The Joy of Killing Read online

  I SOUGHT TO remove my hand from beneath the sweater gently, but the girl pressed it against her breast. I wanted to tell her how amazing it was I had finally met her, how much I loved her for it, she was so much more beautiful than I had ever imagined, and her skin was so smooth, under my fingertips. She put a finger to my lips.

  Suddenly, lights were flashing by in the window, white lights on top of warehouses, lights encircling silos, and flashing red lights on white cross arms, and yellow lights in house windows, and the train whistled three loud blasts, and I thought that nothing of this night could survive the sort of glare that crossing into the outskirts of a Midwestern farm town like Toledo would bring, an unfriendly, grim bleakness that would bust up anyone’s dream, ruin the sounds and smells of it, and I was thinking of what I might say to ease the transition when there was one long, loud blast of the whistle and the rocket darkened, shook from side to side, and shot forward. I wondered what happens now; maybe we cuddle like this for the rest of the trip, and maybe—although, seriously, I doubted it—maybe I could at some fortunate moment slip a hand below the waist—a place unknown to me, and truthfully a place I found a little scary to even imagine. At no time yet in my life had I even come close to it, and even in my fantasies I seldom got that far—an image of a girl, like the one in my arms, standing in front of a mirror in pink panties, where you could just make out the crease in her bottom, was a favorite and far more than sufficient. As if sensing this, the girl raised her face to mine, allowing her eyes to darken even deeper, saying in better form than words that this story was far from over.

  My finger caught the edge of the lower lip and pulled it down a little, and in the dimness I could see a little indentation in the middle. I leaned into kiss her, and I could feel the spot with my tongue. She caught my finger in her lips and sucked gently. I felt her tongue circle my finger. My throat constricted. Her hand tugged at my belt buckle, and the prong easily sprung free from the leather. I thought of touching her hand, guiding it away. I was embarrassed, for myself, over the bulge in my pants. Her fingers wrested open the top button on the slacks and then tugged the zipper down. The flaps spread open. Her hand slid down and then back up my dick. She tightened her grip, and it occurred to me that what was happening might be just a hand job—just a hand job!—and I felt my throat relax a little. Still something to brag about back at school, if I wanted to. Slowly she lowered her head onto me, and I felt her tongue probe around the perimeter, as if looking for something. I twitched, and she dropped all the way down. The blood rushed in my ears. I lay a hand on her head. I felt the tip of my dick brush the back of her throat and her lips pull at the very base of it. Too much, I thought. I’m a goner. I let my fingers sink into the hair. If I intended a signal, she missed it, for now she lifted all the way up until her lips were barely touching me, pausing long enough for the cool air to brush the skin, and then descended slowly, a millimeter at a time.

  OVER THE YEARS I’ve often wondered whether it was simply the particular circumstances of the evening, the lonely metal capsule rocking back and forth as it plowed through the darkness, the proximity of unseen strangers, the faintly flickering stars, that brought the two of us together. There are times when you go beyond words, beyond even images, or sensations, and then you come to see that the process of recovering those times will inevitably fail, and fail so severely that it will make you wonder whether there’s any point in trying to describe it. You know that something dear will be lost by the doing of it; some inner life of the time will be flattened out, and it will become a good deal less precious than before. Sitting in front of the typewriter, banging on these keys, I feel a slight disloyalty to the girl, that I am ruining something that should have remained unwritten, forever. Maybe the night on the train meant nothing to her. She probably forgot about it the minute she stepped off the train in Chicago, already thinking about seeing her boyfriend that night. A real heart breaker, other boys would say. Living her life as she saw fit, leaving a trail of wreckage in her wake. I never felt that about her, over the years. The only harm I suffered was the establishment of hope—that one day I would find her, or someone like her, again. Because it was a perfect experience, and you can chase one of those for all your days, measuring all else against it, and come up exhaustingly short. Now and then, I’ve wondered if it really happened; if she really existed, or if I read it somewhere, or heard it from another boy, or if maybe some of it happened, and I’ve embellished it greatly, but I swear to God, I can feel the train car sway back and forth; I can see her throat white in the stars’ pale light, feel her hair brush my cheek, lost in it, the perfect alignment, not a molecule out of place, giving way, marred only by a tiny voice of warning.

