It was midnight when Frank Avery parked on the deserted beach off the east end of the seawall. He picked up the pistol–a snub-nosed .38 revolver his father gave him for protection when he started his job at the Stop N Go–and he weighed it in his hand. Even in his drunken condition Frank knew he should leave a note; he could at least do this one thing right. He put the gun down and rummaged in the glove compartment until he found a pen and an old gas receipt. On the back he scrawled an attempt at general absolution: “Sorry for this, Dad, Mom–not you. Sick of it all. Better for everybody. Amy, too bad. Good luck. Sorry.” He picked up the gun again.

If the moon hadn’t been full that night Frank might have done it right then. He saw no options and he had made up his mind about it. But he saw the cold light on the waves and he thought maybe just once more he’d like to walk by the water and listen. At times he had somehow found peace in the steady rhythm of the sea.

Frank had difficulty walking in the soft sand as he weaved toward the water. The beach and the water and the jetty shone steel bright under the searchlight moon. He swayed slightly in the silver air as he stood by the Gulf trying to concentrate on the sound of the waves. If he had found comfort in this before he was deaf to it now; there was only the dull hiss of water on sand. He was numb, and he had to look down at his hand to see that he still held the gun. His thin parka offered little protection against the February night, but he did not feel the cold. He wondered if he should pray, then dismissed the idea as stupid. Why would he want to call attention to himself now, just before what he planned to do, like honking at a cop while running a red light?

The cancerous depression that had been in remission had recurred, triggered by recent events. Since Oscar cut his hours at the store to less than thirty a week, a mounting credit card debt threatened to bury him. He never liked Oscar and Frank saw this latest move as a ploy to force a resignation to avoid paying him unemployment compensation. He was two installments behind on his car note and he still hadn’t made last month’s rent. His father had cut him off some time ago, so there was no hope there. Yesterday Amy administered the coup de grace, finally declaring an end to their turbulent two-year relationship.

But those things were only the most recent evidence in Frank’s case against life. Adulthood had descended on him with a rush, and with it came a new hope for the happiness that had inexplicably eluded him throughout his early life. Now, at twenty-four, he had acquired a job and a car and an apartment, but reality had ambushed him with responsibilities and troubles and he sank slowly again into that vague despair he had always known. He had no purpose, no reason to endure the problems that presented themselves daily. The simple truth was that life held no value for him.

He decided it was time. He sat down on one of the big concrete blocks of the jetty. The main thing he was worried about was that he’d flinch–he had heard people did that sometimes–and that he would botch the job and end up a vegetable. Without cocking the gun he put it against his head to see what it would feel like when the steel touched his temple.

The voice came from just behind him.

“Hey! Don’t do that here!”

Frank jumped so hard he fumbled the gun and almost dropped it. He leapt to his feet and spun around. A man in a ragged trench coat stood there glaring at him in the hard moonlight.

“You scared the hell out of me,” said Frank. “What are you doing here?”

“This is my beach. Go do what you’re gonna do somewheres else,” the man demanded.

Frank slipped the gun into the pocket of his jacket, but he kept his finger on the trigger. “What do you mean, ‘your beach’? This is city property.” Frank’s heart pounded. He scanned the intruder and didn’t see any sign of a weapon. Then he recognized him: it was Smitty, the homeless man who haunted the trash cans along the seawall.

The old man waved his hands as if to brush Frank away. “If you’re going to splatter your brains, go do it somewheres else. I don’t need trouble here. This is where I stay.”

Smitty pulled a sandwich out of the pocket of his coat and bent down next to the jetty. A small gray cat appeared from between the rocks and approached him warily then stopped, allowing a prudent distance between them. The man broke off a piece of the sandwich and threw it on the ground. The cat sprang on the food and retreated a few feet to eat. There were dozens of these feral cats living in the jetties up and down the beach and it was somehow touching to Frank to watch this man sharing his meager meal with it.

