Chapter 1: Near Death

I stared down the telescopic site of the rifle. It was still muggy at four in the morning; I was nervous, and stinging droplets of sweat kept fouling my vision. The black tarpaper under my knees was warm, verging on hot, and I could smell the faint sour reek from the rooftop drain vents. In front of me was a kind of narrow alleyway between houses that opened onto the most vulnerable side of the wood-framed building beneath me. The back of the building, which sat out on piers over the lake, I wasn't worried about. The police car in the parking lot and my employee lying in the bed of his pickup could take care of the rest.

I lowered the rifle to swipe at my forehead with my shirt sleeve. Maybe it was my imagination. Maybe I hadn't heard anything after all. I rested my aching arms on my knees, hoping that my family was asleep. Even my wife didn't know what I was really doing. Almost every relative I had in the world was checked into the hotel below me. My hotel. They thought I was worried about a weather disaster. That's how I had explained the boarded-up windows to everyone when they showed up for the family reunion. What I was really worried about was someone stepping around the corner of the building in front of me with a match, and a glass bottle with a gas-soaked tampon taped to the side. All they would have to do was run forward a few steps, light the firebomb, and then throw a pass that even the worst armchair quarterback in the world couldn't miss. I calculated that I'd have at the most three seconds in which to drop them with a bullet. If I hesitated, or missed, they'd have time to hurl the bottle under the hotel's pier and beam foundation, and I would be sitting on top of a five alarm inferno with my entire family inside.

The problems with bikers had begun almost on the day that I bought the hotel and had steadily compounded, like interest on a bad debt. I didn't have many rules, but the few rules that I had to insist on, like banning knives or gang colors inside the bar, infuriated them. Finally they became enough of a nuisance that the police chief had no choice but to run them out of town. The police chief had called to tell me the bikers had promised to burn my resort to the ground on their way out.

A lone cricket chirped forlornly in the darkness. I thought I saw a bat rip through the cloud of moths around a floodlight like an airborne knife. Then I heard it again. This time it was unmistakable. Someone in boots was walking directly toward me. I raised the rifle, steadying my elbows against the roof's raised parapet, and pressed my eye once again against the sight. It felt like my blood had been replaced with a mixture of pure adrenaline and rage. My finger started the slow squeeze of the trigger that they had taught us in the army. I was primed and ready to kill. I was ready to commit "justifiable homicide."

The footsteps grew nearer. "Burn my bar?!" I wanted to scream, "kill my family?!" I'd show them. I'd teach them a lesson they'd never forget. By now I could hear the crisp sound of gravel crunching under foot. The arrogant bastard wasn't even trying to be quiet. I pressed the rifle stock deep into my shoulder, trying to stop the gun from shaking. I felt like I could almost hear him breathing. The footsteps were so near now that I knew he would be stepping out from behind the nearest house in just a few seconds. I had to be ready. I had to be ready. Then the footsteps suddenly stopped. In my mind I could picture the glow of the lighter as he held it to the side of the molotov cocktail he was going to use to kill my family. I felt something harden within me. All time stopped. I knew that I would kill. A moment later I heard the solid whack of a screen door slamming shut. All of the air went out of me as I folded up over the borrowed rifle like a mother over a dead child. "My God," I whispered, rocking back and forth. "My God." My eyes stung but no tears came. "My God," I whispered again. A blurred rectangle of light winked on and off on the second floor of the building across from me. That was Shane's room. Shane was my neighbor's teenaged son. He came into my bar all the time to buy sodas. I'd nearly killed him.

A single tear fell from my eye to the warm black tarpaper, darkening it momentarily before it evaporated and was borne away by the breeze. An uncompromising hatred rose up like a snake within me, a hatred of myself, my life, and all of my wretched possessions. I wanted to reduce everything I had to the size of a stone and throw it into the sea. I had followed my father's advice to the letter and worked longer and harder than anyone else to become a millionaire. Yet something had never felt quite right. Now, for one brief shining moment, God had parted the curtains to show me what I was really worth. The building beneath me felt monstrous and alien. I would have torched it myself to learn what I had learned that night. Nothing I had was worth killing for. Nothing I had was worth dying for. Nothing I had was worth anything at all.

I pushed the gun away and collapsed backward. A patch of stars wheeled through the clouds overhead. I felt the roughness of the roof against my palms. The sound of blood pounding in my ears slowly gave way to the lake's gentle lapping at the dock. I made many vows that night. I would end up breaking most of them, again and again, until the time when I myself was finally broken.