Before everything in my life went balls up, I trained to be a cop. I did the whole Knight Errant program before they tapped me for Firewatch and life grew a little fuzzy. The first thing I learned about being a cop in a dangerous situation was you point your gun at the target and keep your finger off of the trigger, because you don’t want to shoot first. Want to know what they told me day 1 at Firewatch?
When I cam through the door I saw two of Tung’s goons posted up against the bar, laughing at something Tung said and holding drinks. I shot the closest one in the knee cap. I shot the second one in the head. I’m not a killer. Not really, but like I said, I trained a lot of different places and learned a lot of different things. What stuck was this: Make sure they know you are serious.
I pointed the gun at Tung and said, “You know damn well I won that bet.”
He was speechless. His hands flew up defensively and his eyes jittered between me and the mess of his two bodyguards. I followed his gaze to the one that was still breathing. He was a tough guy. He wasn’t howling in pain so much as grimacing like a cheshire cat, grunting unintelligibly and grasping at his blown out knee. I said, “You get to live. I get to live.” Then I turned back to Tung and said, “You don’t.”
After the third gunshot the police were sure to be on their way. Knowing how the place worked I knew to slip back out the backdoor and trotted down the road a ways before easing up into a steady walk. My heart was pounding in my chest. I’d just killed two men. They weren’t the first on my resume and certainly wouldn’t be the last, but they were preemptive in a way that hadn’t happened to me before. I felt the weight of it coming on like a late evening storm. I wasn’t ready to deal with that. My focus had to remain on next steps. I needed to head back to my house and see how badly the remaining goons had tossed the place. I had to think about what those goons would do next. My thought was that it was over. I killed their boss, so why bother coming after me? That’s why I let the one guard live. He needed to remember that I did. he needed to decide what to do with that.
I needed to decide how to live with it.
Some Thoughts:
- Rough day today. Adding to the existing tension, loss, crippling depression, and shame in my life, my first born just quit football on the eve of his senior year. No explanation, no conversation, no emotional moment. Nothing that reflects the value and effort of the work put in leading up to this point. I know that we don’t live vicariously through our kids, but that doesn’t mean we don’t invest in our kids and invest in what they claim to hold dear. When they let go so suddenly we are expected to pivot just as fast, and I for one, am a slow mover. I’m going to need a minute.