Chris Bohjalian - Before You Know Kindness

Nevertheless, the call to the deputy director was even more demeaning: Like John he was a lawyer, and he was very sharp. But it was clear on the phone that he was older than John, and he tended to speak with the slow-motion thoughtfulness of a grandfather in a family movie from the 1950s. It was only when the fellow was near the end of each deliberate, carefully considered observation or response to something John had said would he realize how coldly and precisely he had been diminished by this New York City attorney with a slight trace of a southern accent and how little this other lawyer thought of him. John felt not merely like the moron who had nearly killed his brother-in-law: He felt like the public defender from Mayberry, RFD.

The point that both FERAL officials wanted to make sure John understood wasn’t simply that his negligence had almost slain their friend and associate, Spencer McCullough: It was that his loathsome hobby and his shameful inattention (the former were the high-minded words of the director, the latter the construction of her deputy) had the potential to humiliate FERAL. It simply didn’t look good for the organization’s communications director to have a brother-in-law who hunted. It made them all look like hypocrites. And-worse, in the opinion of the lawyer-it made the group look laughable.

“But I’m the one who hunts,” John had said lamely to the lawyer, when the man had paused to consider how best to twist the knife next. He thought this was a point that should matter.

“Indeed you are, son. Indeed you are. On occasion, we’ve all made bad choices with our lives,” the lawyer responded. “It’s a particular shame, however, when those choices cause pain not simply to ourselves but to the people around us we love. Sometimes, you know, people seem sadly oblivious to the reality that their more irresponsible excursions into the realms of misbehavior reflect badly not merely on themselves, but on their families, too. If the president’s brother gets arrested for drug abuse, the president is tarnished as well. If the president’s teenage daughter gets stopped for underage drinking, the president himself will be sullied. You, John, have not simply injured your brother-in-law; you may have left a deeply troubling blemish on this organization. Sad but true. You have some education-”

“I do not have some education,” John heard himself saying. “I have a law degree from-”

“Of course you do, son. Of course you do. That’s why I am sure you can understand the way all of us with FERAL may look a tad disingenuous if we do not properly control how this information is disseminated. Have you ever seen the op-ed pages of a newspaper? The section in which there is informed commentary? Well-”

“Yes, I have seen the op-ed pages of a newspaper. I may live in Vermont-I may practice in Vermont-but I still read more than my horoscope and the comics!”

“Then I am sure you can imagine what could appear on the op-ed pages this week. Or what Jay Leno and David Letterman might be saying one day soon in their monologues. Vegan animal lover gets plugged by a deer rifle. A deer rifle, John-and fired by his own daughter. Our FERAL family would look deeply troubled. Perhaps even deceitful. At the very least, we would appear to lack the courage of our convictions and-”

“I’m sorry!” John finally shouted into the telephone, exasperated after having to listen first to Catwoman’s rage and now to the sanctimonious diatribe of this lawyer. “I’m sorry my brother-in-law was shot! But lay off this goddamn condescending, holier-than-thou, meat-eaters-are-brainless-barbarians bullshit! I really don’t give a rat’s ass about your precious FERAL reputation! I care about my brother-in-law and my friend. The truth is, most people view you as a bunch of fanatic sociopaths who try to scare little kids away from hot dogs and want cats to become vegetarians! Okay? That is your reputation!” Then he hung up.

As annoyed as he was with the FERAL attorney, he still felt considerably more angry at himself. He was sorry! He vowed he’d never pull the trigger on a rifle again. He’d prayed while he was driving to the hospital the night before, while Spencer was in surgery, and then again this morning before he had gotten out of bed. He prayed not simply that Spencer would live but that he wouldn’t be crippled when he awoke.

He remembered how the hardest part last night hadn’t been having to look Catherine in the eye. It had been having to gaze at Willow-especially when she was looking back at him. At one point his daughter was in the chair beside Charlotte, who was crying. He and Catherine were leaning aimlessly against the walls, but he watched Willow as she patted Charlotte’s bare arm. Her touch, in much the same way that it seemed to calm Patrick, soothed her: She put her head down on Willow’s lap, and her crying grew silent.

He feared that for as long as he lived he would be an imbecile in the eyes of his daughter, and he couldn’t imagine how he could possibly regain a semblance of the admiration she must once-a mere day earlier-have had for him. Sara would understand, he guessed, if only because she was a grown-up and whatever delusions she had of his competence had evaporated in all the years they had been married. She knew his strengths (and almost desperately he tried to remind himself that he did have some), and she wouldn’t lose sight of them in this one mistake.

He thought also of his clients, the women and men-invariably guilty but invariably scarred-and their mistakes. The nineteen-year-old heroin addict who lifted cash from the convenience store where she worked and over the course of eight weeks was alleged to have stolen three thousand dollars. The carpenter who tried to make a quick score by bringing a couple blocks of hashish into Vermont from Montreal. The kid from the Northeast Kingdom who took the checkbook of an older neighbor who’d died and thought he could get away with using the checks to catch up on two months of back rent and treat himself to a couple new CDs.

There were the men and women who drove drunk (too many to count in his head) and the women who were nothing more than unemployable-uneducated or obese or mentally ill-and thus fell into mischief.

Most of these individuals didn’t make one mistake, they made many: Their whole lives were studies in their own bad choices and someone older’s unforgivable negligence. And, John realized with both clarity and sadness, they had grown up in broken homes or they had been abused as children or they had been seduced early by drugs… and he had no such excuse.

But then, he reminded himself, he hadn’t done what they had. He had committed no crime in either the state where the accident had occurred or the state in which he lived. The state trooper and the officer from Fish and Wildlife were clear on this. Yes, the trooper had confiscated his weapon, but Sara told him that after the two men had inspected the gun by the light in his mother’s garage she’d overheard them mumbling that perhaps something they called the extractor was faulty and would turn out to be the real culprit in this disaster.

Consequently, John told himself that he shouldn’t be comparing himself to his clients. If he should be comparing himself to anyone, he decided, it should be to those myriad drivers who lead busy lives (he’d become a father again this year) and thus fail to get snow tires on their vehicles before the first winter blizzard and then careen off the road-though even this thought, in the end, offered precious little comfort.

He understood that if anyone other than Spencer had been wounded this way, the civil suit facing him now would be enormous. Gargantuan. Quite likely to test the upper limits of even the umbrella atop his homeowner’s insurance policy. He and the gun company might even have wound up as codefendants. Consequently, he guessed that in a twisted, self-interested sort of way he should actually take some comfort in the fact this horror had occurred to his brother-in-law and not to an acquaintance or neighbor. Then he most likely would have been sued.