Bottle Rockets

• Short story

								
It was in that bone jarring cold water that was up just above my waist each ripple slapping against me, water splashing upwards, soaking what part of my body wasn't already in the water that I accepted my untimely, self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, soon to be ill fated, soaking wet demise. The young, lady peace officer trained her gun to my back from the river bank while I held my gun to my head in what was an unusual standoff, but not so unusual that she was not telling me to, “Drop the gun and put your hands behind your head.” 
	I didn’t expect to be caught in such a pose.  A pose that to her must have looked like the silhouette of a man saluting the dawn, but instead of my index and forefinger held up to my brow, it was a Colt 1911 pressed hard against my temple, coloring that side of my face into a purple rosacea. One last salute followed by one last report. A salute to a world that had no role or part for me to play anymore. The war ended fifteen years ago and I’ve beaten myself down to a half hearted, half man, and whole travesty of a human being. The lives I’ve ended. The lives I’ve grabbed out of dark death and pulled into this conscious world without them having a choice or a discussion in the matter. My daughter, six, had not seen me in one whole month. My son, four, when he last saw me had the wise words of a man with a thousand yard stare as he said, heartfelt and bombastic, “We should go home, Dad.” I sat in my truck in the front seat drinking beers from a can in one or two whole gulps and then chucking them down in a clatter amongst the other refuse vessels on the passenger seat floorboard of my Chevy pickup truck. The kids, in the back of the extended cab amongst my belongings that I had brought from the house, it was so crammed back there that they also looked like just another piece of chattel sitting with the “not really that essential” essential items I had grabbed from the house while my wife wasn’t home so I wouldn't have to see her. 
	After hearing my son’s wise words I’d brought them home to their mother. I had a penitential feeling of unease when I left them because my inveterate disease was growing worse with each passing day. I thought of myself as an embarrassment. A shoddy wreck of nerves that couldn’t sit still without a shot of whisky, a jag of beer, or some other soporific sedative that would take me out of my caustic and de-spiritualized body long enough to string together one single, lonely, coherent thought that didn’t have to do with blowing out my goddamn brains at some fishing access,  my corpse floating down the raging Madison, swept away so that no human being would have to discover my exposed skull, my brain matter, my final position on a throne of blood and bone caked all over the wall of some gas station bathroom an attendant would have to open once they’d found the spare key to unlock it. 
	I had been outed, though, caught in the act of the secret devilry I was about to commit. So, I abandoned my plot and dropped the gun from my hand, watching it float downstream as it sunk into the water. 

Now, as I sit here, nicotine collecting and smudging on the stubble of my upper lip, I exhale through my nose as a spiritual glint of hope surprises me. A vision for the future that I have not had in at least  a decade rises up. In the Thinking Man posture, with a cigarette burnt down to the butt in one hand, the other hand in the form of a fist that my chin lays upon, I evaluate my claim to a new reformed way of life and second chance. One should not rocket into the atmosphere with only a single booster, though. Once you find yourself past the clouds and in the stratosphere it is vitally important to have another method to continue propulsion upward in order to avoid plummeting to the ground from such a nosebleed altitude. I cannot simply walk out of these sanitarium gates without knowing who I am supposed to be now that I have a fresh chance.
I looked across the grass yard and my gaze caught the white rococo statue, who I thought to be Dyonisis, pouring a carafe of wine across the chest of his mortal lover. At second glance, and in the context of the institution I found myself locked up in, I realize that the statue is of Mother Teresa, bathing an adolescent child in some foreign land I am not able to identify. Water cleanses and renews. Wine distills and pickles, I thought. I was baptized, born again, not so long ago when the young lady of the peace took me down in the water with the force of an inside linebacker sacking the quarterback during a game in which everything was on the line. Even so, she’d misjudged her ability to swim while clad in armored plates and it was me that carried her, spasming and choking up water, as I slapped her soaking wet body on to the muddy, reeded bank. More patrolmen had arrived by then and I’d immediately put my hands back in the air. I must have looked like dogman hunched over her frail body.
I flicked my smoke into the underbrush of a well trimmed hedge, its tiny glossy leaves turning up toward the sun. Looking up, I saw her approaching across the lawn. We’d talked on the phone once prior, about a week ago, since we’d rescued each other. I shuffled for better purchase on my rock resting place among the manicured hedgings. 
She said, “Hello.” 
Her eyes were concerned. I could tell she cared.  I could also tell she was there for more than that. She needed me for what I was to her in that moment. Someone she’d rescued and someone who’d reached out and rescued her back, forcing her to trust. That moment in the water, when she thrashed and sank and I grabbed the handle on the back of her vest, pulling her sobbing and choking out of the turgid, roiling water that really wasn’t all that deep, but she’d lost her footing just the same. She’d recoiled like a fawn in the jaws of a mountain lion, with no way to struggle free. Her eyes panicked but she gave in, letting her body go limp as I carried her to shore. Trusting that I’d not hurt her because in that moment she had no other choice but to forfeit control in the  hope that a suicidal drunk would carry her to safety instead of savage her on the bank when we got there. 
“They found your gun.”
“Can I have it back?”
She giggled, “I don’t think so.”
“Anything as interesting as last week happen on your shift today?”
“Hardly, but the guys at the station are calling me ‘Deputy Dunk’ now.”
“That’s charming. I bet it sticks.”
“God, I’m sure it will.” She rolled her eyes and smirked. Her big brown campaign hat was tipped forward to shade her eyes from the sun hovering halo-like behind my head. 
“They're serving lunch in the cafeteria. You hungry?”
She walked with me along the rocky path amongst the raked gravel that was carefully bordered by big smooth rocks and randomly placed manicured shrubs. 
We sat with our trays amongst the residents and wards alike. Each type of food was nested among its geometrically shaped compartment within the tray. I picked at my soft carrots and drank my carton of chocolate milk with a bendy straw. 

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