Debridement
A three-act short story about the Largent family and their strange place in the world
I
Weird things happened around the boy.
Or was it just a slick of ice resistant to the warmth of late March that resulted in the car accident? The causality could be argued on merit or superstition. Your proximity to the boy. Your understanding of the coefficient of friction and tire stickiness to the road. The slow onset of spring.
The actual cause of the accident would be glossed over, reported on, vaguely argued about. There were no cameras at the site of the crash; those would come later: mobile phones with embedded lenses and connectivity that could record video and stream it to the masses with surprisingly good clarity, despite the infancy of the technology at that time.
The boy, all of five years old, was out for a walk with his father on a sunny Saturday midmorning, just warm enough for him to clump residual snow in his little hands, feel it liquefy slowly between his fingers. “Squishy,” he’d say. Sometimes “Melty.”
“Let me see your hands, bud,” his father, a man named Bo Largent, would say.
The boy would provide his hands, reddish from the snow, cold but not blistered, not in discomfort. Whether he realized his hands were subject to an inspection was anyone’s guess.
The boy’s name was Leopold, all but forgotten language on a birth certificate. No one called him that; he went by Leo.
And he was very much opposed to wearing gloves or mittens of any kind.
“Carry on,” said Bo, satisfied his boy was harming the snow more than the snow was harming his boy’s bare hands.
There were birds chirping in the background, probably; the day had that kind of potential. A car breezed by Bo and Leo on their left, briskly, as they walked along the shoulder. Was the car technically going a bit too fast? It may have been. It was a detail that, in hindsight, was tough to recall, subject to the trappings of memory, faulty or otherwise. The unreliability of human recollection. Even the skid mark analysis the police would conduct was mostly inconclusive in determining the vehicle’s speed. The driver would insist she was obeying the speed limit. So would her son, who had been sitting in the passenger seat. In the end, given all that would happen, there was little reason to doubt her, to disbelieve her account. Or, more accurately, there was little interest in doubting her. In muddying the narrative. So the issue of speed was overlooked. There were patches of ice on the road that interfered with the tires’ traction, with the kinetic energy that corrupted their path and purchase with the pavement. There was a shock to it, a systemic impact that carried all the way through the car, into the steering wheel and into the hands and wrist of the driver, a woman named Ruth Sequoia. Her son was beside her, fourteen years old and still wearing his cleats from baseball practice, from which they were returning.
His name was Joseph Sequoia, and he showed great promise fielding the diamond and rapid bat speed, a five-tool prospect.
Suffice it to say, the accident happened fast, and a patch of ice bore the brunt of culpability when the official police report was filed, when the insurance claims were processed and medical bills accumulated. When the world became curious.
Speed was never indicated as a contributing factor in what happened that day.
Among other things.
Once control of the car was lost, it careened violently to the right into the shoulder and jammed the underside tunnel of an overpass, a relatively important traffic artery in that smallish town, somewhere in New Jersey. In other circumstances, the car would have simply jumped a curb and knocked over a street sign or some wooden fencing before control was regained. Maybe stopped against its will by large oak while wiping out a stretch of newly planted saplings. The car could have escaped incident entirely using the expanse of a drainage area, incurring only the embarrassment of leveraging one’s AAA membership to order a wrecker, to get a tow. Under ideal circumstances, the driver might have been able to regain control of the vehicle entirely, given enough room to course correct trajectory and slowly settle their heart out of their throat and back into their chest cavity where it belonged. It would be the kind of skirmish barely remembered by the end of a long day, reminisced over in bed, on the cusp of sleep: “Oh yes, that was a bit scary today.” Perhaps an extra line of prayer would be whispered, in gratitude, in contrition.
Any number of things could have happened, ideal or less so. But none of them did, aside from one of the less favorable outcomes—the car smashed into the overpass cement wall, then a fire ignited, an ambitious one.
Only a few hundred feet in front of the father taking his son for a walk around the neighborhood. Bo and Leo.
Then the car crash.
There was little time to think.
“Stay. Right. Here,” said Bo, slowly, for emphasis, his hands placed firmly on Leo’s shoulders, the slow-burning wreck in clear eyeshot.
Then Bo took off toward the crash, leaving his son alone to call out after him with two words, “Dad” and “Melty.” But the boy was not looking at his father; rather, he was transfixed by the accident, his words taking on an echo quality at the mouth of the tunnel. Like the maw of some hideous monster, his father sprinting down its throat toward the wreck—a monster tasked with swallowing life whole. It was enough to frighten any adult, even the courageous, even those with first-responder training. It was more than enough to frighten a child of five years old, to petrify him into odd behavior, into shock.
Though Leo would insist he was never afraid that day, a position he would hold long after the incident.
Bo, slightly out of breath, stood before the car and assessed the situation. The difficulty would not be removing the driver, Ruth, from her seat. Her airbag had deployed, disorienting her, but she’d managed to unfasten her seat belt, to get the driver’s side door ajar. Though even that came at considerable mental energy, mostly instinctual—she would quickly flounder, drained of the wherewithal to pull herself out of the car. To pull her 157-pound son across the car seats to safety, through the detritus of smashed plastic and glass and ungodly jagged metal. Let alone the fire that was pooling in areas of combustion, seeking to join, to feed, the way something as elemental as fire is born to do.
Removing Joseph was the rub.
Ruth would be pulled from the car quickly, Bo swinging the door wide open, the hinges mercifully operational, the glass window already smashed away. He would drag her out more aggressively than he needed to, surprised by how light she was, how clear the path was, small variables working in his favor. For now. Or perhaps it was just the flush of adrenaline he was experiencing, unlike anything he’d ever encountered before. Bo was a tax accountant with no first-responder training whatsoever, hadn’t a clue about CPR or even the Heimlich maneuver. He’d never been in so much as a fender bender. He never fathomed such a scenario where he was the only person available to make a difference, the only man available to act.
But that was where he found himself.
It would be widely accepted that the surge of godlike adrenaline, more than anything, guided Bo’s decision-making process, even when the event was over.
With Ruth safely removed from the car, laid out flat and coughing in the middle of the two-lane road, Bo turned his attention back to the wreck, which had morphed beyond his comprehension in what could have only been a minute or so. The flames had grown considerably in such a short time. There was a hissing and popping coming from the car: more combustible components falling prey to the fire’s intensity. The smoke thickened; the air becoming acrid, unsafe. Bo could still see, just barely, his path to retrieve Joseph, who appeared unconscious in the passenger seat, though his door was crushed against the concrete tunnel, inaccessible. The margin to save the boy was shrinking by the second, something Bo understood despite the thrashing of blood in his head, the hammering like bell strikes in his temples. He understood that once the fire had penetrated the gas tank, the fuel lines, an explosion would ensue, one of an unsurvivable nature.
