Rocks they threw, so he went up to those caves that were still open in those days and crept inside. Bigger rocks in there, fastened to walls and floors and ceilings where they couldn’t get to him.

If you look through the quartz crystals sideways sometimes, he said later, you can see your eye looking right back at you.

The way light refracts through a prism.

Rocks they threw, and when he was older he’d build a fire in the backyard of his parents’ home, in one of those aluminum garbage cans for lawn clippings and dead leaves, a fire out of old newspapers and pieces of pressboard. Sometimes he’d throw in firecrackers he’d bought from the oldest kids in school.

Sometimes he’d throw in bullets he’d stolen from his father, just to hear how they’d explode.

With the garden hose, water he’d cover on to watch smoke and steam, learned how even liquid can be a weapon.

In those days, fights were entertainment. You watched them in the movies, on television, how the blood sprayed from a newly broken jaw. You’d watch them in the schoolyard. How gravel scraped into the back.

By then he didn’t fight much, but when he did, he felt good. He felt powerful. The other kids screaming. Important.

They didn’t throw rocks, then.

He felt like God, exacting vengeance on the Egyptians.

He liked those stories, the ones they’d read to him in Sunday school. He especially liked Judges – all that chaos, all that violence.

Then one day he bought a gun. How it felt, not light at all, and cold. When he aimed, arm outstretched, at himself in the mirror, just like he’d seen in that movie, he looked impressive. Important, he thought.

The way light reflects off a thin sheet of glass, silver-coated.

It balanced well, in his fist, just like a stone.