Frank felt like a little boy caught writing on the wall. Embarrassment at being discovered had replaced his anger. He certainly couldn’t do what he had intended in front of this old man feeding his pet. He suppressed the urge to apologize before turning to walk toward his car.

“Why you going to do it?” said the old man. Frank stopped and looked at the man, who sat facing the jetty and tossing scraps to the cat. He hesitated, wondering why he felt he owed the bum an answer.

“Why does anybody do it?” he said. “Life sucks.”

The old man gave a hollow, mean little laugh. He regarded Frank over his shoulder for a long moment. “How old are you, boy?” he demanded. Frank didn’t answer.

“Well, you right,” said Smitty, turning back to the cat. “Life does suck. But you don’t got the right to say that. You’re just a green-ass kid.”

From somewhere inside his coat he produced a wine bottle. He unscrewed the cap and took a long pull. Then he continued to talk as he tossed small bits of food to the cat, speaking more to himself than to Frank, the way Frank had often heard him carry on his running monologue as he wandered the streets.

“Kid like you ain’t got the right ’cause you don’t know nothing. Ain’t been kicked hard enough or long enough by life. Ain’t seen enough bad to know what good is. You with your ‘life sucks’ while you drive around in your daddy’s car and sleep in your big soft bed under your ‘lectric blankets. Stupid.”

As he talked his eyes closed and he sank into a kind of trance. He paused for a few seconds, and Frank wondered if he had fallen asleep. The cat approached Smitty and mewed loudly to solicit more food. He opened his eyes and seemed surprised at his surroundings. When he spoke again it was with a sense of purpose.

“Now that cat, there. That cat knows life sucks. Somebody do it a favor to kill it. When it rains it gets wet. When it’s cold it freezes its scrawny ass. Look at that skin, full of mange and fleas. Wakes up hungry and goes to sleep hungry. Only thing it eats is when it can catch a rat or if some superior-feeling jerk like me throws it some scraps. No family. Ain’t no good to nobody. That cat got no reason at all to want to live.”

He held out another small piece of meat and when the cat approached to take it the old man caught it behind the neck and picked it up. At first Frank thought Smitty was playing with the cat, stroking it as he stood up. Then he saw the man hold it out at arm’s length, the small body dangling as the strong fingers of his right hand closed hard on the animal’s throat.

The cat began to thrash wildly, clawing at the arm, pushing back the coat sleeve and digging long furrows in the skin. The man did not flinch. His expression was calm, his lips twisted into a vague grin. Shocked, Frank stood transfixed by the cat’s eyes, wide with terror, reflecting the bright moonlight. It continued to struggle noiselessly for a few seconds, then it fell limp. Smitty stood without moving, without relaxing his grip, making sure. Scratches covered his wrist and forearm and dark liquid formed tiny pools in the tracks. Finally, the man flicked his hand and the body fell with a faint thud at Frank’s feet. The eyes stared at the young man; the mouth opened in a silent death cry.

“Jesus,” Frank whispered. He realized he’d been holding his breath the whole time. He looked at Smitty and drew a deep breath. “Jesus!”

The old man bent over and picked up his wine. He took a swallow then tossed the empty bottle aside. “He was alive and now he’s dead,” he said. “Big deal. Life sucks.”

“You’re crazy, man!” Frank yelled. “Why’d you do that? Why’d you have to do that?”

Smitty’s face contorted into an ugly smile. “Why does anybody do anything?” he said. He spit into a wave as it washed toward them. “That’s what I do. I just try to help out my fellow suffering creatures.” He chuckled at his own words. “Why should they have to go on being miserable when somebody like me can fix it for ’em? That’s the third one I caught this week in these rocks along here. I’m doing a public service here, boy. Rounding up stray lives that don’t count for nothing and getting rid of ’em. Yes, sir, I’m a regular one-man Humane Society.”

He looked at the scratches on his arm as though noticing them for the first time. He held his arm out toward Frank. “Look at that,” he said, shaking his head. “I tried to do the little bastard a favor and look how hard he tried to stay alive just so he could starve to death tomorrow. Now why you think he’d fight like that? Must be too stupid to know how miserable he is.”

