The Joy of Killing (7 page)

I picture him stepping in, settling on the rear seat, and reaching for the paddle. He's not wearing a life jacket. Maybe there is one in the canoe and he put it on as he paddled out, but at that moment his skinny, tough frame is unencumbered. The rest of us left the beach to play on the tire swing, and I remember Sally was no more concerned than the rest of us. She grabbed the tire, ran a couple of steps, and swung out over the water. I can see the crack in the bottom of her suit as she kicks her legs; I can hear her scream as she let go, see the water rise and dance in the sunlight as she hit.

L
OOKING OUT THE
window, at the streak of moonlight on the water, and the sudden appearance of ghostly dark clouds, I feel like I'm the captain of the ship, in the pilot house, guiding it confidently through the rough seas of the night. There's nothing to fear anymore; I worry only that time will defeat me, although the darkness beyond the moon seems to be holding. As for the images of Joseph
in the canoe? Sally on the tire swing? They come from somewhere, don't they? The mind needs a story, and it sorts and keeps and discards as a narrative emerges, and so one embraces the current version at one's peril, but when there is nothing left to defend, to keep put together for, when you've quit waiting to get somewhere, it seems to me the story might begin to bear a strong resemblance to what actually happened; and it also seems to me that these images should be entitled to a little more weight than usual since they have appeared from nowhere, after so many years of not thinking of Joseph—not just his death, but anything about him. That, and the vividness of them, although the images of my wife with a bloody ice pick wedged in the ribs of her white wedding dress are just as vivid. Could we have played on the swing, watched Sally spin off into the sky, before Joseph paddled off across the water? Yes. Absolutely. In fact, now I'm sure that it was after lunch that he left in the canoe.

I walk over to the door and twist the bolt. The metallic sound strikes my skull. You push too hard on this stuff and you get nowhere. I don't remember Joseph actually paddling off, for example; I just remember that he wasn't there when it was time to go home. I don't remember the lead detective ever putting the wallett back in his pocket. Of course I denied knowing Willie Benson. If I didn't recognize the wallett, I couldn't recognize the name Willie Benson.

“You're not supposed to hang around with David Wright.”

My mother's voice, reeking with accusation and shame, split the silence. The first detective glanced up at her. My father looked out the window. I didn't have many friends, and those I did have
were troublemakers like me, living on the outside of the circle. David's reputation in Booneville was even worse than mine, and he knew characters way outside the circle. One day he came into the repair shop and began telling me about Willie. The man knew where to get girls, he said. We had talked about such a thing endlessly, dreamed about it, tried to imagine what a real pussy would feel like. It wasn't so much about fucking as it was crossing the line from fantasy into reality, to actually
touch a girl there
. David was adamant; his excitement was catching. Have you done it? I asked. No, but he trusted Willie to find the girls. He would arrange for a whore at the state fair, or one of the girls working out of the Booneville Hotel. The two of us went out the back and sat on the step, where we could spit and smoke, and David went on about it, and I sat and listened.

Funny, now I can remember the red pack of tall Pall Malls that David pulled from his shirt pocket, how he shook the pack hard once and a single weed popped out. I took it and thwacked it several times on the side of the Zippo (the same one I would carry on the train a couple of years later, shiny as silver, with the Marine Corps emblem on one side). I lit my weed first, then his.

David let the smoke drift out of his mouth and then pulled it up into his nostrils. We shunned the new filtered cigarettes, except for Kools, which I stole by the pack from the carton my parents kept in a kitchen drawer. We talked some more about Willie and girls, and even then I felt there was something screwy. Why would a grown man want to get a girl for a couple of kids? David mentioned giving him a few bucks, but I didn't buy it. What about Judy Pauling? I
asked. No good, he said. Her father had figured out what was going on and kept her on ice.

We sat there for an hour, smoking and spitting and talking about the girl Willie was going to get for us. The pavement in front of us got so wet it hissed when you tossed a butt on it. The screen door opened, and the postman appeared. He told us to clean up the mess.