He’d seen enough movies to be convinced of that.
He also knew that saving the boy would mean he’d be burned—he just couldn’t say how badly.
That was just one of the thoughts that passed through his mind, including regret for leaving his son unattended, as he raced back toward the car, committed to his trajectory, hoping the boy’s seat belt had come undone in the crash or, at the very least, would unclasp if propositioned to do so.
Ruth had by then dragged herself to the opposite side of the tunnel, violently coughing the smoke inhalation out of her lungs, her senses slowing returning.
A passing car heading in the opposite direction had pulled over, seeing the crash. A woman and a middle school–age boy got out of the car, the woman attending to Ruth, the boy pulling out his cell phone.
Bo’s son, Leo, still looked on from the mouth of the tunnel, alone, absorbed in the scene: what he was witnessing in its entirety, what he could comprehend, what he couldn’t.
Bo got on with the task at hand, suppressing further thought and reason, leveraging the chemical cocktail sloshing around his body, fueling the fight instinct and lubricating his motor functions. He dove into the burning car, freed Joseph from the harness of his seat belt, pulled his knocked-out frame across the two seats then across the road, placing him beside his recovering mother.
It took all of one minute, probably a little less.
The boy rescued, though the damage done and its extent were unknown.
Then Bo, on his hands and knees, now free from carrying Joseph to safety, went about swiping at the lingering flames still attached to his clothes, the embers singeing his skin. Rolling his body over, unsure how afire he might actually be, unsure how much damage to assign his predicament. He could feel the black mass of smoke scratching his lungs, breaching the entry points of tiny sacs, of small blood vessels. He’d held his breath inside the car for as long as he could, limiting exposure, but smoke was like water, always finding a way in, another elemental design. His eyes felt particularly raw; he’s been unable to keep them closed during his retrieval of Joseph. They were somehow watering yet ridiculously dried out at the same time. Multiple fingernails were blackened and cracked. He couldn’t feel his teeth for some reason.
The other aspects of damage to follow—the licks of flame to the skin—would be estimated later, though not much later, in the back of an ambulance, the adrenaline depleted, the mind oriented to register the pain. Then the drugs administered to block said pain.
But Bo wasn’t quite at the ambulance stage yet—there was more to do first.
He rolled and crawled down the tunnel toward his son; whether by instinct or happenstance, that was the direction he chose. He propped his back against the concrete wall to catch his breath when he could travel no farther, still not fully convinced that he wasn’t on fire or that some spigot of inferno hadn’t somehow burst loose, charbroiling his core from the inside out. He found himself panting, burying the heels of his hands into his eyes, looking to see what he’d remove. Streaks of inky black, slightly viscous. His vision compromised. The occasional coughing jag. The smell of smoke so strong he imagined it with him his entire life, like a new appendage. The smell of something slightly cooked. Meat. Hair. All his. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Leo a hundred feet away, still appraising the scene and his father, who literally had smoke coming off his body.
Bo gave Leo a thumbs-up—the nail in its bed splintered, the pad blistering from when he pressed down on the boiling-hot release of Joseph’s seat belt button. Bo would not remember giving his son that gesture, couldn’t say for sure what he was trying to indicate with it. Was he saying that he was OK, assuaging his son’s fears? Was he calling Leo over to him? Was he proud of Leo for staying put, for being so brave? Bo wouldn’t remember an iota of it. The act was captured by other means of storage, of recollection.
Something more reliable, more accurate—less prone to debate, though not impervious to fraudulence.
The middle school boy from the passing car that had stopped approached Bo, cautiously, as one might approach a wounded animal that has strayed from its pack to convalesce, to die in solitude, with dignity.
He was pointing the cell phone at Bo, recording their interaction. Then he spoke.
“I called the police,” said the boy. “I told them to get here as fast as they can.”
To that, Bo just nodded with resigned approval.
The boy, still recording, seemingly unconcerned with the ghoulish way such an action might be interpreted—a different generation, a new paradigm. Nothing off limits, privacy redefined.
“You pulled those people—” said the boy, unable to finish his sentence because of the thunderous boom and wave of heat down the cavernous length of the tunnel.
The car had exploded, just as Hollywood predicted, the internal combustion breached, though with no one within the blast radius, the shock wave—no one in harm’s way.
The boy aimed the phone away from Bo, now recording the explosion, the incinerating car, the absolute mayhem of it. Then the boy pivoted the camera lens back to Bo, narrowing in with the pinch and glide of his fingers.
“Holy hell, did you see that?” asked the boy.
Bo didn’t respond, didn’t know what to say. His tongue felt like a butterflied steak.
“Come on, man, you OK? You saved those people,” said the boy. “You OK? How do you feel?”
For the entirety of his life, Bo would never know why he answered that question the way he did, what prompted the odd response. The receding endorphins? Gallows humor? True thirst? Oddly firing synapses? Who could really say if not for him? But the middle school boy would record it all the same, a posterity Bo could never have imagined. All the boy’s digital content would be sold that day to a local television news source. The retrieval of Joseph Sequoia from the wreckage. The explosion. The thumbs up to Leo. His response to the question “How do you feel?” All of it permeating the airwaves, eventually uploaded to YouTube in those early days of viral videos, basically on the heels of that term being coined, on the country’s developing appetite for such amusement. Their insatiable thirst for viral content.
Bo’s response to an unknown audience of hundreds of millions of people across the globe.
How do you feel?
“I wouldn’t say no to a Guinness right about now,” said Bo. Then he spit out a glob of black phlegm onto the road, the boy zooming his camera phone in on it, so close it resembled a monster, like a living pool of cancer incarnate. He would linger on the shimmering wad for quite some time, as though he were waiting for the carcinogen to blossom like a sick bloom. Then he would stop recording, the thing turning his stomach, the unlikely catalyst to halt his production, finally acknowledging that not all things need be known, frozen in time.
At that point, Bo didn’t so much as pass out as drift off into a self-imposed bliss of catatonia, short lived. Smile on his face. That lasted for x amount of time. Not long. Then he properly passed out.
II
Many things would happen in the years following the car wreck, things that would not have occurred if not for the confluence of that day’s events.
