Remmy

(cw: guns, hunting, suicide)

I know we’re not popular right now. We guns have had our moments. Had a lot of ’em for a long time, actually. But really, you see, we’re just a bunch of parts. Like anything else you use—like your fancy refrigerators, cars, or those phones you all seem so obsessed with. But even though we’re just an assemblage of steel and welded units, everything has a soul. I know that. Everything comes from the earth in some way, so it’s very much alive.

I have loved a boy all of my life, only belonged to him. It was in the summer of 2006 that I was purchased for Jasper.

Jasper’s uncle, Leroy, bought me at a gun show, a simple .22 rifle. I had been previously owned by a member of the Crow tribe in southern Montana, about a hundred miles from where I live now. I was never used by that man, but he was kind, and peaceful, and preferred to hunt for deer with a crossbow.

Leroy gave me to Jasper on his seventh birthday. He didn’t like me at first. He was scared to hold me. I could feel his little, soft hands on my trigger and stock, and he held me like he was afraid to break me. Then, though, little by little, when he came over to Leroy’s house, he would ask to hold me, and Leroy would take me down from the high shelf in the closet and tell Jasper how to position me and to be sure never to point my barrel in the direction of anyone, even if I wasn’t loaded. I was almost never loaded.

Jasper’s grip got stronger and stronger, and before long—I would say by the age of nine—he was holding me like he knew he what he was doing.

From my place, high in the closet, I would watch him draw, paint, play with toy trucks, yo-yos, footballs, action figures, and sports cards. I was always over him.

Sometimes, too, Leroy would make Jasper get used to me in the most significant way—by actually shooting me. Leroy thought it might scare Jasper to bring me to the range because of all the people and noise; besides, out here in rural Montana, there’s so much acreage that everything could be considered a range of some sort. So, Leroy and Jasper would pack up the baby-blue truck, put me and the gear in the rusty bed, and head out west near the foothills.

The sky matched the truck’s hue—that perfect shade, and I remember the fragile air scraping over me, the ideal temperature. And the tops of trees that hovered over the truck, blending into one long, green swath.

Once we arrived at Leroy’s spot, he put out some old pumpkins, bottles, cans, and target sheets. After showing Jasper how to fire, Leroy had Jasper give it a go. It was our first shot together.

Leroy backed away, gave the boy space. And Jasper placed my stock against his tiny shoulder. I could tell he didn’t want to disappoint his uncle as he checked-off each of the steps Leroy had taught him: stock firm, line up sight, deep breath, squeeze trigger. He lined me up on an old Coke bottle and whispered, “Okay, Remmy. Help me with this.” He dug his boots into the soft dirt and calmed himself with big breaths. Little by little, he steadied me and focused on his target. The bottle glinted in the afternoon sun, a big star of light just right above the red label. “Okay, Remmy,” Jasper said again.

And he squeezed my trigger.

The bullet sliced through my body at thousands of feet per second and escaped into the cold air, hitting the bottle right at the base.

The shards glittered and reflected light before settling onto the ground. It all happened so fast. I could hear Jasper’s breath, even feel his hot exhales as he lifted me and pointed me up, my body close to his mouth. He didn’t want to hurt a thing, and like I said before, everything has a soul, and I think he felt that. I knew he felt that, and I knew he was sad for what he did to that Coke bottle. But he didn’t want to disappoint Leroy.

They shot more that day, and Leroy was impressed with the boy’s abilities.

Leroy and his wife, Faith, were divorced. They had tried for a kid of their own but had to stop when the doctor told them Leroy couldn’t—something about his injury from the Gulf War.

I knew Leroy blamed himself for the divorce. I even heard him say to his friend one night that “a real man would’ve been able to give his wife children,” so, I guessed that when Jasper came over, Leroy was happy he got to play dad and pretend that Faith was visiting her mom or delayed at the airport. With certain edits, Leroy could feel like he had it all.

The truck rides were my favorite. Sure, I was designed to be held and fired, but I liked company, too, and sometimes, after Jasper would shoot me at “the range,” he would decide to ride in the back of the pickup with me. There, I would rest at his feet, and we would take in the world. There’s a reason they call Montana the Big Sky State.

