Michael had no use for useless things, and so many people seemed obsessed with useless things. Michael liked things that worked. He liked making things work. He liked finding and eliminating the errors that stopped things from working. In that way, he had little use for ninety-nine percent of people who more or less threw a wrench in the gears of functioning society – those who did dumb things to make life worse all around, obsessed over inanities or were useless as babies when they reached a challenge. It was one of the reasons he liked hunting and had taken to it so quickly. It was one of the reasons he kept hunting even after the accident ten years ago. Hunting gave him two things: solitude and utility. In the early-morning hours, he was alone with the world. Cold, sitting in a tree stand, watching life unfold all around him as the sun rose and the forest grew progressively lighter. Watching, waiting, listening to the sounds creeping up in the morning light, spotting a buck or doe – perfectly created for dashing among the trees, wandering in from the abyss of night into his vision. On those cold mornings it was just him and his prey, hunter and hunted. It was the true nature of life.
Then, when he took a deer and gutted it there in the middle of a forest, he could see the truth of life. Ancient civilizations sacrificed animals to communicate with the gods. Michael wasn’t religious, but, to him, this seemed by far a more effective form of prayer than anything taught in churches with high altars and stained-glass windows. In the blood and guts and organs was the truth of life. And if you’re seeking revelation, staring at the stark, cold, animal reality of life was a good place to start. Mammals were all largely the same – same organs, same functions. In one end, out the other, and everything in between is there to absorb and use energy. When you looked at the inside of a newly gutted deer, you essentially saw the same functions inside yourself. This was what people were. This was what everything was. And then you drag the weight of that realization back to your home. You skin it. You age it. You cut it up and you eat it. That was true utility. Supply yourself with the base truth.
Conner had been one of those few people who did not fuck things up or make life more complicated. Conner greased the wheels. He was not much different from Michael. Whereas Michael liked to discover what made things work and rid them of errors, Conner essentially put those functioning things together to form a grander whole. That was why he’d been so good in business – taking a bunch of moving parts and putting them together to make money. Eliminate waste, fire the useless and capitalize on strengths while taking advantage of others’ weaknesses. If Michael was the engineer who designed the machine, Conner was the guy who created a pipeline to move that machine into the hands of well-paying customers. They were in vastly different businesses, but their minds were symbiotic. Losing Conner would be losing the only person with whom he felt that kind of connection.
Powering through the snow, legs burning from the strain of pushing uphill, Michael almost felt guilty about his sudden frank realization; Conner meant more to him than anyone else – even his own wife. As he struggled through the snowy terrain, he thought about Annie and the one thing that didn’t make sense, the one thing for which he could not envision a fix.
For years they had tried for a baby. Annie wanted a family. Michael was indifferent, really, but he wanted her to be happy – an easy fix for his home life because, as time wore on, Annie became more and more despondent. A child would fix that, would bring her joy and relief and restore his house to something more comfortable. Comfort was one of the drivers of society. It was why there were engineers like him – to ensure maximum effectiveness, ease of use, comfort. Michael worked on helicopters, made them function successfully to keep the discomfort of crashing or even the fear of crashing from encroaching upon passengers. Utility was the ultimate comforter – the maximum benefit with the least expenditure of energy.
But Annie’s despondency at their inability to conceive challenged Michael’s equation for life. They expended massive amounts of time, money and energy trying to create a life.
