Tim McLaurin's, "Below the Last Lock" (1992), recalls a man's trouble coping with life and death. Mclaurin begins the story with Roy Breece waiting for the one good kill of a "big buck", on a hunting trip. Roy only has to shoot the deer once for it to die. Roy is proud for proving all those people wrong, who use to say "how well prepared and planned everything he did but it never paid off." Now at twenty-eight years old, he owns a house, loves his wife and three year old son, and hopefully soon to be daughter, and not including the country record he just broke. But Roy's life was about to change. .
He went to Mary's Place, a bar for a hamburger when an ex-employee, started challenging Roy to drink. Roy does not like to drink hard liquor because of the problems it caused Roy's dad and family. Roy gave into the challenge and drove home drunk. He entered the house and put his gun down. He went to look for a beer to come to find he didn't have any. He tries to leave to get some more but he wife to beg him to stay. He realizes he should stay and a second afterwards he gets angry and slams the door. The gun falls and shoots off a bullet that goes through his son and his wife. The doctors could only save the unborn child, which was a girl. Two months after the funerals Roy became a drunk and was admitted to a mental hospital. .
In the mental hospital Ray figures out that "rules don't matter. They are senseless and without meaning fuck up one time and you"re out." Roy figures out that he needs "control". When he figures this out he tells his doctor that he is ready to leave. On his first couple of days out he goes out on the river canoeing, with his dog Jock. Roy gets a shooting pain after he passes the dam and passes out in the bank of the river. He wakes up engulfed by sand from the bank and water. He kills Jock. If he is going to die he wants to do it his way and this was not the way he wanted to die.
