Free The Shooting by James Boice Page B

screaming—if they were, I could not hear it over the noise of what sounded like a box of M-80s going off all at once by accident. I had already pulled Kaylee to the floor and lay on top of her. I could feel her heart beating against me. She’s still alive , I said out loud. People were running for the exits at the rear of the theater. At the exits they pulled and pushed at the doors, not understanding they had been chained shut from outside. The shooter stood at the base of the screen emptying magazine after magazine, reloading several times with fresh ones he carried in the pockets of his black military contractor cargo pants. I remember his face as he sighted each shot through the scope of the assault rifle. It was blank. It might have been the face of someone driving alone a long distance. This was his life’s great project. This was the only meaningful thing he had ever done. He had been carrying it inside himself for a long time,letting it come to life inside him the way others might carry a baby or music. The air smelled like sulfur. It was smoky, fire alarms were going off, sprinklers raining down on us. I remember seeing blood crawling down the sloped aisle from the exits where the bodies were piled. The massacre lasted forty-eight seconds. Two hundred forty-three were killed. They were dead in the heaps by either exit, dead in the seats they had carefully chosen, asking the ones they were with Are these good? Can you see? unaware this was the final decision they would ever make. They were dead with popcorn still half chewed in their mouths and dopey grins on their faces from the last preview, a raunchy sex comedy starring Jason Sudeikis.
    Once the shooter decided he was finished and shot himself through the mouth with a Glock 19, I tried to lift Kaylee but her head lolled like it was made of dough and that’s how I knew what I had been feeling was only my own heart. I hated my own heartbeat. It was a liar, a traitor—it meant that I was the only survivor. Can you name me? Can you name any of the other dead? No one ever can. But can you name the shooter? Of course you can—you can state all three names, they roll off your tongue: first, middle, and last. You can point at his picture and say, That’s him. You can say what he did in his life. Can you say anything— one thing—those he killed ever did? Can you say one thing I ever did in mine?
    Then Jenny would hit them with the economic data showing the benefits of a tax on all ammunition, the polling statistics indicating growing voter support in favor of repealing the Second Amendment in favor of a new amendment, our amendment, an amendment we the people—not dead , slave-owning white guys from 250 years ago: us— would write. —This is happening, Jenny would tell them. —It is happening. The tide turns quickly. Be on the right side of it.
    I could almost see Kaylee there, in each meeting, watching me showing rich assholes her picture, watching CEOs and hedge fund managers take her picture in their small-fingered hands, pretending to care. I was using her smile and her youth and her utter perfect sweetness to try to garner votes for quixotic state legislation or small bits of money for Jenny’s organization. I was using her lolling neck. Her silent chest. I was giving her to them.
    A thousand meetings, a thousand howling escorts from the building. —I’m sorry what happened to you happened, said one Democratic state representative, —it breaks my heart. But, look, you’re talking about guns. And if that wasn’t bad enough, you’re talking about taxes. In Texas. He looked at Jenny like he was going to cry. —Are you out of your mind? Do you want any Democrats in office in this state? Do you want any kind of future political life here, Jenny? There’s a right way of doing what you want to do and a wrong way. And, darling, this is the wrong way.
    â€”Fuck you, Jenny told him, and