At first he thought that Mal’s betrayed spirit must be crying out in utter misery and shame as it lay unavenged, but he then recognized that feeling for what it truly was—his own sense of pride and loss begging him in the pretended voice of his wife. He sat down on the cinder blocks and thought.
If I kill them, then how am I better off?
You’d still feel bad, but you’d feel better about it. If you don’t want to kill them all, just get the big one.
How’s that any different? One, none or all—I don’t see where it makes any difference.
At least you’d know you weren’t a coward.
That’s ridiculous. And, anyway, what’s bravery got to do with it? It’s a matter of making them pay for what they did to her.
Pay who?
Her.
She’s dead. It would be nice, granted. But it can’t be. If she was still alive, do do you suppose she’d say: JULY, GO KILL THOSE MISERABLE KIDS, AND EXPLAIN TO THEM EXACTLY HOW MUCH THEY HURT US BEFORE YOU DO IT?
I don’t suppose. Of course she wouldn’t say that—and that’s the reason. What right did they have to take someone’s life like that?
They didn’t have any right. What’s that got to do with it?
If they didn’t have any right, but did it anyway, they can expect nothing better.
And probably don’t. But if they didn’t have any right, then neither do you.
Damn it, I simply want to for myself.
Good, now we’re getting down to basics at least. Do you think that’ll make you feel better?
Yes. Better about everything except Mal being gone. Her absence’ll be the only pain.
Only!!! What other pain is there?
Hatred.
That’s a joy compared to Mal being gone.
I know it.
July went to the police station and told them who he was and that there were some murderers over in Riverview Courts, number 27, gave them a description of the car and the plate number. They wrote down the information carefully and asked for the spelling of his name, which he told them, along with his address. Then they told him that they’d already known the boys were somewhere in the area, and it’d’ve been only a matter of time before they were picked up anyway. It was a simple procedure of pulling out files on likely types and looking around and talking to people, and thanked him for the information.
“I was going to kill them,” he confessed solemnly.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Montgomery.”
At this point July cast all thoughts of them out of his head, and with the bang of his car door closing behind him, his involvement with them ended. The long journey back to his lonely house began.
Now that he was not protected from his grief by outrage and fantasies of revenge, the very fact of his aloneness made itself clearly felt for the first time. He was overwhelmed with dread. It seemed there was no place to which he could turn for comfort. Behind him was regret, and the alluring desire to go over that day and find ways of altering the events so what had happened wouldn’t have. He might have come home for lunch. Mal might have gone to work that afternoon instead of waiting for the evening. He might have been sick and stayed home. He might have thought to leave the gun where she could get it, and taught her how to use it. These and countless other circumstances were alternative ways that day could just’ve easily gone, and there was no reason that it hadn’t.
To his left was the commonness—the almost mundane statistic of it: people get killed. In any large city hundreds of peoplewere killed every year. Everyone knew that each day you managed to get through with yourself and your family alive and unharmed was quite a treasure—and you should thank your lucky stars for it. People get killed sometimes. It’s the way of the world—something that an introspective person should have conceded from the very beginning of his conscious thought: an undeniable rottenness to living itself.
To his right was nature, which was the closest thing he had to a religion, and in it he noted the same grim statistics—death and killing, almost as frequently as life and growth. No, it wasn’t all like that, bees, seed-eating birds and the like had little participation in the horrors of it—but they were preyed upon by winter, predators, pesticides, food shortages and adaptation difficulties. There was no comfort for him here.
And in front of him, toward which he was driving steadily, were the empty house and the drawing Mal had made of him hanging above the sofa, about which one of the policemen had commented, “A sort of an artist, wasn’t she.” He remembered wondering what he had when she had her painting, sitting down in the timber below the barn, and only now was he aware of the answer, which came screaming at him from all around: he had her. Oh, why didn’t I realize how happy I was then? The picture above the sofa was a good one, capturing him just as he had been, a little smug, self-righteous and proud of the mere situation that he was who he was and considering that quite a virtue—completely unaware of how he owed everything he had to her. To have her back he would gladly give anything.
Yes, all along it had been this death business. Everyone he had ever loved had been taken from him, past that impenetrable barrier: his grandmother by nature, his parents by accident, Carroll (whom at least he’d liked a lot) by his own choice and, most terribly, Mal by human ignorance and malevolence. No, that wasn’t right. The distinctions weren’t that clear. All of them in a way had been within nature, and couldn’t escape being. All had been accidents, even his grandmother’s—there was noreason not
