Descent

DESCENT
Tim Schlee

I’m at the Rusty Tavern again, where I’m always at Friday night, cept none of my usual friends are here cause I came early. It’s all a bunch of strangers, people I’ve never seen before in my life. They say in small towns like these you get to know everyone else, but I’ve been here about four years and I don’t know nobody. I got maybe twelve, fifteen friends in town, the rest from out of state. Don’t know what I’m gonna do when the divorce is finalized, stay here or go back home. Neither one sounds very appealing, to be honest. There’s assholes home just like there’s assholes here.

I scan the bar, looking for someone I know, or at least someone who looks interesting to talk to. There’s a pretty girl sitting alone in the corner with a martini. I could probably get her to bed, but I’m not really in the mood right now. I take a large swallow of beer and notice a man has sat down next to me while I was looking the other way.

“You from around here?” I ask.

“Yep,” he replies. “Born and raised. You?”
“Nah, I grew up in Mississippi. Greatest state around, if I don’t say so myself. But here ain’t too bad neither.”

“What brought you to a place like this?” he asks.

“I got married, the wife brought me here.” He nodded his head in understanding and I took a swig of beer. “Course now she’s leaving me, the bitch.”

“That’s a shame,” he says, growing uncomfortable. He scoots away to where he’s only got one cheek on the stool and shifts his body slightly so he’s not facing me. He even tries to pull up his collar to shield him from my sight, playing it off as if he were combing his already over-styled hair.

“I don’t blame her, though,” I say. “I’ve done some pretty nasty things.” I look at him, eyeing me from behind is up-turned leather collar, hiding. “Not to her, though, no. Don’t be getting any ideas. I loved my wife. Hell,” I start tearing up a little, “I still do.” I think about it some more, my wife and how much I love her and what I’m going to do when she’s gone, and I really start bawling. I bury my face in his collar, smearing my tears across his jacket and hugging him tight. “Lord,” I cry. “Why did it end up this way?”

“Look,” he says. “I’m sorry and all, but I have to get going. I’ve got a…uh…an appointment with my…uh…bye.” He gets up, shakes me off with not a little effort, and rushes out the door. Soon as he’s gone I stop crying and I wonder if I was really that sad or if I just felt like bugging him. I finish off my beer and order another one. I look around the room again, still no sign of anyone I know. I realize most of my friends are also friends of Emmie’s and I wonder if they’ll even want to talk to me after they find out she’s left.

“Ah well,” I say. “’Snot like I really need any of ‘em anyway.” As the bartender hands me another beer, I decide that after the divorce, I’m moving. I don’t know where to, but I’m moving. Home, maybe, but just temporarily. I think about New York. I’ve always wanted to go there, but I’m too poor and too scared to leave the South. Up in New York they’d just trample all over me.

A few minutes later another guy comes in and sits several stools away. I slide over to him and start talking. “She’s leaving me,” I say, “but I don’t care. Not one bit. I never loved her anyway.” He looks at my like I’m crazy, and I give him a big yellow-toothed grin. “My wife,” I say. “She’s leaving. Stupid bitch.”

“Hey, man,” he says, acting tough, puffing his chest out and straightening his back. “I don’t give a shit about your problems. I ain’t giving you no money or no sympathy either. So why don’t you just scoot back down to your little corner over there and cry to yourself like you was when I walked in.” I don’t want a fight. I’d be kicked out of the only place I have left, and besides, I’d probably lose. So I scoot back down to my seat several stools away and finish my beer.

After another few minutes I hear this guy from the other side of the room, getting louder, getting drunker. He’s telling jokes, but bad ones. Ones that are funny, but shouldn’t be.

“Hey,” he says, calling out to anybody willing to listen. “If your dish washer stops working, what do you do?” A pause, and then, “Slap her!” He guffaws at his own wit as several of his buddies scream with laughter and smack the table; the people who are more sober just giggle uncomfortably. I decide to head over and see if he’ll be any entertainment to a burnt out drunk like myself.

