for good. Outside the rear freight entrance the morning air is cool. Autumn is coming, until now his favorite time of year. A black SUV idles at the curb. Behind it is a yellow cab. The back windows of the yellow cab roll down and there sits Howard, looking at them but saying nothing. The windows of the SUV are deeply tinted and they cannot see the driver. Its lights flash. He and his wife go to it. But when they get to it they keep going past and open the door of the yellow cab and get in. As Howard slides over to make room, he asks if they misunderstood him yesterday. When they tell him no, they understood him perfectly, he asks if they are out of their minds then.

  —No, he tells Howard. —We’re not.

  —This is unbelievable, Howard says. —You have the choice of walking into a meat grinder or protecting yourself, and you’re choosing the meat grinder.

  He puts a hand on Howard’s shoulder. —Have you learned nothing? There is only one way to protect yourself. Only one way.

  His wife says, —We do not care if America disagrees, we know the truth. We are Americans.

  As they ride to the courthouse, Howard sputters and calls Jenny and talks to her in a low, urgent voice. He cannot hear what Howard says to her. He does not care. Also with them is another attorney, experienced in immigration law, who will represent them in court but has seconded Howard’s opinion that there is nothing to be done for them and they should expect deportation. He does not catch this man’s name, he does not care what this man says.

  When they arrive and step out of the cab, they are at once lost in the morning, taken up by the other cabs and the buses and the men and women and even people who are neither men nor women all hustling with coffee and headphones toward clerk jobs and lawyer jobs and halal meat cart jobs and executive jobs and security guard jobs; the tourist families from Real America holding great big maps, born here white and Christian, heirs to the myth and still completely lost. No one notices him and her. No one recognizes them. There is nothing to indicate this is the scene where the story that consumed a large handful of the public’s attention over a few days this summer will now conclude. He thinks, They do not care for conclusions, only beginnings. Not for realities, only possibilities. The streets and sidewalks are clear of the protestors and supporters on either side who so recently clogged them. There are no TV crews now, no helicopters, no riot police. No one yelling USA at them. No 60 Minutes or Michael Bloomberg. No Wayne LaPierre, no Jenny Sanders. There are only him and her. Once again.

  They stand at the base of the stairs looking up at the courthouse entrance, where cops and attorneys and scared, sad brown people hold the door for one another.

  —I love you, he tells her.

  —I love you, she says.

  —It’s not too late for Iceland.

  She takes his hand, thinking about it. —No, she says at last. —Let’s get on with it.

  They climb the steps. His knees are trembling. There is buzzing through his chest and shoulders. His heart kicks. Off in the distance a voice calls out to them, cutting through the noise of the city, and they stop.

  She is turning to try to see where it is coming from. —It’s him.

  Is it possible? Has Clayton found a way back? Of course it is. They will see now the stream of pedestrians parting and Clayton emerging in triumph with his arms out and stance wide, grinning devilishly at the trick he has pulled on nature and government, defying death and saving them yet again. Ha HA! I’m back! Matter of fact, I was here the whole time! Now they gotta let you stay!

  But it is not Clayton, of course it is not, for Clayton is gone—it is his friend Elana Larson, one of the building’s residents whose cats he and Clayton took care of while she was away being treated for cancer. It is Elana for whom the pedestrians part, Elana who emerges in triumph, jogging across the street toward them, calling at them and waving to get their attention. With her are his friends the Mendelsohns, who helped Clayton the last time he sleepwalked, and his friend Max, whose smoking made Clayton meet Stacey, and there are also his friends Chris and Art and the former tenants Janet and Dilbert.