Sometimes, he would lie down with me in the rusty bed and line his eyes up with nothing but blue. There, we were protected a bit from the elements—just enough to feel like we were inside, with all the metal surrounding us, but also, clearly outside, with all that fresh air and those white clouds that seemed thick enough to walk across. Jasper would poke them sometimes, and he would compare them to real things. One time, he saw one that looked like a handgun with little bullets popping from its barrel. Another time, he saw an elephant with this gigantic, curly trunk, and he traced his small finger over it and laughed and laughed. I guess clouds were to him what his freckles were to me—something otherworldly that captivated.

In the fall of 2008, we had our first hunt. Deer. Jasper had gotten used to me, used to holding me, feeling my weight, my barrel, but for the both of us, it was the first time we were going to kill. Leroy was a good teacher—and he kept the boy feeling strong.

The fall of 2008 was also a tough time for Jasper personally. He cried a lot after he hung up the phone with his mother. He said things like, “Do you know how long Dad will be locked up for?” and “Do you think we will be able to visit?” His mother’s voice was loud on the other end of the phone. She wasn’t all that kind to Jasper, not as nurturing as I hoped she’d be. A couple of times, she even snapped and told him to pull himself together and that it was “good for him” and that “he needed to be put away.” Jasper placed the phone back in its cradle, and ran the back of his hand over his eyes, and looked at himself in the full-length mirror near my perch. He didn’t want Leroy to see that he had cried. He made sure his blue eyes were nice and dry before heading back into the hall.

The man who had me before Leroy and Jasper never wanted to show pain, either. It must be hard for humans to always pretend to be strong. I guess I have the same issue. People see a gun, and they only see the pain I can inflict; they don’t see anything else.

Anyway, it was a few hours after that phone call that we went on the first real hunt. And I could feel a difference in Jasper’s grip. It was firm and strong, confident even, like he knew what I was and what he could do with me.

It was a fall day that pretended to be winter. Leroy and Jasper’s boots squeaked through the snow, leaving four footprints in our wake—one pair a size twelve, one pair a size six and a half. Wind whipped, stirring up tornadoes of fresh powder that pummeled us, and sometimes, Jasper and Leroy would turn their backs to the force in order to keep their eyes protected. It was a long slog, the trees swaying with each haymaker sent from mother earth, but eventually, with little steps up the side of the mountain, we made it to a place where the views were open, and we could see down into a little valley flanked by thick clusters of pines that shielded many of the deer, according to Leroy.

Leroy squinted and turned up his voice to combat the wind: “The bucks, the deer, they stay in their little tree cocoon. But eventually, when the wind dies down, the deer have eaten all they can in that area, and they’ll venture out toward the valley, and they’ll keep their heads low.”

Jasper nodded. I thought the nerves would come and that I’d feel his hands begin to tremble, but he rested easy with my body positioned diagonally against his chest. His heartbeat was a steady rhythm that ticked like a clock; his breath, the rise and sink of his inhales and exhales, flowed steady and harmonious.

When a buck came into sight, the world went still. All other senses but sight were silenced, muted, and the world, even on this harsh day, became peaceful in a way—just stirs of powder and branches thick with snow bobbing up and down. “Let him come closer,” Leroy said. “Be patient.”

I was pointed at the valley, and we remained motionless.

Minutes passed. Long minutes, thick with cold.

Then, the buck with perfect antlers walked directly into the valley, stopped, looked up, and then returned his head to the ground in search of some grass underneath the powder. He pushed the snow around with his snout, clearing a large patch, and then munched on some blades.

Leroy turned to Jasper and gave him a nod. They had gone over the specifics of this moment many times, and I wanted the best for Jasper. I really did. The boy had been through a great deal: his mother being tough and his father being sent away, and all he really had was his uncle and these weekend getaways; plus, who really knew why his mom was sending him to Leroy’s to begin with? Who really knew what she was up to? So, I whispered something of a prayer for Jasper.

Leroy nodded again as if to say, “Hurry up.” His eyes widened, too. Traces of snow rested on the tops of his eyelids and frosted on his eyebrows as well.

Jasper didn’t take long. He worked through the checklist just like he did that day in the foothills, and before long, I could feel his finger take my trigger.

He tracked the animal, adjusted for the wind, and with a quick squeeze, I did my job, blasting a shell at the buck.

The buck heard the blast, but by the time it looked up, the bullet struck its flank in a blow that took the buck down. Powder splashed around its frame. Leroy fired to make sure. Then fired again.

Three large cracks in row, and then a long exhale from Jasper.

The world regained its way, and Jasper smiled. I hadn’t seen him sport a grin—a large one where his lips parted, and his teeth shone—in months.

