The old man’s house was at the end of the road that forked off the main road out of town. The old man was named Terrence and there was no evidence that he was ever married, nor that he’d had any children. He wasn’t really that old – the people who knew him in passing estimated that he couldn’t be much older than fifty-five – but he looked old, like his body was eating itself, the cause of which nobody in the full blush of life wanted to speculate about. During the daytime he stayed inside, coming out only occasionally to collect the mail or laundry hanging on the clothesline shaped like a scarecrow behind his house. At night, he wandered. He wore Wal-Mart jeans and stiff-looking boots and a t-shirt torn at the right sleeve. In late October he walked by the home of a family with two little girls. The older girl saw him in the front yard and pointed him out to her father, who came running to the window. The father and Terrence looked at each other, and then Terrence pulled his shirt off and began tearing it apart, starting with the rip in the right sleeve. The father called the police.
Terrence stopped wandering in the winter and then started back up again in the spring. People got used to it. Every now and then, he would spend a few nights in jail for trespassing. One woman who lived with her sick mother went out and smoked on her front doorstep when she saw Terrence walking up to her property, and then Terrence sat next to her and they smoked together. They smoked for half an hour until Terrence stood wordlessly and the woman watched him wander out from under her floodlights and his shape get dimmer and dimmer and smaller and smaller until he was gone.
A social worker who lived in town was constantly asking people if they’d seen Terrence and whether he had any family or a last name. People had no answers. Eventually the social worker drove out of town himself and knocked on Terrence’s door. When Terrence didn’t answer, the social worker yelled, “This is a courtesy call! Is everything OK in there?” Terrence came to the front door wearing a St. Louis Cardinals shirt tucked neatly in to a pair of grey jeans.
“What do you need?” Terrence asked.
The social worker didn’t know what to say. The man he’d seen wandering along the road at midnight seemed very different from the man who now stood in the doorway before him.
“Is there something wrong?” Terrence asked.
The social worker lost his nerve and left.
Once a month a group of twelve people would get together at Lowbeck’s theater and talk about how to defund money from the police. They were young, graduates of the university in Edwardsville who’d stayed in the area, with lip piercings and bicep tattoos. They worried about things other people weren’t worried about, like the slow heating of the earth and the treatment of the mentally ill. Half of all their conversations were dedicated to the subject of protecting Terrence and people like Terrence from police brutality. They wanted to start a hotline that people in town could use to call social workers and healthcare professionals who would respond in an emergency instead of the police. The hotline would be called the Elias Emergency Hotline and would be staffed around the clock by volunteers. They had to be volunteers because the Lowbeck’s group was anticapitalist, but they worried that without a financial incentive for the staff, the hotline would fall apart. Also they couldn’t afford to incentivize the hotline staff in that way.
In the summer, the Lowbeck’s group started the hotline out of the basement of a collective house. The social worker agreed to take the first shift, from 9pm until 1am. There was no one signed up after him. The social worker sat in the basement playing Words with Friends on his phone, listening to an argument taking place upstairs over what sounded like a fifteen-pound bag of jasmine rice. Then the social worker fell asleep and woke up to the phone ringing.
“Hello?” the social worker said. He heard the shifting of a body in the background, then static. “Hello?”
“Hello? Is this the hotline?”
“This is the Elias Emergency Hotline,” the social worker said.
“This isn’t for the police, right?”
The social worker recognized the voice. “Right, Gene,” he said. “Did you hear about us from the kids at Lowbeck’s?”
Gene was quiet for a moment. The social worker was one of very few people in town who knew about how Gene lived his life, though Gene could never bring himself to openly acknowledge this fact. “I saw a flyer by the veterinarian’s.”
“Imagine that. The kids got all the way out there. Do you have an emergency, Gene?”
“My friend is sick,” Gene said, “and I can’t leave him to go get medicine because of what he’s doing.”
The social worker sat up in his folding chair. “What’s he doing?”
“He’s walking around the house talking about things in his head. He’s raving.”
