and rocks. I was firing, too, but only pointing the gun in the general direction, closing my eyes, and pulling the trigger. I opened my eyes in time to see one of my bullets lift a puff of dirt about fifty feet from the buck, and my father saw this, too. He paused, looked over at me, then fired again.
This was the last time we hunted, and we never talked about what happened.
I turned thirteen that fall, after the hunt, and I saw very little of my father. At Christmas, he was having troubles I didn’t understand, crying himself to sleep at night. He wrote a strange letter to me about regret and the worthlessness of making money. At the beginning of March is when he asked whether I would come live with him in Fairbanks, Alaska, for the next school year, eighth grade.
Not long after I said no, my father called my stepmother. He was alone in Fairbanks in his new house, with no furniture, the ides of March, cold, sitting at a folding card table in the kitchen at the end of a day. He had broken up this second marriage the same way he had the first, by cheating with other women. And now my stepmother was moving on. She’d found another man and was thinking of marrying him. My father had other problems I would learn about later, including the IRS going after him for tax dodges in South American countries, failed investments in gold and a hardware store, unbearable sinus headaches that painkillers couldn’t reach, in addition to all the guilt and despair and loneliness, and he told my stepmother, “I love you but I’m not going to live without you.” She was working in a dentist’s office in California, where she had moved after their divorce, and couldn’t hear well. She had to duck behind the door with the phone and ask him to repeat what he had said. So he had to say again, “I love you but I’m not going to live without you.” Then he put his .44 magnum handgun to his head, a caliber bought, like the .300 magnum, for grizzlies, capable of bringing a bear down at close range, and he pulled the trigger. She heard the dripping sounds as pieces of his head came off the ceiling and landed on the card table.
I stopped hunting after my father’s suicide, but I inherited all his guns. Everything except the pistol. My uncle wanted to get rid of that, sold it right away. But that still left me with my father’s .300 magnum rifle, the .30-.30 rifle, his 12-gauge shotgun, the 20-gauge shotgun, the pellet gun, and various odds and ends I had picked up, such as a pellet pistol and a pistol crossbow.
In my eighth-grade year of shooting out streetlights and living a double life, I tried to be the boy my father had wanted me to be. I joined the wrestling team, which he had always wanted me to do, and I was unflinching with his rifle. I sighted in on neighbors at night from the hills, but I also sighted in on them from my own room, from my bedroom windows in the afternoon, watched the man across the street swirl a glass of scotch in his living room. I could see every detail of his face through the scope, even a few dark hairs in his nostrils. Shell in the chamber, finger near the trigger, trained for execution.
ON DECEMBER 1, 2001, as he completes basic training, Steve is notified he’ll be stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, in the Sixth Air Defense Artillery Brigade. Fine with him. It doesn’t matter where.
And then something happens.
It’s unclear exactly what triggers it—maybe Steve loses his temper. Maybe the Army was just late in processing his full background check. But the medical examiner finds out that Steve has been hospitalized in the past for psychotic episodes and suicide attempts. Steve is flagged.
On February 1, they pull him in for a psych exam. He’s worried. What do they know? Is this normal, to be tested like this? He tries to get the doctor to tell him what’s up, but he won’t say anything.
Three days later, February 4, 2002, they cart him off to William Beaumont Army Medical Center, throw him in the
This was the last time we hunted, and we never talked about what happened.
I turned thirteen that fall, after the hunt, and I saw very little of my father. At Christmas, he was having troubles I didn’t understand, crying himself to sleep at night. He wrote a strange letter to me about regret and the worthlessness of making money. At the beginning of March is when he asked whether I would come live with him in Fairbanks, Alaska, for the next school year, eighth grade.
Not long after I said no, my father called my stepmother. He was alone in Fairbanks in his new house, with no furniture, the ides of March, cold, sitting at a folding card table in the kitchen at the end of a day. He had broken up this second marriage the same way he had the first, by cheating with other women. And now my stepmother was moving on. She’d found another man and was thinking of marrying him. My father had other problems I would learn about later, including the IRS going after him for tax dodges in South American countries, failed investments in gold and a hardware store, unbearable sinus headaches that painkillers couldn’t reach, in addition to all the guilt and despair and loneliness, and he told my stepmother, “I love you but I’m not going to live without you.” She was working in a dentist’s office in California, where she had moved after their divorce, and couldn’t hear well. She had to duck behind the door with the phone and ask him to repeat what he had said. So he had to say again, “I love you but I’m not going to live without you.” Then he put his .44 magnum handgun to his head, a caliber bought, like the .300 magnum, for grizzlies, capable of bringing a bear down at close range, and he pulled the trigger. She heard the dripping sounds as pieces of his head came off the ceiling and landed on the card table.
I stopped hunting after my father’s suicide, but I inherited all his guns. Everything except the pistol. My uncle wanted to get rid of that, sold it right away. But that still left me with my father’s .300 magnum rifle, the .30-.30 rifle, his 12-gauge shotgun, the 20-gauge shotgun, the pellet gun, and various odds and ends I had picked up, such as a pellet pistol and a pistol crossbow.
In my eighth-grade year of shooting out streetlights and living a double life, I tried to be the boy my father had wanted me to be. I joined the wrestling team, which he had always wanted me to do, and I was unflinching with his rifle. I sighted in on neighbors at night from the hills, but I also sighted in on them from my own room, from my bedroom windows in the afternoon, watched the man across the street swirl a glass of scotch in his living room. I could see every detail of his face through the scope, even a few dark hairs in his nostrils. Shell in the chamber, finger near the trigger, trained for execution.
ON DECEMBER 1, 2001, as he completes basic training, Steve is notified he’ll be stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, in the Sixth Air Defense Artillery Brigade. Fine with him. It doesn’t matter where.
And then something happens.
It’s unclear exactly what triggers it—maybe Steve loses his temper. Maybe the Army was just late in processing his full background check. But the medical examiner finds out that Steve has been hospitalized in the past for psychotic episodes and suicide attempts. Steve is flagged.
On February 1, they pull him in for a psych exam. He’s worried. What do they know? Is this normal, to be tested like this? He tries to get the doctor to tell him what’s up, but he won’t say anything.
Three days later, February 4, 2002, they cart him off to William Beaumont Army Medical Center, throw him in the
Similar Books
