People later said it was the sudden commotion at the back of the lounge that unnerved the shooter. I don’t know; people later said a lot of things. The shooter looked unnerved to me before the pretty Mr. Barlow was anywhere near him. People said the small, older woman on all fours would have unnerved anyone, but I saw how the shooter had hesitated; his hatreds had confounded him. Nothing in his life had gone according to plan. Yes, Elliot was fast on all fours, but I doubt she was moving sideways like a crab (as people later said) when she suddenly scuttled out from under a table. I’m not saying the shooter wasn’t taken aback by the snowshoer, but the small heavyweight had been unable to make up his mind about shooting Em or me. For a split second, he was then confronted by a third choice. Mr. Barlow (as a woman) had cupped his heels in her small, strong hands.

“I don’t know why he didn’t shoot me in the back of my head,” the snowshoer later said. “I’d heard only one shot—I knew two of you were still alive, not which two,” the little English teacher would tell Em and me. But Emory Trowbridge had hesitated too long. Trowbridge was a man of so many hatreds, he couldn’t choose among them. In the sudden commotion at the back of the lounge, all Trowbridge seemed to know for certain was about the bullet he’d been saving for himself. From Em’s and my perspective—begging, as we were, for the tall Santa to shoot us—we were caught off guard when the shooter shot himself. We hadn’t known there was a reason or a purpose for the tall Santa to have such long arms, not until we saw him put the end of the rifle barrel in his mouth—so seamlessly, without a hitch, we knew he’d practiced this part before.

By today’s standards, the Gallows Lounge shooting wasn’t much of a shooting—only two shots were fired. I saw just enough to know that Em and the snowshoer were safe. The tall Santa’s stocking cap was blown off—also his white wig, which was spattered with blood. Of course there was more of a mess, but I saw little of it. Long after the fact, there would be a magazine article about the other Santas in the lounge that night—how they felt about being Santa, if their feelings for Christmas had changed—but I didn’t care how the other Santas were affected by the homicidal and suicidal Santa. Onstage, where I went to hold Em in my arms, I could see how Em would forever be affected—please kill me, too, her eyes, her hands, her whole body was still pleading.

41. STARTING SOMETHING