“Hey, man,” he says as I take a seat at his table. “You don’t look so hot. How much have you had to drink?”

“Seven,” I say. “Or eight. Maybe nine or ten. I can’t remember.”

“Goddamn, man,” he cries. “You need to settle down. You’re too pale, man. If you’re not careful you’re gonna spew all over this place.”

“I got bigger problems than a little upchuck,” I say. “My wife’s leaving me, and I don’t know if I should stay in town or not. I don’t even know if I’ll get the house.”

“Oh, man,” he sys, and he looks honestly concerned. His friends wander off into their own conversations, leaving the two of us for a little heart to heart. “Why she leaving you?”

“Well, one night, me and my friends got a little drunk, and we got into a fight with this little black boy from the barrens. Well, I guess we messed up a little too good, and he died. We didn’t mean to kill him, honest. She just can’t handle me having a little blood on my hands, is all. Can’t stomach it. But I guess if she can’t forgive me for that, she don’t love me very much, do she?” He nods emphatically. “I’m probably better off without her. She was just a weight chained to my ankle, holding me down. You know, if I’d a stayed home in Mississippi, I’d a had a job working for my uncle, making fifty grand a year. But when I married Emmie – that’s my wife’s name, Emmie – when I married her, she made me move here. Now I barely make twenty grand a year. Working construction, too. It’s killing my back, man. I just don’t know what to do. What would you do? Stay here or leave?”

“Well,” he says, glad to finally have a chance to speak. “Sounds like you ain’t got no business here anymore, tell the truth. First thing I’d do is see if your uncle still wants you for that job. That’s some good money right there, and it’s not like you have any reason to stay here.” I smile at him. I’m not really very grateful for his input – it wasn’t anything I didn’t already know myself – but I try to look like it. I keep smiling as I stand up and walk back to the bar. My beer is empty so I get another one. “That’s your last one,” the bartender tells me. “You’ve had enough.” I just keep smiling.

I sip my beer and keep exchanging glances with the pretty thing in the corner. I’ll look at her when she’s looking away, then she’ll turn her head to look at me, and I’ll have to look somewhere else before she can see me watching her. She always does, though. When it feels safe again, I look over. This continues for a few minutes. We keep getting worse and worse at avoiding each other’s eyes and before I know it she’s staring straight at me, and me at her, and she waves me over.

“What’s your name?” she asks.

“Nathaniel,” I say.

“You from around these parts?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“How come I’ve never seen you around here before?”

“I been hiding,” I say, and giggle. It’s an odd response, but one that seems witty to my drunken self. She just smiles at me – whether in sympathy or confusion I can’t tell.

“You’ve been watching me all night. There something you want to ask me?” I find this just the funniest thing I’ve heard all night and burst out laughing, a deep belly laugh.

“Yeah,” I say and scoot in close, wrapping my arm around her shoulders and burying my face in her hair. It smells like peaches. She scoots away a few inches, not in resistance, but to get my face out of her hair so she can kiss me. Her lipstick tastes like shit. “Let’s go back to my place,” I whisper as we grab and grope each other. “Back to my place.” She runs her hands up my thigh and squeezes me in affirmation. We scramble to pay our tabs, gather out things, and leave. As we’re exiting the bar, she remembers something she must a forgot and runs off to get it as I wait outside in the cold. The chilly air is refreshing and sobering, wising me up enough to realize I don’t know this girl’s name. I’m struck by a wave of guilt, embarrassed that I would take a piece of greasy tail like that over my wife – oh, shit, wife.

“Dammit,” I mutter into the cold and soundless night. I bite my lip but not hard enough to bleed.

“You’re a bastard,” she yelled at me. “A godless, murderous bastard.” Then she threw the last piece of clothing in her bag and stormed off. I haven’t seen her since.

And I’d go back, change it all, even save a dirty man just to have her back. It’s not fair.

The drunk girl is back and hanging on to my arm, pulling me to her car. I wonder why the bartender gave her back her keys, if he ever had ‘em in the first place.