I was surprised to see him smile. Only a couple of years ago, he nearly cried when the Coke bottle exploded, but maybe because he was closer, maybe because the sound was more immediate.

As we trudged down the hillside thick with snow, the buck came into view. Blood was seeping across its pelt and into the powder. “Looks like a cherry snow cone,” Leroy said, and Jasper nodded.

The boy didn’t seem upset by the slain animal. He placed his hand on the buck’s back, a place where the blood hadn’t run, and seemed proud of his work. He didn’t speak. He didn’t breathe hard.

“A hell of a shot, J,” Leroy said. “That time we put in really paid off, but it’s always hard to simulate game-time conditions.”

Jasper nodded. He stroked the buck’s pelt, first with the grain, then against it. Then Leroy detailed what to do with an animal after it was killed. He said it was the hard part, the gross part, the reason most people went to the supermarket and walked down aisles, to see meat already trimmed, behind thick glass, in rows divided by sprigs of parsley. Jasper was to stay with the animal while Leroy walked back to the house to get the truck.

Jasper kept his wits about him—wits was the word Leroy had used—and Jasper did as he was told. He shifted his body to scan his surroundings, making sure no animals came for the meat. It was rare, but sometimes if a carcass was left like this out in the snow for a while, other predators—bears mostly in these parts—would venture out for an easy meal.

There was a pride to Jasper. Everything in his life seemed out of his control. People say, “Don’t worry about what you can’t control.” But that’s never made much sense to me—of course you worry about what you can’t control. Death. Money. Love. Because those things are stressful, and those things are worrisome. Who worries about things they can control? Bedtime, shoe-tying, breakfast. No one. And the same went for Jasper. He couldn’t control school, his family, friends, but hunting with Leroy was a way in which he could tame the world, even take a life, and that was power at its finest.

Months passed without another hunt because Leroy only hunted when he needed food. He had killed an elk and a deer, then carved them up, and frozen the meat in an industrial-size freezer that he kept in the garage. Most nights, he would cook up a small chunk of meat from the freezer and mix it with a can of beans. “Healthy and cheap,” he always said.

I now rested proudly on a rack in the guest bedroom, unloaded of course, but it was nicer, and I had better views of the room where Jasper would stay when he came out to see Leroy and me. His frequency increased, too, and sometimes he would stay for the whole week, and Leroy would have to call the bus driver and let her know that Jasper was living out with us for the week. She seemed easy to talk to and always agreed to pick him up.

On Jasper’s thirteenth birthday, he was alone in the house. He was supposed to go for a little hike on this mid-March day where the sky was open and clear and the sun sliced right into the guest bedroom and warmed my stock and barrel. (He had invited his girlfriend, Fiona, at the time, but how serious can a thirteen-year-old girlfriend even be?) She called often, and Leroy would call out from the other room, “It’s that girl again.” And Jasper would answer, “Cool! I’ll take it in my room.” Jasper still didn’t have a cell phone. His mom wouldn’t get him one. She said it was because she wanted “to keep him innocent for as long as possible,” but Jasper thought that it was just a poetic way of saying she was cheap.

Fiona called that day, his birthday, as he rested on the bed, doodling in a leather-bound sketchbook that Leroy had bought for him at some shop in town. He liked to draw. And he did so often.

Through the receiver, Fiona’s voice was high, and her laugh was higher. She talked a lot, and Jasper drew and drew, his left hand sketching and sketching, the base of his hand turning the color of steel from accidentally smearing all the pencil graphite.

The line went flat for a while with neither of them bringing up a new topic. Just then, though, Jasper asked when she was coming over to hang out, that Leroy had planned a little something, that he was buying a cake, and that they would all play cards, and that a neighbor had promised him to let them ride horses.

“Oh,” Fiona said. “That sounds nice.” But she didn’t say anything else.

“So,” Jasper added. “In a couple hours?”

She didn’t say much more. She called him “amazing” and “sweet” and “incredible.” His face whitened, and he shut his eyes as if expecting pain to come. He sometimes did the same thing when his mom would call and chat with him on the phone.

When he started to cry, he bought the phone away from his ear and placed it face-down against his red quilt.

After hanging up the phone, he came for me, yanking me off the rack and rushing to the garage to load me. He stuffed some extra shells in his pockets, too.

We hurried out back. In the distance was a busted tractor, and Jasper fired and fired at the rusty metal, the rounds dinging against the steel over and over. His rage seemed soothed by the blasts, so he fired more and more rounds, never once missing the target. Then he collapsed to the ground and flung me far into the distance.

