Spare Arrows

“Because you’re comfortable with being a nihilist,” Chad said, unable to hold back a smirk.

“I just don’t see how anyone can logically be much else.”

“That’s pretty fucking reductive of you.”

“But it isn’t naive.”

And, yeah, maybe he’s right, but the word “comfortable” was the most important word of the entire conversation. I stepped over a crack in the pavement, losing God in the seams between concrete and me. It’s all so imperfectly put together.

“So, last summer, when you held up traffic on 75–“

“Fuck you,” I said.

He hucked a wad of slimy spit out the side of his mouth. I thought I could hear it sizzle on the sidewalk.

“Look, sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to–“

“Yes, you did.”

A flock of birds soared too low overhead. I hoped one would shit right on Chad’s face. No such luck. We walked on.

“I just feel like I’m, you know, waking up for the first time,” I said, feeling the silence hedging in and not liking it much.

“You sound like a Hallmark card,” Chad said.

“Yeah, find me a Hallmark card with that line.”

“Jackass.”

“Fuckhead.”

“You should come to church with me and Becka tomorrow,” Chad said.

“Yeah, I’m good.”

It’s always this weird fucking future tense God has to live in. It’s always church tomorrow, come back Wednesday, be here tonight. Yesterday, or even right now, is just never quite good enough, not powerful enough of a moment to accept and be in. It’s like the words “I love you.” They don’t mean anything; just another empty phrase we have to keep repeating, lest we really let their inadequacy to convey much of anything sink in. It’s constant deferral. It’s all just a bunch of empty fucking signifiers: God, the Devil, and my Circumcised Cock. There’s no way to parse out the difference.

“You’re missing something, man,” Chad said, “and if you’d just give it a chance…”

“I gave God the first two decades of my life, and quite honestly, I’d like the interest on my time back. I mean, how many times did I stand up and sit back down again on overworn pews, listen to the same tired message over and over again, sing the same stupid hymns with their ridiculously-placed apostrophes just so some musically disinclined jackass could cram an extra syllable into a stanza?”

Chad stared at me.

“Are you done?” he asked.

“I’ve been done.”

Chad whipped out his phone and checked a text. His thumbs darted across keys, and I looked around campus as we walked. A girl in a summer dress rolled by on a skateboard. I smiled, and she moved on. Then I heard the guy talking loudly just past her.

“If you drink to get tipsy, then you are sinning against God!”

He raised his hands in the air and shook his fists as if wrestling the life out of a chicken’s neck. Some pamphlets flicked back and forth between his fingers. He tried to force one on me.

“No, thanks. I quit,” I said, pushing an open palm toward him. He scowled and preached to my back. Something about ignoring signs and all that. Chad and I stopped at the crosswalk. Chad put his phone away.

“You didn’t have to be a dick to him,” Chad said.

“Just exercising my First Amendment Rights. He’s lucky I didn’t have to resort to the Second.”

Chad raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

“The right to not incriminate oneself in a court of law?” I said.

“I don’t get it.”

“Jesus Christ, dude! It’s guns, okay? The right to own fucking guns.”

“Oh,” he said. “Not that funny.”

“Yeah, you kind of killed it.”

A squirrel darted back and forth around a nearby tree. It jumped from the trunk to the ground and back again.

“I think you’re suffering from anomie,” Chad said.

“Well, at least you pay attention in sociology,” I said. “Well, half-pay attention.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, glaring. “Anomie is when people feel disconnected from their societal expectations, when they live in a–“

“state of normlessness,” I finished for him. “Yeah, remember the name of the book that got popularized in?” I looked straight ahead, although I really wanted to see his reaction. But it just wouldn’t be as good that way.

“Suicide,” he said quietly. It was like I could feel him shrinking next to me.

“So, last summer–“

“Yeah, look, I’m sorry I brought it up,” he said.

“–when I was on the overpass,” I continued, staring straight ahead, “then you could have made a good case for me suffering from anomie.”

He would have been right then. Maybe he’s right even now, but I don’t think so. Something was different then, wrong then. All I knew was what I didn’t believe in; I didn’t have a clue what I did believe in. I was defined by negation, living in a state of absence.

I wanted a gun, but they were expensive. Jumping seemed like a cheaper alternative, anyway. Plus, I had this weird notion that guns were made for killing other people, so it would be a bizarre reversal to turn them in on themselves and shoot the user. Of course, that’s all I accomplished on the overpass, too. Interstates are made for going places, not for stopping and gawking at an underfed college sophomore clinging desperately to the rail on the overpass with one hand while testing space with the other.

I did it, by the way. It just didn’t kill me. I did cause a wreck, however. A woman lost her baby.

If you think God doesn’t deal in blood, then you’re sadly mistaken. If you still believe in God, then you might be underestimating the power of random chance and meaninglessness.

When we got back to the dorm, Chad flopped onto his futon and flung a pillow over his head.

I grabbed the travel case I lived out of and walked out of the room. In the bathroom, I fished out my toothbrush. My bottle of pills shook, and I stopped. Lifting the bottle up to the light, I read the label in its entirety, as if there would be some special code in there this time.

Good old lithium.

I turned the bottle upside-down and listened as the pills rattled in succinct clinks down the drain. I started to throw the bottle away but thought better of it. Instead, I replaced the cap and tucked the empty bottle back in the travel case.

You always want to keep track of your poisons.