Small Moving Parts

When Harland Cain holds a .45 automatic to his head and bears down slowly upon the trigger, he experiences a profound sense of control over his destiny for the first time in his life. He savors the moment and imagines the click of the hammer, the explosion, and the bullet spiraling through the barrel before everything turns black. It's then he hears the out-of-control screaming of tires on the pavement, followed by the sickening sound of metal crashing against concrete. He lays down the pistol and crosses his yard in that predawn darkness to find a young boy, bloody and dazed, sitting behind the wheel of a demolished pickup truck. The boy, intoxicated but not hurt badly, spends the night on Cain's sofa. When he explains to the old man that he had intended to kill himself, the lives of the two become inexorably linked with consequences neither could imagine.