I
HOLD MY
hand up to the night sky and spread my fingers wide until the moon catches between the knuckles of the second and third digit. The moon seems to have filled up a little, as if someone had poured molten light into it. I squeeze gently until the orb flattens out a little. I relax my fingers, and it springs back into shape. The blood streaks on it are gone. The moon is pure and pretty as the first night it shone. My mother's voice reverberates in my bones. I knew by then what it was about; the only way to survive this scene was to stay hidden. Once I said yes or no or maybe, I was screwed. I shook my head at another question. I hadn't really done anything, after all, just gone along for the ride and watched the scene play out. The second detective, with the eyes that didn't move, and the small ears stuck low and back on his head, picked up the wallett and opened it. There was a little pocket with a snap on it for change. Behind a piece of scratched plastic was a photograph. It was of David, with the usual smirk on his face, the flattop with the lock curled over his forehead.

“You know him?” The guy's voice was surprisingly deep, like a radio announcer's.

I nodded.

“Who is it?”

I peered closely.

He took the picture out of its case and held it up to me.

“David Wright?”

I nodded. He lay the picture down on the glass table and opened the last fold in the wallett, as if to extract something else. He pulled out a small photo. It was a girl, with blonde hair, a forced smile. Judy Pauling.

“You know her?”

I shook my head. He lay it down on the table, next to the picture of David. I had misread the situation; this
was
about Judy. Her father had beaten it out of her, the stuff in the basement. But the cop had mentioned Willie. Willie and Judy did not go together. Maybe a photo of Willie was coming out next. I pictured him: slight, short, balding, small black eyes in a sallow face. The three of us met outside a drugstore on the main street of Booneville early one afternoon. David and I stood there for half an hour before he showed up. We stepped under an awning, and he explained that he had arranged for a girl from the fair grounds to meet us at his apartment. Her name was Janice. Half an hour apiece, and wouldn't cost us a thing. He kept glancing around as he talked. Suddenly, he was gone. Behind us not twenty yards stood the postman. He had followed us, and Willie had spotted him and figured him for a cop. The postman gave us a ride back to the shop in exchange for a promise to stay away from Willie.

I
PUNCH THE
keys on the Underwood in a vain attempt to describe the feeling of that night on the train. No other time with
a woman came close to it. Surely I was to blame for that. I see myself as chasing that sensation the rest of my life, always slightly on the run, scared to come to a complete stop for fear of what might overrun me, and drop me. Sometimes, usually when booze or drugs were part of the mix, the barriers to impulse gave way, like the night of my best friend's wedding party, some five years after I'd caught him and my wife together, when all supposedly had been forgiven and everyone, all three of us, had moved on. I was standing on the makeshift stage at the resort outside of Montego Bay giving the best man's speech, rambling on about what a remarkable couple they made, and suddenly the bullshit of it all made me hesitate just long enough for the familiar scene of the two of them fucking to slip through the netting. I looked around for my former wife in the wedding party, and when I spotted her sitting with the bride's parents, a half-empty rum drink in front of her, blonde hair pulled back into a long ponytail, smiling up at me, I raised my glass. “Finally, I'd like to thank David for fucking my wife. In the ass, I might add. I'm looking forward to returning the favor. Cheers!”

It was one of my favorite scenes and pretty out of character for me. Particularly since their cheating had never really bothered me. Was I really that articulate? Was the look on the bride's face as ghastly frozen as I see it now? Did I really slam the champagne and march happily off the stage? I should have felt bad, of course—Julie, the bride, had done nothing to me—but I didn't. A funny thing was, my former wife came to my room a few hours later in her underwear, drunk, and demanded that I fuck her. I
think I did, for old times' sake, or to get a final laugh on David, but I couldn't swear to it.

