“I know. He was out back, in the vacant lot. It’s an old weedy place where some of the kids go to drink or smoke or fool around. I spent all afternoon with Julie, his girlfriend. They’d gone back there to make love and had a big fight, and the next thing we know, he’s dead. Had his throat torn out. The sheriff thinks there’s a wild dog or something on the loose. Same thing got a biker kid out by Jane’s Cafe on Thursday night.”
Murder, he said. Murder. The word careened off the interior walls of my skull and I was unable to think of anything else. Murder. The word went around and around; I could almost see it as it passed across the back of my eyeballs. Murder. My mind caught on the snag and repeated it and repeated it until it was a meaningless assortment of sounds. Murder.
I hadn’t murdered the lad at all. I had loved him. I had loved him totally and completely, with my entire body and soul. I had loved him to his reward, to his peace. He’s away from that spiteful wench, they had not gone there to make love, she had lured him there to break his heart. Somehow, I knew the essence of her character. The boy had seen through her, but he had been in love with the idea of love. He wanted so much to be able to love her. Now he has real love. Now he’s at peace; he has his eternal resting place deep in the bosom of the place of calm. What right have they to use that terrible word—murder?
And by a wild dog! My work was clean that night. I tidied up with a towel, and left him clean and respectable. How dare they! My face flushed red and hot, and I shoved my hands deep into the jacket pockets. I dared not speak, for I knew that my voice would shake with indignation.
The silence fell around us again, but the air in the truck was different. It was tinged with anger—mine—and Boyd’s sorrow. Finally I could stand it no longer. I had to know more.
“Did you know him?” I couldn’t keep the tremor from my voice.
“Not well. Knew who he was. Knew his girl, Julie. She’s a real nice kid, but of course she thinks it’s all her fault. The guilt is eating her alive.”
And so it should, I thought.
“Dan was my brother’s age. Bill knew him pretty well. In the same class and all.”
Boyd turned down the main street and pulled the truck into a parking space in front of the Ford dealership. He killed the engine, then turned in the seat to look at me. For the first time, I noticed a brown spot on the iris of his right eye. It was a little dab of brown, right atop the pupil of his green eye. It gave him a curious look, it was a focal point, a very individual characteristic. I wanted to sit and look at it forever, look deeply into his eyes and learn more about Dan’s death and its repercussions in the community, learn more about Boyd and his gentleness, but he lifted his hand toward my face, which alarmed me in my suddenly paranoid state, and I jumped back.
“Hey,” he smiled. “Relax.” Then a gentle forefinger stroked my cheek and my chin. His voice was soft and mesmerizing. “C’mon. Let’s go see a movie. I need a laugh.” He came closer. The rim of his hat caught the light from the string of bulbs over the used-car lot and cast a deepening shadow over his eyes. “Come laugh with me,” he said as he turned his head, and very gently, his lips brushed my cheek. His cologne was strong and deep—a very basic scent, quite opposite the light, almost feminine stuff Lewis used.
He backed away and the shadow receded and I saw the pain in his eyes, and the question just fell from my lips, “Why do you hurt so?”
“Because he was so young,” Boyd said, almost whispering, his hurting eyes looking directly into my own. “Because he had so much to look forward to in life. Because he was robbed of all of the pleasures of growing up and getting married and having kids and a career. And because we’ve all been robbed of having him and his kids around. Danny was a good guy. He would have been a good man, a good citizen, an asset. And now some senseless thing has . . .” He turned away from me and gripped the steering wheel. “Do you want to go to the movies or not?”
I could see that I had upset him, I could hear it in his voice, feel it in the air, but I could not stop myself now. This was too intriguing.
“Maybe it was right for him to die.”
Boyd’s eyes blazed at me. “That’s a lot of fundamentalist crap. People have been saying that to me, you know. ‘God works in mysterious ways,’ and ‘Somehow it’s all for the best.’ That’s all a bunch of crap. The God I know doesn’t go around ripping the throats out of kids.”
