Our decisions are fragile. My God, so delicate. And they are where you will find the divine knot of the folded hands of prayerful Mothers.
Their songs are the same: Please, God, not my child.
This is a horrible story, I know that. I'm sure you know that.
The other guy was a little punk, not worth more than the dirt on the road, or so he thought. He had something to prove though. Fuck them all, he thought. Who cares? He can’t remember the last time he gave a shit, you know? So now he has a gun in one hand, and in the other he's holding a mixture of something called nothing to lose and something to prove.
If you believe your life means nothing, how can anyone expect you to value any other life? I mean, come on. Don’t be so fucking stupid. Is that what he heard in his mind? You’re so fucking stupid?
I wonder if he trembled when he aimed at the truck. I wonder if beads of sweat formed on his brow as he held the power in his hands, as his anger sprouted and irritated his young body. Maybe he pissed his pants at the immediate scent and sound of gunshot, at the finality and the reality that followed the angry split second it took him to pull the trigger. HE CRACKED OPEN THE WORLD. He pulled that trigger four times. Was he surprised that this time he really did it? Maybe he wanted to vomit. Maybe he regretted it and wondered what the hell he just did. What have I done?
No doubt, something in his mind told him there was no going back.
I imagine that the boys in the truck screamed in fear, yelled at the driver to GO GO GO? Did Tyrese reach his hand across his back when he realized he was shot? Did each young man whose life split apart in that instant gasp in fear and wish he could just be home with his mom?
Being a man was suddenly so far away for those boys. They huddled and cried, disbelieved. No, no way. This is not happening. HOW IS THIS HAPPENING? They ducked and scrambled as their ears cracked with the sound. Each boy looked, searched, screamed. But for one. One slumped. One wondered, with desperate and panicked thoughts: Am I bleeding? Am I shot? Oh God. I've been shot. Surely the tears came then. Surely his heart broke at that moment. Knowing what we know now, surely we all wish we could have been there to hold him, comfort him.
His loved ones and friends were unaware they would soon be obsessively searching their day for what they were doing at that moment. They'd repeat over and over again their last conversation with Tyrese, and they'd scramble for their last laughter shared. They would search for and imagine the exact moment they would eventually define as the line between his life and death. As the line between their life, before and after his. They will never know for sure.
And so it was, just a week before Christmas, a Sunday evening on a quiet dirt road beneath a darkening sky in East Texas, that an edgy 17-year old crossed paths with a truck full of young men -- one in particular an 18-year old just days after his birthday, eager for life, a hometown football kid, along for the ride, sitting in the back seat.
One is dead. One has been arrested. All are forever changed. Fragile decisions, tragic consequences.