From there, I watched his body heave as he sobbed. I wished I could console him. I wished that someone would. But Leroy was on the other side of town, picking up the cake, and there was nothing I could do but lie there, some twenty feet away, still warm from all the gunfire.

I stayed outside for two weeks, actually, until Leroy found me while chopping firewood. He had a stern talk with Jasper about gun safety. It felt good to be in the warm house again on the rack in the guest bedroom, where I could see Jasper and feel like something of an angel, looking over him as he slept the sleep of a teenage boy.

It only got harder for Jasper. Only a few months after his birthday, I found out through conversations between him and Leroy that Jasper’s mom was arrested for meth possession while driving home from her secretarial job. She claimed the paraphernalia wasn’t hers, that it belonged to someone at work, that she didn’t even know it was in the car. She was sentenced to six months in jail—a light amount for the offense— followed by time at a recovery clinic per the judge’s orders.

At night, Jasper would kneel bedside and pray. I had never seen him do this before in all his time with me. I mean, sure, he’d ask me to help him shoot straight when he was learning how to fire all those years ago, but this was the first time he’d gotten religious, and he would sometimes press his face into his pillow and scream. I hoped life would give him a break. I hoped whatever he was praying for wouldn’t wait years to show up.

During that time, Jasper stayed at Leroy’s. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them, and they didn’t talk much. It was a lot of TV and homework, a lot of doodling, too, on a big pad. Sometimes, Jasper wouldn’t like what he drew, and he would just toss the large pieces of paper to the foot of his bed, where they would strike the closet door before falling to the carpet. I would get a peek. Lots of bullets flying from guns, and knives, and cowboys, and crosses.

A couple of times, when Leroy was still at work, Jasper would bring girls from school over to the house, and they would fool around on the bed. When he was nearly sixteen, he had sex for the first time. It didn’t last long, and the girl seemed to be in pain, but Jasper was nice and asked her if she was okay a lot. She had long, red hair and skin that was so pale her thighs blended in with the sheets.

He wanted to see his folks, but Leroy never took him, said it would be too hard to see them like that, and Jasper just nodded. It seemed to me that Jasper and Leroy did better when the relationship was uncle and nephew, and now that Leroy had to be there all the time, it got to be too much. He wasn’t the wise, cool uncle any longer, and that was a role that Leroy relished. Instead, he too was a sort of absent father, working a lot, and doing his best to keep the boy afloat. But afloat is no way to live.

Leroy clearly felt bad for the kid, buying him new shirts and even a bottle of cologne once, but it seemed Jasper’s sadness couldn’t be derailed. He kept a stoic face most of the time, one that seemed numb, except in his bedroom, where Jasper was up at all hours of the night, crying and sweating and praying and cursing out God. “If you’re real,” he said one night, “then why the fuck are you allowing all this shit to happen? What did I do?”

He kept having sex with the pale girl. Most of the time, that’s all they did. Sometimes, they took pills from a little orange bottle she kept in her backpack. Sometimes, they drank from a green water bottle. They almost never talked or shared anything other than stupid jokes. One time, Jasper got quiet and said, “I really like you. Do you like me?”

She waited and then laughed.

Then Jasper laughed, too, and said, “That was a good one, right?”

And she said, “Hilarious.” Then dropped back on the bed.

They spent hours like this, comforted by nothing more than another body in the room.

***

Hunting seasons would come and go. Looking out the window, I could tell just by the light that the seasons were changing and that I wasn’t going to be used yet again. It saddened me. I didn’t feel useful. All things need to be used. Without use, we just die with open eyes.

Then one day, Jasper came home crying. A perfect black-and-blue crescent moon hung under his swollen left eye. He chucked his backpack hard into the wall.

Books tumbled from it. Pens sloshed. He stared hard at himself in the mirror beneath me. He pushed his tongue around his closed mouth. I waited to gain some sort of context, but it never came.

Leroy entered the home a couple of hours later, and their voices blended with the sounds of the television and the microwave that just kept beeping and beeping. Leroy said, “I’m sorry” twice, but I couldn’t learn much from that. “Let’s get away from it all,” Leroy then said. “Maybe a little camping trip. I can ask a guy from work for his camper. Maybe some fishing, too. Even hunting.” I perked up at the idea of being held in Jasper’s hands once again.

