So Far Gone

by Jess Walter

He was always seeing things on-line that explained the whole deal. Or deals on-line that explained the whole thing.

This was the danger of winding up a toy like Shane. He could go on for hours like this, weaving every loose strand into a blanket of conspiratorial idiocy

he had endured four years of such nonsense, ever since Shane had traded his mild drug habit for a Jesus-and-AM radio addiction—“real

watching quietly as he chased blue-eyed salvation with the zeal he’d once chased meth,

we have a good life together, going to the casino, fighting the Department of Energy,

“Technically, I think once you’ve fucked everything up, the only way to fix it is to fuck everything down.”

“Let’s see. What did I learn? That raccoons are assholes.

Here was the final frustration of therapy. That when the answer came, it was so stupidly apparent.

“Wait. So, you can blow hard drugs up your ass, but you can’t buy a Bud Light?”