“… I put my hand down in something soft and I looked down. I saw that kid every day for the next two years. Every morning I’d wake up he’d be looking down at me. What about you, Marcus? What do you see?” “You want to know what’s in my head? Arguing. Mom and dad barking at each other like dogs. Both of them drunk. He’s swinging at her and she’s in a ball on the floor, trying to scoop her brains back in with both her hands. I’m yelling at him to stop, but he cracks her again. And now, now there’s blood coming out of her mouth like a fountain - I’m seven years old. I. I pull his poaching rifle off the back of the door and I shoot a bullet right in the middle of his throat and even as he’s going down his big bloody hands are trying to squeeze the life out of me - that’s for starters. I see this little unwanted boy stuck half-way up an oak tree all the other orphan bastards are trying to knock him down with bricks and balls to send him back to the infirmary so he can spend another night cutting patterns into his arms to send himself to sleep. I see this little boy in Mexico City. His neck is twisted all the way around and his mom is screaming at me from the doorway. I see a housewife in Seattle mixing bleach with tap water and telling her little girl that the water is holy so it burns her when it hits her skin. That is what I see when I close my eyes.”