I laid a hand on his jacketed shoulder. The cold was beginning to penetrate the cab. “Don’t you think that sometimes people bring things on themselves?”
“What the hell is the matter with you? Don’t you understand?”
My face flushed hot in reflection of his sudden anger.
“A boy’s throat was ripped out by wild dogs last night while we were inside dancing and having a good time. I spent all day with his girlfriend, who was wearing a diamond ring that his mother found in his dresser. He was going to give it to her for Christmas. It’s December eighteenth today. I say that’s a fine Christmas for a lot of people. And you’re sitting here telling me that probably because Julie got a little pushy with him out in the vacant lot, when he saw the monster he said, ‘Here, doggy, doggy’?” He pounded the steering wheel, the aura of his grief smelling sour. “You’re a pretty unfeeling person, Angelina. I thought I had you pegged, but now I don’t know.”
“I’m not unfeeling, Boyd, I’m just detached. I’m trying to find a perspective here. I’m sure there’s a larger picture, if only we’ll . . .”
“No. I’ve found my reason. We’ve got a hunting party set to go at midnight tonight. We’re going to track that thing down and blow it to bits.”
It was my turn to recoil in horror. Boyd grinned at me when he said that, grinned without mirth, grinned with the bloodthirsty grimace of a death’s head. Of course. He was a hunter. A hunter.
And so was I.
I opened the door and jumped to the sidewalk, to the harsh brightness of the used-car lot. The theater marquee spilled light over the opposite side of the street, and a line was beginning to form at the door.
Boyd jumped out and ran around the truck to me, but I turned from him and walked away.
He hunted for pleasure, for sport, for recreation. He found beautiful wild animals and killed them. I hunted for pain. I found the confused, the hurting, the oppressed, and I loved them into death, into peace, into calm, into eternity. And I was hated and he commended.
“Angelina.” I heard his heavy steps behind me, and one big hand caught at the shoulder of my jacket. He spun me around. “Angelina?” The brown spot over his iris looked at me and I saw it as a bull’s-eye. “Please. I’ll drive you home.” I shook his hand off and began walking again. “Please. It’s dangerous!” I continued to walk, trying to stomp a little bit, make my steps a little louder on the concrete, wishing I was larger and heavier and not so laughably petite.
I pushed my hands into my jacket pockets, steeling myself for a long, cold walk home. It would be good for me. The early night air chilled me into shivers. I felt vibrant and alive.
My feet took me down the main street, toward the seedier side of town. Prostitutes stood about on the corners, most of them scantily clad. If they were fortunate, a heated car would pull to the curb and they would climb in with a paying customer. If not, they would wobble on their high heels into a heated barroom, where they would warm their knees and try to stir up some activity inside. It was hard weather for hookers, especially this close to Christmas.
I sauntered past them, ignoring their glares, ignoring the noisy warmth that exploded onto the street every time a saloon door opened, ignored the long dirty boys who stood passing plastic packets between themselves, ignored the short-haired men in uniform who made rude comments as they roamed the streets in packs.
I noticed these things merely as peripheral details. My mind was busy with Boyd as I walked down the gritty sidewalk, past
the adult bookstores and peep shows.
As I walked, I recounted our conversation in the truck. I tried to make sense of it. I tried to find a thread of reason to pull the conversation together. Boyd and I were too close; we were too much of the same fabric. We were like identical pieces of cloth from different dye lots; they are too different to match, yet too close to contrast. It was a peculiar situation. I could understand his point of view. At least, I could comprehend understanding it. Boyd would not allow my point of view at all.
Not at all.
Who is he to disallow my opinion? For some reason, my indignation snapped up this rationalization for resentment and began to nurture it. By the time I was deep into the hollowed and empty downtown area of Westwater, I was burning with a furious rage at Boyd and his brother and the sniveling wimp Julie and the entire posse they had arranged to track and mutilate Dan’s killer. If only they knew. If only they knew. If only . . .
Maybe I should volunteer to go with them.
Don’t get too crazy, Angelina, I told myself. Let’s not go off the deep end here.