“No,” I say, and slip my arm out of hers. “I can’t do this,” I say. “I’m sorry.” I walk back to the bar, never looking back. She doesn’t follow, thank God. I sit in the corner – the one opposite where me and the girl had just been – and think. Mostly about my wife. God how I miss her.

About a half hour later Lenny Rogers walks in. He’s part of the usual crowd I drink here with, and his entrance means more are soon to come. He’s an old widower, Lenny, doesn’t do much of anything but go to bars – mostly the Rusty Tavern – and get drunk. He don’t have anybody who’s really a friend of his. He just comes in and talks to anybody who’ll listen. He’s probably in his sixties, but he looks much older. I guess loneliness can wear you down. Or maybe he’s just a drunk.

When he comes in, he goes straight for the bar. He gets several drinks all at once, piles them into his arms, looks about for a place to set them down. He just looks and looks. I guess he never finds what he’s looking for, anyone interesting to talk to, so he scuttles off to a corner and sits in the shadows. He drinks his drinks, sometimes muttering to himself, sometimes addressing people sitting nearby (though never loud enough to grab their attention). Sometimes he just sits and laughs to himself, not sharing his secret hilarity with anyone else.

Back in the bar, I’m not nearly as sober as I imagined I was outside. I sit in the corner, curled up in a chair against the wall, and stare at the people surrounding me, examining them, taking mental notes. I look at each and every one of them, making up histories, who they are, why they’re here, what they’re like. There’s a woman with long curly hair, puffy and light, who raises poodles with hair just like her own. She’s got hundreds of them, thousands, running all around her mansion, a former plantation, an hour out of town. She has bushes in her front yard shaped into animals, mostly poodles, since they’re her favorite. She loves pink. All her poodles are pink. Her curtains are pink, her furniture is pink, her blankets are pink. Everything is pink. I imagine that even her pubic hair is pink.

I chuckle to myself and sip at my last beer, almost gone. I chuckle and look across the room at Lenny Rogers, sitting in the corner and chuckling to himself. Mirroring me. He’s laughing to himself and watching the crowd, just like I am. He’s probably even making up people’s pasts, just like I am. Oh my God, I almost scream. That’s me! That’s me! That’s what I’m becoming. Not a week after she left, and already I’m mirroring his very moves! Dear God! I stand up, knocking over the rest of my beer. Oh, look at what I have become! I’m an old miser at thirty-five. A lonely old man with no friends and no wife and who’s learned to live with his unhappiness. Look, Emmie, look at what I’ve become. This is the rest of my life, right here, and it’s all your fault. He was just a stupid man, Emmie. No one’s gonna miss him! Forget about him, anyway, that’s in the past. I run across the room in three steps and rush out the door.

“Oh, Emmie,” I cry into the night. “I’m coming for you. I’m coming back. I’m sorry and I want you back. You don’t know how much, Emmie, you don’t know how much I want you back. Oh, God, just give her back to me, please! Don’t worry, Emily, everything will turn out right in the end. I’m coming back, Emmie. We’re gonna move back in, have some kids, start a family. Just like you always wanted! We’ll live together and have a family and be happy. We’ll be happy, Emily, happy! Oh, I’m coming back!”

I run home and cry myself to sleep.

***

When I was younger I worked as a journalist for the Charleston Gazette. Since I was just starting off, I got all the stupid stories – stories about missing pets and their amazing treks home, stories about old women who held the world record for collecting stamps, or china, or somesuch useless nonsense – stories that were always far away. I spent many of my days working for the Charleston Gazette on the road, traveling from place to place, interviewing people, but mostly sleeping in motels and driving back and forth between one small town and another.

