in his flannel pajamas, his eyes
shrunken and bleary without
his glasses. He sits on the edge
of the bed, speaking quietly into
the tapped phone. Stop calling,
he says. Please leave us alone.
SOME QUESTIONS
THE GAP
Consciousness
does not appear to itself
chopped up in bits,
William James
once said.
It appears to itself as continuous.
But there can be
holes in time
the mind tries
to ignore, holes
that perforate
the felt of
the night sky.
An aching gap,
James said, trying
to describe
the space made
by a lost word.
To fill it up
is the destiny
of our thoughts.
What transpired
for five and
a half hours
between Jane
and her murderer
is a gap so black
it could eat
an entire sun
without leaving
a trace. Listen
hard enough,
James said.
You can hear
the rhythm
of the ache.
THEFUNERAL
It is not the time to ask why these things happen,
but to have faith, the reverend said,
and four hundred people wept.
Thirty years later the morning is quiet
and faithless. It is time
to ask questions.
(1966)
Questioning is healthy-opinions that are unstable are great.
Pseudo-certainty is the worse crime. Nothing is absolute.
No one has all the answers. Pretense is hideous.
This whole essay is a bunch of crap.
THE ARGUMENT
There was an argument going on, one with subtle terms.
Can anyone like blood the way one likes the mountains or the sea?
Two slugs turn the light of the mind into dull meat.
Answer me.
SOME QUESTIONS
If you walk late at night
pray where you like
do you feel free?
Will I ever understand; otherwise
am I part of this world
or not quite.
TWO BULLETS
The skull
may flatten
the metal, but
the metal
will win. It
wedges in-to
the seat of
thought, uses
the pink tissue
as its envelope.
Two bullets:
one in front,
one in back
quickly speak.
They tell the heart,
No more beats.
AT DENTON CEMETERY
Fresh tire tracks
and the heel print
of a man’s shoe,
the only clues.
THE CALL
My mother remembers something about Jane
making a call for help-
a frantic call from a public phone.
But when I ask whom she called
or from where, my mother admits
her memory on this point
is far from clear.
I’ve looked and looked,
but there’s no record
of any call. No:
when Jane disappeared,
she disappeared whole.
It’s a fantasy, I suppose-
a way of breathing air
into the cramp
of that night. It gives
my mother another chance
to fail; Jane, a chance
to fight.
SERIALS
One girl in 1967,
another in 1968.
Jane in March of ’69.
The next girl just four days later-
then one in April,
one in June,
one in July.
“Each of the girls was killed
and her body left off some lonely road
in or between two towns
whose outskirts are only two miles apart,”
explained the Detroit News.
On maps and records,
each girl gets a number;
Jane is number three.
My family remembers the fourth
as a prostitute, but really
she was just a junkie, aged
sixteen. Her body was simply
destroyed, as if
making up for
whatever Jane was spared
a few days before.
My grandparents had no interest
in talking to the other families-
There were differences between us, they said.
Just as you’d expect, some wanted vengeance,
some wanted to sue the University,
some talked a lot about God.
My family folded in on
itself, accepting the case as unsolved,
shuttered the windows of that house
and sternly commanded themselves
to count their blessings
and move on.
TALLY
I am grateful that a three-inch nail wasn’t hammered into her head.
I am grateful that her face wasn’t beaten beyond recognition.
I am grateful that her breasts weren’t corroded with acid.
I am grateful that her fingers were not cut off. I am grateful that her toes were not cut off.
I am grateful that her forearms were not cut off.
I am grateful that her skull wasn’t cracked in three places with a wooden club.
I am grateful that she wasn’t raped with the branch of a tree.
These are some of the things that were done to the other girls’ bodies.
(FEBRUARY 11, 1961)
Bet it seems like I’ve forgotten you.
I haven’t and my thoughts go on with the same confusing never-ending pace.
ONE LINE OF REASONING
“Had the killer been prepared to force intercourse upon [Jane], only to abandon the effort upon realizing she was on her period? The question that this reasonable deduction did not answer was whether she was already dead at the moment, or whether it was this discovery that drove him to murderous retaliation.”
-The Michigan Murders
Retaliation: To return like for like, especially evil for evil.
REASONING, CONTINUED
“At least three of the slain females were known to have been having their periods when killed, and while this had not been certifiable in the other four cases, in each it was listed as possible. Could their menstrual condition have been the salient common factor, inopportune discovery of which in each instance had set the killer off? It could, if they were dealing with someone who had a paroxysmal fetish about this ‘disgusting’ feminine impairment!”
-The Michigan Murders
REVELATION
So they guessed she wasn’t raped
(but maybe killed)
because she had her period;
the newspapers reported that
her “sanitary napkin”
was found in place.
So what blood
is blood-
head-blood, cunt-blood
Black clots,
red streams.
How we’ve fooled ourselves,
we who’ve split blood
into that which pollutes,
and that which redeems.
(1966)
Anger is a terrible terrible thing.
It causes hate.