Some clarity came my way when Leroy came into the room to tie Jasper’s tie. It was the first time I’d ever seen the kid dressed up. Here he was, a little light coming through the window, warming the tone of his skin, making him look tanned and healthy, in a suit, white button-down shirt, and dark tie with little white anchors on it. The suit was a little baggy on him, and since he didn’t pull it from his closet, I gathered it might have been Leroy’s from when he was a little trimmer. It took Leroy a few tries to get the knot right. “It’s hard to do this on someone else’s neck,” he kept saying. When Leroy finally got it, he brought the knot up into place, adjusted the collar, and dusted off the boy’s shoulders. The house was quiet, only a stir of wind outside, and both of them hugged. “I’m just so sorry this happened to you,” Leroy said.

Jasper didn’t answer, but I could see him crumple into his uncle.

“He was in a lot of pain in prison,” Leroy said. “I didn’t think it would end up like this for him.”

There was a long pause. And neither spoke for a while; some birds cooed and cawed outside. It was as if nature, too, was offering its condolences.

The sun bullied its way through a few clouds and shone hard through the window, lighting the two men in front of me even more than before.

“Your dad was always troubled, J. You know that. But he loved you so much. There’s something beautiful about that.”

Jasper dug his hands hard into Leroy’s dark suit jacket.

I studied them as they left the room. I could still see Jasper’s little eyes. His hands were the same as the day I was gifted to him. I mean, sure, they’d grown, but they’d kept their softness and smaller-than-usual nails. His voice had deepened, but it had also kept its sweetness, and his gaze had stayed the same, too—pensive and full of wonder.

The world, however, was making Jasper hard. After a lot of rain, it seemed, he wasn’t able to see the sun the same way. He didn’t see life as light interspersed with darkness, but rather, I think he saw the default setting of the world as bleak—with just blips of joy to shake things up from time to time.

After the suicide of his father in prison, it was back to the norm for Jasper. He came home from school one day, terribly upset. His face was scarlet, and he sank into the bed. He took a pill from his bag and sat there, atop the comforter, until it took effect.

Then the phone rang and startled him.

Jasper picked it up. “Yes,” he said.

“Mr. Wagner,” the voice on the other line said.

“Yeah,” Jasper said. His voice was groggy and soft from the pill.

“This is Principal Thompson from Lawrence High.”
Jasper seemingly understood the importance, and he realized the call was for Leroy, the

other Mr. Wagner. “Oh, yes. Hello.” He changed the pitch of his voice and pulled the receiver a few inches from his mouth. “Is everything okay?”

The principal was fooled and informed Jasper about Jasper, saying that he was often not at school, often showed up late, and wasn’t turning in assignments.

“You do know that his father just hung himself in prison, right?” Jasper said.

“We do, yes.”

“I mean, Christ.”
“True, true,” Principal Thompson said.
“I mean, I ain’t making excuses for the kid, but seems to me he’s trying to survive right

now and that reading some books and writing papers ain’t exactly the best way to grieve. I’ll speak to him, though. Thank you, sir,” Jasper said, hanging up the phone.

***

I saw less and less of Jasper in the coming months. He spent a lot of time out of the house, and when he was home, he just came in and passed out on the bed. He no longer prayed or cried. He didn’t sleep soundly any longer, either, always tossing and turning, the bed always beaten up in the morning with the comforter crumpled sadly at the base of the bed. No matter how much he slept, he always woke up with pale skin and blueish semi-circles under his eyes. His forehead was always greasy, too, and he wore the same coat day after day.

There was a week that he stayed home from school with the flu, and he cried a couple of times, and I rested high above the closet, wishing I could do something. Then, he took a piece of paper from his backpack and scooted to the edge of the bed, where I could see his hand move across the lined paper. I hoped he was going to draw. It had been a while since I’d seen Jasper sketch. The last time I saw him doodle a bunch of flowers without ever picking up the pen, then he got frustrated and ripped it out of his binder and tossed the sheet of paper to the floor, where it fluttered to the carpet in big swoops. The paper stayed there for a few days, and I studied his single line that curved and bent and made this perfect bouquet. I thought it was beautiful.

But no, not this time. He just kept writing, and I glanced at the words when he stood and paced. “I’m sorry,” he wrote. “It’s been hard. I love you, Mom and Dad. I love you so much, Uncle Leroy.”

He then grabbed me. And we headed to the garage where he located the shells near the industrial freezer and loaded me. It wasn’t hunting season, though.

And as good as it felt to be held in his hands, I didn’t want to leave the home. As much as I complained about not being used, I wanted to go back above the closet.