But not all the people I met were for work. Back then I loved meeting new people, hearing new accents, new outlooks on life. I would talk to anyone if I had a chance. I talked to a black, homeless janitor once, who had quite a story to tell about how he lost his leg in the war, got an aluminum prosthetic one, lost it while hunting alligators in the marshes of Florida, got another prosthetic leg – made out of wood, this time – which broke in a car accident…And the story went on and on. Always another leg. I didn’t think he would ever end when he said to me, “Bud” – even back then people called me Bud – “Bud, I’ve had this here leg fo’ty months. That’s the longest I’ve had any leg since the time I lost my first one when I was eighteen. And you know what? I’m bout ready to lose it again.” I laughed and laughed about that one. I wondered how many legs he’d broken on purpose, merely to get another, newer leg. Secretly I suspected all of them.

I talked to others. Poor angry farmers, rich angry farmers, poor angry workmen, rich angry politicians. The list goes on and on. But there was one group that always stuck out to me. You could always tell them just by the way they walked into a room, or the way they waited in line; not quite patiently, but not hopping from foot to foot in anxiety. They always carried themselves upright, chest out, shoulders back. They never let their feet slide across the floor when they walked. They were the people who were proud to be who they were. They respected themselves and demanded that others respect them too, and everyone always did.

I envied them. Back then I was just an insecure little boy. I’d never been with a woman, I had few friends, no real home. I let my bosses push me around, never objecting when I was assigned yet another menial topic of investigation which no one outside of my immediate family would even bother to read. But those men, those gods, never let a thing bother them. You could throw anything at them, but they’d never break their stride.

Which is why I followed them the most. When I wasn’t busy driving or interviewing my boring and uninterested subjects, I spent my hours delving into the minds of these respectable citizens. I fought my way tooth and nail into their social strata despite numerous attempts (often successful) to leave me behind. I followed them, and they led me to the Ku Klux Klan.

Many people would have you believe the Ku Klux Klan is racist. Well, that just isn’t so. The Ku Klux Klan is an organization devoted to preserving and protecting the morals and values this country was founded on – morals and values that seem to be decaying in modern times. They’re not trying to ‘keep the black man down’ as is so often slandered. They simply want to take a preemptive stance on the violence and mayhem that’s sure to erupt during the miscegenation process. I don’t see what’s so wrong with that.

And the meetings. Back when I was traveling the U.S. for my friends down at the Charleston Gazette, those meetings were about the only thing that kept me from quitting, not just my job but life itself. They kept me going. The burning crosses, the parades on horses. It was all so exciting, exhilarating. And dressed in my tall white mask and my shimmering robes I was just another one in the crowd. I was a brother. I was loved. There wasn’t anything we Klansmen wouldn’t do for each other, myself included. We would glance to the side, catch each other’s eyes, and see that pride, that love of the country and all of its people, that patriotism that was present in all of us. It was bliss.

But it ended all too soon. After a year or two I was promoted. I no longer traveled the back streets of rural America. I had an office in a building, one single place where I did all my work every day of the week for years. It wasn’t too bad; it was money. But it was no adventure, not like the one I’d recently taken, hopping from town to town and fitting in everywhere with just a white robe and a cap. I even missed the long silent hours of cornfields and grassy plains. I almost asked to go back once, to get a demotion. But I got used to it, eventually.

But then everything changed. There was Brown v. the Board of Education and pretty soon blacks were drinking our water, riding our buses, and taking our jobs. I was outraged, absolutely disgusted that the people I spent my time and money getting into power would let such a disgrace happen. When I first read the headlines I felt my innards churn. My will and my strength were renewed. I picked up my things, called in sick to work, and made off for the first Klan convention I could find. There were the usual burning crosses, robed horses, masked men in white cloaks, but there was something else, a hatred that pervaded the huddled crowd, uniting us more than ever before. We moved as one. We were Legion, come to Earth to unleash our wrath upon the pitiful and undeserving black man.

But that was it, a brief resurgence before the final fall into anonymity, one final flash in a dying electrical socket. Five years later there was nothing. I scrambled from town to town, revisiting all the old places thriving with life in those early years of my news reporting. Now they were all dead. The Klan meetings numbered in the tens, sometimes even the single digits. It was pathetic. I desperately searched for that adolescent joy present in all those long ago rallies. I searched with a naïve optimism, sure that around the next bend the next town would have the largest, most powerful Klan across the nation. But the numbers only dwindled.

