Life Expectancy

her feet in a graceless dance, trying to stay out of the line of fire, Lorrie hit Punchinello in the face with her free hand, hit him again, again, grunting with each blow, exhibiting the machine determination of a figure swinging a hammer at a bell in an animated Swiss clock.
        We fought over the pistol, my two hands prying at his one. Muzzle flashed, shot cracked, and a slug ricocheted off the sidewalk, spraying chips of concrete that tattooed my face, clanged off metal, maybe the van, maybe my sweet Shelby Z. I almost had the weapon, but he managed to squeeze the trigger again, and in spite of all that my father had done for his father, the ingrate shot me. Twice.
        I;
        If an ax had cleaved my leg, the pain could not have been worse than this.
        In movies, the hero takes a bullet and keeps on coming, for God, for love of country, for the sake of his woman. A bullet might make him wince, but often it just pisses him off and drives him to even greater heroics.
        As I said earlier, since childhood I had thought of myself as having the potential to be a hero if put to the test. Now I realized that I lacked at least one essential requirement for the job: a really high pain threshold.
        Screaming, I fell off the curb and onto the pavement, between the van and the Shelby Z. My head rattled the drainage grille, or maybe the grille rattled my head.
        I was terrified that he would shoot me in the face-until I realized I had possession of the pistol.
        Reaching between his legs, he tried to pull the nail file out of his crotch, but merely touching it caused him to squeal more pitifully than a nig catching sight of the butcher's blade. Agony knocked him to his knees. Then he went all the way down, onto his side, pulling Lorrie with him.
        We lay there screaming, Punchinello and I, like two teenage girls who had just found a severed head in an old Jamie Lee Curtis movie.
        I heard Lorrie shouting my name and something about time.
        Unable to focus through the pain, undoubtedly slightly delirious, I found myself imagining what she might be saying:
        Time waits for no man. Time and the river, how quickly they go by.
        Time bears away all things.
        Even in my condition, I quickly realized that she would not be waxing philosophical at a moment like this. When I recognized the note of urgency in her voice, I also knew the essence of what she must be saying: Time is running out. The bombs!
        The pain in my left leg churned with fiery exuberance, and I was surprised to see that flames weren't eating through the flesh. I could also feel something bristling in the meat of it, perhaps shattered bones. I could not, however, move it.
        How odd to be terrified but at the same time weary to the point of sleepiness. Wracked by pain yet capable of taking a nap. Pillowy now, the pavement. Bedding with a faint fragrance of tar.
        This tempting slumber was, of course, the sleep of death, which I recognized and resisted.
        Making no attempt to stand, dragging the useless leg after me as if I were Sisyphus and it were my stone, I scaled the towering curb. I crawled to Lorrie.
        Lying on his side, one arm behind him, Punchinello remained cuffed to Lorrie. With his free hand, he plucked the nail file out of his crotch- and promptly threw up on himself.
        I was gratified by this evidence that he felt worse than I did.
        During the past few hours, I had come to believe in the reality of Evil for the first time in my twenty years. I believed suddenly not merely in evil as a necessary antagonist in movies and books-bad guys and boogey men-not merely in evil as the consequence of parental rejection or parental indulgence or social injustice, but in Evil as a presence alive in the world.
        It is a presence that tirelessly romances and beguiles, but it cannot consummate a relationship until invited to do so. Punchinello might have been raised by an evil man, might have been instructed in the linguistics of evil, but ultimately the choice of how to live was his alone.
        My gratification at the sight of his suffering might have been unwholesome, corrupting, but I don't believe that it was itself a small evil. At the time it felt-and even now feels-like righteous satisfaction prompted by this proof that evil has a price to extract from those who embrace it and that resistance to it, while costly,