A Healthy Fear of Man by Aaron Philip Clark

Author:Aaron Philip Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Down & Out Books

Chapter 11

I wake at 6 AM. Luisa is still asleep. I gather water from the well, heat it and prepare my bath. After I bathe, I change into the cleanest set of clothes I can find—work pants, tank top, and a hooded sweatshirt. I inspect my grandfather’s rifle and search the house for bullets. I’m unsure if it will fire; it’s corroded and likely to jam. I detest guns, always have. Guns have been the tools of devastation in my life and I’m sure countless others, but it’s the only protection I have. I’m still haunted by the night Dooney died. The night he pulled his gun and in the wake of our struggle sealed his fate—his body slumped over, soul slowly evacuating—the odor of cordite, gunpowder stains.

Luisa stirs. I watch her intensely as she slowly wakes and acclimates herself.

“Good morning,” I say. “There’s no food here. We have to go to the store.”

She yawns. “What time is it?”

“I think it’s after ten, almost eleven.”

“I don’t want to be here.”

“Okay.”

“I should go.”

“We need to talk.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“I’m sorry I lied but I didn’t see another way.”

“How do you know I wouldn’t have helped you anyway? Why are you so sure I wouldn’t have understood about the girl? About everything?”

I take a seat in the chair across from her. “Would you have?”

“I would have tried,” she says, “I’m not like some fragile doll. I won’t break.”

“Luisa, there are things about me…things that I want to tell you but I’m afraid once you hear, you’ll walk out that door and I’ll never see you again.”

“I’m here now. So, let’s hear it.”

I hesitate, wondering where to begin. I’m fixated on the idea that at some point, no matter what she says, she’ll grow sick from my tale and storm out anyway. It’s a gamble, the kind of gamble that could end with Luisa by my side or against me—there’s no middle ground, the only result is an absolute alliance or complete desertion.

She rises from the couch. “Good-bye.” I wonder if she’s more disappointed in me or herself for having gotten involved with me.

“Wait.” I beg her to sit. She hesitates, and then looking into my eyes, earnest and full; she slowly lowers herself back down on the couch. I tell her about the sounds that echo through my head every night—the sounds that keep me from restful sleep—the squealing of tires and the screams of the mother and child I ran down when drunk. I tell her of the gun shot that took Dooney’s life—my best friend, once, who turned murderer and betrayer. I tell her how time stopped, how our hands touched just before the gun went off—how I watched his eyes go dim and I waited to die too. And how sometimes I wish I had died in that car with him. She listens attentively as I spill out all that I am and all that I was—murderer, victim, and bastard. She can’t take her eyes off

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