  Yes, sometimes I can freeze the image almost anywhere in the scene—her eyes, pleased, even slightly amused, holding a bit of a challenge in them, glancing up at me—and for almost as long as I want, in color or black and white, with or without sound, or I can roll it a frame every few seconds or so, and fall back into the night and absorb it all over again, into my very being.

  She had to know it was my first time; thank God she was kind about it. I let my hand slide slowly down her back, on top of the sweater, feeling the ridges of her spine, slowly, lower and lower, until I felt the band of her skirt. I thought, man, she doesn’t even know your name, nor you hers, and I got it then, that this was the whole point, separation of body and soul. My fingers crept under the edge of her skirt and touched actual skin, and she stopped moving, as if to see how far I was going to go, and I decided not much further. Suddenly, the train rocked to the right hard enough to cause fingertips to slide down another fraction, where they unintentionally touched the very top of the crevice, and my first thought was, Jesus Christ, she’s not wearing any panties! The velvet feel of the soft rise of her bottom was too much, and I pulled my fingers back.

  I worried that I had gone too far, but I felt her fingers creep up my chest and begin unbuttoning my shirt, first the middle button, then one button on either side of it. She glanced up at me, and in those strangely beautiful eyes there was now a touch of merriment. She laid her head on my chest, and her fingers slid under the edge of the shirt and pinched my right nipple. It hurt. I laid my hand on her head and pulled gently on a lock of hair to discourage her. She closed her teeth on me. I sucked in a breath, whispered, “Fuck.” Now she clamped her teeth on the very bottom, and shook her head slightly, and the annoyance turned into little shivers of pain. I pulled back, which only hurt more. She saw the look of discomfort on my face and looked pleased with herself. I got it then; realizing that the end was near for me, she had distracted me from my course, and she had done it quite well, for my dick, which she still held lightly in one hand, was now half its former self, and both it and I were a good deal less excited than a few moments earlier.

  THE SOUND OF the doorbell chiming its brash two-note tune always manages to penetrate the thickest blankets of consciousness, usually in simple moments, like when I’m packing my briefcase in the morning, or lacing up a boot. On that hot summer day, the metallic sounds stirred up in me a terrible dread. I watched as my mother walked by the living room to the front door, and I jumped in my chair when it rang again. I remember the patches of light patterned on the floor from the bright sun streaming through the blinds in the front window; the purple iris pattern on the arms of the chair in which I was sitting; and the polished silver cigarette box on the glass coffee table next to a Life magazine. I can even see the scuffed toes of my black cowboy boots on the beige carpet. I can’t imagine why I was sitting there on a midsummer morning; I should have been out on my green-and-white Schwinn, making the rounds of my hangouts. The sounds of the front door opening, a short pause, and my mother’s voice:

  “Yes?”

  I leaned over to look down the hall to the doorway, where she was standing, one hand on the doorknob and the other on her hip. All I can make out through her limbs is a gray hat, a fedora. Perhaps I saw more then; but that’s the image that�
��s survived. One gray hat with a dark band around the crown and a brim tipped down slightly in front.

  “Mrs. Jackson?”

  It was the voice of doom. I knew that from the sturdy, cold tone. It told her what was coming was going to be tough, steel yourself, I am going to totally fuck up your morning, as well as your son’s, the boy at the center of all this. It’s my job, and it’s part of life. Nothing personal.

  “Yes.”

  She got it, too. This wasn’t about previous incidents with the school principals or department store security. This was dead serious grown-up stuff.