I
TRY TO
refocus on the page in front of me, the round keys with the letters on them, but the distractions are beginning to take over; I'm losing the girl on the train; and time is thinning out. The stars surrounding the moon now have grown sharper, like there is fire on the edges. The wind ticks a small branch against the window, and it plays against the rattling and scraping noises from down below. The whole night is a concert, a play, of beauty and spirit. It's like this at the end, I think. A purple haze drifts across the face of the moon. Or perhaps it's always been like this, I just haven't seen it.

I see the problem now. The rods of the “t” and “h” keys have collided in mid-stroke and are stuck together. I stand and wobble a little. I reach in, twist the rods apart, and they fall easily back into place. I glance at the ribbon. It seems fat enough on the spool. The paper on the left is still stacked high. I punch a capital “T” for train. The conductor wears the same wire-rimmed spectacles as the second detective, the one with the still eyes and small ears. He massages the edge of the wallett like some sort of talisman. He addresses me, but I can't hear his voice, only feel his eyes. It will go on, until I talk. But why are they here, if David didn't send them? Maybe the weasel Willie ratted us out. I get it. They found David's wallett in Willie's room. But then, why aren't they talking to David? I reach for my Luckies on the edge of the table, but the first detective flops a fat finger on the pack, pinning it down. Our eyes lock. He wins.

I punch a key again. If I'm not more attentive, the girl will leave. I need her here with me until the stars begin to fade and I proceed to finish the long corrugated story of my life. The train, I remember, hurtled through the blackness like it could jump the tracks and shoot over the curvature of the earth. Inside it, with me, was this girl, her head on my chest, and beyond this there was nothing.

She sat up. I slipped my hand from beneath her sweater. I began twisting my pants around and fumbling for the zipper, when she said, “I'll be right back.” She straightened her clothes and ran her fingers through her hair. She patted my cheek, stood, and stepped into the aisle.

I watched her walk toward the light at the end of the car, her hips swaying provocatively. The guys at school will never believe me, not that I would tell them. I glanced out the window. We were passing under a tall bridge, and the cars on it looked like they were magnets stuck in the sky. In spite of what the girl said, I feared she'd come back all fixed up with a new attitude. We'd talk, and eventually she would nod off, and there I'd sit basically alone, wide awake, until the train pulled into the Chicago station in the early light. Then there'd be a few words of affection, a brief kiss, and the story would be over. I could finish it in my mind and let that version become the truth. I was thinking that might not be such a bad ending, really, when suddenly the clickety-clack took on a slightly hollow sound. I looked out the window and realized we were on a high bridge, crossing over a wide river. Below us in the water were long thin dark shapes with red lights at either end. The whistle blew two long cries, and the train began to slow. The carriage jerked
and slowed further. Maybe the rails ahead were torn up. What if the train pitched to one side and fell down into the water? We'd all drown. I could really use a weed. I looked over at my old seat; the pack of Luckies was sitting on top of the sack with the dirty magazine, like someone had helped themselves. Which meant the Zippo could be gone. I glanced up the aisle—no sign of her. The train jerked again, the brakes squealed, and we slowed almost to a stop. Still no one stirred. I zipped myself up and stepped across the aisle, found the lone weed and the Zippo on the seat, just where I'd left them. A long time ago, it seemed. Before the girl. I stuck the Luckies in the sack and glanced at the cover of the magazine: a brunette in panties and bra, looking over her shoulder at me. I made my way to the back of the car. The crumpled forms on the seat were fast asleep, unbothered by the screeching of metal on metal, by the fact that we hung suspended in the air over a dark wide river. I punched the button on the door, it hissed and slid open. I walked a few steps onto the metal platform and into the cold night air. The wooden ties stuck out only a few feet beyond the tracks; the struts of the bridge itself were made of wood. Metal against wood. Two steps and I was off the train; another and I was in the air. The train jerked to a complete stop, knocking me back into the door. I leaned out and looked ahead; the entire train was on the bridge; I saw the struts beneath us crumpling like toothpicks from the steel weight. At the first cracking, I would jump free from the train, fold up into a cannonball, and spin down. Praying to miss a boat.