“Is it hard?” I was just drunk enough to ask. “To kill a man?”

Ed took a long drink from his beer and looked away toward the horizon. The bottle looked small in his hand. It was easy to imagine that hand on a rifle, or a knife, or wrapped around an enemy’s neck. Easy, except for the zero floating above his head that only I could see.

“It’s hard for some people,” Ed said at last. Amber reached over and put her small hand over his. It was hard to imagine that hand killing anyone.

“Was it hard for you?” I couldn’t help myself. I had to understand the numbers.

“Here’s the thing,” Ed said, still looking into the distance. “It depends on your reason. Some guys, they do it for the country. Now, that gets abstract real quick. I don’t even like most people in the country, do you? But if you’ve got a good reason,” he trailed off.

“Every shot I took,” he continued at last. “I took for my wife. Not to keep her safe, none of that nonsense. I did it to make her proud.”

He looked at Amber now, and she looked back at him, and the intensity was enough to make me feel like I was invading their privacy.

“And it worked,” Amber said to me, her eyes still on Ed’s face. Then she turned, and reached for the zipper on the back of her dress. At first I thought she was going to climb on top of him right there, but then I saw what she was showing me. Her back was covered in ink: tattooed tally-marks, and I knew without counting there’d be about two hundred of them.

“I am so, so proud of each of his kills.”