“Has he done this before?” The social worker knew the likely answer to this question. Gene’s boyfriend was young and docile. He worked at the accounting firm and came into town to buy flowers for Gene. He always dressed well, and no one suspected that he and Gene lived together, though they might have suspected that there was something off about both of them.
“I called this hotline because I didn’t want to call 911,” Gene explained. “They don’t know me.”
“Of course,” the social worker said, starting to feel a head rush of adrenaline. Gene lived as far out as Terrence did, about ten miles from town. “Do you want me to come over?”
“Don’t you need someone to staff the hotline?”
“I’ll get one of the kids upstairs to do it. Do you have my cell phone number?”
The social worker gave Gene his number and then hung up and went upstairs. No one was there. He called out the names of some of the kids but no one answered. He left a note on the kitchen table: Went to Gene’s house for an emergency, please staff the hotline.
Gene was standing in his front yard when the social worker got there. Inside, Gene’s boyfriend was walking around the kitchen in what looked like a panic. The social worker could see that Gene had a very nice kitchen with granite countertops and an island with a big gas stove.
“Please help!” Gene said, and the social worker could see that he was crying. “I don’t know why this is happening!”
The social worker got out of his car and followed Gene into the house. Gene’s boyfriend darted past them, muttering. His unlined face was pale and sweating, his hands balled into fists. He wore a striped t-shirt with sweat stains at the armpits. When the social worker closed the front door, he turned around and shouted, “Get out of my house!”
“Here’s here to help us,” Gene said gently. “Please, Aaron, let him help you.”
Aaron kicked the coffee table over and a slew of magazines fell to the floor. Then he collapsed next to the magazines and started sobbing.
“I don’t want to be alive anymore,” he said. “It’s too much in my head. I have to end this.”
Gene kneeled next to him. “Please, baby,” he said. “You don’t have to end anything.”
Aaron slapped Gene in the face and Gene fell backward on his heels.
The social worker remembered his masters program, during which he’d trained to be a counselor in a prison. He remembered Powerpoint slides about maintaining healthy boundaries and reacting reasonably when guards took control of unruly prisoners. Nothing had prepared him for this.
“We have to get him to the hospital,” the social worker said. “We have to get him committed.”
“No!” Gene said. “They won’t treat him right!”
Aaron punched his thighs and muttered something inaudible.
“Please,” Gene said. “Please do something.”
The social worker got out his phone and called 911. Gene stood up, trying to stop him, but the social worker ran to the other side of the room and plugged the ear that wasn’t listening into the phone. He reported an emergency.
◆
Aaron spent two weeks in the hospital and Gene couldn’t visit him that whole time. When Aaron was released, he looked like he was made of plaster and had to take a regimen of pills: three in the morning and two in the evening. They made him talk slowly and took away his appetite. At the hospital, a therapist had told him that how he was living was responsible for his illness, and if he kept it up he was either going to kill himself or be killed. Gene tried to tell him that the therapist had been wrong, but he wasn’t sure he believed his own words. Aaron didn’t touch Gene, not even to hug him. Gene stayed home from his furniture store and brought Aaron tea and his favorite chicken chili when he could eat it. He argued on the phone with the accounting firm where Aaron was a receptionist, making his voice sound older and deeper so they’d think he was Aaron’s father. The firm fired Aaron anyway. More than once, Gene caught Aaron sitting on their bed holding his head in his hands and crying. The social worker got a job in a prison in St. Louis and left town in July.
In August, Gene went back to his furniture store. He re-mortgaged the house so he could pay for it without Aaron’s income. He bought a dog for Aaron, a little Terrier he named Lorena. He thought about finding books in the library about depression but was ashamed that the librarian, who gossiped to all the people in her neighborhood, would see him checking the books out. Online, he Googled “personality change,” “sudden personality change,” and “loving someone whose personality changes.” He clicked on a Psychology Today article titled Ego Disturbances in Loved Ones, but was too scared to read it.
On the last day of August, he came home from the furniture store late. Lorena was sitting in the living room barking. He got one of her treats from a cupboard in the kitchen and set it in front of her but she didn’t eat it.
