I take my mail, and go home. I stand in the garage, as lost as I’ve ever been, feeling like the one thing that’s been keeping me going has evaporated. I almost wish someone would come in and rob and hit me. Anything as a distraction. Even the thought of a beer is no comfort. I slump to the concrete floor. I cannot unravel the boxes mystery — it’s like a puzzle that is just too complex, wearing away my desire to solve it.

I want it to end. My living just makes things worse. My death would be the solution — it would be much better for Sarah. She could put a manager on this place, and he might even get some things done. A manager with a family would be good for the local school and the district, and contribute more to the community than me. Everybody would be better off if I just moved on. A simple equation.

In the country, men kill themselves. It’s what we do. No one ever suspects it. Suicidal farmers are far too practical to ever let on that they might be about to do away with themselves. Like me, they see it as the ultimate solution. Their families never do. But I’m not depressed, not clinically, like they are. I’m just crazy, but the solution is the same, and I love the idea of putting a stop to everything forever. Like a line drawn on a page that says, After this, nothing.

I do not hear James’s voice telling me to get up and dust myself off, because his voice doesn’t exist anymore. He does not exist anywhere except in my head. This is the fact that I have been avoiding ever since I saw his blank eyes in his broken body. I have him in my heart. I have his bedroom, and I have his things, but they are just artefacts and remnants, and nothing more. I cannot conjure a lonelier thought, and it brings a bleakness I do not want to live with.

I think about how I should kill myself. Shooting would involve the least amount of organising, but I know it would be easy to stuff up: any loss of conviction for the smallest moment, and the rifle moves, leaving you disfigured and disabled, but alive. You remain in a worse state than you ever were. Pills work, but if someone finds you before the job is done, there is a good chance they will revive you. The best way for me to die would be to have someone do it for me — someone like Buzzcut.