“I should have known. That’s all you could think of to do with your life? Kill a woman? Was she black?”
“Yes.”
“Of course. Of course she was. What did she do? Cheat on you?” She said it ugly. Cheat. Like “Take away your candy?”
He nodded.
“My my my. And you, I suppose, were the faithful boyfriend who never looked at another girl.”
“Never. After I got out of the army, never. I played a little—piano, I mean, at night. Nothing much but okay until I could get on at the gas field. I had this gig in Sutterfield. Off and on for about three months. Then one morning I came home and…”
“No,” sang Jadine, “don’t tell me. You found her with somebody else and shot her.”
“No. I mean yes, I found her—that way, but I didn’t go in. I left. I got in the car. I was just gonna drive off, you know, and I backed the car out in the road, but I couldn’t leave, couldn’t leave them there so I turned the car around and drove it through the house.”
“You ran over them?” Jadine’s upper lip was lifted in disgust.
“No, I just busted up the place. But the car exploded and the bed caught on fire. It was a little place we had, just a little box, and I drove through the bedroom wall. I pulled her out of the fire but she never made it. They booked me after that.”
“What about the man?”
“It wasn’t a man; it was a boy. Thirteen, I heard. Singed him bald, but nothing more. They had me up for Murder Two.”
He was still standing and now he looked down at her and noticed that she had folded her legs under her white cotton skirt. She is scared, he thought. In the company of a killer on an island, far away from the house, she is too scared. Suddenly he liked it. Liked her fear. Basked in it like a cat in steam-pipe heat and it made him feel protective and violent at the same time. She was looking into the horizon and kept her legs hidden under her skirt. Does she think I’ll cut them off, or is there something under there she is afraid I will take out and kill? The idea both alarmed and pleased him and he dropped down on one knee and said very softly, “I won’t kill you. I love you.”
Quick like a doe she turned her head. Her eyes stretched wide with the problem of deciding what to be outraged by: the promise or the confession.
“You better not do either one,” she said. “I don’t want you loving me, and don’t threaten me either. Don’t ever threaten me again.”
“I wasn’t threatening you. I said I won’t—wouldn’t…”
“Why would you even say that? What kind of man are you? People don’t say things like that. Nobody says that. Where do you think we are, in some jungle? Why would you say you’re not going to kill me?”
“Shhhh.”
“I won’t shhhhh. You can’t just sit here on the sand and say something like that. You trying to scare me?”
She’s bolting, he thought. I have disgusted her again. And it was true that she was looking at him as though he were a dwarf with a head lopsided and swollen with water. She’s right, he thought. I am crazy. Whenever I try to tell the truth it comes out wrong, or dumb or scary and there was no way to hide his helpless naked face. “No, wait a minute. I…I wasn’t trying to scare you. I was trying to comfort you.”
“Comfort me?”
“Yeah. You tucked your legs in like you were scared of me. You don’t have to tuck your legs. I mean…”
“What are you talking about?”
“You changed the way you were sitting.”
“You thought I sat this way because I was afraid?”
“Okay. I was wrong. But I didn’t say it to say, ‘maybe I could but I won’t.’ I said it so you wouldn’t think that I would or…I’m not a killer. Just that one time, accidentally when I was fucked-up. I just didn’t want to see your legs folded up like that. I wanted you relaxed, like you were before. You were sassy before and rubbing your ankles with your hands.”
Jadine looked at him trying to figure out whether he was the man who understood potted plants or the man who drove through houses.
“Honest,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Honest. I can live without a lot of things, but I didn’t want you to take your feet away from me just because I didn’t go to jail like I was supposed to. I don’t have a real life like most people, I’ve missed a lot. Don’t take your feet away from me too.”
“You are not well,” she said.
“Yes, I am.”
“No, you’re not.”
“’Cause I like your feet?”
“You can’t have my feet.”
“I didn’t ask to have them. I just asked to see them.”
“I can’t carry on a conversation like this. This is not a conversation that anybody has.”
“Let me see them.”
“Stop it.”