The injuries tend to draw the most immediate questions, attention, curiosity as to who sustained what and how. Amazingly enough, aside from a broken nose from the airbag deployment, Ruth had incurred minimal damage, nothing long term. Scratches, not scars. Zero burns. Joseph had absorbed a concussion he would always have to be mindful of, as well as first-degree burns on his left hand and wrist, though nothing that time and the natural healing process wouldn’t remedy on their own. His lack of long-term injuries was also amazing, particularly as he would go on to become a professional athlete, a second baseman in major league baseball, though a journeyman at best. He would play for nine years and retire with a career batting average of .267, knocking in a grand total of 113 home runs. If his injuries had been more substantial that day, if he’d been subjected to even a few more seconds in that collapsing car, the likelihood of him simply being alive would have exponentially diminished, let alone his prospects of becoming a big leaguer. A truism Joseph would hold close to his heart for all his years.
As for Bo, his valor came at a cost, and he was not as fortunate as those he rescued.
Bo incurred third-degree burns on both hands and his right leg where the cuff of his jeans had snagged and subsequently exposed what had been a somewhat protected area to a swath of flame. His neck, his jawline, and patches of his face were subjected to second-degree burns, and while they didn’t require the grafts his hands and leg would need, it did suffer mild scarring, not always so noticeable years later but a part of him just the same. It was the price to be paid; that was how Bo came to view it. And the truth was that it could have been much worse. He could have lost partial vision or hearing. Or experienced a total loss. He could have lost lung capacity. Mobility. The physical extent of his wounds ranged more toward the cosmetic in nature, though there was some loss of tactility in his hands, but nothing that would impair his ability to manipulate a writing instrument or the impossibly shrinking digital keys of mobile phone technology.
Physically, in the long run, he emerged relatively unscathed—often joking with his doctors that fingernails grew back.
The mental toll of his injuries, on the other hand, would be a different story, one he would guard closely to himself.
Then there was the impact that day had on Leo, Bo’s young son, or, more accurately, the lack of impact it appeared to have on him. While his father was rushed to the hospital, a police officer drove him home the three miles to his mother, Virginia, who was unaware of all that had been occurring. She was picked up and driven by the same officer, with Leo in tow, to join her husband, who was being treated in the emergency room of the local hospital, later to be transferred to the burn ward.
They rode together in the back seat, where she kept inspecting her son for injury, despite hearing the officer’s account of the scene, unconvinced he wasn’t hurt or thinking he might not know his injury. She kept asking him, “Are you hurt anywhere?” He would shake his head, shrug his shoulders, not saying a word, calmly; he was very calm against his mother’s frantic insistence. That’s what Virginia would always remember about the car ride: her son’s placid demeanor. She was suppressing panic just hearing snippets of what had transpired from the officer driving the car. But Leo had actually seen it, been forced to process it through those clear eyes, that young mind—the flaming wreckage, bodies being dragged across the road. Let alone his father being at the center of it, in mortal danger, whether he could actually understand that or not. Why was the boy so damn calm? Was he in shock? Did he think he was in trouble for some unknown reason? Why was it that halfway to the hospital, when he spoke for the first time, he asked his mom if he could have McDonald’s chicken nuggets for dinner? She’d barely noticed she’d been hugging him close in that back seat for ten minutes, the majority of the car ride. And if she were being very honest, during that hazy, tumultuous stretch, when Leo returned her embrace, it felt more obligatory than anything, as though he wasn’t really there. Or didn’t want to be there. Like he was reciprocating just to calm her down. Something she would partially write off as her being in shock herself, an assessment she was not in her right mind to make, as though Leo had his own calculations to go through, and he’d have preferred to do it on his own.
Perhaps not so novel a thought, processing a trauma in solitude, though seemingly unlikely in a five-year-old.
In the years that would follow, it has to be said, it could be interpreted that weird things continued to happen around the boy, if you were willing to pay attention—if you were willing to do the research.
An unintended consequence of that day, far from anything Bo could have ever imagined, was how famous he would become. After the middle school boy sold his footage and eventually uploaded the content to the internet, it was shared and reshared across the world. This was during the burgeoning days of social media, when there was a stronger tilt toward positivity being highlighted, as opposed to the more salacious fare that now defines the zeitgeist. This was also when viral content lingered longer in the collective mind, not as easily surmounted by a new video the following day. The following hour. There was more space for traction, for the story to grow, a greater chance at becoming mythology.
Those who viewed and shared the footage worldwide were enthralled by Bo’s heroism: his lack of first-responder training; his desk-job origins; the actions he took, fueled on courage that one cannot rightly guess about themselves—a determination that can only be made on the cusp of the fire. You had to be there, to live it. Pass or fail, no level of gradation. Speculation need not apply. But the public’s fascination didn’t end there; in fact, Bo’s bravery, while extraordinary, was generally understood, comprehended. The world had seen acts of valor before. What was puzzled over were his actions afterward, the thumbs up to the boy, also shown in the video, featureless, a black smudge in the mouth of the tunnel, statue still. Then Bo’s semi-shutdown, the way he seemed to slip off into the ether, a contributing factor to why the spectator would finally discontinue the recording, eventually admitting that he became spooked. Why the middle school boy hadn’t been spooked by the flaming wreck or the injured bodies was an entirely different question.
Then, of course, not least of all was Bo’s infamous response to the question that was posed to him in the tunnel, a response that even Bo would be somewhat coy about, which prompted some to speculate that not even the originator knew the true reason he spoke those words.
I wouldn’t say no to a Guinness right now about.
Obviously, given the popularity of the footage, the Guinness Brewing Company hired Bo within that first month for their public relations department, where they would subsequently build an entire advertising campaign around him.
It didn’t take a genius in marketing to leverage that opportunity—Bo was a bona fide hero who had pulled two souls out of a burning car, then, on camera, all but asked for a pint of their flagship stout, smoke still wafting off his body.
The pairing was only logical.
What was interesting to the folks Bo would work with, report to, was just how well he did at the job, how it suited him. He had a sharp on-camera presence, an intelligence that was relatable but not off putting, a family-man quality that resonated with a variety of demographics. He was young enough to still seem cool but had had such an extreme experience that even veterans and the grizzled had to tip their caps to the man. Over the course of ten years, Bo would film close to one hundred different commercials, some of them airing during prime-time spots such as the Super Bowl, championship boxing, MMA bouts, and the Masters. Though the campaign dipped infrequently into the territory of humor and skewed toward populism and the buoyancy of the human spirit, it was observed that Bo did have a funny side for a tax accountant; he was willing to poke fun at himself. Above all, market research informed the public relations department that Bo was identified as someone the general populace would want to sit down and have a beer with, to shoot the breeze with, to lament and commiserate with.
Presidents have been elected on the same criteria.
Therefore, the man—Bo—was deemed good for business.