“Did he feed you too much, Lorena?” he asked, but saw her bowl was empty. The house was too dark. He called Aaron’s name.
He went into the bedroom and could look only once, quickly, before turning away. He closed the door. He sat on the ground and felt an unbelievable panic, as if he had just been told that someone was coming to kill him and there was nothing he could do about it. His ears began to ring and his throat felt hot. He imagined this must be how people feel in the moments right after they’ve swallowed poison.
Aaron was buried in the next town over, where Gene’s mother and father were buried. The mortician made him look younger than he had in life. She dressed him in a suit, which Gene thought was a little foolish and unlike Aaron, but he felt too nervous to speak up about it. He touched Aaron’s hand. He had never touched anything so still.
For weeks he was unable to sleep. At 2:00am, he was lying on the couch with Lorena, watching a program about animals in the rainforest, when he saw Terrence appear in his front yard, smoking. His first thought was that Terrence shouldn’t be smoking because he already looked half-dead. His second thought was that Terrence shouldn’t be wandering anymore. He was like a haggard specter, a hillbilly in his cheap jeans and work boots, and he wasn’t doing whatever it was he was supposed to be doing to keep himself from wandering. It wasn’t normal, and people shouldn’t have to put up with it. Gene opened the front door.
“Get off my lawn.”
Terrence stayed still, smoking.
“Go home.”
“I am home,” Terrence said. “I’m home all around.”
“You’re not home. Your home’s down the road. Go back there.” Lorena was at Gene’s feet, licking his ankle. “Stop doing this. People don’t like it.”
Terrence adjusted his pants, which hung from his hips, and shook his head.
“Are you sleepwalking?”
“Nope.”
“Then get off my fucking lawn,” Gene said, and closed his door.
The next night, Terrence was back at an hour even worse than the night before. Gene watched Terrence watching him. He thought about calling the social worker, but the social worker never picked up anymore. He probably got a new phone with his St. Louis salary and had a whole new set of concerns and didn’t have time to take calls from Elias. Gene called the hotline but no one picked up. He called it again and got a voice message: This is the Elias Emergency Hotline. We are unable to reach the phone right now. Please leave your name and phone number and we will return your call shortly.
“This is Gene Saskert. Terrence has been on my lawn two nights in a row and he looks threatening this time. My number is 618-945-6782.” He hung up and kept watching Terrence, who was kicking at some dirt that Lorena had dug up. Gene opened his front window.
“What are you doing?”
“Just standing here.”
“I told you last night not to come around.”
“What’re you gonna do? Call the cops?”
Gene put his hands on his hips.
“The cops know me,” Terrence said.
“I don’t care. I’ll call them.”
“I know you can’t.”
They stood regarding each other in silence. A truck rumbled by on the main road and Gene watched it pass. He sighed and closed his window.
On the third night, he decided he’d just let Terrence stand in the yard. He closed his drapes and waited. Terrence’s shadow made only small movements: scratching the back of his leg, hitching up his pants, running his hand through his hair. Lorena wagged her tail at an old sitcom about a family of steel workers. Gene had liked the show when it first aired but had grown bored of it in the years since. “I’m sick and tired of your whining,” one character said to another, a dirty-faced young woman in a pair of overalls. “You’re either in love with him or you aren’t.”
Terrence stayed on the front lawn for an hour. After two hours, he sat down cross-legged. Gene closed his eyes and tried to sleep, Lorena on his stomach, but he felt like he was being smothered. He sat up and changed the channel to something he didn’t recognize, a reality show filmed somewhere with palm trees and Jeep Wranglers. The music was loud. He turned the volume up until it filled the house.
Terrence stood up and walked forward. It seemed like he’d gotten even thinner in the past three days. He knocked on Gene’s door.
“I swear to god I’ll shoot you,” Gene yelled.
Terrence knocked again. Gene didn’t believe in guns, but his family had.
“I have a gun!” he lied. He went to the door and opened it.
