In a near-whisper, I explained, “I think the raccoon might have been rabid. It was moving real funny and foaming at the mouth.” The r-word fell heavily between us, and she cast her eyes down at the floor. We both stood there for a while trying to decide what to say or do. Once my brain started working again, it occurred to me that there would be a doctor’s office or clinic somewhere that had rabies shots. I went to find Daniel to let him know that I’d go hunting for them, and on the way through the kitchen I noticed that the HK was missing from the kitchen counter. While I was standing there trying to make sense of what was happening, I heard the shot come from further up the hill, behind the house, and the feeling of the rug being pulled out from under my existence came rushing back yet again.

 Daniel was lying crumpled up on his side, the gun still in his hand, most of the left side of his head missing. The .45 had done the job and then some, leaving a ragged exit hole the size of a large grapefruit and even more juicy. I tried not to look but my motor impulse had failed, so I stared dumbly into the skull-crater, watching the blood ooze from the grey brain pudding and into a pool, and his eyes open and staring at nothing and my eyes looking directly into his memories and hopes and fears now spilled out into the grassy sand. I thought of poor Jackie in the pink suit, climbing out onto the back of the limo to retrieve the big piece of poor Jack’s skull that had been blown out of his head that day in Dallas in November of 1963, and the thought came unbidden that the pink cloud of brain matter in frame [ ] of the Zapruder film was a good match for her pink suit.

The sound of Sarah’s quick heavy footsteps in the gravel behind me snapped me out of it, but I didn’t quite have time to turn her away or block her view. She began to scream so loud it made my ears ring, and I grabbed her and pulled her back towards the house, but she was pushing me away and kicking and yelling and sobbing at the same time. I knew her rational mind had failed completely and the scream was primal, animal. It didn’t feel right to restrain her like a little dog, but somehow it seemed worse to let her see the sight of Daniel laying there with his cerebrum exposed to the sky.

Once Sarah calmed down from her hysterics, she was borderline catatonic, lost behind a fixed thousand-yard stare and not responding to me at all. I got her to lay down on the sofa and she went to sleep, or at least closed her eyes, for a while. I wrapped Daniel in a tarp and dug another grave beside those of Aaron and his killer. The rough wooden handle of the shovel tore at my blisters from the previous digging, and the further I dug the more my hands cried out in pain with each new stroke, but after a couple hours of tortured work I managed to scrape out a big enough hole to hold Daniel’s six-feet-six-inches. The clouds had been dissipating as I was digging, and by the time I had finished the sun shone brilliantly on its descent to the flat sea horizon, in what seemed a mocking gesture from the heavens. I laid his hat carefully on top of the tarp about where I thought his face would be, and started to fill the earth back in. Sarah came outside, and we looked at each other for a long moment, and neither of us could find any words. She crouched down and began to scoop sand back into the hole with her hands, and I joined in with the shovel, and in a few minutes we had the grave filled in. Repeating her work from yesterday, she gathered some rocks and placed them into a pile for a marker, repeating the ritual from two days before.

I tried to think of a prayer, but nothing I came up with seemed quite right, and I wasn’t sure there was anyone but us to hear it anyway. Sarah said simply, “We love you, Daniel,” and that seemed about all there was to say, really. The sun was setting through a gradient of blazing peach and mauve, reflecting into fragments across the distant expanse of sea. I wiped my blood off the handle of the shovel and replaced it in the toolshed, praying vainly that I wouldn’t have to use it again anytime soon. I cleaned and bandaged my hands in the bathroom, and by the time I had finished Sarah had come around a bit and was standing in the living room looking out the front window at the bay. I put my hands on her shoulders and she said, unbidden, “Maybe it’s better this way,” and I couldn’t really argue with that. Rabies or no, I couldn’t blame Daniel for choosing that way out, for taking matters into his own hands. I think I even admired his bravery, for I certainly wasn’t sure that I had the resolve to follow the same course – at least not quite yet.

Sarah told me not to blame myself, and I told her I would try. She collapsed into a fitful sleep, shaking periodically, but I let her dream, thinking that even her nightmare might be better than the waking reality. As I had watched her fall asleep, I swore not to let her out of my sight, come what may, and I knew that my frantic desire to protect her, for all its intensity of feeling, was flimsy and pitiful, like waving a curtain at a hurricane. All night I held solitary vigil, afraid that if I closed my eyes Sarah would be taken from me, and I prayed with my whole heart, honestly and without bargaining, for just a little more time with her, even just a few more days. In the flickering candlelight I watched her breath rise and fall in a tranquil, undisturbed rhythm the whole night through. At the first whisper of daybreak I blew out the candle and lay down at her side, doing my best not to disturb her, and sleep came quickly.