While Bo was considered more or less a natural on camera, there were always adjustments that needed to be made, a learning curve to traverse. Things weren’t always perfect by any stretch. In a memoir he would pen years later, Bo recounted his very first instance in wardrobe and makeup, on the set of his first commercial shoot. He was given a pair of tailored, worn-in jeans and a fitted button-down shirt to wear, untucked, with a pair of nondescript brown shoes. Provided no undershirt, he was asked to unbutton the top button, a relatively normal request under most circumstances. However, the time of that shoot wasn’t too far removed from the accident, and Bo’s injuries were in various states of healing and repair, some skin grafts completed with others still to go. The following was his reconstruction of the conversation, as best he could remember it for the memoir, with the makeup artist, the commercial’s director, the Guinness PR representative who was functioning as Bo’s handler, and little Leo, who had tagged along to see his father shoot the commercial, to become a star.
“I tend to button shirts to the collar now,” said Bo firmly. “For obvious reasons.”
The makeup artist shot the PR representative a knowing glance, as though they had expected this, prepared for it.
“We think it would play better with the collar exposed. Even two buttons open would be good,” said the PR representative. “This is your first commercial, your reintroduction to the world if you will. We want them to see the real you.”
“Scars and all is what you’re really saying,” said Bo, the pin prickles of temper rising in his scalp, in his armpits.
“You’re an amazing human being, Mr. Largent,” said the makeup artist, sounding wellrehearsed. “Let them see it all.”
“Have I asked to wear gloves? Do I mask my face?” asked Bo rhetorically, defensively. “Can’t I keep some things to myself?”
“You look fine, Mr. Largent,” said the commercial’s director, smiling. “You’re a handsome man, very camera worthy.”
“Listen, Bo, the truth is, for this to work, the frame must be unobscured,” said the PR representative, speaking with a confidence that came from experience, his resolve toward the issue at hand, whatever that might be, bordering on otherworldly. “I can’t even imagine what you’ve gone through, but understand this: if the trauma is hidden, the authenticity will suffer, and fewer cases of beer will be sold. Bottom line: bad for business.”
Then Bo spoke quickly, without the benefit of thought or the filter of reason. He spoke out of pent-up anger, the need to un-bottle.
“Why don’t you hold a barbeque lighter to your throat if you want to imagine what I’ve been through?” said Bo, seething.
Naturally, the room took a beat after that. How long it took the PR representative to respond Bo could not exactly recall, but didn’t think it was that long.
“I see,” said the PR representative, measuring his response, absently spinning his wedding band around his finger. “I fully recognize your feedback, Mr. Largent.”
That was the extent of the conversation as Bo recalled and transcribed it into his memoir, unafraid to very visibly include material that would cast him in an unfavorable light. His editors had been hesitant about that part—and others—but he had insisted it stay in. He felt it important to document some of those early struggles he’d dealt with regarding his disfigurement, how he was far from perfect, and it was up to other people around him to stay professional, as the PR representative had, gracefully accepting Bo’s apology later that day, telling him not to give it a second thought.
In the end, Bo would shoot the commercial with those two buttons undone, an atonement of sorts for the crude suggestion he’d made—particularly since he’d spoken the words in front of his son, the aspect of the encounter he regretted the most.
The PR representative would later go on record stating that literally hundreds and hundreds of far worse things had been said to him in the line of duty, that Bo Largent was being too hard on himself, and that the issue had been resolved amicably and to his satisfaction.
It’s also worth mentioning that not everything of significance from that day made it into the memoir.
The fact that Bo’s injuries were far from the worst a burn victim could incur was a battle he fought with himself constantly, particularly in those early years. People would tell him—learned people, specialists, other victims—that he was actually quite lucky, given the circumstances. On no part of his body did he absorb fourth-degree burns; no muscle or nerve was penetrated in a meaningful way. By all accounts, the debridement of his wounds had been clean and true. The majority of the grafts were split thickness, stretched and perforated, taken from donor sites on his body that could easily be hidden by clothing. Skin he would hardly miss. And the areas that needed full-thickness grafts, where the full dermis was required, ultimately took, as commonly categorized when successful: stapled, stitched, and meshed to fingers and wrists and neck and, in time blending to a more than acceptable cosmetic outcome.
It was true that some of the scarring was redder in certain areas, with that unnatural-to-the-eye shine and ripple of injuries past, the telltale evidence of a guarded story behind it, an incident. In Bo’s memoir, he was cautiously open about his struggles, his vanity, about the recommendations to seek counseling that he would shrug off, that he would insist were unnecessary. How people would remind him that, unlike most burn victims, he was propelled onto a larger stage, under a spotlight that was going to prove lucrative, where he could influence change. That his heroism had opened a rather sizable door of opportunity. Most burn victims would settle for a mere fraction of the good luck Bo Largent had experienced. Braver men had suffered more and received less. And while Bo couldn’t discount that, he would later reflect that if he’d returned to his desk in the accounting department instead of taking his place on the world stage, his post-injury transition and acceptance would have been smoother. Much smoother. For that push and pull inside him, his logic worthy of debate, Bo blamed only himself and made it a point never to seem ungrateful for his good fortune. If he truly felt it was a bad decision to become a public figure, then he’d hold that doubt close to his heart, like a bird he’d refuse to set free.
But that was merely an example of a rougher time during his tenure with Guinness—the positive experiences outweighed the negative ones ten to one.
The fact of the matter was that the advertising campaign with Bo was a massive success from the jump, from the very first commercial, which was initially conceived for a more targeted local rollout but was quickly pivoted to usher in a national strategy after seeing Bo’s charisma, his effectiveness on camera. It was his simple commercial spot, his introduction to the world as the new Guinness pitchman layered onto the existing version of himself the world already knew from YouTube: the family man, the hero, the CPA. His partnership with Guinness would be rooted in charity and altruism; it would be broadcast to the world in that vein, counterintuitive to how beer advertising had been done in the past. They were creating a new yardstick.
And, for lack of a better term, the world ate it up.
In all the ninety-some-odd commercials Bo would star in, he’d never directly ask the buying public, his fans, to purchase a Guinness or even to drink one. But at the close of every commercial, even as the campaign evolved over time, he’d sign off with his signature catchphrase, “I wouldn’t say no to a Guinness right about now.” And neither would those consumers, as the campaign that never actually asked you to buy the product would see sales rise between 35 and 45 percent over the course of those first five years, depending on the market and its product penetration. Mountains of data would indicate that traditional socioeconomic barriers were agnostic, moot to the transcendence of Bo’s appeal, of the well-crafted message. Market research indicated that even non–beer drinkers were purchasing cases just to have them in the fridge, squirreling them away in the garage. When asked why, the most common response was along the lines of “I find it comforting.” Consider that. Teetotalers were desperate to be swept up in the movement. Even toward the back end of the campaign, when those numbers slowed and saturation set in, the ten-year run the Guinness Brewing Company enjoyed elevated them to a new plateau, an all-time watermark they hardly could have dreamed of.
