Lately I been having to brew the coffee myself. Lucy used to have it taken care of the night before. She’d set the timer and have it already made by time I got up. Now she stays up all night. She watches these shows but she don’t even watch em. Sits there on her phone for hours.

I’m on my lunch break by the time she gets up, I know it. Boy is old enough now to get around for school himself. He don’t need her in the morning. He don’t need us at all. She stopped buying half and half so I can take it with milk or just black. I don’t like the taste of either but I guess that’s well beyond the point.

I knew I was gonna have something in the trap, that’s why I got up a little early and loaded the .22. Garbage was strewn about yesterday morning when I was getting around for work. Coffee grounds all over the porch, little tracks in the wet grounds. I walked past it all and knew I’d have to take care of it when I got home. She’d never even know something got in the garbage again the way she stays inside all day. We used to compost our scraps when we were first married. Had a garden. Felt good. Tell the truth I’d say the garden wasn’t worth a shit most years, but that wasn’t the point either. Now all those scraps go in the trash same as everything else.

I hadn’t even been outside to check the trap and I was already going over the gun. I sat at the table with my coffee and sipped it and slid the safety on and off. Sun hadn’t come up yet but it was somewhere cause I could see the grass in the yard from the window.

I got through the coffee and sinked the mug and went out the front door and there was a little raccoon in my trap next to the front porch. He was laid flat with his head tucked under the shut door of it, just as tight as he could pack it in. He saw me and didn’t even move. Matter of fact he dropped his eyes and looked straight ahead.

I know animals aren’t like us. There’s never been a raccoon could give his boy advice. But Christ, sometimes I wonder.

This one, he looked like he knew. He looked like he was thinking about what his dad told him about traps like mine. He didn’t listen is what it was. There he is. He thought he knew better than his old man, saw a whole world out there ready for him to get into. But then he got into my trap and that’s the last thing he’s gonna do. I like to think this one stared straight ahead and thought real hard about what his dad said, those words pouring over his head like hot water. Bet he wished he listened. Bet he wished it more than anything.

I don’t let raccoons go. I’d like to but I can’t. They’ll just come right back. I learned that from my own dad. He said you could waste all your time letting em go in the woods and that son of a bitch gonna come back and get in your shit again, just to spite ya. Said he knows it’s true cause he put a racing stripe on a raccoon he caught one time and drove it across the county to let it out. Week later he had a raccoon dressed like a skunk back in his trap.

He told me lots of things that I still think about. He told me one time that a man only falls in love with a woman long enough for her to give him a family and then that love is what keeps a man going. I was thinking about that one this morning when I was standing over top that raccoon.

I’ve killed so many little critters over the years. I throw em off the shoulder of the road on the way to work. Sometimes I’ll stop on my way home and look at them for a while. Lot of the time a bigger critter will find em and drag em off somewhere, but when they don’t I get to see how the whole thing falls apart. It happens quick. You come back one day and it’s like the fur just melts off and poisons the ground around it, all the leaves and grass turn black. And you can come back every day for a week and see how it changes, how that fur and fat and meat and all that just goes away, and you’re left with a little pile of bones that don’t look like anything except bones.

I told that raccoon this morning I was sorry for everything, sorry for this. One day soon my boy is gonna be gone from that house and I wonder how it’s gonna be then. The raccoon, I know he sit there thinking about his dad. I put the barrel through the wire and held it right against his ear. Then he finally turned his head and looked at me, and I parted the fur between his eyes.