But we left, and we headed out the back door, down the hill.

There was light snow today, with the weather warm enough to make it melt as it touched the ground, but in the air the white flakes were pretty, sparkling as they fluttered and traced the air, a cold and perfect dust.

We trudged and trudged. And little by little, Jasper began to cry as we made our way over a small creek that curved in a serpentine fashion. We arrived at a tree, one that Jasper used to draw over and over in his room as a boy. He would use pastels for this particular tree. He then stared at the three hills in the distance, each one a little smaller than the other if you looked at them from left to right.

He stopped crying after a couple of minutes and took big breaths like he had learned from Leroy. It reminded me of the breaths he used to take early on when he was learning to shoot, those special Coke-bottle days when we would ride in the pickup.

He then shut his eyes. His fingers convulsed. And all of a sudden, my barrel was pressed against the roof of his mouth. Moisture and heat streamed against my cold steel. And his breath came fast. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Leaving almost no time between the two.

 He wrapped his finger around my trigger and pressed timidly, with little pressure, then he released me and yanked my barrel from his mouth. His chest heaved, and he began to cough harder and harder before hocking up some phlegm and eventually vomiting.

Thank you, I thought. Please, I thought. Don’t do that again, Jasper. I beg you.

But he didn’t listen. Before long, I was wedged back into his mouth, and he pressed me hard against the back of his throat, so hard that he gagged, and I was ripped out and back in the open air. Then he cried and took the note out from his coat pocket, balled it up—like he used to do with drawings that displeased him—and tossed it near his boots.

A little gust of wind blew it a few feet from us, and later, another gust pounded and blew it farther and farther, and with each foot the wind put between us and the note, I felt better.

We stayed there under the tree, the wind sighing through the tree’s branches. We were both calming down, our nerves steadying with each passing minute. Tears came, and one, actually, fell onto my forestock. The droplet was warmer than I imagined and didn’t evaporate in the cold air. Then he tossed me and I landed a few feet from him.

I was pleased. Yes, I thought. Good. Perfect.

It was almost as if I was getting through to him. I thought so hard, concentrated so deeply—and these notions seemingly spurred him. He picked me up, and we began making our way back toward the home.

One, two.

One, two.

His feet plopped on the ground. His tears had dried now, but his eyes were still glassy, almost healthy looking, and his skin, while red just moments ago, had calmed and regained its normal hue.

We were literally headed toward the sun at the moment. And I couldn’t believe that such horror and beauty had happened so close together in time. Moments ago, my muzzle had been in his mouth, and now I was being carried safely, diagonally along his chest, toward the warm rays of light.

It would be okay, I thought. He had learned his lesson. He knew, at some point, the world would soften, give once again.

And it was just as I enjoyed this warmness both in thought and sunlight that Jasper slipped.

His right foot struggled to grip some grass, and he fell forward. It happened slowly. We both approached the ground, our 90-degree angle, slowly decreasing. 45. 35. 20.

My barrel came down as we fell, and one of his fingers—in an attempt to break his fall— wrapped around my trigger and fired a round directly into his sternum at point-blank range.

It was a crack that echoed through the valley. A shot that I can still hear, followed by ringing that bounced through and over the terrain for seconds before falling still again. One millisecond that changed both our lives forever.

I lay underneath him, knowing he was dead, feeling his hot blood stream against me. After a long time, the blood stopped coming. Then it turned cold.

It wasn’t until hours later that Leroy found us.

He looked dead himself when he finally located Jasper. I heard him calling his name for at least forty minutes before spotting us. “Jasper! Jasper! Jasper. Jasper . . .” His voice seemed to know before he did.

Leroy called the police, and before long, there were many men in dark uniforms blocking off the area and speaking in direct voices.

When they rolled Jasper over, I was taken off the ground and dropped into a plastic bag, obscuring the final image I had of Jasper. I didn’t look anywhere from the neck down. I just took in his soft face, closed eyes, and the faintest smile.

It’s been three months, and I’m in a warehouse where they keep evidence and guns and drugs and all sorts of documents. It’s always dark except for when someone comes in and flips on the lights. They ran all sorts of tests on me and determined, correctly, that Jasper was the victim of an accident.

I guess it’s best that way with only me knowing the total truth.

I think a lot these days. That’s all there is do. I imagine the ranch, the sky. I worry about Leroy. And I miss my best friend. ∎

Remmy was serialized over Issues Two and Three, which you can find here.