Killing Everybody

by Mark Harris

  “He don’t keep you awake at night,” said Harold Ferne excitedly. He believed it. If Harold didn’t see it it didn’t exist, it couldn’t happen.

  “What can I say to someone like that?” Brown asked Luella.

  “Don’t try,” she said, “just relax. Don’t agitate yourself.”

  Brown hoped that the soothing old movie would put him to sleep, and the little “something” and Luella’s hands. In the end it wasn’t so much the barking that kept him awake as the thought of Harold Ferne. One forgave a dog its existence. But was such a man possible, unable to believe his dog’s barking disturbed a neighbor, unable to allow himself to accommodate a neighbor, unable even to discuss the matter toward a point of peace? Such a large man and such a child Harold was. The vision of Harold aroused Brown’s anger, as he lay tossing and turning, clapping his pillow over his head, and administering again and again that particular form of punishment reserved for Harold: death by overhead garage door, decapitation by electric eye. Harold was proud of his electric-eye garage door and he didn’t care who knew it. He immensely enjoyed its rising and its lowering, and he stood beside it at evening and watched it go up and down several times before entering the house for dinner, and one of these nights Brown would sneak up behind him and give him a timely push, and Harold would be guillotined by the garage door descending. Let’s hear it for the French.

  Luella with her fingertips massaged his scalp, drawing his rage out of his brain, into herself. Her hands upon his scalp rested his brain. She had magic hands that way. She massaged his temples, his forehead, the shapes of his ears, his jawbone, his neck. She kneaded his shoulders with her wise and experienced hands, traveling lightly over his body, near his heart, lightening his heart of the burden of Junie’s death, relieving Brown of the burden of revenge.

  Four

  He had dozed. Now, however, he was perfectly awake. The motion picture had advanced, the flood receded, the horses were safe, Luella was asleep, and Paprika barked, as before. Brown would throw a handful of poison over the fence to Paprika, who would come and gratefully chew it up and die. Brown would enclose each little poison pill in a small sausage the size of a phosphorous ball.

  But always, at this point, as reliably as in any old film, Paprika rose from the dead, for Brown was forced to consider the effects of Paprika’s death on the Ferne children, two little girls whose names he did not know. He saw them weeping beside the body of their dead and stiffened dog, and when Brown considered the children’s weeping he revised his fantasy of the death of Paprika, or he went on to other things, as he did now, lying beside Luella. She had drifted off. Nothing kept her awake. Luella appeared to Brown to be without fantasies, without nonsense. Except when Stanley came to town she was placid, tranquil. When Stanley came she suffered, but then she was done with suffering. Yes sir, she was all business, no pipedreams, no daydreams, no castles in the air, no murder a day to keep her doctor away, no morning anger. You couldn’t have two dreamers in one house; you needed one hard head at least, and that was Luella, dreaming of prices and mortgages and how to feature properties. “I had a dream last night,” she’d say, “about the Multiple Listing Service . . . I dreamed last night about new interest rates.” Romance, romance.

  Luella had neglected to turn off the television, and Brown rose and did so, trying to keep his mind blank, to see no enemies on the newscast who might excite him, to engage in no debates, no killings, to scatter no phosphorous balls, hurl no hot harpoons, kidnap no boys in wheelchairs. He was successful, his mind began to wind down, and he marveled at his detachment from that man, undoubtedly himself, who had telephoned the bomb scare. He had so often imagined himself doing such a thing that actually doing it had apparently occurred as the purest anti-climax. Could it be?

  There went Paprika, who had been silent for several minutes, “alert” to every cat’s tread for miles around. The “alert” dog protected “the wife.” She was rather attractive, “the wife.” She wore pink; she drove a little green car as a reply to her husband’s big black limousines. He was in the car business. Brown appreciated beauty in women, but Luella was his lover. None other had ever existed, nor did women enter his fantasies except those who were villains to be done to death like any other.

