BooksBarbecue
Back At Dawn
Chapters (39)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
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  39. Copyright

My eyes found him first. He was sweating profusely. Strings of spit hung from his stubbly chin. His white T-shirt was filthy, covered with dirt and spilled beer and a slew of other stains I couldn’t begin to guess at. The whites of his eyes were yellow. And then he lifted the gun. My mother was twenty feet away, and when I turned and found her, I realized she wasn’t watching my father, but rather, she was looking straight at me. Our eyes met for a split second only, just enough time for some acknowledgment to pass between us—perhaps nothing more than a simple good-bye—before the gun went off. Her eyes were there, and then all of a sudden they weren’t, but I had felt something. I’m still certain today that she had, too.

My mother crumpled straight down to the floor like a sackful of weights, coming to rest in an unnatural pose, her legs bent at odd angles beneath her. I rushed to my mother’s side, but when I reached her she was already dead. I think I was screaming. I know I was crying. A siren whined in the distance and I looked up at my father. He stared at my mom for a moment without seeming to notice me, taking in the heaping mass she had become, and then he looked down at the gun as though feeling it in his hand for the first time while wondering how it had gotten there. And upon his face the drunken, confused gaze slowly drained away and turned grave, for he suddenly realized the true reality of what he had done. Without pause, he lifted the gun to his temple, squeezed his eyes tightly shut, and pulled the trigger. In the quiet room, there followed a resounding metallic click, for what he didn’t know was that the gun held but a single bullet. A bullet he’d already used. And in defiance of this newfound logic, which, to him, must have been confounding, he continually pulled the trigger. And the gun continued to click. He finally gave up after about twenty of these. Then he shrugged once, dropped the gun on the floor, and walked outside and sat on the porch swing. The police arrived and I heard him say that he had just killed his wife. His voice was nonchalant, as though passing along the following day’s forecast calling for rain.