_I just wanna listen to calypso but everyone keeps getting shot in the head and it’s my job to save them. “Calypso Queen” by Calypso Rose comes out of the speakers while we rush across town. Sometimes brains gets all over your gloves and they get so greasy that you have to take off your brain gloves and put on a new pair. The homeless man was in the basement busy being homeless and trying to stay warm. The homeowner shot him in the head when he seen him in there. The man landed on a mattress topper with his right arm extended up into the air, held up by a small wooden table pressed against the wall. His head was down off the side of the mattress, his brains weren’t coming out of his head but there was a hole through his lower jaw that went all the way through and came out the top of his head. The blood had stopped coming out of the hole and his eyes were wide open and they was blue. He had long silver hair and a thick black hair tie around his wrist. The hair tie was too tight and was leaving an indentation turning red across his skin and I thought about removing it but realized it didn’t really matter anymore cause he was flatlining and there was blood out his mouth and his nose.

The cops told me to watch out for the shell casings as they placed little yellow cards that stood up like card towers on the ground next to the shells and they told me I could be subpoenaed because they were going to declare this a homicide and I’d have to maybe go to court and talk about what I’d seen. I said I don’t really have time for that and they said no one really does. Cracker picked up our bags and I grabbed the heart monitor. Cracker slipped and fell bad on the ice and I was scared he had cracked his head but he didn’t, Cracker just stood back up and kept walkin. We got back in the ambulance and I said “fuck, it’s cold” and Cracker said yeah and turned up the heat.

Cracker is the type of guy that doesn’t get hurt because he’s such a tough guy and he’s got such a big heart. I think the warmth keeps him safe cause it surrounds him like a bunch of planets round the sun. When we ain’t at work we go up to the mountains out round Townsend and swim in the streams and the bigger rivers if we can get to em and we look at the lil baby bass fish and we look at the little trouts and sometimes we see rainbow trouts and they glisten so much. We enjoy the water. We seen big fish and I don’t know what they’re called but they swim real slow across the bottom of the river, rockin side to side with their big spiney backs and fat bellies and then they dart after the little fish and if you’re lucky they’ll nip your toes and make you laugh.

One time when we was swimming I dove down and found a little cannonball from the Civil War and my daddy said he had found one too when he was a kid and he had taken a drill and tried to drill into it but the cannonball started sparking and that scared him so he stopped. Cracker loves rocks and cannonballs and dead things so when I find a dead snake or a good rock I always throw it in the truck to give to Cracker. I found a dead butterfly and I pinned it to a piece of corkboard, framed it up and wrote CADES COVE - TIGER BUTTERFLY on it in Sharpie and gave it to Cracker. He loved that, he put it on the lil stand in his bathroom to look at while he shits.

We heard a bobcat in the woods let out a scream and the tourists near us said “I wish them kids would quit playing like that.” We go out in the fields between mountains and fall into the tall grasses. Sometimes we see bears and say “no more bears” and then we see another and her fuzzy cubs and she charges at us cause we done pissed her off with our presence or maybe she’s just showin off for her kids. We eat snacks and drink gay little drinks and talk about how everyone we work with are assholes. We seen a coyote dart across the field where the horses hang out and swoop down the hillside where the bear cave is. All the magic in the woods likes to reveal itself when Cracker comes to the forest.

People go and get shot in the head or shoot themselves and maybe regret it, maybe not but Cracker says “they might be dead but we did a good job. You’re a rockstar” and I say “no, you are.”