  But if, thought Brown logically, neither Harold nor his wife nor their daughters were now hearing Paprika’s alert barking how would they hear his barking if in fact a real danger presented itself? True, Paprika was alert, but he was alert all night and all day. He nullified himself. Suppose a real burglar or rapist advanced upon the Fernes’ house right this minute, in the dead of night. In what way would Paprika’s warning barking differ from his present idle barking? How many barks would Paprika bark if Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers? Brown read those old tongue-twisters with Junie in this very bed. Now he rose quietly from his bed, having enjoyed, so to speak, a short introductory sleep this night, and found his slippers with his feet in the dark, and in his slippers slipped away, out of the bedroom and downstairs to the front door.

  When he opened the door he thought for an instant that he had heard some alteration in the level of Paprika’s barking, some change in the dog’s degree of alertness: if so, he was a smart dog indeed, thought Brown, crossing the street in his pajamas and slippers and opening the gate to the Fernes’ yard. Out ran Paprika joyfully. His barking ceased — could it be that that was his signal to his family, cessation of barking altogether? Then we’ll soon see, thought Brown, enjoying the delicious relief of Paprika’s sudden silence. Off into the night Paprika ran. “Goodnight and good-bye,” said Brown. Who said that? Someone said it more ominously. Oh yes, Edward R. Murrow always said it in ominous tones, “Good night — and good luck,” on C.B.S. radio in the good old days when Brown knew little enough of the world to believe that radio reporters were as wise as they gravely sounded. He had thought Murrow a hero at the time, saviour of England. Murrow had worked up all our sympathies for England in those days when it was being bombed by the Nazis. He exhilarated us and charged us up with his low, cool voice. Since war was horrible we were all the more virtuous for accepting the necessity to engage in it. It was only now, in this moment, a quarter of a century and more after Murrow’s voice, crossing Yukon Street at Eagle, that Brown saw in perspective this item of history at last. After all these years of admiration for Edward R. Murrow his admirer, Brown, was pulling out. Good night and good luck, indeed! So Murrow was a fraud with the rest! It was all a game played with the lives of boys. My Very Dear Walter Cronkite, Brown wrote in his mind, but began another instead, My Very Dear Officer Phelps, Following your trail one night recently I noticed that you parked illegally in a bus zone in front of the public library, illegally again beside a fire hydrant out on Geary in the Avenues, and illegally turned left off Park Presidio into Geary while driving from one illegality to the next. The violations of the police are worst of all. . . .

  But look at this. Paprika had not run “off into the night” at all. Far from it. He had run only to the door of Brown’s house, standing waiting there for Brown to open the door and allow Paprika to run in and snatch Luella’s muffins from the window ledge. The dog remembered. He had done that once — snatched muffins set to cool on the window ledge. Brown remembered, too. Then Mrs. Ferne came over a short while afterward with a frozen pie to compensate for the loss of the muffins, rather a sweet pert girl with a funny little name such as Tata or Gaga or Baba. “Nothing doing,” said Brown, “no muffins for you. Come with me.” Paprika followed Brown from the front door to the garage. Paprika loved riding in automobiles as much as he loved eating muffins, and in he went into Luella’s car.

  Brown reentered the house. There she lay, gently breathing. When Brown switched on the lamp to find her purse she lifted her hand to her cheek, touching herself with her fingertips as if, in her dream, she were trying to locate a misplaced thought. “Something I can do?” he’d ask, and she’d reply, “Just thinking. Nobody can help me
.” To which Brown might reply, “Nobody can help any of us.” Taking her keys from her purse and leaving the room, he descended to the garage, where Paprika was sitting up straight and never more “alert” in the seat beside the driver (for Paprika knew that dogs don’t drive cars). When Brown entered the car Paprika greeted him with joy, licking his face and wagging his (Paprika’s) tail. His enthusiasm was high. He was all set for a wonderful drive in the car, although he had no idea where he was being taken, knowing only that wherever it was it was bound to be better than standing and barking and howling all night in the solitude of the Fernes’ yard. Perhaps he was being taken for a romp on the green in the park. He didn’t ask why this excursion should be occurring at a quarter of one in the morning. Any old hour was good enough for Paprika, a ride was a ride, and companionship was a pleasure. Now, at last, a companion, a ride, a car, going somewhere, seeing the sights.

