would write poems and songs about him. But not a single one of them would have ever pleaded with God for his life, because on some level, they would all be glad that he had died.
Alive he had been a great matador—an artist and a star—but by dying in the ring he had fulfilled a torero’s destiny and became the beloved ending to the fairy tale that was Spain.
He didn’t know that she and everyone else crowded around his body already knew he was dead. She wasn’t begging for his life. She was begging for the life of the bull who had killed him.
Kyle
CHAPTER ONE
I hope he was drunk. I guess it’s probably not the best thing for a kid to wish when his dad was out driving, but I don’t care. If he was drunk, he was either happy or mad; he was either singing along with the country-western station while thinking about beer-commercial-caliber women and Klint’s future, or he was scowling into the black night muttering about the latest injustice life had dealt him; but either way he wouldn’t have realized what was coming.
People are finally starting to leave. I can hear their low voices outside my window and the crunch of gravel beneath their tires as they pull out of our driveway and away from the side of the road.
Red and blue lights flash on my wall for an instant as the state trooper starts up his cruiser. He told me earlier if Dad had been wearing his seat belt he might have lived, which to me was like saying if he’d been a foot taller he might have been a better basketball player.
He wouldn’t tell me if he was drunk or not. He said it didn’t matter, and I wanted to yell at the top of my lungs, “It’s the
only
thing that matters!” but I knew everyone in the room would look at me like I was crazy. Crazy with grief, they’d say, when all I am is sensible.
A creaking footstep stops outside my bedroom, and I close my eyes so whoever looks in on me will think I’m asleep.
The door opens. It shuts. The footsteps walk away.
I keep my eyes closed not because I’m tired but because everything in my room reminds me of Dad. We didn’t have a lot in common; about the only interests we shared were hot wings and Klint. Most of the stuff I own I have in spite of him: my books, my four-foot-high erector set model of the Eiffel Tower I built when I was eight and never dismantled, my art supplies and sketch pads, all my drawings and paintings in various stages of completenessscattered everywhere, all the cool rocks, bird feathers, dead bugs, dried leaves, bones, and pieces of broken glass I’ve collected on my treks through the woods that Dad called my “nature crap,” and my set of Van Gogh playing cards I got on a seventh-grade field trip to the Carnegie Art Museum in Pittsburgh. Everything in this room belonged to a kid with a dad, and those things are still here and he isn’t. I had a dad this morning. I had a dad four hours ago.
How can someone be gone just like that?
He had plans. This is the thing I can’t stop thinking about. They weren’t big plans. Nothing ambitious or complicated or admirable. Definitely not anything that could ever be considered a goal. His needs were simple, and his desires even simpler.
Take today for instance. After Klint and I started off to Hamilton’s farm for their annual September barbecue, we knew he planned to drive to the Rayne Drop Inn for Wing Night. He was going to tie one on with a couple of his buddies and eat greasy chicken drenched in hot sauce. He’d shoot some pool and hope to pick up a woman, but he’d never succeed at it. He planned to drive off into the inky black country darkness in his truck with the new chrome deer antlers mounted on the grill, confident in his ability to get safely to where he was going despite his inability to remember where he was going and why he had left the place he was leaving. He planned to sleep until noon the next day and watch the Steelers game. Then he’d go to a job he hated on Monday because it paid the bills.
Alive he had been a great matador—an artist and a star—but by dying in the ring he had fulfilled a torero’s destiny and became the beloved ending to the fairy tale that was Spain.
He didn’t know that she and everyone else crowded around his body already knew he was dead. She wasn’t begging for his life. She was begging for the life of the bull who had killed him.
Kyle
CHAPTER ONE
I hope he was drunk. I guess it’s probably not the best thing for a kid to wish when his dad was out driving, but I don’t care. If he was drunk, he was either happy or mad; he was either singing along with the country-western station while thinking about beer-commercial-caliber women and Klint’s future, or he was scowling into the black night muttering about the latest injustice life had dealt him; but either way he wouldn’t have realized what was coming.
People are finally starting to leave. I can hear their low voices outside my window and the crunch of gravel beneath their tires as they pull out of our driveway and away from the side of the road.
Red and blue lights flash on my wall for an instant as the state trooper starts up his cruiser. He told me earlier if Dad had been wearing his seat belt he might have lived, which to me was like saying if he’d been a foot taller he might have been a better basketball player.
He wouldn’t tell me if he was drunk or not. He said it didn’t matter, and I wanted to yell at the top of my lungs, “It’s the
only
thing that matters!” but I knew everyone in the room would look at me like I was crazy. Crazy with grief, they’d say, when all I am is sensible.
A creaking footstep stops outside my bedroom, and I close my eyes so whoever looks in on me will think I’m asleep.
The door opens. It shuts. The footsteps walk away.
I keep my eyes closed not because I’m tired but because everything in my room reminds me of Dad. We didn’t have a lot in common; about the only interests we shared were hot wings and Klint. Most of the stuff I own I have in spite of him: my books, my four-foot-high erector set model of the Eiffel Tower I built when I was eight and never dismantled, my art supplies and sketch pads, all my drawings and paintings in various stages of completenessscattered everywhere, all the cool rocks, bird feathers, dead bugs, dried leaves, bones, and pieces of broken glass I’ve collected on my treks through the woods that Dad called my “nature crap,” and my set of Van Gogh playing cards I got on a seventh-grade field trip to the Carnegie Art Museum in Pittsburgh. Everything in this room belonged to a kid with a dad, and those things are still here and he isn’t. I had a dad this morning. I had a dad four hours ago.
How can someone be gone just like that?
He had plans. This is the thing I can’t stop thinking about. They weren’t big plans. Nothing ambitious or complicated or admirable. Definitely not anything that could ever be considered a goal. His needs were simple, and his desires even simpler.
Take today for instance. After Klint and I started off to Hamilton’s farm for their annual September barbecue, we knew he planned to drive to the Rayne Drop Inn for Wing Night. He was going to tie one on with a couple of his buddies and eat greasy chicken drenched in hot sauce. He’d shoot some pool and hope to pick up a woman, but he’d never succeed at it. He planned to drive off into the inky black country darkness in his truck with the new chrome deer antlers mounted on the grill, confident in his ability to get safely to where he was going despite his inability to remember where he was going and why he had left the place he was leaving. He planned to sleep until noon the next day and watch the Steelers game. Then he’d go to a job he hated on Monday because it paid the bills.
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