As night gave way to the first light of dawn, Tony pointed his .45 at the horizon and emptied the cartridge. But the sun kept rising, day crawling ever closer, unstoppable.
“Fuck you,” he muttered, ejecting the clip. None of us wanted this day to arrive. Not Tony, not Ruiz, not Jimmy, and not me. About 30 feet from us lay Michael in the spot where he’d bled to death sometime in the night, the only one that wasn’t going to see this day and the only one of us that might’ve wanted to.
They say that everything happens for a reason but that seems like nothing more than a mundane truism to me. Of course everything happens for a reason. Someone drinks 13 cans of Budweiser then drives their car into oncoming traffic. Or someone gets mad and shoots somebody else’s son or daughter. Action and reaction. Cause and effect. But that’s not what they’re talking about, I suppose. They’re talking about a “higher purpose.” Some kind of grand design. Sure, whatever. I don’t know about any of that. I don’t know about anything anymore and I’ve spent most of the night doing nothing but proving that to myself again and again.
I look over at Tony now, sitting in the sand, his legs pulled up to his chest, his forehead on his knees. There are hours yet to go. I watch that sun climb ever higher into the cloudless sky and think, “Yeah, he’s right. Fuck this day. And fuck all the days to come after it.”