I realized then I was of a dying breed. All the others who used to attend the Klan meetings, with whom I stood side by side on many an occasion in joyous fraternal bonding, they had sold out, given in. They didn’t care anymore. I knew they hadn’t changed. No, they were still the same people. They were just scared now. They couldn’t tell a man to relinquish his seat anymore without legal repercussions. It was sickening.

It was then I began dreaming, plotting, scheming. I had to find a way – any way – to revive the Klan. It would take something big, something huge. I didn’t know what. So I dreamt and I waited.

When I retired from my job after decades of reporting, I moved here. Those long hard years of dutiful and solemn journalism had drained me of my will to stand up and speak out against the atrocities occurring in my nation and right before my very eyes, but now, old lonely retired and – most of all – bored, I decided I would sit idly by no longer. I would try to divert my mind from the larger issue, focus my attention on perfecting my putt or installing the microwave I’d bought years ago but never used; but nothing worked. My mind wandered always and inexorably to the blatant disregard of traditional – Christian! – values that seemed to infect the rest of the nation.

I started a local Ku Klux Klan but could only convince two other fellows from town to join: Nathaniel Burrows, a recently married, early middle-aged man who worked part time at local hardware businesses; and Jeremy Compson, a young kid, not bright enough to get into college, but not dumb enough to stick around this town for the rest of his life. “Soon as I get a couple grand on me,” he told me one afternoon at the Rusty Tavern, a local bar, “I’m moving. I don’t know where. New York, maybe?” A question, as if I would have the answer. Young and naïve as he was and old and ostensibly wise as I was, perhaps he did expect an answer. But I just nodded my head and after several minutes of silence told him, “I know how you can make a couple grand.” I didn’t say anymore, and left before he could ask. I made it a point that he had to come to me. I don’t just hand out Gs on a whim, and I made certain he knew that.

It was almost a week later when he finally did come asking about the money. He was already a member of our local Klan, though he came only rarely and was never so devoted as I once was, but I wasn’t sure if he’d be comfortable with the job I was going to offer him. It was my plan, you see, the one I’d been thinking up for decades and decades. It was finally coming to fruition, becoming more than just a faint image in my dull and colorless imagination. It wouldn’t be easy and I had to be sure of this kid Jeremy before I let him in. “You’ve got to come to every meeting,” I told him, “for the next three months, every Saturday and Wednesday. After that, I’ll think about giving you this job worth two thousand dollars. Got it?” He got it. He was desperate for money, and he’d do anything to get some, even attending what to him were probably boring meetings between two old farts trading stories from days long past, days which they no doubt looked back on with a certain fondness only the aged can manage. But he did it. And I decided he was just the guy for the job. This Jeremy kid, he’d do anything we’d tell him.

Nathaniel was easy, of course. He was old enough to know what he was getting into and young enough to get into it.

“Tell me why,” I told them one meeting, “there are only three people from our town in the Klan.” Silence. “Are there not others who share our interests and beliefs?” Faint nods. “Are there not others willing to go as far as us to preserve their God-given values?” More emphatic nods. “Then why are we the only three brave enough to stand up and declare our position and make known our demands?”

“I don’t know,” mumbled Jeremy.

“Because,” I said, raising my voice and gaining momentum, “it’s become illegal in this country to have values. Anyone who dares question a man’s right to take his seat will be tossed up into a courtroom and thrown into jail. You can’t even ask him nicely without being declared a racist and a bigot and wheeled off to the asylum in a straight jacket. My friends,” I yell, as if speaking to a large group, “We must rise up and face our oppressors. No longer shall we stand by as they force us to the bottom, while they wallow in all the riches of the top. If you have any scrap of pride left, any shred of dignity still remaining, then follow me!” shrieking in a banshee wail, “Join me! Fight for your rights! Your pride! Your race!” And so I had them, both of them, in the palm of my hand, strings attached to every joint and limb, ready to do my every bidding.