  —You didn’t think we forgot about you, did you? Elana Larson is saying as she climbs the stairs, out of breath, still weak from her illness. As he and his wife hug her and the others and thank them for coming, another voice calls out: it is his friend Lucien, running down Centre Street, squeezing past pedestrians and dodging bumpers of short-stopping taxis, his gray pompadour wobbling like jelly. Behind him are more friends: Hector and Walter, the super from one of the other buildings on the block who is from Jamaica and lets him borrow materials and tools and vice versa and with whom he now and again on summer nights smokes a joint on the roof after hard days of work; Manuel the dry cleaner, who gave him his American suit and whose life he saved fifteen years ago; Kenny’s mother, who reads and comments on every essay about international politics his wife writes and posts online, and her little girl, Gabriella; Frank the UPS guy, who referred him to his dentist, Dina, who is a very good dentist and person and now also his friend and is also here; Veronica who owns the good Italian restaurant and who is here too with her chef, Robert, and busboy Xiang; Sonny and Ben, the Hassids from the synagogue across the street, with whom he plays basketball; and there is Delilah from the flower shop, who wears a burqa and every spring saves him the first lilacs, and her little boy, Ahmed, and her husband, Al, who gives him books about art to read and whose warped floorboards he helped replace; and there is the accountant Destiny, whose office is in the building three doors down, with whom he talks cricket on rainy days at the coffee shop and whom he introduced to her now-husband, Tyler, the owner of the coffee shop, who is also here. His boss, Dave, is here too, the one who gave him the job and whom he thought was his friend, but he did not come to the memorial service and has not even sent condolences about Clayton even though Dave was the first person he showed Clayton’s ultrasound image to.

  —Am I fired? he asks Dave.

  —What? says Dave. —No, the owner’s lawyers told me not to talk to you, but know what? Fuck them. I’m here for you.

  Kenny and Raul and Stacey are here too, wearing hoodies and Air Jordan sneakers just like Clayton. The kids from Clayton’s church camp are here too, as are his teachers from school and what must be the entire student body. Raul is big and menacing as he barks, waving his thick arms for emphasis, —We ain’t neva gon stop shouting his name and y’all’s name, we ain’t neva gon stop. They can get rid of y’all but they can’t make y’all go away. Cuz we ain’t gon let them. We gon be out here making sure y’all remembered. Clayton gon live forever. Forever!

  His wife is in tears as she puts her arms around Clayton’s friends and their friends and so is he. His heart feels like it has filled with all the heat and light there is. The fear that was coursing through his body like venom is now gone. He says to his wife, —No one can hurt us now.

  She kisses him and says, —If we have to go, then this is how I want to go.

  He puts his arm around her, smells her hair. They walk through the door, into the courthouse, led by friends in front and flanked by fr
iends on the left and friends on the right and followed by friends at the rear, on all sides protected by the only thing that really works.

  11

  THE INHERITANCE

  He is back at Rikers dreading word of the grand jury’s decision. What is there to make him sit around and wait for? They will indict him on the gun. Of course they will. It is cut and dry. They will indict him, and if he does not plead guilty, then he will go to trial where he will lose and he will stay here in Rikers for years. He lies on his cot staring up at the ceiling. He tries to sleep, tries counting up to one hundred, then back down to zero. The others know the grand jury is deliberating and are making bets on the outcome. —You nervous? they keep asking him, enjoying his discomfort. —You scared? He does not answer them. He counts up to five hundred, then back down to zero, up to seven hundred, back down. His mind wanders—his son, what he is doing right now, if he is safe. He listens to his own breath go in and out. Examines his fingernails, which are very long, they were overdue for trimming before that night. How has his son been eating, how has he been sleeping? But thinking of him lying in some strange crib somewhere he does not know, confused, alone, makes Lee want to die, so instead he tries to remember every team in the National Football League. Then he does the same for Major League Baseball, then the NBA. But then he is still thinking of him, so he counts to one thousand, then back down to zero. Which does nothing, he is still thinking of him.

  A gang of COs comes storming down the hall to his cell led by Hurricane, a three-hundred-pound psychopath. —Fisher! Step out!

  Hurricane looks like he is going to break every bone in Lee’s face.