Concurrently and as expected, Bo and his family amassed a tremendous amount of wealth through his employment: nouveau riche, first-generation money.
Once the time was right, Bo; his wife, Virginia; and little Leo moved into a larger house in a quiet, upscale community—not quite a mansion but not far off and a sizable upgrade from their old neighborhood. They would come to drive nice cars. Enjoy more luxuries. Leo would be sent to private school, though it would take time for him to find one that fit. They would vacation more, travel around the world. Despite all this, Bo and Virginia would not lose sight of the fact that they were savers, not spenders, by nature. More than any of the material gains, it was the security of a nest egg in the bank and financial sector they valued the most, that they took the greatest pride in. Money that would be used for Leo. For the family Leo would have. Multigenerational wealth if managed wisely, if treated with reverence.
But at their cores, the Largents were workers, and eventually those ten years took on a normal-enough cadence for the family. Bo would travel a lot, doing appearances for charities and Guinness and helping bring awareness to causes he believed in. Concerns of overexposure ended up being unfounded as Americans, for a much longer period of time than one would have expected, had an insatiable appetite for the man and the message he represented. A charitable man. Involved in a deep partnership with MADD. With law enforcement. Bringing unlikely entities together for a common cause, societal good. But also the kind of man to enjoy a cold one at the end of the day, well earned and responsibly consumed. An advocate for that small reward. A believer in the little things. A believer that all these tenets can be true and exist at the same time, in the same thought.
It all resonated. It all came together.
Bo met a lot of famous people during those years. Became a more worldly man. He even cohosted a celebrity chili and beer cook-off with Jonathan Goldsmith, the actor who portrayed the most interesting man in the world for the popular Dos Equis campaign—two successful pitchmen for their respective beer companies. Of Goldsmith, Bo would say in his memoir that he was wildly charismatic with a real lust for life. There were lots of encounters like that. Lots of events and auctions and public appearances. Bo did his best to treat it like a working lifestyle—granted, a highly desirable one—but he was never away from his family for too long. He made sure of that. Virginia was more than content to no longer work, happily spending time with Leo and leaning in to the role of community organizer for various public works projects. She seemed to especially dote on Leo, perhaps an aftereffect of Bo’s brush with disaster, perhaps because he was an only child. Perhaps because she thought he needed the attention.
In a sense, that ten-minute hug in the back of the police car never really ended. She never let go—something she and Bo would quarrel about.
Leo did have some initial struggles, leaving his old public school and trying an assortment of private ones. It seemed like he could never get the hang of it, the right fit. Eventually, he would fall into a place he liked, where he made friends and lived a relatively normal life, though he never quite lost that distant quality he possessed as a small boy in the mouth of that tunnel. It was hard to gauge the actual impact of that day on his long-term development. Sometimes he’d say he missed his dad even though he’d just seen him. Or he’d say he just wanted to be alone, which never sounded right coming from a boy of such a young age. He never wanted to talk much about that day. Always insisted he hadn’t been afraid and was proud of what his father had done. He’d always appeared just acclimated enough to keep his parents from seeking out professional help for him, a counselor or therapist. It was almost like Leo was one small step ahead of his parents in that respect. And the fact was that as he got older, into his teenage years, a lot of those issues seemed to go by the wayside, replaced by a different set of problems, more traditional to coming of age.
In truth, there were strange moments with Leo, the kind of stuff any parent would have a difficult time cataloguing—the kind of stuff that doesn’t make it into memoirs or social media posts. Where did those kinds of moments go? They were absorbed into a sponge of unconditional love by his parents, then wrung out down the darkest of drains, clandestine, hopeful that the output would remain hidden.
And those dark drains were not solely reserved for the child. The parents buried their share of secrets in the plumbing—out of sight though not out of mind.
In truth, Virginia Largent would want a second child, maybe even a third. But something about that day in the fire had changed Bo’s heart, and he couldn’t bear it. The very thought. It would be something they fought over viciously, something that would test the fabric of their marriage, as all marriages are tested in their unique ways.
In truth, Bo Largent, on more occasions than he would care to admit for the entirety of his life, would wake up in a panic and swat out flames that didn’t exist, that weren’t there. Not so much a nightmare per se, but something now ingrained, like an epileptic who manages mild seizures. Virginia would become adroit at calming him down, soothing the fear away in the bed they shared—a firsthand witness to the mental toll that produced no visible scar, trauma that left behind no image on scannable technology yet existed all the same.
In truth, even little Leo would come to accept that odd things did happen around him.
In truth, the universal truth, nothing was as it seemed, ever.
III
It was another Saturday, about nine years after the morning of the car accident, when all that had been secretly building came to a head. A reckoning of sorts, the culmination of a battle being fought by those willing and unwilling, cognizant and unknowing.
It was the Saturday when Raymond Brace would unlawfully enter the Largent household at gunpoint and have his say as he’d long imagined.
He broke in through the back door, punching out a small pane of glass, then used the handle on the inside of the door to gain access to the house. He’d worn thick gloves to protect his fingers and wrists from injury. A heavy shirt, the sleeves tucked into the gloves. He’d known for a long time that was how he’d do it. He’d practiced on his own door. Despite the house having a state-of-the-art home security system, nothing was tripped or activated—no alarms screeched to life; no lights flashed. The system wasn’t armed. And why would it be? It was the middle of the day, and all the Largents were home, watching a baseball game together as a family. In their den. In their large house. In their safe neighborhood. In their comfortable existence.
When Bo got up to check on a faint noise he’d heard from the back of the house, he figured a bird had flown into a window. Maybe some squirrels were skittering down the roof and along the siding. He wasn’t really giving it much thought, just absently checking as an excuse to stretch his legs, not even convinced he’d heard anything to find. Perhaps he’d grab a snack from the fridge, a pudding cup. Neither Leo nor Virginia had heard the noise. He was only gone for a few seconds before slowly walking back into the family room where the baseball game was being watched, an unsettled look on his face, with Raymond Brace following behind, carrying a small caliber pistol in one hand.
Once Virginia got sight of what was actually going on, she clenched up in her chair, almost ready to scream, fostering the courage to get over to Leo, who was watching the television intently on the couch, the closest to the screen, the gunman not quite in his sight line.
“Don’t scream,” said Bo calmly. “Just stay put.”