I wish I could talk this over with someone.
There’s no one to talk to lately
and my h
eart and chest are tense with anger too often.
DEMOGRAPHICS
“All the victims have been independent and politically liberal,”
the paper said, i.e. girls who would be God.
Three “coeds,” a graduate student in art, an eight-grader, a runaway,
a law student.
The world is ours, but we walk in it
noticed.
NEVER WALK ALONE-NOT EVEN IN THE DAYTIME
“Some coeds did not seem so concerned that they might be raped or robbed, but only that they might lose their lives. ‘Just as long as we don’t get killed, the rest is not so important,’ one girl explained.”
-Michigan Daily, student paper, March 26, 1969
A CASE THAT TURNS OUT TO BE UNRELATED for Margaret Phillips
A sociology student is helping an ex-convict get back on his feet.
One night he comes by her apartment, shoots her in the head and leaves; somehow she manages to call the police.
Alive but incoherent, tomorrow she’ll be dead.
When he gets home, he tells a friend:
I keep seeing small brown holes
coming from nowhere
but landing in her head.
(APRIL 15, 1960)
I’ve not written for awhile and it’s unfortunate for I’ve been
filled with happiness.
No troubles.
I’m getting along well in school, don’t sass Mrs. Ingalls any more.
The girls have been nice to me, happiness at home,
a feeling of oh-I don’t know-
I feel like reading the Bible.
I’m interested in it and of knowing more about God and Jesus.
I’m glad spring is coming, glad Easter’s here, glad to have a family and friends-
Glad to be alive! Happiness!
“All agree that in an extremity we are to seek God’s guidance and help. There probably are not only one or two, but hundreds upon hundreds or even thousands upon thousands of Christians here in Ann Arbor who would be willing to make [apprehending the killer] a matter of prayer.”
-Letter to the Ann Arbor News, June 17, 1969
GOD’S COUNTRY
I had not quite a dream though it was something equally sinister. There was a large church behind closed doors and a gate. I knew this church promised salvation at the hands of a row of white preachers and a choir of black singers who mooned into the evening. It’s guaranteed, the preacher screamed. Behind the closed doors I could hear the shouts of people in rapture, see the shadows made by the legs of running children. I walked by with my collar pulled tight around my face; I was wearing a thin blue jacket that could not keep out the cold. Read the red parts! a woman guarding the door whispered to me. Read the red parts! And it would be there that love would redeem, and that redemption would be love.
I stay outside the gates. The dirt of the street is bone-white. I hang out with some hunchback mourners, eating seeds, rolling marbles between our fingers.
LEFORGE ROAD
It was an abandoned barn off LeForge Road
the kind of place where teenagers go
to drink and fuck
where the police found traces
of “fairly fresh, human blood.”
Also found:
one girl’s plate-gold earring;
another’s mohair sweater;
strips of another’s “drip-dry” white blouse;
and the cut end of a black electrical cord
used to strangle the fifth girl
a few days before.
Soon after the barn is staked out
it burns down, and someone lays
“five plump lilacs”
in front of the smoking debris.
A local kid later confesses to the arson;
the flowers remain a mystery.
ASIDE
I am copying all these details
from The Michigan Murders, a book
that sickens me. Its subtitle:
The Most Barbaric Sex Crimes of the Century!
Somehow I need to make it clear:
none of these details belongs to me.
STAKEOUT
After the seventh girl was found dead in a gully,
the police chose not to notify her family immediately.
Instead they replaced her body
with a mannequin from J. C. Penney
in case the killer returned to the scene,
an apparently common activity.
A man did appear in the woods that night,
a young man in a loose light shirt.
But in the August downpour, the police fumbled
with their walkie-talkies
as the man ran to his car, his headlights
disappearing into the woods.
HEADLINES
The case gets stranger and stranger.
A group called the Psychedelic Rangers
brings a psychic in, who says things like,
Her face was beat, beat, beat. It was wrinkled like a monkey’s.
A curfew is imposed on all local college women;
the governor finally asks the FBI to step in.
Then on August 1st, 1969
a photo of a man walking on the moon
appears on the front page
of the Ann Arbor News.
The caption:
“Two Apollo 11 astronauts romped
in an eerie, unreal world of tortured gray terrain....
Above was a coal-black sky.”
But above this photo was a much bigger headline:
SLAYING SUSPECT HELD:
Collins Is Called “Quiet, Nice Guy.”
ONE MISTAKE
John Collins was a junior at Eastern Michigan University.
His major was education.
His uncle was a police sergeant
who, after returning from a family vacation,
noticed some large patches
of black varnish
sprayed on his basement floor. Curious, he scraped
the stains up, and found
what he thought were spots of blood.
They weren’t, but an investigation had begun.
Before long, the police did find blood,
over by the washer.
In time the police also realized
that the thousands of short hairs
littering the basement floor
from clipping the family’s hair
might match those found on
Karen Sue Beineman’s underwear
Jane: A Murder (Soft Skull ShortLit) Page 5