For reasons reason cannot know we were the ones he wanted to kill and he would have, had I let him. I stashed the kids in a closet, in cabinets, hoping to outsmart the fragile frantic mind of a man child gone amuck. I told him, when he looked around, they were playing in the gym, as they should be even now. Disappointed, he shot me then. Some say If I’d carried a gun, if all teachers did, not just me, we’d be less vulnerable, and I’d still be alive, and so’d the kids. But the thought of shooting off every unfamiliar face, as if being new, or being an outsider is somehow a kind of a crime, rather than a new beginning, offends me so I’d rather take a dive. In the end, the same bitter and grasping questions are asked again, and again, as if to numb the living. Do not ask for whom the bell tolls: it’s not for me. This one’s on you.
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Deliverance
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Jim Ross
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