Tears broke from his eyes.
His heart throbbed one hard, painful time.
He fell against Eagle in tears.
“I can’t do it,” Kevin whispered. “I can’t, Eagle.”
“He won’t feel a thing,” Eagle said, bracing his hands against Kevin’s back. “I have something that will just make him go to sleep.”
“What is it?”
“Peyote.”
Tears running down his face, Kevin reached up to wipe them away, only to find that the look he’d initially seen in Eagle’s eyes was not mistaken. “You’re kidding,” he said.
“No. I’m not.”
“You want to drug him to death?”
“It’s the simplest way.”
“I’m not gonna do that.”
“Would you rather put a gun against his head?”
“I—no.”
“As I said,” Eagle continued, “he won’t feel a thing.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s been used before. Mercy is perhaps the greatest thing you could ever offer to anyone suffering the pain he is.”
Kevin stilled the quiver in his lower lip by digging his teeth into it. “How would you do it?”
“In a soup. I’d just mix it in.”
“He won’t know?”
“Won’t feel a thing,” Eagle said. He reached down to touch Kevin’s now-trembling hand. “It’s up to you whether or not you want to do this. He is your son, after all.”
“I just want what’s best for him.”
“I know. I do too.”
Kevin bowed his head.
This is it, he thought. This is where you have to decide what to do.
Only one thought occurred to him when he lifted his head and looked into Eagle’s eyes.
How would his children feel?
“Boys,” Kevin said. “I need to talk to you about something.”
Both children looked up. Though Mark’s eyes were wide and innocent, Arnold’s eyes showed an awareness that nearly pushed Kevin to tears. His second-eldest who, until recently, had exhibited complete resilience to anything going on in the household, seemed startled, shaken by the tone in his father’s voice and the sense of finality in the air.
Can they feel it? Kevin thought. Do they know it’s the end?
“It’s about Jessiah,” Arnold said. “Isn’t it?”
Kevin nodded. “Yes,” he sighed. “It is.”
Mark’s eyes softened. Arnold simply continued to stare, eyes darkening by the second. It took Kevin a moment to consider his choice of words before he seated himself on the couch and gestured his sons up beside him.
It’ll be all right, he thought, swallowing a lump in his throat. You can do this.
How many times in a man’s life did he have to consider the possibility that, one day, he would have to tell his children that their sibling was going to die? Did this man see an infant dying in a nursery and think about his child, his Julia with her silk-blonde hair and her big blue eyes, or did he disregard it in a way that all people do when they see tragedy and suffering? It’s not every day that you see a car crash in the middle of the road, the driver’s head cut off and lying three feet away, but it never hurts you the way it should because that driver is just a stranger and a stranger he or she will always be, but what about when a man sees a child starving in Haiti, on the shores of destruction with his mother dead nearby? Does he think about his child—his Fernando, with his chocolate-brown eyes and his raven-black hair—or does he simply turn away, flip the channel so he doesn’t have to see them suffer? It’s not as though they will ever have an earthquake, a tsunami that will come to wash them away, so what good is it to think that his child could be on that shore, lying in that sand with the blood on his hands? With so many thoughts running through his head, Kevin found it hard to imagine just what he should say, what he should do, how he should present himself and his case. It seemed impossible to think of just what he would say, so when he looked into his children’s eyes—when he saw both their Julia and his Fernando looking at him—he felt his heart sink and his mind turn to dust.
In the next few minutes, he would have to say the four most horrible words he would ever say in his life.
Your brother is dying.
“Dad?” Arnold asked. “Jessiah’s not going to get better, is he?”
“No,” Kevin said. “He isn’t.”
Mark positioned his hands on the floor and crawled forward like an infant until he sat at his brother’s side. There, he watched his father as though their world would end, burned asunder by the flames of judgment.
Kevin set his hands on his knees. “You both know that your brother has been really sick for the past few days. Now, before either of you ask, I don’t know what’s wrong with him. Neither does Eagle. The only thing we know is that he has a bite on his shoulder that hasn’t been healing.”
“A bite?” Arnold asked, puzzled.
“Why isn’t he a zombie?” Mark questioned.
“Jessiah told Eagle that he wasn’t bitten by a zombie before we started giving him sleeping pills,” Kevin sighed, already regretting the lie that laced his lips. “He’s not getting any better, guys…and we can’t do anything to help him.”
The children simply stared.
This is it. This is where I’m going to start crying.
The first tear slicked down his face.
Kevin blinked.
The second and third followed.
“Dad,” Arnold said.
“What, buddy?”
“Jessiah’s going to die, isn’t he?”
Mark let out a sob. “Yes, Arnold,” Kevin said. “He’s gonna die.”
When both of his children started crying, Kevin could only bow his head.
He’d failed. And there was nothing he could do about it.
“You did the right thing,” Eagle said, pressing his hand to Kevin’s back as he entered the room.
“I hope so.”
Kevin closed his eyes.
Tomorrow, he thought.
When he looked back at Eagle he saw the glimmer in his eyes that seemed to understand his each and every thought, and a part of his soul that yearned to be set free finally curled up and died.
“This is it,” Kevin said, falling to his knees in front of his two youngest children. “Eagle said he’s not gonna make it much longer.”
“Is he awake?” Arnold asked.
“Yes.”
“Daddy, isn’t there anything you can do?” Mark begged, eyes gleaming with tears.
“We’ve tried everything, Mark. There’s nothing more we can do for him.”
The youngest boy nodded. Reaching up, he wiped the tears from his eyes and hardened his face as much as he could, locking his eyes in a way that surprised Kevin. In that moment, he saw a whisper of the boy’s future self in his eyes, on his lips. He saw a man with hollow cheekbones not from frailty, but life, and he saw a strength that rivaled that of the Native American man standing nearby, sadness in his eyes and a frown on his face.
“You can tell him anything you want to,” Kevin said, taking both of his son’s hands, “but I want you to tell him you love him above anything else.”
“Dad,” Arnold started.
Kevin cut him off. “I know you would’ve said that even if I hadn’t have told you, Arnold, Mark. I know that you love your brother more than anything else in the world, but I want you to tell him how much he means to you, that you care about him. He knows this. He knows you love him, but I want him to hear it. He’s not going to live for much longer.”
Standing, Kevin squeezed Arnold and Mark’s hands and looked to Eagle, who set a hand on each of the boys’ shoulders. “When you go in,” the Native said, “you need to be as quiet as you can. Lean down and whisper in his ear, squeeze his hand to let him know you’re there. He might not be able to talk to you, but he can still hear you.”