No Hard Feelings

I have a scar on my neck the size of a jungle cat's claw. It's just below my right ear, where my ear and jawline meet. It's purple around the edges in the cold, white when it's hot outside. People often stare at it but are afraid to ask me where it came from.

That's where the bullet pierced me, in my neck. It exited out of the back of my head -- the top of my skull, to be precise, left side. I remember very little, but what I do remember I've kept secret for so long. I hide the exit scar with a head of matted brown hair and a fitted Detroit Tigers cap.

I get migraines when it rains; and goddammit, it's gonna rain tomorrow. So I'm gonna tell you about the time I got shot in the head, before, God willing, another migraine cripples me.

I was six years old and had recently relocated with my family to suburban Michigan after an unsuccessful -- so I'm told -- three-month stay at my grandmother's palatial home in Atlanta. There were arguments, and dishes thrown against walls, and all that Faulkner bullshit. And finally we wound up on Grover Street, where, my father assured me, nothing bad ever happened.

And, for a time, nothing did. I grew up, was educated, went through puberty, depression, presidents, wars, Academy Awards, Pontiacs.

All that time, though, a bullet was waiting for me. And it would be a long time before I could reconcile with the shooter, my sixth-grade classmate, Lionel Gertz.