The target was easy to find. He was a black boy, obviously, of indeterminable age. I remember seeing him growing up. He was probably eighteen or twenty. I didn’t hate the man; he was a nice enough young lad. But sometimes you have to make sacrifices. When you’re standing up for a cause, trying to make a change, getting attention, you have to make sacrifices. He was our sacrifice. He was my plan, my one last shot at reuniting not just the Klan but the white race as a whole. There hadn’t been a hanging or even a hate crime in years, so I thought I’d revive the tradition. You know, bring back old memories, stir up the dust settled at the bottom of everyone’s heart. I knew that once they saw those headlines about the vicious murder of a poor defenseless black man, all my old buddies and pals would come racing to rejoin the Klan. This would all lead to the purification and reunification of the United States. I was Raskolnikov, transgressing normal boundaries for the good of the world. I was the Ubermensch. Superman. It felt good.

There was a small, couple-paragraph article on the eighth page of a local newspaper. Not the emboldened 72-print headlines I’d imagined, but it was only a week after the murder. There was still time. If they ever caught us, this thing would blow up faster than a firecracker, and much, much louder.

About a month later, we were caught. The detectives did their research, dabbing for fingerprints, examining cells and hair samples under microscopes, and they pinpointed every one of the three of us. As I sat in jail that first night, I wondered what to do. I was Janus, split in two; part of me wanted the glory and fame, the dignity, of being the progenitor of the Klan’s revival which could only follow from my pleading guilty, which would no doubt crowd headlines all across the nations – a black boy killed by a racist white fanatic, and you said racism was dead? – but part of me wanted to sit back, retire, live the rest of my life in quiescence, plead not guilty and hope for the best; this part of me was scared of the possibility, the overwhelming possibility, of my former plan’s complete failure. Perhaps I would plead guilty, be tried and convicted of murder, and just fade into anonymity. I could be certain of no path I might take, or what it might lead to. I can honestly say this was the hardest decision of my life.

And in the end it wasn’t much of a decision. The other two pleaded not guilty, and my lawyer sweet-talked me into following suit before I could really give the matter much critical thought. Part of me cheered; the other hung its head in fear and shame.

But all my worrying and anxious fingernail-biting was for naught, because the trial was quick and easily won. The prosecution was young, unskilled, and poorly organized. Personal opinions about us or our histories aside, the jury couldn’t help but acquitting us in the face of such poor evidence.

Though our lives were spared, my plan was not. I have a wall in my bedroom with a half-inch thick plate of cork nailed over where I place items of interest to me. It’s a place where I can hang things, spread things out, organize my thoughts. Lately I’ve taken to thumb tacking newspaper articles about the murder on this wall. The wall is scarcely filled; I have only eight. It’s been nearly a year. The mass movement across the nation towards a greater, purer America has not begun, and I have no hope left that it should ever begin – at the least, not with me. My dream, the one last thing on which I have placed everything – my hope, faith, my life and the lives of others; it is no more. I’ve given up, quit. I feel like a fossil, old and dead thousands of years, from another world, a world different – much different – a world which I see as better, but a world forgotten by the rest, a world lost to the masses, existing only in textbooks and diaries. I don’t fit in – indeed, cannot survive in a world such as this – and I never shall. And so I say goodbye.