  Brown, having backed out, left the car. He lowered the garage door. The Fernes had an automatic electric-eye garage door, but Brown did not. When he returned to the car Paprika was freshly ecstatic, leaping upon him after his absence of thirty seconds, kissing him with his wet tongue, bowling him over, so to speak, until Brown was finally able to fight himself upright to his position behind the wheel, saying over and over, “Paprika, calm down, we can’t get going until you’re calm.” Soon Paprika did calm down. He sat panting, steaming up his window, and he was happy.

  Brown intended to kill him Finally, after ten thousand fantasies, Brown was going to kill someone at last a dog. He would run the dog over with his automobile — Luella’s automobile, to be precise — freeing Paprika as if for a run, then coming up behind the dog ever so slowly and just nudging him behind the knees so that he’d fall forward and be gently ground to death by Brown’s Atlas tires (clipping it was called, illegal in football). Brown had the right to sleep at night. That was justice. Paprika had no right to keep Brown awake. Did Brown keep Paprika awake?

  And yet Brown wondered how much sleep he actually did lose each night because of Paprika. Possibly he lost less than he supposed. Often in the morning when he complained to Luella that he had slept badly — “hardly slept a wink all night” — she replied that she had observed him sleeping soundly without motion or interruption hour after hour. Thus his impression of having been kept awake by Paprika’s barking may have been only illusion, distant from reality. Possibly Brown simply needed more sleep than ever before. Was Paprika then a scapegoat? How about due process for Paprika?

  It wasn’t the kind of thing Luella understood. The question was justice, whereby in the most brazen and callous manner Harold Ferne made himself unapproachable for the settlement of a dispute. If the shoe had been on the other foot — if Brown had a loud dog, if Harold were the complainant — Brown would have taken immediate steps to restrain his dog. “Just cover up your head,” Luella said, and as far as she went she was right enough. But covering one’s head, my dear Luella, leaves unsettled the question of justice; a just man hears injustice even when his ears are under the pillow.

  They had driven up Market, onto Portola. Brown had been thinking in terms of Great Highway. He’d kill Paprika there. Instead, however, just as he and the dog reached the heights of Miraloma he became aware of the wooded proximity of Mount Davidson, and he swerved from Portola and wound his way up the climbing streets to the great cross.

  Brown drove as high as he could go, parking near the entrance to the woods. From here he had several times in his life walked with Junie up the path to the cross, to see at close range the cross so often seen from the distance, and Junie was always pleased, too, to be for one moment higher than anyone else in the city. To establish this, Brown crouched upon the cement at the foot of the cross, so that Junie would be sure to be higher than he, and higher than anyone else, too. Brown leaned across Paprika and opened the door, and Paprika leaped out and ran forward into the darkness, sniffing and smelling and wagging his tail, soon stopping and looking behind to see where Brown was, for Paprika supposed that Brown, too, by now, had leaped from the automobile and was chasing after him up the lanes in his bedroom slippers at one o’clock in the morning, or scrounging around on the ground looking for a suitable stick to throw for Paprika to retrieve. In truth, however, regardless of anything Paprika might be thinking, Brown had closed the car door behind Paprika and had sat a moment watching the dog run off. Then he stepped on the gas and departed, leaving Paprika alone in the woods to howl the rest of the night if he cared to, to be higher than anyone else in the city, man or beast, to stay alert, and keep the trees awake.

  Five

  At six-thirty in the morning, while Brown was still sleeping very well in his house on Yukon Street, looking down Eagle Street, Harold Ferne raised his garage door with his electric beam and backed out his long black Lincoln Continental without even looking. We will remain with Harold briefly only.