I had to stop and look at myself in a storefront reflection. I looked at my diminutive stature, my tiny little face and features, my short-cut blonde hair, and I thought of stalking the stalkers who beat through the bush trying to scare up a crazed coyote. The thought made me smile in spite of my rage, and sanity again flooded in. Forget it, Angelina, I told my reflection. My mirrored self nodded back and I resumed walking.
But, as is the way with many resentments, my mind would not let it go. By the time I had walked out of downtown, passed the library, and was headed toward the bus station, my chest was knotted again and my temperature was rising. I began to run to burn excess energy.
Hands in pockets, I trotted past the bus station, past Jane’s, feeling the cold air rasp at my throat as my breathing came harder from the unaccustomed exertion. It felt wonderful. I crossed the freeway into Lewis’s subdivision and turned left instead of right toward Lewis’s house. I wasn’t ready to go home yet, I wanted to continued to run, to run faster and harder, to wear out all the built-up tensions, resentments, and anger. My feet pounding the pavement became the only sound, a hypnotizing rhythm, almost like my meditations, and softly the music came and my feet landed lightly, and the place of peace, it was there, just ahead, just out of reach; it glittered tantalizingly just ahead. Why not try it Boyd’s way for once, Angelina, the music said. Don’t be too spiteful until you’ve seen his entire point of view. Understanding lay just ahead.
Just ahead was a man walking his dog. He was in the middle of the field that bordered the outer row of houses. He had walked down a mown path, and without breaking stride, my feet light, my speed incredible, I ran, I almost flew down the path, and in slow motion, I saw him hesitate, and turn, saw the dog cower, the look on the man’s face, then I heard the wildcat scream, the scream of victory, of bravery, of competence, of exhultation.
And I brought down my kill.
The dog ran off, growling and snarling, and came back as I finished. I stood and backed away from the man and looked down on him—my first kill purely for pleasure. The dog licked the man’s cold, wrinkled face with sidelong glances at me, then found the leaking wound. The mutt’s brow furrowed and he began to whimper, forgetting all about me as he lapped at his owner’s flaccid neck. He worried the wound a bit with his teeth, chewing gingerly on the edges with his little ineffectual front teeth, and I chased him away, then brought the towel from across my shoulders and covered the man with it.
Then I put one boot atop the man’s chest and looked to the sky in a great dramatic urge. I brought my arms up as if to embrace the cold night sky with its zillion sparkling stars, and I shouted to them. “I see now, Boyd! I understand! You and I are two of a kind!” And then I laughed, because Boyd had yet to learn this. And I laughed again, knowing that the pleasures of the universe, the delights of eternity, belonged to me.
I tucked the towel around the man’s neck, just above the beaver collar on his coat, like a muffler. I feinted at the dog one more time, clapping my hands to chase him off, and then I walked back home to Lewis’s little house, where I showered and fell into bed, wondering at the pleasure of the kill, wondering who it was I was trying to please.
“I was pretty keyed up that night. I’d been sitting all day long with Julie, while she cried and rubbed that diamond on her finger, and also, I was anticipating the hunt that night. I was pretty tense.
“Angelina was pretty young, too, when you think about it. She was only about . . . well, I don’t know, but she was young. Just a kid, actually. If I hadn’t been so keyed up, I probably would have noticed that and cut her a little slack. But I didn’t. I didn’t.
“So we argued. It’s hard to say exactly what it was we were arguing about, but she ended up jumping out of the truck and taking off down the street. I tried to stop her, but she’s pretty stubborn. I can get that stubborn, so I knew when to give up. There wouldn’t be any changing her mind.
“See, this is where I have trouble. Sometimes you find orphaned pups—foxes, coyotes—and they make good pets, because they’re young enough. But there comes a time in the life of a wild pup when it’s too old to tame, and trying to keep it is just a waste. I keep thinking that maybe if I hadn’t let her go . . . she was still so young . . . Then again, maybe it was my instincts that told me she was already past that point.