“I have a gun,” he repeated to Terrence’s face. Terrence’s jaw was set askew and he was grinding his teeth. He looked trapped in rigor mortis. He shoved past Gene into the house. Lorena started barking and jumped from the couch down to the floor, circling Terrence.
“Nice guard dog you have,” Terrence said.
“Why are you in my house?” Gene asked, and he was aware his tone was desperate. “I never heard of you going in other people’s houses.”
Terrence was looking at Gene’s countertops. He looked up, his face even more grotesque under the high wattage of Gene’s kitchen lights.
“Why did you come here?” Gene asked.
“Because you’re awake when I’m awake.”
“That doesn’t mean I want visitors.”
Terrence shrugged.
“Didn’t they try to stop you doing this?”
“Yeah, the cops tried. But all they do is kick and kill people. They only like me because they can get me where they want me.”
Gene considered this. It was the most he’d ever heard Terrence say.
“Didn’t someone put you on medication?”
“Sure.”
“Why didn’t the medication work?” Gene asked.
“It doesn’t make me sleep. I can’t sleep through the night. I haven’t slept through the night in a long time.”
Gene turned off the TV and sat down on the couch. Lorena sprung up on his lap.
“Well, I’m just paying my respects,” Terrence said quickly, his tone of voice suddenly formal. “I’ll be on my way.” The he turned around and went out the door, which Gene hadn’t realized was still open.
◆
Terrence didn’t come back for two nights, and Gene still couldn’t sleep. He had put all of Aaron’s belongings in boxes in the basement and twice turned on the light and went halfway down the stairs just to look at the boxes. Lorena slept when she could, in the moments when Gene was still, but she woke up whenever Gene shifted on the couch or moaned to himself in pain and frustration. He hadn’t slept in the bed since he’d found Aaron. At the furniture store, he was barely functional, forgetting customers’ names and what they’d ordered. In the spring, he’d known his inventory off the top of his head. Now he had to constantly check a list he kept hanging on a clipboard next to his desk.
One day the woman who lived with her sick mother came into the furniture store looking for an end table. She had a hoarse smoker’s voice and wore a button-up shirt that strained at her bosom. Gene had heard about Terrence coming around to her house.
“Has Terrence been by yours lately?” he asked.
The woman looked surprised. “He hasn’t been around since last fall. Have you seen him?”
“He came by three times,” Gene said.
The woman scratched her chin and looked up at the ceiling. “Three nights in a row?”
Gene nodded.
“That’s weird,” she said. “Did you call the police?”
“Yes,” Gene lied.
“Did they do anything?”
“They, um…they booked him for trespassing.”
The woman’s face brightened. “Well there you go,” she said. “If you don’t want him coming back around, then he’ll take the hint. Old bastard doesn’t know what he’s doing anymore. My theory is he went senile from drinking. He looks like he’s lived hard.”
Terrence didn’t come back a third or a fourth night. Gene found he was feeling the first emotion he’d felt since finding Aaron, which was shame. The gun thing was embarrassing. He’d never acted like that before.
He got a container of sugar cookies from Kroger and drove to where he knew Terrence’s house was. It was more depressing than he’d imagined: clapboard with flaking paint, probably lead on the inside and outside, older than anything he’d seen in town. In the front yard was a rusting pinwheel shaped to look like a sunflower. The sight of it made him sick.
He knocked on the front door and called Terrence’s name. No one answered.
“I’m not leaving until you come to the door, Terrence,” he said. “I came to apologize.”
He waited for five minutes. Finally Terrence’s form appeared behind the fly-dotted screen.
“I brought sugar cookies,” Gene said.
Terrence nodded. “Alright then,” he said.
“Can I come in?”
Terrence stood aside.
The house was a mess: a broken sofa, clothes on the floor, old bike parts laid out on the coffee table, papers and magazines spilling off the Formica counters in the kitchen. Mounted on the wall in the living room were what looked like the skeletons of a squirrel and a fox. The whole place smelled like wet fur.
“I’m sorry about the other night,” Gene said. “The way I treated you. I don’t actually own a gun.”
“I do. But I’ve never used it.”