  These images, the doorbell, the hat, particularly the hat—for it was bright that morning and in the background now I can see trees and perhaps even a house—emerge in pieces, or together in some incoherent fashion, or hooked to whatever else fits their fancy; they flash like a camera bulb or they seep up from the depth; a semblance of coherence might begin to emerge, if you will it to, at your own risk, and you think year after year you’ve glued one shard properly onto another and if you live long enough the whole story will reveal itself. I trust nothing, though. Whatever the latest version, it’s only that: the latest version, stimulated and melded and twisted by all else that’s roiling in the great miasma. The very mind that is fucked up is trying to make up the story of why it’s fucked up. You can see the source of the despair; there is nothing unchanging, immutable, which would be fine if the story was successfully blown out of consciousness, or jammed so deep that none of it ever oozed to the surface, and thus the effects of it were never traceable; you knew only that somewhere something lay beyond your ken, and you left whatever it was alone, and lived as best you could.

  MY FINGERTIPS ARE beginning to hurt from banging on the stiff keys. I would like to sit back in my chair and close my eyes, but I dare not; the moment the faintest light creases the darkness, the time for this will have passed, and the matter will be done. I will be done. My eyes are drawn to the table. The wood is lightly stained rough oak. It shows cuts and pocks, scars of use. I wonder about people who have sat here in front of it over the years. A young woman in a cotton print dress reading a telegraph from the Department of War telling of the death of her husband on an island in the middle of the Pacific. She whispers the words and weeps into her hands. She sees images of him dying on the beach, torn flesh caught on twisted metal in the watery sand. Time goes by, and eventually she remarries and has kids. She serves her new family meals at this very table, but the images of death on that island continue to flitter in and out of the story of her life, vivid but unstable. Her husband’s shattered body turning sideways in the sand as the tide comes in is the image in her mind in the final moments of her life.

  I went through the table drawer several hours ago and found a few sheets of linen paper with a name and the address of the place imprinted on them in an elaborate dark blue scroll. I see a man in an expensively tailored summer suit sitting at the table and writing a letter to acquaintances in Italy. He is arranging their visit the following summer and is inquiring of the woman’s preference in vintage wine. Her husband was his roommate at Oxford University many years ago, and he is haunted by images of a homosexual encounter between them one drunken evening in their flat at the end of the school year. The man’s mouth on his cock, a lock of hair falling over his eye. Waking in the cold light to their still entangled limbs. He seduced the man’s wife when he visited them in Rome three years back, in order, he thinks now, to push aside those images, but unfortunately they all tend to run together into one tawdry erotic jumble, particularly when he’s been drinking heavily, which he has been tonight. He thinks that perhaps during the couple’s stay he should bring the three of them together in bed. He throws back his tumbler of scotch, his mind already conjuring up the sights, the feels, the smells of the scene. He considers for a moment suggesting it in the letter, but thinks better of it. They will all need to be drinking, and at the right moment he will simply ask if he can watch the two of them make love, and then, when they’re in the heat of it, he’ll find away to join in. The man pours another tumbler and bends in to finish the letter. It must appear to be spontaneous, he decides. Or better, the woman’s idea.

  A LOUD SCREECHING of metal on metal—you can picture the sparks flying—was followed by two cries of the train whistle. The train jerked, and the girl’s fingers tightened on my nipples. I flinched, and she giggled, and the brakes sounded again like wild-flying banshees. The train slowed. The sounds of other people stirring; the baby resumed crying. The snoring stopped. A nasal voice complained. The girl leaned in, gave each one of my nipples a tender kiss, and began buttoning up my shirt. The train lurched to a stop. We sat there. I looked out the window—we were nowhere; no lights, no highways, no buildings. Not even trees. Lit only vaguely by a dying moon off to the east and a few scattered stars. I pictured masked men on horses galloping up to the train with six-guns flashing in their hands.