“That was the last I saw of her for a long time. Things got pretty busy around town, I hardly had time to think about her, although she was never out of my thoughts. I even drove by that house a couple of times. Anyway, I was helping out the sheriff, doing a little footwork for him on the case, and that’s when, you know, when I got the word about the towel, Jesus, the towel, and then I knew. I couldn’t believe it, that’s why I didn’t tell anybody else. But I knew. That’s when I seriously started trying to find her. It took a long time. But I found her.”
12
I soared from dizzying heights to stomach-clenching depths in great sweeping glides. Wind washed my face and some flimsy chiffon garment tickled my skin into goose bumps. I flew over mountains and hills, looked down upon cemeteries and churches, little towns with their tangles of wires atop toy poles. I looked up and saw the night on the other side of the daylight; it was always there, patient, comforting, lending support and guidance. It was my security, my safety. I knew I could not fall.
The daylight began to ring. This was a wrong sound, harsh, flat against my flight’s sweeping, soaring musical accompaniment. The air became thick and hard to glide through as the shrill bells poisoned the music. My body shuddered and twitched in uncomfortable resonance. I wished for the darkness, for the light to go away, and I swooped down, searching the countryside for sign of a cave, a hideout, even a valley with shade.
But the daylight was fading, I was fading, and then I was on the ground, pulling tufts of . . . sheets to my chin, and I opened my eyes and Lewis’s telephone on the bedstand rang again.
I sat up, stomach queasy, uncomfortable, cleared my throat several times, then picked up the receiver. I noticed dusk descending around the house. Again, I had slept through the day.
“Angelina?” It was Lewis.
“Hello,” I said.
“Where have you been all day? I’ve called and called. Out having fun?”
“No, I’ve been here. The phone hasn’t rung.”
“Oh. Well, maybe there’s been some trouble on the line. Listen, I’m coming home tomorrow. God, I can’t wait to see you.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yeah. I’ll be leaving here mid-morning, so I should be there late afternoon.”
“How’s your father?”
“He’s doing fine. He’s got some good friends here, so he’ll be all right. I just can’t wait to see you. God, I’ve missed you so much.”
I was silent.
“A
ngelina?”
“Yes?”
“Are you all right?”
“Of course.”
“Have you missed me?”
“Yes, Lewis, I have.”
“Well, get a good night’s sleep tonight, sweetheart. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“Bye, love.”
“Good-bye.”
I hung up the phone. Lewis would be home tomorrow. I tried to luxuriate in a cat-like stretch, but anxiety nibbled at the edges of my consciousness. I had enjoyed Boyd, enjoyed the bus station, enjoyed my freedom, and now Lewis was coming home to put an end to it.
I plumped the pillow and pulled the sheet up over me again, feeling vaguely wrong for sleeping all day long. Mother would never approve.
The clock said five-thirty, winter dusk was deepening. Odd that the phone had not worked all day. Must have been a problem at the main station, a neighborhood-wide outage that had just been fixed.
Surely I could not have slept through the ringing.
I closed my eyes and thought about Lewis coming home. He would want me to submit to sex with him again, something that interested me not at all. I had changed in the days since Lewis had been gone. I felt anxiety about his return, the same anxiety I felt as a schoolgirl, as if I were going to class to take a test for which I felt I was not prepared.
Lewis had standards, requirements.
He would want me to be home every night.
My anxiety turned to anger. Again, I had allowed myself to become enmeshed with responsibilities. Now I had to cut loose from this restrictive web. I had no desire to submit to any test, any scrutiny. I would have to leave him; the only question was when.
Darkness deepened outside, and I became wide awake and restless. My freedom drew nigh, the decision was made: I would soon be traveling again, alone, unburdened. Yet for now, I had to wait. I had to wait.
I went to the kitchen, feeling leaden and sad.
Lewis would be home tomorrow. The phrase continued to run through my mind. Each time I paused in my mundane chores—dusting, cleaning the bathroom, vacuuming—the words would zing through my brain and anxiety would follow on their heels.
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