Gene nodded. “Well, don’t mind me. I’ve been having a bit of a bad time lately.”
“Sure. Aaron died.”
There was a prickling sensation at the back of Gene’s neck. “Yes, he died. He was a good friend of mine.”
Terrence nodded. “That’s why I figured I’d check on you.”
“Oh, OK then. That’s nice of you.”
“Do you ever go to Molly’s?”
“Molly’s?”
“It’s a place a ways out of town. Two towns over, actually.”
Gene shook his head.
“I go there sometimes. I used to drive but I can’t anymore. I walk there.”
“How long is it?”
“About twenty miles.”
“Why can’t you drive?”
Terrence pointed to his right eye. “It’s dead. Glass. And the other one’s going dim.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I did it to myself. Nobody to blame but me.”
Gene decided he didn’t want to know how Terrence had done that to himself, so he didn’t ask.
“Can you drive me?” Terrence asked, face open like a child’s.
“To Molly’s?”
“Yeah. Can you drive me tonight?”
Gene was so taken aback by the question that he didn’t know what to do but nod. “Sure,” he said.
Terrence was silent on the way to Molly’s except to give directions. Gene was grateful for the silence. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this far out of town. He didn’t like to travel, except for the times he and Aaron had gone to Florida to visit Aaron’s aunt. But then they’d had to drive all the way to St. Louis and fly out of the airport there, and that had been a whole hassle. More hassle than it was worth.
Unsurprisingly, Molly’s was a bar. One made to look like a log cabin with neon signs that read “We Have Budweiser!” and “Get Wild with Natty Light.” So what had happened, Gene realized, was he’d gone to Terrence’s to apologize and ended up being an accessory to alcoholism.
“Can I just drop you off here and go home?” Gene asked. “I can pick you up later.”
Terrence turned his face with its crooked jaw and sharp corners to Gene as though Gene had just insulted his mother. “No. I want you to come in.”
“Jesus,” Gene said. “I’m sorry I threatened you but I’m not going to sit in some hole in the wall and get drunk with you. I have a life.”
Terrence nodded. “I know you have a life. But I want you to come in just for a second. It won’t make that much difference in the grand scheme of things.”
Gene sighed. “I’ll come in for five minutes. Then I’m leaving.”
Terrence looked delighted. He took Gene’s hand in both of his. “Thank you,” he said, his voice cracking. The gesture was so strange that Gene felt the prickle at the back of his neck again. “Really, thank you.”
There was something off about Molly’s. Gene didn’t know what it was: there were the usual slot machines, the jukebox in the far left corner, the peeling pleather barstools. But something felt different. At the far end of the room was a group of three young men, all of them farm-thin and glassy-eyed. When they saw Gene and Terrence come in, they smiled.
“Terry!” one shouted, and ran to hug Terrence. “You made it back!”
Terrence laughed. “I got my friend to drive me. This is Gene.”
The young man turned and offered his hand to shake. “So good to meet a friend of Terry’s.”
Something about the handshake felt warm, electric. For some reason it made Gene think of how he’d met Aaron, the way Aaron had kept coming into the furniture store with silly requests until one day he wrote Gene a note on lined paper: I’d like to take you out on a date. They’d driven to an acre of land that Aaron’s father used to own and gone for a walk through the woods. They’d kissed.
“I’m Harley,” the young man said, and pointed back to the other two men. “That’s Ben and Jamison.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Gene said.
Terrence was already sitting at the bar, so Gene did too. The bartender was a tall woman with beautiful bone structure. She wore a strapless pink dress. Gene thought he could detect dark peach fuzz on her cheeks. He’d never seen anyone like her before. She smiled when she saw Terrence.
“You leave us hanging for weeks, waiting for you!” she said. “We were all wondering, where’s Terry? Where’s Terry?”
Terrence laughed. It was so strange to see him laugh. “I missed you, too. I missed all of you.”
“I’m going to give you your dirty martini on the house,” she said. “And who’s this fine young buck you’ve dragged in with you?”
Gene felt himself blush. “I’m Gene. I live in Elias.”
