The Joy of Killing (23 page)

She laid her head back on the seat and closed her eyes.

“When I got to school the next night the headmistress was waiting for me at the front door of the main building. She took me into her office and handed me the phone on her desk. It was my father. Alex was dead, he said. He had hung himself in my closet with a belt. I was to catch a flight home the next morning.”

The last panel of the scene is brightly lit. The boy is naked. His head is bent sideways, a black belt creasing deep into the flesh. His toes brush the floor. Behind the glasses his eyes are closed.

I force in a breath of air, exhale slowly. Flick the bar on the Underwood a couple of times. The boy cannot move until the girl releases him.

“I
THINK THAT
I always knew what he was going to do. I have nightmares about him calling out for me. I see butterflies everywhere.”

S
HE WANTS NOTHING
from the boy sitting next to her on the train, no absolution, no forgiveness, no release. Just the sense of shared despair. She wants him to absorb the images of her dead brother.

I'
VE GOT THE
image. I'll have it forever. The scene has a terrible beauty to it. I stay locked on her dark face, on the borderless eyes that threaten to consume me. I dare not touch her. I dare not show anger at the unfairness of it, only that I'm still there, with her.

“I found his glasses on the floor. I kept them.”

“They fell off when they unhooked him,” I said. Hearing them clatter.

She knows then that I've seen, that her brother's death, the secret of it, is now part of both our stories.

The conductor walked slowly by, pausing at the seat ahead to peer out the window.

“The cigarette,” the girl said, pointing at my hands, amused.

I looked down at the weed, now burned down almost to my fingers. I twitched, and the ash fell on my pants. I stubbed it out in the metal ashtray in the back of the seat ahead of me.

The train wheels screeched and the whistle blew two long blasts. The train slowed hard, like it had run into a great wall of water.

“We're coming to a town,” I said.

I looked away from her eyes, out the window, at a string of yellow streetlights and cars parked in front of small stucco houses. Boxcars rattled by. In the flash of the station lights I could make them out: Union Pacific. Southern Pacific. Burlington. Great Northern.

The girl believes she's not alone anymore. Her posture has changed. She looks at me differently, not as a lover but as a participant in her life. We sat quietly.

“Have you ever lost anyone close?” the girl asked after some time had passed.

The boy felt as if something was loosening up inside him, crumbling like an ancient stone wall on the edge of the sea. The silence settled around them until the images of her story began to dim. He saw the black squall in the blue sky.

“Not anyone close.”

“A friend?”

He nodded.

“Can you tell me?”

“I'm not sure I know the whole story.”

“There's a beginning.”

I hesitated. Finally, realizing that if I did not tell her about the afternoon on the lake, about Joseph, we would part strangers, I began. I told her of that summer afternoon at the lake, how all the kids met up at the river to swim and play on the swing. I even told her of my crush on Sally. She smiled at that. I felt myself moving into the flow of the day, with the hot sun and the blue sky and the roughhousing on the riverbank.

“Joseph wanted to canoe across the lake to a girls' camp. We had done it the week before and met these two girls. I didn't want to go that day. Storms came up in the afternoon.

“But he talked me into going,” I continued. “He shamed me. We left after lunch, when the water was calm. Joseph steered from the backseat.

“He wouldn't wear a life jacket,” I continued. “I handed him one, but he laughed and tossed it away.”

Her eyes grew serious.

“I almost got out. I remembered turning back to the river and tugging open the snaps on the jacket. ‘Hey,' he called loud enough for everyone to hear, ‘the girls are waiting for us.' He had me cornered.”

The train jerked, slowed further. The clickety-clack was like a metronome. I had lost my train of thought.

I described the ride over: The water was calm, the sky clear. I paddled hard, digging for the deep strokes to match Joseph's and keep the canoe straight. You could see the beach a ways before we got to the camp. The canoes were all tied up. Only the two girls. The pretty one waving, the redhead watching, hands at her sides.

Several overhead lights snapped on around us. People were getting off here. The conductor came by, muttering the name of some small town.

I told her how Joseph and the pretty girl, whose name I couldn't remember, walked down a path on the edge of the lake hand in hand with a picnic basket. And how I was getting nervous as the time passed and they didn't return. I could feel a charge in the air, an intense unsettling, although there was still no wind and the sun shone brightly.

The conductor stopped in the aisle. He stuck two stubs in the clip over our seat. A tiny smile crossed his face as he moved away. The train crept to a stop. Slid forward a few feet, then slammed still.

There is a vibration in the floorboards. I push myself up to a sitting position and listen. It's the same sound I first noticed. The rattling of a child's toy and then a faint scraping. I touch my hand to my forehead, expecting a spot of blood, but feel only a slight bump. The cramp in my leg is gone. I need to get back to the story. I force myself to stand and regain my seat at the table. I type up to where I am.

I
TOLD HER
about Joseph and the pretty girl coming back from their “picnic” all smiles and rumpled up. How I tried to convince Joseph to let me call my father to come pick us up. He would have none of it, and the girl added it would get everyone in trouble.

“We were standing there, when I noticed a dark cloud forming about halfway out. A black dot in a blue sky. Right before our eyes it grew larger.”

A
S IF IT
were pulling the rest of the sky into it, I think. I rub the goose bumps on my arms. Tap, tap. Clickety-clack. My fingers are disembodied. I read what they write as a stranger. I twist the roller, and the paper falls out onto the floor. I wanted to crawl out the window and stand on the edge of the roof to pee, but feared the wind would swipe me off.

“It looked like a huge cloud of mosquitoes over the water,” I type.