***

Bud’s dead oh God, dead – killed himself just yesterday morning, shotgun blast to the head (what a way to go). I can’t believe it. This won’t end up well. Bud’s dead and Nathaniel’s wife is gone. Jesus, what’s going to happen to me? What’s my lot? my punishment? If I could go back in time, I’d change all of it. I’d say ‘no’ from the very beginning. No I wouldn’t. I’d say ‘yes’ just so I’d have a chance to save that poor boy’s life. Things got so out of hand…and now Bud’s dead and Nathaniel’s thinking about it I can tell. I saw him just the other day, not at the Rusty Tavern where he’s usually at, just walking down the street. He didn’t nod or say hi or acknowledge my presence in any way. “Hello,” I said to him. He looked up, eyes red, cheeks flushed, forehead damp and shiny with sweat, and said, “Hey,” all listless and robot-like. “How are you?” “I’m fine,” I said. “I heard your wife left,” and I immediately regret it. Have you no shame? no mercy? “Yeah, she left all right.” A pause, uncomfortable and overextended. “If I had a second chance, I wouldn’t do it. Not because I’m sorry, no I couldn’t care less about a man. But if she would come back, you know? You ever been in love?” “No” “Then you wouldn’t know. My wife, I love her, I’d do anything for her, even not kill a man, just to bring her back.” Then he broke down in tears, weeping on my shoulder, chest heaving big monster truck sobs. I walked him back to his place, a one bedroom apartment in the middle of town – this was several weeks after she kicked him out – and stayed a while, drinking and chatting and making a rather friendly towel, I thought, certainly friendlier than most towels, all rough and grainy; some are so bad I’m so red and raw after hopping out of the shower I’m ready for a nice soothing bubble bath to ease the pain. But me, I was wonderful. I just patted his head and whispered consoling nonsense coos as he bawled all over me. Bud was alive then, but I hadn’t spoken to him in weeks, not since the trial. I realized then the gravity of what we’d done. Before that night, whenever some latent, unknown voice rose from deep within my heart or mind or conscience or wherever just far enough to say, mumbling at first but getting louder, that I’m a murderer and a deadbeat and a preterite, devil-possessed, evil little demon headed straight for hell, I would shut it out, close my eyes, turn up music if I could, blot it out anyway possible, bite my finger, my lip, I even wrapped a bag around my head once just to keep the voice away. It worked, however dangerously. Until that night. After my long drunken discourse with Nathaniel on the moral implications of our deviant actions, interspersed with much undue laughter and vulgar name calling, I could no longer suppress that voice. It would grab hold of me and shake me, force me to confront the truth. I was placed in blinders, eyelids taped open, neck splinted in place. I had no other choice. “I’m sorry,” I told the ghost of poor Jimmy Williams. “Please forgive me.” I can still remember the day he died, the day we killed him, though it’s distant and as if a dream. It’s hazy, but it’s all there. We ambushed – I can’t think of any other way to put it – him on the edge of one of those small, rural streets that invariably refused to travel a straight line, Highway F I believe, as he was heading out of town, visiting relatives in Nashville or somesuch. That’s what Bud told us anyway, and I’m not sure how much was the truth and how much a lie. “That man,” Bud told us, “raped a white girl once. A middle-schooler walking home from school, lured in by his friendly smile. A ride home, he told her. He took her to a back alley and fucked her, fucked her till she was sore and bleedin out the asshole. Never got caught because the girl and her mother were threatened and too frightened to press charges. So it’s not like he’s innocent or nothing. We’re just giving him what he deserves.” I wish that were true, God how I do, but I’ve tried everything, talked to everyone, and I know a lot of people in this town. When I asked Bud about it, he told me it was in some other town, he doesn’t remember where, and that’s when I knew he was lying, the bastard. That boy was innocent, at least of what we killed him for, what I thought we were killing him for. And even if he was guilty, who am I to visit vengeance on him? The most I could have done, should have done, was report it to the police, let them handle it. I’m not the law, and neither is Bud. I wish I’d realized that sooner.