“Gene’s friend died a few months back,” Terrence said.
The bartender frowned. “Poor baby. You’re probably raw with grief.”
Somehow these words made Gene feel the way he’d felt when he’d tripped over a rock on his parents’ farm and gotten a gash in his knee. His mother had come rushing to pick him up. She’d taken him into the house and slid his jeans off and bandaged his knee as he cried. She’d held him and kissed his forehead. This was years before she’d known how he was.
“I’m so sorry I made you cry,” the bartender said. She reached out and held Gene’s chin in her hand. “We can help you, honey.”
Gene wiped his eyes. “I don’t usually do this.”
Terrence’s bony arm was resting on Gene’s shoulders. “Nobody usually does anything,” he said.
Harley, Ben, and Jamison liked to dance. They put Donna Summer on the jukebox and moonwalked. Terrence eventually hobbled onto the floor with them and jerked his body around in an imitation of rhythm. A few more people came in, people Gene had never seen before: older women who looked like the parishioners in his parents’ church, except some of them were holding hands. One wore the same boots Terrence wore. Gene looked back at the bartender, who was smiling and waving at them. He felt hot. He wanted to know why Terrence had taken him to this place. Someone was going to burn the place down. Someone was going to get shot.
He went outside and called the social worker once, then again. He waited a few more minutes and then tried again. For the first time since the summer, the social worker picked up.
“Gene? You woke me up.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m in — ”
“How are you?”
“Terrence took me somewhere dangerous.”
The social worker laughed. “Don’t listen to Terrence, OK? He’s off his rocker. He’s beyond hope.”
“I just need your help,” Gene said.
The social worker sighed loudly. “Gene, my wife is asleep next to me. She didn’t sleep so well last night. I have to be up in four hours.”
“Please,” Gene said. “Aaron killed himself a few months ago.”
The social worker was silent.
“Hello?”
“I’m so sorry,” the social worker said. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”
And then something awful clicked in Gene’s head. He felt rage, the second emotion he’d felt since finding Aaron. “It was your fault,” he said. “You called the police.”
“Whoah now.”
“You called the fucking police!” Gene heard himself saying. A new song pulsed behind him, techno-sounding. “You weren’t supposed to call them! You weren’t supposed to get him committed!”
“I did what I had to do,” the social worker hissed. “You and I both know that emergency hotline wasn’t going to work.”
“Bullshit,” Gene said. “Bullshit.”
“I saved his life, Gene. He would’ve killed himself that night if I hadn’t come over.”
Gene bit his lip. He looked up at the sky, which was crowded with stars. “You could’ve helped him get better. You were supposed to help me get better. You didn’t then and you can’t now.”
The social worker started to say something, but Gene hung up. He deleted the social worker’s number from his phone and went back inside.
A circle had formed and Terrence and the bartender were dancing at the center of it. One of the women grabbed Gene’s hand and tried to spin him. He broke away, sat at the bar and poured himself some of the Budweiser on tap. His arms and legs felt numb. He wondered why he was even alive. He was disgusted with himself. He was disgusted with the social worker. He was disgusted with Terrence, with all his late nights and wandering and stalking. And Gene, fool that he was, had gotten wrapped up in it. He’d become some old pervert’s sidekick. Maybe the therapist at the hospital had been right: he was either going to kill himself or be killed.
He pulled his keys from his coat and stood up. He was halfway out the door when he felt Terrence’s hand on his shoulder.
“Going so soon?” he asked.
Gene shrugged him off. “Don’t touch me.”
Terrence looked hurt. “I thought you’d like it here.”
“You think I want to hang out with a bunch of goddamn faggots?” Gene yelled, and the others stopped dancing and looked at him. “Just because I have to live this way, doesn’t mean I want to be around a bunch of people who flaunt it like it’s the best fucking thing about them!”
“Gene,” Terrence whispered.
“Don’t you dare try and get me wrapped up in your bullshit again,” he said, and walked out the door.
He was halfway to his car when he realized Terrence was limping behind him, calling his name.
“Get away from me!” Gene said.