“W
HEN JOSEPH SUGGESTED
I take the backseat, I figured he must really be tired, and that maybe he would hang it up when I declined. It only seemed to energize him more. ‘Hell,' he said, ‘I'll paddle back alone if I have to.'

“I grabbed a paddle and held it up to the sky. The storm was wider than the blade now and directly in our path. I pointed to the black smudge in the sky one final time. Joseph was kissing the girl now, and her hand rested on his shoulder.

“I got in the canoe and dug my paddle into the water. Joseph jumped in.”

I
GLANCED OUT
the window: “Belmont,” the sign on the station said. Never heard of the place. “All aboard!” the conductor called.

The train slid smoothly forward, swayed gently from side to side. Gave a short blast, settled in, and rolled on.

“The darkness was spreading over the water. You could see tiny whitecaps forming.”

The girl had fallen quiet; the image of the water seemed to reflect in the luminosity of her eyes. The train seemed perfectly balanced on a cushion of air.

I describe how the wind hit us suddenly and lashed water in our faces. It caught my arms, the edge of the paddle. I looked back at Joseph; he was leaning forward, head down, eyes shut. The front of the canoe swung against his stroke, and I turned back and dug in.
The wind had now caught the tip of the canoe and was pushing us sideways. I dug harder and harder and slowly we straightened out. The rain came. First in sheets of nails, then in waves. I saw a tinge of fear in Joseph's eyes.

“His hair was plastered to his face.”

I continued. “I saw that we had taken on a couple of inches of water. The sky was pitch-black overhead, the wind whirling this way, then jerking that way. I felt my arms weakening as we fought for every foot of headway. The canoe tipped to the left, and we almost flipped the other way trying to right it.

“Then the wind caught the canoe and turned it sideways into the waves. We rolled over in a flash. I flew out of the canoe, grasping my paddle. I felt a bang on my head and saw black.”

I
AM SURPRISED
at the boy. How much detail he recalls and how calmly he tells the girl about the storm. He is watching the story play out in her eyes. The words tumble out of him before the thoughts form in his head, and the images are in Technicolor. He didn't notice her hands as they brushed the hair back from her neck, and she leaned in a little closer.

I
STUDY THE
sky for the slightest hint of gray around the edges, but it is still black as ink. I wind another piece of paper into the typewriter, flex my fingers. I feel the chaos of the storm now, see it in the girl's eyes.

“T
HE WATER WAS
icy cold,” I told her. “I took in a mouthful of water, and as I coughed I took in more water. I started to panic.

“Joseph was calling to me, but I couldn't see him. I saw the bow of the canoe in the top of a wave. He was hanging onto it by his fingertips.

“He kept screaming my name, each time a little weaker, more desperate. He appeared and disappeared in the water like a pink dot. The cold rain stung like bees.

“All of a sudden, Joseph appeared a few feet away,” I said. “He had to tilt his head back to keep his mouth out of the water. He knew he was drowning. He came at me. He was going to grab me and pull me under with him. I felt a hand on my shoulder. I tilted under. I grabbed the hand. His head popped up and he tried to say my name, but only spit out water.

I paused, remembering it clearly now. “I felt his hands on my leg. Grabbing at me, reaching up for my vest.”

A sheet of lightning broke with a crack outside the window. The girl's face was ghostly white. Only the images played on in her eyes.

“I reached down for his hand. It slipped away.”

I couldn't see beyond this. I was cold, and my eyes were out of focus.

Another sheet cracked over the broad plains. Trees and cars and farmhouses and even animals froze in the flash.

“His hand slipped off my foot.”

The train seemed to settle down on the tracks, grip them tightly and shoot forward with a newfound determination.

“I reached for him again. I lifted my head from the water and gasped for air. Took two deep breaths and dropped down again, feeling for him. I swung my legs slowly about for him to grab.”

I shivered. “I could have gone after him. I could have taken my vest off and dove down.”

“You would have drowned,” she cried.

I could see the end in her eyes. The squall still blowing on the edges, the leftover waves just strong enough to push the bodies to shore, up against the rocks, half a mile apart.

Sally was bending over the boy as he lay on the beach, crumpled.

“Where's Joseph?” she demanded. “Where's my brother?”

I saw the force of blame in her eyes. “Where's Joseph?” was the screech of a mad raven.

I waited as the boy in the girl's eyes tried to answer.

“I don't know,” he finally croaked. He didn't know, of course, but he suspected. The touch on his ankle had been the last grasp of a dead boy.

The girl leaned in a little.

“Sally understood then that Joseph was still out in the water. She froze for an instant, then began tugging at my vest, as if she might somehow use it to save her brother. She took a few steps into the water, called out her brother's name. I rolled over on my back, lifted my head, and watched as she went further in. I struggled to my knees.

“She cried out his name again. The water was up to her waist. Her hands were at her sides. I went in after her. She was up to her shoulders when I reached her, still shouting her brother's name. I
reached around her chin and pulled her back. Her head went under, her scream stopped. I leaned back into the water and stroked and kicked, until we slid up on the sand. She didn't move. I pumped on her chest; she rolled over and coughed out water. She looked back into the black water. ‘He's gone,' I told her.

“She jerked her hands free and began pounding on my chest.”

I
PRESS MY
palms to my eyes. The boy hadn't seen it then. Without her brother, Sally didn't want to live. Life without him would be unbearable. The feeling of the loss of him would leave her alone and in endless pain. She had never left town. Never left her brother. Never married, nor had children. Her posture when she stood outside the car was stiff and unforgiving; she walked with her head down as if there was nothing to see.