Page four of USA Today. A few columns.
No one cares.
There are bigger fish to fry. Rumors about President Clinton and another sex scandal. A new IRA cease-fire in the works.
Even in Denver it’s not that big a story. The JonBenet Ramsey murder case has seized the headlines. Worse things have happened. Worse will come in the southern suburbs at a school called Columbine. But for now the media is done with the Mulhollands, the Patawasti murder, and the bloodletting in the ballroom. The latter is already passing into legend. Indeed, the Eastman Ballroom itself has been torn down to make way for condominiums.
I close the paper, push it away. Yawn, stretch, get up, leave the common room, find my bicycle key. Unlock the bike. Cycle down Fyfield Road.
Yes, it’s over. Done. Nothing to do with me.
Gone.
Only the continuity of violence remains.
Denver was born in blood: the native Cheyenne massacred at Sand Creek, the Comanche and Ute driven beyond the mountains in a vale of tears.
The Patawasti case is over and the ballroom incident is closed, unsolved, unsolvable, soon to be unremembered.
No one should be surprised.
In the end, all of history’s songs will be lost in the depths of time. And the great streams of memory will be as hidden as the rivers of forgetting.
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The Bloomsday Dead
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Hidden River (Five Star Paperback) Page 34