It’s a sad fact that good times make for bad stories. It wouldn’t be accurate to say that nothing much happened over the next five years. Many, many things happened. Cassie started school, made lots of friends, and got pretty good grades. Edmund excelled at his job and Jennifer got a part-time job of her own doing physical therapy. Gunnar started walking, then running and talking and causing all kinds of problems for his mom and dad. But none of that means much for this story.
* * *
It was a bright, clear morning, promising to be a warm day. Edmund checked the balance on his ladder again before climbing up. Cleaning out the gutters had been on his honey do list since October, but he’d never quite gotten round to it. Jennifer had been hinting she’d call someone in to do it, and while he wasn’t the most mechanically inclined guy on the block, Edmund had his pride. So now here he was on the fourth step of the ladder and climbing so he could muck out dead leaves and twigs and whatnot from the gutters.
He heard a whir and a grinding brring-brring sound from behind him as Gunnar left their garage on what used to be Cassie’s bike. He was almost too big for that tiny thing. And while Edmund had been okay with him using his sister’s old one up till now, he feared Cassandra’s faded pink one a size up might subject him to merciless mockery from the other boys. No, they’d have to buy him one of his own. He’d have to talk with Jennifer about that when she and Cassie got back from Cassie’s softball practice.
From the top of the ladder, Edmund called out, “Be careful out there, Gunnar! Watch for cars!”
“‘Kay!” he barely heard, as the boy was a streak already two houses down.
Edmund looked at the work cut out before him. Ugh. Yeah, Jenn had been right. This needed done bad. He looked at the mess and thought a little bit, then climbed back down. After rummaging around in the garage for a bit, he came back up with the kids’ sand shovel from the beach and a bucket and started digging out twigs and rotted leaves.
Edmund had been at it for about twenty minutes when he heard a loud cracking sound. He paused for a moment, then heard a scream. He turned and saw, about fifty yards down the road, Gunnar fallen from his bike in the middle of the road. He furrowed his brow, then scrambled down the ladder and ran over to his son. He found Gunnar lying on the road, a red stain rapidly spreading across his white Mario t-shirt.
For a moment, he just stood there stupidly staring. What could possibly have happened?
Edmund looked around and saw Darryl Simmons walking away back towards his house with . . . a gun in his hand?
“Help!” he screamed. “Someone help! Call 911! Ambulance!”
Then he knelt down beside Gunnar.
“Daddy! Daddy, it hurts.”
The boy’s breathing did not sound right. There was a rasp to it.
“I know, buddy. It’s going to be okay. Daddy’s here.”
There was a cold, rational part at the back of his mind that said he shouldn’t move Gunnar, but he picked his son up and held him close. He felt something hot and wet on his left arm around Gunnar’s back.
He was vaguely aware of a neighbor woman coming up behind him and telling him an ambulance was on its way.
“Daddy, make it stop—make it stop hurting. Daddy, make it better.”
“I’m here, buddy. Daddy’s here.”
When the ambulance arrived seven minutes later, the EMTs found a man kneeling in the road beside a tiny bicycle, clutching a dead boy to his chest. It took them a couple minutes of careful, quiet talking to get Edmund to let go of the child. They did the checks demanded by protocol, but no one doubted.
“Jesus Christ! He’s not even in kindergarten,” muttered one of them, out of Edmund’s earshot.
The police arrived a few minutes after. They took a couple of witness statements from neighbors and took Darryl Simmons into custody. They quickly decided they had enough from the neighbors and could leave Edmund alone for now.
The body was taken to the hospital. Gunnar Landen Dantent was officially pronounced dead at 9:43 AM, five years and three months old.
The Mayor of Christ Mountain 
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