The boy stops short in front of him.
Mr. Dahlquist, dressed in a flannel shirt and pajama bottoms, yanks open the right side of his shirt, ripping off a button, revealing a small, deep-red wound.
“You … shot … shot me … last night.” His eyes red and heavy and unfocused, his face unshaven but handsome. Thick auburn hair. Tall and lean.
And then the boy sees the handgun, nestled in the leaves, three feet from him, and three feet from Mr. Dahlquist.
The boy reaches down and picks it up.
It is tiny, and light. Gold and silver. A short barrel. A big looping circle in the middle of the brass grip. Nothing like the guns that cops have, or that you see on TV.
“My great … grandfather’s revolver,” says Mr. Dahlquist. “Over a … a hundred … years old. A knuckle … knuckle duster.”
The boy wraps his fingers in the circle. Can’t even find the trigger.
“I’m a good shot,” the boy says.
The man’s eyes grow wide for a moment, his lips parting. His eyes shift from the gun to the boy. “That gun’s … loaded,” he says. “It has … bullets—”
“I know what loaded means.”
Mr. Dahlquist stares at the gun, as if lost in a deep dream, his body swaying slightly, his chest heaving. “Give it … to me, kid.”
The boy doesn’t move. He cocks the gun, which produces the trigger, protruding against his index finger.
“What … are you … doing?” Mr. Dahlquist reaches out with his hand, palm open. “Gimme it.” He lets out a noise, air whooshing out of him, and pushes himself to his feet, unsteady.
The boy doesn’t move. Holding the gun, aiming it at the man. The sensation it brings, the feeling of power, control, over another person.
The boy isn’t scared anymore. For the first time he can remember, he isn’t scared or confused. He feels … in control. For the first time in his life, he’s composed, in command.
He relishes that feeling. He doesn’t ever want to lose that feeling. He wants to remember that feeling forever.
He doesn’t ever want to go back to those other feelings he has.
He puts the barrel of the gun against his temple.
Mr. Dahlquist raises his hands, palms out. “No …”
The boy pulls the trigger.
Nothing but a loud click against his temple.
He cocks the gun again, pulls the trigger again.
Nothing again. The boy hurls the gun like a tomahawk across the yard. Adrenaline swirling inside him, his heartbeat rattling against his chest.
Mr. Dahlquist, chest heaving, eyes bugged out, looks at the boy, then at the gun in the grass, then back at the boy.
“You … think about … about doing that … a lot? Kill … killing yourself?”
The boy doesn’t answer.
Every day, he thinks. I think about it every day, every hour, every minute.
“Me too,” says Mr. Dahlquist.
Like the man can read his thoughts. Like he’s the first person who understands him.
“Good thing … that gun’s a … hundred years old.” And then Mr. Dahlquist starts laughing. He laughs for a long time, wiping at his eyes.
The boy doesn’t know what’s so funny.
“We’re quite a … pair. Can’t even … kill ourselves … right.”
Holden Dahlquist VI brushes himself off. “I’m cold. Are you … cold, kid?”
He picks up his bottle, drinks the remaining liquid, and staggers toward the house.
The boy follows him inside.
89
A SECRET. THAT’S part of what has made these last six months so fun. It’s a secret, the two of them. Nobody knows he comes over every day after school. Not his mother, not his friends—nobody knows about his new and special friend, Holden.
Well, six days a week, not seven. His mom comes here once a week. The boy doesn’t come on that day.
But all the other days, the boy slips through the gate and comes around the back.
“Did you kill yourself today?” he asks Mr. Dahlquist.
“Nope. Did you?”
“Nope.”
Their running joke.
“I won’t … if you won’t,” Holden always says at the end. “Prom … promise?”
Sometimes Holden looks happy to see him. Most days, he doesn’t look happy about anything else. Always unsteady on his feet, always reeking of alcohol—“my medicine,” he calls it—always slurring his words, forcing them out in small spurts.
Every day there is a chore, and the reward of ten dollars. Usually the task is really small, like raking a meager pile of leaves or shoveling snow off the front walk or washing a few dishes. The boy can tell that most of this work has already been done by someone else, and only a small portion of the project has been reserved for him.