We ambushed him on Highway F, our car parked in the middle of the road, hazard lights ablaze. He stopped and asked if we needed help. I can’t do it, was the first thought to pass through my head. Nathaniel wasn’t so hesitant. “Yeah, we got a problem, you see, with the carburetor…” He lured Jimmy Williams over, and as Jimmy stared into that perfectly functioning engine, debating which knob to turn, what wire to tweak, Bud held his cane like a bat and swept Jimmy’s legs out from under him as if he were hitting a home run. He hit the ground with a loud thunk! and Nathaniel quickly grabbed him in a full Nelson. Bud commenced hitting him with his cane, still held like a baseball bat, hitting run after run after run, scoring point after point in a game between Bud and the rest of the world, everybody vs. Bud in a long awaited and much hyped exhibition match. The sound was loud and thick sounding; Jimmy wasn’t hollow and neither was Bud’s cane – this was solid against solid, thick, dense, glazed oak smacking tensed, muscular abdomen, then bald, veined skull. Blood flew off in arcing showers, teeth clattered to the street below. I gagged as I watched. But that’s all I did was watch; I didn’t intervene, didn’t offer, didn’t even cross my mind. I just stood helpless and not helping as this horror of a murder unfolded just in front of me. This went on for minutes, ten, fifteen, who knows? not me. Then they stopped, suddenly and without warning. Nathaniel dropped Jimmy to the asphalt as he and Bud opened the trunk, pulled out the rope, already tied in a noose. This was Jimmy’s chance to escape, my chance to help him do it, and neither of us moved a muscle. Nathaniel brought the rope to a tree on the side of the road, tied to a low-hanging but sturdy branch. Bud gave Jimmy several kicks before Nathaniel arrived to carry him also to the tree. Bud supported the feet as Nathaniel lifted the head into the noose. I began to mumble, muttering nonsense to myself. I could feel tears welling in my eyes, not voluminous enough to flood over my eyelids, but opaque enough to obscure my vision of everything that was happening. (I’m actually rather ambivalent about this temporary blindness. I’m quite grateful for not having to witness his death so vividly, but I feel it’s what I deserve. I feel I owe it to him, to watch him die.) I couldn’t see, but I could hear the whisper of the fibers of rope scraping against Jimmy’s smooth neck. I could hear the rustle of leaves under Nathaniel’s feet as he backed away, his voice as he said, “Let er rip.” I heard Bud let go of Jimmy’s feet, and I heard the rope snap his neck. In my dim and blurred vision I could make out the dark shape of his body, swinging back and forth, toward the road then back into the depths of the forest. We stood there like this for several minutes, gazing at the scene as if we were passers by and not the perpetrators of such a heinous act, all the while my eyes filled with tears. Then Bud said, “Let’s go.” and we got in the car and left. I didn’t wipe the tears from my eyes till we got home.

And everything was fine. Till the trial, and the Voice. The judge, sitting up on her throne of mahogany, her eyes vicious and knowing, watching me, examining every inch, every molecule of my body, ready to give me her worst if only the jury would say, “Guilty.” I see that face in dreams, penetrating me to my deepest darkest core, hating me, hating me more with every breath I take, every move I make, especially abhorrent as the first juryman on the right stand up and says, “Not guilty,” his deep and solid voice reverberating off the tough brick walls of the courthouse, attacking me from every angle, splitting my head into thousands of pieces. I hear that voice and I cry out, begging to wake from my nightmare, though incapable of doing so. But every once in a while I would dream of peace, happiness, paradise, the thick gray walls of my prison cell indifferent and not accusing, the cold steel bars protecting from anyone who might do me harm, myself included. I dream this dream and I have hope, although its invariably shattered the next night, or sometimes the next dream, by the jury and the judge and their malicious conspiring to worsen my life and force me to live in such agony daily. They did it, willingly and knowingly, they deliberately set me, us, free, just to watch us squirm. They’ve already got one, Bud, he’s dead, and Nathaniel is half out of his mind with love. It’s not long before he cracks. But me, they won’t get to me. I have a plan. A plan’s what got me into all this, and a plan’s what’s gonna get me out. I’m going to beat the system, find a way out. I’m doing it right now.

I’m standing outside of a Bank of America, a pistol in my left inside coat pocket. It’s not loaded, so no one will get hurt, unless its myself at the fault of some overzealous or overexcited cop, which will be no great loss. I step inside, wave the pistol above my head for everyone to see, pray that someone triggers the silent alarm, and shout,

“This is a robbery!”