  He’d say he was looking, thought his wife, Lala, who was watching him surreptitiously through the little square window of their front door, but he wasn’t truly looking, for he was overwhelmed by distraction. He owned sixty-three long black Lincoln Continentals or chocolate-brown Fleetwood Cadillacs. Harold’s his name, fleet rental’s his game. In her hands Lala held his blue bowling shoes. Tonight was his bowling night, or so he claimed, and yet he appeared to be forgetting his bowling shoes. He had forgotten them last Tuesday, too, and returned home late at night (after bowling, so he said) and mentioned every little obscure event of the day, and who went bowling where, and everybody’s score, and the various remarks the “boys” made among themselves, but he failed to mention having forgotten his bowling shoes, and now here he was, forgetting them again. Peculiar, eh what? Well, Harold was peculiar.

  On the other hand, how peculiar could a man be who owned sixty-three long cars and couldn’t read his native English or any other language? Harold could so cleverly fake reading that one might wonder why he didn’t divert his energies from faking to straight learning. Well, Harold had “hang-ups.” He had obsessions and fixations. For example, one of his obsessions or fixations involved the matter of his wife’s having emerged from his mother-in-law’s womb. “I was smaller then,” Lala said. Even so, it didn’t seem possible, and it was driving him dizzy when he thought about it, which he tried to do as little as possible. Yet how could a man avoid his own thoughts?

  He left his car to raise his flag. Too bad he couldn’t raise his flag by electric beam. His flag size was “extra large,” and his flag flew above his barbecue pit, the smoke of his sizzling meats drifting up into the stars and stripes. Returning to his car, he closed his garage door with his electric beam. But what was he hearing? Something was wrong.

  Ah, thought Lala at the little square window, he remembered he forgot his bowling shoes. But apparently it wasn’t, after all, his shoes he forgot, for he walked to the garden fence. A sound was wrong, or the absence of a sound. Where was the sound of Paprika’s barking? Where was Paprika himself? Paprika was nowhere in the yard, nor, as far as Harold could see, in the doghouse, either, although he might have slipped into the garage, and be there now. Harold, who could have opened the door manually, preferred to return to his automobile and open the garage door with his electric beam, but regardless of how he opened the garage door he would not have found Paprika within. He called, “Paprika, Paprika, I’ll smash you if you hide on me,” but Paprika did not reply, and Harold strode quickly, in a kind of panic, to the front door of his house, where Lala had been standing, and rapped several times upon the door in some alarm (his keys were in his car), bringing Lala quickly to the door in her pink robe. She pretended to be arriving from another part of the house. “Where’s Paprika?” Harold asked. “Don’t tell me he’s in the house.”

  “Paprika’s never in the house,” she said. “Certainly not,” for Harold absolutely prohibited Paprika from entering the house. This was another mild “hang-up” of Harold, who, though he feared above all the rape of his wife and dau
ghters, he feared Paprika too. How would Paprika be useful in the event of rape? Rape in the house, Paprika locked in the garden. It was hard to see.

  “Then where is he?” Harold demanded.

  “He must be out there,” said Lala.

  “He’s not,” said Harold.

  “He can’t not,” said Lala, hurrying out the side door and into the garden to verify the fact she knew would be true if Harold said so: she knew which things in life Harold could be mistaken about, and which he could not. She knew what she knew and what she didn’t know. She was one of the most extremely intelligent people you will meet anywhere, but deceptively so, for her voice was girlishly high and her step was girlishly brisk — always on the verge of running — and her color was pink.

  Harold consulted his watch. He had many appointments today (or so he said), and he knew that to keep abreast of things, today or any day, it was well to be gone from the house no later than “both hands at the bottom.” His mother-in-law was teaching him numbers and letters and reading in general. “He couldn’t have got out,” said Harold. “There’s dirty work somewhere. You tell them. They’re girls.”

  “Somebody let him out,” said Lala, “because somebody couldn’t stand the barking. We can’t say we weren’t warned.”

  “He didn’t bark,” said Harold. “The gate’s still latched.”

  “He couldn’t have jumped over,” Lala said. She held Harold’s bowling shoes, but he did not notice them.

  “Damn it,” said Harold, “don’t be so stupid.” Even so, he contemplated the fence, assessing its height against the possibility of Paprika’s having actually decided, upon some impulse, to leap over the fence, to sail into the night like Santa’s reindeer. “He’ll come back,” said Harold, once more consulting his watch. “Phone in if he comes back.”