Frank looked down and poked at the body with his toe. “You had no right to do that.”

“Right? You gonna talk about ‘right?’ You got a right to shoot yourself?”

Smitty bent down and looked around his feet for his bottle. When he saw it on its side a few feet away he remembered it was empty. He straightened up and fixed Frank with a preacher’s glower.

“My momma told me you go to hell if you kill yourself. That’s in the Bible somewheres. You want to go to hell? All that fire and shit? Not me, brother. No way. Bad enough being here.” He drifted away again into silent confusion and his gaze wandered out to sea. Neither spoke for a time.

Frank stared at the small body at his feet. He wondered what goes through a cat’s mind when it knows it’s dying. “That cat didn’t want to die. What makes you think you were doing him a favor?”

The old man looked at Frank, studying him for several seconds. Then he nodded slowly, not in answer to the young man’s question, but as though he had just come to a decision. His crooked grin returned. “How about I do you a favor?” said the old man, his voice again hard as concrete.

Frank stepped back and pulled the pistol out of his pocket. “You stay away from me,” he said.

The man stepped toward him. “What’s the matter, smart boy? I thought you so hot to be dead. You ain’t got the guts to do it. How about I take care of that for you?”

Frank raised the gun, holding it with both hands to try to steady it. A wave of nausea engulfed him and for an instant he was sure he’d throw up. “You take another step and I swear to God I’ll shoot you.”

Smitty spread his arms wide, closed his eyes, and threw back his head. “Just don’t you miss,” he said. And then softly, like a prayer: “Just don’t you miss.”

Frank leveled the gun at the man’s chest. He glanced down. Bright moonlight glinted off the accusing eyes. I should have stopped him, Frank thought. He looked back to the dark figure that stood motionless before him, waiting.

Suddenly the young man understood what Smitty wanted him to do–what he would force him to do. Frank’s body shook, and his head swelled with the pulsing of the blood in his temples. A cold wave from the incoming tide washed over his feet and soaked his canvas shoes; the skin of his feet crawled against the damp coarseness of his socks. He felt the sweat run down his forehead and the smooth steel of the trigger under his right index finger. In that instant Frank was absolutely, violently alive. Images flashed through his mind with amazing clarity. The girl, the bills, the whole mess of his life faded into insignificance.

“You can’t just go killing things,” he said.

Smitty’s eyes snapped open. “Do it!” he screamed.

Their eyes locked. Frank carefully drew back the hammer until it clicked into place. He braced himself, leaning forward slightly to be ready for the old man’s charge. “It’s too permanent,” Frank said. “Things change. Things can change. You can’t just go killing things.”

The smell of body odor and wine and dead fish swirled around him as he strained to read Smitty’s thoughts. Something–hatred? anger? fear? hope?–blazed in the glaring eyes. Then, as though the old man’s soul lacked the fuel to sustain the intense fire of his passion, the flame faded and died. Smitty’s body relaxed. He turned away from the young man and stared out over the water. “Shit,” he mumbled. He closed his eyes and rocked slowly back and forth, as though he might fall over, then jerked his body upright.

Frank lowered the gun and took two steps backward. A wave rose between the rocks of the jetty, then made a soft sucking sound as it retreated into the vast glowing expanse to begin its new cycle. “You don’t want to die any more than I do,” said the young man quietly.

Smitty didn’t look at him. “You’re wrong, boy. Problem is you can’t kill me. Ain’t nothing left to kill.” He coughed and he spit. “Anyways, nothing changes. Not for me.”

“Maybe that’s not what’s important,” said Frank. “Maybe it’s just being alive that matters. Look how hard we fight just so we can starve to death tomorrow.”

The old man snorted, but he said nothing more. Frank watched Smitty start down the beach toward the west, following the shoreline. Then he turned and headed for his car without looking back.