That bit of language caught Leo’s attention. He could then see his father walking slowly into the room, his hands slightly elevated, Raymond Brace trailing a few paces back.
“Go ahead and sit down, Bo,” said Raymond Brace. “On the couch, away from your boy.”
With which Bo complied, speaking gently to the room, reassuring everyone things would be OK.
Then Raymond Brace leveled the gun directly at Leo’s head with a kind of restrained furiosity that ran contrary to the tranquility the room had possessed literally one minute before.
There were whimpers and pleas from Leo’s parents, still so impossibly unsure what was going on, aside from the raw, logistical fact that a gun was aimed at their son.
Raymond Brace told them all to keep quiet, flashing the gun in their direction, then back at Leo’s head, between his eyes. The room took a beat while Raymond Brace organized his thoughts, got to the question at hand—the moment he’d practiced a thousand times in his mind.
“I want to know exactly what the fuck you are,” said Raymond Brace to Leo.
Leo was a few months shy of his fifteenth birthday by that point, so while he had certainly aged from when he was immortalized in that YouTube video, he was hardly a man yet. He was also now witnessing, firsthand, his father in mortal danger for the second time in as many decades. His mother in mortal danger for the first time in her life, as far as he knew. As for Leo, he knew for sure it was the first time a gun had ever been pointed at him. And the mortal danger part? He remained noncommittal. But he would acknowledge the swell of volatility roiling under his calm demeanor. He had the look of a teenager trying to size up a dire situation, a teenager who’d seen a lot of action movies. Who didn’t understand mortality the way the other three in the room did. The way adults do. If they were being honest, his parents were surprised by the cool detachment he’d shown Raymond Brace, gun in tow, as if he knew the firing pin had been removed, or the gun was loaded with blanks.
A knowledge that looked very real indeed, beyond posturing, beyond comprehension.
“Look at him, hardly a care in the world,” said Raymond Brace, smirking. “What fourteen-year-old reacts that way?”
“He’s in shock,” said Bo, not hesitating, though not really sure if that was true or not.
“The hell he is,” said Raymond Brace. “He’s already figuring out how he’ll kill me.”
At that, Bo and Virginia started to look to each other, confused—there was too much they didn’t know, that they still needed to find out, centered on the lunatic who had broken into their home.
“Sir, can you please just tell us what this is all about? What do you want?” said Bo, in a clear and steady voice. “If it’s money you want, we keep some in a safe upstairs. You can have it all.”
At that, Raymond Brace let out a laugh—a snort—with a kind of unhinged quality that continued to paint a picture of the intruder in the Largent household, his unstable nature, his creepy atmosphere.
“Your money is nothing,” said Raymond Brace. “I want to know how he did it. How’d you do it, Leo? Little boy. How’d you crash that car eight years ago?”
Leo very slowly reached for the television remote control and increased the set’s volume one increment as if Raymond Brace’s line of questioning were interfering with his enjoyment of the game. Then he pointed the remote control at Raymond Brace’s head, mirroring the gun that was pointed at his, then flicked a few buttons on the remote with his thumb. Nothing happened. Just the sensor light innocuously flicking on and off. Leo looked at the remote and just shrugged his shoulders, tossed it back on the couch. Looked back at the armed assailant occupying the family room, looked down the narrow barrel of the pistol.
“I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about, mister,” said Leo, not betraying much in the way of emotion in his voice.
“I’ve seen the video, Leo,” said Raymond Brace incredulously.
“You and about a billion other people. Congratulations,” said Leo, now sounding more like an unruly teenager.
“No, I’ve seen it. I’ve watched that video seven hundred times over the past eight years,” said Raymond Brace. “I’ve spent money, hired technicians to deconstruct and analyze it. To understand what I was seeing. To understand what was really going on.”
Bo and Virginia continued exchanging uneasy glances. Over seven hundred times? The instability of the intruder in their home was becoming more pronounced—not a robbery as one might have thought, but something else. Something more sinister. There was a derangement at play, a delusion. Obviously, they were afraid of this man, his weapon. But as he spoke, their fear grew exponentially.
“Sir, if you would please not point that gun, I’m sure we can talk this out. That’s what you’re here for, right? A chance to speak with us?” said Bo, maintaining as much logic as he could muster. “I was there that day. Everything you saw in that video was how it went down in real life. It wasn’t doctored or anything like that. There’s no mystery behind it.”
“Bullshit. There’s a collective twenty-seven seconds of footage featuring Leo standing at the entrance of the tunnel, just standing there, gazing over the situation he knows he created,” said Raymond Brace. “That silhouette perfectly still, perfectly content, fascinated to see what would happen next.”
“He’s crazy. Dear God, he’s crazy,” said Virginia softly, losing composure. “Leo was five years old. He was panic stricken. He was told to stay put. He was told to stay away from the danger.”
To the slight against him, Raymond Brace appeared to take no offense; he remained calm, cracking a knowing smile. Flashes of anger aside, it was only his words that betrayed instability. Otherwise, he appeared to be a man satisfied with his grip on the situation. His grip on reality. He lowered the gun, which somehow came across as even more ominous than when he was aiming it. He’d anticipated all this, prepared for it.
“I’ve been researching your family, you know, for a long time. It’s how I knew the three of you would be home today, on this day, at this hour,” said Raymond Brace. “You never miss a game when Joseph Sequoia’s in town, and his team is nationally televised.”
On that, Raymond Brace was 100 percent correct. The teenager Bo had pulled from the wreckage all those years ago had gone on to become a second baseman in MLB, and the Largent family watched as often as possible, particularly when they knew he’d be starting, particularly when it was the Saturday afternoon game of the week on the network. That, in and of itself, should not have seemed odd. Or been that difficult to learn of. Since the day of the crash, the two families had been bound to one another, vested in each other’s happiness. Intertwined. They’d done appearances together. Had become legitimate friends over the years. None of that was a secret; on the contrary, it was public knowledge. It was far from remarkable that Raymond Brace had stumbled on that conclusion, a point Bo challenged him on respectfully—then was challenged right back, the barrel of the pistol still aimed at the floor.
“Yeah, but I’ll bet you anything that it’s Leo that insists on watching the games, abnormally so, like a religion,” said Raymond Brace. “Go ahead and tell me I’m wrong about that.”
More uneasy glances were exchanged between Bo and Virginia, speaking with the telepathy only a married couple can achieve. Leo actually was the one who championed following Joseph’s games, insisting with a feverish devotion that they watch them as a family. While his parents found it somewhat odd, particularly as he aged, they chalked it up to the experience of that day. Leo just really liked baseball. Loved rooting for Joseph, the boy his father had saved.