  “Something ahead on the track,” a male voice called out from the front of the car. That confirmed it. We’re being robbed, by a gang of train bandits.

  “It’s a holdup,” I said to the girl.

  “You’re funny,” she said.

  “I’m serious,” I said, leaning over her for a better look outside. A shadow moved away rapidly in the pale light. “It’s the Brandon-Younger gang,” I whispered.

  Now she looked at me curiously, saw that I was serious, and became serious herself. “What’s happening?” she asked.

  “Just pretend you’re asleep. They’re after the payroll in the mail car. If we’re lucky, they won’t have time to rob us.”

  I could hear the whinny and stomping of horses, the barking of orders, the clanging of heavy doors being thrown open, some vain protests, a thunk and a cry as a pistol butt cracked a skull. I pulled the girl’s coat up to her shoulders.

  All we had to do now was not get shot up during the robbery. Another day I would have confronted them—I had run a cowboy gang myself, in my earlier years—but now I had the girl to worry about, and the rest of the trip, although it was beginning to seem as if events were conspiring against us. Loud voices outside a car or two up ahead, arguing, a loud shout followed by two shots. A double cross, I thought. When you had something valuable, someone else always wanted it. I felt the girl stiffen. “Easy,” I said. “It’ll be over soon.” There would either be a shootout, or whoever got the money would hightail it across the barren plains with the others in hot pursuit. The passengers would be forgotten, and in a few minutes the train would limp on without its treasure. More shouts, and shots, and then a raucous pounding of hooves, shadows ripping across the flatland in the slimmest light of the moon. I felt a shot of envy over the outlaws’ freedom to rove and fly about in the wind, and to die a dramatic death if God so willed it. I could have been a Ghost Rider in the Sky, trailing steers breathing fire across the endless expanse, and maybe I still could. I felt a hand on my cheek. The girl’s face was tilted up to me now, and I saw concern in her beautiful eyes.

  I squeezed her shoulders, as if to say it’s all right. I realized the trade-off; you could ride across the endless sky forever or you could have the girl. Not both. I had chosen the girl, and I was glad I had. The robbers would be reaching their canyon hideout about now, and those left would be dividing up the spoils, which could never match up to the gift of this girl’s gratitude. I kissed her firmly, and with barely a thought I slipped a hand under her sweater and captured a breast. The train jerked and inched forward.

  I HEAR THE strange rattling sound again. The wind somewhere, I think, but the branches on the oak are still now, although I notice that the moon seems to have dislodged itself from the limbs and is creeping up the sky like a loosened clot. It sounds again, near the back of the house, probably in the kitchen, four stories down. A raccoon has gotten in. I’ve seen them in the garden; they are not scared of me. But it’s a rattling sound, not a knocking, or a banging. Something metal inside a tin box, like large paper clips, or nails, with an odd rhythm t
o it. Then it stops. Now the night is soundless. I hold perfectly still until I can feel the blood pounding in my ear. I give the roller on the typewriter a hard twist backward, to read a line or two of what I’ve written. The dark hat band, the light in the trees in the background, my mother’s print dress in the door light, would float away for long periods, then come tumbling back in. I knew the path the images would lead me down if I paid enough attention to them, and I did sometimes, in bursts of courage, for I had never forgotten the crux of what happened that day, or rather another earlier day, although as I grew older and learned the fickleness of memory I would look for clues that I had patched the story together from here and there. I never spoke of it to anyone, and it was only in recent years that I began to wonder about the formative effects of it, particularly in things that had played out badly in my life. I was then barely twelve years old. And the whole thing hadn’t been my idea. Yes, I went along with it, but only because of the promises that were made. It was stupid to believe them. How little we see of what makes us who we are, of what pushes us this way rather than that. Fortunate are those who don’t give a fuck, but if you do there’s nothing you can do about it except drink or do drugs or piss off the peak of the highest mountain. Or sit down at a desk on a night with a moon rising over the waters and write the ending of the story.