He went into the kitchen and stood next to the table. Butch came in and stepped on his foot. He filled the dog and cat bowls with dry food mixed with water, and sat watching them while they ate.
They seemed to enjoy eating. Holmes hardly chewed at all and July remembered once when his mother had criticized his father for eating so rapidly and he had responded, “Can’t taste it otherwise,” and laughed. But July’d noticed that he slowed down after that.
Then he thought of his grandfather Wilson and remembered that the only thing anyone had ever really said against him (as far as July knew anyway) was that he maybe spent too much time with his dogs, and when somebody told him that, he thought it was a compliment, because he didn’t think a person could spend too much time with dogs. July smiled at the thought and the smile was so completely unexpected that he was startled right out of it. He hadn’t thought there were any of that kind left to him. He pictured his entire emotional makeup as being so many electrical circuits—a huge network of tiny passages capable of conducting his charged thoughts through them, with countless thousands of different courses. A single thought would start moving and come to a junction where four alternative paths existed; when it had fallen into one of them, another four or five directions would open up, and so on, cutting across other circuits and every which way. This unbelievably complex system was made even more complex by each small segment of line having its own particular emotional value, ranging from very good, through nonfeeling, to very bad.
As the days wore on, he had felt his possibilities contracting. Coming to an intersection, he could see that one and sometimes two of the four channels were slowly being sealed up, like doorways being cemented over, and that it wasn’t easy to get into them any more. Before long it would be impossible. He knew very clearly the substance that was sealing these avenues, knew how it was getting there, but had no idea how to stop it. Invariably, it was the channels containing the good feelings which were being closed. He hadseen also that the beginning work on the bad had started, and that the future held almost exclusively nonfeeling channels, when his thoughts would roll straight through his mind like a bowling ball down a narrow alley and, deviating just the slightest bit, would fall into the gutter, slide all the way to the end and drop into the machine to be returned. He was powerless against it. Watching it happening, understanding it and at the same time not having any influence over it filled him with a hopeless, bitter rage (which was quickly becoming a constant mood, and he began to feel friendly toward it). The quality of his thoughts was being drained from them. But one of those channels was open. He had just been in it. Something inside him was tearing down those walls, opening him back up. He sat down and held on to the table to steady himself. Holmes turned and looked at him. Butch licked a paw and rubbed it over his whiskers. They didn’t seem so sad. Yes, he thought, he could imagine how someday maybe there might be some times ahead when they might go out into the yard, lie in the sun and not have to think about Mal, but just be happy. He could imagine how, after a while, some of those moments might be possible. It was the first glimmer of joy that he’d had since Mal was murdered, and though it lasted only several seconds, still it filled him with a tenacious hope, and for the first time he took up the task of deciding what he was going to do. He had to start getting away from home. Get rid of her clothes. Perhaps he could leave altogether. He needed to find a job; there wasn’t much money left and he wasn’t going to live off Aunt Becky. The issues quickly became too much for him to handle, and the weight of infinity pressed down on him with gloomy, unresolved riddles, but with a courage that astonished him he pushed them from his mind and thought, I’m tired. First rest, then think, and he went upstairs and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep—this time on his own side of the bed.
SIXTEEN
Lieutenant Lester Helm was talking to Leonard and Billy Joe in his office from behind a gray steel desk. There was no real doubt that they had killed the girl. It was written all over them. There was even blood on their clothes. But they were remaining very close-mouthed and refused to say anything other than blatant denials. They couldn’t remember what they were doing three weeks ago, or much before that. Leonard had readily confessed to being wanted in Cedar Rapids for armed robbery and seemed anxious to be sent there for a hearing so he could get it off his conscience. Billy Joe Brighton followed his brother like a pet and always appeared to be studying his face. There were bloodstains on the walls of his right pants pocket, where he’d put his unclean knife away before getting rid of it. The other one, Wally Cobb, had faint fingernail scratches