How Raymond Brace could have known such a thing was more than mildly disturbing.
“Is it guilt, Leo? Is that what keeps you watching?” asked Raymond Brace, his smile betraying too much confidence. “Or are you just a total freak?”
“That’s enough,” said Bo forcefully, but he was quickly interrupted.
“Leo’s been through a lot of schools, hasn’t he?” asked Raymond Brace rhetorically. “Always found it hard to find his place?”
“Not so many . . .” said Virginia softly, trailing off.
“He’s made friends,” said Bo defensively.
“Sure he has,” said Raymond Brace, snorting again. “Did you know that a plane Leo once flew on about a year ago had an emergency crash landing a week after he was on it? In Prague. Two people died.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Virginia angrily. “What does that have to do with Leo? Thousands of people are on planes. Did they cause it to crash?”
“Hell of a pattern,” said Raymond Brace, showing the slightest bit of reluctance, his confidence eroding, the parents not relenting an inch, not giving in to his accusations.
“It’s a coincidence, if it’s even true, and if it is, it’s not even a relevant one,” said Bo, standing up slowly from the couch. “Look, sir, you’re seeing things that aren’t there. So why don’t you just leave? Simple as that. No one’s been hurt. You can just leave; we won’t call the police. We can pretend this never happened. You just need to leave.”
The crack of the bat could be heard from the television. A double had been hit. Leo was keeping an eye on the game and the other eye on Raymond Brace. Why Raymond Brace didn’t deserve both Leo’s eyes was a mystery to everyone in the room. After the runner was safely on second base, Leo turned his full attention to the armed assailant still prattling on about airplanes and conspiracy theories.
“You mind if I go to the kitchen and grab a soda?” Leo asked Raymond Brace, as though the gravity of the situation was beyond his level of absorption.
Leo’s parents cringed.
Raymond Brace could hardly believe it. Could hardly believe what he was hearing. He wasn’t totally sure what to expect that day, finally putting his plan in motion, thoughts that had been gestating for years and years. A confrontation he had longed for. Leo’s ambivalence was not what he was expecting. It was an affront. And it was making his plan feel less true, as though he were losing the room. It would be fair to say it was making him angry, fast.
“A fucking soda, who says that? You think your kid is so normal?” Raymond Brace asked Bo, then turned his attention to his wife. “Let me ask you, Virginia, did your husband ever tell you what Leo said to the makeup artist?”
To that, Bo didn’t reply, didn’t say a word—opened his mouth like a fish, though nothing followed. He was taken aback, noticeably. Looking at his wife. Then his son. Nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Even Leo looked less confident, some of that bravado clearly leaking away. It was Virginia who remained confused, seemed to be left out regarding what Raymond Brace was on about.
“What’s he talking about, Bo?” asked Virginia.
“It was nothing,” said Bo unconvincingly.
“I guess that answers my question,” said Raymond Brace, enjoying himself again, feeling more in control. “I guess that’s the kind of thing you don’t bother to put in a memoir. Or tell the kid’s mom about.”
“You can go straight to hell,” said Bo. It was his turn to lose his composure.
Raymond Brace pointed the gun directly at Bo’s heart, allowing the room to take a pause, then he dove into the story, eagerly.
“That day of his first commercial shoot, with Leo in tow, back when he was so honest about his shortcomings, spelled out in his stupid book,” said Raymond Brace. “But what he omitted was what little Leo said to the girl doing Bo’s makeup for the lights and cameras.”
“How could you possibly know about this?” asked Bo, still angry, floundering.
“The director. The commercial’s director,” said Raymond Brace. “He had plenty of stories about you to share. Observations. He was more than happy to talk, to unburden himself.”
“What did Leo say?” asked Virginia. “What could he have possibly said? He was just a little boy.”
“Don’t,” said Leo to Raymond Brace, for the first time showing some vulnerability, no longer keeping an eye on the baseball game.
Raymond Brace ignored the boy.
“Well, Virginia, at some point, Leo was staring at the makeup artist, and when his father told him it was impolite to stare at people, Leo said he wasn’t staring at her,” said Raymond Brace. “Then, as the story goes, the girl took a knee and asked him, all sweet-like, what was he looking at? Like he’s got some little kid crush on her or something.”
“Don’t say it,” said Leo again, still vulnerable, more razor in his voice.
“Do you want to tell her, Leo? Do you even remember what you said? ’Cause the director sure as hell remembered,” said Raymond Brace. Leo didn’t reply. “He told the girl he was staring at what was inside her.”
At that, Bo let out a thrust of air through his nostrils. Leo ground his molars together, as he was prone to do when agitated—two different reactions to an unpleasant memory, remembered, unearthed.
“Huh, so? What does that even mean?” asked Virginia, irritated, not seeing the point. “Was she pregnant or something?”
“She was pregnant, all right, just not with a baby. Instead, it was stage three bile duct cancer,” said Raymond Brace, relishing the moment. “Twenty-seven years old, had no clue about it, was dead less than a year later.”
The room then became a vacuum that sound could not escape, that could no longer express itself—Virginia processing the new information, what had been kept from her, looking to her husband and son, who struggled to return her gaze.
“It was just a coincidence,” said Bo, shaking his head. “He was just a kid saying a weird thing. It didn’t mean anything. He didn’t know. He didn’t do anything. He didn’t actually see anything.”
“My, how these coincidences keep piling up,” said Raymond Brace, smiling.
“Why didn’t you tell me this?” Virginia asked her husband, taking a step toward him.
“Ah ah, stay put, Virginia,” said Raymond Brace, jiggling the gun, turning his attention back to Bo. “Did you know then, Bo, that something was off with your son? Did you know then he had to have some impact on the car crash that day? Or did it take you a few more years to figure that out?”
“You’re crazy,” said Bo, resigned, the anger receding. “The only evidence you have is how delusional you are. You want this all to be true so badly. It’s pathetic.”
“There’s nothing off about my son,” said Virginia coldly, taking two steps toward Raymond Brace, who promptly fired a shot into the wall behind her, only a few inches from her head.
The room reverbed with the ringing of the gunshot, until it faded into nothing, a tuning fork whose work is done—the sound of the baseball game was all that remained. Virginia then shuffled over to Bo, who was now holding her, all the Largents on their feet in front of the couch, a collective audience for their captor, who was sniffing the barrel of the gun, which vaguely reminded him of graphite, of a tooth being drilled in a dentist’s office.
“I love that smell,” said Raymond Brace. “Please don’t move again, Virginia. I’m an excellent shot—not that you really need to be at this distance.”
