He nodded again.
His heart continued to beat loud and painfully inside his chest long after she’d left. The fantasy of kissing her flashed inside his brain once more, but this time, he wasn’t holding a gun to her head.
***
Fiant sicut paleae ante faciem venti.
Regan typed the English translation into Google: Let them be like chaff before the wind. A list of Bible resource websites popped up, and she randomly chose the fourth. She read to herself. It was a verse from the book of Psalm: “Let them be like chaff before the wind, with the angel of the Lord scattering them.” She had no idea what that meant, and there wasn’t an explanation accompanying the verse.
She started at the beginning.
What is chaff in the Bible? she typed into the search bar. She learned it was the outer casing of grain seeds—useless for human consumption. A waste material.
Well, that makes sense, she thought. “Them” must refer to Jeremy’s tormentors, and he saw them as chaff. Useless. A waste. Waste of space. Waste of air. She might have agreed if she didn’t believe that every person had at least one redeemable quality.
She reread the verse. Who’s speaking? Who’s upset? Who wants vengeance, and why? She thought these questions would help her better understand Jeremy, so she specified her search: What is “let them be like chaff before the wind” about? Not the best search phrase, but it landed her more information.
She learned that the psalms were divided into categories based on praises of thanksgiving, songs of love, and petitions. Some Bible scholars believed the “petition” psalms seeking retribution were written by King David after he fled Jerusalem upon his third son, Absalom’s betrayal. Jeremy’s tattoo was definitely a petition, so she researched David.
Why did King David flee Jerusalem? Answer: Absalom decided to declare himself king over David. Why? Because he was pissed off. Why? Because his sister was raped, and David did nothing about it. Bitterness. Resentment. The stuff that fuels hatred. And revenge.
“Whoa,” Regan said, sitting back in her chair. “This mess is heavy.”
She superimposed her very basic, limited picture of King David onto Jeremy. The two didn’t match. Jeremy wasn’t the bad guy here. He didn’t wrong his bullies in the past. He did nothing to invite abuse. She believed Absalom had a legitimate reason to rebel against his father, so his father’s cries for vengeance made no sense to her.
She sighed in frustration and tossed David’s story altogether. It didn’t make sense for why Jeremy chose to brand himself with that verse. No, she decided David wasn’t the author of Psalm 35 after all. Just like that—like she’d been studying theology for decades when in actuality she’d never held a Bible in her hands.
Psalm 35, she typed into Google. She read the entire passage. And then again. And again. They were words of a broken man. A man crying out for mercy. A man pleading to God for help. A man who couldn’t contend against his enemies alone. A man seeking justice from a righteous deity—someone who could do what he could not: annihilate the wicked.
She cried. She thought of the boy who endured years of abuse from kids who had nothing better to do—kids who got away with it every time. She thought of her one attempt at helping him. It seemed pathetic and small now. She should have done more. She couldn’t do it on God’s level, but she could have done something. She thought maybe God used people to help others, and he wanted her to help Jeremy. She didn’t obey, and she was the cause of his continued distress. His years of loneliness. His heartbreak.
And then she understood. It didn’t matter who wrote the psalm. That wasn’t the point. The point was to illustrate brokenness and a prayer for justice—that virtue sought by righteous people. Balance, with the scale tipped slightly in favor of goodness.
She thought of Jeremy in the tattoo parlor, head bent in reverence as the words were etched across his back. His prayer for deliverance: “Let them be like chaff before the wind.” Punish them. Make them pay. Protect me. Avenge me. She thought of his words earlier today: “It’s, like, my motto, or whatever.”
The tears froze halfway down her cheeks. She stared at the verse, her brain screaming at her to make the connection that had, thus far, eluded her. And then the chill twisted up her spine like an icy snake. Realization dawned in a flash—something she overlooked from the beginning. His tattoo was a partial verse. Partial. The second half suggested someone else would deliver the justice. But that was left out. On purpose. Because Jeremy had no intention of waiting for the angel of the Lord to deliver him.
~
I shot a 9 mm at nine years old. Dad taught me because he wanted me to understand and respect the power of guns at an early age. He took me nearly every weekend. It was a break from our otherwise strained relationship. When we went to the firing range, we were like buddies. Well, almost.
He made me load the bullets. You know how fucking hard it is to load a clip? You have to press down and in with each bullet. The more you load, the stiffer the stack, making each new bullet resistant to sliding in. Imagine doing that at nine years old.
He showed me how to slip the clip into the gun handle—smack it with the heel of my hand to secure it in place. It took several tries to pull back on the slide to load the first bullet. I just wasn’t strong enough. But Dad waited patiently. If I wanted to fire that gun, I had to prep it.
I think it was my tenth try when the slide finally clicked into place, signaling a loaded gun.
“Locked and loaded,” Dad said.
“Locked and loaded,” I echoed, eyes wide at the prospect of actually firing a gun.