“Gene, please. Please just let me ride home with you.”
“You can find your own way home.”
“Just let me talk to you then.”
Gene sat in the driver’s seat and slid his keys into the ignition, but he couldn’t bring himself to start the engine. Terrence’s ragged face was at the window. Gene begrudgingly rolled it down.
“Can I come home with you?” he asked.
“I’m not your taxi service.”
“I just want to talk a little in the car. If you let me do that, I’ll never talk to you again.”
“You swear to never talk to me again?”
“I swear.”
Gene unlocked the passenger door and Terrence got in. The road was dark and empty and the moon was full. Gene drove as fast as he could and watched Terrence grip his seatbelt. He knew he’d be too timid to say anything about the speed.
“What do you want to talk about?”
Terrence swallowed hard. “I had a husband once,” he said. “When I lived in Arizona. He divorced me. He said he’d fallen out of love. He remarried to a woman.”
Gene stayed silent.
“He was the love of my life. It hurt so much to lose him. I thought maybe you were hurt too.”
Gene clenched his teeth. “Why do you go wandering around?”
“Honestly I wanted to see who’d be a friend to me. I told you I can’t sleep, and everyone’s more honest in the night. People just started tolerating me. A few were kind, but most were just tolerant.”
“I wasn’t kind.”
“Yeah, but there was a reason for it.”
Gene lifted his foot off the gas. The car coasted. He fantasized about cutting the wheel and driving off the road.
“We don’t have to be friends,” Terrence said. “We don’t have to ever talk again. I just wanted to take you there. I thought maybe it’d make you feel better.”
“Well it didn’t.”
In Gene’s headlights there was the flash of an eye, the brownish shape of a deer. Then a loud thud. The car skidded. Gene tried to grab control of the wheel, but they’d fallen into a ditch on the side of the road. His headlights illuminated the panting form of the deer on its side.
Terrence opened his car door into the ditch and climbed out. He ran to the deer and knelt beside it. Gene followed him and knelt down too. Terrence grabbed the deer’s head in his hands. He stroked the fur beside the deer’s nose with his thumb.
“That thing’s probably got diseases,” Gene said, but Terrence didn’t seem to hear. He kept stroking the fur on the deer’s head and rubbed it between its ears.
“Don’t be paralyzed,” Terrence said. “Don’t die on us.”
“It’s going to die,” Gene said.
“It’s not going to die.” Terrence kept stroking its head. “Don’t die. Don’t die.”
The deer’s chest stopped rising and falling. Terrence put two fingers on its neck.
“It still has a pulse,” he said.
Gene sat down cross-legged and checked his watch. The sun would be rising in a few hours.
“I’m sorry I hit it,” Gene said.
Terrence ignored him. “I can feel the pulse. Come on.”
And then the deer took a deep breath and coughed up a wad of phlegm. Gene saw it splatter the knees of Terrence’s jeans. The deer opened its eyes and reared its head back. It turned on its side and drew its front legs up underneath it.
“There you go!” Terrence shouted. “There it is!”
The deer strained until it was standing, all four legs shaking. Gene realized that his heart was pounding, that there was warmth in his chest, that he was feeling lighter than he’d felt in months. He imagined the deer with a halo around its head like a saint. He imagined beams of gold light shooting from every place on its body.
Terrence walked the deer off the road, both of them hobbling on skinny legs. When it got to the grass, it seemed to regain its strength, and ran fast into the night.
Gene called AAA and a tow truck came to pull them out of the ditch. The sky was light by the time he dropped Terrence off at his house.
“You don’t have to stop talking to me,” Gene said as Terrence unbuckled his seatbelt. “All that stuff I said back there, you don’t have to worry about it.”
“Alright,” Terrence said. “Say hi to your dog for me.”
When Gene got home, he fed Lorena and gave her a rawhide to chew on. There was a heaviness behind his eyes but it wasn’t unpleasant. Thoughts came lazily to him and vanished just as quickly: they were of no consequence to him anymore. He sat down on the couch and realized how tired his legs were, how full his head was. Then he laid down and slept until sunset.