Leo was still grinding his molars; he couldn’t stop. “I don’t like that,” he said, some of his earlier iciness returning despite the deteriorating circumstances in the room.
“I’m sure you don’t,” said Raymond Brace. “But this moment’s been tracking you down for a long time now.”
“Please don’t,” said Bo, sounding desperate, his wife now crying a bit, their options running low, reality collapsing in on them.
“Why don’t you say your nifty little catchphrase for your boy one more time?” said Raymond Brace. “Let it be the last thing he ever hears.”
“Fuck you,” said Bo viscerally, out of options. How to protect his son?
Let me see your hands, bud.
“Hey, look, Joseph Sequoia’s at bat,” said Leo, pointing to the TV, sitting back down on the couch.
Raymond Brace just shook his head, could hardly believe the gall of this kid, could hardly wait to erase his presence from the planet, what he’d always known he was meant to do.
“Why don’t you just admit it to me, Leo? We both know what’s going to happen next,” said Raymond Brace. “Why not answer my question at this point?”
On the television, at the plate, Joseph Sequoia dug in and took a cut, fanned at a curveball.
“I don’t even remember. What exactly was your silly little question?” asked Leo, as dismissively as possible.
Raymond Brace pointed the gun at Leo’s head. Bo had inched his wife away, looking like he was about to charge their attacker, an act of absolute last resort. Even if there was way too much distance to cover. Even if there was zero chance of it working. The room sensed it, including Leo, who put his hand up.
“Don’t, Dad,” said Leo calmly. “I’ll deal with it.”
Joseph Sequoia fouled off a high fastball for a quick strike two.
“I asked you what the hell you are,” said Raymond Brace, spitting through clenched teeth, seething with his anger toward the boy with his general instability.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Trace; you’ve got it all wrong,” said Leo, crossing one leg over the other. “I’m just a regular teenager. Nothing to see here.”
Raymond Brace paused momentarily, confused, like a double take. Mr. Trace?
Joseph Sequoia watched a slider glide just outside the strike zone for a called ball one.
“You can still leave, Mr. Trace,” said Virginia, suppressing tears, using that name reflexively, a connection point, trying to save her son. “You can still just leave.”
Are you hurt anywhere?
“My name isn’t Trace. It’s Brace,” said Raymond Brace. “And I never told you either name. So how’d you get so close to it, Leo? How could you possibly have known that, regular teenager?”
“Really? Brace?” said Leo nonchalantly. “Huh, that’s not what he told me.”
“Who, you little freak?” screamed Raymond Brace, the gun still leveled at Leo, visibly shaking. “Who told you?”
“Him,” said Leo, pointing toward the television.
All four occupants of the room directed their attention to the screen where, facing down a one-and-two count, Joseph Sequoia dug in and saw a pitch he favored: high heat, just a bit inside, the kind of pitch you can really turn around on. He swung the lumber off his shoulder, a big-leaguer kind of rip, which splintered his bat in two on contact. The ball sailed harmlessly into the crowd, deep foul. He was left holding the majority of the bat’s handle, a jagged splinter down the barrel of its former self. A rather sizable portion had cracked and sailed off as broken bats tend to do in almost every game. That particular fragment sailed toward the main camera broadcasting the wide shots at field level.
Melty.
It all happened incredibly fast, not unlike the car accident eight years before. The television may have flash-banged. Or maybe it was the universe. Like a concussion grenade, but too short to correctly recall, given the faulty mechanics of memory, the unreliable nature of human perception.
What they were sure of, in that moment, was that Raymond Brace was now on the ground, having dropped the gun, writhing on his back with a jagged piece of Louisville Slugger jammed into his neck, lodged in, unrelenting. A torrent of blood leaked rapidly around the penetration point. He touched the wound, his punctured neck, with crimson fingers—his life evaporating to his utter disbelief, or so his eyes read, his mouth agape, wordless.
Virginia let out a sharp scream. Bo grabbed his son and pulled him along the couch toward himself and his wife.
Leo did not bother to resist.
The panic in Raymond Brace’s eyes alone was enough to make you feel sorry for him—already too weak to move, in shock, unable to pull the shard from his neck. Not that it would have done any good. The thing was done. If anything, it would have ushered him along that much quicker.
From the television screen, which was perfectly intact, still broadcasting the game in HD clarity, the announcers could be heard saying things like “Whoa, boy, that’s a nasty piece of wood,” and “Wouldn’t want to be on the business end of that calling card,” and “Not to worry folks—it bounced off the stand the camera’s mounted on; no one got hit.”
Joseph Sequoia ambled toward the dugout, still down in the count, to retrieve a new bat, perhaps one with a bit more pine tar.
Raymond Brace continued to slowly bleed out on the hardwood floor in the Largents’ family room.
After a few moments had passed, after the fog of utter confusion had lifted ever so slightly, a millimeter or so, Leo walked over to the downed body of Raymond Brace, whose neck wound pulsed the life out of him, his own pumping heart betraying its purpose, the failings of a closed circulatory system, once violently compromised beyond repair. Leo took a knee and then placed the dying man’s left hand into his own, despite minor protests from his parents that he just nodded off, telling them it was OK.
“I’m truly sorry, Mr. Brace. To answer your question, I don’t know what I am,” said Leo, not unkindly. “But what teenager really knows who they are at this age, right?”
A collection of water, a tear, more the result of biology than emotion, leaked from Raymond Brace’s right eye, trickled down his cheek. He’d lost the strength, the ability of speech or to move his right arm. He’d evacuated his bowels. It was his eyes that registered the clinging lucidity, the brain activity, all too aware of what would happen soon. Who knows? Maybe it was true emotion that rolled the tear over his cheek.
“But I can tell you this, Mr. Brace,” said Leo, softly, leaning in close to the dying man’s ear so that only he could hear him. “From what I remember about that day, the car seemed to me to be going too fast. And I didn’t much care for that either.”
It wasn’t a confession. He wasn’t asking the armed intruder for his judgment, opinion, forgiveness, any of that. He was offering Raymond Brace the smallest act of kindness he could deliver. Leo felt that last bit of pressure holding the man’s hand. Saw the last spark of cognizance in his eyes. He watched as Raymond Brace, after being given that last piece of earthly information, ferried off to a place where Leo could not follow.
The man died, and Leo gently place Raymond Brace’s hands atop his own body, streaked in rapidly darkening blood.
Then Leo rejoined his mom and dad, where he belonged, but not before turning off the baseball game, the television set shrinking the image into oblivion, into what men of letters have referred to as the hard star—blinking out for good, unsure what the final result of Joseph Sequoia’s last at bat was.
* * *